DB's guide to 'epic' endings

[DragonBlaze]

Theres a lot of games that are great, but then, they have such a whimy ending, that it ruins everything. I don't see it so much in rm2k/3 games, simply because I haven't played many complete rm2k/3 games.  But yeah, this guide will give you some basics on making an good ending for your game.

I got the idea of writing this tut after watching over 100 episodes of a particular series back to back, which I honestly think the whole experience fried my brain and turned it into a big pile of mush. Anyway, the series  was split into two differant stories, so it had two differant endings. It made me think and gave me some insight on what makes an ending good, and what makes an ending not so good (aka horrid).

First off: This tutorial is really only meant for 'save the world' plots, if the goal in your game is to rescue a carrot, I doubt this will help you too much. Most of the time endings will be cliche. The hero(s) save the world, the bad guy dies, etc. Theres not much you can do about this unless you have the bad guy win, though original, it would most likely be a horrible ending, unless of course you play as the bad guys. No matter what you do, a good ending will be somewhat cliche, but don't worry about it. The reason it'll be cliche is because its been done before, and the reason its been done before it because its good. And although the basic 'save the world' part may be cliche, the means on how you do it should be original.

Leading up to the final fight: The final fight shouldn't just be a 'fight'. There has to be mystery, uncertainty, and doubt. Lets say the bad guy is some evil emperor. You have just beaten his army, all thats left to do is go in and fight the emperor. Seems pretty straight forward. Now even if you plan to put a big twist in when you fight the emperor, the player won't know that, and the player  may get bored with the plot since they think they know what will happen, especially if the last dungeon takes hourst to walk through. It happened to me in FF7, I got all the way to the end of the game, then I just got sick of it and stopped playing it. The ending just seemed like it would be too straight forward. Go in the crator and kill the bad guy. Without any big mysteries and such left, I completely lost interest. It wasn't until 3 years later that I went through and beat the game.

The mysteries and such you wish to include can be either subtle or big. Example, maybe you've had some dreams or something throughout the game. That would be a subtlle mystery, its not something that smacks the characters in the head, but its something that will grab the interest of the player enough to play through the game to see what it means. A big mystery would be like an unknown character popping in and causing trouble throughout the end of the game for the party.

Lastly with the 'leading up to the final fight' section. Parts of the story that deal with the end of the game should be found throughout the game, however, they should be mainly found at the end of the game. I see A LOT of intros that say an ancient evil was sealed away, or sometimes they give the plot of the bad guy away. Stuff like that, that will take effect at the end of the game, shouldn't be given away at the begining of the game. In fact, if you so much as mention anything about a great power, any decent minded player can guess evil is trying to get it, some point during the game you're gonna look for it, and most likely the bad guy is going to beat you to it. If the power is a bad guy, you can guess that someone or something will try to release it, you'll try to stop it, but fail miserably. Though small hints are a nice touch, nothing big enough where the player can guess the big event at the end of the game should be given away.

The 'bad' guy: The bad guy is very important to how the game ends. If the bad guy is dumb, then it can make the whole game dumb. First off, the bad guy must have motivations, and world domination should NOT be one of them. Why does the bad guy want to rule the world? Maybe they think the world is corrupt so they're going to straighten it out. Whatever the reason, it can't be simply because they want to rule the world, there has to be a good reason why. The same thing is true for if the bad guy wants to destroy the world. If there is no reason, the whole ending can get lame. A very good and popular theme is that the bad guy views life as pointless, it ends. Life is full of fear, fear of deing, and the bad guy wants to 'save' everyone by taking that fear away. Anything that deals with the meaning of life is big and often good to use.

Another big thing I see with bad guys is that you fight who you thought was the bad guy, then when you beat him, out of the blue comes some other freak who happens to be the main bad guy. NO!!! If you plan to do this, you must really hint at another foe besides the bad guy near the end of the game. This plays into the part leading up to the final bad guy as well. But under no circumstances have some guy pop up and be the final bad guy.

