Push Button, Receive Ending.

*Warning: This article contains spoilers for Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Bastion, Mass Effect 3, Primordia, The Walking Dead, and Spec Ops: The Line. Proceed at your own risk.*

It is no secret that a good ending is one of the hardest parts of a narrative to pull off. Video games are no exception and there is a rather unfortunate trope in game writing that has developed out of the idea that the player should have choices in their stories. The trope is what I like to call the: “push button, receive ending,” where the player reaches the end of the game and is asked at the last moment to make an A/B/C choice which determines which one of a few predetermined endings they see. Now, this trope and the idea behind it are not problematic in and of themselves. It can be argued that by making such a choice only important through cutscene, then the agency inherent in play is being removed from the player, but that argument is predicated on the idea that any game element not expressed in play is fundamentally unimportant. And while the integration of narrative into play is arguably the most powerful modes of expression at a game’s disposal, such an argument neglects other approaches to delivering narrative which are still useful and valid. Granted, the “push button, receive ending” formula is over-saturated, and by and large, it is used poorly. All too often developers seem to get caught up in the idea that the final choice needs to be the biggest and most world sweeping choice of all. As a result, the choice often becomes disconnected from the game’s narrative arc and characters. 

Two of the most egregious examples of this phenomenon are Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Eidos Montreal, 2011) and Mass Effect 3 (BioWare, 2012). Human Revolution's narrative focuses around Corporate Security Chief Adam Jenson’s quest to rescue a group of kidnapped scientists. Meanwhile, in the background of the setting, the rest of society attempts to determine the role human augmentation in the future. Jenson’s narrative is partially resolved before the ending in that he finds several of the scientists and engineers their escape, only to suddenly be pulled away by a tangentially related and world threatening event. Though the game is all about stealth-action and a mix of lethal and non-lethal combat, the ending requires Adam to press one of four buttons and send a televised signal which will determine the role of human augmentation in the future of man-kind. No matter which choice the player makes the game shows a minute-and-a-half montage of stock-footage while Jenson monologues about the choice the player just made. The problem with this ending is that it is completely disconnected from the core narrative. The narrative focus on the smaller scale problem of saving the scientists is lost in favor of foregrounding the conflict between pro- and anti- augmentation forces within society. While this conflict was definitely important to the setting, it is not the driving force of the narrative and its foregrounding overshadows any sort of human-scale consequences. In that sense, the choice is rendered meaningless because the player lacks the proper context to make an informed choice.

This room was built to control world politics, apparently.

The ending of Mass Effect 3 demonstrates the same problem. The 40+ hours narrative of Mass Effect 3 involves rallying the species of the galaxy against the ancient race of sentient machines called the Reapers. The Reapers intend to destroy and harvest all sentient life for reasons known only to them. The ending places the protagonist, Commander Shepard, in a room with three options: sacrifice herself in order to become the overmind of the Reapers and turn them into a force that could help the galaxy, destroy the Reapers and all synthetic life in the galaxy (including an allied race of sapient machines), or sacrifice herself in order to merge all organic and synthetic life in the galaxy and create a new and strange future. Once again, the ending became disconnected from the central focus of the narrative. The three-way choice at the end of Mass Effect 3, asserts an organics vs. synthetics dichotomy that is not supported by the game’s narrative. In fact, the narrative arc of the Geth, a sympathetic race of machines that the Reapers also seek to annihilate, actively subverts the typical science fiction cliché of organics vs. robots. Much like Human Revolution’s ending, the consequences of the player’s actions, though briefly explained, are not contextualized on an individual scale. The choices themselves only slightly change the ending cutscenes and the consequences for the characters the player has spent an entire trilogy working with are not shown, nor explained, making informed choice impossible. 

Color coded for your morality.

While those are just two of many examples of how the “push button, receive ending” formula tends to go wrong, there are a few instances where it actually works. Bastion (Supergiant Games, 2011) is the best example in recent memory. Bastion’s narrative focuses around the Kid, a former citizen of a city called Caelondia and survivor of an apocalyptic event called The Calamity. As the game progresses, he goes to a place called the Bastion where he meets an old survivor named Rucks. Rucks explains that if they can collect enough "cores" to power the Bastion, it can undo all the damage of the Calamity and restore the city of Caelondia to its former glory. During the final level, Rucks explains that true purpose of the Bastion is to reset the world to a time before Caelondia caused Calamity. The problem is that the Bastion will also reset everyone’s memories, so there is nothing to guarantee that the same mistakes will not be made again. The final choice of the game is whether to use the Bastion to reset time or deactivate the Bastion’s core and try to “set sail” into an uncertain future. 

