I'm back. As I mention at the end of this video, I made a companion piece to this that you can watch right now on Nebula. I typically cut a lot of stuff from scripts that is interesting but doesn't add to the main point of a video, and I rarely do anything with it, but I was able to get this one made because of Nebula. I plan to start posting more things there that don't really fit or typically perform well on my main channel, so if that interests you, consider checking it out. If you don't have Nebula, you can get it and CuriosityStream as a bundle for like $12 a year right now because of the Mother's Day sale: curiositystream.com/razbuten
I think you might like a game called "death's door". It's a really beautiful rpg and I'm loving it so far. It's not a super long game (especially for an rpg) which I think is nice. The story is simple yet still instills interesting questions about life, and it’s really fun to find out more about the history of the world.
Note that "The Ability to Miss Something" is something that Team Cherry expressly talked about in an interview with GMTK for developing Hollow Knight. Their thought is that the world feels much more alive and bigger if you're capable to forge your own journey, even if that makes you experience less of the stuff in the game.
I think thats a core part of exploration and discovery that Razbuten and others often miss. It seems there has been a push towards making more content in open world games which some people has started complaining about, because yes it can be repetitive, but the point is that with an open world with a ton of content everybody makes their own path and you arent forced or expected to do "everything". Taking "immortal fenyx rising" for example, it has tons and tons of gear pieces to find and while there are a few repeats you might not find everything, which means every player might find their own playstyle from the gear they find, "Oh i found something that makes my arrows deal more damage while im in the air? neat what if i combine it with the thing that makes me glide slower and makes my arrows knock back" etc etc, which means that the various players would have ended up with various approaches to the game, which is somehow accepted that to use one playstyle you dont use another, yet both are ways to complete the game in a satisfying way and you dont HAVE to beat an entire game again as a warrior after doing it as a sorcerer forexample. Yet for whatever reason it seems alot less accepted that you dont get all the "story" or content unless they are very binary paths such as paragon or renegade, yet i think thats a bit of a simplistic idea, which again morphs into "But im tired of doing this same thing because i have to do ALL the content to be done". I think there is massive value in making a playthrough "yours" and what you find and what you dont you dont. To paraphrase the creator of stanley parable from a GDC "There is alot more value to a player in finding 1 out of 10 secrets by themselves, than there is in them finding 5 out of 5 "secrets" that is heavily pointed at and guided to". Basically i think if we want people to have the freedom to pick their own path then it also comes with the consequence of potentially missing stuff, and that should be okay, with all the hype for elden ring and liking it myself i fully understand im going to miss a boatload of content, but whatever i have done when i complete it ends up being MY journey, and that to me is good enough.
@@zoulsgaming9455 It's something I "miss", too. I'm a little too obsessive-compulsive in games to actively choose not to get content unless I replay the game a few times, or if each route is a bit linear. You say "Renegade/Paragon", but I think VN routes, like Fire Emblem TH's routes.
@@AusSP Personally i would almost always only play through a game once, so i understand SOME of the sentiment, hence a game with 30 endings i wont play through 30 times. But i also think that is what makes it charming, take "the life and suffering of sir brante" really like that game, really cool, and the playthroughs can be done quite differently with a focus on different paths. SPOILER: But in my playthrough i ended up rejecting the idea of predetermined nobility, started a rebellion, lost my family because i cut them out of my life and ended up meeting the gods to remove the predetermined lot in life and have everyone be equal, took about 7 hours. And to me the knowledge that i could have gone the path of being a noble, or joining the church, with various romance options and various friendships means that i will miss a solid 70% of the content, but that is also what makes the game interesting. I find it difficult to sell a game as open world and being exploration based if your entire path is laid out infront of you. and if it isnt it means some things can be missed and that should be okay.
@@zoulsgaming9455 Sure, I agree with that, and I'd never say that someone playing Witcher 3 should play everything. Most things in that game are optional, and at worst you need to turn the difficulty down to bridge the gear gap. But most of them are great! So you want to do them all, especially once you find one that's hidden as a much more boring quest, and now any quest *might* have consequences down the line. If an open world is truly great, then skipping content should feel like you're really missing out, and not avoiding "minor" content. So unless the game stops you from accessing them, it feels like skipping them is closer to admitting that you don't enjoy them. Which is a sad reality of many sidequests in large games - there's less effort, less polish, less quality, or just a really inane system that isn't enjoyable, something that's just there to take up time. If you do it well, every quest and activity should be worth doing. From another perspective, playing through an Adventure game with many choices that lead to unique paths doesn't mean you need to check *all* of the paths. And it's also hard to have lots of meaningful choices, so replaying the game can pull back the curtain, so to speak. Something seemingly impactful just being a different coat of paint, or half a dozen lines of unique dialogue.
I think there's a really interesting conversation to be had about minecraft's end credits. After all, unless you're a speedrunner or brand new to the game (& who is at this point, with minecraft youtube), the credits rarely mean anything. The game only ends when you don't have time or you burn out.
I agree and getting an elytra and shulker boxes after beating the ender dragon is like the beginning to me. However, I see many people that see getting to the credits as, not necessessarily the end, but as a "climax". They don't immediately stop playing, but they start slowing down how much they play and eventually grow board and stop playing.
@@andrewg.3281 yeah i generaly play like that do and finishing my projects after the End then I get the joy of fly around the world I built from the ground up :)
I agree but also disagree, since I treat all games like that, mostly the burn-out part, think about it: you stop playing games when you've done all you wanted to do,, maybe even everything the game had to offer you, so what naturally happens is that you can only do things you've already done, get tired of it and stop playing, until maybe you want to do those things again some time later, or not, that depends on you
Depends on the game tbh... Some games are just endless fomo fueled grinds attached to the cash shop, which is the part the devs/publishers actually want you spending time (and money) in... Others are Deep Rock Galactic. Rock and Stone!
Unironically, sometimes yes. I like that I have games like the Witcher, which I can play through once and enjoy and maybe replay again, but I can also just choose to play to its end and move on. And I also like having games like Destiny, which I know I can always come back to, enjoy the content, and have a good time whether it's my 10th hour or my 1000th, that have consistent and regular content updates to stay somewhat fresh, and are built around a core of repeatable activities buoyed by great core mechanics. Gaming is so diverse that the only thing I want is for every player to have experiences available to them that suit their needs. I want players who want to just play one game for its gameplay to have their FF14s and their Lost Arks, and for players who want their deep single player experiences, which they play then move on to the next, to have their Red Dead Redemptions and Breath of the Wilds.
In Undertale's neutral ending, if you spare Flowey, he could tell you how to get a better ending by sparing monsters. It's the perfect balance between the two tropes discussed here. Rolling credits early, or late. It rolls credits after the final boss is beaten, but without music. Those credits feel incomplete. Along with Flowey's comment and the fact that the game places you outside the final boss before you beat him, it keeps you searching for the true ending.
So when I played Undertale because of my cousin who recommended it to me and the whole world was praising this game, I enjoyed the game but one thing was really peculiar. The last fight with flowey. So in that fight, flowey says you can't go back because I have messed up your save game and that he is undefeatable. Then he also says you must accept that you are dying and there is really you can't do anything about the world and yourself. And funnily enough the game also ends when you die to him and take you to the desktop. Of course you can go back to die again. But there were no credits whatsoever. It was so difficult to accept that the game ended and I must accept this even if there are no credits so I started to reflect on my journey and eventually accepted that I failed to "Save" everyone and that flowey won. I went on with my life and many moons passed. And then recently I found that was not the ending but somehow you could defeat him. I was so mad that I had to convince myself that it was the end and now you tell me there was a proper ending. Get out of here 😅
@@ten-dimension9390 This would actually be a really interesting topic to cover. We often take what a game tells us at face-value regardless of who in said game is telling us, but in Undertale's case the game actually lies to you in a way. It wants you to challenge it not only mechanically, but philosophically as well and this works well with its themes of determination. You could say that Undertale is a game that only ends when you choose for it to end. Putting the game down after dying to and being demoralized by Flowey is just as valid as getting the pacifist ending and while the game may encourage you to get the best ending it's ultimately up to the player to decide how things end. What's even more interesting however, is that while the game uses that little trick of an post-credit cutscene to encourage you to keep playing to get the pacifist ending, it also using that very same trick, counter-intuitively even, to ask you to put the game down once you do get the best ending. It's practically reverse-psychology, and the now the player has to fight against their own curiosity or risk going past the point of no-return. That's just another way Undertale makes us question how we are conditioned to approach games.
Genocide tells you to stop several times (especially in the judgement hall). I was tempted to stop at Undyne because of how much I respected her and the fight. Some people didn't spare Flowey but the bigger problem is that if you do pacifist (first run or not) it's not obvious that you then have to leave the last area without restarting. That's a decent amount of walking before you know if it'll do anything since you assume that everything is done. Also I respect your careful wording that technically avoids spoilers (in the initial comment not in replies which are fair game).
Skyrim was very special in this regard. Unlike my other favorite games ending on highest note, there was no staff roll in Skyrim and it was my choice to wrap up the journey at my cozy home. I felt like Bilbo Baggins returning to Shire after all the adventures for the time to rest, and it was an exceptional experience.
Honestly looked for this kind of comment. Skyrim, in my experience, does open world the best. Yes, there's a story, yes there's content, and while neither are anywhere close to perfect, they kept out the key element that makes the game truely itself: you, the player, and your story. After all, it *is* an RPG, play how you will. But since each playthrough can be different, can be resolved many ways, that's the fun of it. You could be a speedrunner, zooming to save the world, a true explorer, etc. But the game never really ends until you stop
@@peterheinisch2294The game where I spent more time modding than playing lol. I think I never really cared for the series. All I needed was a bow and arrow and a large map where I can spend hours.
The problem with your Hollow Knight idea is that Team Cherry’s said that every ending in the game is the canon ending, they are all equally the “real” or “true” ending to the game. Putting a message after defeating The Hollow Knight would ruin that idea, as it’d basically say “this isn’t the actual ending.” Another thought I had while writing this, the Dream No More ending is about rejecting your destiny and doing it your way, it’s about going off the path the game pushes you to take and create your own path. By adding that message after THK it would take away this idea as the game would then be pushing the player towards Dream No More.
Exactly. Outright telling the player that the ending they got "isn't the end" is antithetical to the entire design philosophy of how the endings work lore wise. Saying one isn't the finale or one is "better" than the others is counter to what Team Cherry wanted. All 5 of the possible endings (6 if you want to count the bonus mushroom ending but that's more of an easter egg) are all equally valid and are all canon.
That is why I loved the endings. No true endings of the game make the game much more open to interpetation and philosophy so making a "good" or "true" ending would kinda ruin it
@@albinofroggy they may be all valid for team cherry, but ontly the radiance one is actually satisfying for the player (given that the vessel us just one new first try bosses that poses 0 danger)
Regarding the second part of your comment, I actually never thought about it from that perspective, it's really interesting and makes sense. However it doesn't change the fact that a good fraction of the people who played the game probably didn't do the other ending.
@@goldenhorse4823 Dream No More and Flower Ending are just objectively by far the best morally though, I’d say it goes Flower, Dream No More, The Hollow Knight and then Sealed Siblings. Embrace the void is either between Dream No More and The Hollow Knight, or after Sealed Siblings, depending on how bad the Shade Lord being unleashed on Hallownest is.
You are nailing it with "I don't know if the optional content will be worth it". I'm currently playing Hollow Knight (for the first time) and I'm amazed at how every "optional" stuff leads back to the main content. It's the exact opposite of "collect 100 cards". If every game would be like that, I would tend to 100% all of them. But they aren't, so I don't and maybe I'll miss something cool because of it.
I played and absolutely consumed hollow knight in september 2021 (It became my fav game). The emotion of exploring each and every part of HK is just different from any other game
If I didn't care enough after playing the main game to want to continue, then I probably didn't enjoy the game enough to get that much out of the post-game/repeat playthroughs anyway.
i wish there was a checkbox you could tick where the game gives you more guidance on where to go, ie credits telling u there are multiple endings, or maybe even a hint section if you're convinced you've explored every part of the map and you dont know where to go from there (thats when i stopped playing hollowknight, i didn't finish the 3rd colliseum and i didnt do all the dream nail fights, but i did all the endings and the grimm troupe.... but theres soo many bosses in that game i havent fought that i see people fighting, and its just sad for me tbh)
My first playthrough of Automata ended after Ending A. A good chunk of time later, maybe half a year, I replayed the entire game and actually continued this time and OH MY GOD this game just. goes. on. and. on. which is great because it's gameplay is exceptional and the story just kept on getting better and more intense up to the very ending of the game.
Every gamer that insists on 24/7 handholding should be forced to play Nier Automata so that they can analyze their own lack of desire to explore and wonder what else they've missed thanks to modern game design.
I just couldn't get past the hacker thing. It made things annoying and no longer enjoyable for me and that's why I didn't complete neir. I'm a person that replays games that are actually enjoyable for every end, but just couldn't do it on that b/c of the mechanics. Maybe one day I'll go back to it, but I have a heck of a lot of other games I much rather play lol.
@@sylki121 the hacking was pretty fun for me, plus it was so easy the fights ended within seconds once you got a hang of it. I cant imagine dropping such a good game over this
Dark Souls, especially DS1, was so good on the 'not everyone content' for me. It doesn't care if you don't kill the Darkroot Basin hydra, or not return there after you killed it, or return there a third time to finally get to some of the coolest content of the game. Doesn't care if you find Ash Lake. Doesn't care if you never find Laurentius, (or talk to Eingyi while having the egg which is even more obscure), never accessing pyromancies. Doesn't care if you don't find the hoops to jump through for the secret covenants. Made finding all those places and things very special.
Exactly, this is what made FromSoft games very special for me. The way FromSoft makes games is just infinitely inspiring to me. Another example is that in TLOU2 you can find a guitar at a certain spot of the game and it'll trigger a very sweet (albeit insignificant in the grand scheme of things) cutscene, and that's easily one of my favorite cutscenes in the whole game.
It also makes the things you do in the game feel like they have no meaning. Nothing you do in that game actually matters. Which is kinda dumb for an RPG with “deep” lore
@@mr.stuffdoer8483 but thats like.. literally the story of Dark Souls. It doesn't matter that you Link the fire, the cycle literally keeps repeating itself in DS2 and DS3. Your action literally have no meaning in the grand scheme of things.
0:43 Imma have to pause you right there. I have the solution. At some point, the player receives a notification alerting them that the Credits option has been unlocked from the Main Menu. Now, you have to never put down the game. I win Mr Razbuten.
Well I can't think of the examples I have also played games where their are 2 credits sequences, a partial for the first end, and a full for if you "properly" complete the game.
i thought about this but i feel like all that would do is taint the satisfaction of the resolution of the story, and also would mean that a lot of players never see the credits which i feel like are important for the developers to get some recognition. Maybe have a notification like you said for the FULL credits (that include all the names, and lasts like 10-15 mins for AAA games and seems to be getting longer every time) and then have a shortened approx. 5 mins credits when you "finish" the main story, followed by a cutscene (marvel post-credits-esque) which sets up some of the end game content and allowed the player to better flow into the extra content as opposed to just having it be a quest marker.
@@IrvineTheHunter Undertale does that, it has a small credits sequence for the Neutral Route (+ advice on how to get the better ending) and a more grander credits scene showing what characters are up to after the game in the Pacifist Route
@@Ad-im1ne Don't miss out, it's probably the most underrated game of all time. A true masterpiece on empathy in game design. For me, and this comes from a massive Shadow of Colossus fan, is Fumito Ueda's Magnum Opus! :D
I think Nier Automata's ending problem is basically already adressed in game, by virtue of the fact that there's 26 endings, each labelled with a letter of the alphabet. Some of them are jokes, that make the credits roll very quickly, but you're quite likely to encounter one of these 'fake endings' during a normal playthrough. This should clue the player into the idea that it might be worth playing again after beating 2B's side of the story. I think the only missed beat with this approach was not labelling the endings after each playable character's code name, so that when you beat the game the first time as 2B you'll get ending 'B' instead of ending 'A'. Then the second playthrough should have given ending 'S', and the third should give ending 'A'. I think this would have made it more obvious that there's still more to do after beating the game once.
True, but B, S and A (what about D&E) would be pretty convoluted and difficult to keep track of, I think. A, B, C, D, E is just much simpler and much more straightforward.
I think that it might be a good point but the thing is, the average casual player will probably actually end up running into a few of the "joke" endings more than likely, which signals to the player , once they get to the end of A that, there is a high chance of something else existing in there. I personally just ran into 2 joke endings in my first play through but there's so many of them and a few of them you don't even need to go "out of your way" to find them, especially the "fish" one where it's an NPC that you normally talk to so you'd just check it out normally. Or going the wrong way for a little bit or anything really, so I think because of that Nier and Yoko Taro are completely valid in their expectations, The endings are not a sign of ending the game but more of a "story" within the game
The game outright tells you there's more to do It's just that the "more to do" is playing the same damn game a second time so you could be deemed worthy of actually progressing
I feel like a strict adherence to credits meaning the end of something can be self defeating, I mean do you stop after the first movie or game of a franchise just because there were credits, no. Do you stop at the beginning of Metal Gear Solid because there were credits, no. Whether or not a game has meaningful content after the credits is up for the individual to determine for themselves. In the case of Nier someone could hypothetically think of each ending as the ending of an episode if that made it easier to digest. Telltale games literally have episodes with credits. As for the people that miss out on some of the great post credit or hidden content of some games, that's their prerogative.
I think it’s kinda weird to always associate a credit role with the end of a game. In movies, sure, but all those have are narrative and visuals, whereas most games also have fun gameplay loops to get you to continue past the credits to play endgame content or new game plus. For me, I think it’s when a game’s core gameplay loop starts to feel stale and lacking iteration when I feel okay to drop it. That can be before a credit drop or after.
Yeah changing when the credits roll wouldn’t help me at all. As soon as the game sends me back to the beginning I’m gonna move on to the next title whether the credits rolled or not.
But now I'm envisioning a movie that puts the credits somewhere in the middle after some false ending! That is such an interesting concept! Would take the idea of end credit scenes to a whole new level. Makes me think of Live Die Repeat putting credits after his 1st death! 😆
Except only ending your playthrough of a game after you feel burnt out will worsen your overall impression of the game, and will only worsen potential future playthroughs because you already got sick of it.
thats what i do with roguelikes! dead cells gave me the credits for the first win, but it never felt like i was finished considering i just got a new difficulty, so I kept going on. One of the best roguelikes I've played truly speaking (not as good as EtG because thats the first one I've played)
Playing pokemon as a kid gave me minimum 2 other starters to use that I didn't pick my first playthrough. This gave it a lot replayability because I was always learning more about the game; new mons, their moves, when they leveled up, where to catch them, which ones I liked or preferred, and trying new pokemon i failed to catch/didn't use the first time that interested me. Also the champion theme was a freaking bop and even if the fight was tough as a kid i looked forward to it every time while being a nervous wreck from potential crits and flinches that tended to end me more than I care to admit. Thing is i don't get the obsession with a post game when it's not even necessary most the time. However Xenoblade 2's "post game" aka ng+ is a rare exception and i will gladly sink more time into it and torna if I'm in the mood. In botw I was learning something new all the time or going a different route when i start a new file. So many wanted post game for botw but that just seems silly to me. The battle never ending epitomizes their overall fate to fight and seal ganon - or beings like him - over and over for the rest of time. They can't really move on or be kids for long before being reminded to step up or else.
I know it depends on the kind of player but trust me, rolling the credits does have a neuronal response in everyone, making you less likely to go on for the extra content.
I absolutely adore how Razbuten manages to express his opinions without disregarding other's. His style of video making makes you think about all sides of the situation. Absolutely amazing. Keep up the outstanding work.
@@buffthepixel Yeah like the only players are people who only play a game for it's creidts or 100%ers... Like what abou those who just want more gameplay and love New game + and or the game never ends?
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough I think he focuses too much on the ends of the spectrum of players. On one end you have the people who play games just to complete them, not for the fun of playing games. On the other end you have hipsters who really want to be the only ones to find said content. Most players aren't either of those.
It always strikes as disingenuous when people try to come across as unbiased, even if they’re pushing themselves to really do it. (Especially with reviews) I like to see people embrace the uniqueness of their own perspective in the right way. Dunkey is also someone who does that well.
@@buffthepixel Which is, actually, why I've liked his channel from the beginning. Of course, the other half is that he's good at making you listen to it.
