Fallout Does anyone actually like ending power point presentations? Why?

[rusty_shackleford]

. If you want to see postgame consequences, what's a good alternative?

Whew it's a good thing RPGs are books and there's no way to show people things without showing static images next to a block of text.

 

[SoupNazi]

There are a few games that benefit from the slides only, sure. But if it's an open-world sandboxy game I'd prefer getting released back into the world to finish my sidequests and see the consequences as well.

 

[V_K]

CRPGs by definition have a finite amount of content. Which is why attempts to emulate the free-formness of PnP through dialog choices are noble, but ultimately misguided. They can never be realised in a satisfying manner and put a huge drain on resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

 

[d1r]

But ending slides don't fire in the middle of the game.
They're like little epilogues to show you what happened after the end.

Nobody expects fairytales to elaborate the "And they lived happily ever after." into a detailed day by day description of the prince and princess' life for several pages. You maybe get "And three years later they had a son who grew up to be a great and benevolent king." for closure, but that's it. The story is over, and the details of what happened after would be a new story.

Ending slides just give you closure for side quest threads after the game is over. That's their purpose.

Or it could just end instead of telling us "so and so lived happily ever after"
What do those powerpoint slides actually add other than taking away the player's interpretation of events?

You mean something like this?

In all seriousness, these slides serve as a nice sum up of the character YOU played in the game, respectively a reward for finishing the game, which puts a strong emphasis on various quest paths and outcomes, multiple times in multiple ways. There are obviously better ways to do it by letting you continue the game and see the consequences of your actions (a feature that was planned if Obsidian had more than just one year), but just giving you an end screen saying that everyone lived happily after is completely cheap, and something no one wants to see these days (unless of course you're a massive Bioware fan).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

But ending slides don't fire in the middle of the game.
They're like little epilogues to show you what happened after the end.

Nobody expects fairytales to elaborate the "And they lived happily ever after." into a detailed day by day description of the prince and princess' life for several pages. You maybe get "And three years later they had a son who grew up to be a great and benevolent king." for closure, but that's it. The story is over, and the details of what happened after would be a new story.

Ending slides just give you closure for side quest threads after the game is over. That's their purpose.

Or it could just end instead of telling us "so and so lived happily ever after"
What do those powerpoint slides actually add other than taking away the player's interpretation of events?

You mean something like this?

In all seriousness, these slides serve as a nice sum up of the character YOU played in the game, respectively a reward for finishing the game multiple times in multiple ways. There are obviously better ways to do it by letting you continue the game and see the consequences of your actions (a feature that was planned if Obsidian had more than just one year), but just giving you an end screen saying that everyone lived happily after is completely cheap, and something no one wants to see these days (unless of course you're a massive Bioware fan).

That's exactly the same as the crappy slides. You've just been conditioned to respond to one positively and the other negatively.

 

[Grauken]

The thread where we learn Rusty is to lazy to read and prefers walking sims

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The thread where we learn Rusty is to lazy to read and prefers walking sims

Why would I want to play a book?
Imagine preferring some crappy slides an intern spent 15 minutes typing up and thinking it's good design.

 

[Grauken]

The thread where we learn Rusty is to lazy to read and prefers walking sims

Why would I want to play a book?
Imagine preferring some crappy slides an intern spent 15 minutes typing up and thinking it's good design.

Imagine thinking good slides only take 15 minutes to make

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The thread where we learn Rusty is to lazy to read and prefers walking sims

Why would I want to play a book?
Imagine preferring some crappy slides an intern spent 15 minutes typing up and thinking it's good design.

Imagine thinking good slides only take 15 minutes to make

They're never good, they're cope by designers who didn't budget their development time correctly.

 

[Grauken]

The thread where we learn Rusty is to lazy to read and prefers walking sims

Why would I want to play a book?
Imagine preferring some crappy slides an intern spent 15 minutes typing up and thinking it's good design.

Imagine thinking good slides only take 15 minutes to make

They're never good, they're cope by designers who didn't budget their development time correctly.

Must be nice to have all the answers

 

[Abu Antar]

They are made for people like me. Once I have dealt with the final boss, the game tells me what happened around the game world.
At some point, the game has to come to an end. It's an rpg with finite content.

Other open world games allow you to play after the main story is beaten, but at that point, if there's no meaningful new content, I don't care anymore. I move on to the next game. And usually, that content is more often than not side stuuf that is either procedurally generated, or some stuff that you may have missed.

