Just want to say thank you for mentioning Tales from the Borderlands. Its my first TTG game (games game??) and I picked it up on steam yesterday because I saw it in this video. Amazing game, finished it last night, been listening to the intro songs non-stop. :)
I really don't like the overview videos that just describe what the game will have. Its bad for the returning fans because you can tell that they are dodging around some key players/concepts in the Dragon Age universe (The Tevinter Imperium, in this case). Its also bad for the newcomers to the series because part of what makes a game fun is discovering the combat and the story for yourself. Skyrim was my first TES game, and most of the fun I had in that game was exploration, not just of the physical space, but also of the mini-cultural one contained within the province of Skyrim. These bland trailers are bad for both the New players and the Old, because it robs the game of a certain degree of its ambiguity and exploration, and it feels condescending, as if those of us who are familiar with the series don't know what the freaking Tevinter Imperium is. Agree/Disagree, thoughts?
Both ways of ending a story (with ambiguity or certainty) are, in my opinion, perfectly valid. I have enjoyed both kinds equally, the definite best exemplified by Halo:Reach. The major marketing phrase was "From the beginning, you know the end", which immediately places in stark contrast the glorious victory of the first trilogy in which the Chief prevails, no matter the cost, and a sense of impending doom which is bearing down on the player from the onset of the game. So in that regard the definite ending, as stated in the article, can be done well and can stay with you. Six's last stand is pretty epic, you know its coming a mile off, but the question of "how" remains until after the game has finished.
On the other hand we have ambiguity, where my experience in gaming is limited but my experience in literature is far more extensive. Ambiguity is what makes a story interesting. Adding ambiguity shows that the developer/writer trusts the audience. The impact of it is, for lack of a better word, ambiguous, and as such takes courage on the part of the developer and the publisher, which is why it is more rare in western AAA titles. In the west, especially the United States we are used to secure endings: rare is the ambiguous ending that successfully captures the imagination of the general public. Inception comes to mind. The reason, I think, that vague endings are more rare is because the hero(s) ride off into the sunset, or go down in a blaze of glory. Personally I would love to see more ambiguity, though I admit I generally don't play games for their intellectual stimulation, but I think that this is essential for the industry to move forward towards calling itself "art". One of the best ways that ambiguity could be placed in games that could never work in another medium is what we saw in Dead Space 3, co-op. Give one player hallucinations that the other(s) do not see, or have a mystical character give each of them a unique message (think The Lady Galadriel in "Fellowship"). In terms of narrative in videogames, I think that co-op is the next great thing. Just look at what Bungie is doing with Destiny (from what I understand with the given information) and what Journey did.
@COMMANDOBLACK I'm not a dev, but I do write a lot and I think I might be able to answer your question. The reason we don't see minorities in gaming is because as you said, the writers are white males. This is not because they're inherently racist or anything, it's because they're afraid of getting something wrong, of stepping into someone else's moccasins. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to do so, and I can't blame them for not wanting to leave their comfort zone. So the solution I guess would be to get more non-caucasain males writing for the games. As for how to actually implement that, I have no idea.
@never-named and the sad thing is that the DNA will be given on to the next generation. Once upon a time he/she would have been eaten by a tiger or otherwise forcibly removed from the gene pool.
Therimight's comments