I've always been a completionist in games, and my motivation in games is driven by just experiencing everything a game has to offer and getting as much out of it as I can. I know most people aren't like that, but I suppose it never occurred to me that there are people who would just stop when the credits roll and not even think of checking for postgame content or at least some side stuff, even if they don't plan on doing all the smaller things. In my mind the credits don't even mean anything (I tend to skip them if there's no unique music track), and I'm typically disappointed when you just get booted back to your last save before the final boss.
Same. This entire video's premise is antithetical to the way I play games. There is no world in which I wouldn't have explored every room I could find in Hollow Knight, for example.
Yo i wish i was like that sometimes becuase one of my biggest disappointments of BOTW was being booted to my last save after beating the last boss. I still had side quests that could've been done but for some reason, i was disappointed becuase i love the exploration but felt like no point after that.
It's interesting hearing your perspective of losing motivation to play a game once the credits roll, for me I just keep playing a game as long as the stuff I'm doing is still fun. I'll beat all the shrines in BotW and collect all the moons in Mario Odyssey because those are fun gameplay activities in and of themselves, even if there isn't a ton of reward for them. The coliseum trials in Hollow Knight though? To me those are just exercises in frustration, so they're left unfinished.
I'm pretty similar, I play a game until I deem it myseld that im satisfied with what i've done in the game. He mentioned hades and playing the game until 1st/10th time you beat hades, which was really only the beginning for me. There were so many different builds to experience that you could not possibly experience all of it within 10 hades final boss victories, so i kept going until the novelty of the build in the game wore off on me, which so far has been 120 hours and like 70 finished runs. If I still feel like I want to do more after the goal set by the devs has been reached then I play more simple as that, and it helps a lot for games that might have alternate endings or 'true' endings, especially hidden ones like oneshot.
For me, hollow knight was just me wandering the caverns, dying whenever I encountered something of even slight difficulty, and absorbing the downright gorgeous atmosphere. I liked wandering more than fighting bosses.
If I like a game, I will continue playing after the credits. I won't do something if I think it is too tedious or hard for me, but losing interest in playing a game just because of the credits is so foreign to me. The only time I've stopped playing a game after the credits when there's post-game content is when I don't want to play anymore (which doesn't happen often). Even if there is a greater ending after those games, I wouldn't want to play even if the credits didn't roll.
@@andrewg.3281 I'm not sure if it's this exact way for him, but the way I understood it (because it often is the same for me too) is not, that he immediately turns off the game after the credits and never looks at it again. it's more that after the credits roll the motivation often goes down a lot faster than before. If the game doesn't present me with a compelling reason to keep going or something interesting to work towards after the credids doing things in the game often starts feeling like a chore because you are just cleaning up some (insignificant) loose ends. Even if I enjoyed doing the same thing a lot during the story playthrough. There is just a certain drive missing because you aren't doing it as part of the story (even if it doesn't help proress it in any meaningfull way) but because there are some checkboxes still unchecked. TLDR: Still continuing to play after the credits as long as the game is fun. But in many cases there is a faster dropoff in fun after the credits then there was before
When people talk about how often they have played a game or about how many playthroughts they have gone through, I always feel this is wild Because in my experience, I put in so much effort to get as much as possible out of one playthrough that I couldn't even think about doing it multiple times
It's even harder for me to relate with people who immediately rewatch a movie, or are on the 3rd rewatch of an entire television show. At least with video games, you can choose to play in a different way.
@@notoriousfrog yeah there's that, but in some cases you just enjoy the game so much that you can't help but replay it just for the heck of it. I've played hollow knight at least 10 times by now.
Yeah, i'm betting this is a form of Disorder. Like some sort of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I don't blame them though. I like having sex a lot. But yeah, I'd rather have sex with multiple women of different kinds, than just one my whole life.
I think the placement of Automata’s credits is actually quite logical - they come after you have completed a story. Route A is a complete story. Route B is the same. C&D are complete stories as well. Ending E is the end of the story. It’s actually the one thing that royally ticked me off with the remakes of the first NieR game - the story felt incomplete after reaching the first ending (also the gameplay was tedious at best, which really didn’t help matters). Ironically enough, for a game about flesh and blood humans, it made the endings in that game feel significantly more artificial.
As someone who enjoys Replicants story more, I dont know about this take. Automata doesnt feel very complete without the additional endings because I dont think it makes much of a point by Ending A. Replicant has an almost complete story by Ending A, and then each ending twists the narrative into new themes with small additions or changes. Then Ending E is a fantastic cap off that twists things again.
A number reviewers mentioned that opinion that second playthrough doesn't play very differently from the first, and I think that is a significant stumbling block rather than the placement of the credits or the rewards for multiple playthroughs. Steam stats suggest plenty of players were motivated to continue but dropped off somewhere along the way towards ending B. Contrast this to Sifu where feeling like a master during the second playthrough is in itself already rewarding, independent of any rewards that come after finishing a second playthrough. Another example might be FTL, where the game is intended to be replayed, but there's no special second or third ending, merely new ships to unlock through achievements, and a secret level and secret ship and accessible through random story events. I think in all cases, it's wise to put gameplay first and completion rewards second.
@@dlaniganohara It might be due to me having recently played Automata and I was waiting for a bigger finish because of it. (On further introspection, it was the result of the final ending of the remake that completely soured it for me. It felt like a cheapening of the choice I had just made) I actually felt like Automata had already made a point by the end of route A - it wasn’t done making its full point, but it had already made one. The point it made was what got me through route B, while the final act sealed the deal for me. With Replicant, I was DONE with the game by the time I was going for ending C, so if it had some sort of deeper message in repeating the exact same content three times, I missed it.
@@Arashmickey Route B is absolutely a weak point in Automata, but it’s offset by its purpose - it is basically forcing you to go through the same thing, make largely the same choices with the underlying knowledge of what is actually going on. It’s fundamentally sacrificing the gameplay for the story, which is why I get people dropping off during route B. It kept me hooked through the new information presented (largely related to the game having fully dropped its facade), but I understand that that is absolutely not for everyone.
@@Toberumono Route B wasn't for everyone, but you truly appreciate the lore, and yet the language you're here using suggests the route B wasn't even for you either. The rewards kept you hooked, not the route itself. I think there are some situations where putting the player in a repetitive situation IS the point, and that plays a part in route B in the context of the lore, so there's a seedling of justification there. There's a further step where the idea is to put the player in repetitive situations while also minimally informing or rewarding the player of that point, which route B flirts with because the rewards come before and after route B, moreso than during route B. In any case, there's two limitations to that approach, one you already mentioned: the curiosity or patience of potential audiences. The other is it's self-limiting by definition compared to what other approaches can do. The whole point is you gotta go through everything again, which is why I think the comparison between Nier and Sifu is so interesting, how the subject matter leads to repeating the game and gameplay, and how in Sifu it produces the feeling of "mastery" that is absent or far less prominent in players reviewing their Nier route B experience.
Many years ago I came to terms with the fact that I don't have to finish a game to feel happy that I've finished playing it. Saved my sanity many times.
Yeah i just recently adopted that. For many years i would finish a game for completion’s sake even though I’m whining and complaining while doing it. For the past year i just dropped a game if I didn’t like it. Better for my sanity.
I’ve always found it interesting how most visual novels have a credit roll at the end of each route. I think it works well there because there are very few people who go into them without knowing the quirks of the medium, but if they were more mainstream, I can’t even imagine how many people would play a single route and assume they got the true ending.
i know im replying to an old comment, but i was curious about something. For VNs, are the consequential playthroughs commonly streamlined at all by the developers? Or only by the player skipping dialogue you have already seen and just knowing the order of things/places of things/answers to puzzles?
@@YungRamo It depends on the visual novel. At the very least, most older ones take a more hands off approach though, which I personally prefer. I think it makes you feel more like you’re the one in control of things. I haven’t played THAT many, so I can’t say how it applies to all VNs, but all the ones I’ve finished leave it to the player.
Visual novels still often number or title their endings, implying there's more. Some players are so conditioned to hand-holding that unless you hit them with the JoJo to be continued, they really think the game is over and that it was just bad...
Personally, I'm the exact opposite of you. Not in the sense of being a 100% completionist, but in the sense of *not* even being an any% completionist. I play games that I enjoy, and stop playing when I'm no longer having fun, regardless of whether I'm five minutes or five hundred hours into the game, and regardless of whether I've "finished" it or not. The credits are nice to get to, I suppose, but they're not really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.
I’m trying to be more like you. I have a terrible habit of continuing to play games long after I’ve stopped enjoying them just to get achievements or fill in some other arbitrary completion check list. With less and less free time and a huge backlog of games to play, I really need to force myself to stop sometimes.
I just started playing breath of the Wild and it's the first game I played, I'm 63. The first time I went through it I was just trying to stay alive. The second time I went through it I was learning more about where I was. I'm now on my third time through it and I actually am beginning to understand what I'm doing 😂😂😂😂😂😂❤️.
@@krimson8317 I tried Ocarina of Time, but my mind doesn't work like that 🤣. Mario is too stressful with that clock running down all the time 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. I broke my back last December and BOTW keeps my mind working while my body heals 😀.
@@dragonflytoo First, hope you're doing and feeling better at least. Second, learning "how to game" can be a real steep slope itself and it sounds like you're getting it. Given time and some experience, your mind can be at the point where it will work in ways that it didn't before. My nearly 90 year old Great Grandma (also a broken back this past year) has just recently started picking up games other than Farmville has been in a similar boat. She uses the exact same line, but she's been having things click recently (sometimes to hilarious ends) and is getting much better.
@@1un4cy 🤣🤣🤣 The first time, I accidentally went into the Sanctum 🤣🤣🤣🤣. I had 5 hearts, weak shield and weapons. I didn't know how to get out 🤣🤣🤣🤣! The second time, I got all for .... What do you call them, the bird, the lizard 😂... But AGAIN went into the Sanctum by accident!..... You'd think i'd learn! THIS time, I have 120 shrines, lots of side quests, 300 Koroks 😁😁😁. I'm still amazed at this game ❤️❤️❤️❤️.
Never realized credits have such power over some people, I'm honestly shocked there's comments agreeing with You. They're usually synonymous with game's ending but I don't think they've ever influenced my decision to stop playing or continue. So bizarre, shows how different peoeple really are.
I think legends arceus is a great study in how different people play, like it took me 20 odd hours to leave the first area and 79 hours to get to the credits at star level 9, but some people got the credits in 20 hours and zoomed through the story so fast they had cyllene tell them they weren’t a high enough star level to progress to the next area each time, a mechanic I didn’t even know was in the game because I was star level 5 by the time I left the first area
it's so strange to me as well honestly I don't even think game credits are the actual 'ending' of most games it's just the end of the game story not the actual game. do you not like playing the game?? why would you just stop because arbitrary ending points told you to stop
Credits are always a way for me to stop and appreciate the game I just played. I'll go eat or watch some TH-cam or go to sleep so I can take a break for a bit so I can just think about it and appreciate it. Maybe I won't play for a few days or maybe (very rarely) even a few weeks, but if I like a game, I will always go back to play it more afterwards.
@@idontneedaname318 dude if I want to play a game more after I get to the credits I just restart it????? most games are more than just the gameplay. to insinuate that those who won't play if they assume there is no more story to progress simply didn't like playing it in the first place is ridiculous. I'm not gonna keep playing a save file if I think it only lets me progress things I don't care about (like leveling up skills or getting better weapons). I'm motivated by _accomplishing_ things, things that I _want_ to accomplish. I don't enjoy/won't end up doing things unless I have a specific goal I want to achieve. I like making origami stars but I won't usually make them unless I plan on using them for a bigger project. that doesn't mean I don't enjoy the process while I'm making them. for most games, that's getting to the end of the story. for most games I've played, there is no goal I care about beyond the credits, so I'll just restart the story if I want to play more. if I want to make more stars, I first figure out what I want to _do_ with them.
Okay, I went from “that honestly sounds like a you problem, buddy” to “he’s got a point”. Great video. Reminded me of the “play conditioning” concept Hbomberguy presented in his Bloodbone video. Part of the responsibility for making a great game should include leading players in how it was intended to be engaged with. I’m always going to be a player who prefers “end game” or “exploration” content, but many games are not best experienced that way and it should be clear through the in game mechanics and elements how the designers INTENDED the game to be played so as to be best enjoyed and thus judged most fairly.
I legit only made it three minutes in because of RL issues but seriously, the first three minutes were really, really sad as a commentary on gaming these days. Did it legit actually become an analysis?
@@msmarigold knowing that he apparently changes from the frankly sad "I need to be told what to enjoy" of the first few minutes means I probably will return to the video soon enough. Cuz yeah... that was a rough few minutes. It's like people who refuse to play Morrowind after fifteen minutes because they weren't told what to do. Or RDR2 because they got bored in the snow. Yes, to each their own, but at the same time... That's just sad.
This video isn’t that good. It’s just him rambling about his own personality quirk and how he’s wrong but how there’s benefits to both. Basically figuratively pulls out an orange and says citrus is great, then pulls out An apple and says not citrusy and needs to be cut, wow why even bother? But then Twitter tells him it’s good if you cut it and he’s goes wow it’s so good! They’re both good! I’m still a citrus guy though. No point to this video
@@sidjtd "Your incorrect expectations are the reason you didn't enjoy this" is a horrific problem that plagues people and has done so for all time. Part of growing up is learning to appreciate things for what they ARE, not what you want them to be. And it's ESPECIALLY rampant in gaming.
For me, Nier Automata true ending is the weirdest, crazier, most satisfying, intriguing and emotional ending of all times, nothing can compare to it, and I doubt anything can and will hit in the same way without being a direct copy or inspiration... I'll never forget it, and will forever be my #1
Play Outer Wilds and Nier Gestalt/Replicant. Personally I think Gestalt is the best Nier title and Outer Wilds has the most complete ending I've ever seen in a video game. It just felt perfect.
@@archersterling6726 "to the moooooon" XD... as crazy as it sounds, there's another ending afterwards related to the credits scene that at the end can or cannot grand you a new main screen background... if you didn't get that ending, you should definitely go and do it, do not under any circumstance watch any video of someone playing that part cuz it will ruin the whole experience, it is something that you need to experience your self.
There’s another angle to this I think you missed. If I love a game, I’ll want to continue exploring after the credits roll. Sometimes I’ll neglect exploration, rushing through the story with the assumption that I’ll come back to it later. So playing a game like Breath of the Wild, where the game ENDS ends when you beat the credits, and you can only do more exploring by going back to a prior save state feels really awkward.
Is there any warning? Is there an auto-save you can load, or can you only load the last manual save? I never thought about how something like this would work with games with autosave. Saints Row 1 warns you to save when you're about to start the final mission, because it kicks you out to the main menu afterwards - but there's actually commented out lines in the mission script file to teleport you back to the mission start location instead. Spoiler: But you don't survive the last mission, so it makes sense in this case to exit the game.
@@_comment Pretty sure BOTW saves right outside the final boss battle, if you come back to play after you beat it your save file will have a star beside it.
Something that affects a player’s perspective on this issue as well would be how many games they play per unit time. As someone who only gets a few games a year at the very most, I always try to squeeze as much out of the games I do own as I can, meaning I’m more than used to playing after the end credits. As for someone like you who gets games more frequently, it makes sense that you would not be as motivated to continue after you’ve finished (what appears to be) the main story, since you want to move onto the next game.
That's right! There was a period where I just jumped from game to game finishing them in short time, while not really going back to find all the optional stuff. And while I had fun, I really couldn't shake that feeling that I did not really play the game and whole experience wasn't that memorable. Beating the game 100% (or something close to that) can bring you a feeling of completing a great journey (even if it sometimes gets tedious) and it can be much more memorable. Which is why I recommend that if there is a game someone enjoys, it's more than likely that it will be worth playing after credits.
The type of games I play most often don't even have endings. They're builders or sims of some sort. The game 'ends' when I run out of ideas, or my ideas become so large I lose interest days into trying to complete them. The most famous game of that sort is Minecraft, the limits are creativity. I picked up Cities Skyline again a few weeks ago after years of not playing because I decided I wanted to recreate Venice. Just decided I'd do that. Finished that then off to something else. I just don't think of endings as a concept in the games I most enjoy.
Absolutely love your point. I often see it when I compare myself to another dude at my work. I don't have much money and when I bought RDR2 for example, I played it countless of hours. Repeatedly. 100%ed it. I did everything one could. I knew that it would take a while before I could afford another game again. So I tried to get the most out of it. And heck, even now I still sometimes play it just for the sake of experiencing it again. Meanwhile, the dude at work gets new games on a weekly basis, jumps around all of them, doesn't finish most of them. Especially after credits roll. I often find myself talking to him and he doesn't know what I'm talking about, because he didn't play the games I played far enough... And I often can't talk with him about his games, because every week it's another new one.
@@Humblemud I feel this. I take games slow. Don't always beat them, but try to enjoy them for a good amount of time. But the people I talk to, They rush through games and beat them or discard them too fast for me to catch up. Feels kinda isolating. I feel it also means I'm less likely to spend money on a toxic game because I expect it to be enjoyable.
@@Humblemud Honestly, I feel like this is how games are meant to be played. Not saying that everyone should hit 100% completion all the time, but people literally chew up a game that spends years in the making in a weekend and wonder why they didn’t scratch the surface of it. It’s like watching a movie in 2x speed and then complaining that it was shallow and ill-paced.
This reminds me of something Yahtzee from The Escapists has said. It’s something around the lines of “Japanese games don’t seem to care if the player misses out on the game’s content.” I know this isn’t exactly what you’ve pointed out here, nor are only Japanese games allowing players to miss game content, but I feel that these topics are somewhat in the same boat.
One of the more interesting games I ever played that had a very interesting use of End credits was the first "Ar Tonelico". One of the reasons why this game is memorable to me is how the game handled "Ending the Game" in a rather unique way. The game has 3 Story Arcs or "Phases". At the end of Phase one your presented with the end credits after the "Final Boss" and afterwards there is an epilogue which leads to two choices. One is "Chose to live a happy life with (said female partner)" or "This doesn't feel right". Now choosing the first option ends the game with a Happy but Incomplete ending and amazingly enough you can just stop playing. But if you chose the latter you begin the Second Phase story arc of the game and continue the story. I found this rather fascinating because it felt like the game was rewarding me with more content to keep searching for the best satisfying ending for the game and it really spoke to me about how the main character wanted to give everyone a happy ending.
The one thing that can get me to replay a game immediately is the ability to play through again with all the items I acquired the first time through, which I find to be great. Parasite Eve was the first game I played that allowed me to do that.
As someone who stops only when is tired of playing, I love games that keep going after the end credits and know I wouldn't like messages that tell "don't stop playing, there's more" because then it would feel more like it's mandatory than something like one wants to do. The joy of playing is that one can play however they want at their own pace, pushing in certain directions, making any other choice feel less valid, would in some ways strip this away.
I agree with that but I think it depends. For example, in Nier's case, the end credits is basically a fakeout, signalling the 1/3 point. Still, it takes long enough to get there, so a "there's still content... we don't wanna spoil but keep playing..." message was quite necessary, I'd say. Without being too blunt, like the video said.
I think it depends on the way the message is conveyed. If they told you you’ve completed the game but there is extra content would you feel dissatisfied? Or would it be enough for you? Because not knowing there is content you missed can be a big problem for game devs, to the point the public opinion of the game can be tarnished. In the testing fases of dishonored the test aundience complained for the linearity of the game and how there was only one way to play even though there are hundreds or thousands simply because they had no idea the other possibilities were possible due to their previous videogame experiences. So the designers tuned it for most players to be able to know they could have done things differently. Would that be bad for the ones that could find it by themselves and feel rewarded? Maybe. Is it worth the risk of turning off most of your target audience for this small minority to have a tiny moment of pride? Probably not.
@@minecraftgravityguy the problem with disonorhed seems to be that the devs didn't make it clear enough that things could be done in different ways, it's different: when I see "don't put the game on the shelf please there is more to see" it feels like I'm being begged to continue playing and the sense of surprise and discovery when finding new content is gone, because I already knew there was.
