This problem does not arise in video games and MMOs: they may offer a lot more freedom to players than to the audience of a movie or the readers of a book, but the ways in which the players can interact with the world are severely limited – NPCs can be unkillable or even unattackable, items undestroyable and most importantly of all, dialogue options are severely limited.

Of course it can be argued that the responsibility to ensure that the players do not stray from the path and instead follow the thread of the plot falls to the Gamemaster. After all, the gamemaster represents the setting and world the players move in. If he fails to draw the players into the world and make it clear what consequences their actions could have, it’s not the story’s fault is it? In my opinion, that is not entirely true. The responsibility of creating a believable world – believable not only in its general plotline, but also in little things like consequences and punishments – is a shared one between the writer and the Gamemaster (if he happens to be both at once, like I prefer to be, well, tough luck).

The Gamemaster and the Writer both have possibilities to keep players from straying from the path at different levels. The Gamemaster is, naturally, responsible for interacting directly with the players and suggesting, for instance, what consequences their actions might have. A simple example of that would be as follows: The players have gotten it into their mind that they want to kill this particular NPC, let’s call him Borgar. However, he is still needed for later parts of the campaign. So the Gamemaster could say something to the effect of “Borgar sees your muscles tense as you get ready to attack him. His right hand move to his side and comes to rest atop the pommel of his sword. He doesn’t seem to be frightened or even alarmed at the prospect of having to fight you and the scars on his face suggest that this would be far from his first fight. He nods two times, in different directions, and you can see several people in the crowd shifting their position. They are likely to be his friends and together, they outnumber you by two to one.”

How could the writer have made sure that the players wouldn’t even get the idea to kill Borgar? Well, for instance, he could’ve written in dialogue or NPCs – even a book or story – that features this particular character before. Say the players are fighting to stop an undead blight. The stories say that Borgar hates the undead with a passion – a valuable ally in the fight, then. There are, of course, exceptions to that. Some events are very difficult to foresee and thus prevent in writing. Another scenario: the party figures that, instead of bringing back the sacred relic to the villagers, why don’t they just sell it? It’s solid gold after all! However, the merchants in the area (played, of course, by the Gamemaster) refuse to buy it because they fear the wrath of the gods…not even criminal fences want anything to do with after what happened to the last guy to anger the gods… Events like this often have to be handled by the Gamemaster because the Writer cannot possibly foresee them all.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the Writer should put down his story in the simple faith that everything will happen as it should. An experienced campaign writer will be able to predict at least some of the points at which the players will deviate from the plotline he has in mind and take some precautions. Your players are trying to get away with that relic? Well, too bad there’s a curse on it that makes them sick and sicker the further they carry it away from the village.

This is also why, among others, creativity and the ability to improvise are such desirable traits for Gamemasters – you never know what crazy ideas your players come up with, and you always need to have a response at the ready that is not “Rocks fall, everybody dies”. A good Gamemaster should always be prepared for his players to not go where he wants them to go or not act the way he wants them to act. You have a central plot point coming up that rests on the party spending the night at this particular inn? Well, too bad, your players just decided that they will ride on through the night to make up for time lost elsewhere or the Dwarf in your party is just too miserly to pay up. (Make someone break their ankle or a sudden downpour appear or anything that will force them to turn in for the night.)

Gamemasters have at least as much freedom in interacting with the world as the players do – even moreso because they control not only the people and creatures in it, but to an extent also the world itself. Forces like the weather are at their disposal, events of chance, etc. And in the end, every P&P game is a shared responsibility: The writer has total creative freedom, but he has to trust the Gamemaster to help carry the players along the plotline. In return, the Gamemaster is limited by the central plotline and general setting, but controls the immediate action and reaction of the world. And while the players have the least power over the world, they control a central point of the story as well: the protagonists. They, too trust the Writer has come up with a consistent (and fun) story and the Gamemaster is doing his best to keep them on track without giving away too much – even when it sometimes might seem that the Gamemaster is playing against the players. It is important for everyone to remember that all three parts have to be played in order to have a fun experience for all involved.

