Topic: Episode 286: Jill-in-the-Box

[Yoshidious]

Jonny returns to discuss games and game endings, plus a surprise guest joins the fray!

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/rfn/29702

The crew is back together for this last episode before PAX East, but Jonny is immediately caught off guard by an unexpected voice -- it's Karlie Yeung! She came to America early for next week's convention and joined James at the microphone to break the curse of female guests on RFN, as you'll hear explained.

For New Business, Jonny catches up with Crush 3D, the stealth-released puzzle/platformer from Sega that may be worth your time to seek out. He also revisits Mutant Mudds (demo now available on the eShop) and tests the hypothesis that Rhythm Heaven Fever can be just as much fun to watch as it is to play. James and Karlie co-author audio impressions of Dokapon Kingdom, the bizarre party-RPG that turns out to be even weirder than anyone could expect. Jon didn't have any new games to bring up, so Greg wraps the segment. He mentions the extensive GAME store closures throughout the UK before continuing his adaptation to and enjoyment of Kid Icarus: Uprising, one of the most controversial Nintendo releases in quite a while.

After the break, we take an oblique approach to the Mass Effect 3 debate by examining the broader topic of game endings. The conversation spans endings retro to recent, Nintendo and otherwise, and we discover a few interesting truths about why games have endings, how they differ from other media, and why some are effective while others fail. It's a fun feature, but we still have enough time left to address a pair of questions for Listener Mail. One proposes a new review scoring method, while the other asks us to prioritize a gaming backlog. Send your own email questions so we'll have more to answer next time!

Don't forget that next weekend is PAX East, so there won't be a normal episode of RFN. Instead, we'll be live and in person at the Arachnid Theater for our third annual panel. If you can't make the trip this year, don't worry -- we'll record the panel and get it online as soon as possible. Also, stay tuned for details coming extremely soon on the long-awaited RFN shirt that will make its public debut at PAX East. We'll soon have details on how you can get your own for a reasonable price and show your support for the podcast without the pain or commitment of a tattoo!

Finally, it is time to spin up for the next RetroActive feature. We'll focus on WiiWare this round, so head over to the poll to view the nominated games and vote for the one you'd like us to play and discuss together on a future episode!

[Yoshidious]

A clarifying note on the curse of girl guests that we discuss at the start of this episode: it has only applied to numbered episodes and not special ones at PAX East or E3, which of course aren't as likely to suffer from the same kind of technical problems that robbed us of previous appearances by Karlie and Bonnie.

[The Ruffians]

I'm surprised no one mentioned Earthbound's ending. It's weird not only for a Nintendo game, but for games in general. There's a reason why it's called the first "art game." There are literally 10-page essays done on that ending. I thought it was very effective. Anyway, good episode!

[Jonnyboy117]

It's been so long since I saw the ending of Earthbound that I can't tell you anything about it. I thought the Mother 3 ending was sweet and poetic, but not terribly interesting.


James: "Fish Man is a saint!"


I really wish I had said at that moment: "No, Fishman is the drummer for Phish!"

[Plugabugz]

I'm just about to get started but i think we should have a female overdose RFN: aka kick out the J's (Jonny, Jon and James) and bring in Karlie and Bonnie for an episode. And someone totally oddball like Kairon.

I'm not saying Kairon is female but if we cant have another woman on the show then lets have an unknown voice.

[Dropkik]

Without spoiling anything, I'll just say this:  The Mass Effect series has been in in my short list of favorite games ever made since the first one, and while I love 99.9% of ME3, the best analogy I can come up with for the ending is kind of like watching the original star wars trilogy, but at the end of Return of the Jedi, instead of Vader's sacrifice and redemption, the death star explodes and kills everybody.  Rebels, Imperials, Ewoks, and all.  Except then han, leia and R2 walk out of an escape pod on a random planet because Q teleported them their apparently.

[ejamer]

Great job on the podcast, Karlie!  Another episode, another great guest. Seems like it's becoming a trend...

I especially love the Dokapon Kingdom discussion. That game is so random and silly, but the first time you play nothing really makes sense and you have no idea how long and deep the game actually is.  Things do speed up once you have an idea what's happening though.  "Laughing at the misfortunes of others until it's your turn to be misfortuned" is a pretty good description. Definitely not for everyone because it's so slow and ridiculous and chaotic... but great fun if you have friends that are into griefing (and/or drinking).

[TrueNerd]

Based on your thoughts on endings Jonny, I'm going to guess you're going to like the ending to Mass Effect 3.