One important thing about the bad guy, is that they really shouldn't blab away their whole plot to the heros. The same plot they never told them before. Sure the bad guy will most likely have to say some stuff, but the heros should figure some stuff out on their own. A very big cliche is having the bad guy talk forever about his master plot. Have the heros figure part of it out and piece some of it together to help hide the cliche.

The fight: Everything in this game leads up to this one spot, this one point in the game. Thus the fight has to be epic, BIG. Throwing 20 forms of the bad guy won't do this either. An epic battle in a game has little to do on how hard or long the fight actually is . What really finalizes the epicness of the battle are the events surroudning it. The battle being long and tough goes hand in hand with these events.

You can't just fight the bad guy, that would be boring. You have to add more. Even if you're characters are all on level 99 with maxed out stats, before or after one of the final battles, the bad guy should do something evil, overpower you, or in someway put your characters in a situation where they would lose hope, strength along should never be enough to win the battle. When all the light has faded. Playing with the purpose of life is a very good idea here. The purpose of life is something that everyone wonders about at some point or another, thus it is a very powerful issue. When everything seems dark, you can move on to the good part.

Here you can start playing around with the idea of light. In a world of darkness, even just a speck of light can be seen and make a differance. Play with the idea of hope, though the battle may seem impossible, you're going to keep on fighting. And you have to fight for something you believe in, let that give you stegnth. Whether its the for the future, for a person, or just because you can.

Finally, when everyone has found a reason to fight and regains hope, they have to band together, and let their light shine. A group of people coming together to face a threat. The fight continues with the new found strength. Even this sometimes isn't enough though. It is always a good idea to never have the heros fighting alone. They should have the support of everyone around the world. It doesn't matter if they have differances in opinions or have conflicts with eachother, what matters is that they come together at this one time to unite, to stand agianst the darkness as one, and offer their support in the fight. Though usually its not a good idea for them to actually join in the battle, but believe, support, and encourage the heros, even if they're hundreds of miles away. And finally, the fallen heros and characters could also make an apearence, it always adds to the epicness.

Now you can fight and win

The ending: Now that the last battle has been won, you need to end the game, and you need to end it well. After the battle, if you just have the heros like, yay we won. Then put the words 'the end' on the screen, it's going to ruin everything. Endings should be long. They have to show the aftermath of everything, how did it turn out. Show that the battle meant something. A good idea for any game is to have the end product better then the starting ingretiants. What I mean by this is the world at the end of the game should be better than the world at the begining of the game. Though everything could be destroyed, everyone has come together, people have thrown aside their differances, other problems in the game such as wars should be solved. Then you can also throw in a party and/or show what happened to every character afterwards. What they moved on to do, if they acomplished their goals or something that they never got to do in the plot.

And most importantly, don't leave any open ends!!! If you had a mystery, let it be solved. If you had a pesky bad guy that always bothered you during the game, get rid of him. Don't leave anything that could be questionable out of the mix. I'll bring that series I watched as an example. Near the final episodes, some bad dudes came into the picture, they knew something, and they were plotting something, they were fighting against you and against the bad guys. Then it kind of brushed them out of the picture, and it never really said why they where they or what they were doing. It was really stupid. An earlier time during mid season, there was this girl and this wierd place. Then there were these creatures trying to drag the girl along with them, the whole dark place played a big role in the plot, but the ending never really explained it to much. It gave a sentence or two about it, and I kind of had to make my own guesses on a lot of things there.

Lets say you want to leave some ends open, a lot of times this is a good thing when making a series of games, or if you plan to make a sequal. BUT, you have to let the player know you didn't forget about it. Adress the issue in the end, you don't have to answer the question, but bring it into play.

