In my creative writing classes, when we tell a story, one of the first and most important things my professors emphasize is that you should never begin telling a tale without knowing how it’s going to end. Endings shape the narrative by establishing where a character is going to end up once their journey is complete, be that for the best or for the worst.
There is a whole debate regarding whether or not games can be interpreted in the same way as classical narratives, such as books and films. Arguments against this perspective stress games’ intrinsic need to be played to be understood– there may still be a beginning, middle, and end of a game, but a consumer is at the helm, playing a character in a way that differs from how a reader interacts with a story. Obviously, there are media that complicate this model, such as choose-your-own-adventure books and films– Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch comes to mind– but in general, classical media differs from the recent video game trend of having multiple endings depending on the player’s choices and interactions. The Stanley Parable and Undertale are perhaps two of the most relevant examples, though with a broader definition, almost any game can be considered to have multiple “endings” depending on how broad one’s definition is.
But what’s the point in that? Why would a creator want to complicate their narrative with endings, when one of the core tenants of telling a story is building to a finale that has changed the character irrevocably?
In video games specifically, I hypothesize that this comes down to the idea of a player-centric narrative, which puts them in contention with classical narratives by emphasizing the role a player has in the game’s progression. What better way to do this than to reward choices with customized results that both incentivize replays and force a gamer to consider the gravity of their actions? Every game does this to some degree, but those that explicitly involve gamers’ actions as reasons that contribute to the end of a game in particular stress the deviation of a typical narrative model in interpreting games’ meanings and stories.
I find your blog interesting as it raises the question of the purpose of multiple endings. I think it does complicate the possible narrative arc of a video game but I think that specifically for these kinds of games, there is less focus on narrative storytelling and more on the player’s experience and mechanics. While it may be more tedious, I think each ending can serve as its own narrative ending but I agree that it can seem unnecessary, especially when compared to literature or other forms of media.
I like your hypothesis that play-centric narrative is a key reason as to why many videogames have multiple ‘endings’ – but what is the ending of a videogame? This is why I found your post particularly interesting. I think there are two ways of looking at this, firstly, a videogame ends when you finish the story i.e. you cannot progress any further. In this case, a game like The Stanley Parable has many many endings, which fits into your hypothesis well. However, I would also argue that a videogame ‘ends’ when you fully complete it, by finding all the secrets (and all the endings). This would suggest that there is only one ending to a game, as finding all of the ‘endings’ is still part of completing the game.
I think that your idea about play-centrism as one of the fundamental differences between video game and other forms of media in terms of narrative is very interesting, and I agree that what makes “multiple endings” something that game designers pursue and often promote in their games is to stress this focus on giving the player more choices and give them agency in determining the “ending” of the narrative of the game. However, I sometimes wonder how much agency and freedom the player actually gets in a game with multiple endings, as even though they have the liberty to access different endings they are still progressing down selected paths of a narrative tree that has been pre-designed by the game. Even in a game like Stanley Parable, where there seem to be a lot of branching points for the narrative, every line of dialogue of the narrator has to be pre-written and pre-recorded, and every move the player makes still falls into the constraint of the designers of the game.
This is a good point! Though, with your comment on how a writer should have an ending in mind, if multiple endings are being developed, should those be made first as well? Would each narrative be developed separately before being combined in a game? Webs are so complicated and interesting to me, yet creating them feels so daunting. Plus, I was also thinking about the difference between the player and the main character. Some characters, even though you are playing as them, still have a will of their own which is then reflected in the narrative of the game. Does creating these paths for the player to choose get rid of the will of the main character?