Final Boss Battles Part 2

Previously on RGV Double-Tap: I lost it on the computer taking over at the end of a video game and finishing off the big bad guy for you.

This week, I’m actually going to talk about a couple of games where there wasn’t a final boss battle, and I didn’t miss it, or that I felt tonally, it wasn’t necessary to have a thirty-minute long overture of dodge, dodge, fire at the giant glowing weak spot on the bad guys lower back.
Other than a middle-aged man, who’s weak spot is their lower back anyway? If you’re going to give the main bad guy a crappy glowing weak point, why not just make it a tendon behind their heel? I’ll digress for now, as that’s a whole other blog.

In my time, I’ve played a few games where it wasn’t necessary to have a final fight of epic proportions with a boss that can’t fit his pinky on screen. At the end of Call of Duty: World at War, there was no final boss that you needed to kill in order to win. There was an extremely difficult stage, but upon it’s completion, I never felt the need to have an opportunity to kill Mutant Stalin, or Bio-engineered Hitler. I was perfectly content to play my Soviet soldier pressing forward to claim Berlin for Mother Russia.

At the end of Saints Row 2, the computer takes over in a cut-scene and shoots the main bad guy in the head, sending him crashing out a window and tumbling to his death (just in case the 9mm round in his brain didn’t do the job initially). Would I have liked the opportunity to bury my bullets in his squish instead of the computer? Sure! However, it didn’t bother me so much as I had just finished off a particularly difficult mission trying to get into the bad guys office. Once I made my way past attack helicopters and mounted machine guns, standing face to face with an evil suit, instead of a physical threat; having the computer execute the yuppie was an easy pill for me to swallow. After all, putting a bullet in someone’s head (for the bad ass you portray in SR2) is given less thought than breathing. It was getting to that opportunity that was important.

This final example, is most likely the one that will make you, the reader, shake your head in bewilderment. As it was this ending that made me realize that I’d had enough of computer patronization, but it’s also this ending that, after the fact, I felt the most satisfied with. Splinter Cell Conviction features, quite simply, one of the easiest final bosses that I’ve ever had the pleasure, and displeasure of encountering. Yet, it’s remarkably satisfying in its simplicity. You’re literally given you the opportunity (with the press of a button) to “win the game violently” or, “win the game peacefully.” Yet, the ending fits so well with the overall narrative of the game, I didn’t have a problem with it, eventually (but we covered that already in the last installment of the Double-Tap).

Early in Splinter Cell Conviction you are introduced to the interrogation ‘interactive cut-scene.’ It’s one step simpler than a Quicktime event, where you have to press a button to continue, but not in a set amount of time. You see, while interrogating someone, you undoubtedly will ask a question that they don’t want to answer, and as we all know the easiest way to get a person to speak that doesn’t want too, is to beat them with something (your fist, your foot, part of the environment). Therefore with each interrogation sequence, at some point “Press a button to interrogate” will appear on screen. With a button press, you (as Sam Fisher) will persuade the interrogate-ee into talking by say… breaking a urinal with their face, or stabbing them in the shoulder with a busted flagpole. Nothing quite says “talk to me” like a flagpole through the clavicle. Try it sometime with a friend or significant other, and I’m sure you’ll hear a string of lovely words just escape their lips.

Well at the end of Splinter Cell Conviction, once you’ve taken Big Bad Boss Guy’s team out, it’s just you, him and a Desert Eagle in a three-way conversation. You have questions, he has answers, and your friend the Deagle has 8 pre-loaded conversation points that it will add at your leisure. Should BBBG decide to not talk, or talk too much.

Alas, the rest of the game plays out like so:

You: “Question?”
BBBG: “Answer.”

You: “Question?”
BBBG: “I would prefer not to say.”
You: “Deagle?”
Deagle: “BANG!”
BBBG: “Answer.”

You: “QUESTION?!?!”
BBBG: “Answe-“
You: “Don’t you dare answer my question!!!”

AI: “Press Button to Win Game Violently” or “Press Button to Win Game Peacefully”

Deagle: “BANG!”
BBBG Head: “Splode!”

As we can see, the Deagle had one final point to interject at the end of your talk, and during my numerous plays through I won the game violently, always. However we already know I’m that kind of gamer, and it probably comes as no surprise that even when my mind said “Press Button to Win Game Peacefully,” the gamer in me had other ideas.

So even though this was quite possibly the most anti-climactic final boss encounter I’ve experienced, it was true to the narrative style of the game, which brought an overwhelmingly satisfying sense of closure, even without thirty straight minutes of dodging and shooting. Which is saying a ton for a guy that ranted for over 600 words on why we don’t have boss battles anymore.

While I long for the days of difficult Final Boss Battles, it’s apparent to me (now anyway) that it’s not always a necessity to have one, as long as the game stays true to itself, and the narrative it’s built leading up to that point. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go beat Splinter Cell Conviction peacefully.


Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.