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1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF OCTOBER 15 | GAMING'S GREATEST MYSTERIES

Breaking Down Gaming's Most Ambiguous Endings

Cover Story: Some mysteries are better left unsolved, but it's fun to try anyway.

I

f you like endings that neatly wrap everything up and pat you on the back, you're in for a lifetime of disappointment. Most video games conclude with a bit of mystery. Why? When it's properly handled, ambiguity can encourage a player to reconsider their whole experience, framing the adventure in a new way. On the other side of the coin (the cynical side with little regard for creativity) a mysterious ending can pave the way for a sequel. After all, no one can resist ominous music and the clumsy introduction of a new, more villainous villain.

Today we'll take a look at some exceptionally ambiguous endings, their most likely interpretations, and whether the bulk of each game provides any clues. We probably won't come to any conclusions. If we did, this wouldn't be a mysterious article, would it?

Spot Art

Journey

Journey is ambiguity in the form of a game. You traverse a strange environment, speechless, never quite sure why you're there or what it is that you're hoping to accomplish. In other words, it's like attending E3.

Trudging through snow where so many others have fallen, you collapse before reaching your goal. The screen fades to white. A group of strange figures arrive and lend you the strength to continue on your way, this game's version of St. Bernards with little whiskey barrels around their necks. Reaching the final destination bathes you in another white light, sending your soul back to the beginning of the game.

Everything after the collapse could have been a hallucination brought on by exhaustion. Or maybe it was all real, an end that had been laid out for you since the beginning. In either case, what was the purpose?

Journey does not have a profound story in the traditional sense. The lack of context encourages players to pay close attention for any scrap of information, letting them become invested in its expressionistic flourishes. Any interpretation seems valid as long as the game makes people react, even if they react by purchasing a thirty foot scarf.

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Jericho

Of course, mystery isn't always a good thing. Take the unfortunate case of Jericho, the first person shooter with a story by horror writer Clive Barker.

Jericho's premise has potential. Throughout history, a banished god-like being repeatedly tries to break through to our world, absorbing a chunk of the planet and its people into his realm with each failed attempt. When a man named Leach attempts to free this god, the Jericho Squad must stop him by infiltrating the realm and its slices of Earth's past. Though these ideas allow a lot of variety in terms of environments and enemy types, the narrative is very much what you would expect from a military/sci-fi shooter, with occasional set pieces and ranting bosses.

This makes the abrupt, inexplicable ending so jarring. You spend a few minutes unloading your guns into an oversized magical psychic baby - which is ALWAYS fun, as anyone who has played the original Half-Life will tell you. Before you can finish the god off, Leach has a change of heart, grabs the bad guy and dives into a glowy hole. Your squad jumps into a body of water as an explosion goes off. When you resurface, the sky above you is orange. Then the credits roll.

First of all, that was rude. There was clearly a line to kill the boss, and that guy cut in. Unacceptable. Second, what?

Did the evil god and Leach die in that neon explosion? Did your squad get stuck in that screwy realm (presumably forever) or did they somehow resurface back home, with the bizarre sky indicating that the explosion had some far-reaching impact?

Think about the ending for a few minutes, and you will likely double the amount of time that was spent on its creation. It's as if the makers of the game realized that they would have to come up with an ending if the player killed the boss, so they didn't let it happen. The explosion was probably added to keep everyone in Jericho Squad from standing around in awkward silence, shrugging at one another. Honestly, though, that would have made for a more satisfying ending.

Spot Art

Final Fantasy VII

You defeat Sephiroth. As Meteor (a meteor) closes in on the planet, a tremendously powerful spell named Holy rises to counter it. This doesn't quite get the job done. When the city of Midgar is involuntarily remodeled by the leading edge of the meteor (Meteor), the lazy planet finally decides to wake up and do something. It lends its soul to Holy to destroy Meteor. Don't ask how. After the credits, a cinematic shows the ruined city of Midgar 500 years later, now covered in overgrowth.

Final Fantasy VII's ending has been scrutinized for nearly fifteen years. It's unclear if Meteor was stopped in time to prevent the devastation of the planet's surface, or the damage was contained to the area immediately surrounding Midgar. The fate of most of the main characters is up in the air. Everyone wonders if that group of kids in Costa Del Sol ever stopped kicking their ball around. Okay, I'm probably the only one that's haunted by that last one.

