Bossed Around

I can not stress enough, if you have not finished Mass Effect 2 and intend to, then go no further. This article is not for you -- at least not yet -- because I intend to spend time exploring its most tender and uncensored secrets, probing with a total disregard for the sanctity of any of the game’s normally unmentionable parts. In terms of spoilers, this article is "gone wild" like an illicit spring break video or a David Duchovny diary entry.

As usual, reviews be damned. You want my review of Mass Effect 2? Here it is – the game is really good, just like everyone else on the planet has already confirmed. The specifics that make such a statement true – or at least objectively defensible – are, frankly, pretty boring and certainly a lot less interesting than the game itself. The time for reviews is over. The time for analysis is at hand.

Beware, I’m giving the end of the game away in 3.
2.
1.

Like BioShock before it, Mass Effect 2’s greatest sin is in the final boss battle with the human reaper, a ridiculous Terminator-shaped space ship that is, frankly, made all the less imposing when you consider that I killed it by shooting it in the eye with a pistol.

Dear galaxy,

The greatest threat you face is not an ancient evil. The greatest threats are bans on handguns. Repeal any curbs on the Second Amendment in your sector and consider yourself now safe from Reapers. You’re welcome. Love, Cmdr. Shepherd.

How I longed for the game to have ended after the monumental and crucial decision over what to do with this supposedly hyper-advanced technology. Here at last was a game whose climactic element is a decision with ramifications that may not play out fully for years to come. Daring and inventive, this was maturity and restraint on a grand, galactic level.

Then the big Reaper thingy lunges up from out of nowhere, like the bad guy at the end of a bad horror movie, and shoots some laser beams at you for a little while. How I wish it had all stopped while this construct still maintained a vestige of mystery about it – when I could still suspend my disbelief that I hadn’t worked all this time to fight an overdeveloped Sinistar that could be felled by a particularly well organized drive by. Whether this constitutes good or bad game-making is a point worth some debate, but without question, it’s terrible storytelling.

File Mass Effect 2 into the unfortunate folder of evidence that supports the thesis: Game companies should consider getting rid of boss battles from adult games.

Is that too audacious a statement to make? Can we not begin to imagine that, perhaps, we have confused a story's climax with an arbitrary conflict with a difficult “boss”? Can we entertain the notion that this conflation is a fundamental flaw that deserves to be aggressively re-examined? Would we feel that something had been lost from our games if we looked for new ways to end epic games?

I struggle to remember a boss battle that I genuinely enjoyed. Maybe fighting the titular evil at the end of Diablo 2; because let’s be honest, it just makes sense to have that fight. But even as I consider it, I have to admit that it wasn’t so much the battle that was fun, but the story of that confrontation. Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, was primed to have a satisfying ending built on the foundation of difficult moral dilemmas and gray-area choices – do you give technology to the Illusive Man that he might someday use to dominate other races?

I am not the best person to discuss comparative examples of good and bad boss battles. I rarely get to the really big ones in most games, and when I do I’m either disappointed at how trivial the ordeal was or frustrated that I didn’t get it on the first try. It seems like one of those conceits in gaming that is nearly impossible to pull off, where the window between accessibility and challenge is so narrow that 9 games out of 10 won’t even come close.

To make a boss really work, he needs to be present throughout the game. He needs to seem initially invincible, but increasingly evenly matched as you progress. There must be a sense of confrontation fostered within the protagonist, so that when you arrive to finally lay waste to your enemy, it makes sense. And, even then, it’s maybe 50/50 at best that most game makers will stick the landing and give players both a sense of accomplishment and closure.

There has to be a better way.

Is it so wrong to imagine that just resolving the story, or challenging the player with a tough choice, is not enough? As game-makers develop their story-making chops, why not have them dare to rely on their skills as storytellers? Is there room for a place where "climax" is not synonymous with "epic battle"?

I am very happy to have played Mass Effect 2. As I pointed out at the start, I am convinced that this was an outstanding game. Like “unobtanium” in Avatar, the Reaper episode will just be something I try to forget. It serves as a reminder, however, of how far we still can go in finding new ways to tell stories in games.

Comments

Just want to send a big F-You for writing something I can't read yet, and big Thank You for putting the spoiler warning up front. I look forward to reading this once I get my computer running smoothly again and can play through the game.

Between the podcast spoiler section, the ME2 spoiler thread, and now this, GWJ is busting my balls with all this forbidden ME2 fruit!

