Broken Successes: end-game content that matters

Felicia told me that her coworker’s favorite Final Fantasy was FF VI, and I was excited!  FF VI is probably my favorite in the “main” series (Tactics has my heart forever). 

Two days later, she told me she was wrong.  It was FF VII (figures). 

VII is a great game, don’t get me wrong.  The materia system is one of my favorite customization schemes in an RPG, and I dug how grown-up the series felt with VII.  Characters swore!  The setting was modern and gritty, the violence felt real (characters actually moved to make contact with swords/fists/spears), it featured cinematics that showed what the game world really looked like, and Tifa had some big-ass titties.  Big-ass titties just weren’t possible on the SNES; they were some 16-bitties, which just didn’t do it like some Madonna cone boobs on a kung-fu hottie. 

(I was going through puberty)

Plus, Final Fantasy VII was one of the first games I played at the same time as many of my friends.  It was a shared experience, and that’s worth a lot to a nerdy kid. 

For clarity, I’m going to refer to VI as FF3 from now on (they’re the same game, it was a rebranding done for the US).  Fucking FF3, man.  I undoubtedly sunk more time into that game than VII.  I played it to completion more than once, and as far as I know, I uncovered almost all of the end-game content and side quests.  I searched out every nook and cranny, found the hidden characters, found the powerful weapons and Espers.  I beat that game as much as any RPG can be beaten. 

I haven’t done that since. 

I didn’t even do that with VII or Tactics, which I played within two years of all that time sunk into FF3.  Why did I explore that game so much?  What made it so engaging?  I had strategy guides for VII and Tactics--perhaps having so much content spelled out dimished the fun?  Nah, I didn't have a guide for FF 2, and I spent very little time exploring that game.  It felt like a chore to find things in FF 2, 8, 9... 10... and many other games.  I don't get a lot of joy out of wandering around for a long time--I like returning to the main thrust of the story before long.  

It seems to come down to the packaging of the end-game content.  For the uninitiated, I’m using “end-game content” to refer to optional side quests that players did not need to complete to finish the game.  Typical end-game content is fighting boss monsters to get the best equipment or powers available.  These quests are normally stand-alone—the player finds the dungeon with the monster, explores it and kills the boss, and leaves.  The rest of the game is not impacted by this accomplishment. 

That's typical end-game content.  I think FF3 did it better than that.  To appreciate the FF3 end-game content, a real quick synopsis is in order:

The game begins by following a young woman, Terra, who exhibits magical abilities (which are all but forgotten in an increasingly technology-driven society).  Other characters join her as she journeys to uncover her past and the secret of her powers (spoiler: it’s kinda bestiality), but they all become swept up in a battle to save the world from destruction by a villain who laughs evilly a lot. 

And they lose. 

The villain, Kefka, harnesses the powers of three Goddesses encased in stone to wreak havoc on the world.  The face of the planet literally changes: continents shatter, water sours to purply-black, the horizon is perpetual sunset.  All of our heroes are scattered to the new ends of the world, and when we regain control of the action, we’re no longer following Terra.  It’s disorienting, but not too disorienting.  We’re following Celes, a character who joined our group near the start of the game.  Her first task: nursing an NPC back to health by catching healthy fish. 

Not fighting.  Feeding. 

That’s great.  They reconfigure our expectations of success.  They drop us from indomitable heroes to fishers.  Survivors.  This world is unforgiving, and you can even fail here—feed Cid the unhealthy fish and he’ll die.  If he dies, that’s bleak—our hero has little hope of making a difference in this ruined world.  If he lives, it’s but a glimmer of hope as Celes ventures into the post-apocalyptic world to find her friends and defeat Kefka. 

We aren’t quite to the end-game content yet; there are a couple more plot points before the player can assault Kefka’s tower to beat the game.  However, these encounters establish the format of the end-game content. 

Celes journeys to a town being bombarded by Kefka.  She discovers one of her old allies, Sabin, is struggling to hold up a collapsing house.  A child wails within.  Celes must run inside and save the child, after which Sabin joins her. 

It’s a small victory in this broken world.  Sabin isn’t slaying demons—he’s saving lives.  In case the player didn’t save Cid, Sabin shows it’s still possible to make a difference.  Vitally, you can do it by finding your old allies.  It’s important that Sabin was unable to save the child himself; both characters played their role in the rescue.  This embeds the idea that our heroes will be capable of much more when they find their other friends. 

The party next encounters Terra in an obliterated town.  She’s raising children orphaned by Kefka’s apocalypse and doesn’t believe she can fight anymore—not after all the destruction war has already caused.  While they talk, a huge monster stomps through the town.  Sabin and Celes rush out to battle it and manage to drive it off. 

Seeing their strength, Terra joins the party. 