1. Hurr hurr, Evil McBadass has no backstory

As I’ve said, villains need a backstory, motivation and character development. You have to think about what made him or her “evil” or bad or criminal. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know. It worked for the Joker. Some man just want to see the world burn, I get it. But that doesn’t meany it’ll work for anyone. Most villains need a specific goal, be it revenge or world domination. It’s equally important what kind of relation the villain has to the protagonist(s). This, too, has to be believable. Possibilities include the villain being an old aquaintance or family member of the hero, natural opposition such as Law Enforcement vs. Criminal, conflicting values, etc. It also avoids the generic “YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE” heroic vocation. If the hero has a believable, comprehensible and traceable  reason to oppose the villain, the story tends to work much better.

2. Archdemon running a smuggling operation

Your villain has to have an appropriate amount of “evil” so as to fit into the story and the setting. Depending on how grave or horrible the ultimate threat your hero(es) will face, it has to fit the character of your villain. To refer back to the title for this one, if you have an Archdemon running a smuggling operation, it’d better be part of agreater plan or fit well into your setting (for instance, Demons could actually be small-time in your world). An isntance where this irked me was Quantum of Solace, in which a powerful criminal organization tries to take over 60% of the water supply in Bolivia and then double the rates. I get it, it would make them money. But the film is based on a true story and in real life, after the Bechtel corporation signed a contract with the president of Bolivia to privatize the water supply, they TRIPLED the rates and got away with it. So the thing with the evil, soulless criminal organization didn’t quite work our for me.

3.Oh, hi there – the villainous reveal

The point of most stories featuring a villain is the eventual confrontation between the hero and his nemesis. So their paths obviously have to cross at some point. Where, when how and why that happens is essential to the feel of the story and closely tied to how the villain is connected to the heroes. There are three basic ways to reveal your villain (the final one, that is): either at the beginning, at some point during the narrative, or just before the very end. All those have their merits. Revealing your villain at the beginning gives you more opportunities to develop his character, but having the hero unveil his identity during the narrative might fit better with the plot, and finally, unveiiling the real villain in a shocking finale can surprise the audience. Of course, they can be mixed as well: the villain can be featured, for instance, in the intro. His identity remains a secret, he is apparently killed off or simply vanishes, and later on in the narrative, he is revealed to be someone the audience never even thought of.

4. The Biggest Bad behind the Bigger Bad behind the Big Bad behind the Small Bad behind…

Villains tend to have henchmen, so sometimes, what you thought to be the head of the operation turns out to be a mere mook, and his boss, who played the puppet master all the while, steps out of the shadows. Overplaying that should be avoided however – if there is always a higher evil behind the one that was just vanquished, it gets old. This frequently happens with movie franchises, game series or TV shows that run longer than originally intended, such as Buffy (which featured a bigger and badder and evilerer Big Bad every season), the Terminator movies (in which it doesn’t really make sense at all, because Skynet could just have sent the most advanced model the first time around) or Shadow Hearts: Covenant (which kind of takes this into an extreme and has every threat to the world replaced by an even bigger one. You thought you just saved the world? Too bad, you’d better start over with this guy).

5. Evil McEvilson

This one should be obvious. Believe it or not, but a villain’s name (or names) is very much an essential part of his character. Names can tell the audience a great deal about the character after all. Many authors thus use ominous, meaningful or sinister-sounding names. You wouldn’t expect that guy Tom to turn out to be a really ancient, really evil Vampire Lord, but someone named Hannibal?You’d better be careful there. There are more obvious names like Dr. Nefarious or Sinistar or anything involving the syllable Mor (presumably shortened from latin “mors” (death)) such as Mordred, Morgaine, Professor Moriarty, Mordeth, Morridin, Morrigan, Mordor, etc. and some which allude to something that takes a bit of knowledge to understand. These are usually names with meaning in foreign or ancient languages, such as Ra’s al Ghul (Arabic for “The Demon’s Head”). A common thing is also for your villain to have many names, especially when they’ve been around for a while – a fact that they will often point out when asked by the hero who they are: “I have many names! Beelzebub, Satan, Lucifer, etc. pp”.  Expect them to enumerate all their spiffy titles too. In the end, if you plan to reveal your villain early, you can give him one of these more obviously villainous names, but if you want them to secretly get close to the hero, it’d be better if they did not introduce themselves as “Morseh’n, Lord of Darkness”. If you have some knowledge of foreign/ancient languages (or if you’ve made up your own), you can get a kick out of hiding an obviously evil meaning in the name for a villain without your audience suspecting. Believe me, that can be quite hilarious.