Looking to the rest of the game for answers is problematic. Final Fantasy VII's iconic moments are held together with very little in the way of internal logic. Characters bounce between cool poses and overwrought emotions as each scene demands. The game doesn't hint at any answers because its narrative lacks consistency.

The possibilities become downright screwy when you consider all the metaphysical forces at play. Holy, for instance, could have reunited Aeris with Cloud even as it fought off Meteor. All of the characters might have been absorbed by the soul of the planet and fused into a diamond chocobo. Any outcome makes as much sense as what's presented in the game itself.

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The Binding of Isaac

If you glance at a few moments of gameplay, The Binding of Isaac appears to be entirely goofy, a cartoonish roguelike that falls somewhere between Smash TV and Link to the Past. When the game kicks off with Isaac's mother deciding to sacrifice her son, however, you might begin to suspect that things could get a bit dark.

After descending through a hellish basement and shooting monstrous enemies with his tears, Isaac finally confronts his mother and emerges victorious. An epilogue, drawn by Isaac, shows his mother raising a knife to sacrifice him when a Bible falls on top of her head. This moment of victory is cut short when the game cuts away from the drawings, revealing Isaac lost in imagination as his mother opens a door and enters, knife in hand.

Did Isaac's mother recover from the bump on her noggin and come after him again? Was a doomed Isaac imagining the whole thing in the moments before his grisly fate? Or is the reappearance of his mother simply the imaginary ordeal starting over again, an endless loop that Isaac keeps revisiting as some sort of self-imposed punishment?

The narrative's theme is present in every part of The Binding Of Isaac. Biblical elements abound in enemy type, items, and power-ups. Levels resemble a neglected basement and hell in equal parts. Even the structure of the game plays into the possible meaning of the ending, since roguelikes punish failure with permadeath and encourage multiple playthroughs. The unlockable characters (save for one) are simply Isaac with different outfits, a hint that this might all be a repeated fantasy.

The Binding Of Isaac smuggles these clever ideas in a seemingly crass presentation. Its aesthetic can be enjoyed on a surface level as you focus on the gameplay. If you choose to start asking questions, however, you'll quickly find all sorts of provocative concepts that had been staring you in the face for hours.

There's a surprising amount of nuance for a game with so much poop.

Spot Art

Street Fighter II (Zangief's Ending)

You are Zangief, the greatest fighting game sprite ever made. After suplexing and bearhugging your way through the world's most formidable fighters, you emerge victorious over M. Bison. What happens next?

Well... does everybody dance? The entire planet? There's no way to tell for sure. Future installments don't even attempt to address the issue. It's been twenty years since Street Fighter II hurricane kicked its way into our hearts, and in that span of time no video game mystery has surpassed the enigma that is Zangief's ending.


Author

Dennis Farrell

Dennis Farrell

Dennis Farrell leaves no room for mystery. Or does he...?




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Comments (28)


  • GomezGomita
  • ambiguous endings...

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  GomezGomita

    and no Tekken in it?!

  • NinjaKaos
  • Final fantasy 7 was explained in advent children

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  NinjaKaos

    The world survived, as shown in advent children, the cg movie.

  • trip300
  • FFVII

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  trip300

    Yeah the ending drove me balls for years.  I remember beating this for the first time when I was younger and thinking, ".... So are they all dead?  Do they have siphilis?  Did they all survive and have a massive orgy to repopulate the planet?  I mean it was obvious that Red XIII survived (if indeed that was the wolf, fox, dog thing) so some of the characters had to have lived through the epic meteor diharea mess.  I'm a fan of this game but still, the ending does leave you scratching your cock in confusion.  Yes I know that Advent Children was released years later and all of the characters were there, but this was 1997 and I wanted to know what fate these people met then and there!

  • ButterPeanut
  • Pretty cool article, esp. on Binding of Isaac

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  ButterPeanut

    I played the Binding of Isaac off Steam and thought it was OK, but I've never had a successful run. I then spoiled a bunch of it by browsing through articles on items and bosses on the Wikia website for the game, and I still return to it now and then when I have a spare 20 minutes. (I really wish there was a way to pause and close the game to return later on-- is there any way to do that?)

