Endling and the art of the escort quest

Let’s get something out of the way: escort quests are the worst.

Protecting a non-player character as they move from point A to point B simply isn’t fun, and it can be downright maddening when the helpless bot runs headlong into danger. Personally, I’ve been tired of playing babysitter since the late ’90s, when some of the earliest and most irritating escort quests somehow established the trope as a staple of game design. (Remember picking up Princess Ruto and carrying the bratty fish-girl through Jabu-Jabu’s belly in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? Remember covering for Natalya in GoldenEye 007 as the Bond girl repeatedly ran into the line of fire?) My hatred had crystallized by 2005, when World of Warcraft asked me to accompany Tooga the tortoise as he plodded across the entire Tanaris Desert.

Thanks to better storytelling and smarter NPCs, today’s triple-A games typically offer a smoother and more dynamic escort quest experience than the games I grew up playing. But for the most part, the basic mechanics remain the same as they were a quarter century ago: Protect so-and-so from assailants until he or she reaches such-and-such destination. What’s strange, though, is that some of my favorite games function as feature-length escort missions. And these “escort games” make me think that this otherwise tired cliché tends to work better when it’s pushed beyond the limitations of a formulaic side quest. 

The Last of Us and God of War, for example, each tell a Lone Wolf and Cub–inspired story about a man escorting a child on a journey across a dangerous landscape. The kids under your wing aren’t merely a burden; they’re smart and capable companions who come to your aid as often as you come to theirs. This makes all the difference, because it’s easier to suspend your disbelief and feel emotionally invested in video game characters when they speak and behave like real people. 

The most poignant escort game I’ve encountered, however, is Endling: Extinction Is Forever. In this beautifully animated indie gem—a side-scrolling survival simulator from 2022—you play as the last mother fox in a world that’s been ruined by humans.

During the dramatic opening sequence, your pregnant vixen races to escape a hellish forest fire, injures her leg in a fall, narrowly dodges a speeding truck, and then limps into an industrial wasteland, where she makes her den and collapses from exhaustion, giving birth to four fox pups shortly thereafter. Then, the gloved hand of a human scavenger reaches into the den and grabs one of your newborns. This abduction—a disturbing scene that made me feel intensely protective of the three remaining cubs—sets in motion Endling’s storyline, which unfolds wordlessly as you follow the scavenger’s scent trails and track down the missing pup. 

Each night, your family of foxes ventures out from the safety of the den to search for food in desolate, polluted environments such as garbage dumps and factory yards. Providing for the hungry kits involves sneaking up and pouncing on small prey, climbing trees to steal birds’ eggs, and rummaging through piles of trash. As food grows scarcer, you must put your imperiled litter in harm’s way as you explore a logging operation, a poultry factory guarded by rottweilers, and an encampment of miserable climate refugees. 

Endling’s simple but effective stealth and survival mechanics are complicated by the game’s day/night cycle. Because humans are more active during the day, you only have so much time to hunt and explore before the threats multiply and your cubs grow fatigued. Choose one path and you may find a berry bush (foxes are omnivores). Choose another and you may step in a steel-jawed trap, or worse, run into the Furrier, an annoying antagonist who will snap your neck if he catches you. Choices matter, and the uncertainty of what’s down each path teaches you to remain as furtive as a fox.

As you progress, you teach your kits how to hunt, jump, climb, and dig—skills that enable them to feed themselves and join you in accessing previously inaccessible areas. You can also pick the furballs up by their scruff, nuzzle them when they get scared, or bark to make sure they keep up. These small touches went a long way toward immersing me in the mindset of a mother fox, and my newfound maternal instincts intensified as the growing pups began to develop unique personality traits. 

Their individuality is important, because it fosters feelings of attachment, feelings that will well up if and when one of the cubs dies. That’s right: Even the adorable baby foxes can die, whether they starve to death or fall prey to owls. And once your cubs die, there’s no bringing them back. 

I’ve never played another escort quest with such high stakes. It’s bleak, and yet it’s refreshing, because for once, I genuinely cared about ensuring the safety of my wards. If I were able to undo my mess-ups, it would be easier to dissociate—to think of the cubs as NPCs, as lines of code. Even in a drama as brutal as The Last of Us, you can always reload from your last checkpoint if, say, Ellie gets bit by a clicker. But in Endling, there is no safety net. Here, you have to live with your mistakes.

For three years, I had avoided Endling, because as someone who cares deeply about wildlife, I knew this game would make me sad. After all, we are currently witnessing a mass extinction of our own making. In just 50 years, between 1970 and 2020, wild animal populations declined 73 percent, largely due to habitat loss. Why, then, would I want to play a tearjerker about the tragedy of extinction? Well, I wanted to feel something. To push myself beyond avoidance, apathy, and resignation. I wanted to confront this catastrophe (albeit in simulation) and, perhaps, experience some of the primal terror that all parents feel when their children’s lives are threatened by forces beyond their control.

Endling reminded me that video games offer more than escapism—that the medium has the potential to move us as much as any film—and it did so with an escort quest. Escort quests aren’t inherently tedious, I realize now. Ultimately, it all depends on the execution, and going forward, I hope more game developers find ways to repurpose this well-worn trope to such emotional effect. All they have to do is give me a reason to care.

Dale Obbie is a writer, editor, and musician who lives in Brooklyn with his wife and large orange cat. He attended Skidmore College, and from 2012 to 2024, he worked at The Week magazine, where he wrote about the arts. He has Type 1 diabetes, and apart from video games, his interests include astronomy, speculative fiction, and representations of disability in popular media.