Ever since the Top 50 CRPG list has been tallied up, I've been trying to play my way through all of the classics I never picked up or just never finished. One identical trait I noticed about all of the playthroughs I've abandoned was that my interest always peters out at the same spot- the endgame.
This got me thinking, were there any endgames that really felt like a strong conclusion in an RPG? So that's what I want to ask the Codex. What is it about endgames that makes a player stop caring? What are elements of a good endgame? If you wanted to put together your own RPG, what would an ideal endgame look like? What other games would you draw inspiration from? Was there any one RPG experience that stood out as having a particularly strong endgame?
Plenty, if not most of the good RPGs are let down by weak or just boring endgame stages; Gothic II or Deus Ex immediately come to mind. There's a sort of similar thread about this from back in 2010, but its focused on games with shitty ending stages. I'm more interested in seeing what people actually like about them.
I can't pick out one in particular, but here are some parts of endgames which I enjoyed:
This got me thinking, were there any endgames that really felt like a strong conclusion in an RPG? So that's what I want to ask the Codex. What is it about endgames that makes a player stop caring? What are elements of a good endgame? If you wanted to put together your own RPG, what would an ideal endgame look like? What other games would you draw inspiration from? Was there any one RPG experience that stood out as having a particularly strong endgame?
Plenty, if not most of the good RPGs are let down by weak or just boring endgame stages; Gothic II or Deus Ex immediately come to mind. There's a sort of similar thread about this from back in 2010, but its focused on games with shitty ending stages. I'm more interested in seeing what people actually like about them.
I can't pick out one in particular, but here are some parts of endgames which I enjoyed:
- Alpha Protocol: Everything that the game did well, the endgame did well. Everything the game sucked at, the endgame did too. Depending on the choices you made much earlier on, the hotel room scene would change, and once you were in, NPCs could be present or missing, and would have different goals. Replaying for the Thornton Inc. ending was actually a lot of fun and had a big payoff here. I liked the hotel room scene itself, it gave the player a sense of finality. The bosses were crappy, and the level design were nothing special, but I though the good really outweighed the bad in this game.
- Fallout: Not sure if the Cathedral strictly counts as an endgame, since you can leave at any time and go back to other sidequests. The atmosphere was perfect, the variety of approaches lent themselves to replayability, the Master could be dealt with in a number of different ways, it wasn't reliant on combat but could be beaten with stealth or persuasion. It rewarded exploration, and maintained a dark, bleak, mysterious mood which capped off the Fallout experience perfectly. I think this one might be my favorite.
- VTM: Bloodlines: Not a controversial statement here, but I didn't like the endgame stages one bit. Massive let down when compared with the first third of the game, but that's be discussed at length. What I did like was the taxi cab ride. It's not the first time you take a taxi ride, but it's the first time you actually experience the ride in first person perspective, which signals an end to the game. The conversion with the mysterious cab driver was good, and I liked how he responded to all the different decisions you could make, weighing the pros and cons.
- Jagged Alliance 2: Even though it's not the only way you can beat JA2, the assault on Meduna was a blast! The first time I took on the bloodcat zoo was a real “oh shit oh shit!” moment and forced me to really get creative. The zones with dug in tanks and bunkers gave you an opportunity to go wild with all of the less common ordinance you'd been collecting the whole game. The urban combat and the hedge maze were interesting ,and the final assault on the palace was intense. The unique merc reactions to Dedriana's death were a cherry on top of an already excellent experience.
- Dragon Age Origins: Never actually finished this one, but there's a scene right before the end where everybody from you party is AI controlled and engaged in one of the larger fights in the game. There was something really satisfying about this, after going through all previous fights with only a couple members of your crew at a time. The whole game you had been leveling up and equiping your party but you never get to see what they're capable of all together until now. I wish other games would incorporate this as it gives a real sense of accomplishment and finality.
