Iseveryone ready for the final battle? Are all of you leveled up? Did you select your special abilities and construct your characters to complement each other during combat? You’re gonna need every elemental magic at its maximum power.
Do you have spells to debuff the enemy and keep your team alive? Have you bought enough items? Do you want to buy more? You should probably buy more. It’s the final battle, after all! Get ready! Buckle up! We all agree that the final battle is coming up, so spend all that gold now and get into a dungeon to grind it out! Final battle, everyone! Last call for the final battle! This is the end!
Wait, sorry! No! That was just a battle halfway through the game! Our bad! Everyone said it was the final battle, so we all just thought it was the final battle! Sorry for giving you bad information on that. It turns out what we thought was the final battle was in fact just a ruse for the bad guy to continue his plot elsewhere! So, regardless of what we previously said, that battle was neither ultimate nor even penultimate.
In fact, that ‘final battle’ you prepared for was probably halted halfway through as the villain clutched his shoulder to show that you’ve somewhat hurt him after throwing fireballs for ten minutes. That bad guy’s gonna leave now if it’s okay with everyone else. Don’t worry, there will still be one or two more final battles later.
RPGs Need To Stop Playing Pretend
Stop it. I’m begging roleplaying games to stop overtly pretending every act break in a game is going to be the final battle or - worse - actuallysayingit’s the final battle. I don’t feel bamboozled. I feel annoyed. Because, honestly, we’ve all played enough video games and seen enough genre fiction to know that the big bad does not go down in a single fight and - often - isn’t even the real big bad after all.
Sometimes the initial villain turns out to just be some person who may have murdered thousands, but can be redeemed if they say the right thing at the end. Sometimes they’re still the main antagonist, but you gotta have three or four dramatic matches before the actual credits. I’m not talking about three or four forms in one fight - I mean literally multiple battles that are each presented with the vibe of “this is it!”
Look,Metaphor: ReFantaziois fantastic.Atlushas done it again! The world is beautiful, the characters are all fun, the story pulls at your heartstrings, and - with More’s narration - even traveling around the map feels special. If you haven’t played the game, I won’t spoil anything, but there’s a pretty clear big bad from early on.
And throughout the game, this big bad keeps coming back. And, I swear to God, there comes a moment in the game where every character is talking about how this -this very moment!- is the final battle. And I’ll be real honest, when they did that I absolutely laughed and said, “No it’s not.” And you know what? It definitely was not the final battle.
The trope is so tiring and drawn out that even in games that I love, I can always tell when something isn’t the last fight of the game. When you’re playing a triple-A roleplaying game and someone says, “Hey, we’re about to wrap it up!” you can almost guarantee that there’s 40-50 more hours to go. If a review tells me that a game lasts about 80 hours and some characters are like, “We need to ensure we’re strong enough to face this baddie for the final time” at hour 20, I know it’s probably not actually the final time.
Now, I respect that within the story of the game itself, these characters believe the final battle is coming. They’re not aware they’re in a game and they definitely don’t know they’re launching the assault on the enemy base while they’re at level 20. We all do, though. No matter how many times the characters say it’s the final battle, we know - in all likelihood - it is not.
Metaphor’s Boss Fakeout Isn’t Needed
Going back to Metaphor, how many times do those charactershaveto think something is the last fight? How many times do players have to sit and contemplate the sorry state of the game’s world while buying a few extra revival potions just in case?
It’s not even that the trope is bad writing or a cheap cop-out. It’s just… dear god, how many roleplaying games need to do this? “This is it, everyone!” No, it’s not! We all know it’s not. “We’re finally facing our destiny!” No, we’re not! You know how I know that? Because we’ve explored three small cities on a massive game map that would otherwise be empty. Because we’re only a dozen hours into a game. Because we still haven’t met even half of the characters that appear on the box.
Sure, this doesn’t happen in every game. But it sure seems to apply to a lot of them, even outside of RPGs. Games love a good false final battle. “What? There’s even more to this game?” It’s a close relative of “most of the game is actually after the credits,” which I don’t think is as bad but also strikes me as vaguely annoying.
“Oh, how fancy! You put the end credits here, but the story keeps going!” Okay, sure. ThanksDragon Quest. That’s more like being told I’m finished mowing the lawn, but now I can go trim the hedges if I’m up for the full experience. At the very least it can claim its final battle was pre-credits.
Am I setting some arbitrary boundaries here? Probably! But in a genre that’s full of amazing stories and dramatic twists, the one thing I could probably do without is the fake out last fight. I don’t mind if characters are nervous or worried or think it’s their last shot at survival. But for the love of God, please stop having every one of them gathered in a prayer circle telling each other that this is the end and that they’re such good friends. It’s like a combination of a locker room speech and a eulogy and it never turns out to even be the last part of the game. Those sorry losers don’t even know they’ll be doing this five or six more times.
Telling a story over dozens of hours isn’t easy. You need to keep the players’ interest. Sometimes that means the rise and fall of conflict, and sometimes that itself means going big to emphasize a dramatic moment. I get it. But while everyone’s discussing how they’re going to take on the LAST BOSS EVER, I’d love it if just one character - one - said, “Folks, I’m not sure this is the final battle. It just… eh… feels like there’s more to go.”
