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CLIMAXES AND VIDEO GAMES
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Decky
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CloseWhat makes a good climax in a video game, where should it be in the story structure, and should it be gameplay- or story-driven? Do you like an epic cutscene with a particularly challenging boss battle? Or do you like to create a gauntlet of easier battles leading up to a powerful boss battle?
There's the traditional "witch hat" method of storytelling, blah blah blah. I've never bought into the idea that the climax should be the -middle- of the story. To me, the climax should be either immediately before the final dungeon or during it. I also like the idea of an epic penultimate dungeon that serves as the climax (or the build-up to the climax), followed by a smaller, perhaps more personal, final area.
Games can also have multiple climaxes, like TV shows - RPGs tend to be lengthy beasts, and games like Final Fantasy 8 have distinct climaxes at the end of each Disk (Parade, Garden vs. Garden, Lunatic Pandora showdown, time compression).
I dunno. I think a game needs a major -battle- as its climax, either on a macro or micro level. I want to face the most challenging story boss at the apex of the game, UNLESS there's a long cutscene involved. In such a case, the boss shouldn't be too hard - we don't want to kill the moment by forcing the player to replay the segment several times.
How do you handle the climax in your story structure, and how do you like to see it tied into the gameplay?
There's the traditional "witch hat" method of storytelling, blah blah blah. I've never bought into the idea that the climax should be the -middle- of the story. To me, the climax should be either immediately before the final dungeon or during it. I also like the idea of an epic penultimate dungeon that serves as the climax (or the build-up to the climax), followed by a smaller, perhaps more personal, final area.
Games can also have multiple climaxes, like TV shows - RPGs tend to be lengthy beasts, and games like Final Fantasy 8 have distinct climaxes at the end of each Disk (Parade, Garden vs. Garden, Lunatic Pandora showdown, time compression).
I dunno. I think a game needs a major -battle- as its climax, either on a macro or micro level. I want to face the most challenging story boss at the apex of the game, UNLESS there's a long cutscene involved. In such a case, the boss shouldn't be too hard - we don't want to kill the moment by forcing the player to replay the segment several times.
How do you handle the climax in your story structure, and how do you like to see it tied into the gameplay?
Killer Wolf
1235
Multiple climaxes are always a good thing. I think the piece as a whole should build to a fairly late story reveal climax fading into a nice dénouement.
There was an episode of Extra Credits that touched on this using Star Wars a New Hope as an example, showing that the entire movie built to a climax, but that each component/encounter also followed the same structure. It gave things a nice progression and made the ending feel all the more rewarding.
After seeing that, I started to analyze some of my favorite books. I noticed that the novel structure really beats that model into the ground. There is always rising and falling action and a ton of little climaxes along the way to keep you hooked, with plenty of down time to let you catch your breath.
When you bring actual gameplay and control into the mix, things get a little different, because the player's moment of climax may be slightly different than the story's. Lets take Far Cry Instincts as an example. The "Climax" would probably be the end battle with Krieger (or whatever his name is, the fact it isn't that clear of a memory, even for me is part of the point I'm about to make) where you finally get to duke it out with the guy who has been hounding you the entire game, but the biggest moment of the game for me was taking down the group of hulking Tri-gens in the fenced in area somewhere closer to the middle.
I fought them the first time with my paired P-90s blazing away. I was out of ammunition and in trouble by the time the first one fell. The second one took me out. Load the checkpoint, start again.
I decided to use only Jack's primal powers against them, the claw uppercut strike, and evasion. I sunk into the character and into the moment for a close, tense battle, with the behemoths. When I won, running across the small map to deliver the fatal blow to the last Tri-gen, I felt more accomplishment than I did during the whole "take a quad bike up a hill with rocket launcher snipers, kill your arch enemy and his army" sequence at the end. I think I was actually growling at the Tri-gens at one point during the battle. Not Jack. Me. That was the best moment of the game for me, but to the story it just seemed like a throwaway filler battle because video games need bosses every now and then.
There was an episode of Extra Credits that touched on this using Star Wars a New Hope as an example, showing that the entire movie built to a climax, but that each component/encounter also followed the same structure. It gave things a nice progression and made the ending feel all the more rewarding.
After seeing that, I started to analyze some of my favorite books. I noticed that the novel structure really beats that model into the ground. There is always rising and falling action and a ton of little climaxes along the way to keep you hooked, with plenty of down time to let you catch your breath.
When you bring actual gameplay and control into the mix, things get a little different, because the player's moment of climax may be slightly different than the story's. Lets take Far Cry Instincts as an example. The "Climax" would probably be the end battle with Krieger (or whatever his name is, the fact it isn't that clear of a memory, even for me is part of the point I'm about to make) where you finally get to duke it out with the guy who has been hounding you the entire game, but the biggest moment of the game for me was taking down the group of hulking Tri-gens in the fenced in area somewhere closer to the middle.
I fought them the first time with my paired P-90s blazing away. I was out of ammunition and in trouble by the time the first one fell. The second one took me out. Load the checkpoint, start again.
I decided to use only Jack's primal powers against them, the claw uppercut strike, and evasion. I sunk into the character and into the moment for a close, tense battle, with the behemoths. When I won, running across the small map to deliver the fatal blow to the last Tri-gen, I felt more accomplishment than I did during the whole "take a quad bike up a hill with rocket launcher snipers, kill your arch enemy and his army" sequence at the end. I think I was actually growling at the Tri-gens at one point during the battle. Not Jack. Me. That was the best moment of the game for me, but to the story it just seemed like a throwaway filler battle because video games need bosses every now and then.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Deckiller
I want to face the most challenging story boss at the apex of the game, UNLESS there's a long cutscene involved. In such a case, the boss shouldn't be too hard - we don't want to kill the moment by forcing the player to replay the segment several times.
FYI, this is exactly the problem that cut scene skip buttons were invented to fix. If adding skippable cut scenes doesn't bother you, or you have another method of letting the player not repeat the scene (like a save point after the cut scene, or a "continue" button upon getting a game over), then you can do this without worrying about the player having to re-watch the scene. Even if you don't have a high-tech solution, I think the benefit is usually worth the cost. Having the climaxes of the gameplay line up with the climaxes of the story events creates an emotional rush in players that makes everything feel really exciting and memorable.
As far as the ultimate climax of the game, I can't even think of an example where it's not the final boss. That's basically what "final boss" means, to me. It's the point where the conflicts come to their breaking point and then are resolved. Of course, "final boss" can be a relative term when you have a bunch of post-game content. I tend to ignore most post-game content because it often really does have that downward "witch hat" slope of excitement; it gets more and more boring as you play further past the final boss. Makes me wonder why they don't put all that content before the final boss, where I'd still have that rising excitement and thus feel a lot more compelled to keep playing it.
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