Working Title 09.18.08: Working Title Special Edition: Working Cliffhanger

Posted by Jordan Williams on 09.18.2008

This week I take a break from writing Working Title and let one of the wonderful Workaholics take the reigns. Toddo has a problem with games that end in cliffhangers and then are dropped and never fully resolved. Psi-Ops? Advent Rising? He's talkin' about you.

Working Title...When is a cliffhanger ending okay?

By –Toddo-

Note: This column was completely written by 'Toddo'. It has no input from me (Jordan Williams) at all. The views expressed by this column are not nessecarily those of Jordan Williams and Working Title. tl;dr If you're gonna rant at someone, rant at him. Not me...but if you want to send thanks in the form of hookers by all means send them to me. Working Feedback and Working Question will return next week.

I'd like to start out by thanking Jordan for this opportunity. When Jordan ended his September 4th column stating that he had no idea what to write about the following week, I shot him an email with the idea of a column that took manufacturers to task for ending a game with a cliffhanger that all but promised a sequel. Jordan presented me with the tremendous opportunity to do the write up myself. I came up with a couple of games that I could think of that all but promised sequels, but to be quite honest, other than the three you will see below, neither of us could think of any that fell into that area.

So, the idea of taking a manufacturer to task for practically promising a sequel and not delivering, has now morphed into a look at several games with cliffhanger endings that may or may not have promised a sequel. I hope to be able to illustrate the frustration that we, as gamers, feel when we spend our hard earned money on a game, only to have an ending that leaves us wanting more. But on the same token, we will examine when a cliffhanger ending is perfectly acceptable. (I'm looking at you God of War 2.) With that said, let's get this show on the road. Warning the following WILL contain end of game spoilers for every title I will address.

What the F*CK do you mean to be continued...


Alright, first up I'm going to talk about the three games in particular that are the inspiration for this whole column, Midway's Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, Capcom's Dead Rising, and Majesco's Advent Rising. Of these three, Advent Rising is probably the biggest offender; due to it being promised as part one of a planned trilogy.

Ah Advent Rising... show of hands, how many remember Majesco's "Race to Save humanity" Million Dollar Giveaway that was part of this games marketing? Come on, you remember... The one they scrapped and attributed the abandonment to "Majesco Entertainment and Xbox Live have determined there to be no technically feasible solution that would allow the contest to continue in a fair and secure manner". Sorry I got off track there. Advent Rising was a game, that for all intents and purposes was part one of a planned sci-fi trilogy written by Orson Scott Card. The game itself was buggy at times, and a lot of people did not really get into it. For my money it was fun, and had an incredible story.



The game was a 3rd person action game where your character constantly took on new cosmic powers as you progressed. The plot of the story revolves around an alien race; looking to wipe out humanity from the universe, they arrive on earth. Chaos ensues, and humanities last hope is Gideon Wyeth. The game follows Gideon as he uncovers the plot of the alien attack. Along the way he finds out why humans are the most important creatures in the universe.

The final cut scene left something to be desired. Gideon is teleported to an ice planet, apparently completely alone. Wandering aimlessly, seemingly on his last leg, when he comes across a horned alien being. The alien says to our protagonist "Come with me human, there is much to be done" With that the game ends.

They are several reasons we were not treated to the rest of this story. The major reason being, Majesco apparently refocused all their efforts into handheld gaming. That coupled with the poor sales of the game, and Majesco scrapped the proposed Advent Rising trilogy. The loyal gamers who purchased and enjoyed this game were left in the cold on what becomes of Gideon, and this battle to save humanity. Bad, bad, bad!! I understand that these companies make games ultimately to make money, and I fully understand that sometimes plans have to change for the good of the company.

I have a couple of questions regarding this:
1. If you are concentrating on handheld gaming, why could the trilogy not be completed on the PSP, or the DS?
2. To the best of my knowledge the trilogy was planned to appear on the Xbox, with some side stories appearing on the PSP. If this is the case, couldn't Microsoft step in and take the reigns of the trilogy, and possibly complete it? Buy the IP from Majesco, something?

That brings us to all but promised sequel number two: Midway's Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy. This was a fun game that incorporated psi-powers such as pyrokenesis and telekinesis into the game play. Midway essentially took a straight, forward action game, and added certain strategic elements where it was beneficial to use your powers and not your guns.

The story starts after Nick Scryer has his mind wiped to make it easier to infiltrate a terrorist organization. Along the way, Nick finds out that he has psionic powers that he must unlock by essentially unlocking the memory of said power. He is aided in this process by receiving shot from a double agent named Sara. The game progresses with the hero discovering that the leader of the terrorist organization is a general who used to be in charge of the Psi-Ops Project. Along the way you must battle other former operatives, each with a stronger version of one of your powers.



The ending of the game sees you defeating the general, and apparently finally regaining all of your memory. a helicopter or two appears to recollect some artifacts, and you see Nick take down one of these choppers with his telekinesis power, as he and Sara run away from the area. We are then treated to a blank screen with the words "to be continued" on the screen. This particular cliffhanger was a little bit easier to swallow, because as far as I could find a second game was dependent solely on the success of this one. There were reports of a lawsuit filed against Midway for apparently stealing the idea of this game from a 1998 screenplay written by William L Crawford III. This may also have contributed to the lack of a sequel. I was unable to find if this lawsuit was settled or not. But some research shows that this guy was definitely onto something with this lawsuit. Apparently they even stole the name from his screenplay.

