One thing that I have often pondered is this: Why is it that so many games - we should say Video Games here - are absurd at the endgame?

Let me clarify. I mean, why does a carefully crafted virtual universe begin to lose its quality of believability as it draws to its conclusion? Why do some games insist that a rat can destroy a man in full armor with perhaps its tail - to name simply one type of the problem?

Another is the paradox of powers, (anyone who has watched a significant amount of Dragonball Z can attest to how bizarre this can become) which is to say, with this or that absurd power, can't you sort of end things completely? Now, certainly they can't - we can imagine a constraint - as perhaps the creator did - but we are rarely convinced of it.

I think the problem is telelogical (which I suppose is redundant in a way.) By this I mean, there is not a proper concept for the end of things. What is the end of man? The end of an epic? What is the point of a story? In some cases, sadly, I think the point has a level of narcissism; the point is to create a world of challenge and power around the player, regardless of absurdities and impossibilities generated by this.

But games with a constraint on this - i.e. massively multiplayer games - are positively no better and not an example to emulate, since they are literally endless. They don't really deal with telelogy directly, except in a material sense of having attained all that is attainable within a context. But in reality, as in stories, we move on.

Some games flaunt this. Take Earthbound, which does not attempt a realistic account of the strengths or powers of anything really - and the way the final enemy is dispatched is entirely consistent with this approach. (Search 'defeating Giygas in Earthbound'. It is both amusing and profound.)