What makes an Act 2 in a game?

I've been thinking about how most of my favorite kinds of games recently start off in a relatively established world, and then they have some sort of twist which launches us into a sort of Act 2 of the story. I'm thinking of games like Inscryption, Tunic, and Blue Prince. But in a way, I would also tentatively include games like Minecraft or Stardew Valley. This might just be another way of discussing story in games, but I think there's something so interesting about games that pull the rug out from under you--A deckbuilding rogue-like has a whole ARG component or a cutesy Dark Souls game ends up becoming a puzzle game that changes the way you see things on the map that have always been there.

Even games like Minecraft or Stardew Valley though I think have these interesting aspects of story. The rug pull is less violent certainly. It's more of a gentle push into a direction for uncovering secrets or a final boss. But otherwise those games can be played solely as creative sandboxes. To take Minecraft in particular, I think that its fascinating how the whole journey to beat the Ender dragon was never really a secret, but as a player who goes into Minecraft independently of the whole wide encompassing community, I found it really engaging to consider how these different aspects of the world all gently point to an End, quite literally. When you boot up Minecraft, there's no overt directions there, but creatures in the Nether and Endermen, the random vestiges of ancient civilization, things that you discover just through gameplay make it feel like there's a depth and an undercurrent of a direction to the game that it wouldn't otherwise have.

I found it interesting discussing this notion of an "Act 2" or "secrets" with my friends, but at the end of the day I think its connecting to Jesse Schell's idea of building a virtual world. In class, he spoke about how some of the most enduring stories have built up worlds for the audiences to play in, and how a key aspect of that is the notion of the "distant mountains." I think this is the "Act 2" of so many games. For Inscryption and Tunic, they shuttle you towards those distant mountains: They're a highly anticipated stop but still filled with mystery and wonder. For games like Minecraft, you casually meander there, taking your time.

I think a key part of these Act 2's though is how they always still leave knots untied. They give the game a life beyond the credits screen, and they let the world live on beyond them. A lot of the time, it's easier than we might think it is. Often times, the players yearn to be pulled into the world--If there are distant mountains, I don't think we as developers need to know from the get go what they are. Sometimes it might be beneficial to not know, and it might be beneficial to go on that journey with your players, pioneering the way. I feel like perhaps when you know too much about where your game will land, the players will as well.