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

[Ol' Willy]

Ending slides often break axiom "character knowledge /= player knowledge". Your char supported Killian against Gizmo: ending slides tell you what happened to Junkyard later.

How exactly your character is supposed to know that? He ventured north; he has no contact with the people he left behind.

It is an interesting question of how player should be made aware of the long-term consequences of his actions. But what if the answer that he shouldn't? It looks like some kind of instant gratification; leave some place for mystery and unknown, why tie down all the ends?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Ending slides often break axiom "character knowledge /= player knowledge". Your char supported Killian against Gizmo: ending slides tell you what happened to Junkyard later.

How exactly your character is supposed to know that? He ventured north; he has no contact with the people he left behind.

It is an interesting question of how player should be made aware of the long-term consequences of his actions. But what if the answer that he shouldn't? It looks like some kind of instant gratification; leave some place for mystery and unknown, why tie down all the ends?

Which is why I either prefer you shouldn't know and let the player have their own interpretation, or let the player see it from the POV of another character.

 

[Shaki]

Ending slides wouldn't be a problem in itself if they would just fulfill their original function, but I do feel like they made devs lazy, and over the years it became more and more common to abuse them as a replacement for a competent quest/world design. Why spend time and effort creating C&C and reactivity in the game itself, when you can just move it all up to the powerpoint presentation at the end? I feel like if ending slides didn't exist, devs would be forced to actually find a way to show consequences of your actions in game, rather than being able to conveniently ignore them, because gamers were conditioned to have all the payoff in the presentation at the end, so they won't care anyway.

Also I fucking hate ending slides in games which are meant to have sequels. Ending slides in a prequel, pretty much guarantee that the next game in the series will either retcon them, will be forced to ignore everything you touched in the previous one and completely change the setting, or will have garbage writing because it's hard to craft a good story that touches the same places/characters and stay consistent with the 30 ending slides that already told you what happens to them in the next xx years. Or they will give us a shitty combination of all the worst parts of those 3 options, like Pillars 2.

 

[Alex]

I take it Rusty's favorite RPG is Wizardry.

Even Wizardry 1 has non interactive parts. The graphics for monsters, for instance. Well, you could mod them, I suppose, but this is an out of game way of interacting; and by that measure ending slides are also interactive. So is the battle text (well, it is interactive in the meaning that it changes according to how much damage you cause, for instance; but by this measure ending slides can be interactive as well. Sign text is also something that is not interactive (though, to be fair, it can be a clue which is part of the gameplay), etc.

 

[Desiderius]

How many people even make it that far anymore?

 

[Alex]

Ending slides often break axiom "character knowledge /= player knowledge". Your char supported Killian against Gizmo: ending slides tell you what happened to Junkyard later.

How exactly your character is supposed to know that? He ventured north; he has no contact with the people he left behind.

It is an interesting question of how player should be made aware of the long-term consequences of his actions. But what if the answer that he shouldn't? It looks like some kind of instant gratification; leave some place for mystery and unknown, why tie down all the ends?

The game is over; you don't need to consider the PC the player's avatar anymore. It is ok if you do, of course; but it isn't like when you are still playing where showing stuff from out of the character's perspective would change the kind of game significantly.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

Ah so THIS is rusty's coming out as an angsty teenage girl in a desperate need for attention thread! Let's all chip in fellas, in solidarity to her poor boyfriend.

Playable epilogues with consequences of previous actions are great, don't need to look to Rockstar for that. Witcher 1 and 3 had them, although 3 also had shitty slides.

That being said, slides worked for OG Fallout games, because they were short, to the point and sort of made sense. They were also limited by a static world. I didn't really care for BG TOB slides, felt completely unnecessary. I thought previous endings with a badass cinematic fit perfectly.

Sometimes it's best to just end the game and that's that.

Game design is hard.

 

[Roguey]

Witcher 1 and 3 had them,

Witcher 1 didn't have what I'd consider an epilogue. You return home and talk to a handful of people in a single location? 3's epilogue was also extremely narrow in scope (it's just about Ciri's fate, it doesn't account for others).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Game design is hard.

is game design hard or are most game designers just retarded?

 

[Moaning_Clock]

is game design hard or are most game designers just retarded?

As a game designer: Why not both?

 

[0wca]

I like them. Maybe they could be done in a better form instead of simple narrated slides, perhaps in the form of interconnected cutscenes but that's more of a budget issue than anything else. I like the fact that the game shows me how I impacted its world with my actions. If they're not there, I just get RPG blue balls. I need closure damnit.

Ending slides are cheap replacement for real C&C

They take place after you finished the game. Are you upset that the game didn't give you another campaign after you completed it?

 

[ScrotumBroth]

Witcher 1 didn't have what I'd consider an epilogue. You return home and talk to a handful of people in a single location? 3's epilogue was also extremely narrow in scope (it's just about Ciri's fate, it doesn't account for others).