@@razbuten i can imagine you playing Animal Crossing, waiting until the first K.K. concert, and then turning off the console like "great game! Lady I Live With, you can have it now, i finished it"
Personally when I played Nier Automata I found the message after the credits to be crystal clear to me essentially telling me I need to play again. (Minor spoilers for the mechanics of route B in Nier Automata) I felt like the hook of playing a new character after starting up again with a completely new hacking mini game got me hooked enough to think "if this is the B route will I play as that other character that I was wondering about in a route C or something?" which was a pretty big driving force for my whole B route playthrough along with the points where the B route would definitely be different from the A route.
Compare the following comparison regarding "you can now play as Luigi". Maybe if the game dropped the Kingdom Hearts "new item sound" along with "you can now play as 9S" instead of a couple of sentences, maybe Razbuten would've had a different opinion.
Honestly, I think Nier Automata did this idea well, but there’s one change I would make: I would shorten the B route. Making the player play through all of A again but as 9S feels bloated: I would’ve instead made it more like an abridged version of route A told from 9S’s view, containing all that 9S-exclusive content. The rest can be as usual.
I've noticed something odd about myself. I like playing games that don't particularly have a solid "ending" so to speak. it keeps me going but allows me to be like "yeah i can exit out, come back and play, and exit so on and so forth until the world ends". i end up procrastinating on games that do end funny enough
I feel that there's also some level of discussion to be held regarding the role of credits in deliberately removing you from the immersion of the game to pull you back into real life. This could be less common than I believe it to be, but when playing a game I really enjoy, especially a narratively-driven one, I become DEEPLY entrenched in the world and its stories, and when I finally finish that experience, credits feels like a good way for the game to say "hey, your experience has concluded, it's time to detach yourself and return to the real world". At the be time, however, I think this video places too much of the onus of deciding whether to play more on the credits. Ultimately, if you choose not to continue playing the game and miss out, that was your choice. Yes, it may have been influenced by the placement of the credits, but to insinuate it was the fault of the game's placement of credits seems to be shirking personal responsibility of choice a little.
1- as a story driven player: i reach the end of the story the game is finished. 2- Not everything needs to be spelled out to us. Some communication is done via gameplay options. if we see there are other options to try out we may want to continue playing( different builds, dialogue options, multiple characters) 3-I need games to have an (satisfying) ending, otherwise i feel lost and lose interest and that just one of the reasons i dislike open world games and prefer a carefully crafted gaming experience.
My problem with some open world games is the main story feels like an afterthought. I’ve played games where the side quests are much more interesting than the main quest.
Honestly, this seems really weird to me. I always play the post game until I'm no longer enjoying the game or have done all meaningful content. Sometimes I google to see if some content has any value, like the one Assassin's Creed I played, I looked up and found all the collectibles were completely meaningless and worthless and I didn't collect any of them and the game was not good, so I hit the credits and powered off not even checking if there was any postgame stuff. But I'll do any meaningful content in a game I enjoy, I can't understand how the credits could make you want to quit if there is still actual game left, I get how it might end your play session though.
This is my opinion as well. Not all post game content is created equal. Some games waste your time with padding. Sending you back to the beginning and the only difference is enemies are now damage sponges but everything else is the same. Final Fantasy is an example of post game that i like because they really put in development time into it. Their post game has new written dialogue, new voice overs, new animation, new monster art, new monster skills, rebalanced monster stats for higher levels.
I think that's what made Kid Icarus uprising so cool for me. spoilers for anyone who might of not touched it, but it has a thing called False Credits. You beat Medusa credits roll and Hades come out and says "yeahhh no."
@@dthbdbsfgh dang, any reason why? I usually take that small bit of time to just let it sink in. And false credits are usually brief, unless you turn the game off as soon as you see a word then you should usually be ok lol Kid Icarus false credits had dialogue playing so if you're interested in the characters you stay to hear them speak, then Hades comes in and breaks the 4th wall
Nier Replicant and Automata were quite unique in that aspect. Multiple endings, including joke ending, inciting you to grind to obtain the "true ending". The Replicant Remake has quite the surprise in terms of true ending. There was a point where I didn't mind the grind anymore because of how much I had become attached to the characters.
The way that people tend to talk about NieR Automata confuses me a bit. It's how they say that, "oh, beating the game once isn't enough", that you need to "beat" it multiple times. I understand why they say that, but you aren't technically completing the game more than once. Each ending that you get is more like the end of an episode or chapter, not a game. The biggest counter to this idea would be the second chapter, considering that its mostly the same, just in a different perspective. However, you aren't resetting the game. Rather, you are simply picking right back up where you left in the sense that side quests are still in the same state you left them in by the end of the first chapter, except there are some new ones. And no, I don't think that credits inherently denote an ending. What I mean is that imagine if Mario Galaxy had credits at the end of each level. Does that mean you beat the game? No, not really. Granted that kind of thing never really happens except for in NieR, in which I guess that that's the intent more or less. But that doesn't really change what it is. Not to sound rude, because I don't mean to. My main problem with people saying that you have to play through the whole game several times is that it turns people off who, very reasonably, don't understand by "ending" they mean chapter. Its still a long game, but not 6 games long. It's just one game split up into segments. It's an interesting design choice and I'd have it no other way. But if someone asks, make sure to not scare them off by selling it as though you're replaying the same game over and over, rather that the game has a lot of chapters disguised as endings, assuming that they don't want to go into it 100% blind. Amazing video as always.
I actually really like when games carry on after the credits mainly because I have a bad habit of dropping games right before I feel an ending coming on. I want the option to go back in without feeling like I have to reset everything to before a final boss fight, but this usually leads to me procrastinating on beating the game all together. I loved Breath of the Wild for example but I still haven't beaten it. It'd be too strange to beat Gannon and then jump back in the game and see that nothings changed and he's still there.
Unfortunately every Zelda game is like that. I’ve always wanted to continue playing a game post beating Ganon and roaming around hyrule, greeting and interacting with all the people you saved. I hope Nintendo explore a post credits world in botw 2
This reminds me of my first time playing Monster Hunter 4. After 90+ hours of playtime i beat the very obvious final boss monster, the whole story wraps up and the credits roll. That was the first quarter of the game.
I think Razbuten presents a false dichotomie: you ether want to finish every aspekt of a Game, or you just want to reach the End credits. I for one do not fall in those categories. I never hunted down collectibles in any game or such Things. I consider a Game finished when i won every Gameplaychallenge the Game throws at me. So Hard "post-Game" bosses and such.
I suppose it may have been better to say that you either just want to reach the credits or you want to take the game further. Either way, the point he's making remains the same.
I genuinely dont see how thats different from the first camp. Whats the difference between: "I want to finish every aspekt of a Game" and "I want to beat every Gameplaychallenge the Game throws at me."
@@GhostEmblem it’s a bit of a middle ground, wanting to do more than just the main game, but not every little thing and just doing the actual fun things(but yes it isn’t that different to the first group)
The most impactful games I've played always hit me when the credits roll. Imagine if all your movies ended with telling you there will be a sequel and no story close or credits
1:26 totally agree, and that's why I try to delay reaching the end credits as much as I possibly can - especially if I'm enjoying the game. In God of War Ragnarok, I tried to do ALL the side quest areas before reaching the end. That gave me an even greater sense of journey (it didn't matter in the end - I still ended up doing 100% on it). I'm currently playing Zelda BOTW, and I have just given myself the goal of reaching at least 100 shrines, plus completing ALL the sidequests in my journal, before heading to the castle. I see the end credits as a full stop on the experience myself, but sometimes I like to be in control of when that happens. And yes, I've only realised that watching this video lol
I think the entire concept of playing a game just to "beat" it is incredibly outdated, and I don't know why it is still pervasive today. Obviously, it depends on the game. The idea of "beating" a game and immediately dropping it made sense when all games were linear. You could "beat" Super Mario Bros and move on, there's little to gain from continuing to play. (Unless you're a speed runner) With Super Mario World, there were more levels to unlock after killing Bowser, but there was still a finite end and way to "beat" the game. With Modern Non-Linear Games, in particular Open World games where things are not gated in "levels", the game is not "about" just the story, and "beating" it. It's about the gameplay, the interaction with the game systems, the experience of playing it. I enjoy playing games. HowLongToBeat means nothing to me, because I take my time to enjoy the games I like. It's okay to not enjoy all games, and it's okay to prefer linear games which do not have any additional content. There are plenty of games I try, and don't enjoy, so I simply stop playing them. I have no drive to "beat" something I don't enjoy. But of course, linear games with no optional content are not what we're talking about. The subject this video essay discusses is video games that have credits when you reach a certain part of the game, and continuing to play the game's additional content after the credits. The video is not about Super Mario Bros, or arcade games, or multiplayer games, or endless games. Personally, when I am enjoying a game, I get sad when I run out of content, and wish developers would make more content for the games I actually enjoy, instead of making sequels that deviate from previous games I enjoyed. If I like the food at a restaurant, I return to that restaurant for the same food, and if the restaurant changed their menu, I may not continuing eating there. A meal is not a perfect comparison, but it is something that you can return to if you enjoy, and that you expect to be more of the same when you do. Saints Row and Just Cause are examples of two games i enjoy with vast amounts of optional content. These games have massive worlds, and are about existing in the world of the game. Sure, there is a story and a credit roll after completing it, but there's a John Carmack quote about story that applies here. "Beating" the story in those games is a formality, and anyone focused solely on "beating" the story in those type of games is, in my opinion, not really enjoying those games for what they are. And while those game series both have a "100%" you could aim for, I'm not solely talking about that either, they're both just fun games to simply "play", even without a "goal". With Saints Row, a lot of people complain about "having" to do side activities to be able to play missions - my dudes, that's the game, if you don't enjoy then content of the game, just go play a linear game instead. The later Saints Row games sucked because they made them more linear to appease the whiners. I think that these open world games are great candidates for real DLC expansions - full campaigns utilising the same world. But instead, we get DLC which only has like 3 missions. (Just Cause did a bit better than Saints Row in this regard, but it was additional islands instead of reusing the rest of the map.) What happened to things like StarCraft Brood War, which was a complete game that reused the engine? It seems like people who only play games for the story should share my sentiment of reusing engines to tell new stories. Of course, the DLC in Saints Row doesn't even have credits, so I wonder what credit-centric people think about those. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "People are enjoying games wrong!", I just don't comprehend the motivation to be laser focused on just "beating" games like these and dropping them upon seeing the credits, when there is more to those types of games than the story. It could be said, however, that if you want to drop a game as soon as the credits roll, are you really enjoying the game at all?
I too have a problem around that, because i force myself to finish every thing i start no matter what the quality or enjoyment i get out of it. I don’t know if its the sense of satisfaction from compelting something (movies/series/books/games/comics/etc) or just a attention disorder but its not every game i‘ve played but its every one i have previously enjoyed in some way. Its like a fly in my ear annoying me with “You’ve never finished that, why didn’t you” kinda feeling. Its not unbearable or anything but most of the things i touch i intend on finishing if i’ve invested enough time/feelings. And the fun in even linear games like Super Mario Broa isn’t only exclusive to beating it, just like other non-linear or open games you’ve mentioned the fun is in playing, but not having any goal is a turn-off for many and that’s understandable to me. Like you can replay the same thing again and that is great sometimes, but other times you just want something new that feels familiar at the same time and is easy to get into like a DLC, Post-game content, extra difficulties or new game modes. Minecraft for example is an open-ended game for shure but not having any goal or interest in doing something in that game is always the reason i stop playing it for a while.
@@minecraftgravityguy same, i always force myself to play games all the way to the end as well, and sometimes its annoying as hell to not just be able to play a game and do the part i find fun. The exception to this is (luckily for my sanity), mmorpgs, or other games that can take 100s of hours to complete, or dont have an ending.
@@minecraftgravityguy If you can't find something to do in Minecraft you just have no imagination. It's a "make your own fun" sandbox. The goal is whatever *you* want it to be.
@@ayeyuh6920 Even in a game like that, the core sandbox elements themselves can get boring after you’ve clocked over several thousand hours into it like me lol. Doesn’t really make you an un-imaginative person.
Personally I like games that let you play after the credits as it allows you to finish missions, look at the scenary in a more detailed way but I think that most of the after-credits content should be a bit more lore-y or just for pure overpowerdness to help you get a better grasp on the story in case there is a following game.
Post-credits content has a completely different feel than the content in the main story. The main story is linear where mainly focus on just progressing through the game. Post-credits content allows me to slow down and appreciate the game more. Many games have you go throughout the map again for this purpose. Being after the credits allows me to feel like I'm truly doing everything the game has to offer and makes me slow down and maybe do other side quests first so I can savor it more.
I'd be super curious to hear your thoughts on The Longing (a game without end credits). I just finished it tonight, and I felt genuinely guilty hitting the "reset" button at the end...
The interesting thing about this video is that I can totally relate to everything you said about getting your dopamine and how after getting it everything else is pointless, EXCEPT that I get it only via the platinum trophies/100% achievements. Credit rolls mean nothing to me, but getting that notification pop in the corner of the screen is SO satisfying.
I found this very interesting, because it's almost exactly the opposite of how I play games. The end credits are effectively meaningless to me, I play a game as much as a want to (or until it runs out of unique content), and then I stop. And that's it. Like with hollow knight, I finished most of the secret stuff (white palace etc), but I had no interest in godhome, and so, never did it. And I'm happy with that. Now of course, sometimes the end credits come when I'm done and feel satisfied, and that's fine. But if there's more I want to do, the credits simply don't matter. And I think this has happened because so much of my time is/was spent playing roguelikes/lites which never really end anyways, so the only course of action is to play until I am personally satisfied.
My issue has always been that I hate to leave a game "unfinished". That can mean either credits or 100% achievements/exploration, but not really anywhere in between. So once I see the credits, I pretty much have to decide between being done with the game for good, or resolving to collect every achievement. It's definitely self-enforced, and I have left games in between those two, but it never feels right
I have the same tendacy. I'm not sure why, but I will almost always try to 100% a game, even if it takes a lot of grind that isn't always that fun. I get a lot of pleasure out of completely finishing a game.
This is the comment. My exact issue is deciding between the credits, and taking the chance to slog through too much extra content, or just too hard content.
This is actually a genuine struggle for me. I have to completely finish a game, even if I have stopped enjoying it hours ago. With most games, there are at least one or two trophies that I couldn't get, and it still feels like I haven't completed those games. I don't know how to get rid of this feeling, seeing as games are growing bigger and more complicated, so I actually feel discouraged to start playing them. This is especially the case with games with a lot of optional content that you have to go find on your own, such as Red Dead Redemption 2. I have watched videos of it, but I still can't bring myself to playing it myself.
I’ll be honest, I don’t feel like catering to people just interested in getting to the credits and not in finishing the story is the way to go. there’s people that will live or die on the hill of “git gud” and that if someone is unskilled enough they should be barred from the ending. I don’t necessarily believe that, but what I do believe is that the dedication to find secrets and look beyond the credits is something I’m comfortable with them locking things behind. You could say that people don’t have infinite time, but then, that’s an argument against long games in general, and I think that’s not terribly helpful. But I’m honestly fine with having something locked behind curiosity and losing people who just want to add another “game done” to their list.
Yeah, he's a bit of a normie. And a sperg too, like if you know there's an entire story after you finish Pokemon why not play it? Using credits as a cutoff no if's and's or but's is so weird. Like, the game is still there, you don't have to burn your copy when you see the credits.
I think gaming is a time investment - and comes down to a fee types of player: - Those that want to churn through as many games as possible (and to be fair, it feels like gaming as a hobby has become highly disposable. Buy game, finish core game, buy next game) - Those that want to 100% every game. - Those that play games to their own self satisfaction, and move on. All have merits, and reasons for their approach - none are 'wrong' But, all three are rarely compatible with each other. Each will argue what the real value of a gaming experience is. Playing every game. Or playing it until everything is done. Or playing it until intrinsically you feel you have finished with it. No one has infinite time, that's true - but I feel it's not the point of anything in life. It's about how you value using your finite time. If you find value in doing something you love, then is it wasted time? I don't think so. However one plays games, and for how long - as long as they value that time, it's not a waste.
@@cajunseasoning1846 I mean, he got that with Automata, and he still says that if everyone hadn't told him, he still wouldn't have. This does kinda feel like a him problem tbh
Stopping at the credits is related to modern decadence. In the olden days, you got one or maybe two games a year. You played everything you had to death. This is when the designers of these games grew up. Hollow Night's true ending probably inspired by SotN's upside down castle. Everyone that played SotN back in the day knows about the upside down castle. Because you either figured it out in your 5th play-through or some friend told you about it. A lot of game genres have these well known secrets. To get the true ending in a shmup you have to beat it with 1 cc. For character action games, story mode is the tutorial and new game + and harder difficulties are the actual game. Monster Hunter games have like 3 credit scrolls in the middle of the game. Final Fantasy games have the real challenging fights in end game side quests.
I fully agree with this. A lot of our fond memories of media are tied to them being our only or one of only a handful of choices at that time. From masterpieces to more modest stuff like Snake on Nokia phones or Space Pinball on Windows PCs, as long as they are good enough we would stick to them because there was simply nothing else to do. Here I am living at a time where even the much maligned Netflix has tons of great content for me, yet I never even start to watch most of them because I’m either paralyzed by choice or have so many other things that I can do. I think that’s a huge reason why roguelites and mobile games have become more popular. They’re the successors of arcade games. You get the hit if you play for even a few minutes, but you can also get more out of them for hundreds of hours if you wish. Same with the evergreen appeal of competitive multiplayer. You can have fun with a couple of matches, or you can just play cs go forever.
it's nothing to do with "decadence" . it's actually simply psychology. different people play games for different reasons, and enjoy different aspects of games. the Bartle taxonomy of player types classifies the four major types of gamers: Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers. Basically the multiple endings and post-ending content cater mainly to achievers (and sometimes explorers), who have a strong urge to complete 100% everything in a game. but to everyone else, such extra content is just extraneous, and provides no additional enjoyment. such as the creator of video is the latter who feels extra content (in most games) are not worth doing or completing.
I think Zelda games played a big part in conditioning me to find such a sense of finality in the ending credits, because their endings are so satisfying. When I first played Breath of the Wild, I wanted to get all of the shrines, but then I accidentally walked into the final boss room when I had only gotten about 105/120, and then after seeing the credits I absolutely could not pick it back up again. When I finally did pick it back up, it was for a whole new playthrough.
I feel an absolute perfect ending is extremely rare in video games with some exceptions like uncharted 4 (what should I say that was the perfect ending of all time) but what I think a game should end is with the feeling of wanting more instead of half way through losing motivation and playing the game just to see the credits. Like lost legacy though not perfect I was left for wanting more which is good unlike Batman Arkham knight though really amazing games one of the best I feel could have ended a bit early. Most of the games now days became a chore to complete till the end. I feel a shorter but better game is way better than a longer lack luster one.
this video was such a reality check for me. personally i never look foward to the credits and maybe thats because i dont want the experience to be over yet. personally when it comes to me pursuing a game or dropping it, it rarely stops with the credits. for me its the rush of a steep learning curve, mastering the movement of your character in titanfall, or your car in rocket league or learning the patterns of a boss from dark souls or monster hunter to a point where you can demolish them is so deeply satisfying to me. if a game does not encourage mastering its very core mechanics its likely i will drop the game sooner or later and at some point never touch it again
I wonder how many people stopped playing Rocket League after the credits. I wonder how many people even playing the single player mode to play the credits.
Raz: "If developers opt to make most content in a title mandatory [...] leading to a lot of bloat." *Shows Binding of Isaac with the Bloat boss* Raz: "Continuing playing a game after completing it always feels so hollow." *Shows footage of Hollow Knight*
My experience with Elden Ring the first time through was similar to how you talked about Hollow Night in this video. I didn't do the Haligtree at all on my first character and left a lot of optional stuff undone because I just wanted to get past the final boss and see the credits roll. For the most part, I'm okay with seeing credits roll and moving to the next game, but with something like Elden Ring I went right back in immediately.
I personally just don't see credits as an end at all. I say the game has 'ended' when I don't get any fun out of it. And with every type of game this point is different. If the game captures me only by its story then I drop it once I get all the important story bits. Which for a lot of linear games is when the credits roll. If it's mostly a gameplay driven game (like Enter the Gungeon or Isaac) then credits don't matter at all. Gameplay is what giving me fun there so I continue while it stays fun. And so on. Sometimes a lot of aspects make a game fun (like Hollow Knight), sometimes one aspect makes me push through boring parts. Also on the topic of collecting essence in HK, I never thought it was a boring collectible. To get it in any considerable ammount you have to find and defeat pretty fun bosses. It's not like a stupid flag for getting on top of the roof which doesn't do anything.
