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Q&A Anticlimactic ending as a surprise after climax?

I can recall a video game that did this in a very satisfying way; Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc. In the final boss, you have Reflux the Knaaren, essentially the Big Bad, Andre's muscle. He's souped-up on...

posted 5y ago by Matthew Dave‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T09:35:10Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/45758
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Matthew Dave‭ · 2019-12-08T09:35:10Z (over 4 years ago)
I can recall a video game that did this in a _very_ satisfying way; Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc. In the final boss, you have Reflux the Knaaren, essentially the Big Bad, Andre's muscle. He's souped-up on a MacGuffin to the point of mutilating/mutating himself with its power. By the time you fight him, he's just a big, extremely powerful monster.

The Big Bad, Andre, however, has only been in a direct fight _once,_ and it was as a Hoodlum (the standard, lowest level mook; essentially, Andre is the progenitor of the black lums, a set of black, corrupted-looking fairies who harvest fur to give themselves bigger bodies, hoodlums). He went down laughably easily. And now it's later in the story, when you have the ability to uncorrupt black lums to red lums.

Once Reflux's MacGuffin runs out of power and he turns into a crystal, this is it, your final confrontation with Andre, who doesn't even have a hoodlum body. But surely he'll put up some kind of fight, right?

Nope, you uncorrupt him like any other black lum and he goes out begging to be saved. And it's _so_ satisfying after the hell of a boss battle marathon Reflux was.

Essentially, if it's established in-universe that it's possible for the post-climax enemy to be laughably weak (and in Andre's case, _very_ likely), then go ahead. It could make it even better.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-06-05T09:57:45Z (almost 5 years ago)
Original score: 2