I see Red Dead Redemption mentioned as an example. Other than being open world, I would say that the games don't have much in common. On top of that, one game had closer to 500 developers, if not more, working on it. Two or three times longer development period, and a budget that is not comparable. RDR is basically GTA in another suit. Playing them after story completion is fun for some people, but you don't change the world itself all too much.

Compare to a role playing game, where some things change the whole world on large scale levels. You would have to make content for that. As JarlFrank says: You would have to basically make a sequel game for the game that you are already developing.

Are there better ways to end a game? Maybe, but they would probably be more expensive. Like allowing you to explore the world after the ending, you would have to add new dialog, reactions, environments and so forth.

 

[NJClaw]

Based rusty shitting on the ending of Divinity: Original Sin 2

Careful, though. We don't want you to get fired.

 

[SoupNazi]

Compare to a role playing game, where some things change the whole world on large scale levels. You would have to make content for that. As JarlFrank says: You would have to basically make a sequel game for the game that you are already developing.

Are there better ways to end a game? Maybe, but they would probably be more expensive. Like allowing you to explore the world after the ending, you would have to add new dialog, reactions, environments and so forth.

And I'd rather that some other content is cut from 99 percent of games this could be applied to and they have that. You don't need that much new dialogue (not all RPGs are voiced anyway), environments stay the same, at worst they are changed in mostly minor ways, which you already have in RPGs anyway.

 

[Grauken]

Most of us don't want to play further after the game has ended, we're ready to move on

 

[SoupNazi]

Most of us don't want to play further after the game has ended, we're ready to move on

Is there a sub-title from your title missing? Are you the Voice Of Most CRPG Players at the same tme as being a Professional Procrastinator?

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

Based rusty shitting on the ending of Divinity: Original Sin 2

D:OS 2 was probably one of the worst examples of it, but story never was the stongest aspect of Larian's games anyway.

 

[Grauken]

Most of us don't want to play further after the game has ended, we're ready to move on

Is there a sub-title from your title missing? Are you the Voice Of Most CRPG Players at the same tme as being a Professional Procrastinator?

 

[Tihskael]

Going through the slides in The Witcher 3, being satisfied with how I changed the fate of Novigrad, only to find out Redanians were still alive and well in the city was a kick in the nuts. I actually like Skyrim for this as after kicking out Imperials or Stormcloaks out of towns, depending on the side you choose, some NPCs will call you names and say how their life under the new faction has changed. When I kicked out the Imperial scum out of Whiterun and then later ran into the Jarl and his family in the basement of the Blue Palace in Solitude, they told me to fuck off which feels way more satisfying than a jpeg slapped at the end of a game making no noticeable change when I am dropped back in the world after the credits end.

 

[Orud]

Yes I like them because I like seeing how my choices pan out, and there are only a few cheaper alternatives to show this off;

• A simple text message, which is far worse than at least some visual feedback accompanied by text. You're free to argue that it's the same, but then you decide to completely ignore the fact that (unless you're blind) humans are highly visual creatures. Comics and books both exist and are different from each other by how they convey information.
• A repeating animation accompanied by text. Still better than just text, but visually extremely bland.
• Nothing, which happens a lot due to time/money constraints.

Wishing for anything else will always require more resources (time/money) and doing nothing is just overall worse.

 

[Butter]

Going through the slides in The Witcher 3, being satisfied with how I changed the fate of Novigrad, only to find out Redanians were still alive and well in the city was a kick in the nuts. I actually like Skyrim for this as after kicking out Imperials or Stormcloaks out of towns, depending on the side you choose, some NPCs will call you names and say how their life under the new faction has changed. When I kicked out the Imperial scum out of Whiterun and then later ran into the Jarl and his family in the basement of the Blue Palace in Solitude, they told me to fuck off which feels way more satisfying than a jpeg slapped at the end of a game making no noticeable change when I am dropped back in the world after the credits end.

Skyrim might not be the best example for reactivity. 99% of the world treats you like utter shit even after you've saved them from dragons for the 40th time.

 

[Abu Antar]

Compare to a role playing game, where some things change the whole world on large scale levels. You would have to make content for that. As JarlFrank says: You would have to basically make a sequel game for the game that you are already developing.

Are there better ways to end a game? Maybe, but they would probably be more expensive. Like allowing you to explore the world after the ending, you would have to add new dialog, reactions, environments and so forth.

And I'd rather that some other content is cut from 99 percent of games this could be applied to and they have that. You don't need that much new dialogue (not all RPGs are voiced anyway), environments stay the same, at worst they are changed in mostly minor ways, which you already have in RPGs anyway.

