Lots of games end on cliffhangers, intentionally (and obviously) setting up potential sequels, and I’ve always hated it. It’s a cheap way of keeping an audience’s attention and building up anticipation for what comes next, but in doing so, it refuses to round out its own narrative and makes it feel incomplete. This phenomenon was, for a long time, relegated to television, because of its seasonal format, but we’ve seen it happen more and more in movies, especially after the Marvel Cinematic Universe became a thing.
These extremely high-earning movies, which were once shaping the theatrical landscape, started becoming cameo-laden advertisements for other movies in the universe, normalising post-credits scenes directly indicating what would be next for the characters featured. Now, I’m not saying that games are being MCU-ified, but I do think that original IPs are being slashed in favour of existing franchises, because people would rather build on an already successful game than strike out and take a risk on something new. It’s not that audiences aren’t interested in new IPs, but it’s less financially risky for companies to keep doing what they’re already doing. Sequels are extremely in vogue right now.
I didn’t play Dead Island 2, but I read my colleague Jade King’s coverage and was struck by the fact that it ends on a cliffhanger and the primary narrative is set to be concluded in future DLC. I find it shocking that a non-live-service game would be so brazen as to sell a narratively incomplete game and lock its ending behind content you have to pay even more for. It’s greedy, and more than that, it’s lazy. It’s disrespectful to your audience, for one, but this is also part of a wider pattern of using the endings of games to set up sequels.
Right now, The Last of Us is one of the biggest game franchises in the world. It has two critically-acclaimed games, and a hugely popular HBO series under its belt. Fans are hankering for a third game, and interviewers are asking Neil Druckmann if he’s making it yet. The marketing-savvy thing to do would be to capitalise on the hype and announce a third game, yet Druckmann has said only that “if we can come up with a compelling story that has this universal message and statement about love – just like the first and second game did – then we will tell that story. If we can't come up with something, we have a very strong ending with Part 2 and that will be the end."
It’s refreshing to see a studio making games to tell good stories and not for the sake of squeezing every last cent out of a good idea, and that’s how it should be. These games are made to be whole in themselves, to tell complete stories that touch audiences. Fans of The Last of Us aren’t feral for more because the game ended on a cliffhanger, they want more because the games are good.
Not every game should have a sequel, though some series do benefit from a bigger story, like the Mass Effect trilogy, which was written as a trilogy and not a standalone game. Bigger arcs can show greater care for narrative and a larger, wider story with a variety of themes. If we use Mass Effect as an example, each game is still self-contained. We see characters return, but not out of a desire to stuff cameos into a game, it’s so we can watch them grow and evolve.
But games like Dead Island 2 aren’t ending on cliffhangers for the love of storytelling, they’re doing it for the love of money. If this is what studios have to do to pad their bottom line, there’s something deeply wrong with this industry.