Halo 4 End-Game: Challenge vs Pace

Finished Halo 4 singleplayer.  Fan-freakin-tastic game, 343.  Now that's out of the way, there was a moment right toward the very end that didn't so much annoy me as it did make me think about the priorities of a game's "end-game" design.

Obviously you want to the end of a game to be challenging. It's the culmination of all the learned skills you've developed thus far, and it should feel satisfyingly challenging so you get that cathartic release of having done some impossible task.

On the other hand, with so many cinematic games, Halo 4 included, the end-game also tries to be this accelerating crescendo of pace and spectacle. They want that "stop the bomb at 2 seconds" action movie feel.

I feel like these two things, challenge and pace, conflict. Challenge almost necessarily implies a greater risk of failure and thus a slower pace. Fast continuous pace implies a smaller risk of failure and thus a lower challenge. I feel like Halo 4 was particularly unbalanced at the end. The game was telling me to "go faster" and yet "going faster" got me killed, and disrupted the feeling that this was a cohesive story about a cyborg who never fails and always saves the day.

I wish games could be smarter with still presenting what seems like and feels like an impossible challenge, like some challenge you've faced in a slower paced part of the game where death didn't feel so disruptive, but did things to make sure you were more likely to succeed. I think if you want to maintain the action finale pace of the story you are trying to tell, you should present the illusion of challenge, but do as much as a game designer to ensure the player doesn't get knocked out of the story by an untimely death.

Rather than just gripe, let me give an example.  At the end of Halo 4 (no spoilers) I finished what I thought was the last part of the "challenge" portion.  I turned off the things, and was ready to put the thing in the thing to make the thing go away, and seen a cutscene.  As I ran to accomplish my final task, I found myself faced with 3 more bad guys.  I had expended all of my ammo of their 15 or so buddies previously, so I had nothing to use on them.  What resulted was a hit & miss attempt to figure out how to kill these guys with 2 bullets in the chamber.  I feel like if the game design focus had been about avoiding pace slow down, they could have seen that I had no ammunition, and done something as easy as conveniently placed an extra gun or some more ammo to help get me past this last wave of bad guys. They could have maintained the illusion of challenge without affecting the pace.

I actually think Halo 1 did this well.  You were giving a challenging, slower paced fight where you set the bomb, and then given a "run for your life" finale that minimized the chances of you having to stop and repeat it.  Halo 4 had a very similar mix, but I feel like they got it the other way around.  I felt like I had beaten a difficult challenge, but I felt like I lost the pace of the story in the process.

Anyways, my 2 cents.  Still an awesome, awesome game.