Desert island video game. Just one, but any system. Don’t worry about electricity or internet connection. This is a hypothetical, imagine-you-have-everything-you-need-to-enjoy-playing-that-game-to-its-full-potential sort of situation.
Maybe WoW or one of those Call of Duties? Super Mario All Stars would be a strong contender. Especially the version that also came with Super Mario World.
For me, it’s Fallout 3. Huge, open world, full of weird places, novel quests, with a unique sci-fi setting populated with likable and quirky characters. There is a wide range of ways to construct an enjoyable character, and branching choices that can affect the makeup of the world you play in. Need I say I’m a big fan? Fallout 3 is that game for me, the one that changed the way I think about video games, the game that if I was trapped on a magical island with food and water, but also electricity and a television, I know I could play for the foreseeable future and continue to derive enjoyment.
Plus, it might give me the chance to actually beat it.
See, I have a habit of falling hard for Bethesda games. First was Fallout 3. A game I knew tangentially, one I was hesitant to buy because of my negligible interest in FPSs. I bought it off eBay because I couldn’t find it in my area, even though I don’t live in a small town at all. Soon enough though, my partner and I were fighting over the controller.
And the first time I played, the first time I created a character, I did manage to beat the game, sort of. Like in the sense that I got to hear Ron Pearlman’s sultry voice soliloquize about death and war and hope and ghoul sex. But, I didn’t beat the game in the sense that I finished all of what the game had to offer. There were countless unfinished and many more undiscovered quests to complete, so, I continued to create new characters, to try out different narrative paths and different play styles, but never again would I approach the conclusion of the main narrative. There really wasn’t any reason to.
It didn’t help either when I bought a package deal of all of the DLC. I am like a runner struggling to complete a 40k marathon and then putting down money for it to extend another county. Hell, I actually negated my initial completion when I added the Broken Steel DLC because it extends the game beyond the original ending. Now your character doesn’t die at the end, but goes on to have new and exciting adventures.
I’ve played more than half of the DLC I bought, but still haven’t been able to reach the point where I play the content after the original storyline. There’s plenty more for me to do when I get that Fallout itch, but rather than just picking up where I’ve left off, I always waver on the title screen, and eventually select “New Game” because I’m curious about trying a melee grenadier with a brazen attitude towards life.
I wish I could say that this is an experience exclusive to Fallout 3, but it’s not. I have two characters in Oblivion, three in Fallout New Vegas, and I just started my second Skyrim character. I have not beaten any of these games, not once.
It’s not like I run out of shit to do either. With Skyrim, my first character isn’t even that high leveled. Like late twenties. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the main quest and haven’t touched several of the guild quests. Not to mention all the other billion things you can do it that game. But, hey, why not try a lizard rogue?
Oh, and why not buy the Dawnguard DLC to make my problematic playing habits completely absurd? Well, because of crossbows and bat teleportation.
So I wonder, to myself and in text to you, why can’t I beat a gosh darn Bethesda game?
Maybe the problem is that sandbox games are not really meant to be beat? But, I beat Saints Row 3 recently and I actually pushed through the main narrative. Maybe because there are fewer side quests and a more cohesive narrative trajectory, maybe because I got flying tanks and stuff. In Bethesda games I actually tend to defer the main narrative. I kind of like to save things for later, when the time seems right to complete the story. But the problem is I put it off and off and then eventually another game comes out.
Really though, I put off “beating” Bethesda games because beating them kind of ruins them. I have two end game case scenarios to discuss.
First, you venture forth and complete the main narrative and then all the end game business plays out, cutscenes, credits, music you probably don’t like, and then, a save file is created for you (yay!). A special save file at a point in the narrative that the developers designated as the beginning of the end. That time before you went on the giant robot death parade, or dragon king hunt. You are then again free to travel the world to complete other adventures, and of course to buy lots and lots of DLC. But there’s something funny about this timeline. You have a nagging sensation that you’ve already solved the big problem that everyone seems so concerned about. As a player, the game world is now fractured. The awareness that you are playing a game is more apparent. There is no conclusion, just a Scary Door episode where you continue to fight the great evil over and over again.
Some of open world games work differently though, allow you to continue your adventure after the main narrative. This is a great idea, but it sort of strains under the structure of the game. I mean, yes, it’s great that I can still go on quests, but is the hero of the land, the hero that stopped the end of the world, now supposed to go herb collecting for the lazy potion maker, or clear a cave full of trolls? All for a couple hundred gold? I already have a million of those. Talk about over-qualified and underpaid. Playing the rest of the game, after beating the main narrative can lack appropriate scale. Before when you were building your character up so you could defeat the lord of evil, you needed all the XP and gold you could get your hands on, now you’re just accumulating wealth.
It is unfair to expect a game to fully adapt the cast of NPCs and game world to a character’s newfound place in the world. But here again, players are exposed to structure or the game system and have to pretend a little harder to keep the world going in their heads.
To further complicate these scenarios, it isn’t immediately evident to players what the end of the game means for their character. They don’t necessarily know if they can continue on in the post narrative world, or if they will get warped back. Moreover, it wouldn’t be clear if the post end game world is as interesting to play the game in. Are there fewer quests, reduced enemies, or less complex politics? The uncertainty might not be a deterrent but I can’t see it as an incentive.
I can chalk these criticisms up as elaborate excuses for why I can’t beat Bethesda games, but there might also be something complicated about games that offer such a wide gameplay and narrative experience, but culminate around a singular core narrative. It almost seems like a conclusion is antithetical to Fallout or Skyrim, and that’s why they continue beyond them. On one level I guess we need some motivation to act inside the game, but it seems like people are usually pretty good at constructing their own motives. Wasn’t that what everyone realized when we started playing Skyrim, that we all had our own stories and were even interested in other people’s stories too. The absence of a designated narrative would allow players to fashion their own unified story, a story without a fixed endpoint, one that I wouldn’t have to actually finish.