Ah yes, the Final Boss. The gaming equivalent of a final exam, the final Boss is meant to put all the skills that you aquired throughout the game to the test. Some are Hard as Hell, and some are easy, but for the most part they function the same, as basically a steroid infused version of every boss from before.

We gamers have faced many final bosses throughout our gaming experience, be it Bowser or Sephiroth or O2. But every now and again, the game throws us for a loop.

You've gotten to the end of the game, you're clearly fighting the boss, but something's wrong. Cutscenes are sprouting up mid battle, the boss WON'T die, or only takes massive damage from that previously useless plot based item, or sometimes, you, the player, cannot die. This is strange, what is going on? Well chances are, you've entered a scripted final Boss.

Wait, this isn't what I wanted! this is terrible right? well, not entirely... (spoilers below)

In a nut shell, scripted boss battles are fights where the gameplay takes a back seat to the story. As stated above, his can take many forms, whether the battle is full of cuscenes, is unwinnable/ unlosable, or if a deus ex machina ends up winning the battle for you. On the one hand, this kind of final boss can make a game feel very anticlimactic. After all, you were ready for the final battle, the batle royal, the climax of the game, but instead it pisses that experience away all for the sake of story? It's just downright dissapointing.



One great example of this is the final boss of Final Fantasy X (spoilers!). You had just beaten Jecht, one of the hardest bosses in the game, excluding bonus bosses, and you were ready to take on Yu Yevon, the man/ it/thing responsible for all of Sin's destruction! You knew Jecht was only going to be the second to last boss, so Yu Yevon's fight had enough buildup to make he final battle truly epic! But then yo get there and... Yu yevon is some wierd jellyfish thing. A minor dissapointment, but you push on, in the hopes that he will be a challenging opponent! But all he does is summon your own Aeons against you. An interesting twist! but you soon discover, that these aeons have the same hp value as they did with you, which makes them pitifully easy to take out. And to top it all off, your entire party has auto life cast upon them for the duration of the battle. So all you do is slaughter your Aeons for a few minutes, and then finish of Yu Yevon. No dialogue, or final speech or anything, he just dies.



Now don;t get me wrong, FFX is a great game (one of my personal favorites!) but that final boss was a pathetic attempt at drama. In retrospect, one realizes that Jecht was the REAL final boss, but at the time, I considered Yu Yevon to be the big finale, after all, HE was the true Villain of the game. HE was the guy pulling the strings and causing all that harm! Why woud he be such a pushover? Jecht, while a great boss in general, only served the story as a way to get Tidus' daddy issues out of the way before the end. After that battle was over, you still felt like there was more that needed doing (Via actual gameplay, not in the story)

Despite how badly it can be done, scripted final bosses can be done in a very good, satisfying way. One can see the logic behind them after all: games are an interactive medium, so rather than seeing the end via a cutscene, why don;t you inerct with it? Even whe done badly, this kind of gameplay is a sign of developers trying to use the medium in a way that only video games can do.

A game that uses this idea well is Moher 3, with it's final Boss against (MASSIVE SPOIERS) the Masked Man aka. Claus.


What made this work was, you had jus previously beaten (in a sense) Porky, he Villain of the game. The main threat in the game wwas now gone. Sure the final needle hasn't been pulled, and you need to defeat the masked man, but you'ive fought the masked man before and won. The stress, from a gameplay standpoint, is relieved. However, plot based stress is still alive and kicking. With this in mind, The final Battle versus Claus is scripted. You can die, but you cannot "defeat" the Masked man. You cannot even fight him, just sit there and survive as long as possible. Now, on its own, that would be boring and inticlmactic, but throughout the battle, there are short bits of dialogue from Lucas' mother, Hinawa, as well as actions from Lucas' father, Flint. This dialogue and action alongside the gmeplay creates a new anicipation for the player. Tension is built up via this dialogue and your slowly waning hp and pp. You want it to end, and so does Lucas. This creates empathy for the character of Lucas in this situation, thus creating more immersion into the scene.

In the end, the masked man goes back to being Claus and commits suicide, all within the normal battle screen. his suceeds in being more immersive than a simple cutscene or normal boss battle, because you're not LOOKING at Lucas coming to terms with his brother, you ARE Lucas. It forces you to put yourself into the situation, because you are making all the actions, not some cutscene.

In he end, made one of the most immersive moments in gaming that I have ever experienced. As I played it, I remember attacking Claus by accident (by this point, the game let me attack again). Lucas attacked claus, and I got this bit of text, paraphrased "Lucas attacked the Masked man. Lucas knelt down and wanted to cry". By that point, I no longer wanted to fight. I too wanted to cry and lord knows I did just that. That kind of immersion came from a battle where all you needed to do was keep healing yourself until it's over.

In he end, making a good scripted boss battle is just like writing a good cutscene. sometimes it's pulled off, sometimes it isn't, but when it is, (shiver) it WORKS.