[yoshi1001]

I think we sometimes expect an ending to make up for a bad game experience. A game ending can seem bad because getting to it wasn't worthwhile to the player.
I'll re-listen to make sure, but I don't think you guys mentioned games with significant post-ending content (the Pokemon games are a good example of this), where the game stays "beat" and continues on.

[broodwars]

The current war between game journalists and fans over the Mass Effect 3 ending is the main reason I still haven't picked up the game, despite really liking Mass Effect 2.  The whole thing has really soured me on the experience (that the ending has been thoroughly spoiled by now doesn't help matters).

My view on endings is that they may not need to be "happy", but they do need to be satisfying and make me feel like the time I spent with the game was worth it.  Looking at other mediums, take the ending to the Quantum Leap TV series for example.  It's really not a "happy" ending, as the status quo of the main character still has not changed by the end of the finale.  However, the final episode devotes a great deal of time to examining the impact Sam Beckett has had on the people whose lives he has touched during his adventure, and how they in turn will touch the lives of others to eventually create a better world.  It's an ending that reaffirms what I love most about that series: that the world can be made better just by people showing other people that they care.  The series ends on an uplifting message, though not a "happy" ending and I love it for that.

The ending to the Lord of the Rings could also not really be considered a "happy" ending (especially the original ending in the novels with the Scouring of the Shire), but it is exceptionally thorough in giving every character a proper send-off and reflecting upon all that has been accomplished by the sacrifices and ordeals of the entire world.  The story ends on a bittersweet but uplifting message: that though bad things may happen and the world may never return to what it was, "good can triumph over the evils of the world" if people are willing to stand up and fight for it.

When I play a game and reach the end, I want the feeling like my role in the adventure mattered and have at least some closure on the story.  That's one reason why the RPG is my favorite gaming genre, as it usually does offer that.

I think Bioware's big error in this series was promising the world, and then delivering an island.  They promised that your actions would have real meaning, and then it turns out they really didn't (and they especially didn't if you believe some of the fan theories about that ending).  I don't think fans would have cared about the ME3 ending so much if Bioware hadn't spent so much time hyping the user's contribution to it.  After all, games have had plenty of bad or unsatisfying endings before, and there wasn't so much uproar. But don't promise things you can deliver on, especially when you make them the core of your entire franchise.

[AV]

The ending to the Ghost and Goblins is infuriating !


One of the hardest games ever and you beat it and it says you NEED to
DO IT AGAIN!


Than if you do beat it a 2nd time you get


" Conraturation this story is happy end Thank You. "


 


I was very surprised that James didn't mention 999 'endings'

[roykoopa64]

I was very surprised that James didn't mention 999 'endings'

I was thinking the same thing! The endings are one of the main reasons you play 999. 

I'm surprised no one mentioned Earthbound's ending. It's weird not only for a Nintendo game, but for games in general. There's a reason why it's called the first "art game." There are literally 10-page essays done on that ending. I thought it was very effective. Anyway, good episode!

Earthbound was seriously one of the first games that popped into my mind during the discussion. One of the greatest things about the game is the freedom you are given to explore after you defeat the last boss and restore peace.

[leahsdad]

To the listener who wrote in about the list of games from which he choose to play, I would go against the grain and go with Illusion of Gaia, and strongly recommend AGAINST Halflife2/TheOrangeBox/Portal/etc..   Having played Halflife, Halflife2, all the extra episodes, Portal, and Portal2, I serious want those hours back, or wish I had sunk them into a different game on my own to-do list.  I think where Valve was really introducing some new ideas in Halflife, Halflife2 felt boring and empty, because it didn't bring anything new to the table and the old things that it was trying to do again (big scripted events, soldiers with better-than-average AI) it didn't do as well as it  used to.   The game didn't get interesting until the very last level (and gun), and I think that's why the extra episodes are much better than the actual game.  But still, largely forgettable level design.  And you know what, I think Valve knows this, which is why they haven't done any work on an Episode 3 or a Halflife 3, despite the cliffhanger ending that the last one finished with, and you don't really hear a lot of people clamoring for more, because the series seems kind of bankrupt on innovation.

I also didn't love Portal, it was just way too easy, which was why you heard of everyone finishing it in about 2 hours.   With Portal 2, I felt the only new idea they brought to the table was the gels, but they introduced that  very late into the game.   I wonder if that was because they thought the initial gameplay model would be too difficult for newcomers to grasp, or if they felt the gel gameplay was too limited in nature to be stretched very far.   I think the latter.   I also strongly suspect that this is why we will never see a Portal 3 anytime soon-- again, they are out of ideas.