I couldn't agree more. Loved ME2, the storytelling in the game (as distinct from the story itself) was masterful. I would have been perfectly happy to leave at the same point you mentioned.

Moreover, I agree that it illustrates the lack of necessity of boss fights - despite their ubiquity. They are a throwback to an older age. Perhaps they were necessary to add variety when graphics were stick-men in their simplicity, and storytelling could only be done by adding reams of text. As has been amply demonstrated, this is no longer the case.

Like BioShock before it, Mass Effect 2’s greatest sin is in the final boss battle with the human reaper, a ridiculous Terminator-shaped space ship that is, frankly, made all the less imposing when you consider that I killed it by shooting it in the eye with a pistol.

The reaper also features that good old boss trope of yore: a huge glowing circle on its chest that screams "WEAK POINT!" I'm starting to think I'm the only guy who actually noticed this and, consequentially, shot him there.

The fact that you could ignore it completely and still win pushes the endgame situation straight up Redundant Hill to the edge of Ludicrous Lookout Point.

I thought getting to kill the thresher maw was pretty fun since Wrex was the last one to do it. So it was a boss fight, but still tied into the story just fine. I especially liked all the Krogans talking about how crazy it was that I did it.

Never really considered games like this getting rid of Boss Battles but now that you wrote it, it makes total sense. Although I liked the

Spoiler:

Saren battle

at the end of ME1. But the Giant-Head battle in ME2 was silly.

Bullion Cube wrote:

Just want to send a big F-You for writing something I can't read yet, and big Thank You for putting the spoiler warning up front. I look forward to reading this once I get my computer running smoothly again and can play through the game.

Between the podcast spoiler section, the ME2 spoiler thread, and now this, GWJ is busting my balls with all this forbidden ME2 fruit!

I'd like to second this. I hate nothing more than a GWJ article that I can't read due to spoilers. Wait, that's a lie. One thing I hate more are ladders in games that are unclimbable. Damn you level designers!!

On the one hand it was stupid and out of place in a relatively sophisticated narrative, and on the other was totally rad in the Contra sense of the word. Why can the two not peacefully coexist? After all, they had for the entire 99% of the game leading up to that point.

Also:

To make a boss really work, he needs to be present throughout the game. He needs to seem initially invincible, but increasingly evenly matched as you progress. There must be a sense of confrontation fostered within the protagonist, so that when you arrive to finally lay waste to your enemy,

You really need to play the Yakuza games.

To make a boss really work, he needs to be present throughout the game. He needs to seem initially invincible, but increasingly evenly matched as you progress. There must be a sense of confrontation fostered within the protagonist, so that when you arrive to finally lay waste to your enemy, it makes sense. And, even then, it’s maybe 50/50 at best that most game makers will stick the landing and give players both a sense of accomplishment and closure.

This ties into why the 'terminator' doesn't work completely as ME2's end boss, compared to the build up at the end of ME1 which I feel did it right. In ME1's endgame you're like ants compared to Sovereign while climbing up the outside of the Citadel tower, as he crawls over the tower with his mile long legs to connect with the tower. Once inside you kill your nemesis who you've been pursuing the whole game, and by killing him you weaken Sovereign by some 'link'.

The other part is that it's not the enemy that you've been fighting the rest of the game, the collectors are who you've been sold as The Bad Guys (or agents of The Real Bad Guys). The terminator turns up at the end with an air of mystery about it (I guess the middle of a suicide mission isn't the time for 10 minutes of in-depth plot exposition about it) and you don't know how it fits into the main story or the threat it represents. IIRC you pretty much enter the area and your first reaction is "What the ____ is that?" instead of knowing that it was the big nasty thing you must destroy because it is vital to the enemy or will destroy your enemy.

This is another way in which 2008's Alone in the Dark was ahead of its time. While it has a few boss battles earlier in the game, it ends not with a battle against a larger, more deadly enemy but with an interesting, story-driven choice. Essentially, the game revolves around the heros attempts to prevent Satan from being summoned into our world; in the end, the hero fails and Satan possesses either the body of the hero's lover or, if the hero shoots his lover before she can be possessed, in the body of the hero himself. While the choice provided, like a lot of the writing in the game, is a little bit hokey, neither choice is clearly superior to the other and both have long-term implications for the story.

