The end is only the beginning, or how video games shouldn't have clear-cut endings.

“Oh, crap I did not see that coming at the end! When she met with him and that thing from the beginning became clear! Holy crap that was amazing!”

That’s a quote from me when I’ve finished a particularly good book which blew my mind. I screamed that internally, intensely staring at the last page of the book, hoping, even praying for some new words to magically appear.

Sadly, that was the end. The story was no more. The characters shook their hands, nodded politely to each other and went their ways.

The End.

“Yet, it's the end, Friend of mine.” Sang Sibylle Baier. The end is simultaneously a thing we love and hate. We love it because it gives us a sense of completion and we hate it because it means the story – a part of our life – has finished. We can try to revive it by starting the whole thing from the beginning, but there’s no fun when we know how things end, right?

Humankind was always obsessed with stories and particularly their endings. We always wanted and always will want to get to the very last chapter, the last episode, the last cut scene. We need things to end so that we can move on to other things and then to others and so on. How a story ends matters, because as a reader or viewer we want that moment of “oh crap I did not see that ending coming!” to happen. We crave that sense of completion.

Oh, the end is so tempting, isn’t it?

I am too, like the rest of the world, obsessed with endings. I like to finish things, not because I like them but the completing part is important. Can I sit and read for six hours just to end one book which I don’t particularly like? Hell yes, I can. I’ll read the epilogue even if it means more facepalming and headdesking.

However, video games endings are quite different.

You’re not only playing as the main character but at some level gamer becomes the main character. His worries are gamer’s worries, his adventures are gamer’s adventures. So when the ending doesn’t include the most important part of the game, the player is sure to revolt.

But should endings be clear-cut?

With games like, for example, the Witcher 3 it would be hard to not have a clear-cut ending. First of all, there are so many plots and characters that at least some of the quests had to end early and then the player’s choices would be visible on a beautiful art that accompanied major quests. But what about the “find my daughter” mission, which is the drive for Geralt and Yennefer? What about those seemingly unimportant quests like killing Radovid and reconciling Ciri with her biological father? These quests had an effect on the main ending of the game, but should they? I mean, the whole game was created out of a not clear-cut ending, in which the reader basically didn’t know what the hell has happened. Did Geralt and Yennefer survive? What happened with Cirilla? And how the hell did Andrzej Sapkowski dared to finish the saga the way he did? The Witcher – three games made by Polish developers – one of the biggest fan fiction in the world presents you with a possible, non-canon in Sapkowski’s eyes, ending.

Before I even got to the first half of the main quest, I looked the possible endings of the Witcher 3 up. Not because I really needed to satisfy my curiosity, but because I wanted to do everything just right for Ciri to survive. She was my teenage hero, as I read the books when I was 13 (NOT a good idea to be honest, but well, at least, I didn’t have nightmares), and I needed this game to end on a good note for her. Screw Geralt and his incapability to stay faithful to one woman, Ciri needs to have a happy ending! So, I watched all the endings and chose the perfect one of Ciri (and me).

Geralt and Ciri / via: thewitcher.com

After some time, when I was thinking more about how the story ended I thought “wow, wouldn’t it be so much better for the games to end on the same notes as books?” Not only games are using characters and places created by Sapkowski, they’re also using the unfinished, not clear-cut ending to continue the story. It would  be amazing for CD Project to acknowledge that they have created their own story but still establish that after all there wouldn’t be The Witcher: Wild Hunt without the books.

Wouldn’t it be so much more awesome for the game to have a similar ending as Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture had?

via: wikipedia.com

Published in 2015 by The Chinese Room, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is a game about seemingly normal English town. Everything is beautiful, the sun is shining, the people…well, the people are not there, as they have vanished and the player doesn’t know what happened to them. By walking around traditional English countryside, following light that transforms into human silhouettes, the player pieces together the story by listening to characters in non-linear order.

The ending is peculiar, one that has stuck in my mind for quite some time. The ending… doesn’t say anything. We still don’t know fully what happened, where the people have gone to, what was the light and were did it came from. There are no answers, only questions.

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture / via: www.stuff.tv

And this type of ending, this not clear-cut story which doesn’t present answers just more hypotheses, speaks to me on a special level. It a) provides me with different alternatives to how the story could end, b) treats me as a highly intellectual creature and c) you can’t spoil it to anybody because what is there to be spoiled?

Of course, putting not clear-cut ending after the player has spent hours and hours creating the characters, levelling them then beating the game, is risky. Some players might hate the ending and they might rant on Internet about how horrible it is. They may even pressure the developers into creating a DLC with a ‘proper’ ending that will not only add few hours of gameplay but will also neatly close loose plots. Some may say that the ending depends entirely on what kind of story developers want to create. It may be so, however, the ending is only a part of the story, not the sole purpose of creating it.

What kind of endings do you prefer? What was the most disappointing ending in a game you played? The most satisfactory one? Let me know in the comments!