Today I finished Earthbound for the second time overall (but first time in years). In the final battles, you have to fight both Pokey and Giygas.
I always thought it was ridiculous that Pokey, the annoying kid next door, could so quickly become aligned with the most evil force in the world. Then again, I suppose it’s no more ridiculous than another young boy (Ness) becoming the most powerful fighter in the world.
Earthbound’s ending does almost everything right. It has the happy ending, peace is restored, and the characters return to their hometowns.
But most importantly, you are free. All the enemies are gone, but you can still go anywhere in the world that you want. You can explore. You can reunite with characters you haven’t seen in a while. There is new dialogue, as characters will react to you having saved the world. You can even get any of the photos that you may have missed. Every RPG and adventure game should do this! Sure, lots of games revisit the characters and maybe show what they’re up to now, but you don’t have the freedom to go anywhere and explore at your own pace.
The ending seems to do everything right…but not quite. There is one problem: You can’t save your game. You may be free to do anything else, but you can’t save your progress and finish up later on. Sure, it’s almost unheard of for a game to let you save during the ending. But this is no normal ending. A normal game ending is typically non-interactive and lasts maybe 5-10 minutes. In Earthbound’s ending, you are still playing! According to Starmen.net, it can take over two hours to go back and talk to everyone! And that’s a long time to have to go without saving. So it may not completely perfect in my mind, but it is still a great ending that more games should emulate.
At any rate, once you are done visiting with everyone, you can return home. Then you and your mother will look through the pictures taken by the cameraman throughout your journey. And of course the credits will roll as well.
Next up, I plan on getting back to Batman: Arkham City: Armored Edition for Wii U. In the meantime, check out my video of Wii Fit Plus. It’s a collection of my many fails while playing the obstacle course. It may seem funny now, but those hits weren’t so funny at the time!