An alternative path can open up at many points and many layers throughout a game, often also depending on the genre. Let’s start with what I understand by “layers”. The topmost layer would be if the game offered a completely interactible world and just a vague goal for the player to accomplish. Unfortunately, most games have to limit that at least somewhat, so you rarely will have complete freedom in a game – that is, amongst other things, reserved for P&P games in which the world is represented by the GM and thus is – as long as you have a good GM – completely interactible with. So unless science develops a perfect AI, we’ll have to do with freedom of action at lower layers.

So we have a world, a vague goal and certain ways to interact with said world to reach it. The simplest way to go about alternate pathways now is to give us a couple of objectives and nto enforce a specific order in which to do them. An example would be Dragon Age after the events at Ostagar: we know we have to recruit the help of a human noble, the Circle of Mages, the Elves and the Dwarfs, but the order in which we do so – and the order in which we pick up our companions -  is entirely up to us. Ideally, the order in which we choose to accomplish these objectives would directly affect them. An example for that would be that while we go to help the Elves first, the problems of the Dwarfs get more urgent until we arrive because we were held up by the Elves.

The most common way of implementing alternate pathways, however, is to do so within the task set before the player. In the RPG genre, for instance, there are often multiple ways to go about a quest. This can go from choosing Diplomacy or Violence to get to your goal (Fallout 3 contains a hilarious example in the fight between the Ant-Agonizer and the Mechanist, two self-proclaimed superheroes/-villains fighting over a small town) over sneaking or breaking down the door up to choosing to helping one of the two quarreling sides. A good example for that would be a quest in The Witcher which lets you decide whether to let rebellious Elves smuggle weapons or turn them in. Again, ideally, decisions like these would have repercussions or benefits later in the game. The quest in The Witcher does – if you allow the Elves to smuggle the weapons, they will later use them to kill a quest NPC.

The one crossroad that usually brings about changes in the later game is when the player has to decide between two major factions in a conflict. These changes can range from minor benefits and disadvantages – such as “your” faction giving you additional quests or offering better prices and the other one barring you from their quests and merchants – to the other faction attacking you on sight.

In strategy games, they can range from world-domination, Risk-like games such was Warlord’s Battlecry 2, which leaves the decision of what province to attack next entirely up to you – and even gives small boni for certain regions you manage to conquer – to secondary goals in missions of more linear games such as the Command & Conquer series, which often includes additional tasks that either simplify your main objective or unveil information on the game’s background. There’s a funny way to win an otherwise lengthy Allied mission in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. You’re supposed to establish a beach head in order to break through the enemy’s base and destroy their missile silo. However, there’s a water passage leading right up to the silo so you can actually use the ships you receive at the beginning to rush through and destry it from sea, winning the mission in merely a couple minutes – and being congratulated by your intelligence adviser for coming up with such a cunning plan.

MMOs, however, generally avoid multiple ways to solve a quest; in fact, most MMOs tend to keep their quests, tasks and storylines straightforward and linear. They also rarely have the player choose between factions – presumingly because they do not want to divide the playerbase. Consequently, many MMOs unfortunately lack diversity both within their questlines and between different quests.

Interestingly, alternate pathways throughout the game do not have to end in alternate endings – while the road may be different, the goal can be the same.  In fact, there are usually many more decisions to make and alternate paths to be walked than there are endings to be seen. My favourite endings are actually the ones which show me what consequences every little decision I made throughout the game has had. Games that do this include the earlier Fallout games, Arcanum or Dragon Age. What happened to that village? That little boy I rescued? Did those two factions solve their problems with each other or did they blow themselves to pieces?

In the end,  alternate paths serve the same purpose that multiple endings do, which is to increase replay value. The point is to make the player wonder what would’ve happened differently if he had chosen this or that path instead of the other one. Would the quest NPC have survived if you hadn’t helped those Elves smuggle weapons? How would that mission have played out if you hadn’t used that water passage right at the beginning? What would have happened if you had joined the Inquisition instead of the Don’s men? Would Bhelen have made a better king than Harrowing after all? Essentially, it’s a chance for a do-over, and who among us has never wanted one of those?

How is it that we readily accept the existence of a multitude of sentient races, each with their own distinct culture and historical heritage, not to mention physical and mental capabilities when in the real word, humanity is the only race that comes anywhere near the history and accomplishment of these races? From what we understand of evolution – if the evolutionary concept can be applied to fictional worlds, that is – such a development is very unlikely at best. Naturally these fictional wordls “work” regardless of that, because we’re able to suspend our disbelief (see the last blogpost on that concept).

