Games have it tougher than most media when it comes to endings. Portal is another.* Usually, after the player has spent his or herself on a traumatically difficult boss battle, where can a game go? Can tying up the loose ends of a possibly feather-light plot compete with the excitement of climactic play? Often, no. There are games out there with spectacular finales, but I’d argue that they’re the exception to the rule: Modern Warfare is one. The ending to KOTOR II was an uninspired mess. Indigo Prophecy’s ending arguably ruined the game for me the ending to Beyond Good and Evil is a bit too baffling to be fully satisfying. I can’t think of many games that have a similar sense of profound resolution. The best ending of any kind that I can think of is possibly the ending to Casablanca, followed quickly after by the ending to Watership Down, which actually made me cry when I was in fourth grade.
The editorial act of forcing an end to a story’s living world can be an easy thing to mess up: many people would put this kind of blame on Harry Potter. They’re where we choose to stop telling a tale that, in the context of the real, continuing world, has no actual end. I have an English professor who asserted once in class that ‘most endings are bad… pretty much, all endings are terrible.’ In a way, he’s right.
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