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prototypelq · 5 months

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Very curious about this one from the game ask game:

22. A game ending that’s really stuck with you

A mutual after my own heart, are you?)

I'll do a small confession here - I love gaming, I love playing all kinds of things, but I don't do it nearly as much as I know of them. So I might start to sound a bit like a broken record by mentioning some familiar titles

If I had to choose one, I would, predictably, say Outer Wilds. This won't be a surprise for anyone who played the game, and if you, for some reason haven't yet - good, don't look anything up, and please try it out for yourself. If you, for some reason, can't or don't want to play it yourself, I recommend looking up an essay, either one of the dozens on this game (there will honestly never be enough). Personal favourite would be The Song at The End of All Times. I don't want to go into anything further than this in fear of spoiling someone, but I think from the title of the essay you can guess where this is going.

Let's just say space westerns are my jam) Finishing this game was incredible, and I was in a kind of limbo for some time afterwards. I don't think I would be the same person I am today without it, not really. I also watch every single essay on this game that I come across, because you only really get to experience this game once, and then desperately wish to do so again somehow. Watching essays is the closest you can come close to that feeling ever again. The game is a perfect space exploration game - it will make you experience the dread and joy of cosmos like no other, it can be depressing and feel oppressive at times, but the story of the game, while bittersweet, is fundamentally built upon hope. So, while the ending shakes you to the core, it does so with the goal of sharing something intimately beautiful with you.

Another game I can think of that has story which affected me a lot, but which I haven't played myself (not sure I could ever play it really) would be SOMA. This game introduced me fulltime to existential horror, and apparently I am a sucker for it.

The game has a lot of philosophy tied to it, and it had me thinking about it all for literal weeks. The 'horror' name-part might be misleading, as this game and its' story is not about scaring you with monsters or jumpscares (although those exist in the game and that's why I'm never playing it, I would NOT be able to handle that), it's, uh... about literal horror of existence? Anyway, you'll get what it's about if you look up anything about the game, I saw a cutscene ('gamemovie') cut of it and oh boy, the voice acting sells everything perfectly. The writing is insanely good, there's a reason people still keep talking about the game.

Cyberpunk 2077 also kind of steps a little into that territory. While I couldn't play that game because CDPR are bastards, I had a lot of fun looking into the endings of that game as well as the lore of the cyberpunk universe.

Not-really spoilers paragraph ahead

basically by the time the protagonist, V, figures out what to do with the chip with AI-personality of Johnny Silverhand in their head, that has been taking over their body for the entirety of the game, it is too late to really do anything about it, and V is doomed to be overwritten out of his own body. There is an interpretation of different endings for the game as different stages of grief (selling yourself as a guinea pig to try to get experimental treatment - denial, single-handedly storming the corporation that owns the chip - anger, etc.) and I loved that insight, especially because for the player, these are not really as transparent as may seem. The game does a good job of installing into you the idea of dying and the fear of death, and the endings are basically the forked roads which player can take in their limited time to try to deal with it. It's very personal, and I think the writing team at CDPR did an amazing job for this game. The most striking of them all, and one that surprised me the most, was the suicide ending. When V and Johnny finally end up at that 'final fork' where they have to choose a path to their grand finale, they have to consider their options. All of these endings have a price, and none of them guarantee a solution - it's either selling yourself out to a corporation for experimentation, storming a corporation single-handedly or with help, and chances to die in getting to any of these is very high. You can rope in some friends for help you get to the solution, but again, there likely is no way out of this for you, and this puts your friend on a firing line right up with you. So, V can die a slow and torturous death because of the chip, die trying to do the impossible and/or force his friends into it, or. Or the game allows you to end it all, right now, without additional pain for you or any casualties. Hence, the suicide ending. All game credits, regardless of the chosen ending, have companions and friends calling V and leaving him a message. In messages for the Suicide ending it's...all of them crying in anger and hurt and feeling betrayed. One of them calls only to realize 'Shit, I can't do this', starts howling and ends the call. Those voice messages are genuinely heartbreaking to listen to.

That. That is one powerful ending to experience.

...would it be cheating to add DMC5 here? I don't think it will be news to anyone xD This didn't leave me a wreck like the others, but I love how surprisingly wholesome and sweet the story ends in this game about blood, gore and demon hunting. I love the fandom, I arguably love the fandom more than I do the game, but the game is also great, and it deserves a lot of praise for that, sparda loser twins my beloved)

Pyre ending resonated with me a lot as well. Won't go into any detail here, basically the game is a perfect blend of a roleplaying and a visual novel. This means you have a lot of free space to bond with your companions, this game is very much about the path, and not the destination. However, the destination sells the impact of your time spent with each companion.

