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Worst game endings [spoilers]

Having also played through the Mass Effect trilogy, I understand why so many people didn't like the last 10 or so minutes of ME3. However, I never considered those last minutes really the "end" of Mass Effect and almost five years later I'm still surprised to see so much animosity towards it. The entire duration of Mass Effect 3 to me was really the ending, as the conclusion to many conflicts throughout the series comprise the makeup of the entire game. I guess that's why it didn't hit me so hard, because I felt like I was playing "the ending" from the very start of ME3, not just the last few minutes of it.

Anywho, my pick is Super Mario 64. Sure, we get to see a picture of the cake, but we don't get to see Mario's satisfaction in getting to actually enjoy that cake.
 
What? This is bullshit and you know it.
No, I made my feelings about ZTD very clear in the OT (as did a lot of other people). It was a trainwreck of epic proportions that fucked over, changed or ignored everything that 999 and VLR had set up, the fact that they had to go as far as using
aliens and mind control
to explain the gaping plot holes and blatant stupidity in ZTD is evidence enough. Virtually nobody can say with a straight face that it was a worthy ending to such a complex and engaging series.
 
No, I made my feelings about ZTD very clear in the OT (as did a lot of other people). It was a trainwreck of epic proportions that fucked over, changed or ignored everything that 999 and VLR had set up, the fact that they had to go as far as using
aliens and mind control
to explain the gaping plot holes and blatant stupidity in ZTD is evidence enough. Virtually nobody can say with a straight face that it was a worthy ending to such a complex and engaging series.

Complex ending for a complex series. It was definitely a worthy ending.
 
Deux Ex Human Revolution. It was just completely unsatisfying.

Also I thought the end of Metal Gear Rising was trash garbage.

Oddly enough I did not mind the end to Mass Effect 3, but I didn't play it until several years after it came out. I played the trilogy back to back and didn't hate it. I chose the synthesis ending but also watched the others on youtube.
 
No, I made my feelings about ZTD very clear in the OT (as did a lot of other people). It was a trainwreck of epic proportions that fucked over, changed or ignored everything that 999 and VLR had set up, the fact that they had to go as far as using
aliens and mind control
to explain the gaping plot holes and blatant stupidity in ZTD is evidence enough. Virtually nobody can say with a straight face that it was a worthy ending to such a complex and engaging series.

I didn't participate in any ZTD threads after it's release because I was so disappointment with the game, but I agree completely with you. The game ended up being a prime example of why I try to avoid any ongoing stories, and just wait for a series to be complete before giving it a try.
 
XIII for the Gamecube, PS2, and Xbox.

the game ends with "To Be Continued " but was never continued. Damn you Ubisoft.
 
Life is Strange. All the choices you made, all your actions over the past 5 episodes end up meaning precisely nothing. Instead, make a binary choice between the ending the developers obviously wanted you to pick or a 30-second cutscene with no dialogue or closure! Fuck you!

Final Fantasy XIII. ???? ????? ????????????????????? "We did exactly what the villain wanted us to all throughout the game and only escaped being responsible for the destruction of our entire planet through a literal deus ex machina!"

Uncharted 4 gave me diabetes. Sam is a selfish gaping asshole who doesn't deserve a happy ending. Uncharted 3 will always be the true ending of the series for me.

All Fabula Nova Crystallis based games are like that unfortunately.
 
The Revenge of Shinobi on the Genesis stands out for me. It had two different ones, but they were so brief that they stood in stark contrast to the quality of the rest of the game. Such a bummer!
 
Dragon Age 2.

Anders who's a member in your party blows up the mages tower. You have a choice of unknowingly helping him earlier in the game but it happens no matter what you pick. Then you can side with either the Mages or Templar. Again, no matter what you pick you fight the Mage leader and then the Templar leader. The Templar has a dumbarse anime talking sword that you battle. After a very half arsed fight you get a voice over that your character left the city and wandered away. The end.

The entire story is bad but the ending, wow, just wow.
 
Uncharted 4 is up there for me but not necessarily for the reasons you mentioned

The ending itself is so thematically inconsistent from the rest of the game. There's so much buildup toward a darker conclusion than usual, as Drake and Sam will inevitably suffer the consequences in which they deserve for their relentless pursuit of treasure at the expense of all those around them.

Instead, we get literally the most happy go-lucky perfect ending possible. Drake and Elena are still happily together living a laid back, safe life and have an intelligent, healthy daughter. Sully and Sam go on adventures together and are still close with the family.

It just felt so out of place when looking at the tone of the entire game before that. Nobody faces any sort of consequences and on top of that, Sam actually makes it out with some treasure.

I disagree.
I thought the whole build up towards Drake's ultimate change of heart was done masterfully. I don't see why it should have been inevitable for him to reap what he sow. The themes of the game still stand, one of which is clearly family values/life. Drake was able to overcome his obsession/rush and Elena also came to terms she wasn't suited for a normal family life either, so they went for a healthy middle way in the end. The whole game, to me, logically builds up to that, making the character development of Drake great. I do agree with people that Sam could've faced the consequences, but he had his own journey after the end of UC4, as he himself says he is not ready to settle down. So it is not like the broke character with him.