Hollow Knight for me was quite interesting. I got about half of the true ending by accident and was confused about all of the extra things I had. I wanted to keep playing out of curiosity but was unsure where to start and had to look it up. This ended up sucking me into the larger community which is awesome and I feel like could be a benefit of games where most of the story is hidden after the credits.
I see most games to have 3 endings -main credits (here is where the main plot ends) -post-credits/true ending (extra lore or gameplay that is relevant to the main story but wasn’t crucial to understanding the main story) -100% completion (completing every last challenge the devs have set before the player) And there are those who play past 100% completion but that just means that there is content that has no definitive end (mini-games, games within the main game, obtain unique in-game items (like a custom crafted sword in Skyrim or catching a shiny Pokemon), creating creative pieces, etc)
I really appreciated where the credits are in holowknight due to the fact it show’s how much of the game you’ve completed. My jaw dropped when I saw I had only done 50% in 20 plus hours, and that made me want to find more.
I will typically finish a game once I have every item in the game. Whether it be armour, weapons or other things, if it exists, I want at least one copy of it in my collection. After all that is done, I still play the game until im bored of it.
I'll be honest, I'm a 100 percenter and sometimes I purposefully make sure I don't finish a game without getting everything. Other times I'll get through the story and them try and find everything after; especially if the story is too good to put on hold.
I literally just, can’t understand getting dopamine from credits. Cause I’m not done with a game until either 1) it’s not fun anymore. 2) I’ve got a nice, tidy 100% or 3) I did the thing I wanted to do. (Be it get all secrets, just beat the story, get all collectibles, talk to that one dude and do their storyline…). The credits to me is always like, an annoyance? It’s stopping me and slowing me down from doing what I want to do, so it becomes “let’s get a snack” time instead of “reflect” time.
For a lot of people the thing they want to do is Finish the Main Story. And thus the credits are the signal that they've accomplished that. That's really all it is.
Ngl this is so strange to me because it was never a consideration for me mostly because I'm done with the game... when I'm done with the game. Sometimes this means doing sll the postgame in legends arceus, sometimes it means not reaching the credits at all in minecraft, sometimes I finish when I end a games story or sometimes I have no drive to even finish it. Where the credits are placed doesn't matter tbh.
After a certain point I got tired of playing Hollow Knight and just got the “default” ending from fighting the hollow knight. I knew there was a lot more to experience but I couldn’t fight the radiance and after a while it didn’t seem worth it to get aggravated trying to beat him. In my mind the true ending is sitting at the lake with Quarrel reflecting on our journey. I don’t know if it makes sense, especially since it technically isn’t even an ending, but it’s good enough for me and I’m happy with it. With that being said, when is Silksong coming?
Do godmaster dlc and Grimm troupe dlc including dream no more ending,also silksong release trailer released 3 years ago and team cherry had a recent quote ,"We can't wait for the day we all release the game to you all,silksong can't be too much longer surely",but seriously,Play Hollow Knight radiance ending including nightmare king Grimm and godmaster pantheon 5,it's so worth it and I would do anything to be able to do radiance ending again like you can,my only complaint is too much walking,but please play it
@@aidenallen5922 I’ll probably try fighting the radiance and nightmare king grim again some time, but I’m not sure about godmaster pantheon 5. I don’t think I’ll be able to beat it unless I dedicate myself only to Hollow Knight for a few months, but it won’t hurt to try it. I do hope that silksong comes soon so we all can see what they’ve been working on
@@hairohukosu433 Thanks! I know it’s not what team cherry intended but I’d be curious to know what they, or at least huge hollow knight fans, think of that kind of ending
I feel you. I also get the feeling of finality with the credits. So I instead explore and achieve as much as possible before progressing the actual story. I’m the guy to collect 900 pine cones before the boss battle. Optional over mandatory is my gaming style.
A mid game credit roll like Nier Automata makes the game feel really special. It's like instantly getting season 2 of a TV show right when you thought it was over.
I'm honestly blown away by the perspective of credits being the end of the important content to a game. I've always viewed credits as the end of the main story, entirely seperate from the end of gameplay.
@@raffiking1not always. For example, nobody play mario galaxy for the plot, they do it because the levels are amazing, and in a normal playthrough you probably will probably end bowser letting a lot of levels before getting all the stars, so there are a lot to do after beating the game, nothing really changes
This is such a cool take, I’ve always just thought of the end credits as a milestone that just needs to be seen. I didn’t even think the end credits would be seen as the end. I love you videos
thanks, never really noticed it, but it's the same for me. and now i finally know why i suddenly keep losing interest in a game. it's because i have already beaten them.
As a big fan of soulsborne and the older RPG games, I can say that giving a chance to miss (espaccily cool stuff) is crucial for the true feeling of explorational joy. And that is why I love games that are brave enough to give me the chance to really explore. So a big thanks to Hollow Knight, Elden Ring, and other new Game Developments that give me a better reason to play them than just 100 Markes I can check :)
I remember the first time I actually finished Mario Galaxy 2. My older brother and I used to play it every day when I was 6-7 years old but we never beat the final level. After about 8 years, he left for training, i decided to play the game by myself. 16 year old me cried so much after the credits started rolling with Mario jumping around on the tiny planets and honestly I think those are the only credits I still vividly remember. As much as I want games to just let me continue playing or just send me back to the screen after it ends, I would rather have a bad credit sequence that goes through what i spent nearly 20 hours of my life on than just a "well, it's over chump, get back to ticking off more boxes"
Honestly, I just feel like the solution to this is just to stop putting so much meaning on the end credits. Enough games have multiple ending or 'true' endings that it should be a pretty clear and expected convention at this point. It shouldn't really be that hard to figure out if the stuff you are doing after the credits is just an opportunity to finish the completionism checklist or is actual bespoke content. And some games, like Assassins Creed Odyssey, don't even have end credits, they just continue forever to keep you in the live service model. It's up to you to figure out that that yeah, the story is done, there is nothing left here for yeah. And there are enough examples in this video that people should know they need to be doing that figuring out whether the credits have played or not
The end credit is why I start playing games with a fine brush in my first playthrough. The credits really just have that power to give a finality to games. I find myself reluctant to replay Elden Ring, even though in the first playthrough, I thought of over a dozen builds I want to try out. Fortunately, for Nier: Automata, I found out that it required multiple playthroughs, and I was greeted with the best credit of any videogame ever.
It's funny imagining people getting upset about having to Sifu an additional time after the credits when I'm sitting here trying to finish the first stage without a death before even moving on to the second stage lmao. I haven't played a second of the second stage yet and I already have like half of the abilities permanently unlocked.
8:30 that's the biggest problem with filler and bloat. You can't "just skip it" without also skipping good stuff, or vice versa. I'm a bit of a completionist (play all main content and quests, not talking about getting 900 koroks and other mundane things) so I usually get to "the good stuff", but if games were more focused (especially AAAs, lots of indies are intensely focused on their ideas) it would let more people get to the quality bits because they wouldn't be drowning in a sea of repetitive content and bs. Bit rambly but I hope the message got across lol.
Have you tried Sable ? The game has this really interesting system where once you beat the tutorial and a few missions, you can basically end the game whenever you too . It's also really thematically appropriate and might be one of the best approaches I've seen with this kind of issue
Ironic that immediately after doing Ending [E] in NieR: Automata, I head over to TH-cam to see this video with that Thumbnail :D And as soon as I'm done watching this, I'll head back to the game to complete not only the remaining endings but get everything else 100%. So despite it having technically ended twenty-four times already, for me it isn't over yet! By the way, I'm glad you're back so soon! I hope your family is doing great and that you three will have many new chapters of fulfillment and happiness ahead of you :)
If this is something that would interest you, I suggest trying out the dlc arenas, specifically the lvl99 special rank in the sunken city coliseum. I spent around 30 hours just trying to beat it, and now I have put another 120h just to speedrun the damn thing. This arena is so difficult, you'll discover combat mechanics you didn't even know existed before. It's kind of crazy how much this arena changes your approach to combat in subsequent playthrough.
@@taxevasion2403 I have the "Become as Gods" edition of the game so I count that to 100% completion. Although until now, I was under the impression that it won't take that long to beat. I guess it's too late to stop now :D
@@rinkulink To help your chances in this arena, let me give you some tips. I struggled for a long time but now my record is at 5:06. It's possible, just hard as hell. - Get to lvl99. Check online, there is a cheese with 9S and hacking the golden statue in the Amusement park - Play as A2. Get all the damage chips you can get. No safety net, cause you'll get one shot anyway and having a build around defense just makes the arena harder. You can use overclock and the one that slows bullet near you to learn the enemy placement. After I suggest removing them. - Be beserk all the time. - Chips: HP, Skill, Enemy data, Weapon attack, critical up, shock wave, counter (optional), offensive heal (at least +5), deadly heal (+4), and most of all TAUNT UP! Put as much as you can in WU, CU and Taunt, and the more you beat the arena, the better chips you'll get. - Weapons: Iron Pipe and Fang of the Twins. You use them because they both have Crit+ and with those chips are the highest damage build in the game. FotT also has Bullet rupture, so use heavy attacks to clear bullet storms. Iron Pipe can also stun bosses. - For pods: Mirage, Bullet Shield and Slow. - During bosses, if you don't have Taunt +8, use slow on them when they spawn, taunt, and hack away. With this build, they should melt in seconds. - If you manage to beat the wave with the shade tank and 8 spiders, that's it. You have everything to beat the coliseum, because it's the hardest one. I suggest beating the tank FAST, then taunt in the middle of the arena, use bullet shield, and kill as many as you can before it runs out. - For Adam and Eve, I still use overclock. They are way too fast without it. I have a separate built just for them. If you want more help, come back to this comment and I'll happily give more precise tips. These are just the general ones.
Literally every NPC in Hollow Knight tells you there are 2 ways to end the game. I mean they don't say it in those words but they make it pretty clear there is more than 1 ending.
Probably the best example of credits not meaning anything is is The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and all of its DLC. The game runs the first credits after you beat mom for the first time. Mom is technically the first final boss (it's very confusing), but beating her is probably less than 10 percent of the full game. There is basically no credits after that. I have been playing Isaac off and on since Afterbirth came out and have gotten pretty far. There is an enormous amount of characters, and I think the best part of the game is trying to beat all the different endings with each and every character since they all stagger is difficulty and strategy. This is the "true ending" of the game and I think the way Edmund McMillen, the game designer, made this is genius. I'm still no where near completing the game, but it is still in my top 5 forever.
I think it is important to remember that games aren't homework. Most people's life isn't going to become tangibly better by Hollow Knight moving from a game they completed to a game in their top 5, and Hollow Knight doesn't need everyone who bought it to beat every part of it to stay successful or to be critically aclaimed. Like there is a lot of talk in this video about what you "should" do and what is "worth" doing and I think it is a very backwards approach to judging art, I think people should play as much of a game as they feel like, and if that means they end up "missing" massive chunks of the game because they weren't compelled to keep going, then that's absolutely okay. Like we should remember that there is more art to engage with in the world that would be interesting to us than there is hours to engage with art, so an important part of engaging with art is to follow what you are personally compelled to engage with.
The first game that came to my mind when thinking about extra content after the Credits roll was Hades. Even though the "Credits Ending" makes sense, I think the epilogue is totally worth it and Hades being a Roguelite, I think it isn't that hard to just start another run and see how the story goes on.
Counterpoint: the credits signal that there's a "break" in the gameplay: you can go on after that, you can drop it for good, or you can drop it _for now_ while you reflect on the ending (that you did reach), take a break of this game's storyline and/or mechanics, or take a break of gaming in general; and when you are ready, jump in and see the rest of it. A cutscene alone just doesn't have the same effect. But it doesn't have to be now or never, which you kinda seem to imply (although I see where you are coming from, *mumbling* adulting *mumbling* ) I don't think your criticism of Arceus is necessarily warranted. I haven't yet played that one (but now I want to!), but the Pokémon series has been doing this post-credits endgame thing since forever. At least criticize the entire series lol But you could also be right that the game makers just don't think most players will bother with the post-credits content. I was baffled when I read that the developers of Fire Emblem Three Houses were genuinely surprised to learn people were actually playing several runs of the game to see the different storylines, did they seriously not expect it?
I definitely see end credits as "you have completed enough of the core objectives to have a full enough understanding of the game ti now know who is responsible for this experience". Generally this is shortly after finishing the main storyline of the game. In pokemon the credits are traditionally after the elite 4, who are the final big challenge after the main storyline is done. However, the fun of pokemon is not the story (well black/white has a very good one), its in the battling so the postgame is basically heres all the battle facilities for the elite trainers, enjoy. But the story is typically functionally over. However some games like Pikmin or Portal have a very contained story with a clear end at which to place the credits. (Pikmin is also amazing for being so short, you litterally lose if you don't win in ~5hrs or 30 in game days. Its basically the opposite of modern skinner boxes and actually is very respectful of your time, and is highly replayable) Its definitely a per game decision where to put the credits, and depending on the story and core fun gameplay that will change, if the core fun presists post story then the credits don't mark the end, but if the core fun is the story then the end of the story is the end of the game and the credits should role there.
@@ShadowSkyX well yeah because in the past recent generations, all you could do was focus on competitive. But Black and White had an entire NEW section of the map you could explore, Gen3 and Gen4 had contests you could still do a lot with. In XY you only had competitive and the Friend Safari (and the Looker Missions I GUESS), Gen7 ONLY had competitive immediately after the main story ended (and UB hunting I guess but that's just glorified dex filling, Gen8 ONLY had competitive after the postgame story, and yes that's including the DLC. If you're not into competitive, the past 2 generations (3 if you don't count ORAS) are pretty barren for post-story content.
@@TheJH1015 wrong about gen 7, you forgot ultra sun and moon… in which you defend your title as champion (from challengers you met on your journey, not just randoms) and take down team rocket and EVERY villain boss from past generations that came from universes where their plans succeeded, you ride on a legendary to hunt shiny legendaries from all previous generations, you get a starter pokemon from ultra space… USUMs postgame is great especially for a pokemon game
This is great but I wish you mention more game that is so afraid of having some of their content missed by its player that it end up being worse for it For example Ubisoft games with their disgusting UI, world map and main quest lock behind side content and or paywall
Usually I find once every 5 or so years a game has a combination of a couple of things that keep me coming back. Most recently is Ori 2. The music and movement made me fall in love with that game
I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, especially since I've noticed a few of the games I've played recently roll their credits either too early or too late. To keep my thoughts brief, I don't think every game should end at its peak, nor do I think that the end credits should denote when the player is intended to put the game down. When you're a kid, you usually keep playing a game after you've beaten it, but as you grow up and want to experience more, games increasingly become one-and-done's. Even with multiple endings, post-games, extra content, secrets, a developer should make their game's ending follow the game's identity, rather than the player's intended experience, I believe. This mentality I think is what has led to many of the most memorable endings and epilogues.
I played Breath of the Wild for more than 350 hours before I finish the main quest. In those 350 hours I finished all the divine beasts and shrines, captured all the memories, collected 400 koroks, and many more. When I finished the game I felt so satisfied.
Honestly The credits seem to only matter when I'm just playing a game for the sake of seeing it through and it finally releases me from having to play it. Most games I loved I've played way beyond the credits.
There are definitely games I've loved that I never went back and did alternate endings or side content on. Partially I think I like the idea of my unique story being finished in the game. I had the experiance of playing through it the first time my own way, finding or missing content whatever content I may have, and once that is done I feel like I've had a complete and personal experiance with it. I don't feel motivation to go back and learn everything I could have missed. Not that this applies to every game but its a feeling I've had many times before.
2:56 Children are less likely to finish a 50h game because of their attention span?! Objection! They have a lot of spare time and will probably finish the game several times in a row! In fact as an adult any game that is more than 20h long is a serious commitment and most will never finish it.
As sappy as that sounds I fully understand what you mean. I didn't cry but I got emotional. That final choice left a huge impact on me. I went through about a week of reflecting on this game after I finished it and still think about it to this day. Knowing that before I got to the end so many others did the same for me and I would also be doing the same for others. Without even knowing who they are. A final message of hope. And in the end having no record of it ever even happen. I mean unless you record your gameplay that is lol but from a save state. It was truly a unique experience.
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I'm back. As I mention at the end of this video, I made a companion piece to this that you can watch right now on Nebula. I typically cut a lot of stuff from scripts that is interesting but doesn't add to the main point of a video, and I rarely do anything with it, but I was able to get this one made because of Nebula. I plan to start posting more things there that don't really fit or typically perform well on my main channel, so if that interests you, consider checking it out. If you don't have Nebula, you can get it and CuriosityStream as a bundle for like $12 a year right now because of the Mother's Day sale: curiositystream.com/razbuten
So glad your back , hope your doing ok :)
Best “out on the background” Nebula show right now?
You should pin this, its so far down the comments lol
@@Jesu-vz7lc I had it pinned, but somehow TH-cam undid it. I hate it here.
I think you might like a game called "death's door". It's a really beautiful rpg and I'm loving it so far. It's not a super long game (especially for an rpg) which I think is nice.
The story is simple yet still instills interesting questions about life, and it’s really fun to find out more about the history of the world.
Note that "The Ability to Miss Something" is something that Team Cherry expressly talked about in an interview with GMTK for developing Hollow Knight. Their thought is that the world feels much more alive and bigger if you're capable to forge your own journey, even if that makes you experience less of the stuff in the game.
Yeah - they also said that all endings are "canon", and it may delegitimise certain endings if they don't have a credit roll
I think thats a core part of exploration and discovery that Razbuten and others often miss.
It seems there has been a push towards making more content in open world games which some people has started complaining about, because yes it can be repetitive, but the point is that with an open world with a ton of content everybody makes their own path and you arent forced or expected to do "everything".
Taking "immortal fenyx rising" for example, it has tons and tons of gear pieces to find and while there are a few repeats you might not find everything, which means every player might find their own playstyle from the gear they find, "Oh i found something that makes my arrows deal more damage while im in the air? neat what if i combine it with the thing that makes me glide slower and makes my arrows knock back" etc etc, which means that the various players would have ended up with various approaches to the game, which is somehow accepted that to use one playstyle you dont use another, yet both are ways to complete the game in a satisfying way and you dont HAVE to beat an entire game again as a warrior after doing it as a sorcerer forexample.
Yet for whatever reason it seems alot less accepted that you dont get all the "story" or content unless they are very binary paths such as paragon or renegade, yet i think thats a bit of a simplistic idea, which again morphs into "But im tired of doing this same thing because i have to do ALL the content to be done". I think there is massive value in making a playthrough "yours" and what you find and what you dont you dont. To paraphrase the creator of stanley parable from a GDC "There is alot more value to a player in finding 1 out of 10 secrets by themselves, than there is in them finding 5 out of 5 "secrets" that is heavily pointed at and guided to".
Basically i think if we want people to have the freedom to pick their own path then it also comes with the consequence of potentially missing stuff, and that should be okay, with all the hype for elden ring and liking it myself i fully understand im going to miss a boatload of content, but whatever i have done when i complete it ends up being MY journey, and that to me is good enough.
@@zoulsgaming9455 It's something I "miss", too. I'm a little too obsessive-compulsive in games to actively choose not to get content unless I replay the game a few times, or if each route is a bit linear. You say "Renegade/Paragon", but I think VN routes, like Fire Emblem TH's routes.
@@AusSP Personally i would almost always only play through a game once, so i understand SOME of the sentiment, hence a game with 30 endings i wont play through 30 times.
But i also think that is what makes it charming, take "the life and suffering of sir brante" really like that game, really cool, and the playthroughs can be done quite differently with a focus on different paths. SPOILER: But in my playthrough i ended up rejecting the idea of predetermined nobility, started a rebellion, lost my family because i cut them out of my life and ended up meeting the gods to remove the predetermined lot in life and have everyone be equal, took about 7 hours. And to me the knowledge that i could have gone the path of being a noble, or joining the church, with various romance options and various friendships means that i will miss a solid 70% of the content, but that is also what makes the game interesting.
I find it difficult to sell a game as open world and being exploration based if your entire path is laid out infront of you. and if it isnt it means some things can be missed and that should be okay.
@@zoulsgaming9455 Sure, I agree with that, and I'd never say that someone playing Witcher 3 should play everything. Most things in that game are optional, and at worst you need to turn the difficulty down to bridge the gear gap. But most of them are great! So you want to do them all, especially once you find one that's hidden as a much more boring quest, and now any quest *might* have consequences down the line.