Pick one. Add monologue. Don't skimp on the characters.

Mechanically, there is very little difference between Human Revolution, Mass Effect 3, and Bastion’s endings. All three endings are very non-specific about what actually happens after the choice. The above images and a very brief final monologue from Rucks are all that happen before Bastion's credits role. And the true purpose of the Bastion was only introduced during the final level, so this was not a choice that the player would anticipate. The difference is that the results of Bastion’s choice both fit logically into the narrative and have comprehensible and meaningful consequences for the characters involved. The “Someplace Strange” levels provide the player with the personal histories of several of the characters and demonstrate how their lives differed from the gleaming picture of Caelondia that Rucks paints. As a result, the player understands what Caelondia meant to every character in the story, and what the chance of freedom setting sail offers them could mean. While the decision whether or not to reset the world is a massive-scale choice, it is also parallels more universal problems. “Errant Signal’s” analysis of Bastion compared the choice at the end to a bad break up: do you try to get back together with the person knowing the problems that caused the original break up may return, or do you move on and try to find someone else? Other positive examples of the “push button, receive ending” formula reflect back on the player's reality. Spec Ops: The Line (Yager Development, 2012) ended with a rumination on the nature of choice and guilt. Captain Walker’s war crimes are as much a function of his choices as the player’s desire to “be a hero” and play the game to its end. The decision by the player whether or not Walker will take his own life reflects the player’s acceptance or rejection of his own culpability. Primordia (Wormwood Studios, 2012) offers the player a Hobson’s choice through dialogue, which the player can either accept causing credits to roll, or attempt to puzzle their way out using the tools they have been using throughout the game. Horatio’s success or failure is dependent on how the player reacts to seemingly untenable situation: do you accept the Hobson’s choice the developers provided and which modern video games have accustomed players to, or do you try to find third, fourth or fifth option? The Walking Dead’s (Telltale Games, 2012) final choice asks the player to face their impending mortality from the perspective of a parent. It demands the player reflect on whether he prepared Clementine for the world she must face alone, whether he made the right choices between showing her what is right and what is necessary, and whether he will meet his death alone or with her assistance. This choice demands he choose between the existential horror of becoming one of "the walkers" or risk traumatizing her by asking her to kill him before that can happen.

Arguably, the problem with this trope is a problem in writing and contextualization but there is a design element which should be taken into account. In most games, especially linear ones, choice is just a branching railroad and we need to acknowledge that the branching-dichotomies type of ending does not create game-play choice but rather narrative choice. Any consequence made at the end of the game is a narrative consequence that the player will not have to experience for long. Thus, this choice itself, and not just what follows it, needs to be the emotional core of the ending. In order to make this choice important, the final choice needs to be the one with the most emotional and thematic impact, not the choice with the biggest consequences. Arguably, Mass Effect 3 and Human Revelution’s endings are the biggest choices in their respective games. Any choice the player makes will completely alter the future of the galaxy/world, but they are also arguably the least emotional or thematically relevant choices in either game because they are not consequences of the core, character-driven narrative. For a final choice to have impact it needs to do more than just relate to the characters and have comprehensible results—though it needs both as well—a final choice must also feel like the ultimate consequence of everything that came before. The choices in Bastion, Spec Ops, Primordia and The Walking Dead are all consequences of the protagonist’s actions. The Kid’s actions made activation of the Bastion both a possibility and potential necessity; Captain Walker’s unwillingness to acknowledge his actions drove him to create Colonel Konrad as the manifestation of his deferred guilt, leading to his final existential crisis; Horatio’s confrontation with Metromind is a result of his drive to be independent; and Lee and Clementine’s final moments are the result of a plethora of choices on Lee’s part. Such choices leave the player feeling that the final choice is as much their doing as it is the developer’s. A well executed final choice offers a place for introspection, for questioning what brought the player to that point, and what each option means to them as a person. In essence, a final choice should not be a question of whether the player is on a "paragon" or "renegade" playthrough!