I thought the contrast between Drake and Rafe/Avery/Evelyin was done really well. Especially in case of Evelyn's backstory you read show she neglected her family and eventually led a lonely life in a mansion filled with treasure, where Drake during the latter half of UC4 slowly turns towards his choice for his family (Elena, Sam, Sully) .

With so many games recently having the main characters die in all kinds of depressing ways, I actually found UC4 to be a beautiful, positive story for a change.
 
Well, it's kind of the obvious answer, but nothing will ever top Mass Effect 3 for me. Mass Effect 1 was my game of the generation, and it contained the fictional universe I was most invested in over decades of gaming. And just like that, it was all gone. It wasn't just disappointing in how it ended, bad endings happen, game development is hard, etc. This went beyond that. It was nauseating just how awful and misguided everything about it was. From the moment you go up the elevator, to the final message asking you to buy more DLC.

I had to run to the GAF thread to see if I wasn't going crazy, because nothing in the media reception or stuff I heard even hinted at what just happened. And then I realized most people here were the same and knew I wasn't going crazy. That it was really just that shit.

Suffice it to say I'm never playing a Mass Effect game again. I don't even personally hate Bioware, even though I feel they have declined steeply from what they were. I played Dragon Age Inquisition for more hours that that game deserved even after the fuck up that was DA2. But I don't care about that world enough to let that affect me, when it comes to ME I just can't trust them with the thing they created anymore.
 
Having also played through the Mass Effect trilogy, I understand why so many people didn't like the last 10 or so minutes of ME3. However, I never considered those last minutes really the "end" of Mass Effect and almost five years later I'm still surprised to see so much animosity towards it. The entire duration of Mass Effect 3 to me was really the ending, as the conclusion to many conflicts throughout the series comprise the makeup of the entire game. I guess that's why it didn't hit me so hard, because I felt like I was playing "the ending" from the very start of ME3, not just the last few minutes of it.

Anywho, my pick is Super Mario 64. Sure, we get to see a picture of the cake, but we don't get to see Mario's satisfaction in getting to actually enjoy that cake.

Dude... Mario 64 had a fantastic credits scene though. That music was amazing.
 
It might have already been mentioned, but The Order 1886's ending is horrendous.
It feels like it's about to kick off, and then just finishes. It feels like an ending to a Game of Thrones episode or something. But there is no next episode. Because it's a videogame. That people paid £40 for.

You know that scene in season 4 of GoT where Tyrion says "I demand a trial by combat!" and then the Lannister theme plays, and it pans around the surprised faces of every character ever? Imagine if that was the final scene of the show and that's pretty much The Order 1886.
 
fallout 4s institute ending was awful. like a 2 second clip of the blimp falling down is all bethesda could afford? cant you make it fucking bombastic and amazing? nope.
 
I disagree.
I thought the whole build up towards Drake's ultimate change of heart was done masterfully. I don't see why it should have been inevitable for him to reap what he sow. The themes of the game still stand, one of which is clearly family values/life. Drake was able to overcome his obsession/rush and Elena also came to terms she wasn't suited for a normal family life either, so they went for a healthy middle way in the end. The whole game, to me, logically builds up to that, making the character development of Drake great. I do agree with people that Sam could've faced the consequences, but he had his own journey after the end of UC4, as he himself says he is not ready to settle down. So it is not like the broke character with him.

I thought the contrast between Drake and Rafe/Avery/Evelyin was done really well. Especially in case of Evelyn's backstory you read show she neglected her family and eventually led a lonely life in a mansion filled with treasure, where Drake during the latter half of UC4 slowly turns towards his choice for his family (Elena, Sam, Sully) .
Totally agree. I loved the contrast of this games finale with the first 3 games.
In all of those games something supernatural is happening, and the villains are clear cut evil. Drake's obsession with treasure hunting at all counts no longer needs challenged as its fully justified. He doesnt just want to go after super awesome treasure anymore, he has to because there are horrid people after the same treasure, and the treasure is super dangerous. In UC4 that twist doesnt happen. The pirates treasure is just treasure. Rafe is a horrible dick and killed a mostly innocent guard, but besides that hes not really dangerous, and Nadine isn't dangerous really, shes just a merc. This is all contrasted amazingly with Avery's history and all the greed and desire for glory causing their downfall, just as it almost did to Nathan, and is doing to Rafe. At this point Nathan has a full introspection and tries to walk away. Sam then is the real fuck up this time unlike Nathan in the past. Nathan Drake's save the world in UC1-3 endings was always justification for the adventuring, but Sam doesnt have that. He even tries to make up a reason that he NEEDS the money just to justify the adventurelust and greed. This then becomes Nathan's new motivation to have to press back on and finish the adventure. Sam is a jackass, but family is family.

