8 Scrapped Endings That Almost Ruined Great Video Games
How to make The Last of Us just another action game.
Crafting a good video game story is virtually impossible. Game development is an ever-changing beast, and even a slight alteration to a level, line of dialogue or story beat can mean hours of extra work across departments and previously-completed code thrown out. Despite this pressure, it's not unheard of for entire stories to get scrapped months before a game is set to ship - which is exactly what happened with the original Destiny - forcing the devs to cobble something together at the last minute.
This is all on top of deciding how to actually tell a story as well. Which characters deserve to live or die? How much control should players have over the outcome? Should the final scene wrap everything up, or tease a sequel so fans definitely want to return in a couple of years time?
Sometimes developers and writers are able to identify when they've made a mistake or something isn't right though, and save a story before it's doomed. It's not easy to admit the work you've created isn't up to snuff, but these games rightly scrapped their original endings, and they're all the better for it.