DB's guide to 'epic' endings

[drenrin2120]

Very sweet. It helps when making a plot for your game. A good reminder. My game has to deal with the purpose of life, it throws a lot of different ideas at you. I like stories that make you think, what if? Where do we go after death? Questions like that. The kind of questions in which the answers are not so forgiving.

[DragonBlaze]

 

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?

Well its kinda hard to make a sequal to a game with multiple endings. If a player would get an ending, but the sequal would be focused on another ending, it would get confusing. But theres a few things you can do about it. First you should make multiple endings if the story is the 'choose your own adventure' type game. You'll have to think about the sequal and figure out which elements/ideas will be brought into it. Then all you have to worry about is keeping those particular elements in the ending, an example would be like this. The sequal of the game tells a story of how the hero(s) defeated the bad guys. If the game takes place 100 years later, then no matter what the heros would be dead, so for multiple endings in the first game, one could have the hero live, and one could have the hero die afterwards. Both are differant, but getting one or the other won't effect the sequal game at all.

If your game will only be loosly based on the first, then your endings can vary a lot. A good example is chrono cross and chrono trigger, chrono cross is a sequal, but it doesn't have any characters or places from the first.

However, if your game has a lot in common with the first I.E. the main character. Your endings can't vary as much. Basically you have to test which variations will effect the sequal, and which ones won't, then just focus on the ones that won't. Things that can vary in this situation would be when the last battle was fought and where it was fought. Some smaller things would be stuff like which characters were with you, and whatnot.

And no matter what the ending, they should all have a degree of 'epicness' to it. Though how that epic concept is brought out can be differant each time. Perhaps if you fight the bad guy after you do a bunch of sidequests and such, you'll be doing bad, but then all the people you've helped will push you to go on. Then perhaps you didn't do all the sidequest and didn't help the people, well then maybe you get wasted right away, but you realize that you're the only one who can do this, and if you fail the world will be doomed, and even though its imposible, you get back up and keep on fighting.

However you wish to vary the endings, if you have a sequal, the end effect must be the same. If the bad guy is dead in the sequal, the bad guy must die in all the endings. If the world gets changed somehow at the end of the game, and that change is in the sequal, then all the endings must have that change in them.

There is a much easier way to do all of this though. You can have a good ending, and then a bunch of ok and bad endings. If you get an ok or bad ending, simply display a message saying something like "play again for a chance at a better ending" or something along those lines.

Then during the sequal, be sure to tell the player the ending of the last game, you could do this in the intro, though it may be a better idea to have someone tell the heros the story of the first game later on. If you have the same hero, you could have the hero tell the story to one of the new members of the party.

Well I hope I covered everything  :p

[SaiKar]

I like this. Nifty concept for something to rant about.

Originally posted by Warxe_PhoenixBlade
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?

I'd do what Chrono Trigger and most branching games do - have a "normal" ending that is the easiest to obtain, and choose that as the "official" ending of the game to base a sequel on.

[DragonBlaze]

I played through Chrono Trigger and did everything, but I never got motivated to play through it again to try and get a new ending. Do the endings really vary at all from eachother? I know you have the option to choose when to fight the last dude, but I thought the endings were very simular to eachother.

[BlackIceAdept]

no, some of them are rather odd, and the perfect ending (beating lavos asap with crono alone) is one of the oddest and has nothing to do with the story.

[ZeroKirbyX]

I have my game so when you beat the 'boss', or the character who the player has been led to believe to be the big baddie, there is about another 30 minutes until the 'real' final boss.

[Archem]

If you want to make a sequal involving the same characters, ypu COULD ask questions at the start of the sequal, but that would result in a bajillion switches. Or you could just use a few branching paths in each game, or none in the sequal. Or a few in one and more/less/none in the other. That would be up to you. And have the end of the first part tell you what you did for an accurate account in the sequal.