RPG Endgame Concept

[Lilura]

Gothic 1 & 2: Yup, endgame in both consists of a huge linear dungeon with tough enemies you need to slog through to get to the final boss. Boooooring.

Was it Gothic 1 that also threw zillions of potions at you endgame, just in case you didn't pay attention for the first 95%? I didn't like that, either.

 

[StaticSpine]

After that they moved on to making casual games and did pretty well for a while, if I remember correctly. Oh well!

 

[Nyast]

Now for some good parts:
Legend of Grimrock: A very different and cool endboss that can't be killed the normal way, also I felt the game stayed fun till the end instead of some boring slog.

The end boss was surprising, yeah, but the rest of the level was boring and uninteresting. No more puzzles, a giant room full of ennemies, and having to look for hidden items all over the place, which could take hours of searching if by lack of luck you missed them. The boss itself was fun, the 3 hours before it, huh nope, it was easily the worst part of the game..

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Gothic 1 & 2: Yup, endgame in both consists of a huge linear dungeon with tough enemies you need to slog through to get to the final boss. Boooooring.

What I disliked in G1 is how inconsisted it was with the theme of the game. The game is about navigating through a penal colony, chosing your friends and enemies, slowly trying to unravel mystery of the barrier end the end game is about killing some super-evil bug from outer nowhere. It was really disappointing. Confrontation with Gomez and his cronies would make a much more climatic ending. Instead they chose to just let you kill him in some anti-climatic slaughter. When I've started Gothic 2 and Xardas started talking about evil dragons and god of evil I wanted to put the game down. Thankfully it wasn't that bad. At least for the most part.

 

[V_K]

Now for some good parts:
Legend of Grimrock: A very different and cool endboss that can't be killed the normal way, also I felt the game stayed fun till the end instead of some boring slog.

Come to think of it, creative endbosses seem to be rather common among DM-inspired games. DM itself had a similar puzzle-based encounter with Lord Chaos. And what The Summoning did with its ending sequence was simply brilliant (not going into specifics as that would be spoilers).

Other good examples:
Magic Candle: Instead of fighting through a final dungeon with an endboss, you just have to perform a lengthy and complex ritual without mistakes. Challenge of the Five Realms did something similar, but there was a combat-heavy content-light area before the spellcasting part.
Dragonfall: While there was a final dungeon, it was literally the best dungeon in the game that had consistently good level desing in the first place. Lots of content, lots of ways to avoid combat if you're clever enough, great atmosphere - basically, an even more rare beast than a non-trivial ending: a final dungeon done right. The epilogue part was a nice touch too.

 

[gromit]

what The Summoning did with its ending sequence was simply brilliant (not going into specifics as that would be spoilers).

so then please spoil it

it's been fifteen years

 

[odrzut]

What about TW2 endgame?

Spoiler

boss battle is optional and you may choose to drink with Letho instead

 

[V_K]

what The Summoning did with its ending sequence was simply brilliant (not going into specifics as that would be spoilers).

so then please spoil it

it's been fifteen years

Just play the fucking game, dude! It's great anyway.
I can't be bothered to lay out all the plot intricacies, and without them it wouldn't make much sense. Basically, final encounter is a rather inobvious choice in the form of an inventory-based puzzle, that you can only solve right (and there are wrong ways to do it, leading to bad endings) if you paid attention to the pieces of lore you've been fed throughout the entire game. And then there's one more, even more inobvious thing you can do to get the true ending.

 

[StaticSpine]

What about TW2 endgame?

Spoiler

boss battle is optional and you may choose to drink with Letho instead

it was p. cool too.

 

[Marquis de Lirium]

Gothic 1 & 2: Yup, endgame in both consists of a huge linear dungeon with tough enemies you need to slog through to get to the final boss. Boooooring.

What I disliked in G1 is how inconsisted it was with the theme of the game. The game is about navigating through a penal colony, chosing your friends and enemies, slowly trying to unravel mystery of the barrier end the end game is about killing some super-evil bug from outer nowhere. It was really disappointing. Confrontation with Gomez and his cronies would make a much more climatic ending. Instead they chose to just let you kill him in some anti-climatic slaughter. When I've started Gothic 2 and Xardas started talking about evil dragons and god of evil I wanted to put the game down. Thankfully it wasn't that bad. At least for the most part.

Exactly my thoughts. If I could remove just one of the many stupid tropes from all future games, it would be this utterly idiotic idea that an RPG has to end with an Epic Battle® against The Ancient Evil© after an odyssey through a completely nonsensical and boring dungeon full of fucking lever puzzles or similar shit.

