Variety in videogames, part 1: Multiple Endings

In my last post, I lamented the limited freedom writers for video games haven when creating an end to their story – an inherent disadvantage compared to movie or book authors. However, video games also offer a freedom to storywriters that is unavailable to most of their colleagues in the literature or cinema business – that of variety within the same story.

Let me explain. Nearly all books and movies follow a preset narrative out of necessity. If you watch a movie or read a book, there is usually no possitibility for you to influence how the characters act and the story progresses – that is the author’s prerogative. There are, of course, books that will allow you to choose amonst storylines or alternate ways of approaching a situation, e.g. “if you want Vaselion the Elf to jump off this cliff, continue on page 42, if you’d rather have him take his chances with the pit of molten lava, continue on page 53″; but those are the exception to the rule – and I’ve never heard of such a movie – it’d have to be a straight-to-DVD release for that to work, I guess). The medium of a video game, meanwhile, allows the recipient to make decisions that influence the story.

One of the most common ways to allow this is the inclusion of multiple endings. This can have many forms. The three most common are:

a) An achievement-based good or bad ending in which the game measures your performance (such as quests completed, enemies eradicated, women wooed, minigames mastered, pockets picketed, etc pp) and grants an ending that can range from sad to perfect. If  a game features a wider variety of these than just good or bad, it will often require multiple playthroughs to achieve the “better” ones. Example: Final Fantasy X – 2.

b) A faction based ending, most commonly found in strategy games. These games force the player to decide between two warring factions at the beginning – rebels and loyalists, conservatists and reformists, the US or Russia, furries or Klingons, etc pp. The end will thus either favour one faction or the other. Example: the Command and Conquer series.

c) A decision based ending, in which the decisions made during the game influence how the game ends. This can range from minor differences such as to which characters are standing next to the player in the ending sequence to monumental differences such as a completely “good” (everyone is saved) or “evil” (world is destroyed) ending. Example:Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Baal.

(Another type of multiple ending (and my favourite one, in fact) is one that can beobserved, for instance, in games such as Fallout 1/2 or Dragon Age. During the epilogue, the player is informed how his actions during the game – including sidequests – influenced the future of the game world. For instance, the player can side with the Sheriff or a casino owner in the Fallout settlement of Junktown. Depending on his choice, Junktown will later become a bastion of law and order or a wretched, run-down crime hive.)

There are, of course, a few more types of multiple endings, but this is not an enumeration of these. The one thing all multiple endings have in common is that they contribute greatly to the replay value of video games – which is something developers like to use in promoting their games, too. What some fail to realize, however (or at least, I’m giving them the benefit of doubt here), is that the replay value multiple endings add also depends on a number of additional factors.

Basically, there are two major factors at play. One is how much the endings actually differ.  A good example for this is, once more, Fallout 3. The game had a karma meter, but all it did to influence the game’s ending was changing a few lines in the epilogue. That didn’t add much replay value. In contrast, Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal’s endings had a much greater impact on the whole game world: the player was faced with the decision to succeed his divine father as God of Murder, renounce godhood for good or become a deity of justice and righteousness – theoretically increasing replay value much more.

Why theoretically? Well, the problem here is that the game offers the decision to choose between these endings after the final battle. So all a player would have to do to experience all endings would be to reload and click a different option each time. (That is not to say that Throne of Bhaal didn’t have replay value, by the way. Far from it – I have played through it more than 10 times myself.) This brings us to the second factor influencing the added replay value of multiple endings: the decision point, the point at which the ending is decided. Simply put, the earlier in game the decision point lies, the greater the replay value. Naturally, that is only valid if the ending is influenced by a single decision or performance. If the point is more a net spreadout through the whole game – it becomes more difficult to directly influence the ending – thereby increasing replay value. In essence, the more time it takes to influence the ending, the higher the replay value.

So if multiple endings increase replay value, why aren’t there more games that include them? Well, multiple endings introduce some unique problems. The most obvious one is, of course, the added work hours and general effort that goes into including multiple endings. Another problemare sequels. If you want to base a sequel (or an addon) on your game’s storyline and the endings differ too much, you’ll have to decide on one ending that you will build upon, the canon ending, so to speak. A good example for this is the Tiberium saga of the Command & Conquer universe, which would normally assume that the GDI (the “good” guys) won in the game preceding the current one.

In a perfect game series, the sequel to a game with multiple endings would read out a savegame from the earlier game in the series and base the story upon how that ended for the player – something Mass Effect 2 apparently will do. Naturally, this adds an even greater workload than simply including multiple endings. But hey, one may dream.