Holy shit I can't remember the ending.
By reisz 1 Comments
This thread asks a pretty standard but great question and in thinking out my response (Metal Gear Solid if you're interested) I tried to think of all the game endings I can recall off the top of my head to make sure I wasn't overlooking anything. The result? well I remember The ending to The Walking Dead, which I finished just over a month ago, Kentucky Route Zero, which I finished this week and definitely Perspective which I finished yesterday. Then I tried to go back.
And that's the problem, Out of the dozens of games I have finished over the past couple of years, I can't recall the ending of any of them, not in detail. When I really think on it and look back over as many games as I can remember playing in my life, you know what I get? the Metal Gear series. The ending of every Metal Gear game..... And that's it. I have been greatly influenced by Metal Gear over the years, but to the exclusion of all else? That's Madness! I can remember moments, moments of gameplay from all my most important games but no details of the ends of their stories.
This is incredible to me, the first realisation from this is despite my championing of video games as a story telling medium, I personally am (clearly) more meaningfully affected by gameplay; that's big news for me. The next realisation is, "Holy shit I never actually finished insert game here." For instance here's a quick selection of some of my all time favourite games in no meaningful order:
Never finished 'em. Not a one. . . . How does that happen?! I guess it's as simple as being interested in too many games, I most likely move on to the next title I want to play before I'm really done with the last. The crazy thing about this though is up until I really thought about it today, I would have told you without hesitation that I had definitely finished FF IX and Tenchu 2. This doesn't sit well with me, I really enjoy games as a past time and I now realise I am missing out on a huge part of the ones I play.
What does this mean? Well two things; one: I get to go back and finish a bunch of great games I never got around to the first time and two: If I really want to give video game stories the best chance of staying with me, I need to document it somehow.
So there it is, this is a manifesto, I'm going to start a list, I will start with all the games I can recall recently and I'll either write a short review or my impressions of the overall story, then add titles as I either refresh my memory or go back to them. It will be the spoileriest list of them all (considering the subject) but it'll be for me more than anyone else.
Looks like I won't be buying any new games this year!