According to Falcom, their groundbreaking Trails series is ending. The JRPG juggernaut, which now spans a whopping twelve interconnected games (each installment with weeks of gameplay on its own) and celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, was made in the hopes that it would be the most ambitious RPG story of all time. With Trails announcing that they’ve got a definitive conclusion on the horizon (probably soon after Kai), it’s enough to wonder if other franchises shouldn’t follow its lead and just end things once and for all.
It’s no secret there’s a fatigue throughout gaming communities. You need only look at franchises like Assassin’s Creed or Call of Duty to see that the endless sequels with minimal variation result in aggressively average gameplay that gets shrugged off more and more with each increasing installment. It’s even worse in decades-spanning triple-A franchises that have a continuous story, where one finds themselves asking the question “Okay, how many times is this exact cast going to get themselves in trouble in similar ways?” There has to be a point where people are willing to say, “It’s done.”
This insistence on continuing endlessly also causes all kinds of problems for the series that do it successfully. The Like a Dragon franchise, a decades-spanning Japanese mafia epic, can’t seem to quit Kazuma Kiryu, its iconic player character. Despite giving Kiryu a farewell chapter three times over now, his last title had him co-headlining (and fighting for the spotlight) with Ichiban Kasuga, the purported new lead and protagonist of the current story arc. It lessens the impact of each “farewell” when we know there’s a chance that the character we just said goodbye to is going to find a way to come back into the series. It diminishes the bigger moments and wrecks the emotional stakes of the story.
That said, there are advantages to continuing a series—if you have several successful games, you can create a brand and use the name recognition to launch all kinds of things—just look at how long Street Fighter‘s gone on, with fans willing to bend over backwards for each game given how much the series means to them. It’s also useful when an ending (like the rightly maligned Mass Effect 3) lands with a soft wet thud instead of a hammer-blow, giving the company a second chance to do right by its fans.
As much as that’s the case, endings give a story meaning. Knowing there’s an ending gives everything meaning. There’s a word for things that just continue endlessly without purpose or meaning, and that’s “zombies.” An ending makes the story matter. It makes the time you spend in that story matter. So maybe, even if it’s not the ending we want, it’s okay if a story finally ends.
What do you think? Is it better to tell a complete story? Or would you like to see everything explored and all loose ends tied up first? Let us know in the comments below or join the Boss Rush Discord to continue the conversation!
Featured Image: Falcom
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The Boss Rush Podcast is the flagship podcast of The Boss Rush Network and Boss Rush Media. Each week, hosts Corey Dirrig, Stephanie Klimov, LeRon Dawkins, and Pat Klein come together with their friends, colleagues, and fellow creators to talk about their week in video games, discuss industry topics, conduct interviews, answer listener questions, and more. New episodes every Monday. Get each episode one week early and more perks over on the Boss Rush Network Patreon page.
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