I’m a bit of a computer game addict. Not a big fan of FPS though. However what recently struck me is that in many ways I actually do not want to win the game I’m playing. It might sound crazy at first, but after thinking about it it really become apparent that it was way more enjoyable to play the game that to finish it.

Maybe it has something to do with my game preference - I love open ended, free roaming RPGs and strategies that go on forever (I always play Civilization on marathon speed…). These games do tend to focus on the game-play and immersion a lot. Then again a lot of the RPGs often tend to have some big finally at the end.

Unfortunately either the games have been getting worse and worse or my memory of the old ones is making them look better then they did. All my recent games, even when playing was a pleasure the ending turned out to be a disappointment.

A really bad case of an ending gone wrong was Two Worlds. The game itself was decent enough, and some bits of the story were building up high expectations for the finish. I was guessing maybe some time travelling with your character actually being involved in the kidnapping, basically some unusual, unexpected twist at the end. I would have even forgiven the ridiculously easy last boss if the storyline had lived up to my expectations. Unfortunately the ending was shorter than some of the cut-scenes in the middle of the game. And a bit lame too.

In a way winning these games means your adventure has ended. Some games have re-play value, some do not. Maybe it is just a character trait - I’m just as often disappointed with books and movies as I am with games. You know the feeling, when the movie is great for 95% and then the last minutes spoil the experience. When it just feels like they needed to finish it off, clean-up the scene and there wasn’t a good plan for it in the first place.

I guess good role playing games are a bit like an interactive book or movie. You get to be part of the adventure. You are not just a passive observer of an intriguing mystery or a good plot on the screen - you get a chance to immerse yourself in it, make the decisions and write the story (or at least pretend you’re writing it…). This sets the expectations for the ending very high. I would even say that the better the playability the bigger these expectations are.

When you get emotionally attached to your characters it can be hard to part with them at the end of an adventure. I wouldn’t say that you expect “happy ending” Hollywood style… It more about either giving the character’s journey a meaning or surprising you with something unexpected, but not lame at the same time.

Recently I read this interesting article about the “American Stonehenge”. Apart from being a great, and considering today’s press, surprisingly informative article, it made me think about how we treat the monuments from the old days… Well obviously I mean civilized people, that do not trash and destroy something because it’s from this or that religion.

We kind of subconsciously assign more value to it as opposed to modern pieces. In a way the less we know about a structure, the more mysterious it is and the wilder the theories that surround it. I look at things today and am amazed at things like the pyramids. But then again is it maybe that I am assigning knowledge available to few people to a whole society? Just because modern day humans have the technology that can build structures even greater than the pyramids or Stonehenge, it does not mean a random person in the street could build as much as a simple watch or a car… In similar sense it was probably just very select few who had the skills and knowledge to orchestrate such a great undertaking.

Also at first I was taken aback with the negative attitude of some of the people. Doesn’t matter what the intention is of the builders, it’s not like they are putting some nuclear weapon out there. But when I thought about it for a longer while I remembered something.

My home town Gniezno is located near a bigger city called Poznan, and there near the town centre one can find the Castle. For many years it looked like any castle. The stereotypical grayish-green walls looking old and gloomy. That’s how old castles look, at least all that I have seen up till then, that’s how they looked in the stories etc…

Until one day I went to Poznan and they were in the process of restoring the Castle and a part of it was cleaning the walls - washing of all the dirt and stuff that has accumulated over the centuries. I was in fact lucky enough to get there when the process was half-way done, which meant you could see half of the wall clean and half  with the dirt still on. Not to drag it out much more the restored stones were of a nearly light sandy colour, not really something you associate with old castles.

But the point of this is that it made me realize that when the Castle was built it in a way looked completely differently. And in similar way we will never know whether there were the equivalents of graffiti painters trashing monuments like Stonehenge or commoners whining about what a waste of money the pyramids are. Probably not to the degree that democracy allows us today to voice our opinions, however still the perception at the time of their building might have been just as controversial as of our modern attempts at great architecture.