If an open world is truly great, then skipping content should feel like you're really missing out, and not avoiding "minor" content. So unless the game stops you from accessing them, it feels like skipping them is closer to admitting that you don't enjoy them. Which is a sad reality of many sidequests in large games - there's less effort, less polish, less quality, or just a really inane system that isn't enjoyable, something that's just there to take up time. If you do it well, every quest and activity should be worth doing.
From another perspective, playing through an Adventure game with many choices that lead to unique paths doesn't mean you need to check *all* of the paths. And it's also hard to have lots of meaningful choices, so replaying the game can pull back the curtain, so to speak. Something seemingly impactful just being a different coat of paint, or half a dozen lines of unique dialogue.
I think there's a really interesting conversation to be had about minecraft's end credits. After all, unless you're a speedrunner or brand new to the game (& who is at this point, with minecraft youtube), the credits rarely mean anything. The game only ends when you don't have time or you burn out.
That didn't even cross my mind but you are completely right about that
I agree and getting an elytra and shulker boxes after beating the ender dragon is like the beginning to me. However, I see many people that see getting to the credits as, not necessessarily the end, but as a "climax". They don't immediately stop playing, but they start slowing down how much they play and eventually grow board and stop playing.
I have never gotten pass the tutorial idk why maybe I was too old when I finally got into it but I just can't do minecraft
@@andrewg.3281 yeah i generaly play like that do and finishing my projects after the End then I get the joy of fly around the world I built from the ground up :)
I agree but also disagree, since I treat all games like that, mostly the burn-out part, think about it: you stop playing games when you've done all you wanted to do,, maybe even everything the game had to offer you, so what naturally happens is that you can only do things you've already done, get tired of it and stop playing, until maybe you want to do those things again some time later, or not, that depends on you
with the games as a service model, the game NEVER has to end! boy, isn't that great? haha.
Aren't games as service models mostly just multiplayer PvP though? They already don't really have an end
@@lucafacchinetti2522 Mmorpg are a big game as a service model genre.
Depends on the game tbh...
Some games are just endless fomo fueled grinds attached to the cash shop, which is the part the devs/publishers actually want you spending time (and money) in...
Others are Deep Rock Galactic.
Rock and Stone!
@@TheSpeep to da bone
Want to play some sweaty haz 5?
Unironically, sometimes yes.
I like that I have games like the Witcher, which I can play through once and enjoy and maybe replay again, but I can also just choose to play to its end and move on. And I also like having games like Destiny, which I know I can always come back to, enjoy the content, and have a good time whether it's my 10th hour or my 1000th, that have consistent and regular content updates to stay somewhat fresh, and are built around a core of repeatable activities buoyed by great core mechanics.
Gaming is so diverse that the only thing I want is for every player to have experiences available to them that suit their needs. I want players who want to just play one game for its gameplay to have their FF14s and their Lost Arks, and for players who want their deep single player experiences, which they play then move on to the next, to have their Red Dead Redemptions and Breath of the Wilds.
In Undertale's neutral ending, if you spare Flowey, he could tell you how to get a better ending by sparing monsters. It's the perfect balance between the two tropes discussed here. Rolling credits early, or late. It rolls credits after the final boss is beaten, but without music. Those credits feel incomplete. Along with Flowey's comment and the fact that the game places you outside the final boss before you beat him, it keeps you searching for the true ending.
And then there’s the genocide run
fr
So when I played Undertale because of my cousin who recommended it to me and the whole world was praising this game, I enjoyed the game but one thing was really peculiar. The last fight with flowey. So in that fight, flowey says you can't go back because I have messed up your save game and that he is undefeatable. Then he also says you must accept that you are dying and there is really you can't do anything about the world and yourself. And funnily enough the game also ends when you die to him and take you to the desktop. Of course you can go back to die again. But there were no credits whatsoever. It was so difficult to accept that the game ended and I must accept this even if there are no credits so I started to reflect on my journey and eventually accepted that I failed to "Save" everyone and that flowey won. I went on with my life and many moons passed. And then recently I found that was not the ending but somehow you could defeat him. I was so mad that I had to convince myself that it was the end and now you tell me there was a proper ending. Get out of here 😅
@@ten-dimension9390 This would actually be a really interesting topic to cover. We often take what a game tells us at face-value regardless of who in said game is telling us, but in Undertale's case the game actually lies to you in a way. It wants you to challenge it not only mechanically, but philosophically as well and this works well with its themes of determination.
You could say that Undertale is a game that only ends when you choose for it to end. Putting the game down after dying to and being demoralized by Flowey is just as valid as getting the pacifist ending and while the game may encourage you to get the best ending it's ultimately up to the player to decide how things end.
What's even more interesting however, is that while the game uses that little trick of an post-credit cutscene to encourage you to keep playing to get the pacifist ending, it also using that very same trick, counter-intuitively even, to ask you to put the game down once you do get the best ending. It's practically reverse-psychology, and the now the player has to fight against their own curiosity or risk going past the point of no-return. That's just another way Undertale makes us question how we are conditioned to approach games.
Genocide tells you to stop several times (especially in the judgement hall). I was tempted to stop at Undyne because of how much I respected her and the fight.
Some people didn't spare Flowey but the bigger problem is that if you do pacifist (first run or not) it's not obvious that you then have to leave the last area without restarting. That's a decent amount of walking before you know if it'll do anything since you assume that everything is done.
Also I respect your careful wording that technically avoids spoilers (in the initial comment not in replies which are fair game).
Skyrim was very special in this regard. Unlike my other favorite games ending on highest note, there was no staff roll in Skyrim and it was my choice to wrap up the journey at my cozy home. I felt like Bilbo Baggins returning to Shire after all the adventures for the time to rest, and it was an exceptional experience.
Honestly looked for this kind of comment. Skyrim, in my experience, does open world the best. Yes, there's a story, yes there's content, and while neither are anywhere close to perfect, they kept out the key element that makes the game truely itself: you, the player, and your story. After all, it *is* an RPG, play how you will. But since each playthrough can be different, can be resolved many ways, that's the fun of it. You could be a speedrunner, zooming to save the world, a true explorer, etc. But the game never really ends until you stop
@@peterheinisch2294The game where I spent more time modding than playing lol. I think I never really cared for the series. All I needed was a bow and arrow and a large map where I can spend hours.
The problem with your Hollow Knight idea is that Team Cherry’s said that every ending in the game is the canon ending, they are all equally the “real” or “true” ending to the game. Putting a message after defeating The Hollow Knight would ruin that idea, as it’d basically say “this isn’t the actual ending.”
Another thought I had while writing this, the Dream No More ending is about rejecting your destiny and doing it your way, it’s about going off the path the game pushes you to take and create your own path. By adding that message after THK it would take away this idea as the game would then be pushing the player towards Dream No More.
Exactly. Outright telling the player that the ending they got "isn't the end" is antithetical to the entire design philosophy of how the endings work lore wise. Saying one isn't the finale or one is "better" than the others is counter to what Team Cherry wanted. All 5 of the possible endings (6 if you want to count the bonus mushroom ending but that's more of an easter egg) are all equally valid and are all canon.
That is why I loved the endings. No true endings of the game make the game much more open to interpetation and philosophy so making a "good" or "true" ending would kinda ruin it
@@albinofroggy they may be all valid for team cherry, but ontly the radiance one is actually satisfying for the player (given that the vessel us just one new first try bosses that poses 0 danger)
Regarding the second part of your comment, I actually never thought about it from that perspective, it's really interesting and makes sense. However it doesn't change the fact that a good fraction of the people who played the game probably didn't do the other ending.
@@goldenhorse4823 Dream No More and Flower Ending are just objectively by far the best morally though, I’d say it goes Flower, Dream No More, The Hollow Knight and then Sealed Siblings. Embrace the void is either between Dream No More and The Hollow Knight, or after Sealed Siblings, depending on how bad the Shade Lord being unleashed on Hallownest is.
You are nailing it with "I don't know if the optional content will be worth it". I'm currently playing Hollow Knight (for the first time) and I'm amazed at how every "optional" stuff leads back to the main content. It's the exact opposite of "collect 100 cards". If every game would be like that, I would tend to 100% all of them. But they aren't, so I don't and maybe I'll miss something cool because of it.
I played and absolutely consumed hollow knight in september 2021 (It became my fav game). The emotion of exploring each and every part of HK is just different from any other game
If I didn't care enough after playing the main game to want to continue, then I probably didn't enjoy the game enough to get that much out of the post-game/repeat playthroughs anyway.
Also the game expects you to have every collectable for its hardest challenges, so nothing is just collecting for the sake of collecting.
i wish there was a checkbox you could tick where the game gives you more guidance on where to go, ie credits telling u there are multiple endings, or maybe even a hint section if you're convinced you've explored every part of the map and you dont know where to go from there (thats when i stopped playing hollowknight, i didn't finish the 3rd colliseum and i didnt do all the dream nail fights, but i did all the endings and the grimm troupe.... but theres soo many bosses in that game i havent fought that i see people fighting, and its just sad for me tbh)
@@homeyworkey hard disagree. I hate checkboxes. Totally destroys any sense of discovery, which is a huge element of metroidvanias
I personally enjoy games that have an epilogue, but lets you play afterwards.
It’s like a cozy goodbye playground before the eventual uninstall of the game
@@helixier6629 what if you want to play the game multiple times?
I hate when games just stop after beating them
@@smashpow Main thing that i hate about zelda games. You beat ganon and then its like yeah but you cant enjoy the world in peace deal with it.
Definitely
My first playthrough of Automata ended after Ending A. A good chunk of time later, maybe half a year, I replayed the entire game and actually continued this time and OH MY GOD this game just. goes. on. and. on. which is great because it's gameplay is exceptional and the story just kept on getting better and more intense up to the very ending of the game.
Every gamer that insists on 24/7 handholding should be forced to play Nier Automata so that they can analyze their own lack of desire to explore and wonder what else they've missed thanks to modern game design.
Eh, I found the Ending abit underwhelming...
I just couldn't get past the hacker thing. It made things annoying and no longer enjoyable for me and that's why I didn't complete neir. I'm a person that replays games that are actually enjoyable for every end, but just couldn't do it on that b/c of the mechanics. Maybe one day I'll go back to it, but I have a heck of a lot of other games I much rather play lol.
@@sylki121 the hacking was pretty fun for me, plus it was so easy the fights ended within seconds once you got a hang of it. I cant imagine dropping such a good game over this
I stopped after a couple levels or whatever. The game-play was just not refined or interesting enough.
Dark Souls, especially DS1, was so good on the 'not everyone content' for me.
It doesn't care if you don't kill the Darkroot Basin hydra, or not return there after you killed it, or return there a third time to finally get to some of the coolest content of the game.
Doesn't care if you find Ash Lake.
Doesn't care if you never find Laurentius, (or talk to Eingyi while having the egg which is even more obscure), never accessing pyromancies.
Doesn't care if you don't find the hoops to jump through for the secret covenants.
Made finding all those places and things very special.
Exactly, this is what made FromSoft games very special for me. The way FromSoft makes games is just infinitely inspiring to me.
Another example is that in TLOU2 you can find a guitar at a certain spot of the game and it'll trigger a very sweet (albeit insignificant in the grand scheme of things) cutscene, and that's easily one of my favorite cutscenes in the whole game.
It also makes the things you do in the game feel like they have no meaning. Nothing you do in that game actually matters. Which is kinda dumb for an RPG with “deep” lore
@@mr.stuffdoer8483 but thats like..
literally the story of Dark Souls.
It doesn't matter that you Link the fire, the cycle literally keeps repeating itself in DS2 and DS3. Your action literally have no meaning in the grand scheme of things.
@@Reveries0129 So I shouldn’t bother playing? Got it.
@@mr.stuffdoer8483 that's all up to you lol. It doesn't affect anyone but yourself that you missed (in my opinion) some of the best modern AAA games.
0:43 Imma have to pause you right there. I have the solution. At some point, the player receives a notification alerting them that the Credits option has been unlocked from the Main Menu. Now, you have to never put down the game. I win Mr Razbuten.
Game designers fear him
Well I can't think of the examples I have also played games where their are 2 credits sequences, a partial for the first end, and a full for if you "properly" complete the game.
i thought about this but i feel like all that would do is taint the satisfaction of the resolution of the story, and also would mean that a lot of players never see the credits which i feel like are important for the developers to get some recognition. Maybe have a notification like you said for the FULL credits (that include all the names, and lasts like 10-15 mins for AAA games and seems to be getting longer every time) and then have a shortened approx. 5 mins credits when you "finish" the main story, followed by a cutscene (marvel post-credits-esque) which sets up some of the end game content and allowed the player to better flow into the extra content as opposed to just having it be a quest marker.
@@YungRamo I’m the type that just walks away from the screen when credits start.
@@IrvineTheHunter Undertale does that, it has a small credits sequence for the Neutral Route (+ advice on how to get the better ending) and a more grander credits scene showing what characters are up to after the game in the Pacifist Route
Too emotional from seeing .5 seconds of The Last Guardian's credits to properly concentrate on the rest of the video
Hey! It's so cool to see a favorite content creator of mine in another favorite content creators comments.
Okay I thought I was the only one 😂
Not sure if I wanna play Last Guardian now...
@@Ad-im1ne Don't miss out, it's probably the most underrated game of all time. A true masterpiece on empathy in game design. For me, and this comes from a massive Shadow of Colossus fan, is Fumito Ueda's Magnum Opus! :D
@@Ad-im1ne it'll make you cry your eyes out, but it's beyond worth it!
I think Nier Automata's ending problem is basically already adressed in game, by virtue of the fact that there's 26 endings, each labelled with a letter of the alphabet. Some of them are jokes, that make the credits roll very quickly, but you're quite likely to encounter one of these 'fake endings' during a normal playthrough. This should clue the player into the idea that it might be worth playing again after beating 2B's side of the story.
I think the only missed beat with this approach was not labelling the endings after each playable character's code name, so that when you beat the game the first time as 2B you'll get ending 'B' instead of ending 'A'. Then the second playthrough should have given ending 'S', and the third should give ending 'A'. I think this would have made it more obvious that there's still more to do after beating the game once.
True, but B, S and A (what about D&E) would be pretty convoluted and difficult to keep track of, I think. A, B, C, D, E is just much simpler and much more straightforward.
Actually there's 27 endings. It's a dlc secret or something.
I think that it might be a good point but the thing is, the average casual player will probably actually end up running into a few of the "joke" endings more than likely, which signals to the player , once they get to the end of A that, there is a high chance of something else existing in there. I personally just ran into 2 joke endings in my first play through but there's so many of them and a few of them you don't even need to go "out of your way" to find them, especially the "fish" one where it's an NPC that you normally talk to so you'd just check it out normally. Or going the wrong way for a little bit or anything really, so I think because of that Nier and Yoko Taro are completely valid in their expectations, The endings are not a sign of ending the game but more of a "story" within the game
The game outright tells you there's more to do
It's just that the "more to do" is playing the same damn game a second time so you could be deemed worthy of actually progressing
Wait, WHAT? I MADE IT TILL "E" AND THOUGHT THAT WAS IT
I feel like a strict adherence to credits meaning the end of something can be self defeating, I mean do you stop after the first movie or game of a franchise just because there were credits, no. Do you stop at the beginning of Metal Gear Solid because there were credits, no. Whether or not a game has meaningful content after the credits is up for the individual to determine for themselves. In the case of Nier someone could hypothetically think of each ending as the ending of an episode if that made it easier to digest. Telltale games literally have episodes with credits. As for the people that miss out on some of the great post credit or hidden content of some games, that's their prerogative.
I think it’s kinda weird to always associate a credit role with the end of a game. In movies, sure, but all those have are narrative and visuals, whereas most games also have fun gameplay loops to get you to continue past the credits to play endgame content or new game plus.
For me, I think it’s when a game’s core gameplay loop starts to feel stale and lacking iteration when I feel okay to drop it. That can be before a credit drop or after.
Yeah changing when the credits roll wouldn’t help me at all. As soon as the game sends me back to the beginning I’m gonna move on to the next title whether the credits rolled or not.
But now I'm envisioning a movie that puts the credits somewhere in the middle after some false ending! That is such an interesting concept! Would take the idea of end credit scenes to a whole new level. Makes me think of Live Die Repeat putting credits after his 1st death! 😆
@@One.Zero.One101 Our replies are so opposite! I thought of movies having credits early and you thought of games putting credits later. Interesting! 😄
Except only ending your playthrough of a game after you feel burnt out will worsen your overall impression of the game, and will only worsen potential future playthroughs because you already got sick of it.
@@ThatOneLadyOverHere that’s been done! Everything Everywhere All At Once has a false end credits
I usually never worry about reaching the end credits. As long as a game keeps my interest I'll keep playing it.
I do that for Nintendo and some indie games but not much others after the end credits
thats what i do with roguelikes! dead cells gave me the credits for the first win, but it never felt like i was finished considering i just got a new difficulty, so I kept going on. One of the best roguelikes I've played truly speaking (not as good as EtG because thats the first one I've played)
Playing pokemon as a kid gave me minimum 2 other starters to use that I didn't pick my first playthrough. This gave it a lot replayability because I was always learning more about the game; new mons, their moves, when they leveled up, where to catch them, which ones I liked or preferred, and trying new pokemon i failed to catch/didn't use the first time that interested me. Also the champion theme was a freaking bop and even if the fight was tough as a kid i looked forward to it every time while being a nervous wreck from potential crits and flinches that tended to end me more than I care to admit. Thing is i don't get the obsession with a post game when it's not even necessary most the time.
However Xenoblade 2's "post game" aka ng+ is a rare exception and i will gladly sink more time into it and torna if I'm in the mood. In botw I was learning something new all the time or going a different route when i start a new file. So many wanted post game for botw but that just seems silly to me. The battle never ending epitomizes their overall fate to fight and seal ganon - or beings like him - over and over for the rest of time. They can't really move on or be kids for long before being reminded to step up or else.
I know it depends on the kind of player but trust me, rolling the credits does have a neuronal response in everyone, making you less likely to go on for the extra content.
The credits should roll every time a character says the name of the game. Example: "What is this... some kind of Elden Ring?" Roll credits.
Do the credits roll every time they title drop? Like in the intro to Elden Ring should it just end as soon as the narrator mentions the Elden Ring?
After the game name has been quoted there has to be a freeze frame where the characters laugh in the backround of the credits
Ahh, the CinemaSins method
Ahh, Witcher, welcome! Have you seen my 3 daughters?
*Roll credits*
@@teethcoat4274 Yes.
I absolutely adore how Razbuten manages to express his opinions without disregarding other's. His style of video making makes you think about all sides of the situation. Absolutely amazing. Keep up the outstanding work.
I agree but to bad his opinions are usually pretty lame and tame
@@buffthepixel Yeah like the only players are people who only play a game for it's creidts or 100%ers... Like what abou those who just want more gameplay and love New game + and or the game never ends?
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough I think he focuses too much on the ends of the spectrum of players. On one end you have the people who play games just to complete them, not for the fun of playing games. On the other end you have hipsters who really want to be the only ones to find said content. Most players aren't either of those.
It always strikes as disingenuous when people try to come across as unbiased, even if they’re pushing themselves to really do it. (Especially with reviews)
I like to see people embrace the uniqueness of their own perspective in the right way. Dunkey is also someone who does that well.
@@buffthepixel Which is, actually, why I've liked his channel from the beginning. Of course, the other half is that he's good at making you listen to it.
Love the little comedy elements. "A game starts to feel hollow" with hollow knight playing in the background. "Bloat" while fighting bloat in Isaac.
I've always been a completionist in games, and my motivation in games is driven by just experiencing everything a game has to offer and getting as much out of it as I can. I know most people aren't like that, but I suppose it never occurred to me that there are people who would just stop when the credits roll and not even think of checking for postgame content or at least some side stuff, even if they don't plan on doing all the smaller things. In my mind the credits don't even mean anything (I tend to skip them if there's no unique music track), and I'm typically disappointed when you just get booted back to your last save before the final boss.
Same. This entire video's premise is antithetical to the way I play games. There is no world in which I wouldn't have explored every room I could find in Hollow Knight, for example.
