I was planning to write about the ending of BioShock Infinite, but it's fair to say that the internet is already saturated with analyses of it. Still, thinking about the ending of Infinite led me to think about game endings more generally, and what kinds of game endings I enjoy the most. There is a definite type of ending that resonates with me more than any other: the open or unresolved ending. My favourite game endings are those that lack closure. The vast majority of iwin 270 are geared towards a kind of narrative finality that requires a very definite resolution. There's a structure of objective-completion-reward that necessitates closure: you have a task, you complete the task, and you get the reward. It's a closed process. Games with open endings, however, challenge this structure. An unresolved narrative contrasts with a completable, objective-based game. As a result, there's a dissonance inherent in games with open endings, a tension between the lack of closure on the one hand, and the traditional objective-completion-reward structure of video games on the other. It's this dissonance that makes the open ending the most interesting type. Unresolved endings are often sadder, more challenging and more memorable than endings that tick all of the boxes and tie up all of the loose ends game iwin . They linger in the mind, asking questions and demanding analysis. They encourage deeper philosophical investigations into the roles and responsibilities of the player. I've had many more long discussions with friends over unresolved endings in games, books and films than I've had over neat, definite, happy ones.
One type of open or unresolved ending is the projected ending. In literature, a projected ending is one that takes place hypothetically after the end of the book. (A famous example would be in David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest; the denouement takes place after the work has ended.) One of my favourite examples of a projected ending in gaming comes from Final Fantasy VII. For various convoluted reasons I won't go into, the villain Sephiroth has summoned a meteor to scar the planet. The heroes have cast a spell called Holy to counteract Meteor. The player defeats Sephiroth at the game's climax, leaving Holy free to do its stuff. But there's a catch: in addition to destroying Meteor, Holy will judge humankind and, if it finds them to be a threat to the planet, will cleanse the planet of the human race; a twist in-keeping with the game's eco-focused ideologies. he final moments of FFVII consist of a brilliant white flash game iwin 270, a brief image of Aeris as she exists in the lifestream, and then… nothing. The ultimate judgment of Holy is left for the player to ponder. It's projected outside of the game's narrative: it happens after the ending. Did Holy destroy the human race? The epilogue, set 500 years later, shows us the prominent city of Midgar now overgrown and ruined. But even this fails to answer the significant question: what happened to the humans? Did they merely abandon the city, or is Midgar in ruins simply because there are no people left to inhabit the place? The quiet, post-credits laughter of children is a similar source of heated fan debate. The most significant aspect of the ending is the way it upsets the traditional narrative expectancy for a grand heroic action that saves the world and wins the day. It changes the identity of the player from somebody who completes an objective and saves his heroes to somebody who may be complicit in the downfall of the human race. The world is, most definitely, saved, but at what cost gamealo.net. The unknowable qualities of FFVII's ending definitely contribute to its impact. It's unfortunate, then, that Square Enix decided to answer the question of FFVII's ending by developing various sequels, making something that was once unresolved and highly original into something run-of-the-mill: the Holy spell worked, and it saved the day tai game iwin 270.