You'd have to take into account many different locations, and many different endings.

https://arcanum.fandom.com/wiki/Endings
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_endings

That's a lot of extra work. Maybe it can work if you're a company with a big ass chest of money laying around, but it won't be feasible for most studios. I would also not be interested if there wasn't enough reaction to all of what has happened on my adventure. Therefore I feel you are wrong about not needing more dialog. Why even bother, then? The two examples above can change the game world in significant way, no matter what ending you get. To me, it seems unfeasible that you'd have to develop content for all of that. I did what I did. I met the last boss. The story ends there. The End.

 

[Orud]

Even if you're in a studio with a 'big ass chest of money', the chances that someone is going sign off on the cost for making the animations for so many iterations is basically nil considering the cost of the alternatives.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Playable epilogues are great. The RDR epilogues were genius.

Another game did something similar: Lunar 2. Worked well. The key in those games was there were story threads left up in the air; the RDR epilogues reverse the downer endings of both games. Lunar 2's epilogue lets you get the girl.

The question is in a game like New Vegas what is really left open after the ending? The issue isn't ending slides but that the story is barely there. Its really not much of a story at all. You were left for dead, you overcome some obstacles to get to the city, then you pick a faction and that's it. I don't care about ending slides for side quests because I don't care about side quests. I do them for the loot and XP, and because the main quest is so short.

The problem with western RPGs is they aren't a single story but more of an anthology of stories. Mass Effect 2: stupid main plot, good side stories. If your RPG is just a vehicle for side plots, why bother with a main plot at all? Consider that 2000 years ago Aristotle argued that all stories should have a single main narrative that is resolved by the end. This idea was so influential that even 1500 years later Ludovico Ariosto was dinged for violating it by adding an unrelated sub plot to Orlando Furioso. I think RPG devs do this because main coherent content across an entire game is too hard and no one really has the vision or motivation to push for it. Why bother when bethesda can take a 20 year game engine and let their designers put zombie kids in fridges and it still sells a shitzillion copies?

In LotR, every event and quest feeds into the main story (except Tom Bombadil.) Even the dicking around at the Shire in the beginning. When the heroes divert to fight a war in Rohan, it's all part of the main narrative and growth. The issue with RPG stories is that in order to allow development by 100 different writers and designers at the same time without a single main vision, the side quests and main quests are unrelated. So the player just ends up in this random war for no reason that doesn't really matter because hey, gotta hit 60 hours and content sells. Or the classic Bioware "Go to these four different hubs and resolve the sub stories there then do the final dungeon" setup. Getting an ending slide "Faramir married Eowyn and rebuilt Osgiliath" is interesting because those characters and their struggles matter to the story. Veronica the lesbo and Arcade the sodomite do not matter and their slides are pointless.

 

[Tihskael]

Going through the slides in The Witcher 3, being satisfied with how I changed the fate of Novigrad, only to find out Redanians were still alive and well in the city was a kick in the nuts. I actually like Skyrim for this as after kicking out Imperials or Stormcloaks out of towns, depending on the side you choose, some NPCs will call you names and say how their life under the new faction has changed. When I kicked out the Imperial scum out of Whiterun and then later ran into the Jarl and his family in the basement of the Blue Palace in Solitude, they told me to fuck off which feels way more satisfying than a jpeg slapped at the end of a game making no noticeable change when I am dropped back in the world after the credits end.

Skyrim might not be the best example for reactivity. 99% of the world treats you like utter shit even after you've saved them from dragons for the 40th time.

Todd just wanted to send home the message that a lion shouldn't concern himself with the opinion of sheep.

 

[Tigranes]

Slides themselves aren't the problem.

You either have no consequences, or superficial consequences (including slides), or gameplay consequences that you can actually play out.

If it's something you can create gameplay consequences for, then you should, instead of slides, of course. But in the case of ending slides that are more like "and then your companion went on to live for 30 more years as a merchant" or "the kingdom would later prosper", it's silly to think that they are cheating you out of actually playing through those events. So it's a question of whether the slides are standing in for gameplay, or they're just showing you stuff that would realistically never be in the game.

I also question whether the above W3/Skyrim example is really any different from a slide. Quite a few RPGs do this, you go back to the city after the big quest, there's absolutely nothing that's changed and there's nothing to do except the NPCs are wearing red instead of blue and they tell you "Hail Gonorrheadom" instead of "Hail Diarrheadom". Who fucking cares?