Yo i wish i was like that sometimes becuase one of my biggest disappointments of BOTW was being booted to my last save after beating the last boss. I still had side quests that could've been done but for some reason, i was disappointed becuase i love the exploration but felt like no point after that.
It's interesting hearing your perspective of losing motivation to play a game once the credits roll, for me I just keep playing a game as long as the stuff I'm doing is still fun. I'll beat all the shrines in BotW and collect all the moons in Mario Odyssey because those are fun gameplay activities in and of themselves, even if there isn't a ton of reward for them. The coliseum trials in Hollow Knight though? To me those are just exercises in frustration, so they're left unfinished.
I'm pretty similar, I play a game until I deem it myseld that im satisfied with what i've done in the game. He mentioned hades and playing the game until 1st/10th time you beat hades, which was really only the beginning for me. There were so many different builds to experience that you could not possibly experience all of it within 10 hades final boss victories, so i kept going until the novelty of the build in the game wore off on me, which so far has been 120 hours and like 70 finished runs. If I still feel like I want to do more after the goal set by the devs has been reached then I play more simple as that, and it helps a lot for games that might have alternate endings or 'true' endings, especially hidden ones like oneshot.
For me, hollow knight was just me wandering the caverns, dying whenever I encountered something of even slight difficulty, and absorbing the downright gorgeous atmosphere. I liked wandering more than fighting bosses.
If I like a game, I will continue playing after the credits. I won't do something if I think it is too tedious or hard for me, but losing interest in playing a game just because of the credits is so foreign to me. The only time I've stopped playing a game after the credits when there's post-game content is when I don't want to play anymore (which doesn't happen often). Even if there is a greater ending after those games, I wouldn't want to play even if the credits didn't roll.
@@andrewg.3281 I'm not sure if it's this exact way for him, but the way I understood it (because it often is the same for me too) is not, that he immediately turns off the game after the credits and never looks at it again. it's more that after the credits roll the motivation often goes down a lot faster than before.
If the game doesn't present me with a compelling reason to keep going or something interesting to work towards after the credids doing things in the game often starts feeling like a chore because you are just cleaning up some (insignificant) loose ends. Even if I enjoyed doing the same thing a lot during the story playthrough. There is just a certain drive missing because you aren't doing it as part of the story (even if it doesn't help proress it in any meaningfull way) but because there are some checkboxes still unchecked.
TLDR: Still continuing to play after the credits as long as the game is fun. But in many cases there is a faster dropoff in fun after the credits then there was before
Odyssey is a kid's game till the credits, the real fun started after that imho
When people talk about how often they have played a game or about how many playthroughts they have gone through, I always feel this is wild
Because in my experience, I put in so much effort to get as much as possible out of one playthrough that I couldn't even think about doing it multiple times
It's even harder for me to relate with people who immediately rewatch a movie, or are on the 3rd rewatch of an entire television show. At least with video games, you can choose to play in a different way.
Well some games have a ton of replayability! Dark souls series is a great example. Even devil may cry .
@@notoriousfrog yeah there's that, but in some cases you just enjoy the game so much that you can't help but replay it just for the heck of it.
I've played hollow knight at least 10 times by now.
I've beaten final fantasy 1 twenty times
Help-
Yeah, i'm betting this is a form of Disorder.
Like some sort of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
I don't blame them though. I like having sex a lot.
But yeah, I'd rather have sex with multiple women of different kinds, than just one my whole life.
I think the placement of Automata’s credits is actually quite logical - they come after you have completed a story. Route A is a complete story. Route B is the same. C&D are complete stories as well. Ending E is the end of the story. It’s actually the one thing that royally ticked me off with the remakes of the first NieR game - the story felt incomplete after reaching the first ending (also the gameplay was tedious at best, which really didn’t help matters). Ironically enough, for a game about flesh and blood humans, it made the endings in that game feel significantly more artificial.
As someone who enjoys Replicants story more, I dont know about this take. Automata doesnt feel very complete without the additional endings because I dont think it makes much of a point by Ending A.
Replicant has an almost complete story by Ending A, and then each ending twists the narrative into new themes with small additions or changes. Then Ending E is a fantastic cap off that twists things again.
A number reviewers mentioned that opinion that second playthrough doesn't play very differently from the first, and I think that is a significant stumbling block rather than the placement of the credits or the rewards for multiple playthroughs. Steam stats suggest plenty of players were motivated to continue but dropped off somewhere along the way towards ending B. Contrast this to Sifu where feeling like a master during the second playthrough is in itself already rewarding, independent of any rewards that come after finishing a second playthrough. Another example might be FTL, where the game is intended to be replayed, but there's no special second or third ending, merely new ships to unlock through achievements, and a secret level and secret ship and accessible through random story events. I think in all cases, it's wise to put gameplay first and completion rewards second.
@@dlaniganohara It might be due to me having recently played Automata and I was waiting for a bigger finish because of it. (On further introspection, it was the result of the final ending of the remake that completely soured it for me. It felt like a cheapening of the choice I had just made) I actually felt like Automata had already made a point by the end of route A - it wasn’t done making its full point, but it had already made one. The point it made was what got me through route B, while the final act sealed the deal for me.
With Replicant, I was DONE with the game by the time I was going for ending C, so if it had some sort of deeper message in repeating the exact same content three times, I missed it.
@@Arashmickey Route B is absolutely a weak point in Automata, but it’s offset by its purpose - it is basically forcing you to go through the same thing, make largely the same choices with the underlying knowledge of what is actually going on. It’s fundamentally sacrificing the gameplay for the story, which is why I get people dropping off during route B. It kept me hooked through the new information presented (largely related to the game having fully dropped its facade), but I understand that that is absolutely not for everyone.
@@Toberumono Route B wasn't for everyone, but you truly appreciate the lore, and yet the language you're here using suggests the route B wasn't even for you either. The rewards kept you hooked, not the route itself. I think there are some situations where putting the player in a repetitive situation IS the point, and that plays a part in route B in the context of the lore, so there's a seedling of justification there. There's a further step where the idea is to put the player in repetitive situations while also minimally informing or rewarding the player of that point, which route B flirts with because the rewards come before and after route B, moreso than during route B. In any case, there's two limitations to that approach, one you already mentioned: the curiosity or patience of potential audiences. The other is it's self-limiting by definition compared to what other approaches can do. The whole point is you gotta go through everything again, which is why I think the comparison between Nier and Sifu is so interesting, how the subject matter leads to repeating the game and gameplay, and how in Sifu it produces the feeling of "mastery" that is absent or far less prominent in players reviewing their Nier route B experience.
Many years ago I came to terms with the fact that I don't have to finish a game to feel happy that I've finished playing it. Saved my sanity many times.
Yeah i just recently adopted that. For many years i would finish a game for completion’s sake even though I’m whining and complaining while doing it. For the past year i just dropped a game if I didn’t like it. Better for my sanity.
I’ve always found it interesting how most visual novels have a credit roll at the end of each route. I think it works well there because there are very few people who go into them without knowing the quirks of the medium, but if they were more mainstream, I can’t even imagine how many people would play a single route and assume they got the true ending.
i know im replying to an old comment, but i was curious about something. For VNs, are the consequential playthroughs commonly streamlined at all by the developers? Or only by the player skipping dialogue you have already seen and just knowing the order of things/places of things/answers to puzzles?
@@YungRamo It depends on the visual novel. At the very least, most older ones take a more hands off approach though, which I personally prefer. I think it makes you feel more like you’re the one in control of things. I haven’t played THAT many, so I can’t say how it applies to all VNs, but all the ones I’ve finished leave it to the player.
Visual novels still often number or title their endings, implying there's more. Some players are so conditioned to hand-holding that unless you hit them with the JoJo to be continued, they really think the game is over and that it was just bad...
Personally, I'm the exact opposite of you. Not in the sense of being a 100% completionist, but in the sense of *not* even being an any% completionist. I play games that I enjoy, and stop playing when I'm no longer having fun, regardless of whether I'm five minutes or five hundred hours into the game, and regardless of whether I've "finished" it or not. The credits are nice to get to, I suppose, but they're not really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.
I thought exactly the same. Credits or not, I just play a game as long as it brings me joy.
yeah, thats i've never seen the end cutscene in HL2E2... good to know im not alone)
Well said!
I’m trying to be more like you. I have a terrible habit of continuing to play games long after I’ve stopped enjoying them just to get achievements or fill in some other arbitrary completion check list. With less and less free time and a huge backlog of games to play, I really need to force myself to stop sometimes.
Most game endings (the credits) are pretty terrible anyway so it can feel like an arbitrary stopping point. Play until you don't want to play anymore.
I just started playing breath of the Wild and it's the first game I played, I'm 63. The first time I went through it I was just trying to stay alive. The second time I went through it I was learning more about where I was. I'm now on my third time through it and I actually am beginning to understand what I'm doing 😂😂😂😂😂😂❤️.
That's so awesome how you're enjoying Breath of The Wild so much! Have you played any of the previous Zelda games before?
@@krimson8317 I tried Ocarina of Time, but my mind doesn't work like that 🤣. Mario is too stressful with that clock running down all the time 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣.
I broke my back last December and BOTW keeps my mind working while my body heals 😀.
@@dragonflytoo First, hope you're doing and feeling better at least. Second, learning "how to game" can be a real steep slope itself and it sounds like you're getting it. Given time and some experience, your mind can be at the point where it will work in ways that it didn't before. My nearly 90 year old Great Grandma (also a broken back this past year) has just recently started picking up games other than Farmville has been in a similar boat. She uses the exact same line, but she's been having things click recently (sometimes to hilarious ends) and is getting much better.
you mean you did 2 whole playthroughs without understanding what you were doing?
@@1un4cy 🤣🤣🤣 The first time, I accidentally went into the Sanctum 🤣🤣🤣🤣. I had 5 hearts, weak shield and weapons. I didn't know how to get out 🤣🤣🤣🤣!
The second time, I got all for .... What do you call them, the bird, the lizard 😂... But AGAIN went into the Sanctum by accident!..... You'd think i'd learn! THIS time, I have 120 shrines, lots of side quests, 300 Koroks 😁😁😁.
I'm still amazed at this game ❤️❤️❤️❤️.
Never realized credits have such power over some people, I'm honestly shocked there's comments agreeing with You. They're usually synonymous with game's ending but I don't think they've ever influenced my decision to stop playing or continue. So bizarre, shows how different peoeple really are.
I think legends arceus is a great study in how different people play, like it took me 20 odd hours to leave the first area and 79 hours to get to the credits at star level 9, but some people got the credits in 20 hours and zoomed through the story so fast they had cyllene tell them they weren’t a high enough star level to progress to the next area each time, a mechanic I didn’t even know was in the game because I was star level 5 by the time I left the first area
it's so strange to me as well honestly I don't even think game credits are the actual 'ending' of most games it's just the end of the game story not the actual game. do you not like playing the game?? why would you just stop because arbitrary ending points told you to stop
Credits are always a way for me to stop and appreciate the game I just played. I'll go eat or watch some TH-cam or go to sleep so I can take a break for a bit so I can just think about it and appreciate it. Maybe I won't play for a few days or maybe (very rarely) even a few weeks, but if I like a game, I will always go back to play it more afterwards.
Mean in legends arceus it tells you your next objective literally right after the credits.
@@idontneedaname318 dude if I want to play a game more after I get to the credits I just restart it?????
most games are more than just the gameplay. to insinuate that those who won't play if they assume there is no more story to progress simply didn't like playing it in the first place is ridiculous. I'm not gonna keep playing a save file if I think it only lets me progress things I don't care about (like leveling up skills or getting better weapons).
I'm motivated by _accomplishing_ things, things that I _want_ to accomplish. I don't enjoy/won't end up doing things unless I have a specific goal I want to achieve. I like making origami stars but I won't usually make them unless I plan on using them for a bigger project. that doesn't mean I don't enjoy the process while I'm making them. for most games, that's getting to the end of the story. for most games I've played, there is no goal I care about beyond the credits, so I'll just restart the story if I want to play more. if I want to make more stars, I first figure out what I want to _do_ with them.
Okay, I went from “that honestly sounds like a you problem, buddy” to “he’s got a point”. Great video. Reminded me of the “play conditioning” concept Hbomberguy presented in his Bloodbone video. Part of the responsibility for making a great game should include leading players in how it was intended to be engaged with. I’m always going to be a player who prefers “end game” or “exploration” content, but many games are not best experienced that way and it should be clear through the in game mechanics and elements how the designers INTENDED the game to be played so as to be best enjoyed and thus judged most fairly.
I legit only made it three minutes in because of RL issues but seriously, the first three minutes were really, really sad as a commentary on gaming these days.
Did it legit actually become an analysis?
@@yondie491 yeah, I’d consider it worth a watch. Not sure if you’ll agree with him but it’s a worthwhile perspective.
@@msmarigold knowing that he apparently changes from the frankly sad "I need to be told what to enjoy" of the first few minutes means I probably will return to the video soon enough.
Cuz yeah... that was a rough few minutes.
It's like people who refuse to play Morrowind after fifteen minutes because they weren't told what to do. Or RDR2 because they got bored in the snow.
Yes, to each their own, but at the same time...
That's just sad.
This video isn’t that good. It’s just him rambling about his own personality quirk and how he’s wrong but how there’s benefits to both.
Basically figuratively pulls out an orange and says citrus is great, then pulls out An apple and says not citrusy and needs to be cut, wow why even bother? But then Twitter tells him it’s good if you cut it and he’s goes wow it’s so good! They’re both good! I’m still a citrus guy though. No point to this video
@@sidjtd "Your incorrect expectations are the reason you didn't enjoy this" is a horrific problem that plagues people and has done so for all time. Part of growing up is learning to appreciate things for what they ARE, not what you want them to be.
And it's ESPECIALLY rampant in gaming.
For me, Nier Automata true ending is the weirdest, crazier, most satisfying, intriguing and emotional ending of all times, nothing can compare to it, and I doubt anything can and will hit in the same way without being a direct copy or inspiration... I'll never forget it, and will forever be my #1
Wait, I played it like 2 years ago. I got the E I think (let's call it To The Moon to not spoil). There is more?
@@archersterling6726 No, E is the true ending. There’s 21 joke endings and a DLC “ending” as well but those are just Yoko Taro being weird.
Play Outer Wilds and Nier Gestalt/Replicant. Personally I think Gestalt is the best Nier title and Outer Wilds has the most complete ending I've ever seen in a video game. It just felt perfect.
@@archersterling6726 "to the moooooon" XD... as crazy as it sounds, there's another ending afterwards related to the credits scene that at the end can or cannot grand you a new main screen background... if you didn't get that ending, you should definitely go and do it, do not under any circumstance watch any video of someone playing that part cuz it will ruin the whole experience, it is something that you need to experience your self.
@@mr.stuffdoer8483 by joke ending are you referring to the credits ending thing?
There’s another angle to this I think you missed. If I love a game, I’ll want to continue exploring after the credits roll. Sometimes I’ll neglect exploration, rushing through the story with the assumption that I’ll come back to it later.
So playing a game like Breath of the Wild, where the game ENDS ends when you beat the credits, and you can only do more exploring by going back to a prior save state feels really awkward.
Is there any warning?
Is there an auto-save you can load, or can you only load the last manual save?
I never thought about how something like this would work with games with autosave.
Saints Row 1 warns you to save when you're about to start the final mission, because it kicks you out to the main menu afterwards - but there's actually commented out lines in the mission script file to teleport you back to the mission start location instead. Spoiler: But you don't survive the last mission, so it makes sense in this case to exit the game.
@@_comment Pretty sure BOTW saves right outside the final boss battle, if you come back to play after you beat it your save file will have a star beside it.
Something that affects a player’s perspective on this issue as well would be how many games they play per unit time. As someone who only gets a few games a year at the very most, I always try to squeeze as much out of the games I do own as I can, meaning I’m more than used to playing after the end credits. As for someone like you who gets games more frequently, it makes sense that you would not be as motivated to continue after you’ve finished (what appears to be) the main story, since you want to move onto the next game.
That's right! There was a period where I just jumped from game to game finishing them in short time, while not really going back to find all the optional stuff. And while I had fun, I really couldn't shake that feeling that I did not really play the game and whole experience wasn't that memorable. Beating the game 100% (or something close to that) can bring you a feeling of completing a great journey (even if it sometimes gets tedious) and it can be much more memorable. Which is why I recommend that if there is a game someone enjoys, it's more than likely that it will be worth playing after credits.
The type of games I play most often don't even have endings. They're builders or sims of some sort. The game 'ends' when I run out of ideas, or my ideas become so large I lose interest days into trying to complete them. The most famous game of that sort is Minecraft, the limits are creativity. I picked up Cities Skyline again a few weeks ago after years of not playing because I decided I wanted to recreate Venice. Just decided I'd do that. Finished that then off to something else. I just don't think of endings as a concept in the games I most enjoy.
Absolutely love your point. I often see it when I compare myself to another dude at my work. I don't have much money and when I bought RDR2 for example, I played it countless of hours. Repeatedly. 100%ed it. I did everything one could. I knew that it would take a while before I could afford another game again. So I tried to get the most out of it. And heck, even now I still sometimes play it just for the sake of experiencing it again. Meanwhile, the dude at work gets new games on a weekly basis, jumps around all of them, doesn't finish most of them. Especially after credits roll. I often find myself talking to him and he doesn't know what I'm talking about, because he didn't play the games I played far enough... And I often can't talk with him about his games, because every week it's another new one.
@@Humblemud
I feel this. I take games slow. Don't always beat them, but try to enjoy them for a good amount of time. But the people I talk to, They rush through games and beat them or discard them too fast for me to catch up. Feels kinda isolating.
I feel it also means I'm less likely to spend money on a toxic game because I expect it to be enjoyable.
@@Humblemud Honestly, I feel like this is how games are meant to be played. Not saying that everyone should hit 100% completion all the time, but people literally chew up a game that spends years in the making in a weekend and wonder why they didn’t scratch the surface of it. It’s like watching a movie in 2x speed and then complaining that it was shallow and ill-paced.
This reminds me of something Yahtzee from The Escapists has said. It’s something around the lines of “Japanese games don’t seem to care if the player misses out on the game’s content.”
I know this isn’t exactly what you’ve pointed out here, nor are only Japanese games allowing players to miss game content, but I feel that these topics are somewhat in the same boat.
That definitely seems to be true for From Software
In which video did he say that ?
@@pseudonymef1718 it was a recent one. It could've been from his Extra Punctuation series, maybe the one about Elden Ring?
@@pseudonymef1718 in one of this “extra punctuation” videos
Sounds like a guy who once accidentally reviewed 1/3 of a NieR game.
One of the more interesting games I ever played that had a very interesting use of End credits was the first "Ar Tonelico". One of the reasons why this game is memorable to me is how the game handled "Ending the Game" in a rather unique way. The game has 3 Story Arcs or "Phases". At the end of Phase one your presented with the end credits after the "Final Boss" and afterwards there is an epilogue which leads to two choices. One is "Chose to live a happy life with (said female partner)" or "This doesn't feel right". Now choosing the first option ends the game with a Happy but Incomplete ending and amazingly enough you can just stop playing. But if you chose the latter you begin the Second Phase story arc of the game and continue the story. I found this rather fascinating because it felt like the game was rewarding me with more content to keep searching for the best satisfying ending for the game and it really spoke to me about how the main character wanted to give everyone a happy ending.
The one thing that can get me to replay a game immediately is the ability to play through again with all the items I acquired the first time through, which I find to be great. Parasite Eve was the first game I played that allowed me to do that.
As someone who stops only when is tired of playing, I love games that keep going after the end credits and know I wouldn't like messages that tell "don't stop playing, there's more" because then it would feel more like it's mandatory than something like one wants to do.
The joy of playing is that one can play however they want at their own pace, pushing in certain directions, making any other choice feel less valid, would in some ways strip this away.
I agree with that but I think it depends. For example, in Nier's case, the end credits is basically a fakeout, signalling the 1/3 point. Still, it takes long enough to get there, so a "there's still content... we don't wanna spoil but keep playing..." message was quite necessary, I'd say. Without being too blunt, like the video said.
I think it depends on the way the message is conveyed. If they told you you’ve completed the game but there is extra content would you feel dissatisfied? Or would it be enough for you? Because not knowing there is content you missed can be a big problem for game devs, to the point the public opinion of the game can be tarnished. In the testing fases of dishonored the test aundience complained for the linearity of the game and how there was only one way to play even though there are hundreds or thousands simply because they had no idea the other possibilities were possible due to their previous videogame experiences. So the designers tuned it for most players to be able to know they could have done things differently. Would that be bad for the ones that could find it by themselves and feel rewarded? Maybe. Is it worth the risk of turning off most of your target audience for this small minority to have a tiny moment of pride? Probably not.