Witcher 1 finale could be considered an "epilogue" in the context of this discussion, since you get different dialogues with "Alvin" depending on previous decisions.

In Witcher 3 epilogue, you can see how your decisions have affected White Orchard as a representative sample of the area. Armies retreating/advancing, locals reacting, locations of prominent NPCs changed. They've even included different outcomes for the dwarven smitty depending on how you've resolved the initial quest. And I suppose Blod and Wine is one huge, final epilogue for the main characters close to Geralt.

I suppose my point was that you don't need Rockstar money, just the right idea and justification to keep playing. Lack of immersive story organically growing a strong bond to the main characters makes it hard to justify an epilogue in most cases.

 

[Ibn Sina]

The Witcher 2 had an impressive amount of C&C and yet zero PowerPoint presentation because the effects happened in real time all around you. Was such a fantastic game.

 

[mondblut]

Proper cinematics are fucking expensive, duh.

 

[Johnny Biggums]

When i think of good movie endings, it's usually a joyful, tragic or wry dialog between important characters, or a poignant monolog, or a well constructed synesthetic combination of visuals and music, or a crazy twist. A few movies - usually of the based on a true story genre - do end with a text slideshow, which tends towards a 'huh, interesting' moment that leaves no emotional impression.

 

[EvilWolf]

Ending slides often break axiom "character knowledge /= player knowledge". Your char supported Killian against Gizmo: ending slides tell you what happened to Junkyard later.

How exactly your character is supposed to know that? He ventured north; he has no contact with the people he left behind.

It is an interesting question of how player should be made aware of the long-term consequences of his actions. But what if the answer that he shouldn't? It looks like some kind of instant gratification; leave some place for mystery and unknown, why tie down all the ends?

Because ending slides aren't for the character, they're for the player. Same reason no one from Animal House knows where they'll end up until it happens.

 

[fantadomat]

Ending slides are cheap replacement for real C&C

Sure,now give me an example of that real C&C. Ending slides exist to give you a satisfaction that your actions mattered and effected the world past the timeline of the game.

 

[Faarbaute]

Ending slides serve as a nice goodbye to the player. Giving you closure. Bonus points if they include fourth wall breaking stuff like thanking the player for playing or hinting at future adventures. To give you something to look forward to.

It reminds me of classic fairytales, where after the story ended, the narrator would wrap things up by telling you they lived happily ever after and so on.

 

[Can't handle the bacon]

Bonus points if they include fourth wall breaking stuff like thanking the player for playing or hinting at future adventures.

Are you trolling?

 

[Faarbaute]

Bonus points if they include fourth wall breaking stuff like thanking the player for playing or hinting at future adventures.

Are you trolling?

Nope. The game has ended. The story is over. The ending slides are for you, the player. Not your character.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

No, since they often serve as a band aid solution for the lack of a proper epilogue. And if there's a proper epilogue, then they're redundant (e.g. Dragon Age Origins with the coronation scene was enough and any extra info could've been added to NPC dialogues therein rather than separated as ending slides).

 

[Dustin542]

Say your choices have major consequences like the whole place got nuked, the Legion subjugated the whole Mojave, joining Elijah, or you died. Things shown past your character's lifespan due to their choices would also need to be shown in slides. You really want all the permutations of your actions to be shown in game even when the whole map has to be redone in each?

If your mostly just keeping the status quo, sure you can show it in game, but major upheavals or things quite a ways into the future, cannot.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Ending slides are alright, it's not like RPG started the powerpoint ending sequence trend, it gets the job done.

Of course, a reactive world with cities/areas changing depending on the players actions or lack of actions would be infinitely superior but this kind of reactivity doesn't seem to be worth the efforts for the devs so far.

However, if one dev does it well and is successful (get his efforts well rewarded with shekels), everyone and their mothers is going to get at it.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Say your choices have major consequences like the whole place got nuked, the Legion subjugated the whole Mojave, joining Elijah, or you died. Things shown past your character's lifespan due to their choices would also need to be shown in slides. You really want all the permutations of your actions to be shown in game even when the whole map has to be redone in each?

It doesn't have to be redrawn if you're creative enough. In the aforementioned Legion case for example, one can have a Legion-affiliated NPC tell you how things are going on the front in such a way as to heavily imply that the Mohave will soon be subjugated. Why would you need more than that?

The divergence of the endings should leave some room for interpretation and it shouldn't require slides explaining the far-reaching consequences. And if it does, that's something to be properly explored in a sequel rather than thrown there briefly in a slide (often to the detriment of the sequels which tend to trivialize such grandiose choices anyway).

 

[gurugeorge]

I don't see anything wrong with them in principle. It depends on whether they feel "rushed" and "cheap" or not, whether they give you a sense of closure for the events you've been through or not. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

The best ones I feel tend to be the ones that tell you how the world (the characters and places you interacted with) fared after the end of the story.