After $60 and 20 hours of effort, I want to feel closure. I do not want a dark, to be continued screen. More games seem to end with an anti-climatic final battle only to find out the real big-bad was kept hidden until the next next, yet-to-be announced sequel. I enjoy my franchises, but waiting two to four years for a conclusion is just cruel. Video games take too much time to play and sometimes (not always) longer to make for half a story.

Halo 2 infamously left players floating (and only partially resolved in Halo 3). But several cliffhanger games have yet to get sequels like Shenmue II and Beyond Good and Evil, a cruel act since these are great games with amazing stories. And who knows if we’ll see real answers to God of War and Kingdom Hearts ever.

A recent trend has started announcing games as trilogies. Halo had that distinction as has the recently released Mass Effect and upcoming Too Human. This will only make things worse.
Too Human is a great example of the dangers in video game development. This yet-to-be-released action title first appeared back in 1999 as a Playstation title (Playstation 1 to be precise). Then it moved to Nintendo’s GameCube until recently showing up on the Xbox 360. Of course, now the developer is mixed up in a lawsuit with Epic, the makers of Unreal 3 engine powering Too Human. It’s unknown if this lawsuit will further delay the game.

And this is all for part one of three. At this rate of development, assuming the game even sells enough for a sequel, we won’t see the conclusion until almost 2020. No story is that good.

Movies have figured out how to make cliffhangers work - film movies at the same time. Lord of the Rings and the Matrix left short windows between releases to alleviate the cliffhanger sting. Video games don’t have that luxury. Compared to movies, video games don’t have the variety of revenue opportunities to make up money badly spent. A Hollywood blockbuster has theatrical release, DVD sales and rentals, enforcement deals, and cable and TV royalties to help pad the bottom line. This means Hollywood has more wiggle room when thinking about how much ticket sales alone bring in. Video games, however, have initial sales and rentals and that’s it. It makes taking a financial risk that much riskier.

On top of that, gamers require each part of a video game franchise to provide some kind of enhanced experience. This prevents simultaneous development of a game and its sequel. Though it’s unknown if gamers would accept less advancement if release windows were shortened.

Since simultaneous development like Lord of the Rings seems unreasonable at present, video game companies need to rethink how to develop game stories. Stop thinking about games as trilogies and more as series or franchises. We all know Halo won’t end as a trilogy. Aside from the cliffhanger ending in Halo 3 (which kinda defeats the trilogy idea), the game makes too much money to not make a fourth. So let’s model games more like an X-Men comic and less like an episode of Lost.

Basically, each game can be a self-contained story. With 10 to 40 hours of gameplay, there’s no excuse you can’t fit everything in one game (I’m looking at you Mass Effect). That’s called bad editing.

But self-contained doesn’t mean the story totally ends. Older comics had the major villain die after every issue with some hint that they might, just might come back (which they always did next month). Allusions to sequels are okay, but closure is required. Similarly, it’s okay to leave some questions unanswered. It only adds to our love of Master Chief not seeing his face or questioning why Marcus Fenix was in prison in Gears of War. Just make sure the game we play has a beginning, middle, and a real end. I don’t to beat the final boss only to find out they were just a pawn (much like - LIGHT SPOILER - Gears of Wars’ ending).

Basically, when I pay $60 for a game, I don’t expect half or a third of anything. I want the whole story. Just like wouldn’t accept half of the gameplay (like waiting a year for combos to be added to Street Fighter) I don’t want to wait forever for the story.