As a pseudo-endings trope, this page has spoilers. Consider this your only warning.
So What Do We Do Now? in Video Games.
- Meta example: the Expansion Pack and New Game Plus try to fill this role, and this is the central question behind replay value.
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: Why did the titular castle reappear a mere 5 years after Richter Belmont banished Dracula? It seems like Richter couldn't go back to a normal life after saving the world from the Prince of Darkness and he wants Dracula back so he can be the hero again. Luckily. he's just been brainwashed into thinking this, although you can get a Non-Standard Game Over by killing him.
- In the best ending of Cave Story, Balrog asks Curly and the protagonist what they're going to do now. Curly declares she'd like to live out the rest of her days somewhere with a beautiful view and they all go off to look for one.
- Disgaea 3 reveals that, after saving Veldime in Disgaea 2, Adell has pretty much jack-all to do. Turns out the Demon Hunter skill set doesn't transfer to other jobs very well.
- In Dragon Age II, completing Fenris' persona quests leads to this. Fenris finally kills his former master so there is no one hunting him anymore. He doesn't feel satisfied, since as an amnesiac whose few memories are still of slavery, he has no idea what do once he doesn't have to run and fight any longer. A conversation with Hawke sets him straight and he sees the bright side. Maybe he doesn't have an answer to "So What Do We Do Now?" yet...but for the first time in his life, the answer to that question is completely up to him.The future of a slave is never uncertain. But I am no longer a slave. Perhaps it's time I remembered that.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition:
- Some of the members of the party start asking themselves this question near the end of the game. A few make plans to leave the Inquisition to either settle down or pursue their own interests, while others decide to stick around.
- The Inquisition itself is forced to confront this in the Trespasser DLC. Two years after the main story, the leaders of Orlais and Ferelden demand the Inquisition justify its heavily-armed presence in their nations now that the threats it formed to fight are long dead. The Inquisitor can choose to either downsize the group and reform it as a peacekeeping force under the Divine, or disband it for fear of internal corruption and refusal to be used as a political pawn.
- In Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2's Infinite History mode, there's a point where you go to the Cell Games era and Fu has pitted Cell against Androids 13, 17, and 18. Siding with Fu will lead to an alternate outcome where after defeating Cell, the Androids then challenge and defeat Goku instead of the latter either dying from an illness or fruitlessly sacrificing himself to stop Cell. They then wonder what to do now that their assigned goal has been achieved and set off to find something else to do.
- At the end of Dragon's Dogma the player essentially becomes God. This is not nearly as fun as it sounds since the player can visit the game world but is unable to interact with it in any way, condemning the player character to an eternity of loneliness. The only way to escape this fate is suicide, although this actually reincarnates the player character in the body of their main pawn.
- Or the other way around, if the conditions are right.
- Subverted in Dragon Quest III, where pretty early in the game the player is forced to become the king of Romaly, and then must relinquish the role to continue on with the story.
- Dreamfall: The Longest Journey asks this question in regards to the protagonist of the original The Longest Journey, April Ryan: after sacrificing most of her ordinary life to Save Both Worlds, she was left to pick up the pieces without any recognition of her ordeal from anyone (since most people who knew the real story are dead). As a result, she has become a bitter cynic with Death Seeker tendencies and refuses to get involved in anything remotely similar to another grand, world-saving adventure in Dreamfall.
- Final Fantasy VIII fanon embraces this trope for continuations, usually featuring Squall trying to come to terms with life after the war and a job that, now Ultimecia is no more, is mostly paperwork.
- Final Fantasy X's sequel did this twice:
- After the ending of the first game, Spira enters the Eternal Calm. Final Fantasy X-2, posits that Yuna's life has settled into a routine, which is shaken up only after discovery of a sphere depicting images of "Tidus." This prompts her to become a Sphere Hunter to find the truth about this. While this happens, the rest of the world discovers that being freed from Sin gives them the opportunity to squabble among each other, giving rise to religious and civilian factions which almost engage in civil war.
- The Updated Re-release, Final Fantasy X-2: Last Mission explicitly states that, after its own ending, the Gullwings have gone their separate ways and settled down in ordinary, domestic lives. After they receive a letter of challenge, they join up again to tackle one last dungeon, which helps them realize that they'll always count on each other regardless.