UC4 was fucking beautiful

With so many games recently having the main characters die in all kinds of depressing ways, I actually found UC4 to be a beautiful, positive story for a change.
yo this too. I'm tired of stories trying to depress me
 
Anywho, my pick is Super Mario 64. Sure, we get to see a picture of the cake, but we don't get to see Mario's satisfaction in getting to actually enjoy that cake.
At first I thought that was a Navgtr reference, but I checked, and it turned out he actually praised Mario 64's ending as "the best ending ceremony of any game in history."

It still sounds like something he could be disappointed by, so I approve of that statement.
 
Also I thought the end of Metal Gear Rising was trash garbage.

The ending cutscene was crap, but I'd rather have a game with a satisfying final boss fight and a shitty ending cutscene than one with a good cutscene and a bad boss fight (or a game with bad both *coughBioshock1cough*).

Also the ending credits theme is really good.
 
The ending of Fallout 3 where you have to sacrifice yourself in the radiation when there is a dude just standing there that is immune to radiation. That shit was star trek beyond.
 
Fahrenheit is so hilariously bad

You fight "the Internet" and a Mayan God all matrix style just because with literal Simon says qte's
 
Personally this one:
Alexkidd2.jpg


Little me spent hours and hours getting good at it days and days trying to get further just to have a single game over screen at the end.
 
No, I made my feelings about ZTD very clear in the OT (as did a lot of other people). It was a trainwreck of epic proportions that fucked over, changed or ignored everything that 999 and VLR had set up, the fact that they had to go as far as using
aliens and mind control
to explain the gaping plot holes and blatant stupidity in ZTD is evidence enough. Virtually nobody can say with a straight face that it was a worthy ending to such a complex and engaging series.

Maybe I'm going crazy but I don't remember anything about
aliens and mind control
in ZTD. I did only play through it once several months ago.

But yeah I did feel like the ending and the game as a whole was a poor way to end the series.
 
Maybe I'm going crazy but I don't remember anything about
aliens and mind control
in ZTD. I did only play through it once several months ago.

But yeah I did feel like the ending and the game as a whole was a poor way to end the series.
There was a plot device introduced in ZTD that
was an alien teleporter device that lets people send copies of themselves to other timelines. This was used to explain Phi and Delta's origins.

The
mind control part was the main villain's "power" that came out of nowhere in the last hours of the game. Delta could "mind hack", which let him read minds and order people to do things. That was used to explain why he always knew everything that was going on, and why characters did things that their personalities normally wouldn't make them do. Delta was behind it all along! It was all because he had his "complex motives".

Both felt like ass-pulls and narrative cop-outs.
 
Well Mass effect 3 is the gold standard of bad endings. Life is strange was tie for GOTY with Witcher 3 2015 for me until the last episode and it's ending.
 
Dragon Age 2.

Anders who's a member in your party blows up the mages tower. You have a choice of unknowingly helping him earlier in the game but it happens no matter what you pick. Then you can side with either the Mages or Templar. Again, no matter what you pick you fight the Mage leader and then the Templar leader. The Templar has a dumbarse anime talking sword that you battle. After a very half arsed fight you get a voice over that your character left the city and wandered away. The end.

The entire story is bad but the ending, wow, just wow.

The cherry on top of Shit Mountain.
Why did Bioware even bother with the whole mages vs templar arc? Ending with both parties becoming uber Nazis and uber blood mages made the conflict pointless. In fact, basically all mages you come across in the game are either evil and/or blood mages. The goddamn Templars seemed more morally grey than the mages.

Plus Anders' blatant disregard for the well-being of every other mage by destroying a Chantry and killing a rather decent Grand Cleric. Way to make things worse for mages, jackass.

Should've just ended the game with the Qunari arc.
 
No, I made my feelings about ZTD very clear in the OT (as did a lot of other people). It was a trainwreck of epic proportions that fucked over, changed or ignored everything that 999 and VLR had set up, the fact that they had to go as far as using
aliens and mind control
to explain the gaping plot holes and blatant stupidity in ZTD is evidence enough. Virtually nobody can say with a straight face that it was a worthy ending to such a complex and engaging series.

I don't have a problem with you saying the ending was disappointing (even though I think it's nowhere near as bad as some say), but to say it's far worse than Mass Effect 3's ending? Hell no.
 
The cherry on top of Shit Mountain.
Why did Bioware even bother with the whole mages vs templar arc? Ending with both parties becoming uber Nazis and uber blood mages made the conflict pointless. In fact, basically all mages you come across in the game are either evil and/or blood mages. The goddamn Templars seemed more morally grey than the mages.

Plus Anders' blatant disregard for the well-being of every other mage by destroying a Chantry and killing a rather decent Grand Cleric. Way to make things worse for mages, jackass.

Should've just ended the game with the Qunari arc.

Why Anders did what he did was adequately explained by the game, I think. Housing a Spirit of Vengeance inside you must not have been healthy for his sanity, after all.
 
Mass Effect 3 takes the biscuit. The pure disappointment and shock everyone back then felt was immeasurable. It's an ending you really don't forget... for all the wrong reasons. At least BioWare sort of agreed and did an extended cut ending. It helped a little...
 
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