Gothic is one of the worst offenders in this category: It had a nice story revolving around the prison colony and the barrier and multiple factions with different goals regarding a possible escape. But no, an RPG is not complete without some bullshit story about ancient gods who are about to destroy the universe. Fuck, fuck, fuck fuckity fuck....

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Gothic 1 & 2: Yup, endgame in both consists of a huge linear dungeon with tough enemies you need to slog through to get to the final boss. Boooooring.

What I disliked in G1 is how inconsisted it was with the theme of the game. The game is about navigating through a penal colony, chosing your friends and enemies, slowly trying to unravel mystery of the barrier end the end game is about killing some super-evil bug from outer nowhere. It was really disappointing. Confrontation with Gomez and his cronies would make a much more climatic ending. Instead they chose to just let you kill him in some anti-climatic slaughter. When I've started Gothic 2 and Xardas started talking about evil dragons and god of evil I wanted to put the game down. Thankfully it wasn't that bad. At least for the most part.

Exactly my thoughts. If I could remove just one of the many stupid tropes from all future games, it would be this utterly idiotic idea that an RPG has to end with an Epic Battle® against The Ancient Evil© after an odyssey through a completely nonsensical and boring dungeon full of fucking lever puzzles or similar shit.

Gothic is one of the worst offenders in this category: It had a nice story revolving around the prison colony and the barrier and multiple factions with different goals regarding a possible escape. But no, an RPG is not complete without some bullshit story about ancient gods who are about to destroy the universe. Fuck, fuck, fuck fuckity fuck....

At least they've finally done it right in NoTR.

 

[Dominae]

I dislike the thing that in most RPGs the endgame become diablo-like in terms of filler combat. It really become tedious, because you know all of the combat aspects and want to kill the final boss ASAP, but the devs are like "Oh, let's throw another 5 hours of mobs trashing before the boss" and you already do not need that.

The cynical side of me I almost think they get the game wrapped up and someone in marketing says "brilliant! how many hours of gameplay does it have for us to put in the advertisement?!" ... and a dev says "52 hours!" and said marketing douche replies "shove in 8 more hours of bullshit so we can say 60!"

Then they shoe-horn in purposefully mind-numbingly slow/tedious/banal trash mob grinding to "flesh it out".

 

[StaticSpine]

I dislike the thing that in most RPGs the endgame become diablo-like in terms of filler combat. It really become tedious, because you know all of the combat aspects and want to kill the final boss ASAP, but the devs are like "Oh, let's throw another 5 hours of mobs trashing before the boss" and you already do not need that.

The cynical side of me I almost think they get the game wrapped up and someone in marketing says "brilliant! how many hours of gameplay does it have for us to put in the advertisement?!" ... and a dev says "52 hours!" and said marketing douche replies "shove in 8 more hours of bullshit so we can say 60!"

Then they shoe-horn in purposefully mind-numbingly slow/tedious/banal trash mob grinding to "flesh it out".

Yup, I believe that's the way it is.

 

[a Goat]

This thread had me thinking. Why are game designers so slavishly loyal to the concept of a dungeon? There are many dungeons-only RPGs. Old Wizardries, Eye of the Beholder, Grimrock etc. However there are no city-adventure RPGs with mechanic centred solely around cities (just like dungeon crawlers are focused on dungeons). Bloodlines had dungeons which were so forced it hurt. Even Torment had dungeons.

Because "muh consumer might find himself lost".

For the same reason most cRPG's take place in medieval fantasy. Most popular D&D setting was Forgotten Realms so everybody first games were located in similar-looking universe. Then there was non-p&p audience being formed and they've expected medieval fantasy instead of "dem boring gunz and aliuns/dinosurs".
So to not make people feel dizzy in setting they don't understand majority of RPG's followed the same setting and had long ass dungeon filler.

It can be also attributed to the reason 2 posts above, but with a twist - dev 1 bragged about his game taking 80 hours to beat so dev 2 planned 80 hours too but bragged that he'll made a game that takes 100. Making huge dialogue/city parts is expensive and takes work, you have to make elaborate scripts, WRITE stuff so to achieve that 100 hours dev 2 adds additional 20 hours of dungeons.