- Dracon the Dragonslayer's campaign in Heroes of Might and Magic III: Armageddon's Blade ends with him finally slaying the mighty Azure Dragon. As he sits on the body of his fallen prey, he wonders why the victory feels so empty. Dracon had built up the Azure Dragon as the key to long-sought personal contentment. He admits he was wrong and wonders what he'll do next.
- It's implied that Link was hit with this after the events of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (from the child timeline) and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. With his adventures completed and his duties fulfilled, Link has nothing else to do and lives the rest of his life regretting that he could not pass on his sword techniques to another person. The Hero's Shade in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is confirmed by Word of God that he is that same Link and he finally passes on his knowledge to the current Link.
- Lance Boyle brings this up in the intro to Megarace 2: "[The winner] is crowned King Megaracer 2, he experiences a sense of achievement, and returns in regal triumph to reality, where he will probably never readapt."
- Minecraft's bizarre ending sequence has two entities speaking directly to the player, praising their accomplishments in the game and suggesting that maybe their next adventure will be to do great things in the real world, too.
- About half to two-thirds of the way through Persona 3, SEES has a short battle with this after defeating the twelfth Arcana-shadow. Not long after, cue the clarification of Ikutsuki's Evil Plan, followed by the build-up to either the Downer Ending or the Bittersweet Ending.
- The real "What do we do now?" is in The Answer, a sort of expansion pack available in some releases of the game, taking place after the defeat of the final boss and the death of the original protagonist. When Shadows start attacking again, the survivors are a little too happy to finally have something to fight, and it turns out that their inability to find proper closure is part of what brought the Shadows back in the first place. Persona 4: Arena later expands on this: Shadows will still exist regardless of what anyone does, simply by their nature, so SEES expands into the Shadow Operatives and continues the fight.
- Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando begins with the titular duo being interviewed for a show, and they discuss the fact that they haven't done too much since the events of the first game.Presenter: Welcome back to "Behind the Hero". Tonight's heroes are the duo who recently restored peace and order to our galaxy: Ratchet & Clank. So gentlemen, tell us about your latest incredible adventures!
Ratchet: Well as you can imagine, we've been pretty busy. After Drek's defeat there were parades, press conferences, fancy dress balls...
Clank: ...and the wiener roast at Al's.
Ratchet: Oh yeah that, and then things started to slow down a bit. After that we... well...
Clank: There was the grand opening at "Groovy Lube".
Ratchet: Right. I think that was... last week.
Clank: Six months ago.
Ratchet: We're still pretty busy, but in a more, uh, domestic sense.
Clank: Yesterday I flushed out my radiator core.
Ratchet: I guess... no one needs a hero right now. - Shaundi asks this after the main story ending of Saints Row 2. The answer, of course, is "whatever the fuck we want".
- Happens in the time between Star Fox 64 and Star Fox Adventures. After saving the Lylat System in the previous game the Star Fox team finds themselves out of work and with nothing to do. This causes Falco to leave the team and for all their fancy equipment to fall into disrepair. Same thing happens in the prologue of Star Fox Command, only this time the entire team breaks up.
- One of the earliest versions of this in video games is Ultima IV, and it's entirely based around it. Basically, in the past three games, all of the big evils have been destroyed (there are still dungeons full of monsters to fight, but nothing controlling them or threatening the world). So what do you do? Go on a quest to become the most shining example of pure good in the world as an example to everyone else!
- Said example then immediately departs the world, giving rise to a new great evil that kidnaps the king and corrupts the Avatar's philosophy, turning moral fortitude into utter totalitarianism. So, back to form. Of course, the kidnapping was partly a result of this trope, too (albeit offscreen) as Lord British decided that, having nothing better to do, he needed to wander down into the underworld and see what was up with that freaky place, only to have his party eaten alive by Demonic Spiders. This is why kings have champions in the first place.
- The final game in the series reveals that the Avatar's quest to become an example of pure good created the Big Bad of the last trilogy of games, the Guardian, since he is the embodiment of the evil the Avatar left behind.
- In the Warcraft series, Maiev Shadowsong, a night elf warden personally responsible for the imprisonment of Illidan Stormrage, devotes her entire life to chasing him when he escapes prison. Eventually, she ends up killing him, only to realize her life has no meaning anymore.
- You Have to Burn the Rope features a little ditty at the end of the game that's mostly about this:Now you're a hero / You managed to beat the whole damn game
We're happy you made it / But how are you gonna spend the rest of this day?
Maybe watch a video / Maybe press refresh and start again.