However, many authors opt to adopt fantastical elements auch as magic while foregoing to adopt the racial variety mentioned above. And whether they do so, seems, to me, dependent on the form of media for which they write. The genre of fantasy literature encompasses a myriad of books, and I’d never claim to be familiar with all of them, but it occurs to me that it is in the literary form in which the decision to go for a world populated simply by humans or for a more diversely populated one is entirely up to the authors. Some of the most popular fantasy series, such as George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire feature human protagonists exclusively, while others – most notably, the Lord of the Rings, of course – feature non-human races quite proficiently. Many traditional fantasy TV series are the same – probably because they are often based on a pre-existing book series (such as recent adaptions like Legend of the Seeker or Merlin). The same goes for the big screen. A large part of the “traditional” fantasy movies (the sword and sorcery genre) is based on a series of books. Examples include not only The Lord of the Rings, but also classics like Conan.

While those three forms of media – literature, TV and movies – can really go either way on the issue, it is the genre of video games that I find the balance tipped towards a multitude of races. Since the fantasy setting is most prominent in the RPG genre, it makes sense to offer the players as wide a variety of rolls to play as possible. Thus, it seems to me that most RPGs include at least the basic set of Humans, Dwarfs and Elves to choose from and/or fight with or against. One of the more recent examples would be Dragon Age, one of the classics Baldur’s Gate 2 and it even holds true for JRPGs such as Final Fantasy or The Last Remnant. There are, of course, exceptions such as the Gothic series or Risen. However, there is one subgenre in which the scale is tipped so much in the favour of racial variety that it almost touches the ground: MMORPGs.

There are a couple of reasons for this. For once, in MMORPGs, customization is a vital part of the playing experience. It is instrumental that not every player looks exactly the same. Including multiple races, which usually feature wide visual differences, goes a long way there. In addition,they are an easy way to form factions in PVP-centric games. If each race has an individual starting zone, capital, area or whole nation, it also contributes to the general diversity of the game experience. This is much more vital in MMOs than in other games as MMOs depend on binding players to continue playing and a good way to do so is the allure of something they haven’t seen or experienced before. Nearly all of the AAA western MMORPGs – like WoW, Warhammer or Everquest – include multiple races for the player to choose from, and even those who form the exception such as Guild Wars all feature a lot more enemy races than just other humans.

Up until now, I’ve made a point to look at the traditional fantasy genre. If we move our perspective to the genre of modern day fantasy and eventually sci-fi, we’ll find that the picture changes drastically: modern fantasy shows such as Heroes or settings like the Marvel Universe would hardly be expected to contain Elves or Dwarfs, yet they feature superpowers that seem almost magical. Books like Twilight or shows like True Blood, or Buffy feature vampires, werewolves and magic, but these are more acceptable in a modern setting than treehugging Elves and stout Dwarfs. After all, werewolves are still part human, vampires used to be human and the magic is performed by humans.

The sci-fi genre takes this to another level, especially when the setting spans multiple planets, galaxies or even universes. Sci-fi readers and watchers often except multiple alien races to show up, probably because Aliens are infinitely more acceptable than Elves or Dwarfs since we figure we can’t be alone in the universe. The chance that sentient life develops on another star somewhere in the universe is infinitely greater than the one multiple fantastic, sentient races develop on Earth (or a comparable world), so the appearance of Romulans and Vulcans in Star Trek or Twi’leks, Hutts and Javas in Star Wars seems acceptable. Again, there are natural exceptions to this, such as Battlestar Galactica, which has only humans and the human-made Cylons or Firefly which has humans only.

So how come some authors follow the “Tolkienite” path while others focuse on humans and still others invent their own races (different or not as though they may be)? Is it inspiration from myths and legends? Do the authors feel it necessary to include races that often impersonate certain human values – like the honorable Dwarfen warriors or the Elves, who live in peaceful coexistence with nature? Or could the inclusion of magical and non-human races in the fantasy genre ultimately even be an extension of that wish so frequently associated with sci-fi? The wish not to be alone?  It is certainly an interestingquestion – which has no definite answer.

“It was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth on the other hand was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us.”