Oh also financial reasons. What we're talking about will be something in-between of adventure game and RPG. How many people will buy it? And how many people will buy game where you can crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women? You'd say that a lot of people will pick the first one for novelty, basing from this forum but the reality is - people OUTSIDE of tight RPG fans circle hated places like Cyseal in D:OS(to point out recent example) because "why the fuck do I have to to walk around the city for 2 hours and talk with some peasants, I want to kill stuff".

 

[Coriolanus]

Troika games were notorious for this. Arcanum's last third was basically a string of long, tedious dungeons. ToEE... well, you played it in anticipation that it would 'get good' just around the corner, but it never did, so once you saw the endgame areas were going to be the same slog as before there was no reason to continue. Don't even get me started on VtMB's post-Chinatown endgame.

Out of the recent ones, I loathed D:OS final puzzle-infested dungeon.

 

[laclongquan]

Bloodlines: Endless trash mobs and a couple bosses at the end. Meh.

I will fuck your face! The Sheriff is a way cool boss.

 

[Cadmus]

Bloodlines: Endless trash mobs and a couple bosses at the end. Meh.

I will fuck your face! The Sheriff is a way cool boss.

The Sheriff was horrible, I killed him with a shotgun in a few seconds because he just kept flying around like an idiot. I was hoping for an epic battle and it was more like a cheese/glitch fest.

 

[laclongquan]

You can do that in your fever dream. While Bloodlines has its fair share of bugs, a normal bugfix pack should solve that nicely. Without bugs, Sheriff require at least 15 minutes of running around and shooting yourself dry. Possibly two or three different weapons, even. His aerial movement is such that the fastest gunslinger of Toreador doesnt catch up to him completely.

Who do you think you are tricking?

 

[MrMarbles]

Nerdy rant alert: Another sweat-drenched night of RPG nightmares where an end-game concept came to me in my sleep:

How about a game villain that has risen to warlord (ie Thulsa Doom)? His psychotic intercontinental rampage is rooted in a lifetime of inability to distinguish reality from what is in his mind. His mad ravings always seem to contain truth, and his unstoppable rise to power has lead him to suspect that he is, in fact, a god. The question of whether he is mortal or immortal drives him over the edge of insanity. So he continues to hack his way through the world, looking for a challenger that can answer the question: mortal, or immortal?

CHAR show up as another challenger, and conducts the end battle accompanied by villain's usual screaming questions of mortality. Of course, this CHAR succeeds. The villain is, in a way, relieved. Then it becomes clear: he is a god. His ascension to godhood takes place with CHAR covered in his blood, fusing them together, ripping CHAR out of the plane with the villain, bestowing some of the power on CHAR and starting the actual end game. What follows could be anything, maybe some high level ToB-esque DnD-madness, perhaps featuring a civil war in the pantheon.


Might be preferable to the usual hurr-durr prophecy chosen one derpfest.

 

[Cadmus]

You can do that in your fever dream. While Bloodlines has its fair share of bugs, a normal bugfix pack should solve that nicely. Without bugs, Sheriff require at least 15 minutes of running around and shooting yourself dry. Possibly two or three different weapons, even. His aerial movement is such that the fastest gunslinger of Toreador doesnt catch up to him completely.

Who do you think you are tricking?

I'm not exaggerating - the fight was over in a minute or two, I didn't even use all my shotgun ammo if I remember correctly. I played with the community patch. I have no idea what the fuck are you talking about.

 

[Lilura]

Auspex + Celerity Toreador gunslinger drops that boss like a sack of shit.

 

[laclongquan]

Is that shitty Unofficial Patch we are talking about? Because let me tell you that I dont trust that modder to not fuck shit up.

And precisely an Auspex+Celerity Toreador that take 15 minutes with that flying tank. My Marilyn Monroe like her guns, big or small, and develop along that strictly road of gunslinger. Katana I leave to the Malk crazy bitch.

 

[Johannes]

Or instead of tons of trash mobs, have a good amount of very tough and interesting, well-designed fights. Possibly in such a sequence where you cannot rest or retreat in between, and have to conserve your resources.

 

[DrowningHarvey]

Bloodlines: Endless trash mobs and a couple bosses at the end. Meh.

After several times of starting a new game and faltering at the combat marathon the latter half of the game, I finished a play through of Bloodlines few weeks ago. That slog at the end was even more tedious experience than I remembered. Such a shame.

 

[Reject_666_6]

Thanks, will check it later. I've stopped playing NVN modules because I had enough of shitty combat, but I'll probably reinstall. Would brofist, but can't.

He is Gangrelrumbler, the Cimmerian. He won't brofist; so I brofist for him.