Two of my favourite games accomplish having a big boss fight as the climax that ties in with the story just fine.

The first is Shadow of the Colossus, which everybody probably knows by now. The final colossus is easily the biggest one of all, and just getting close enough to start climbing him is an ordeal of epic proportions. Throw in a torrential thunderstorm for atmosphere, and you're set. This is easily one of the best final boss fights in video game history.

The other one is Zelda: Ocarina of Time on N64. To this day, I still say OoT kicks Wind Waker and Twilight Princess's collective asses, both for bosses and overall dungeon design in general. But the final boss fight with Ganon is absolutely epic in this game. You fight your way to the top of his tower and battle him in human form, then race back to the bottom as the tower crumbles to the ground around you, only to find that he's not dead yet, and you have a final showdown with him in his classic pig-beast form while lightning rages in the background. No other Zelda game matches this final boss fight, although Twilight Princess does come close IMO.

The key ingredient in both these boss fights is the build-up over the course of the game. In the case of OoT, it's obvious. Ganondorf is the Principle Bad Dude (TM) and he's present for the course of basically the entire game. Hell, he even succeeds in his plan to take over Hyrule when you turn into an adult. When you first wake up and find out he's taken over, it's like "Well sh*t, how am I supposed to compete with that?" But you slowly build your power until you're ready to take him on, and it's immensely satisfying.

SotC is a little more subtle, but still perfectly clear. You're killing the Colossi for Dormin so he/she/it will revive the girl. However, over the course of the game, you're given cutscenes involving Wander's people chasing after him to stop him from completing the task. This isn't because they're mean and don't want him to revive the girl; it's because they know that the price for doing so is releasing Dormin into the world again. You could argue that the actual climax of the story is when Dormin is released, but I think that's actually the conclusion. The climax in my view is Wander choosing to finish the task, even though he knows what's about to happen. He's been slowly changing over the course of the game, and it's obvious that doing this isn't good for him. Look at the design of the final fight. Most of the time it takes to finish the fight is simply getting to the Colossus; once you're on top of his head, the fight is basically over in a matter of seconds. In order to get that far, you have to make a constant choice every step of the way that "Yes, I'm going to kill this thing and finish the job". Seeing the final consequences of your actions is one of the best emotional payoffs in any game I've ever played.

I think Shadow of the Colossus has to exist outside of this discussion, and I want to stress that not every game should choose to eliminate boss-battles just as I do argue that not every game should feel compelled to either. SotC accomplishes outstanding battles, because so much loving care is obviously put into the effort that there's no point in even trying to argue that boss battles shouldn't be there.

I've never been into Zelda, so that's one I can't comment on specifically, but it does appear the praise is universal. Again I want to stress that the idea is not that boss battles never have a place, but that there is genuine folly in assuming they are, by default, a necessity.

I don't yet own ME2, but I want to commend this article not only for the forward thinking on bosses, but also for not being too spoiler-phobic to talk about something interesting.

Elysium wrote:

I've never been into Zelda, so that's one I can't comment on specifically, but it does appear the praise is universal. Again I want to stress that the idea is not that boss battles never have a place, but that there is genuine folly in assuming they are, by default, a necessity.

Dorkmaster's assessment is pretty spot on, though the rest of Ocarina rubbed me pretty raw with the rest of its annoying gameplay cliches.

Elysium wrote:

I think Shadow of the Colossus has to exist outside of this discussion, and I want to stress that not every game should choose to eliminate boss-battles just as I do argue that not every game should feel compelled to either. SotC accomplishes outstanding battles, because so much loving care is obviously put into the effort that there's no point in even trying to argue that boss battles shouldn't be there.

I've never been into Zelda, so that's one I can't comment on specifically, but it does appear the praise is universal. Again I want to stress that the idea is not that boss battles never have a place, but that there is genuine folly in assuming they are, by default, a necessity.

Fair enough. I was more bringing those two examples up as counterexamples to your point, but I guess I misinterpreted it a bit.

No, your point is very well taken. I was trying to clarify a bit further.

Great Article. After the dumb thing died to some shots from the Cain heavy weapon, I was expecting the reaper to give the thumbs up at the end

You should go back and do the loyalty missons you skipped, maybe when they put out the Hammerhead dlc.

wordsmythe wrote:

I don't yet own ME2, but I want to commend this article not only for the forward thinking on bosses, but also for not being too spoiler-phobic to talk about something interesting.