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BioWare. Mass Effect 3. Electronic Arts. 2012. Xbox 360

Eidos Montreal. Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Square Enix. 2011. Xbox 360.

Supergiant Games. Bastion. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. 2011. Xbox 360 (XBLA)

Telltale Games. The Walking Dead. Telltale Games.  2012. Windows.

Wormwood Studios. Primordia. 2012. Windows.

Yager Development. Spec Ops: The Line. 2K Games. 2012. Xbox 360

Differing Approaches to Challenge and Progression in Rez and Child of Eden

Originally released on the Sega Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 in 2001, Rez (United Game Artists, 2001) is a cyberpunk rail-shooter with an aesthetic heavily influenced by films like Tron (1982), Hackers (1995) and a variety of cyberpunk literature. The game’s soundtrack features a dynamic techno song for each level, to which the player’s actions add additional layers. In terms of Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek’s “aesthetics of play,” Rez and its spiritual successor Child of Eden (Q Entertainment, 2011) operate primarily on the “aesthetics” of challenge and sensation (Hunicke et. all, 2).  They provide the arcade-y challenge of a rail-shooter while inviting the player to sit back and enjoy the raw sensory information of pulsing music, vibrant colors, and the rumble of the controller in his hand. This article seeks to explore the differing ways that these games approach progression during a first playthrough and how these approaches affect challenge and player tutorialization. Since these games are so similar and come from the same developer, they will provide a useful tool for understanding how a slight difference in the way progression is handled can adversely affect the game as a whole. For the purposes of this article, all references to Rez refer to the Xbox Life Arcade rerelease: Rez HD (Q Entertainment, HexaDrive, 2008), as it is the easiest version to acquire. 

For the purposes of this article we ought to define “progression” as a quantifiable movement towards the end of the work. In a film, this might just mean that after ten minutes of watching, the viewer is ten minutes closer to the credits. But since both Rez and Child of Eden have fail-states which force the player to restart a level, we must understand that progress only occurs when certain conditions are met within play. Since both games are rail shooters, forward movement within the level proceeds at the pace the developer sets, the player’s role is to shoot down incoming projectiles and shoot as many enemies as they are able. Progress within the level is undone by player death. We might term any progress which can be undone through a failstate as micro-progress, any progress which cannot be undone through a fail state as macro-progress. [Note: Because I am attempting to use a quantifiable standard for progress, neither of these models account for increase of player skill as a form of progress, as that would be beyond the scope of this paper.] Completing a level in either game is the method by which the player can make macro-progress in either game. And while micro-progress is treated almost identically in both games, Rez and Child of Eden treat macro-progress in markedly different ways. 

A first playthrough of Rez operates on a semi-linear, multi-layered progression path. What this means is that there a linear order to the levels but multiple objectives must be completed to finish the game. On a first playthrough, new levels are unlocked by completing the preceding level. Level 1 is of course available from the start, completing it unlocks level 2, and completing level 2 unlocks level 3. Once a level is unlocked, the player may replay it if they want in order to gain more health or complete another objective. This is the pseudo-linear element described above. The multi-layered element is that the final level, Area 5, is not unlocked by completing Area 4. Rather, it is unlocked by completing all of the four preceding levels with a 100% “Analysis Rating.” Progress within each level is made possible by shooting special “transition blocks” along the way, hitting one of the blocks on the first try results in a 10% increase in Analysis and progression within the level. Failure to hit the target results in a loop until it is hit. Since the Analysis requirement is built into how the level itself progresses, the 100% Analysis requirement will often result in the first time player having to repeat only one or two of the initial four levels because there is a high chance they already got “100% Analysis” on at least one level without actively trying to do so. 

This repetition acts as a delayed tutorialization, where the designer introduces an additional function to a mechanic which has become familiar. This also requires the player to improve their skills in a way that will be important for Area 5, where failure to shoot the transition block causes the player to take damage. The new requirement thus works into building the game’s difficulty curve. Originally the player only had to survive Area 3 and unlocked Area 4 but now has to both survive Area 3 and prioritize shooting the transition blocks in order to unlock Area 5. The addition of a new and clearly explained challenge requires more of the player than was previously necessary, but in a way that is manageable and useful for tutorialization. Lastly, multi-layered progression rewards skilled play. In theory, a skilled player can unlock all four initial levels and achieve 100% Analysis on a first attempt. This allows skilled players to bypass needless repetition and progress through the game in accordance with their skill. 

