

You might get a big action sequence or a great boss fight, but chances are that those will be less interesting than some of the events that have come before–take Dragon Age: Inquisition‘s final battle, for example. Instead, most games put their attention toward hooking players from the beginning, leading to an imbalanced story that wows you up front and gradually peters off as you continue through, hence endings that feel rushed, bland, or out-of-place. Roughly nine out of ten players will never see a game’s ending, giving developers little incentive to focus their efforts there. When you dig in a little bit, you start to see why. Take the aforementioned Mass Effect–even if you strip away three games’ worth of expectations and hundreds of hours spent in enjoyment, the endings for the third game were acceptable at best, and decidedly worse for many.

Game endings are notorious for being less than great, often venturing into downright bad or disappointing. But not every story needs to be one of incredible adrenaline and action there are smaller stories to be told, too. Those heroics can be fun–I get a kick out of playing galaxy-saving, Fade-repairing heroes who smooch a lot in their spare time. The power of God of War, for example, is tied directly into your own ability to mash buttons and receive a reward in a way that watching even something like Hardcore Henry can’t. They’re power fantasies, one of the few sources of escape that actually let us experience each victory as our own rather than filtered vicariously through text or images without our input. And Firewatch’s ultimate deflation pinpoints how deeply we’re drawn into Henry’s desire for something, anything, to not be his fault, ultimately leading us with the same sense of disappointment when we’re not the hero, just another schlub making our way through a story where we’re not the hero. Gone Home is a deliberate subversion of tropes, challenging your expectations for a queer teenage love story wrapped in trappings of riot grrl and 90s occultism. I found each ending to be a perfect conclusion for the story’s events. You explore and interact, putting together pieces of a narrative, rather than literal, puzzle. These are quiet, simple stories told in only a few hours at most. Two of my favorite games of the past few years are also two of the games I most frequently see criticized for having bad endings– Gone Home and Firewatch. Keeping this in mind, here are some of the best walking simulators that gamers can check out if they want to immerse themselves in a story-heavy title.Spoiler Warning: This piece contains spoilers for Firewatch, Gone Home, and Dragon Age: Inquisition. The increase in visual fidelity has led to titles using captivating stories and unique art styles to engage audiences as opposed to the action-heavy gameplay that many people have become accustomed to.

Updated July 24, 2022, by Ritwik Mitra: The allure of walking simulators has increased in modern times. Suffice to say, fans who love unique adventure titles and mysterious stories will have a great time with the following games, some of which are legendary for all the right reasons.

Be it a person who has never tried this genre before or a fan looking to find another title to enjoy these games are some of the best walking simulators ever made. RELATED: Story-Heavy Games To Play If You Loved God Of Warīecause of this, many gamers underestimate how great the genre can be. Most of these titles are short and can be beaten in just a couple of hours. They heavily focus on their stories, often with mystery or horror elements, in which players walk around. Rather than having a lot of action, walking simulators are exactly what they sound like.
#GONE HOME ENDINGS SIMULATOR#
Walking simulator games are an interesting type of video game.