    Reading about the ending makes it sound kind of interesting. I wasn't really interested because it seemed like just an inch-deep indictment of religious conservatism, but it's nice to know it tried doing something else too. It'd be nice to hear what people think of the what-a-twist! three-stage bosses added with the Wrath of the Lamb DLC.

  • king_mob
  • Phantasy Star II

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  king_mob

    Was probably the first game I ever played who's ending had me scratching my head. It's very ambivalent over whether the heroes of the game lived or died. As far as I can tell, they were betrayed by Noah (aka Lutz) from the first game. He sends them to their death, in order to save the Algo star system from being conquered by the survivors of Earth, which they say was destroyed. It's the only Phantasy Star game in the original series where Dark Force isn't the main villain and is actually relegated to a side role, and a mysterious one at that. It wasn't until the third one that they finally explained who Dark Force was and why he keeps coming back.

  • RobGrizzly
  • Jin falls on Asuka's chest. Paul punches a rock...

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  RobGrizzly

    What about Tekken? None of that sht made sense

  • xHinata85x
  • My two cents

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  xHinata85x

    For Zangief's ending- that is the best. He beats Bison just so that everyone in the world can dance. Now THAT"S how you celebrate. Second best ending would be him wrestling a bear and the bear would dance after he lost to Zangief...or the dancing ending with a dancing bear. Z is crazy.

    For Final Fantasy VII's ending- this is how I interpreted the ending. Everything is saved, and then the cut scene of 500 years later. I'm sure in any realm of time, Red XIII wouldn't of been able to last that long, even tho he was old. Instead, those pups were his great grandkids and yes, unfortuantly after 500 years, humanity might of left that town (Midgar) to live somewhere more stable or healthy. Midgar almost collasped on itself completely, even tho part of it did come down within the first couple hours of the game. The plate above (which where the Shinra building sat) covered a lot of the sectors where people lived, and well, if all that castrophe happened above me, I would want to leave that city too. Junon the ocean city also was in that attack of Diamond weapon, so I could see a abondonment of that place too. People might of just relocated to Kalm or turned Fort Condor into a small town.

    Or I stick my original theory and say that man was probably existict by that time.

    Pretty good article by the way. I enjoyed it.

  • McMarbles
  • I can confirm that

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  McMarbles

    ..for one brief, shining moment, yes, EVERYBODY DANCED.

  • AfterTheFire
  • Are you kidding about FFVII?

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  AfterTheFire

    The ending to final fantasy vii is actually quite simple.  Holy was summoned by Aerith at the end of disc one, Sephiroth tried to stop her by murdering her, but he was too late and the spell had already been summoned.  Then, when meteor reaches Gaia (The planet) Holy is not enough to hold off Sephiroth's devestating attack and the Lifestream rises from the planet to help aid Holy in its battle againt Meteor.  They win, obviously.  This is shown by the Red XIII cutscene after the credits.  Red XIII's kind lives for hundreds and hundreds of years, this cut scene is merely a way of showing that the planet has lived on well into the future.

    Don't take my word for it, take Dennis Farrel's, who doesn't know about Hopak and Cossack dances

    • SoliceKirsk
    • Almost!

      Posted: 10/18/2012 by  SoliceKirsk

      The laugh at the end suggests that humanity made it as well. Not to mention when they ruined the franchise by adding all the VII spin off stuff.

      You are incorrect on one thing though. Sephiroth didn't kill Aeris. Jenova did. You were chasing Jenova for the entire first part of the game when it escaped from Shinra headquarters. They explain that when you get to the crater and you get the black materia back. It actually ties up a lot of "plot holes" that people think exist. FF VII had a pretty complex story lin and unfortunately pacing and translation issues made a lot of it more convoluted than it had to be.

  • lokey013
  • For Zangief's ending...

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  lokey013

    ....I initially thought they would show the one with him flexing to Vega's picture =P

  • roto13
  • Title of Comment

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  roto13

    The real question is whether Zangief and Gorbachev ever found happiness together.

    • xHinata85x
    • Oh I am quite sure they did...

      Posted: 10/17/2012 by  xHinata85x

      Just look at their smiling faces. They shared a beer afterwards.

  • sunmofo
  • limbo!

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  sunmofo

    for me, limbo has the quintessential ambiguous ending. one of my favorite titles from this generation.