This excerpt has to be looked at in context.  For one, the context of the book that contains it: Chapter XIV deals with the creation and the reception of poetry, especially regarding the Lyrical Ballads, a collaboration of Coleridge and William Wordsworth. As is suggested by the quote, Coleridge contributed the more romantic, supernatural pieces of the work while Wordsworth’s pieces tend to relate to and feature the “real world”. The other context that has to be taken into consideration is that of the time the works (both the Biographia Literaria and the Lyrical Ballads were written in. Literature of the eigteenth century, particularly of English origin, had largely discarded the supernatural both as subject and as inspiration. Especially among the educated classes – which made up for most of the literary audience – belief in the supernatural was replaced by rational thought and an interest in the emerging sciences. As such, most authors mirrored this development. This is where Coleridge’s original interpretation of “suspension of disbelief” comes in. Wishing to reintroduce the supernatural elements into his works while still writing for a modern and educated audience, he formulated his concept.

In essence, Coleridge beliefed that as long as the work procures “a human interest” and contains “a semblance of truth” – that is, contains nothing too outlandish – , his readers would be ready to shed off their critical disbelief of supernatural elements in order to be entertained. While Coleridge was specifically referring to elements of the supernatural, the meaning the term encompasses has since expanded. In modern usage, “suspension of disbelief”  refers to any fictional element that is fantastic or non-realistic – from things that might merely raise an eyebrow to things that might make one throw the book away or walk out of the theatre (*cough*Aliens in Indy 4*cough*).

A key part of the concept  of suspending disbelief is the little adjective that precedes the term in Coleridge’s original formulation: “willing”. Naturally, the recipient of the work needs to suspend overly critical analysis of the work out of his own free will. If the reader or viewer approaches the work or play with the intent to pick it apart and find unlikely or plainly impossible occurences or what we today would describe as plot holes or inconsistencies, then the concept cannot work. It is this intent that the author cannot influence.

Although Coleridge coined the term that is in use for the phenomenon to this day, the concept itself is much older, being referred to, amongst others, in the Ars Poetica by ancient roman writer Horace. Shakespearerefers to the general concept in the prologue to Henry V as well, though his understanding is more akin to the modern-day usage of the term: “[...] make imaginary puissance [...] ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings [...] turning th’accomplishment of many years into an hourglass.” Shakespeare here refers to one of the problems in fiction that most frequently requires suspension of disbelief in media like theatre or television, namely the notion that the plot – or parts of the plot – is/are resolved within a certain, usually very short period of time whereas in the real world, it would take much longer to do so. Examples include, for instance, many criminal shows in which the perpetrator of the crime is usually caught within a matter of days as well as shows like CSI in which forensic tests are conducted unrealistically fast when they really can take months.

There are many other examples in literature and modern media that require suspension of disbelief: science fiction shows such as Star Trek that depict space battles featuring the sound of explosions and the like (when no sound can be heard in space), shows like Heroes where supposedly “ordinary” people develop superpowers due to evolution (which does not work that way), the ease in which cars (and many other things) explode in the common Hollywood action movie, TV series in which the actors age much more visibly and way faster than the characters they play (basically, when more times passes in the real world than in-series) and thus look much older than they are supposed to be, etc pp. The examples are endless.

Whether suspension of disbelief works might be dependent on the setting of the work in question. Some argue that the further the setting deviates from what we see as the “real world” – that is, if it is set in a completely fictional world, far into the future or the past or in a galaxy far, far away – the more we are willing to suspend disbelief. That might be true for some – but it would mean that not many people would be able to enjoy, for instance, Spiderman, Heroes or anything else set in today’s real world. But even that is subject to what exactly the fictional elements are – it would seem that far more people are able to accept superheroes or sci-fi elements in a modern day world than, for example, Elves or Dwarfs which almost exclusively appear in fantasy settings.

In the end, many people might decide to not watch a show or read a book because the events portrayed in them seem too unbelievable – that is, they cannot sufficiently suspend their disbelief to enjoy the show. Should they be blamed for that? Should the writers? Hardly. Some people are capable of suspending their disbelief farther than others can, some approach everything they see more critically. And when all else fails, you can just try the old MST3K mantra:

If you’re wondering how he eats and breathes,
And other science facts,
Repeat to yourself “It’s just a show,
I should really just relax.”

Lalala

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.

With that out of the way, let me put forward the question I will be exploring in this post. do endings to video games need to follow different “rules” (for lack of a better term) or conventions than endings to other fictional works such as movies and/or books?

