That’s All Folks: My Thoughts On Completing Video Game

After spending the little time I did with Legendof Dungeon last week, I decided it was best to return to, and hopefully finish with, Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. Not that the game is bad, mind you. It’s a decidedly engaging dungeon crawler with a tempered encounter rate, unique common foes, challenging bosses, etc. In other words, it’s difficult and variable enough to warrant my focus and energies.

Psychologically, deciding to finish any form of entertainment endeavour is always a herculean task for me. Not that I don’t enjoy finishing games; more, I often negatively stigmatize my remaining hours with an IP to the point where I no longer enjoy it. What results are feelings of apathy, apprehension and excitement, all mangled together into an intolerable anxiety, which plagues me as I mindlessly approach encounter after encounter leading to the grand finale, and the eventual ending cinematic—which is often very cathartic.

For instance, the last three-four hours of Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter felt excruciating. Much of the time was spent felling foes far too strong to simply strong-arm my way to victory. They demanded strategy and foresight which I didn’t want to devote to defeating them. I became weary to the point of almost stopping. But I mustered on, and eventually began a gauntlet of 5 near back-to-back boss encounters.

Upon finally defeating the last boss, I felt the excitement that comes with being unshackled from a weighted and dissatisfying obligation. But what is it about endings that force me to consistently devolve into an irrational fit?

Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one

Much of this dissonance, I feel, is rooted more deeply in a general disinterest in finishing with any entertainment medium more generally, including TV shows and books. As I’ve mentioned before to Adam, I don’t feel that many endings are simply worth the energy to see through. They often feel inorganic, stiff and unoriginal.

I tend to prefer endings which suggest an ongoing existence of the fictional characters portrayed in a story. For this emotional resonance to exist however, much work must go into properly establishing a historical past and present, so that a hypothetical future can be envisioned organically.

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter is not one of these games, sadly. Characterization is severely lacking, and much of the game’s world is hidden behind an intuitive new game plus feature. What I’m left with on my first play through is very little emotional payoff, and thus a great deal of apprehension toward finishing the game in the first place.

Fin

Ultimately, I’m glad I played Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, and would highly recommend it to most RPG-enthusiasts. My gripes with the late-game are more a general malady I contract whenever I recognize a game’s ending in sight. More generally, it is the recognition that something I’ve invested time into will have its value weighted, calculated and determined. I often find that intellectualizing this process is a taxing experience. Thankfully, much of the time leading up to this ending often outweighs its final moments. Thankfully still that I’ve developed this confusingly psychological manner of thinking. As a consequence, I was actually able to enjoy Mass Effect 3’s pre-patched ending! How’s that for a Hollywood ending, internet.