@@minecraftgravityguy the problem with disonorhed seems to be that the devs didn't make it clear enough that things could be done in different ways, it's different: when I see "don't put the game on the shelf please there is more to see" it feels like I'm being begged to continue playing and the sense of surprise and discovery when finding new content is gone, because I already knew there was.
Me: I play games because i find them fun!
Razbuten: I play games becuase i haven't seen the credits yet
the paper bagian urge to see names roll along a screen
@@razbuten i can imagine you playing Animal Crossing, waiting until the first K.K. concert, and then turning off the console like "great game! Lady I Live With, you can have it now, i finished it"
Personally when I played Nier Automata I found the message after the credits to be crystal clear to me essentially telling me I need to play again. (Minor spoilers for the mechanics of route B in Nier Automata)
I felt like the hook of playing a new character after starting up again with a completely new hacking mini game got me hooked enough to think "if this is the B route will I play as that other character that I was wondering about in a route C or something?" which was a pretty big driving force for my whole B route playthrough along with the points where the B route would definitely be different from the A route.
Yeah, I didn't think it was confusing at all tbh. They tell you pretty explicitly that there's more to do.
True, his comparison between nier automata and a Mario game is mind boggling to me. They are not the same genre of games but I guess 🤷🏽
Compare the following comparison regarding "you can now play as Luigi". Maybe if the game dropped the Kingdom Hearts "new item sound" along with "you can now play as 9S" instead of a couple of sentences, maybe Razbuten would've had a different opinion.
The game outright states with no room for questioning: “you ain’t fucking done yet.”
Honestly, I think Nier Automata did this idea well, but there’s one change I would make:
I would shorten the B route. Making the player play through all of A again but as 9S feels bloated: I would’ve instead made it more like an abridged version of route A told from 9S’s view, containing all that 9S-exclusive content. The rest can be as usual.
I've noticed something odd about myself.
I like playing games that don't particularly have a solid "ending" so to speak. it keeps me going but allows me to be like "yeah i can exit out, come back and play, and exit so on and so forth until the world ends". i end up procrastinating on games that do end funny enough
I feel that there's also some level of discussion to be held regarding the role of credits in deliberately removing you from the immersion of the game to pull you back into real life. This could be less common than I believe it to be, but when playing a game I really enjoy, especially a narratively-driven one, I become DEEPLY entrenched in the world and its stories, and when I finally finish that experience, credits feels like a good way for the game to say "hey, your experience has concluded, it's time to detach yourself and return to the real world".
At the be time, however, I think this video places too much of the onus of deciding whether to play more on the credits. Ultimately, if you choose not to continue playing the game and miss out, that was your choice. Yes, it may have been influenced by the placement of the credits, but to insinuate it was the fault of the game's placement of credits seems to be shirking personal responsibility of choice a little.
1- as a story driven player: i reach the end of the story the game is finished.
2- Not everything needs to be spelled out to us. Some communication is done via gameplay options. if we see there are other options to try out we may want to continue playing( different builds, dialogue options, multiple characters)
3-I need games to have an (satisfying) ending, otherwise i feel lost and lose interest and that just one of the reasons i dislike open world games and prefer a carefully crafted gaming experience.
My problem with some open world games is the main story feels like an afterthought. I’ve played games where the side quests are much more interesting than the main quest.
@@One.Zero.One101 true.i guess it is just a matter of great storytelling an d getting the player interested and involved.
Honestly, this seems really weird to me. I always play the post game until I'm no longer enjoying the game or have done all meaningful content. Sometimes I google to see if some content has any value, like the one Assassin's Creed I played, I looked up and found all the collectibles were completely meaningless and worthless and I didn't collect any of them and the game was not good, so I hit the credits and powered off not even checking if there was any postgame stuff. But I'll do any meaningful content in a game I enjoy, I can't understand how the credits could make you want to quit if there is still actual game left, I get how it might end your play session though.
This is my opinion as well. Not all post game content is created equal. Some games waste your time with padding. Sending you back to the beginning and the only difference is enemies are now damage sponges but everything else is the same.
Final Fantasy is an example of post game that i like because they really put in development time into it. Their post game has new written dialogue, new voice overs, new animation, new monster art, new monster skills, rebalanced monster stats for higher levels.
I think that's what made Kid Icarus uprising so cool for me.
spoilers for anyone who might of not touched it, but it has a thing called False Credits. You beat Medusa credits roll and Hades come out and says "yeahhh no."
The same thing happens in the N64 Donkey Kong game (I forget what exactly it's called) and Zuma's Revenge.
@@dthbdbsfgh dang, any reason why? I usually take that small bit of time to just let it sink in.
And false credits are usually brief, unless you turn the game off as soon as you see a word then you should usually be ok lol
Kid Icarus false credits had dialogue playing so if you're interested in the characters you stay to hear them speak, then Hades comes in and breaks the 4th wall
@@dthbdbsfgh you should play donkey Kong country. The end credits are hilarious. Scared me bad though as a kid
@@victor_creator It's, uh. Donkey Kong 64
@@elijahbigsby4154 I probably could have guessed that.
Nier Replicant and Automata were quite unique in that aspect. Multiple endings, including joke ending, inciting you to grind to obtain the "true ending". The Replicant Remake has quite the surprise in terms of true ending. There was a point where I didn't mind the grind anymore because of how much I had become attached to the characters.
The way that people tend to talk about NieR Automata confuses me a bit. It's how they say that, "oh, beating the game once isn't enough", that you need to "beat" it multiple times. I understand why they say that, but you aren't technically completing the game more than once. Each ending that you get is more like the end of an episode or chapter, not a game. The biggest counter to this idea would be the second chapter, considering that its mostly the same, just in a different perspective. However, you aren't resetting the game. Rather, you are simply picking right back up where you left in the sense that side quests are still in the same state you left them in by the end of the first chapter, except there are some new ones. And no, I don't think that credits inherently denote an ending. What I mean is that imagine if Mario Galaxy had credits at the end of each level. Does that mean you beat the game? No, not really. Granted that kind of thing never really happens except for in NieR, in which I guess that that's the intent more or less. But that doesn't really change what it is. Not to sound rude, because I don't mean to.
My main problem with people saying that you have to play through the whole game several times is that it turns people off who, very reasonably, don't understand by "ending" they mean chapter. Its still a long game, but not 6 games long. It's just one game split up into segments. It's an interesting design choice and I'd have it no other way. But if someone asks, make sure to not scare them off by selling it as though you're replaying the same game over and over, rather that the game has a lot of chapters disguised as endings, assuming that they don't want to go into it 100% blind. Amazing video as always.
I actually really like when games carry on after the credits mainly because I have a bad habit of dropping games right before I feel an ending coming on. I want the option to go back in without feeling like I have to reset everything to before a final boss fight, but this usually leads to me procrastinating on beating the game all together. I loved Breath of the Wild for example but I still haven't beaten it. It'd be too strange to beat Gannon and then jump back in the game and see that nothings changed and he's still there.
Thanks for the spoiler
@@SummonerArthur The game is 5 years old grow up
@@bighomie7991 the game is only* 5 years old.
Unfortunately every Zelda game is like that. I’ve always wanted to continue playing a game post beating Ganon and roaming around hyrule, greeting and interacting with all the people you saved. I hope Nintendo explore a post credits world in botw 2
@@SummonerArthur dude, it's been 5 years, easy. Besides how is that even a spoiler? That you beat Gannon? Big shock
This reminds me of my first time playing Monster Hunter 4. After 90+ hours of playtime i beat the very obvious final boss monster, the whole story wraps up and the credits roll. That was the first quarter of the game.
I think Razbuten presents a false dichotomie: you ether want to finish every aspekt of a Game, or you just want to reach the End credits. I for one do not fall in those categories. I never hunted down collectibles in any game or such Things. I consider a Game finished when i won every Gameplaychallenge the Game throws at me. So Hard "post-Game" bosses and such.
Same, for me it’s main story and most or all side quests(unless they need me to just get collectables)
I suppose it may have been better to say that you either just want to reach the credits or you want to take the game further. Either way, the point he's making remains the same.
I genuinely dont see how thats different from the first camp. Whats the difference between: "I want to finish every aspekt of a Game" and "I want to beat every Gameplaychallenge the Game throws at me."
@@Behemoth399 true
@@GhostEmblem it’s a bit of a middle ground, wanting to do more than just the main game, but not every little thing and just doing the actual fun things(but yes it isn’t that different to the first group)
The most impactful games I've played always hit me when the credits roll. Imagine if all your movies ended with telling you there will be a sequel and no story close or credits
1:26 totally agree, and that's why I try to delay reaching the end credits as much as I possibly can - especially if I'm enjoying the game.
In God of War Ragnarok, I tried to do ALL the side quest areas before reaching the end. That gave me an even greater sense of journey (it didn't matter in the end - I still ended up doing 100% on it).
I'm currently playing Zelda BOTW, and I have just given myself the goal of reaching at least 100 shrines, plus completing ALL the sidequests in my journal, before heading to the castle. I see the end credits as a full stop on the experience myself, but sometimes I like to be in control of when that happens.
And yes, I've only realised that watching this video lol
I think the entire concept of playing a game just to "beat" it is incredibly outdated, and I don't know why it is still pervasive today.
Obviously, it depends on the game.
The idea of "beating" a game and immediately dropping it made sense when all games were linear.
You could "beat" Super Mario Bros and move on, there's little to gain from continuing to play. (Unless you're a speed runner) With Super Mario World, there were more levels to unlock after killing Bowser, but there was still a finite end and way to "beat" the game.
With Modern Non-Linear Games, in particular Open World games where things are not gated in "levels", the game is not "about" just the story, and "beating" it. It's about the gameplay, the interaction with the game systems, the experience of playing it.
I enjoy playing games. HowLongToBeat means nothing to me, because I take my time to enjoy the games I like.
It's okay to not enjoy all games, and it's okay to prefer linear games which do not have any additional content.
There are plenty of games I try, and don't enjoy, so I simply stop playing them. I have no drive to "beat" something I don't enjoy.
But of course, linear games with no optional content are not what we're talking about. The subject this video essay discusses is video games that have credits when you reach a certain part of the game, and continuing to play the game's additional content after the credits. The video is not about Super Mario Bros, or arcade games, or multiplayer games, or endless games.
Personally, when I am enjoying a game, I get sad when I run out of content, and wish developers would make more content for the games I actually enjoy, instead of making sequels that deviate from previous games I enjoyed.
If I like the food at a restaurant, I return to that restaurant for the same food, and if the restaurant changed their menu, I may not continuing eating there.
A meal is not a perfect comparison, but it is something that you can return to if you enjoy, and that you expect to be more of the same when you do.
Saints Row and Just Cause are examples of two games i enjoy with vast amounts of optional content.
These games have massive worlds, and are about existing in the world of the game. Sure, there is a story and a credit roll after completing it, but there's a John Carmack quote about story that applies here.
"Beating" the story in those games is a formality, and anyone focused solely on "beating" the story in those type of games is, in my opinion, not really enjoying those games for what they are. And while those game series both have a "100%" you could aim for, I'm not solely talking about that either, they're both just fun games to simply "play", even without a "goal".
With Saints Row, a lot of people complain about "having" to do side activities to be able to play missions - my dudes, that's the game, if you don't enjoy then content of the game, just go play a linear game instead. The later Saints Row games sucked because they made them more linear to appease the whiners.
I think that these open world games are great candidates for real DLC expansions - full campaigns utilising the same world. But instead, we get DLC which only has like 3 missions. (Just Cause did a bit better than Saints Row in this regard, but it was additional islands instead of reusing the rest of the map.) What happened to things like StarCraft Brood War, which was a complete game that reused the engine?
It seems like people who only play games for the story should share my sentiment of reusing engines to tell new stories. Of course, the DLC in Saints Row doesn't even have credits, so I wonder what credit-centric people think about those.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "People are enjoying games wrong!", I just don't comprehend the motivation to be laser focused on just "beating" games like these and dropping them upon seeing the credits, when there is more to those types of games than the story.
It could be said, however, that if you want to drop a game as soon as the credits roll, are you really enjoying the game at all?
I too have a problem around that, because i force myself to finish every thing i start no matter what the quality or enjoyment i get out of it. I don’t know if its the sense of satisfaction from compelting something (movies/series/books/games/comics/etc) or just a attention disorder but its not every game i‘ve played but its every one i have previously enjoyed in some way. Its like a fly in my ear annoying me with “You’ve never finished that, why didn’t you” kinda feeling. Its not unbearable or anything but most of the things i touch i intend on finishing if i’ve invested enough time/feelings. And the fun in even linear games like Super Mario Broa isn’t only exclusive to beating it, just like other non-linear or open games you’ve mentioned the fun is in playing, but not having any goal is a turn-off for many and that’s understandable to me. Like you can replay the same thing again and that is great sometimes, but other times you just want something new that feels familiar at the same time and is easy to get into like a DLC, Post-game content, extra difficulties or new game modes. Minecraft for example is an open-ended game for shure but not having any goal or interest in doing something in that game is always the reason i stop playing it for a while.
@@minecraftgravityguy same, i always force myself to play games all the way to the end as well, and sometimes its annoying as hell to not just be able to play a game and do the part i find fun.
The exception to this is (luckily for my sanity), mmorpgs, or other games that can take 100s of hours to complete, or dont have an ending.
absolutely
@@minecraftgravityguy If you can't find something to do in Minecraft you just have no imagination. It's a "make your own fun" sandbox. The goal is whatever *you* want it to be.
@@ayeyuh6920 Even in a game like that, the core sandbox elements themselves can get boring after you’ve clocked over several thousand hours into it like me lol. Doesn’t really make you an un-imaginative person.
Personally I like games that let you play after the credits as it allows you to finish missions, look at the scenary in a more detailed way but I think that most of the after-credits content should be a bit more lore-y or just for pure overpowerdness to help you get a better grasp on the story in case there is a following game.
Post-credits content has a completely different feel than the content in the main story. The main story is linear where mainly focus on just progressing through the game. Post-credits content allows me to slow down and appreciate the game more. Many games have you go throughout the map again for this purpose. Being after the credits allows me to feel like I'm truly doing everything the game has to offer and makes me slow down and maybe do other side quests first so I can savor it more.
I'd be super curious to hear your thoughts on The Longing (a game without end credits). I just finished it tonight, and I felt genuinely guilty hitting the "reset" button at the end...
The interesting thing about this video is that I can totally relate to everything you said about getting your dopamine and how after getting it everything else is pointless, EXCEPT that I get it only via the platinum trophies/100% achievements.
Credit rolls mean nothing to me, but getting that notification pop in the corner of the screen is SO satisfying.
I found this very interesting, because it's almost exactly the opposite of how I play games. The end credits are effectively meaningless to me, I play a game as much as a want to (or until it runs out of unique content), and then I stop. And that's it. Like with hollow knight, I finished most of the secret stuff (white palace etc), but I had no interest in godhome, and so, never did it. And I'm happy with that. Now of course, sometimes the end credits come when I'm done and feel satisfied, and that's fine. But if there's more I want to do, the credits simply don't matter. And I think this has happened because so much of my time is/was spent playing roguelikes/lites which never really end anyways, so the only course of action is to play until I am personally satisfied.
My issue has always been that I hate to leave a game "unfinished". That can mean either credits or 100% achievements/exploration, but not really anywhere in between. So once I see the credits, I pretty much have to decide between being done with the game for good, or resolving to collect every achievement. It's definitely self-enforced, and I have left games in between those two, but it never feels right
Achievements are lame if they require grind
I have the same tendacy. I'm not sure why, but I will almost always try to 100% a game, even if it takes a lot of grind that isn't always that fun. I get a lot of pleasure out of completely finishing a game.
This is the comment. My exact issue is deciding between the credits, and taking the chance to slog through too much extra content, or just too hard content.
This is actually a genuine struggle for me. I have to completely finish a game, even if I have stopped enjoying it hours ago. With most games, there are at least one or two trophies that I couldn't get, and it still feels like I haven't completed those games. I don't know how to get rid of this feeling, seeing as games are growing bigger and more complicated, so I actually feel discouraged to start playing them. This is especially the case with games with a lot of optional content that you have to go find on your own, such as Red Dead Redemption 2. I have watched videos of it, but I still can't bring myself to playing it myself.
@@ninawth same here. own RDR2, installed it, haven't even opened it after a couple of weeks it feels like. especially true with The Witcher 3
I’ll be honest, I don’t feel like catering to people just interested in getting to the credits and not in finishing the story is the way to go. there’s people that will live or die on the hill of “git gud” and that if someone is unskilled enough they should be barred from the ending. I don’t necessarily believe that, but what I do believe is that the dedication to find secrets and look beyond the credits is something I’m comfortable with them locking things behind. You could say that people don’t have infinite time, but then, that’s an argument against long games in general, and I think that’s not terribly helpful. But I’m honestly fine with having something locked behind curiosity and losing people who just want to add another “game done” to their list.
Yeah, he's a bit of a normie. And a sperg too, like if you know there's an entire story after you finish Pokemon why not play it? Using credits as a cutoff no if's and's or but's is so weird. Like, the game is still there, you don't have to burn your copy when you see the credits.
I think gaming is a time investment - and comes down to a fee types of player:
- Those that want to churn through as many games as possible (and to be fair, it feels like gaming as a hobby has become highly disposable. Buy game, finish core game, buy next game)
- Those that want to 100% every game.
- Those that play games to their own self satisfaction, and move on.
All have merits, and reasons for their approach - none are 'wrong'
But, all three are rarely compatible with each other.
Each will argue what the real value of a gaming experience is.
Playing every game. Or playing it until everything is done. Or playing it until intrinsically you feel you have finished with it.
No one has infinite time, that's true - but I feel it's not the point of anything in life. It's about how you value using your finite time. If you find value in doing something you love, then is it wasted time?
I don't think so.
However one plays games, and for how long - as long as they value that time, it's not a waste.
This guy needs a bright red alert in all caps and bold that reads "there is more to this game, keep playing"
@@Gaia_Gaistar Seeing someone use normie and sperg as insults is so powerfully embarrassing I think I'm anime-girl blushing. Fuck.
@@cajunseasoning1846 I mean, he got that with Automata, and he still says that if everyone hadn't told him, he still wouldn't have. This does kinda feel like a him problem tbh
Stopping at the credits is related to modern decadence. In the olden days, you got one or maybe two games a year. You played everything you had to death. This is when the designers of these games grew up. Hollow Night's true ending probably inspired by SotN's upside down castle. Everyone that played SotN back in the day knows about the upside down castle. Because you either figured it out in your 5th play-through or some friend told you about it. A lot of game genres have these well known secrets. To get the true ending in a shmup you have to beat it with 1 cc. For character action games, story mode is the tutorial and new game + and harder difficulties are the actual game. Monster Hunter games have like 3 credit scrolls in the middle of the game. Final Fantasy games have the real challenging fights in end game side quests.
I fully agree with this. A lot of our fond memories of media are tied to them being our only or one of only a handful of choices at that time.
From masterpieces to more modest stuff like Snake on Nokia phones or Space Pinball on Windows PCs, as long as they are good enough we would stick to them because there was simply nothing else to do.
Here I am living at a time where even the much maligned Netflix has tons of great content for me, yet I never even start to watch most of them because I’m either paralyzed by choice or have so many other things that I can do.
I think that’s a huge reason why roguelites and mobile games have become more popular. They’re the successors of arcade games. You get the hit if you play for even a few minutes, but you can also get more out of them for hundreds of hours if you wish.
Same with the evergreen appeal of competitive multiplayer. You can have fun with a couple of matches, or you can just play cs go forever.
it's nothing to do with "decadence" . it's actually simply psychology. different people play games for different reasons, and enjoy different aspects of games. the Bartle taxonomy of player types classifies the four major types of gamers: Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers. Basically the multiple endings and post-ending content cater mainly to achievers (and sometimes explorers), who have a strong urge to complete 100% everything in a game. but to everyone else, such extra content is just extraneous, and provides no additional enjoyment. such as the creator of video is the latter who feels extra content (in most games) are not worth doing or completing.