I wanted to quote this for emphasis. A lot of interesting discussion about games gets side-lined because people are too afraid of spoilers. Good on you, Elysium.

At least it was a battle where you had to fight something. Dragon Age's final fight was not a battle.

You've reached the voicemail of Commander Shepard. Sorry I can't take avert your genocide at the moment but I'm draining a gaseous dwarf star.

Am I the only one that felt like the game was over, or had reached its climax, after

Spoiler:

making the decision to destroy or save the collector ship?

(on a side note, this is one of the most difficult decisions I think I've ever had to make in a game)

It felt to me like "Yes! That was satisfying." and I was ready for the wind-down of the final moments, but then

Spoiler:

the terminator popped up

and I was "eh? What's this?". It just felt unnecessary.

Y'know, I never looked at the cinematic trailers for ME2 before, but going over them now, I'm struck by how much better looking they are.

Whatever happened to awesome cinematic endings? I mean, take something as good as the Dawn Of War intro movie, and do something of similar quality to reward the player for beating the game...

Certis, I loved the original ME. I bought it on day one for the pc release. However, due to a number of reasons, I passed on ME2 at launch. Sorry to break up any conversation flow at this moment, but I just wanted to say that I applaud how this article was handled. I'm not a zealot when it comes to spoilers (how could I be as a fan of Idle Thumbs :), but I appreciate the extra effort in making the shortened (read: rss) post contain no spoilers. In a few months or so when I do purchase ME2 and am able to continue the story of my Shepard, I hope to revisit this article. However, until then, thanks for not lessening my experience.

Oh, and at this point I assume we're never getting that Dragon Age spoiler section on the Conference Call.

I think that boss battles come from two gameplay requirements: (i) to make the gamer feel powerful, and that they've accomplished something extraordinary; (ii) to provide difficulty spikes in the gameplay and to give some kind of tempo to the gamer experience.

For these two reasons, I don't think the boss battle against the powerful enemy will ever go away, though I totally share your desire for an end to the cliche of the huge boss with the transparently conveyed weak point.

Spoiler:

I think that ME2 dropped the ball here by making the reaper foetus look too mechanical, it just looked like a robot. Given its parentage I think they should have made it look much more human, which would have given more of an emotional reaction to it.

It had to be there from the story in ME2, though. You know the reapers are abducting thousands of humans for some reason, and that's the reason. It's not a satisfying reason, and it doesn't really serve the overriding plotline, since a much more logical goal for the collectors would be to get the reaper fleet into the galaxy, rather than merely building a new reaper.

I think a better use of the thing would be a more involved battle. Having a tiny reaper that your team would beat on foot from outside clearly didn't work. I think it needed to be more complete, and you needed to be fighting it from inside the normandy, fighting bits of it inside the ship like you had to with the Guilty Spark things, and then possibly jumping over to it and blowing bits of it up from outside or inside. (Mordin could have come up with some way of beating Indoctrination). It is highly anticlimactic in its current form.

harrisben wrote:

Am I the only one that felt like the game was over, or had reached its climax, after

Spoiler:

making the decision to destroy or save the collector ship?

(on a side note, this is one of the most difficult decisions I think I've ever had to make in a game)

It felt to me like "Yes! That was satisfying." and I was ready for the wind-down of the final moments, but then

Spoiler:

the terminator popped up

and I was "eh? What's this?". It just felt unnecessary.

That is exactly the point of this article, and I couldn't agree more.

Good job Elysium, you've managed to really put my feelings on the whole thing into words.

Pawz wrote:

Y'know, I never looked at the cinematic trailers for ME2 before, but going over them now, I'm struck by how much better looking they are.

Whatever happened to awesome cinematic endings? I mean, take something as good as the Dawn Of War intro movie, and do something of similar quality to reward the player for beating the game...

Given the percentage of people that actually finish games, that's not really resources well-spent, compared to a great intro.

It would be really nice if developers didn't feel obligated to include a giant boss battle at the end of their games. Arkham Asylum was a good example of how that can tarnish your final moments with an otherwise brilliant game.

I didn't mind the idea of the human reaper as much as a lot of people seemed too, but yeah, the fight itself was completely unnecessary. When I shot out the supports and watched it fall, the first thought I had was "I guess I'll be seeing you again in a minute", and sure enough back he comes like a jack in the box.