Finally in this section we have Dead Rising. Dead Rising was an interesting new take on the Zombie / Survival Horror genre from the masters at Capcom. The game saw your character trapped in a mall in the center of a town that has roughly 50,000 zombies for you to kill, in all sorts of creative ways. I was quite fond of the lawn mower myself. When I first played this game, I had to do so on a standard set, and I think we all remember how hard the text is to read on a standard TV set. So I never defeated the game, but I had heard of the ending from a friend, who was kind of mad about it.

From Wikipedia:
After defeating the final boss, Frank screams into the air surrounded by hundreds of zombies and infected with the zombie virus. However, while the player is told that Frank is able to escape, there are other unresolved problems, such as kids infected with the zombie virus planted around the country, Frank's own zombie virus and whether he is cured, and the fate of Isabella, a supporting character.

The problem with this open ending is that you never find out what happened to the few people the game tried to make you care about. Essentially ending without resolving several key issues. This is an un-necessary open ending. As of now I have yet to hear of a sequel to Dead Rising. So when do we get to find out Frank's ultimate fate? Not as harsh as the above two games, in that this one does not state that the story will be continued. But it is enough to make a gamer angry after spending $60 on the title.

Of course, the simple solution to this undelivered sequel problem is to just not have an ending like that. Both Psi-Ops and Advent Rising could have ended a half a minute earlier and been perfectly acceptable endings, with enough of an open ending to warrant a sequel if they decided to go that route. Again, I understand that these companies are in the business of making money.

With that in mind, there is an easy alternate route to satisfy the curiosity of the gamers who feel cheated by these endings. USE THE DAMNED INTERNET! What is to stop these companies from continuing the story on their website? Hire an artist to create a graphic novel, or a comic book or something. Put them on your website, and charge on a per download fee. Granted you could not charge much, but at least you are satisfying the fans, and managing to make a little extra coin off of some under performing games. See, everyone is happy.

So...What happens next?
Now I want to talk about some of the games that offer this open-ended cliffhanger, but do so in a different manner. I'm talking about the games that pull these cliffhanger endings, but offer no hope of a future title, or anything of that nature, and only seem to have such an ending in hopes of keeping people talking about the games. For this section we will look at Halo 3.

Halo 3.... Finish the Fight. Um... Okay, how about a satisfactory ending for finishing the damn fight? The more I think about the legendary difficulty ending on this game, the more I feel it is ass backwards. It appears as if beating the game on the easier endings gives you a slightly more satisfying conclusion than the legendary difficulty. Beating the game on normal mode will get you virtually the same ending as legendary, until the credits. Before the credits roll you are given information about the end of the war, and all the heroes lost during the fighting. We are left to wonder about the fate of Master Chief, and Cortana. With the game hinting that they are dead,
Thus giving a fairly satisfactory conclusion to Microsoft's crown jewel trilogy.



Now defeating the game on legendary, as I'm sure most of you know offers a "special" treat after the credits run. We learn that Chief and Cortana are in fact, still alive. We have no idea where they are, or how they escaped, but they are alive. The problem with this is that this version of the ending concludes with their ship approaching a planet, and Chief telling Cortana to wake him if there are any problems. Thus hinting that the journey, and apparently the fight are not in fact over. I could be in the minority of thinking the easier ending is the more fulfilling of the two. But this kind of open ending in what is to be the final chapter in the story, is unacceptable for my money. Is it too much to ask for a solid closed ending in the final chapter?

When is it okay to end on a cliffhanger?
Now for an example to show that a cliffhanger ending is sometimes acceptable. For this we will look at the ending of God of War 2. The game ends with Kratos, charging up the side of Mount Olympus, along with the Titans, to bring down the Greek Gods. As the game fades to black, we see the words "The End Begins..." Thus ensuring that this story will be finished in the 3rd game, to be released on the PS3.

When making God of War 2, Sony knew that they had a monster franchise on their hands after the success of the first game. With that in mind Sony said that the story of Kratos will most definitely be a trilogy. What Sony did different than Majesco in this case, is not promise, or even divulge any details of a trilogy till the first game was a huge success, and garnered several Game of the Year nominations. The first game had a satisfying ending with Kratos being named the new God of War. It was only when developing God of War 2 that we were informed that there would be a 3rd title in the series.

That is the biggest reason I consider this as an acceptable cliffhanger ending. This was similar to the Matrix films. The first one had an acceptable ending, and only after making incredible box office, and into development of the second and third installment we were told there were two more films to follow. They shot both at the same time, thus a cliffhanger at the end of the second film was acceptable. Fans knew they only had a short while to wait for the conclusion.

I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to read this, and I am anxious to know if others feel the same way I do about cliffhanger endings in our $60 a pop entertainment of choice. Do you think a cliffhanger ending is acceptable? When is it okay?