Kind of a weird question but I was thinking of making my final boss a giant eye ball with tentacles and was wondering if that concept is too over done but maybe not. What do you guys think?

I admit, I have seen it quite a bit, haha. :) Don't let that stop you: if it thematically makes sense for your end-boss to be a giant tentacle-bearing eyeball, go for it. (I assume the boss has other abilities/events that distinguish it from other eyeball-squid bosses?) The question I have here is "What would make thematic sense for the climax of your game?" Why is the enemy a giant floating eyeball with tentacles? What other enemies/challenges has the player faced up to this point? What's the relationship between the player character and this enemy?

If we're just strictly talking aesthetics (i.e. your boss is that way because you think it's cool) and if you're open to other ideas, perhaps drawing from the source would help? Pick up some Lovecraft or at least read about the other monsters/aliens/things he's come up with, maybe draw inspiration from those? Or from similar sources? Maybe your boss is a giant eyeball with tentacles until the moment [something happens, you think you've won, you actually haven't yet] and it weirdly morphs/sheds its skin/somehow transitions into some other Lovecraftian-style horror...like a bag of writhing mouths or a sinister verison of the PC that has a single eye, many mouths, tentacles, whatever. Or maybe one of these other forms (or something else) is the only form the boss takes? Get crazy!

They're done alot, but usually not as common enemies (at least not until towards the end of games) - usually as more powerful bosses or mini-bosses. So I wouldn't say they are overused. Certainly not as much as rats or bats.

Though come to think of it, I've never played a game where the last boss is a giant rat - that'd actually be pretty original.

Though regardless of what you make your last boss, it has to make sense to the player as well. "Wait, what? How did a giant eye rise to the top of the assassin's guild?"

If fridge logic, that's fine, but if those kinds of thoughts occur while a player is still playing the game, that breaks immersion, which breaks the drama, and hampers enjoyability. It can turn your ending from dramatically epic to cheesy.

Thank you all for your support and ideas! I am quite far form the final development of this boss so I have plenty of time to reshape it and make it a little different than other an eyeball squid!I will definitely use this post again as reference :)

Not sure I've seen gient eyes with tenticals that much.

Unrelated this has to be one of the wierdest thread titles this year.

A Beholder you mean?

I feel the problem with any creature drawn from the D&D universe is that you're exposing yourself to their tropes.

The majority of fantasy-based games draw their inspiration from D&D by lack of other refs. Even when they seek to derive from this (by looking art unrelated art pieces), these artists are also inspired directly by D&D, or indirectly (by looking at D&D-inspired art).

As a result, ever monster that has significant popularity in the D&D universe has bled extensively across all brands. This doesn't cause much of a legal issue because the ideas themselves have become public domain (Assuming you are only inspired by the eyeball and tentacles and not, say, the ray of doom), but it causes sufficient overlap so that your player base will find it uninspiring.

I recommend going for something else, even if ugly, just so that your final boss has some form of originality. The best bosses are those you can easily remember (GladOS!) because they are significantly different. No one remembers Kerrigan-based human mutant/hybrid bosses anymore, but a frog in a magitek armor still has a chance to be iconic.

You should make it a boss battle with a monster with a giant eye patch and missing tentacles sitting sadly in clearly what was once a mighty arena designed for just such an encounter. Then have the room begin to glow an creepy red and have the monster grow red glowing tentacles and a red glowing transparent eye over the eyepatch and name him "Phantom limb". Its an inspiring story about not giving up.