I think Zelda games played a big part in conditioning me to find such a sense of finality in the ending credits, because their endings are so satisfying. When I first played Breath of the Wild, I wanted to get all of the shrines, but then I accidentally walked into the final boss room when I had only gotten about 105/120, and then after seeing the credits I absolutely could not pick it back up again. When I finally did pick it back up, it was for a whole new playthrough.
Sometimes starting a new save is much better. Feels fresh and new again.
I feel an absolute perfect ending is extremely rare in video games with some exceptions like uncharted 4 (what should I say that was the perfect ending of all time) but what I think a game should end is with the feeling of wanting more instead of half way through losing motivation and playing the game just to see the credits. Like lost legacy though not perfect I was left for wanting more which is good unlike Batman Arkham knight though really amazing games one of the best I feel could have ended a bit early. Most of the games now days became a chore to complete till the end. I feel a shorter but better game is way better than a longer lack luster one.
Hoq about oneshot's true ending? That to me was pretty much perfect
you should buy A Short Hike. same premise, only 2-3 hours to beat, but the music and art and game is just beautiful :)
@@homeyworkey It actually on my to play list definitely going to play it soon.
@@cana0 sadly haven't played it so cant comment 😞.
Try Celeste or Undertale, some people say oneshot is very good but i don't play it yet
this video was such a reality check for me. personally i never look foward to the credits and maybe thats because i dont want the experience to be over yet.
personally when it comes to me pursuing a game or dropping it, it rarely stops with the credits. for me its the rush of a steep learning curve, mastering the movement of your character in titanfall, or your car in rocket league or learning the patterns of a boss from dark souls or monster hunter to a point where you can demolish them is so deeply satisfying to me. if a game does not encourage mastering its very core mechanics its likely i will drop the game sooner or later and at some point never touch it again
I wonder how many people stopped playing Rocket League after the credits.
I wonder how many people even playing the single player mode to play the credits.
@@_comment okay, i admit rocket league was a pretty bad example lol
Raz: "If developers opt to make most content in a title mandatory [...] leading to a lot of bloat."
*Shows Binding of Isaac with the Bloat boss*
Raz: "Continuing playing a game after completing it always feels so hollow."
*Shows footage of Hollow Knight*
My experience with Elden Ring the first time through was similar to how you talked about Hollow Night in this video. I didn't do the Haligtree at all on my first character and left a lot of optional stuff undone because I just wanted to get past the final boss and see the credits roll. For the most part, I'm okay with seeing credits roll and moving to the next game, but with something like Elden Ring I went right back in immediately.
I personally just don't see credits as an end at all. I say the game has 'ended' when I don't get any fun out of it. And with every type of game this point is different. If the game captures me only by its story then I drop it once I get all the important story bits. Which for a lot of linear games is when the credits roll.
If it's mostly a gameplay driven game (like Enter the Gungeon or Isaac) then credits don't matter at all. Gameplay is what giving me fun there so I continue while it stays fun.
And so on. Sometimes a lot of aspects make a game fun (like Hollow Knight), sometimes one aspect makes me push through boring parts.
Also on the topic of collecting essence in HK, I never thought it was a boring collectible. To get it in any considerable ammount you have to find and defeat pretty fun bosses. It's not like a stupid flag for getting on top of the roof which doesn't do anything.
Hollow Knight for me was quite interesting. I got about half of the true ending by accident and was confused about all of the extra things I had. I wanted to keep playing out of curiosity but was unsure where to start and had to look it up. This ended up sucking me into the larger community which is awesome and I feel like could be a benefit of games where most of the story is hidden after the credits.
I see most games to have 3 endings
-main credits (here is where the main plot ends)
-post-credits/true ending (extra lore or gameplay that is relevant to the main story but wasn’t crucial to understanding the main story)
-100% completion (completing every last challenge the devs have set before the player)
And there are those who play past 100% completion but that just means that there is content that has no definitive end (mini-games, games within the main game, obtain unique in-game items (like a custom crafted sword in Skyrim or catching a shiny Pokemon), creating creative pieces, etc)
I really appreciated where the credits are in holowknight due to the fact it show’s how much of the game you’ve completed. My jaw dropped when I saw I had only done 50% in 20 plus hours, and that made me want to find more.
I will typically finish a game once I have every item in the game. Whether it be armour, weapons or other things, if it exists, I want at least one copy of it in my collection. After all that is done, I still play the game until im bored of it.
I'll be honest, I'm a 100 percenter and sometimes I purposefully make sure I don't finish a game without getting everything. Other times I'll get through the story and them try and find everything after; especially if the story is too good to put on hold.
I literally just, can’t understand getting dopamine from credits. Cause I’m not done with a game until either 1) it’s not fun anymore. 2) I’ve got a nice, tidy 100% or 3) I did the thing I wanted to do. (Be it get all secrets, just beat the story, get all collectibles, talk to that one dude and do their storyline…). The credits to me is always like, an annoyance? It’s stopping me and slowing me down from doing what I want to do, so it becomes “let’s get a snack” time instead of “reflect” time.
I always thought credits were super annoying. Like I want to skip them most of the time and get to the content I might've missed.
For a lot of people the thing they want to do is Finish the Main Story. And thus the credits are the signal that they've accomplished that. That's really all it is.
Ngl this is so strange to me because it was never a consideration for me mostly because I'm done with the game... when I'm done with the game. Sometimes this means doing sll the postgame in legends arceus, sometimes it means not reaching the credits at all in minecraft, sometimes I finish when I end a games story or sometimes I have no drive to even finish it. Where the credits are placed doesn't matter tbh.
After a certain point I got tired of playing Hollow Knight and just got the “default” ending from fighting the hollow knight. I knew there was a lot more to experience but I couldn’t fight the radiance and after a while it didn’t seem worth it to get aggravated trying to beat him. In my mind the true ending is sitting at the lake with Quarrel reflecting on our journey. I don’t know if it makes sense, especially since it technically isn’t even an ending, but it’s good enough for me and I’m happy with it. With that being said, when is Silksong coming?
Do godmaster dlc and Grimm troupe dlc including dream no more ending,also silksong release trailer released 3 years ago and team cherry had a recent quote ,"We can't wait for the day we all release the game to you all,silksong can't be too much longer surely",but seriously,Play Hollow Knight radiance ending including nightmare king Grimm and godmaster pantheon 5,it's so worth it and I would do anything to be able to do radiance ending again like you can,my only complaint is too much walking,but please play it
@@aidenallen5922 I’ll probably try fighting the radiance and nightmare king grim again some time, but I’m not sure about godmaster pantheon 5. I don’t think I’ll be able to beat it unless I dedicate myself only to Hollow Knight for a few months, but it won’t hurt to try it. I do hope that silksong comes soon so we all can see what they’ve been working on
@@ryans6442 the point of Hollow Knight is to carve your own journey, and I think the ending you settled on is pretty damn poetic. Good stuff!
@@hairohukosu433 Thanks! I know it’s not what team cherry intended but I’d be curious to know what they, or at least huge hollow knight fans, think of that kind of ending
I feel you. I also get the feeling of finality with the credits. So I instead explore and achieve as much as possible before progressing the actual story. I’m the guy to collect 900 pine cones before the boss battle.
Optional over mandatory is my gaming style.
A mid game credit roll like Nier Automata makes the game feel really special. It's like instantly getting season 2 of a TV show right when you thought it was over.
I'm honestly blown away by the perspective of credits being the end of the important content to a game. I've always viewed credits as the end of the main story, entirely seperate from the end of gameplay.
Isn't that the same? The main story is the important content of a game.
@@raffiking1not always. For example, nobody play mario galaxy for the plot, they do it because the levels are amazing, and in a normal playthrough you probably will probably end bowser letting a lot of levels before getting all the stars, so there are a lot to do after beating the game, nothing really changes
Yes, and watching the end credits is way of showing respect for the developers. My brother told me that, and I think the same too.
When the game says "also thank YOU for playing" I point at the screen like that Leonardo Dicaprio meme
This is such a cool take, I’ve always just thought of the end credits as a milestone that just needs to be seen. I didn’t even think the end credits would be seen as the end. I love you videos
thanks, never really noticed it, but it's the same for me. and now i finally know why i suddenly keep losing interest in a game. it's because i have already beaten them.
As a big fan of soulsborne and the older RPG games, I can say that giving a chance to miss (espaccily cool stuff) is crucial for the true feeling of explorational joy. And that is why I love games that are brave enough to give me the chance to really explore. So a big thanks to Hollow Knight, Elden Ring, and other new Game Developments that give me a better reason to play them than just 100 Markes I can check :)
I remember the first time I actually finished Mario Galaxy 2. My older brother and I used to play it every day when I was 6-7 years old but we never beat the final level. After about 8 years, he left for training, i decided to play the game by myself. 16 year old me cried so much after the credits started rolling with Mario jumping around on the tiny planets and honestly I think those are the only credits I still vividly remember. As much as I want games to just let me continue playing or just send me back to the screen after it ends, I would rather have a bad credit sequence that goes through what i spent nearly 20 hours of my life on than just a "well, it's over chump, get back to ticking off more boxes"
And here I am playing games like Factorio, Civilization, Cities: Skylines.
"Wait, your games have endings?"
Honestly, I just feel like the solution to this is just to stop putting so much meaning on the end credits. Enough games have multiple ending or 'true' endings that it should be a pretty clear and expected convention at this point. It shouldn't really be that hard to figure out if the stuff you are doing after the credits is just an opportunity to finish the completionism checklist or is actual bespoke content.
And some games, like Assassins Creed Odyssey, don't even have end credits, they just continue forever to keep you in the live service model. It's up to you to figure out that that yeah, the story is done, there is nothing left here for yeah. And there are enough examples in this video that people should know they need to be doing that figuring out whether the credits have played or not
The end credit is why I start playing games with a fine brush in my first playthrough. The credits really just have that power to give a finality to games. I find myself reluctant to replay Elden Ring, even though in the first playthrough, I thought of over a dozen builds I want to try out. Fortunately, for Nier: Automata, I found out that it required multiple playthroughs, and I was greeted with the best credit of any videogame ever.
It's funny imagining people getting upset about having to Sifu an additional time after the credits when I'm sitting here trying to finish the first stage without a death before even moving on to the second stage lmao. I haven't played a second of the second stage yet and I already have like half of the abilities permanently unlocked.
8:30 that's the biggest problem with filler and bloat. You can't "just skip it" without also skipping good stuff, or vice versa. I'm a bit of a completionist (play all main content and quests, not talking about getting 900 koroks and other mundane things) so I usually get to "the good stuff", but if games were more focused (especially AAAs, lots of indies are intensely focused on their ideas) it would let more people get to the quality bits because they wouldn't be drowning in a sea of repetitive content and bs. Bit rambly but I hope the message got across lol.
Have you tried Sable ? The game has this really interesting system where once you beat the tutorial and a few missions, you can basically end the game whenever you too . It's also really thematically appropriate and might be one of the best approaches I've seen with this kind of issue
Ironic that immediately after doing Ending [E] in NieR: Automata, I head over to TH-cam to see this video with that Thumbnail :D
And as soon as I'm done watching this, I'll head back to the game to complete not only the remaining endings but get everything else 100%. So despite it having technically ended twenty-four times already, for me it isn't over yet!
By the way, I'm glad you're back so soon! I hope your family is doing great and that you three will have many new chapters of fulfillment and happiness ahead of you :)
If this is something that would interest you, I suggest trying out the dlc arenas, specifically the lvl99 special rank in the sunken city coliseum. I spent around 30 hours just trying to beat it, and now I have put another 120h just to speedrun the damn thing. This arena is so difficult, you'll discover combat mechanics you didn't even know existed before.
It's kind of crazy how much this arena changes your approach to combat in subsequent playthrough.
@@taxevasion2403 I have the "Become as Gods" edition of the game so I count that to 100% completion. Although until now, I was under the impression that it won't take that long to beat. I guess it's too late to stop now :D
@@rinkulink To help your chances in this arena, let me give you some tips. I struggled for a long time but now my record is at 5:06. It's possible, just hard as hell.
- Get to lvl99. Check online, there is a cheese with 9S and hacking the golden statue in the Amusement park
- Play as A2. Get all the damage chips you can get. No safety net, cause you'll get one shot anyway and having a build around defense just makes the arena harder. You can use overclock and the one that slows bullet near you to learn the enemy placement. After I suggest removing them.
- Be beserk all the time.
- Chips: HP, Skill, Enemy data, Weapon attack, critical up, shock wave, counter (optional), offensive heal (at least +5), deadly heal (+4), and most of all TAUNT UP! Put as much as you can in WU, CU and Taunt, and the more you beat the arena, the better chips you'll get.
- Weapons: Iron Pipe and Fang of the Twins. You use them because they both have Crit+ and with those chips are the highest damage build in the game. FotT also has Bullet rupture, so use heavy attacks to clear bullet storms. Iron Pipe can also stun bosses.
- For pods: Mirage, Bullet Shield and Slow.
- During bosses, if you don't have Taunt +8, use slow on them when they spawn, taunt, and hack away. With this build, they should melt in seconds.
- If you manage to beat the wave with the shade tank and 8 spiders, that's it. You have everything to beat the coliseum, because it's the hardest one. I suggest beating the tank FAST, then taunt in the middle of the arena, use bullet shield, and kill as many as you can before it runs out.
- For Adam and Eve, I still use overclock. They are way too fast without it. I have a separate built just for them.
If you want more help, come back to this comment and I'll happily give more precise tips. These are just the general ones.
@@taxevasion2403 Thanks for the advice! :D
Literally every NPC in Hollow Knight tells you there are 2 ways to end the game. I mean they don't say it in those words but they make it pretty clear there is more than 1 ending.
Probably the best example of credits not meaning anything is is The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and all of its DLC. The game runs the first credits after you beat mom for the first time. Mom is technically the first final boss (it's very confusing), but beating her is probably less than 10 percent of the full game. There is basically no credits after that. I have been playing Isaac off and on since Afterbirth came out and have gotten pretty far. There is an enormous amount of characters, and I think the best part of the game is trying to beat all the different endings with each and every character since they all stagger is difficulty and strategy. This is the "true ending" of the game and I think the way Edmund McMillen, the game designer, made this is genius. I'm still no where near completing the game, but it is still in my top 5 forever.
I think it is important to remember that games aren't homework. Most people's life isn't going to become tangibly better by Hollow Knight moving from a game they completed to a game in their top 5, and Hollow Knight doesn't need everyone who bought it to beat every part of it to stay successful or to be critically aclaimed. Like there is a lot of talk in this video about what you "should" do and what is "worth" doing and I think it is a very backwards approach to judging art, I think people should play as much of a game as they feel like, and if that means they end up "missing" massive chunks of the game because they weren't compelled to keep going, then that's absolutely okay. Like we should remember that there is more art to engage with in the world that would be interesting to us than there is hours to engage with art, so an important part of engaging with art is to follow what you are personally compelled to engage with.
The first game that came to my mind when thinking about extra content after the Credits roll was Hades. Even though the "Credits Ending" makes sense, I think the epilogue is totally worth it and Hades being a Roguelite, I think it isn't that hard to just start another run and see how the story goes on.
and it goes on for so long! Arguably too much... I decided to stop playing after maxing relationships but not weapons.
Counterpoint: the credits signal that there's a "break" in the gameplay: you can go on after that, you can drop it for good, or you can drop it _for now_ while you reflect on the ending (that you did reach), take a break of this game's storyline and/or mechanics, or take a break of gaming in general; and when you are ready, jump in and see the rest of it. A cutscene alone just doesn't have the same effect. But it doesn't have to be now or never, which you kinda seem to imply (although I see where you are coming from, *mumbling* adulting *mumbling* )
I don't think your criticism of Arceus is necessarily warranted. I haven't yet played that one (but now I want to!), but the Pokémon series has been doing this post-credits endgame thing since forever. At least criticize the entire series lol
But you could also be right that the game makers just don't think most players will bother with the post-credits content. I was baffled when I read that the developers of Fire Emblem Three Houses were genuinely surprised to learn people were actually playing several runs of the game to see the different storylines, did they seriously not expect it?
I definitely see end credits as "you have completed enough of the core objectives to have a full enough understanding of the game ti now know who is responsible for this experience". Generally this is shortly after finishing the main storyline of the game.
In pokemon the credits are traditionally after the elite 4, who are the final big challenge after the main storyline is done. However, the fun of pokemon is not the story (well black/white has a very good one), its in the battling so the postgame is basically heres all the battle facilities for the elite trainers, enjoy. But the story is typically functionally over.
However some games like Pikmin or Portal have a very contained story with a clear end at which to place the credits. (Pikmin is also amazing for being so short, you litterally lose if you don't win in ~5hrs or 30 in game days. Its basically the opposite of modern skinner boxes and actually is very respectful of your time, and is highly replayable)
Its definitely a per game decision where to put the credits, and depending on the story and core fun gameplay that will change, if the core fun presists post story then the credits don't mark the end, but if the core fun is the story then the end of the story is the end of the game and the credits should role there.
Which is weird because so many whine incessantly for meaty post-game that isn't geared toward competitive.
@@ShadowSkyXWhat is weird?
@@ShadowSkyX well yeah because in the past recent generations, all you could do was focus on competitive. But Black and White had an entire NEW section of the map you could explore, Gen3 and Gen4 had contests you could still do a lot with. In XY you only had competitive and the Friend Safari (and the Looker Missions I GUESS), Gen7 ONLY had competitive immediately after the main story ended (and UB hunting I guess but that's just glorified dex filling, Gen8 ONLY had competitive after the postgame story, and yes that's including the DLC. If you're not into competitive, the past 2 generations (3 if you don't count ORAS) are pretty barren for post-story content.
@@TheJH1015 wrong about gen 7, you forgot ultra sun and moon… in which you defend your title as champion (from challengers you met on your journey, not just randoms) and take down team rocket and EVERY villain boss from past generations that came from universes where their plans succeeded, you ride on a legendary to hunt shiny legendaries from all previous generations, you get a starter pokemon from ultra space… USUMs postgame is great especially for a pokemon game
This is great but I wish you mention more game that is so afraid of having some of their content missed by its player that it end up being worse for it
For example Ubisoft games with their disgusting UI, world map and main quest lock behind side content and or paywall
Usually I find once every 5 or so years a game has a combination of a couple of things that keep me coming back. Most recently is Ori 2. The music and movement made me fall in love with that game
I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, especially since I've noticed a few of the games I've played recently roll their credits either too early or too late. To keep my thoughts brief, I don't think every game should end at its peak, nor do I think that the end credits should denote when the player is intended to put the game down.
When you're a kid, you usually keep playing a game after you've beaten it, but as you grow up and want to experience more, games increasingly become one-and-done's. Even with multiple endings, post-games, extra content, secrets, a developer should make their game's ending follow the game's identity, rather than the player's intended experience, I believe. This mentality I think is what has led to many of the most memorable endings and epilogues.
I played Breath of the Wild for more than 350 hours before I finish the main quest. In those 350 hours I finished all the divine beasts and shrines, captured all the memories, collected 400 koroks, and many more. When I finished the game I felt so satisfied.
I finished main story in about 150 hours, but then player 400 more because I was having fun
Honestly The credits seem to only matter when I'm just playing a game for the sake of seeing it through and it finally releases me from having to play it. Most games I loved I've played way beyond the credits.
There are definitely games I've loved that I never went back and did alternate endings or side content on.
Partially I think I like the idea of my unique story being finished in the game. I had the experiance of playing through it the first time my own way, finding or missing content whatever content I may have, and once that is done I feel like I've had a complete and personal experiance with it. I don't feel motivation to go back and learn everything I could have missed.
Not that this applies to every game but its a feeling I've had many times before.
2:56 Children are less likely to finish a 50h game because of their attention span?! Objection! They have a lot of spare time and will probably finish the game several times in a row! In fact as an adult any game that is more than 20h long is a serious commitment and most will never finish it.
From the bottom of my heart, I pity the people who didn't go through ending [E] of NieR: Automata. I cried tears of hope and thankfulness.
As sappy as that sounds I fully understand what you mean. I didn't cry but I got emotional. That final choice left a huge impact on me. I went through about a week of reflecting on this game after I finished it and still think about it to this day. Knowing that before I got to the end so many others did the same for me and I would also be doing the same for others. Without even knowing who they are. A final message of hope. And in the end having no record of it ever even happen. I mean unless you record your gameplay that is lol but from a save state. It was truly a unique experience.