  • kingsharkboi
  • Today I played The Mirror Lied

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  kingsharkboi

    Well me and this girl played it after considering buying To the Moon, and we got distracted by The Mirror Lied.  It's a half hour long game, is free, and is very ambiguous in every way.  But it is well worth your time and is thought-provoking.  Its elements may fit with any metaphor you concoct.  However, the metaphor i kept coming back to was the Cold War (and possibly the movie Fail-Safe).  

    Anyone else play this game?

  • chinpokoman
  • gorbachev

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  chinpokoman

    gorbachev can definitely cut a rug

  • ajbolt89
  • More like this!

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  ajbolt89

    I loved the article, wish there was more to it! It would be fun to see what sort of interpretations various reviewers have had of the same game (such as journey's ending being death, etc). Thanks for not going straight for the simple ones (mario/zelda etc).

  • DenGreatshot
  • I really don't understand why people find FF7 so hard to understand

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  DenGreatshot

    aside from the nearly inchoerent at times translation. If you couldn't get it because it's near to gibberish at times, that's understandable. :D But the story's surprisingly layered if you care to actually THINK about what the game presents as opposed to explaining everything, like the ending, who your real enemy truely is (unlike the post game Sephiroth as the ultimate badass stuff, the game makes equal cases for Jenova being the real puppetmaster all the way to the end). It's just too bad Square semi-canonized some really bad answeres to most of the game's open ended questions with the abysmal compilation crap. 

     

    Though I always thought this was by design. Cloud is the ultimate Unreliable Narrator. Who's to say much of the game isn't just in his head? 

    • VeryMadMage
    • You're giving it too much credit

      Posted: 10/17/2012 by  VeryMadMage

      I like your brief analysis. It's fun in a liberal arts way of saying everything has meaning and all interpretations are valid. And I'm not trying to be condescending. It really is interesting speculating how much of the plot is coming from Cloud's psyche. That being said, don't give them credit they don't deserve. The plot is all over the place with no regard for continuity, and the translation only makes things messier.

    • xHinata85x
    • Unfortuantly with FF7, you have to give it some throught...

      Posted: 10/17/2012 by  xHinata85x

      That's a good thought, Den and I see your point, VNMage, but at the time, FF7 was left open for people to make their assumptions on what happened after the end (or about the ending) and try to cover gaping plot holes. There's nothing wrong it that and I can see why everyone thinks differently about specfic parts in the game, but what I do see is that the producers should of left no hole open because it can leave that part of the story to be moot. It seems like they got lazy in parts of the game; some parts are more thought out than others. And some parts were very weird....

  • Gleeokman
  • Fun article

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  Gleeokman

    We all tend to look back through a fond nostalgic lense at FF7. While it was truly amazing for the time, the story made no friggin sense from start to finish. Especially the ending.

    • MikkiSaturn
    • Same

      Posted: 10/16/2012 by  MikkiSaturn

      I have big nostalgia goggles specially made for this game.  That said, I actually feel that the story pretty much made sense.  It's ambiguous in places, but that's not the same thing as contradictory, which is what this article implies.

    • starman_deluxe
    • Who actually saw this scene!?

      Posted: 10/17/2012 by  starman_deluxe

      It's true the ending of FFVII is complete nonsense.  I always presumed everyone died and the planet started over, honestly, although obviously stuff came later to dispute that.

      SPOILERS below...

       

       

      As far as the rest of the story...I never actually saw this until after playing Crisis Core and revisiting FFVII, but the relationship between Cloud and Zack (and how Cloud actually came to "be" Zack) is in fact explained somewhat by a scene that probably no one saw (you can watch it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxI1S3sg9es).  

      If you've beaten FFVII but never seen this scene you should absolutely watch it.  It's kind of mindblowing that they hid a scene like this.

    • MikkiSaturn
    • I Saw It

      Posted: 10/17/2012 by  MikkiSaturn

      I had forgotten about it though, until just now.  I totally remember the scene on the truck.  Yeah, there are several hidden scenes that flesh out the back story.  You know Sephiroth's mother is hidden in a cave.

  • VeryMadMage
  • Very fun read

    Posted: userComment.createdDate by  VeryMadMage

    Some other endings that could use a bit more light or are up for debate are FFT, Monkey Island 2, Braid, and Madden 2008 (who won?).

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