Dramatic ending enhancement

[MRHAPPYFACEMAN]

Got a story that you are working on that needs a better ending? Need a second and third opinion on it before using it? Perhaps I can help... and for less than a penny a year! (not really, its all for free.) I make dramatic endings for games! Whether they are more tame or if they are dark and depressing, I do them.

I have spent the past 10 years or so working on stories with both really really good endings - and those with really really sucky endings. I for one, strongly believe that the RPG world has great potential for either a soul inspiring game or a game that can rip out your heart with an emotional dagger, which is why I am doing this. I love seeing RPGs with heart ravaging endings! I believe that I have seen them all at this point and for the most part, basically once one figures out the barriers between an excellent and lame ending, the rest is just spending time unraveling what that ending should be.

What I propose in specific is that I can work on whatever ending you have to make it better. If you have a good ending for a game, maybe its just not quite the build-up you wanted and needs some more spice to it for people to remember once they finished the game. If you have a bad ending, maybe its just not quite as devastating as you wanted it to be, I can work with that. Tell me how bad or how dark and depressing you want it to be with the info I need, and it shall come to pass. My only thing is that I will need a significant amount of time to come up with something really really good since I will be starting from scratch from any person that shows me their project. So expect a couple of weeks for me to work on it before I can start giving out red meat.

PM via this website or on Discord or Twitter, I can do whichever.
Twitter - MRHAPPYFACEMAN6 (forget the 6, and you will find someone else)
Discord - MRHAPPYFACEMAN6 #3937



Lots of different things can make or break an ending for a game, here are some examples I will follow:

• Death is not traumatic if it doesn't last. In fact, most viewers get turned off if people don't stay dead
• Painful endings are not only for bad endings. Some of the best good endings ever made were tear jerking
• Take a stance with your characters personalities. Everyone has personalities, talents, personal opinions, and priorities in real life, so should your characters. If the audience doesn't understand how your characters feel, then good ending or not - it will mean nothing to them in the end.
• Overarching goal - there needs to be a clear and present problem with some sort of consequence that the player NEEDS to avoid at ALL COSTS (this is where drama comes in neatly) What happens if the goal is reached/breached?
• Plot Twists. They either work or they don't. If an endings has a plot twist, there needs to be evidence sprinkled throughout the game or else players will think you just rushed to get an ending or just grabbed something from the air to finish it.
• If a game needs to end, end it. If you can't end it, ur most likely holding back somewhere. Don't hold back, give it your all!
• Unsolved mysteries can leave the player thinking after the game ends, but if its tied to the main problem, that can make it really muddy. I find that the main problem needs to be solved for a game to end properly, but maybe some side quests were never fully answered
• Along side with characters, backstories make a game come to life. Beware of cliches. The game will become "another game"
• LOGIC!!! I will be playing the role of Spaak here. Why are people doing what they are doing? Is it necessary? "Why should I go over and drink the mysterious fluid?" "Why should I go over and speak to the monster that will surely kill me if it sees me?" Why can't I use the knife to stab the bad guy, it won't let me! it wants me to use it to open the jar with kudu beans in it instead!" And my personal favorites can include moments like, "Oh yea! I have this massive board that I have been carrying around half the game! We can use it to make a bridge to the other side of X, Y, and Z! Good thing this is a game and my little girl muscles can hold this thing up in the air for hours on in along with these dumbbells, an evil book I can't read, wet matches that mysteriously dried off shortly after I crossed the river, rope, rusty key, a rock that looks like the boy I liked in 4th grade, and chemicals I found that... I have NO idea how to combine them, but they must be useful later on!!!"...... This is not Minecraft folks.

I can't exactly share many of my specific examples because the game owners still want them to be a secret through development.... so here is what I can share with what I have as examples without saying exactly what is happening.