After you've shown the aftermath, closed all the open ends, you can finally slap "the end" on the screen, then congradulate yourself on a completed game. Though in reality you'll most likely have to go through and fix hundreds of errors and such after some people play it, but you'll basically be done :-p

Again, I can't stress how important it is that you include and play with the meaning of life or our purpose here. Nearly every good ending deals with it in some way or another. I can just list a ton off of the top of my head, SO3, FF9, The matrix revolutions, FFV, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross pull it in their story a lot, though I don't remember how much they inlclude in their ednings.

The End.

This was my first tut that didn't deal with how to script something, so I don't know how it turned out. I'm sure a lot of people already knew most of the stuff in this tutorial, but I felt like writing it anywayz :p

[Noobpwner]

Im workin on a game that is a filled with so many mysterys like who the evil is and such it has no intro but is about saving people that get captured by ghosts is this a bad plot?  The enemys are always new and made by me!

[Bluhman]

Not bad, but I found a little spelling error:

It's not suttle, it's subtle.

[DragonBlaze]

Originally posted by Bluhman
Not bad, but I found a little spelling error:

It's not suttle, it's subtle.

Lol, I always sucked at spelling. I wish my computer had a spell checker on it :p, but I don't have MS word or anything.

 

Im workin on a game that is a filled with so many mysterys like who the evil is and such it has no intro but is about saving people that get captured by ghosts is this a bad plot? The enemys are always new and made by me!

Well it sound like a good original plot Though I think every game needs an intro of some sort.

[coasterkrazy]

I like this a lot!

Hmmm, my game wasn't gonna get too involved with the whole "meaning of life" thing, but maybe... just maybe... I'll be able to pull it off in a way that's least expected. Thanks DB, you could get story credit for this...

[Bluhman]

Originally posted by Noobpwner
Im workin on a game that is a filled with so many mysterys like who the evil is and such it has no intro but is about saving people that get captured by ghosts is this a bad plot?  The enemys are always new and made by me!

Actually, despite how picky I am about plot, this sounds rather decent.

[Noobpwner]

cool thanks every one maybey ill make a thread and post it there when Im done  

[Meiscool-2]

Originally posted by Bluhman

quote:

Originally posted by Noobpwner Im workin on a game that is a filled with so many mysterys like who the evil is and such it has no intro but is about saving people that get captured by ghosts is this a bad plot?  The enemys are always new and made by me!

Actually, despite how picky I am about plot, this sounds rather decent.

I hope to God your sarcastic mode was active when you wrote that.

Thanks for this DB. I really suck at making intros and endings, so this will help out a lot.

[Razor]

Hmmm
 

An earlier time during mid season, there was this girl and this wierd place. Then there were these creatures trying to drag the girl along with them, the whole dark place played a big role in the plot, but the ending never really explained it to much

Sounds a lot like The second series of Digimon. Amirite?

[Linkforce]

Pretty good.  My ending has to deal with life, but its in no way considered cliche to anything I've seen or heard.  :p

[DragonBlaze]

Originally posted by Razor
Hmmm
 

quote:

An earlier time during mid season, there was this girl and this wierd place. Then there were these creatures trying to drag the girl along with them, the whole dark place played a big role in the plot, but the ending never really explained it to much

Sounds a lot like The second series of Digimon. Amirite?

Err, uhh, well, you see... Dammit, well actually it was the first two seasons. I'm really not a big fan of those types of shows, or any cartoons for that matter (except family guy, south park, etc.). But yeah, back in the day I watched the first episode when the series first came out. I didn't like it and I never through I'd watch it again. Well I had some very faint memories of a few other episodes that were very intreging, and though I didn't know anything about the context or how the event ended. Anyway, the few ideas I remembered from the show actually influenced my games a lot. For example, I saw an episode where one of the digimon was captured by a black ring sort of thing and was forced to fight his friends. Well I thought that was a neat idea and it later played a part in one of my games where a character was used as a test subject and the bad guys were using mind control methods to make him into their slave. There were a few other ideas that just stuck with me from the series. Plus I've always liked the idea of monsters that were inteligent and could talk and such. Its not something you see often. Lol, I even got the basic idea for my main characters armor from a digimon called flamedramon, which was basically the only digimon I liked. But yeah, I spent a week working on my CBS, and I needed a break. And though I never liked digimon, since its inspired aspects of my games, I just felt compelled to see how it played out. So yeah, I jokenly searched for a place were I could download it. It just happens that I found the first two seasons. What really surprised me that each episode was only 20 mbs. Even with my dial up I could download an episode in an hour. So yeah, I was like, what the heck, and started to download it.

