To Be Continued…
Had it been more honestly called ‘Not Even Half A Vampyre Story’, maybe the abrupt cut-to-credits wouldn’t have been so painful…
You fought your way through Hell, you beat the end boss with style and panache, you thought you’d saved the world… but no. Out of nowhere, your victory is torn from you, your triumph smashed into tiny little pieces. You’re not a winner. You’re no damn hero. But hey, maybe in the sequel…
To Be Continued endings are nothing short of a pox on the industry – one so common, we often forget just how insulting they can be after devoting hours of our time and no small amount of cash to a new game. There is precisely one situation where they’re acceptable, and it’s in an episodic game where the next instalment is not only guaranteed, but imminent. Beyond that, they don’t work, and the justifications for them don’t pull their weight. In short: they must die.
Let me tell you a story…
The last couple of Tomb Raider games trod a good balance between individual episode stories and a running metaplot about the (now fully resolved) fate of Lara’s lost mother.
Just to make sure we’re on the same page, it’s important to point out that a To Be Continued ending doesn’t simply mean that the story goes on, or has the potential to go on, after the game is over. Not everything has to be wrapped up with a neat little bow for an ending to be satisfying and conclusive. Paving the way for sequels, having the characters head on to fresh adventure, even changing the dynamics of the world in some interesting way as a result of the quest… all of those are perfectly valid narrative techniques, and good business sense in today’s industry.
The main difference between these endings, the Story Goes On type, and the much-hated To Be Continued, is really one of objectives and how well they’re conveyed to the player. As a broad guideline, every major objective that a game raises should be satisfactorily resolved by the end of the game, and you should always have a good idea of what you’re working towards.
This doesn’t necessarily have to be specific/stated up front, but it absolutely has to be there.For example, take a look at the average World War II game. Broadly speaking, you’re fighting to win the war, but in practice, you’re invariably part of something much more focused, complete with its own pacing, structure, and important goals. A specific case of this is Assassin’s Creed, where the Crusades-era storyline and its plot points comes to a specific close, even though the present-day metaplot continues in the Venice based sequel. Another would be Psychonauts. We’ll never get to see the mission that Raz and co head out on in the ending, but that’s fine, because what matters is that he’s accomplished his dream of being able to do it in the first place.
Getting this scope balance right was one of the reasons why Halo finished so well, while Halo 2 choked. In the first game, it was clear that the plot revolved around the titular ringworld, and while there was more going on than the battle between humans and aliens to control it, that was the focus. When it went boom at the end, the story was conclusively over, even though the Human/Covenant war was still raging. The sequel lacked this coherent focus, with the politics and fast-switching mission objectives simply being spat out as you ran around. When the cliffhanger ending came, it wasn’t obvious that it was what you’d been working towards, so it came as a shock. The Master Chief’s sign-off, that he was ‘Finishing the Fight’, instantly shifted from a heroic quip to a thinly veiled pitch for the sequel. It wasn’t simply a bad ending. It was betrayal.
When even Bungie, a company with both a good handle on, and heavy interest in its games’ storylines can make this kind of misstep in one of its flagship products, it’s no wonder that the average game’s TBC endings make for a painful finale indeed.
Why Continue?
Finish the fight? Finish the damn story…
There are several reasons why games end on a To Be Continued. Sometimes, as in the case of Still Life, it’s a problem during development. Due to budget issues, that game never actually got round to revealing who the serial killer you were chasing was, leading to a hysterical marketing campaign for the sequel that actually tried pretending this was a good thing. Why? Because you got to come up with your own theory, of course! Is this acceptable? I’d argue no. We can be sympathetic to the company for running out of money, but when the game’s in the box, we deserve the whole thing.
In other cases, this isn’t an excuse, and Christ only knows what the developers were thinking. Runaway 2: The Dream of The Turtle is one of the worst offenders I’ve ever encountered, not only ending with nothing resolved, but doing so after almost an entire game made up of filler, with the characters idly chatting about the dangling plot and describing the whole tedious affair as nothing more than a warm-up for the real story. Madness. Infuriating, contemptuous madness.
See you in the sequel!
Specific cases aside, far and away the most common reason why To Be Continued endings get into everything is to provide a convenient hook for the inevitable sequels. This sounds like a no-brainer, but in practice the arguments for it aren’t convincing. Here are just five reasons why not…
First: In the overwhelming majority of cases, no such sequel has actually been commissioned. Even if it gets made, chances are it’s going to be at least a couple of years away, at which point the finer details are likely to have been lost to memory anyway. This is an especially annoying point when it’s a game like Dreamfall, which took years and years to get a green light, repeatedly tripped over the story it thought it was telling, and is still no closer to resolving its seventeen million cliffhangers.
Second: Count the number of franchises you’ve kept playing specifically for a continuous narrative thread. Very few games qualify, even long-runners like Ultima and Final Fantasy. It’s the characters and worlds that primarily draw us back, whether it’s to see what horrible situation Max Payne’s got himself into now, reuniting with old friends like the residents of Chandler Avenue in the Tex Murphy games, or getting a second chance to rebuild the world in our own image in Deus Ex. If these elements on their own aren’t enough to warrant a sequel, a TBC won’t make them so.
Third: Using a TBC is voluntarily locking yourself into a plot, regardless of any better ideas you may have between games, or how well/badly the game goes across. There are ways around this, but none of them offer an improvement over having that blank slate to work with, and most look silly in front of the fans the original TBC was intended to impress in the first place.
Fourth: As powerful as story is, the real irony of TBC endings is that it’s much harder to get people to join an adventure halfway through than to get them to give something standalone a try. This is why many franchises, particularly in casual gaming, avoid numbers like the plague. The more baggage a series carries, the greater the diminishing returns with each new release.
And last but not least, Fifth: We know full well that most people don’t actually finish their games anyway. If even Valve struggles to get 50% completions, most other titles are doomed. The wasted effort of trying to get the fans excited about the sequel (which they’ll buy anyway) is much, much better spent on leaving them with a warm glow after a satisfying experience. It’s better in terms of enjoyment, and makes it much more likely that they’ll promote it to their friends.
Really, the argument comes down to this. If a game’s story and characters are good enough to draw people back for a sequel, they’re going to do it anyway. A To Be Continued ending is simply a cheap way of trying to win back some of the excitement that the games themselves should be providing. They let down otherwise good games, do nothing to pump life into weaker ones. Worse, with blatant sequel hooks so often acting as the kiss of death as far as actually getting a sequel goes, anyone who actually bought the original ends up screwed. We work hard for our victories in these games. The least we should expect is to have the chance to enjoy them.