I finished L.A. Noire tonight. MILD SPOILER: It’s somewhat bittersweet. I liked it, because it was entirely in keeping with the genre in question.

Endings are a tricky business, though, whatever medium you’re working in. The temptation to have a happy ending where everything resolves itself nicely is always strong, because everyone likes things to be “resolved” and for characters they’ve spent a hefty amount of time with to have some degree of “closure”. Leaving things hanging either leaves an author open to accusations of planning a sequel, or leaving the audience unsatisfied.

I wrestled with this particular conundrum throughout the course of the month-long piece of fiction I wrote over the course of November. In fact, for the final post, I rewrote the ending several times. I eventually plumped for a “happy” ending because I felt it was in keeping with the personal journey my protagonist had been on — to smack him down after everything he’d been through would be a bit harsh.

Well, yes, it would — but equally, a harsh ending isn’t necessarily a bad one. In fact, a bittersweet ending where not everyone leaves feeling satisfied can actually be very effective and memorable. I’m not going to spoil L.A. Noire‘s ending here in case there are people reading who haven’t played it yet, but instead I’m going to talk about the first game I remember to have a strikingly “bad” ending — and I’m not talking “bad” in the sense of “poor”.

Rare’s Conker’s Bad Fur Day was a peculiar game. Starting out as one of the cutesy platformers that typified a lot of the N64’s catalogue, it eventually morphed into something completely unexpected: a “mature” title. Now, by maintaining the game’s original cartoony visuals, there was an element of immaturity about it, too, particularly when combined with the not-very-well bleeped out swearing, the grotesquely excessive violence and the crude situations (a bee cheating on his wife by humping a large-breasted sunflower (off-screen, but very audible) being a particularly memorable example). But there was an undercurrent of maturity about the whole thing, too — the game treated the player as an adult who enjoyed puerile humour but was capable of understanding pathos and an impressively wide range of references to movies and popular culture.

Most notably, though, it had a brilliant ending that not only spoofed Alien fantastically, it also managed to provide a genuine “What the fu–” moment in a game that prided itself on its ridiculousness throughout. By providing a sobering, heartbreaking ending after the hours of cartoonish insanity which had preceded it, the game was giving the player a very marked wake-up call. It was marking the end of your time in this brightly coloured world filled with chocolate, poo monsters and cogs which told you to fuck off. It was time to wise up and start being a grown-up again. It also mirrored Conker’s own journey throughout the course of the game — the basic premise of his whole adventure was him attempting to get home and recover from the mother of all hangovers. The most sobering experience he could have was the loss of the one he loved.

This isn’t to say that good endings aren’t satisfying — who doesn’t like to see the Death Star blowing up? But a well-made “bad” ending can be just as — if not more so — effective at tugging at the heartstrings and provoking an emotional response. To date, my favourite game endings include the aforementioned Conker along with Silent Hill 2, surely one of the most depressing interactive experiences you could ever sit through — but all the better for it. Heavy Rain, for all its plot holes and flaws, also had a great “bad” ending. Several, in fact.

So what makes an effective ending? For me, it’s a sense of “closure”, that this is most definitely and unequivocally “the end” — whether that’s because everyone is dead, because the planet is saved or simply because our lead characters are closing one chapter in their lives and starting a new one. Get me invested in your characters and I’ll care what happens to them — so make sure whatever shenanigans they’re involved in reaches some sort of satisfying conclusion — even if you’re planning a sequel.