While some might expect all fantasy books to have a happy ending – evil vanquished and the forces of good triumphant, the villains slain, etc. – those of us who are familiar with more diverse works than The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia will have happened upon one or another book or series that does not fulfill the conventional “happy ending” criteria. Just like some authors choose to discard the classic black vs. white scheme for their books (which seems, from my observation, to have become a more acceptable practice, sometimes even lauded for “originality”), an author or writer might choose a depressing (or, at least, a less triumphant) ending to his or her work – just think of the last of the ever-popular Harry Potter novels; I daresay many people did not expect the amounts and particular cases of deaths before the end. While this might still be the exception in fantasy books and movies and some readers might be upset about it, it does not cause any major uproars (fan fiction writers reinventing the continuity to lead to an end – or coupling – they find more desirable put aside).

This does not apply to video games. Much more than readers and viewers of books and movies, gamers except the protagonist – themselves, essentially – to triumph in the end. I recently observed this myself when I finished Divinity II: Ego Draconis. The ending to this game shows the main villain triumphant over your character (after a magnificent Xanatos-Gambit, I might add) – now invincible and destroying the very world you were trying to save while you are forced to watch from an inescapable magic prison (so inescapable in fact, that your prison mate is a divine being, effectively shattering any hope for an addon in which you might escape – also: no, there are no alternate endings). Needless to say, I was quite upset about that.

Digging around the net a little, I found that I wasn’t alone with that feeling. The writers, while being flamed in many a gameforum, supposedly defended themselves with the idea of creative freedom (I never saw an actual dev post about it, so this might be just hearsay – still, it serves as an argument). I was reminded of a similar dispute that erupted in regards to the original ending to Fallout 3 (pre-Broken Steel DLC), which had the protagonist succeeding in his quest to bring clean water to everyone in the Capital Wasteland, but had him sacrifice his life in order to do so. Admittedly, players may have been upset for different reasons – not being able to continue playing the game, having their character die (from radiation no less, when you could have several NPC followers who should have been immune to the effects of this radiation and thus could have completed the task without danger to themselves), the end being a major letdown compared to Fallout 1 and 2′s endings (in terms of complexity, not happiness). But the tenor of the complaints seemed to be the powerlessness to change the end they disliked.

As I said before, gamers expect a happy or triumphant ending. That may be because they put a lot more thoughht and effort into playing through a game than most people do put into reading a book or watching a movie. If we spend hours hacking and slashing and blasting ourselves through dungeons we want to be apllauded. Celebrated. Rewarded. Not shot down and watch our nemesis triumph.  Thus, even though a book or movie may also feature a single main protagonist, gamers tend to identify much more with their avatars than viewers or readers with protagonists (an experience that is only enhanced by such features as customized character creation at the beginning of the game). It’s due to that identification that gamers expect their avatar, their extended self, to triumph.

Does that mean all games should have happy endings? I can’t say. It seems like a boring rule to set down and follow. If we know for sure how the story will end, why bother playing through the game? Is the journey the reward? Are we content with just a few twists and surprises on the way? I am hesitant to agree with that so easily. A good game, just as a good book or movie, tells a story. Stories can be spoiled by knowing how they will end.

In the end, there is no simple solution to the question. I can’t say whether all games should have good endings. The danger of gamers being disgruntled over an ending they don’t like is just one writers will have to consider. It’s a disadvantage they face when compared to writers of books or movies. There’s also the fact that a lot of people work on the story of one game, as opposed to mostly just one author for a book and maybe a few for a movie. Writers for games have to answer to the Creativer Producer, etc etc. In return, they have the possibility to include, for example, multiple endings to a game or alternate plotlines to increase replay value (I’ll further explore the advantages game writers have over traditional writers in the next post). For now, all I can say is:  I get the gamers. They want to be rewarded. In my own opinion, a game shouldn’t end on an entirely low note. But I also get the writers. They want creative freedom. In the end, most writers will have to compromise – not exactly a solution to the problem.

…and welcome to Walls of Text – a blog that primarily revolves around what I like to call “lore”. Storywriting. Crafting imaginary worlds.

Before we get into what I mean by that, a fair warning: If you’re the kind of guy (or gal) who clicks through the walls of text in Baldur’s Gate (2), this blog is not for you. If you skip the cutscenes in Final Fantasy, this blog is not for you. If you do not have the patience to sit down and read a good book (for fiction, I currently recommend “The Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss, for non-fiction, “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players” by Ethan Gilsdorf), this blog is not for you. Finally, if you make frequent use of “TL;DR” – shoo, this is not a blog for you.