[Lithium]

don't know what it is about british accents that make them sound classy but  Greg and Karlie's voices combined just gave this show an overdose of class.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

don't know what it is about british accents that make them sound classy but  Greg and Karlie's voices combined just gave this show an overdose of class.

Trust me, if you'd heard the full spectrum of accents that we have in Britain, classy would not be the word to come to mind.

Solid episode and excellent feature discussion as always. For my part, I think this talk about endings is very much connected to that hype feature from eons ago (Episode 120?). Ultimately, the reaction to an ending comes down to expectation vs. reality.

It goes without saying that there was a great deal of hype surrounding Mass Effect 3, the follow-up to many people's Game of the Year and the conclusion to a trilogy. From everything I've heard, it sounds like BioWare did not live up to their promises, but to be totally honest, I'm surprised that such a vast contingent of players thought they would. The idea that this game would be the culmination of all your actions over the course of several other games always seemed utterly ludicrous to me. Did anybody truly believe they could pull it off?

I won't try to define what makes a good ending - it is an art rather than a science, after all. Should it answer all my questions? Some of my questions might be better left unanswered. Should it be happy, sad, ambiguous? Well, obviously that's dependant on what would be fitting to the rest of the story. Should I get closure? Again, it depends - is that closure to the story, or to the characters, or to both? How much closure? Would it be better if some things were left open to interpretation? Maybe so. Like I said, it's an art, not a science.

[oohhboy]

I am a sucker for classy british accents. All countries have bad accents and people who go about butchering language with the glee a slasher. New Zealand is no exception, here is a mild example. Here are some normal NZ accents from Flight of the Concords. Rhys Darby has a really overblown accent though.

It goes without saying that there was a great deal of hype surrounding Mass Effect 3, the follow-up to many people's Game of the Year and the conclusion to a trilogy. From everything I've heard, it sounds like BioWare did not live up to their promises, but to be totally honest, I'm surprised that such a vast contingent of players thought they would. The idea that this game would be the culmination of all your actions over the course of several other games always seemed utterly ludicrous to me. Did anybody truly believe they could pull it off?

It was poorly implemented. Deus Ex's(2000) narrative is structurally very similar to ME3. It starts off very open and there are plot threads everywhere, but the differences is that they take the time to resolve an close those threads before moving on to the next section assuming you choose to follow the threads. ME3 had failed to collapse the plot tree properly. Deus Ex eventually ends in a 3 choice ending where for all intents and purposes nothing you did before "matters". But it isn't true since there are multiple "endings" sprinkled throughout the game that closes those threads. Another important difference is that Dues Ex doesn't pull out the deus ex machina card out to close the story. You are properly lead to the end, it doesn't come out of nowhere like ME3 did. You can't have something that comes along and just hand waves away the ending. It's an indictment as to how poorly written the whole story is at the end of the day. It only got worse since ME made you double down with the war readiness system enhancing that false sense of agency. The ME series is a bigger entity as a whole, but it doesn't mean you can't apply those plot tree pruning devices.

What they could have done was to resolve the ME universe by doing a Fallout 1/2 ending where they show you the consequences to your actions throughout the game. Fallout 1/2 pretty much has a "Fixed" ending, but what you did changes the epilogue. Contrast this to FO3's ending where nothing you did before matters and your final decision damns you or praises you regardless of how sound your decision is. In fact FO3 has the very same problems as ME3. You would think that the development community as a whole would learn from the FO3 debacle years earlier.

Story writing in games isn't young, but it's far from mature. It's not a bad thing as transitions can be quite enjoyable especially if you're there to see it evolve. One of the greatest potential strengths to story telling in games is the possiblity to tell the same story multiple times in one game, but yet it isn't the same story. The ability to tell all the possibilities the story could have taken, every play through can be a mirror universe to your original playthrough. The writer is no longer constrained with one possibility, they can go mad and include most if not all the endings and threads. But it's also one of it's greatest weakness where it can grow out of control and becomes a weed.

[Ceric]

The best ending I saw as for what you did sort of mattered was Marvel Ultimate Alliance.  That ending stepped you through the consequences of your action.  Some you know there be consequences but there was a few that at the time I had no idea they be relevant to anything other then the moment.

Good episode.  Wish Karlie was more vocal.      If anyone want to see my random thoughts through the episode just lookup #RFN286 on Twitter.  I eventually added timestamps because it was getting to random.

[Miyamoto]

Has there been any comments about Karlie being the Yoko Ono of RFN? I keed, I keed.


Great episode guys. Thanks.