Nope!  She knows that fighting Kefka might protect the children—but who will raise them if she leaves?  Regardless of the player’s actions, Terra stays.  This deepens the weight of character’s choices.  Characters won’t necessarily rejoin the group just because you show up—they’re already facing their own problems.  There’s more to life than heroic acts.  There’s responsibility.  There’s hiding from the consequences of your actions.  There’s doubt.  If each old ally immediately ran back to you, we couldn’t follow their journey back to redemption.  The characters would be flat, nothing more than fighters you want for their powers.  Instead, we get to watch characters struggle.  Argue.  Be human. 

The final step before the end game content opens up is meeting up with our gambling whorey hero Setzer, who knows where an airship is buried (spoiler—it’s in a grave.  Yeah).  Setzer’s story demonstrates the other notable aspect of the end game content: he’s dealing with some shit.  He used to love whoever owned the airship, and now he’s a dashing grave robber because he couldn’t cope with that.  Before Celes and Sabin showed up, he was drinking his life away.  Setzer only confronts his issues because our heroes need him.  After this point, players can return for Terra—and of course they will!  Setzer didn’t want to join our heroes at first, but they convinced him.  Perhaps Terra will do the same? 

Spoiler—of course she fucking does!  This shows players that they may need to be persistent. 

With the airship, the player is free to explore—but the format of the end game content has already been laid out.  Go someplace, look for an ally.  If they need help, help them.  In virtually every case, the character is either helping someone in need or facing their demons (Locke, Cyan, and Strago are all coping with the loss of loved ones; Edgar is trying to return his family’s castle to its former glory).  They’re puzzles, they’re sidequests with some meat, they’re more than just wandering around.  You know what you’re looking for—people in need.  Characters you already care about helping. 

In case a silly thing like empathy isn’t enough to nudge players into exploring this shell of a world, the player must split his characters into 3 parties when they assault Kefka’s tower.  That’s twelve characters!  The player can have as few as four when they first approach the tower.  Seeking out eight characters, figuring out their issues, resolving them—that’s a lot of content, almost all of it focused on story.  Overwhelmingly, those stories feature heroes struggling with their failures.  Pain.  Loss and grief, inadequacies and flaws. 

That’s so rare in games.  Even though I was young, I think that got to me.  I knew it was strange that your heroes didn’t overcome every obstacle with ease—and some of the older psychological traumas the characters faced were never overcome.  They acknowledged the pain, realized they had to set it aside for the greater good, and did so.  With every character that rejoins your party, the world regains a little hope.  Your group becomes stronger, more capable of ending Kefka’s reign.  This hope never quite turns to certainty, though.  It’s more of a grim determination to do their damnedest. 

Protagonists in video games dealing with emotional trauma and failure.  Redemption as a goal.  Necessary teamwork, the recognition that the community is stronger than the individual.  All of that is accomplished with side quests, which are normally throwaway content.  At the most, side quests add a little depth to the world.  They almost never add more depth to the characters. 

As if all that weren’t enough, the climax isn’t an unmitigated success.  When you eventually defeat Kefka… well, damn.  The world’s still fucked up.  Killing Kefka doesn’t make the grass grow back, doesn’t turn the sky blue.  Sure, Kefka isn’t torching towns anymore, but… is that it?  The world’s just perma-ruined? 

Now that I’m an adult, I’m like… yeah.  Sometimes fucked up stuff will remain fucked up even after you do all you can to fix it.  It doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth the effort.  Sometimes, small improvements are the best we can hope for.  Sometimes the best we can do is keep things from being quite as broken—but that’s still success.  It means there’s somewhere to go from here. 

That shit’s way more profound than a meteor almost destroying the planet but actually getting destroyed by the world’s life force or whatever happened at the end of FF VII.  There’s so much happy ending in that game that somehow extra Red XIIIs pop out of the meteor-stopping world splooge.  Yeah, earlier you cope with Aeris dying, sorta, kinda.  I think that’s why Cloud goes into a coma for a bit?  Maybe? 

For plot, there’s simply no comparison between the end-game content of these games.  In VII, you breed and race chocobos.  You get awesome materia and great weapons by exploring strange and challenging dungeons.  But there’s no story reason to do it.  In fact, that meteor I mentioned?  It’s hanging over the world, constantly threatening to destroy everything.  Not only does the end-game content lack character development or consequences, it flies in the face of the climax.  The characters in FF3 don’t bum-rush Kefka’s tower, it’s true—but the characters in VII never question facing Sephiroth.  They’re just gonna do it because, y’know.  That’s the end of the game.  They have to or else the player doesn’t get to feel accomplished. 

And yeah, feeling accomplished is great.  I love games for that.  But being able to slowly repair broken characters in a charred world to have their success leave the world only slightly less unlivable… that’s the kind of stories I want to play.