• A game once had a very unusual setting, but the game was overload with characters. Not that having a lot of NPCs is a bad thing, but squishing in all their dialogue into every cut scene can be overwhelming for many people. Kinda like every person had to say something about every event that popped up. Cutting out unnecessary dialogue lead to the developer spending more time making a meaningful situation that was both hasty and perilous. It also sped up the game a lot. Before, the game was veeeeeerrrrrryyyy ssssslllooooooooowwwww... eevveerryyoonnee wwaass ssaayyiinngg ssoommeetthhiingg tthhaatt slloowweedd iitt dddddooooooowwwwwwwnnnnnnnn. zzz...zzz...zzz...zzz...
• Believe it or not, but some minor glitches or faulty programming can very rapidly destroy a game if it impedes the player's ability to move on, especially if it is at the beginning of the game. I can certainly play test it, but let it be known now, I am not very good at finding the bugs when they are there. I'm a story designer, not a coder.
• If it is a fast paced game, there may be trouble in figuring out when the game needs to slow down to allow feeling into it. And if the game does slow down, it needs to be short enough to let the feeling in, then resume its spastic nature. (It breaks my heart to say this) but no game will get everyone, but the atmosphere of the game will define its players. If a game starts out fast paced, it should probably stay that way
• Again. Plot twists can be really cool, but they need to be done right. I was playing a game once, and the game was trying to act very sneaky about the plot twist that came up. Well.... It kinda gave itself away in the title of the game... Then when the dramatic turn point happened, it kinda... was not all that of a big deal. It was just kinda like... "Oh... This happened... Oh ok - umm... Yea, so I guess I'll just start running around in circles like a chicken with its head cut off because that is what the storyline calls for... For no reason whatsoever..." Let's change that up a bit, yea? Yes, this can be much better, I promise you, there can be a reason to go berserk over this, its just not presented yet into the game.
• As I mentioned above, logic can be kinda a big thing. Whatever the main character is doing, is it what the main character would be doing? If the number of choices is narrowed to a couple of things, there is no room for things like, "well I could have just stepped to the left and the tragedy would have been avoided." or "instead of standing here like a frickin' idiot, watching the bad guy murder my boyfriend, I should just jump onto his back and... X, Y, and Z... Then by BF can shank him and everything would have been fine and dandy afterwards" There is a sense of desperation that is created when options are not present on the table. It causes disarray, franticness, and more likely to release the carnal state within that allows for primitive instincts to kick in. So rather than what was just mentioned above, the player would think, "If only... no, I couldn't have done anything to avoid that... I was so powerless to avoid it!" Then other feelings can come in and ravage the player.

I promise I am not a mean person, but there are lots of silly mistakes that people can make over and over again when making a storyline for the game. I love to see great RPGs made and flushed into YouTube where I can see them again, I would like to see that number rise. This is why I am offering my services.

I need to know what I am doing:

• Good ending tweaks
• Bad ending tweaks
• Neutral ending tweaks
• Plot/Plot twist tweaks
• Setting tweaks
• Backstory tweaks
• Overall rating of the game
• Logic Monster services
• Character development
• Everything tweak...

PM via this website or on Discord or Twitter, I can do whichever.
Twitter - MRHAPPYFACEMAN6 (forget the 6, and you will find someone else)
Discord - MRHAPPYFACEMAN6 #3937



I know most of you don't want to give spoilers to other people about your game. Sorry, but I can't help you if you don't tell me what is going on in your game. I need ALL of the secret messages, Morales, intentions, goals, purposes, etc of the game. I need to know how the game starts, all of the meat and lettuce in the middle, and the end. I also need your plan of attack. I need:

--------------------------------------|Prelude
--------------------------------------|Beginning
--------------------------------------|Transition to middle
The story as a whole-----|Middle
--------------------------------------|Transition to ending
--------------------------------------|Ending
--------------------------------------|Post Ending
Secret significances of objects/events
Moral of the game (don't do drugs, girls are evil, god is real, my life sucks...)
List of Characters (who is good, who is bad, who is important, who is an NPC)
ALL of their intentions and purposes in the game
WHY are they there
Their backstories
Main problem in the story - why is it so terrible?
Any other side quest that may or may not be important to the storyline
If there is a story tied to it, I need it!

If you already have a rough draft of the story somewhere, send that and it should be enough for a while. Depending on the complexity of the story will depend how long it will take me to give a good solid answer. For example, my storyline is VEEERY complicated, so I would take a week or 2 for me to come up with a mind blowing ending for it even having all of the details at my disposal.


PM via this website or on Discord or Twitter, I can do whichever.
Twitter - MRHAPPYFACEMAN6 (forget the 6, and you will find someone else)
Discord - MRHAPPYFACEMAN6 #3937

 

[leenat40]

I would have truly asked your help two days go, but now I have successfully planned out the whole story and ending.
Unless I can get some recommendation and tweaks?

 

[Philosophus Vagus]

This is more necessary than most people think. So sick of story being treated as a throwaway mechanic with no real value to the overall game, just a ramshackle vessel to give the player the thinnest of excuses to go out and murder hundreds of people or whatever else gameplay might entail; where endings are written merely to allow continuation and further sales of future games.

I've only just started writing the story I hope to tell through a game so I don't really have anything to seek help on yet but I strongly endorse what you are offering here and would urge anyone whose first reaction is "but this is the least important aspect of a game" to reconsider their stance and consider the above bullet point observations carefully. It's truly sad the number of AAA highly invested in games these days that have their potentials butchered with nonsense narratives with little to no thought put into them.

Small indie games may not be able to compete with them in any other field, but there is a massive gap when it comes to proper storytelling in gaming right now that I for one believe should be addressed by those with the freedom from corporate restraints (jaded investors and such) rather than emulated by them.

 

[MRHAPPYFACEMAN]

Some people have come up to me already with their projects, but at the moment, there is no limit on how many people want my service, so if you want in - there is no need to be shy. And as mentioned above, if you want a simple ending, I can probably make it right on the dot, but if you want an eye gouger ending, expect me to take a while to make one since all of the new projects coming in are things that I will have to start on from the very get go.

Sorry that I can't give many examples, it basically defeats the whole point of what it is I do if I go out throwing previous ideas in the open before my clients finish their projects I will give them out when I get the OK though