[Fatty The Hutt]

I was hurt by the ending of Red Dead Redemption. I invested so much time into John Marston's redemption that I had a negative emotional reaction to the ending (I am trying to be vague for spoilers). I should note that I took pains to play as only a good guy.
 
Great episode guys. Nice to hear Karlie. Is that hint of a South African accent I detect?
 

[Chocobo_Rider]

Out of town, don't have much time to reply... here goes...

1. British accents make anyone sound awesome.  Or, as they might say: "brilliant!"  Nicely done, Karlie.

2. KIUprising is absolutely amazing.  The stylus control is supremely accurate, however, my hands can't deal with the pain so I have tweaked the settings and found finely-tuned face-button controls to be ideal.  The stylus' accuracy now feels like a bonus that I can't handle.  While the face-buttons feel like a completely reasonable standard.

3A. Regarding people flipping out over ME3? Game fans are just not a tolerant bunch no matter what the circumstances.  In my experiences, somehow constantly griping about games is a prerequisite for being a "real" gamer.  I hope it can change one day.

3B. Though, to be fair, it doesn't seem that people had issue with the content of the ME3 ending, but that they felt it didn't have enough to do with their previous in-game choices - which, apparently, is the big draw in that franchise.  Now, I have not played the game so I can't say for sure if that is the case.  However, if the developers really did spend the last X years touting the impact of player choice, and then just toss it all out at the culmination of the trilogy? That is, indeed, rather "bullocks." =P

4. That was very, very interesting point about how the last bits of old games were like a thematic climax and followed by nothing.  Never thought of it that way.  "Bang on!"

5. 999 was one of my personal games of the year until its ending provided little to no explanation/resolution.  I am eagerly anticipating its sequel and the fact that I will likely get fooled again in to thinking the creators want to give me any kind of explanation/resolution in this franchise =\

[Ceric]

..

3B. Though, to be fair, it doesn't seem that people had issue with the content of the ME3 ending, but that they felt it didn't have enough to do with their previous in-game choices - which, apparently, is the big draw in that franchise.  Now, I have not played the game so I can't say for sure if that is the case.  However, if the developers really did spend the last X years touting the impact of player choice, and then just toss it all out at the culmination of the trilogy? That is, indeed, rather "bullocks." =P
...

Yeah, Bioware was really big on your choices mattering.  In ME1 they seemed to and really transferred to ME2, I haven't played ME3 and I'm only roughly halfway through ME2, but they really dialed it down so far in ME2, so I can see ME3 being just as disappointing.

[ejamer]

5. 999 was one of my personal games of the year until its ending provided little to no explanation/resolution.  I am eagerly anticipating its sequel and the fact that I will likely get fooled again in to thinking the creators want to give me any kind of explanation/resolution in this franchise =\

I'm surprised to hear this.

How many endings/paths did you see?  Is it fair to assume that you reached the "good" ending?

After playing through 3 or 4 different endings including the "good" one, I felt like the story had been pretty well explained. Certainly well enough that I wasn't looking for more details or left feeling unsatisfied.  If I hadn't seen the good ending, or didn't go back after my initial play then that impression about the game resolution would be very different.


Hard to discuss too much without hitting spoilers all over the place, but I'd love to hear general impressions (good/bad/wtf?) of the endings from others who played through the game.

[Chocobo_Rider]

@Ceric

Indeed.

@ejamer

Yea, I'm sure I got every ending.  PM me if you want to discuss it further (so as to keep from spoilerizing the masses).  Maybe you can help determine if something is going over my head?

[Traveller]

On the topic of the ME3 ending. I have not played any of them, but I think that this debacle just portrays video game players as being selfish idiots. I get that the ending may be terrible etc. But trying to get the developer to change it is wrong and I hope Bioware does not give in to the demands.

This is what they intended, like it or not. It has been released and that should be that.

[oohhboy]

Here is a very good article as to why ME3's ending failed. Labeling the complaints as selfish or entitled or childish in order to dismiss them is worse than unhelpful, it's insulting. Bioware had failed with what should have been their coup de grace to the trilogy. They had gamers emotionally invested over dozens to a hundred hours and they threw it back in their face. If you had invested hundreds of hours into something or somebody only for them to break off rendering all that efoort meaningless, you would be upset too.

How many movies have you seen that left you with the feeling the "Wow that was a horrible ending, why did they think that was any good?" only to find directors cuts and extra endings upon viewing which did much better. One off the top of my head is Die Hard 3. Here is the alt ending. The original ending was really flat and quite frankly gamey as hell.

As I said before, games are unique in that they don't have to have one ending, what Bioware did was reduce all those choices into one choice and effectively one ending.