Warning- spoilers ahead! When it comes to videogames, there are players who play for the action and there are players who play for the story. They’re not mutually exclusive, of course, but even those with no capacity for cutscenes have to admit that some game endings are as iconic to the world of gaming as rosebud is to the world of cinema. Yair Ben-Dor has more.
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00:00 Warning, spoilers ahead. When it comes to video games, there are players who play for
00:05 the action and there are players who play for the story. They're not mutually exclusive
00:09 of course, but even those with no capacity for cutscenes have to admit that some great
00:14 game endings are as iconic to the world of gaming as Rosebud is to the world of cinema.
00:20 Like Mafia 3, whose framing device is a documentary that mixes interviews, old news clips, and
00:25 other bits of footage from the past to tell the story of Clay and his fight against the
00:29 mob. In a scene that takes place after you beat the mob boss, Donovan exposes the Senator's
00:34 involvement in the assassination of JFK and shoots him in front of everybody and the cameras,
00:40 saying "I'm starting with you" and vowing to find everyone involved.
00:45 Or in Red Dead Redemption, easily one of the most iconic games ever, when Marsden pushes
00:49 the doors of his farmhouse open and the game automatically activates Deadeye, persuading
00:54 you to take out as many lawmen as you can. You can take out a few, sure, but Marsden
00:58 dies and we later see that the cycle of violence continues in Marsden's son, Jack, who we
01:04 see returning to gather his father's belongings, cluing us to the idea that one day we might
01:09 pick up where we're being left off.
01:11 What about the legend of Zelda, the Wind Waker? As Kenneth Shepard writes in Kotaku, the entire
01:17 fight is a literal washing away of the past that has plagued these heroes through multiple
01:21 reincarnation cycles. Wind Waker's final battle sells the notion with a dramatic vigor
01:27 elevated by a stellar fight. These are just three examples of endings, good or bad, that
01:34 stick with you and hopefully there are many, many more still to come.