Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

Does a game have to fail to have an ending? Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa has been shut down, but it out-classes almost every AAA game …

We live in a world where creating a video game costs a very large amount of money. While there is the indie-gaming circuit and PC development can be done on a budget, getting a game onto consoles (and hyping it) requires money. It's no surprise that most games hope for a sequel, as it's the easiest way to get some of that money back while taking advantage of the staff, engine, assets, and other advantages you've banked while creating the first title. The problem? This has lead to a generation of cliff-hangers at worst, and endings that hedge their bets at best. Oddly enough, it's an MMO that had the most satisfying ending this week.

On February 27, there was a message posted on Tabula Rasa's official webpage that basically explained the end of the world. "We request that all military personnel begin fortifying defenses at every AFS base in preparation for a massive Bane assault. If enemy troop movements are as large as we fear, and the Neph are truly prepared to lead all out war against us, this may be our last stand," the message stated. "We can not afford to be complacent or uncertain, but if it is truly our destiny to be destroyed, we are taking them all with us."

Players weren't left completely unprepared. "Two to three weeks ago they started dropping all kinds of high-level goodies (basically level 50 armor and weapons but no minimum level requirement for use) and hyper-XP tokens that gave a 2000% experience point bonus," one Ars reader wrote on our gaming forum. "Those allowed folks to level-up much quicker. I managed to get to level 42 by the end of last week with a sniper, but then was out of town until last night when it was all due to shut down."

It seems every game you play ends by pointing at a sequel, with story threads left hanging, characters left floating in the depths of space, or wars left unwon. When was the last time you finished a game and felt completely satisfied by the experience? With Tabula Rasa, at least the ending has come for everyone; there will be no final call from the governor, no last-minute angel investor. The war is going to come to an end, and by all accounts humanity didn't win, and the game ended with quite the bang. Sure, it was a down note, but the game failed, and a happy ending would be somewhat inappropriate for fans.

Is this what it takes to get a final goodbye from a game? Does a world have to fail to be so decisively shut down? As all the game's characters die, as the servers are shut down, as the data is erased or backed up and then boxed or whatever happens to MMO data once the game is done, it's hard not to be a little sad. The sights and sounds of the world of Tabula Rasa are gone, forever. All the memories written into those ones and zeroes will quickly be forgotten, and no one will walk those grounds again. The game never gained the following that NCSoft hoped for. It did one thing better than almost every other game on the market however: end with grace.

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