So, I recently replayed one of my favorite video games. Trails of Cold Steel IV. Why yes, I do have a good two dozen other games piled up in my backlog. And yes, I have played this 120 hour long game already. What's your point?
Anyway, it resolved the cliffhanger from Trails of Cold Steel III so well that got me thinking about how the resolution to cliffhangers are handled in all forms of media. Off the top of my head, I came up with two extremely high profile examples of it being done very badly, So let's compare them so I can point out why Trails of Cold Steel IV worked, while the others did not.
The Empire Strikes Back had a GREAT cliffhanger. Han Solo is frozen in carbonite and taken by Boba Fett to Jabba the Hutt. Luke has had his entire world shaken to the core by Darth Vader's revelation. And earlier in the movie the Rebel Alliance suffered a stunning defeat that left their forces scattered. Great cliffhanger that had people eagerly awaiting the next movie 3 years later. But the problem with that great cliffhanger was that it had to then be resolved. Han needed to be rescued, and Luke needed confirmation of the truth and to confront Obi-Wan for lying to him. Return of the Jedi spends nearly 45 minutes of its runtime resolving this cliffhanger, almost 50 in the special edition because of that gawdawful Jedi Rocks musical number. *shudder*.
On paper, this is fine. This SHOULD be exciting. But in actuality it is very boring. Luke does the majority of his character development into the confident Jedi Knight between films, and so, goes through very little in this first part of the movie. Everyone else pretty much stays the same. The rescue goes on, and on, and on, and on, and we see no new sides of characters. We see no growth from them, other than Harrison Ford's hair being considerable longer than it was when he got frozen in the previous movie. Even the action scenes are kind of boring. It's just like 45 mins of nothing just sitting there taking up space at the beginning of the movie.
It's boring. It goes on forever. And when the movie FINALLY moves on to its main plot little of value has been achieved for all of the time spent. Then the whole rest of the movie has to play catch up to cram the plot of an entire movie into a much shorter amount of time because it first had to spend so much time on resolving that cliffhanger before it could even begin its own story. A lot of it feels rushed. It feels like things are missing. There is very little time left for characters to deal with new revelations, like the Luke Leia thing. The whole movie feels kind of like a gigantic mess, because they spent so much time on that rescue that there wasn't enough time for anything else.
Okay, next let's move on to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. So, Halfblood Prince ended with what some people would call a good cliffhanger, but what I called, at the time, really stupid and pointless. Harry and Dumbledore go for the locket horcrux, Dumbledore is weakened by the experience, and dies because of it. And then the locket turns out to be fake with a taunting note to Voldemort from a guy named R.A.B. Yeah, there was a lot of speculation and hype between book releases over who R.A.B. was, but, I mean. Come on. Anyone who was paying attention in book 5 already knew exactly who it was, and exactly where the locket was. I don't consider this to be a very good cliffhanger, because I was paying attention, so there was no mystery for me. But the hype train chugged along anyway.
So, book 7 comes out, and we spend over an entire third of the book resolving that cliffhanger. This time is absolutely wasted in the story. Very little of value happens in this time. Our characters spend ages figuring out the mystery, ages tracking down the locket, ages planning how to get it back, and ages actually getting it back. It goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and at the end we're left with very little of value. Hell, the Deathly Hallows themselves are NOT EVEN MENTIONED UNTIL WELL PAST THE HALFWAY POINT IN THE BOOK. Sure, there is the wedding, and a few other things of import in this beginning third of the book, but the majority of it is tracking down that damn locket It's boring and it goes on forever, and the escape from the Ministry, which is clearly supposed to be exciting, falls completely flat because we're already bored out of our freaking minds by the absolutely nothing that has been happening so far to resolve that stupid cliffhanger.
Come with me, if you will, on a journey into an alternate world. Say that Halfblood Prince didn't end with a fake locket, and instead, the cliffhanger was that Harry has the real locket, but he has no idea how to destroy it. Now, the beginning of Deathly Hallows is more about the locket corrupting our heroes as they desperately try to find a way to kill it. It's darker. It's more entertaining. It doesn't rely heavily on a mystery that isn't much of a mystery to anyone that was paying attention, and it is something they actually had to do later in the book anyway, which would give more time to more important things so the ending of the book doesn't feel so rushed, and the Deathly Hallows, can actually be a more integral part of the story from a much earlier point in the book.
Anyway, the cliffhanger sucked, and the resolution took way too long to meander its way through to its endpoint.
So, how did Trails of Cold Steel IV succeed where the others failed? Well, Cold Steel III is all about a new group of students following in the footsteps of the previous class, and learning about the world, and all of the political tensions in it, while also facing some pretty crazy combat situations. It is made very clear in this game how naive and young these kids are, and how far they have to go before they're adults, and how hard they'll have to work to live up the the class that came before them. The cliffhanger was very strong. The villain defeats our heroes with overwhelming might and power. An important character dies, sacrificed by the villain in an evil ritual. Darkness is spreading all across the land, causing chaos and fighting everywhere. Rean, our hero, after watching his friend be murdered, loses control of his power, goes berserk, and kills the holy beast he was meant to protect, thereby starting the apocalypse he was there to prevent himself. The students can only flee before the might of the villain as Rean is taken prisoner.
So, how does Cold Steel IV resolve this? Beautifully. The entire world starts gearing up for war as an ancient curse spreads through the land, unleashed by the death of the holy beast. The students who fled are outlawed, and in hiding. They want to get Rean back, but it will take a lot of work to uncover where he's being held and then to actually get him out when they do. The beginning of this game is all about these naive children from the previous game having to step up and use what they've learned. It's about them transitioning from children to adults. Taking responsibility. Growing beyond who they were into who they need to be to get the job done and save their instructor. It's crazy how much real, impactful character development is packed into the beginning of this game as our characters get closer and closer to finding Rean, and then, eventually launching an all out attack on where he's being held. But he's been consumed by the curse, and is still running berserk and mindless. They have to defeat him in battle, and then bring his mind back by forcing him to remember who he is, who they are, and what they all mean to each other. It's a really touching scene.
So, we've got our characters basically being forced to grow up into adults with no one to guide them anymore. They grow quite a bit as characters. And then they prove their worth through succeeding in finding Rean, and by overpowering him and forcing him to remember. It's a story about students who were pretty clueless before meeting him, surpassing him, and taking their places beside him as equals for the coming darkness and world wide war rather than beneath him as children and students. Great character development, great actiony climax, with a very emotional reunion. This is a GREAT resolution to the cliffhanger. Yes, it takes up a huge chunk of the beginning of the game, about 25 hours of gameplay. That's 25 hours of gameplay not devoted to fighting the villain and his overwhelming superiority. But it's 25 hours of characters becoming who they need to be to stand up to him, challenge him, and eventually defeat him. Which is priceless.
This is what Return of the Jedi, and Harry Potter lacked. Cold Steel IV filled this cliffhanger resolution with deep emotional weight, and solid character development. It used this time very well to push characters into bettering themselves for the coming battles. The other two treated their cliffhanger resolutions like this annoying thing that needed to be dealt with, and couldn't be bothered to make it interesting in any way.
Anyway, those were just my thoughts about cliffhangers and the crappy way most writers resolve them in the next installment. It's pretty rare that you get writers who can actually pull off a great resolution, and Trails of Cold Steel IV did really well at it.
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