Towards the end of the Super Nintendo’s life-cycle, however, Chrono Trigger tried out a scary new way to finish games: Don’t finish them at all.
Two options: Jab the reset button and start over, or shut the whole thing down and do something else.
If you were lucky, the game designer programmed in a perfunctory closing story sequence to tie up loose ends and make you feel like it was all worth your while, like you accomplished something, but more often, the ending was just that: the end. Go play outside and get some sun, you agoraphobic phantom. The game’s over, congratulations, you win, you’re done. It used to be the case that, when you dispatched the final boss of a game, that was it. I’ll keep using MGS V as a primary example, if only because it’s what I’ve been working on lately (and because, by now, it’s basically turned into a part-time job). Like any half-decent philosophical questions worth their salt (their salt is expensive), these aren’t easily answered, but they might make for some good discussion fodder.
Naturally, such a decision leads to a series of existentially twisty, Philosophy-101-Lite questions: Is a game that effectively “ends” after each mission ever really “over”? How do you know when to call it quitsies and move on to something else? Do videogames really end at all anymore? Hideo Kojima, whether in revenge for his ignoble ousting from Konami or simply because his ego has grown bigger than Big Boss, made the balls-of-steel executive decision to cap every single mission in the game with credits identifying him as the game’s director. Something’s different in MGS V, though, and it’s deeply unsettling.
You shouldn’t do that, of course-a GFR’s arrival is no useful kind of time measurement-but you could. That’s how you know you’re at the end of a Metal Gear Solid game: You find yourself face to face with a GFR, and you blow it up with missiles. After sinking what seemed like at least fifty hours into Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (I could have checked the in-game clock, but I didn’t feel like deep-menu-diving), I frantically but successfully dispatched the requisite Giant Fucking Robot (GFR) that stood between me and the endgame.