00:01Warning! Spoilers ahead! When it comes to video games, there are players who play for the action
00:05and there are players who play for the story. They're not mutually exclusive, of course,
00:10but even those with no capacity for cutscenes have to admit that some great game endings are
00:15as iconic to the world of gaming as Rosebud is to the world of cinema. Like Mafia 3,
00:21whose framing device is a documentary that mixes interviews, old news clips, and other bits of
00:26footage from the past to tell the story of Clay and his fight against the mob. In a scene that
00:31takes
00:31place after you beat the mob boss, Donovan exposes the senator's involvement in the assassination of
00:36JFK and shoots him in front of everybody and the cameras, saying, I'm starting with you and vowing
00:43to find everyone involved. Or in Red Dead Redemption, easily one of the most iconic games ever,
00:49when Marsden pushes the doors of his farmhouse open and the game automatically activates Deadeye,
00:54persuading you to take out as many lawmen as you can. You can take out a few, sure,
00:58but Marsden dies and we later see that the cycle of violence continues in Marsden's son, Jack,
01:04who we see returning to gather his father's belongings, cluing us to the idea that one day
01:09we might pick up where we're being left off. What about The Legend of Zelda, The Wind Waker? As
01:14Kenneth Shepard writes in Kotaku, the entire fight is a literal washing away of the past that has plagued
01:20these heroes through multiple reincarnation cycles. Wind Waker's final battle sells the notion with a
01:26dramatic vigor elevated by a stellar fight. These are just three examples of endings,
01:32endings, good or bad, that stick with you, and hopefully there are many, many more still to come.
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