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