After watching it, I can say it had its up points and down points. Its a show geared for younger kids, but when I threw that aspect aside I actually enjoyed watching it. I doubt I'll ever watch it again though.

Anyway, even something like Digimon played a lot with life meaning and such. The last episode was called 'a million points of  light'. The bad guy was takig over the world, and there wasn't anything the heros could do about it really. Thats when the light started to show up, one person held out their hand and gave their light. Though one person didn't make a differance, millions of people started to and it finally overcame the darkness that was consuming the world.

So yeah...

[Noobpwner]

Originally posted by DragonBlaze

quote:

Originally posted by Razor Hmmm   quote: An earlier time during mid season, there was this girl and this wierd place. Then there were these creatures trying to drag the girl along with them, the whole dark place played a big role in the plot, but the ending never really explained it to much Sounds a lot like The second series of Digimon. Amirite?

Err, uhh, well, you see... Dammit, well actually it was the first two seasons. I'm really not a big fan of those types of shows, or any cartoons for that matter (except family guy, south park, etc.). But yeah, back in the day I watched the first episode when the series first came out. I didn't like it and I never through I'd watch it again. Well I had some very faint memories of a few other episodes that were very intreging, and though I didn't know anything about the context or how the event ended. Anyway, the few ideas I remembered from the show actually influenced my games a lot. For example, I saw an episode where one of the digimon was captured by a black ring sort of thing and was forced to fight his friends. Well I thought that was a neat idea and it later played a part in one of my games where a character was used as a test subject and the bad guys were using mind control methods to make him into their slave. There were a few other ideas that just stuck with me from the series. Plus I've always liked the idea of monsters that were inteligent and could talk and such. Its not something you see often. Lol, I even got the basic idea for my main characters armor from a digimon called flamedramon, which was basically the only digimon I liked. But yeah, I spent a week working on my CBS, and I needed a break. And though I never liked digimon, since its inspired aspects of my games, I just felt compelled to see how it played out. So yeah, I jokenly searched for a place were I could download it. It just happens that I found the first two seasons. What really surprised me that each episode was only 20 mbs. Even with my dial up I could download an episode in an hour. So yeah, I was like, what the heck, and started to download it.

After watching it, I can say it had its up points and down points. Its a show geared for younger kids, but when I threw that aspect aside I actually enjoyed watching it. I doubt I'll ever watch it again though.

Anyway, even something like Digimon played a lot with life meaning and such. The last episode was called 'a million points of  light'. The bad guy was takig over the world, and there wasn't anything the heros could do about it really. Thats when the light started to show up, one person held out their hand and gave their light. Though one person didn't make a differance, millions of people started to and it finally overcame the darkness that was consuming the world.

So yeah...

xcool do u have a website with  your games on it?

[blackskullwarlock]

Nice tutorial. You should write an intro one next. I find introductions harder than endings.

[DragonBlaze]

Originally posted by blackskullwarlock
Nice tutorial. You should write an intro one next. I find introductions harder than endings.

XD, I was planning on doing that next :p Though it may be a bit.

 

xcool do u have a website with your games on it?

I used to then my host site died. When I release the next demo of my game I'll remake it though

[WarxePB]

Yep, awesome tutorial. Added to the Top Tutorials list for sure.

EDIT: Question for ya. Let's say that the game is a "Choose Your Own Adventure" type game, where the plot changes depending on the choices made throughout the game. What would be the best way to make an ending for it? I was thinking of multiple endings, but then if I decided to make a sequel, the continuity might be screwed up or something. So what do you think?