This Friday, the latest addition to the “Assassin’s Creed” franchise, “Odyssey,” will hit shelves, bringing much-anticipated changes.
The most hyped up change the game’s publisher, Ubisoft, discussed was the branching narrative with multiple endings. This is a first in the “Assassin’s Creed” series, where players can now make decisions in-game that will affect the conclusion of the story.
Hunter Diehl | Argonaut
However, this concept isn’t new.
Games having more than one possible ending to their story mode has been a growing trend for several years.
The appeal is it allows the player to immerse themselves in to the narrative and make decisions for the characters that have actual consequences further down the road. It can be argued that this is the whole point of gaming — immersion into another world.
But it should be mentioned that good world building doesn’t mean good storytelling.
Just because games can take us into another reality, where we can do whatever we want, doesn’t mean that that reality is filled with interesting characters. Having a choice of multiple endings in a game doesn’t mean much to me if I don’t care how the game ends.
With new developments in graphics and motion capture, game designers can tell stories as compelling as those on the big screen.
From big shots of beautiful sunsets to close ups of the hero’s face, video games can give us visual storytelling that is precise and gorgeous. When coupled with creative and ingenious writing, video games can give you an experience like no other art can.
The problem with multiple endings is they can compromise that experience. It’s hard enough to write one story with a beginning, middle and an end. It’s crazy to think some writers have to write a story with a beginning, five middles and then ten endings.
Here’s an example: the 2012 game “Dishonored.” In this game, the playable character is a royal bodyguard, turned deadly assassin, Corvo, who must save the city of Dunwall by killing the corrupt politicians. In order to do this, the player must slash, stab, shoot, explode, possess and hide their way through multiple levels. The game rewards those who play with stealth in mind.
Normally stealth games are a ton of fun to play, but “Dishonored” had one big drawback — multiple endings.
One of the ways it rewarded stealth was its chaos meter. The less you got caught, the less you killed and the damage you did, the less chaos you caused. Having a low chaos meter at the end of the game meant you received the happy, bright satisfying ending.
Here’s a strange idea: maybe it’s fun to get caught once in a while so the big, loud weapons get a chance to shine. Perhaps the reasons you buy stealth games is so you can have fun taking out the lackeys one by one, and maybe it’s more fun to blow a door up than it is to screw with the stupid lock picking minigame.
The point is, if someone did too much in “Dishonored,” then they got the high chaos ending and learned that the city of Dunwall would have been better off if Corvo died in a ditch — that right there is why game developers need to slow down with multiple endings.
Gamers get invested in the stories of the games they are playing, and to have to be delegated to an ending that is less than satisfying because their play style doesn’t fit with the developers’ vision is obnoxious.
Instead, it would be preferable if the developers kept it to one game, one ending.
Games can still have the element of player choice in them, but those choices need to lead to a singular conclusion that is fulfilling.
Hunter Diehl can be reached at [email protected]