Castle Paradox

[Baconlabs]

I'm not at liberty to discuss any spoilers for SHiIDA, but I will at least say that the plot has taken a complete 180 under my nose and now I feel immoral for even considering it. So here's my question to you, the OHRRPGCE community:

What do you think of Downer Endings?

Answer plain or elaborate, doesn't matter to me.


For those unfamiliar with this idea, this is the dark, inverted version of the Happy Ending, where the day is NOT once again saved (thanks to the Powerpuff Girls) and things turn out very much less than favorably. Perhaps a beloved cast member, maybe even the main character, gets killed off, or perhaps your entire quest was meaningless all along, or perhaps everything died in an apocalypse that you failed to prevent. These things can get real emotional, making you cry your heart out, and sometimes quite nihilistic, making you ponder the meaninglessness of it all.

This may be more volatile when it comes to games. People are used to having sad and pointless endings in other movies, plays, and books, my case in point being anything written by Shakespeare.
But with games, there is no longer a viewer, there is a gamer. Gamers interact, and expect events in a game to react according to what they do. In Final Fantasy VII, players at first went through a fair amount of trouble leveling up Aeris only to get rudely slapped in the face when she's killed off by the plot. In Castlevania II, to have to go all over Transylvania, collect Dracula's parts, revive him, then kill him, just to get over a stupid curse that was never curable in the first place (according to the bad endings) makes gamers feel frustrated and sometimes foolish.
Compare to Final Fantasy VI and Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, where certain character deaths - several of them - can be avoided if the player has the power to do so.

I guess what I'm working towards is how to pull off an unhappy ending without pissing off the players, who may end up working terribly hard only to see their efforts melt in front of them.

[Artimus Bena]

I would say, yes, spending so much time on something always makes me want a positive outcome.

In this case, I say ride the middle ground. It can be a sad ending, but at least make the player feel like he's accomplished something equal to the work he put in.
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SACRE BLEU!

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[Bagne]

Is there a lesson to be learned in the sad ending?
Is there anything to be gained other than "it's not normally done"?
If not, I would say don't do it.

But, I'm sure you have a good reason.
So, consider this:
Even should the bad guys win, their victory can never be complete.
This might sound unreasonable, but it's really not.
Can the conquering tyrant really and truly break the spirit of an *entire* nation? Of course not.
Is it possible to completely eradicate all that is beautiful and good in the universe? It would be absurd to answer "yes".

There's always something good to work towards.
I mean, look back 4.5 billion years at the hellish ball of blistering magma and dust that was once Earth - and look at the amazing stuff that has since arisen!

So whatever happens in the end, cataclysm, war, famine, whatever... if you admit (and show) that it's really not the end, I think the player might be okay with it.
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Working on rain and cloud formation

[Ronin Catholic]

Downer endings are dumb and only barely make me want to kick the author less than "good" vampires/witches/demons. That said, it's better than having a happy ending handed to you on a silver platter.
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"I didn't start the flame war;
I don't know what you thought here
'Twas that way when I got here"

"I didn't start the flame war;
I can't understand a word you're saying
nor the game you're playing~"

[NeoSpade]

I cry at sad endings (:p) but if its in a good way, like if I feel like I achieved something at the end then it won't be a bad sorta sad , have you ever heard of bitter sweet endings, like for example, they lose all their past memories forever, but get something out of life there after, or...they get completely cripled forever! But survive and get to see the world become a better place...or my favorite sort of bitter sweet ending; although killed, his best friend finds him in a basement wandering around as a zombie, and is taken home and taught not to eat people, and play on Tekken 2. :p

Also fake bad endings are interesting, when you've already made the player feel low, only to pleasantly surprise them at the end! The sad bit still hits just as hard, but then the player says: Hell yeah, thats a happy twist (as they sob big snotty tears). If you haven't already, watch Chobits, if you have...watch it again![/rant]

[Newbie_Power]

Yume Nikki didn't make sense until I found out about its ending... Which cannot be altered.

Also, most "bad endings" are mostly to encourage the player to play more of the game. This is an obvious practice, and results mostly in bad endings that aren't really appreciable.
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

[The Wobbler]

[Bob the Hamster]

Sadness tempered with hope...
Or celebration tempered with mourning...
Or wookies being given gold medals tempered with.... nevermind...

[8bit]

You should just go with what the story calls for. Do people get pissed when Romeo and Juliet die after devoting 3+ hours of their time watching the play? Should Ahab befriend Moby Dick because the book is hundreds of pages long? It's your job to tell a story. It's the player's job to go for the ride. If they get pissed about where it takes them, then boo-hoo. You shouldn't feel the need to crow-bar an ending in, be it good OR bad.

Rule: NO shoehorns!
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Peace and love. Peace and love. No more autographs. Peace and love.

[ShakeyAir]

Bittersweet endings all the way, if you can get one to fit.

Look at MOTHER 3. I mean, damn. Its sad, but somehow good, and then... very ambiguous... haha. But that is easily the most a game's ending has ever moved me.

One way I see it, is a good tragedy must still pull at your heartstrings even if you've seen it coming a mile away. If it is painful for you as an author to do that to a character. It will be painful for the person playing, but pain is always a stronger emotion than happiness.

So don't chuck something terrible at someone out of nowhere. Make it build. But give it a moral.. or a message. Again, MOTHER 3 said a lot in its ending.

Idk man. The more I think, yeah, it can be done really well. but you gotta tow that line. And you gotta love that character and that world. It has to take something out of you to hurt them. If it doesn't, you can't expect it to really affect anyone else. If you don't love your creation, it won't be genuine. And tragedies that aren't genuine are never any good.

[mjkrzak]

All that matters is that it's well executed. The rest is personal taste.