Unlike most standard rpgs, there is no really 'good' or 'bad' ending for the characters. The path you took will dictate the circumstances of their life in the future, and they will have to just deal with it. There is no weight placed on the player character of 'making their lives better', quite honestly because you really can't. So every ending for them is just, a character being in one place, or the other, and them continuing their life from there. I love this, and the credits song Bound Together, which is Gorgeous as all Darren Korb&Ashley Barrett tracks are, reflects the path you took and time you spent with your companions by changing the lyrics of the song to fit your version of events. One of the videos about the game is called 'How Pyre Sings Your Story' and the game really does exactly that - sings your own personal story. It's beautiful.

Transistor stuck with me too, not just because of the soundtrack, but because it is a very wholesome romance story. Tragic as hell at the beginning (We All Become - as the opening song of the game), but I guess Supergiant's love their bittersweet endings, and credits songs that emotionally devastate me (We All Become morphs into -> Paper Boats).

Terra Nil is another weird game I wanted to add here. I didn't change my life or anything, but it did provide me a unique perspective. The game was marketed as 'reverse city-builder', I would characterize it as a 'climate-change solar-power fantasy'.

Horizon games setting of a post-post-apocalypse (meaning= the future after immediate post-apocalypse= meaning far future after an apocalypse) speaks volumes to me on a level of hope for life in general - that life will always persist, in any way shape or form, it will always continue to surprise and amaze you, it's just the matter of if humanity will live to see it in the future. Terra Nil would be a reverse of that mentality - what it would feel like to have the power to help mother nature recover and let it thrive again. The game has you use green-science-based technology to refertilize soil, clean pollution from water, manipulate the landscape into distinct biomes and introduce different animals into the according environment, the newfound ecosystem stabilize on its own, then your job is to recycle everything you've built to leave this land clear of external devices and leave it to thrive on it's own. This makes the gameplay feel extremely wholesome and hopeful, usually the solarpunk genre is a static image of an unattainable future - a pretty motivating picture, but without any depth to it. Terra Nil shows how our technology and power could be used for good. I think the moment that kind of broke me a little, was when in a later level, I had to dredge up land from the bottom of the ocean to create a continental ecosystem, and this unearthed nuclear pollution which quickly undid a lot of my work on like, half the map. The game then gave me access to sunflower seeds, because they have the actual power to safely suck up nuclear pollution, and save the ecosystem I was trying to build. I had to genuinely pause the game and go get a tea or something in that moment, that was so beautiful I teared up.

This game can actually be quite educational - it makes you really think about the necessity of each part of an ecosystem, that every animal, every plant, every water source - all of them are important for the whole ecosystem. The gameplay teaches you to look at a dumpsite and think up about how can you make a complete and thriving ecosystem out of it. The gameplay requires you thinking up ahead some steps, and that can be a bit challenging at first, but the game is very lenient with the difficulty. Although, if you are trying to introduce all the rarer and more niche animals into the system - prepare for some tries and errors, this will prove a nice tactical challenge.

I also just learned Terra Nil was nominated by several committees for 'Social Impact' award and Yes this game absolutely deserves it. Also the developers have donated quite a sum to the Endangered Wildlife Trust, and it's extremely nice of them.

#tbh i didn't expect to write that much but is that a surprise to anyone #i mean at least I have the excuse of a kind of deep question to write a reply to xD #thank you mutual I had fun digging through my gamelog for this post)#mutuals my beloved #gaming #outer wilds #soma #pyre #cyberpunk 2077 #terra nil #transistor #supergiant games #devolver digital #annapurna interactive #you may be surprised there is no death stranding or witcher 3 or rdr2 but to be honest their stories didn't capture me at all #no rainworld either because the story there makes absolutely no sense to me it is a very fun/frustrating game though #also i kind of realized that while i love my story-focused games my preferred actual Playstyle is just wandering around in these beautiful #virtual worlds #i have sunk more than 120 hours into death stranding before story finale because apparently I Love Delivering Packages! and making the few #apocalypse survivors happy by delivering their requested stuff #even when its super weird but that's more on kojima #and who am i to judge anyone's online orders the less said about them the better xD

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