By contrast, one can define Child of Eden’s progression path as non-linear and single-layered progression path. Whereas Rez’s levels are unlocked via a 1 to 1 progression, Eden’s levels unlock by accruing the necessary amount of “stars.” The player gets stars at the end of the level and is awarded 1-5 stars based on their score which is based on the percentage of targets hit, power-ups picked up, and points from combos. Level 2 requires 2 stars to unlock, level 3 requires 8 stars, and so on. (Note: I cannot find a source that will break down the number of stars needed per level, and after a first playthrough, the level selection screen does not show how many stars were needed to unlock the level). In theory this system is designed to reward skillful play by allowing the player to unlock each level without repetition if they get 4-5 stars on every level. The obvious problem with this is that if the player fails to get 4-5 stars per level, they must replay old levels to add more stars to their total. The requirement that the player continually replay already beaten areas results in a sort of “calculus of time for benefit,” whereby the player will naturally gravitate towards replaying the shortest and easiest level in order to gain more stars faster. Additionally, the score that the player receives is hidden from them, meaning that the player does not know how well they did until the end of the level. While real-time scoring mechanics can be problematic in games like Hitman: Absolution or Deus Ex: Human Revolution, in an arcade style game like Child of Eden, the calculus of knowing the value of each action is not just helpful but necessary when the player is being judged based on score. The problem with this system is that the player is being punished without knowing how to improve. In essence he is being told to improve but not how to improve. Rez asks the player to improve by requiring they prioritize certain targets, while leaving considerations of point totals for future playthroughs and “Score Attack” mode. By contrast, Child of Eden’s use of scoring as its primary judge of progression makes improvement into a myriad of unclear actions rather than something simple (maybe the player needs to get more power-ups, or prioritize enemies with higher point values or perform more “perfect” combos). 

In point of fact, the implementation of the score system in Child of Eden is counter to the function of a score system for this type of game. One might argue that the purpose of a score system in an arcade-style, challenge focused game is to communicate to the player the difference between skilled play and the baseline play needed for progression. Take the scoring mechanic of Pac-Man as an example. In Pac-Man, the player progresses from level 1 to level 2 by eating all the dots—i.e. an easily communicable baseline actions. Extra points can be acquired by eating the cherries or strategically leading the ghosts into traps and devouring them. The extra points allow the player to earn extra lives, which help progression but are not required for it. Sub-baseline play is gauged and punished within the game’s rules through death and loss of lives. Death communicates what the player should do in order to achieve the baseline for progression: avoid the ghosts. Meanwhile, the score system defines and communicates above baseline (i.e. skillful) play—eating bonuses, ghosts, pellets while still not dying. The score system is also visible during play, allowing the player to gauge how far above baseline they are playing. The problem in Child of Eden is that above baseline play is critical to timely progression through the game, yet the only metric the game gives the player for what contributes to above baseline play is hidden, making conscious improvement difficult. 

The sad fact is that Child of Eden’s star mechanic has a very simple purpose: it exists to slow player progression and increase the game’s length. If Child of Eden measured progress like its predecessor, it would only be about a one hour long game. The star system could have been tied to bonus features instead of baseline progression, but marketing wisdom says that players want longer games, so instead of being one hour long like its predecessor, Child of Eden is three hours long for an equal amount of content. It is true that a game that uses challenge as one of its core aesthetics ought to tie challenge and progression together, and the most skilled of skilled players might finish Child in one hour. But difficulty is not inherently the same as challenge. Macro-progression ought to be closely tied with the requirements of micro-progression. When macro-progress diverges from successful micro-progress, as it does in Rez for Area 5, the game must communicate what is required of the player in order to continue progressing. A challenge based game, needs to increment through additional clearly communicated challenges, not through repeated demonstration of old skills.

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Citations:

HexaDrive. Q Entertainment. RezHD. Microsoft Game Studios. 2006. Xbox 360.

Hunicke, Robin. LeBlanc, Marc. Zubek, Robert. “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research.” 2004.

 Portnow, James. "Extra Credits: Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics." Youtube. Penny Arcade. 1 Nov. 2012. Web. 14 June, 2013.

Q Entertainment. Child of Eden. Ubisoft. 2011. Xbox 360