Castle Paradox

[Ronin Catholic]

How does this sound?

After you've made it to the top of the monster-infested tower containing clones of all the game's earlier bosses, the game's "final boss" makes part of his speach and has a heart attack in the middle.
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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~"

[Rya.Reisender]

@The Drizzle
It's worth getting to the final boss because it's a really nice challange, though!
And you can also make a screenshot of your level and money at the end and upload it to compete with others. ^^


@Ronin Catholic
That sounds like it could be the end of your game.

[Newbie_Power]

You can use any idea you want... You just have to do a great job fitting it in.
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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?

[Rya.Reisender]

I wanna change the topic a little bit and wanna talk about how awesome final boss battles are in some games. Sometimes the battle systems get way improved in the final battle (more tactic or better animations for example). Also the music that plays in the final battle often is way better than all the other bgm in the game. Some games feel like they are only worth playing because of the final battle at the end (Unlimited Sa-Ga got me to that point that I just wanted to fight the final boss with each of the 7 main characters, although I didn't really feel like repeating it over and over again).

So yeah for me final bosses are something very special.

You sure you can top that with a different idea?

I'd never make an RPG that doesn't have a final boss. If anything, I'd make a final boss that can't be damaged and you just need to survive for a certain time (like for example when god is the final boss and you take 'god' quite serious, as a being that can't be hurt).

[Newbie_Power]

[djfenix]

The problem with an RPG not having a final boss is that practically everything that was done prior was leading up to an inevitable battle.

What i mean by this is that majority of all the challenges in an RPG were through battles. For any game for that matter, the final boss/challenge is a reflection of everything that was done before. Even with that "dramatic last minute escape" thing that metroid did. It was still a testing the gamer's skill as a side-scrolling platform gamer.

Having that been said, it wouldn't really make much sense if your game was a traditional RPG and the final boss wasn't, well, a boss.

But if your game had a secondary focus aside from battles, then that secondary would be perfectly fine for a last boss. Take Brain Lord for example. I would've been perfectly fine if the final boss was a puzzle only because a large chunk of Brain Lord's challenges were puzzles.

[Clamps]

[J.A.R.S.]

[Rya.Reisender]

No matter how many bosses there are, they'll never remove the need of a final boss. In fact, if there are many really good strategical bosses in a game then the player expects an even better final boss and will be disappointed even more if he reads "You have finished the game." without having any boss battle before that.

Even if there is a game where the clear goal is marriage, if it's of the RPG genre, the player will still expect some evil boss to appear during the wedding as final boss.
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Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

[Newbie_Power]

[J.A.R.S.]

[Rya.Reisender]

Wait, when did I talk about a game devoid of bosses? If anything I would suggest to many game developers to put as much effort in their normal bosses as they did put into the final one.

I don't really approve of games without bosses to begin with.

In a puzzle game you can basically regard puzzles as 'boss'. And the hardest final puzzle is the final boss then.
_________________
Snippy:
"curt or sharp, esp. in a condescending way" (Oxford American Dictionary)
"fault-finding, snappish, sharp" (Concise Oxford Dictionary, UK)
1. short-tempered, snappish, 2. unduly brief or curt (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

[TwinHamster]

Let's all try to replace "boss" with "challenge" and see if everything starts to make a little more sense.

[Bob the Hamster]

[Rya.Reisender]