If you are, however, the kind of person who might show up at work/school/university overtired because you just had to finish that last chapter of that great book, who spends hours creating a backstory for your P&P/LARP character or world, who can understand why people cried when Aerith died (or did so yourself) who understands that the art of storytelling involves so much more than just a recount of events, then this definitely is a blog for you.

So what do you mean by “lore”?

So let’s define “lore”. If we look around the net a bit, lore is describe as “all the facts and traditions about a particular subject that have been accumulated over time through education or experience or the backstory created around a fictional universe” (Wikipedia), “knowledge gained through tradition or anecdote” (Princeton) or the “collective beliefs and legendry relating to a subject, as in “vampire lore”" (Twin Cities Paranormal Society) – don’t ask how I found that last one. Roget’s International Thesaurus offers “mythology”, “tradition”, “body of knowledge” and “superstition” as references. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary tells us that lore is “knowledge and information related to a particular subject, especially when this is not written down; the stories and traditions of a particular group of people”. The truth is that, in relation to fiction, lore is all that – and much more.

To me, the concept of lore encompasses everything that fills or influences the game world – whether you get to see it or not. Let me explain that using an example. When you read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – or see Peter Jacksons’s movie adaption – you will get to know a great deal about Middle Earth. But there’s more to it than what you read or see or hear in the books and movies. Tolkien created a whole world, a mythology, places, persons, deities that aren’t mentioned there. Many aren’t mentioned anywhere but the Silmarillion (such as Beleriand) – some merely in a short description or general idea. I suspect that some are not even in there, but existed merely in Tolkien’s imagination. Yet all that is part of Middle Earth’s lore (if you want proof, you might try to look at some of the dozens of original drawings, sketches, notes and scribblings of Tolkien in the Marquette University’s collection in Wisconsin). When an author writes a fantasy book, he will often create many more details to his world than he ore she ends up including in his or her book.

It’s the same for other activities such as P&P games. I’m currently running a P&P game set in Elysea, a world that I have created myself. If the campaign runs like I imagine it will, my players might not get to know a great deal of the lands, places, timelines,  persons, historical events – and even races – that the world includes or alludes to. My point is that even though one might enjoy a game or a book or a movie simply by what parts of the lore are included, what you see is often influenced by what you don’t see.

Some might feel that one does not need to know everything about a fictional world to enjoy reading, seeing or playing (about/with) it. I agree. But often, a little background lore can enhance the fun you’re having. Another example: if you’re playing the Warhammer tabletop game, let’s say High Elves vs. Dwarfs. You might be aware that Elves and Dwarfs do not get along well. You do not need an explanation of why that is to enjoy beating the crap out of the Elves with your Dwarfs. But maybe by learning about the War of the Beard, you might be able to delve into the game some more, emphatize with your Dwarfs and get another kick out of beating up those wussy Elves (sorry for the example, I don’t really like High Elves).

The more effort and time an author or writer puts into crafting details of his world, the more complex and detailed it becomes.  This allows for the author to create more believable, more intricate and more consistent characters and backstories for these characters. If he has, for himself, established that a certain city is renowned for a particular craft, a character that hails from this city will most likely have a relation to this craft. It’s easier to write a heartless, cold character if you think about how he became this way – but there’s no need to let your players/readers/viewers know his background. This increases the chance that a fictional work will succeed in suspending disbelief – an instrumental concept in fantasy and one I will further explore in a future post.

On the other hand, if you’re the reader, player or viewer, trying to get to know everything about a fictional world can get in the way of enjoying it. If you’re scrutinizing every last detail, you’ll eventually destroy the aforementioned suspension of disbelief.  That might be due to finding contradictions: writers and authors are just human after all, and the more complex a world is, the more prone to little contradictions it will be. But it can also happen because you know too much about the world you’re trying to immerse yourself in. After all, much of the appeal of fantasy is the mysterious: the fact you don’t know everything, the fact you can’t explain everything.

The point I am trying to make is the following: when dealing with an imaginary world in any medium – text, movie a P&P game – you should be aware of the fact that the world you’re exploring is probably a lot more complex than just the parts you’re seeing. At the same time, don’t try to find an explanation, justification or detailed derivation of everything you encounter. A complex and imaginative lore can enrich your reading, gaming or movie experience without you realizing it.