Bioshock 2 end spoilers:

Spoiler:

I really liked the way the end battle was handled in Bioshock 2, it made a lot more sense than the final battle in Bioshock 1. Fighting a horde of splicers was a lot more fun than one super bad guy, it was challenging enough, lasted just long enough, and was very satisfying I thought.

Certainly having the final battle be a horde of enemies is not a new idea, but it was nice to see a big game like this not fall into the trap of the big boss battle, like the first game did.

One thing touched on by the article, and by previous posts on the thread is how a boss is very different to the enemies you're fighting 98% of the game. Most of your foes will be around the same scale as you are, and mostly humanoid. Rarely you get a larger threat such as a praetorian what functions as a boss near the end of a mission.

The other type of boss encounter you meet in ME2 is where there is some object you need to destroy, such as the end of the IFF mission. Here your opposition is still human scale humanoids, but the thing you need destroy to win and complete the mission is a core that opens periodically, I feel this fits in better as a challenge with the rest of the game. The 'terminator' encounter is very close to this mechanically with addition that it attacks you as well, but you can't disable it's attacks as you could with humanoids by prioritising certain classes such as heavy or snipers.

Yah, I loved ME2, and thought the boss battle at the end was just a little silly and anti-climactic. I agree, a good 'adult' game doesn't need a huge contra-style boss, just a successful resolution that is interesting and furthers the plot. If you have to have a boss - I thought that the first Uncharted did a great job.

Spoiler:

The main bad guy you are fighting the whole game gets eaten by zombie bugs and taken out by an ancillary character. Very surprising. Then the final boss is more of a quick time event, and wasn't challenging; however, it was well done, and satisfying.

I hate when you skate through a game on cruise control, and then the final boss just can't be beaten without a strategy guide and power leveling.

Spoiler:

That is probably why I have never beaten a Final Fantasy game.

Elysium wrote:

File Mass Effect 2 into the unfortunate folder of evidence that supports the thesis: Game companies should consider getting rid of boss battles from adult games.

Is that too audacious a statement to make?

I say yes. You provide an excellent rationale for my response in the following:

Elysium wrote:

To make a boss really work, he needs to be present throughout the game. He needs to seem initially invincible, but increasingly evenly matched as you progress. There must be a sense of confrontation fostered within the protagonist, so that when you arrive to finally lay waste to your enemy, it makes sense. And, even then, it’s maybe 50/50 at best that most game makers will stick the landing and give players both a sense of accomplishment and closure.

This is the crux of the debate. Final boss battles should be sculpted the way you describe, and not some half assed, shoe-horn attempt to create climax at the end of a weak story.

Imagine if Final Fantasy 3 on the SNES (I'm not sure of the proper number) did not end with fighting Kefka, or Super Metriod did not have the final battle with Mother Brain.

I enjoyed the final battle in ME2. I perceived it to the personification of everything I was fighting against, and why I went on the suicide mission in the first place. This was how previous galactic civilizations met their end, and was a sign of things to come. Considering as well that

Spoiler:

tens of thousands of humans were melted down into some kind of organic slag to create this Reaper

I wanted to engage it in a fight, and show that things were going to be different this time around.

To make a boss really work, he needs to be present throughout the game. He needs to seem initially invincible, but increasingly evenly matched as you progress. There must be a sense of confrontation fostered within the protagonist, so that when you arrive to finally lay waste to your enemy, it makes sense. And, even then, it’s maybe 50/50 at best that most game makers will stick the landing and give players both a sense of accomplishment and closure.

I think this is the key. Saren and Sovreign in ME1 were there from the get-go, and you knew who you were chasing at what the stakes were (which got more complex the more you learned about the ship). The final battle there made a lot more sense.

Being the "Empire Strikes Back" of the Mass Effect universe, ME2 really didn't have that same sort of urgency. As you said, the "boss" comes out of left field 10 minutes before you fight him/it, so where are the stakes? What's the drama? I suppose it was included more out of obligation than any true sense of narrative purpose.

To be honest, I STILL don't quite even know what the POINT of the human reaper was-- would it fly around in space? Landing on human worlds and enslaving the populace somehow? What's the point of making it "human" shaped? Why, exaclty, did it need all those soylent humans pumped into it? Very weird.

I also find it highly ironic that an article talking about "spoilers" has a comments section full of spoiler tags and people posting who haven't played the game in question!