Current Events > Most disappointing video game endings?

(+) Yeah! (+)

just finished halo wars 2 and immediately thought of this topic. great game, dumb ending. halo 4 had a bad ending too iirc

any other games like this?
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-RetroActive- posted...

great game, dumb ending.

mass effect 3
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kotor 2
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The Last of Us.
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RAGE
Homefront: The Revolution
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I just finished Mega Man X. The ending was surprisingly emo in a 90s anime kinda way.


I think the worst ending is probably anything where the lead character dies in the end anyway. It's like winning a contest only to have a biased referee disqualify you after the fact. I can understand if you're doing a video game adaptation of a movie where the protagonist dies at the end, but that should never work its way into any original video story except as a "bad ending."

Dragon Age inquisition
Tales of Zestiria
Deus Ex Human Revolution
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chill02 posted...

mass effect 3

ManSpread posted...

kotor 2

First two that came to mind. In the same order, even.

tomb raider (2013)

final fantasy XV (this game was so dumb in general)
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chill02 posted...

-RetroActive- posted...

great game, dumb ending.

mass effect 3

i've never played the ME games but i remember people losing their shit about that ending. what was so bad about it?
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-RetroActive- posted...

chill02 posted...

-RetroActive- posted...

great game, dumb ending.

mass effect 3

i've never played the ME games but i remember people losing their shit about that ending. what was so bad about it?

basically the premise of the mass effect games is that you are trying to save the galaxy from a major threat, and so you assemble a team of diverse characters to help you out.

the gimmick with mass effect is that the squadmates follow you throughout the 3 games in some capacity (as either teammates or NPCs), so by the time Mass Effect 3 rolled around, there were gamers who had been playing through these stories with the same squadmates and characters for years.

then you get to the ending of ME3, where you are basically going to stop the major threat. you have to make a choice to walk into one of three beams (each has a different intention for how you'd solve the problem), but after that you are greeted to like a 2 minute cutscene that iirc was nearly the same for whatever choice you made, and that's it. there's no real closure to the story besides a resolution, lots of loose ends, you don't see what happened to these characters the player has grown to love etc
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Kisai posted...

The Last of Us.

Joel did nothing wrong
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Fable 2
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Shadow of Mordor had an awful final "boss" and ending
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green butter posted...

ah. sounds like the gaming equivalent to blue balls
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The ending was one photo with a sub title. Forgot what game.

Chrono Cross.

You travel through alternate dimensions, defeat the big bad, and the ending is some random Japanese chick walking down the street.

wut.
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advance wars dual strike had a pitiful last level
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Old NoiseTank posted...

final fantasy XV (this game was so dumb in general)

I thought, as far as story is concerned, the ending was the best part. Final boss battle and every bit of exposition in the game was terrible though.
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LIMBO. The game just plods along, then you fall through a window and it ends. No indication that you're anywhere near the end.
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Half-Life 2: Episode 2, in the sense that it's one of the biggest cliffhangers in gaming and will likely never be followed up on
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Megaman50100 posted...

Old NoiseTank posted...

final fantasy XV (this game was so dumb in general)

I thought, as far as story is concerned, the ending was the best part. Final boss battle and every bit of exposition in the game was terrible though.

This. The ending of XV was great, but the way they handled the story in the other areas was bad, especially with Lunafreyas character development before she died, we barely go to know her before she just died.
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Dead Space 2. But honestly I've struggled to figure out wtf the story even is, even with all the logs besides the in game dialogue. I mean the ending of DS made sense, and so did the end boss. But DS2???? Still fun as fuck play though.
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jenningsnash313 posted...

This. The ending of XV was great, but the way they handled the story in the other areas was bad, especially with Lunafreyas character development before she died, we barely go to know her before she just died.

The fact that nothing in game compared to the ridiculously supercharged final battle in Kingsglaive was the biggest disappointment for me.
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Megaman50100 posted...

jenningsnash313 posted...

This. The ending of XV was great, but the way they handled the story in the other areas was bad, especially with Lunafreyas character development before she died, we barely go to know her before she just died.

The fact that nothing in game compared to the ridiculously supercharged final battle in Kingsglaive was the biggest disappointment for me.

I thought ardyn and noctis in god mod duking it out flying over the palace, along with their ending bout reminiscient of mgs4 was as good as the final battle in kingsglaive
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-RetroActive- posted...

advance wars dual strike had a pitiful last level

It had a pitiful last EVERYTHING.

The final boss was a wimp that was merely a faint shadow of the intimidating final boss of the previous games, the penultimate level(where you fight him for the first time) is made in such a way so that you could just cheese it in like 6 turns without building/capturing anything if you don't care about rankings, and the final level actually puts you at a humungous advantage(NOT disadvantage) over the antagonists.

They really screwed up on difficulty control in the very last step of the game.
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Fallout 3's original ending was so awful and disappointing that it made me take a long, hard look at all the plot points and game features leading up to that moment that I thought I'd liked. The final verdict was not kind.

I thought Final Fantasy Tactics' endgame and ending were kind of letdowns to an otherwise-fantastic game, but part of the issue might have been the PSX translation (I never quite understood what Delita was getting at in the final cutscene, and even though I've sunk tons of hours into WotL I've never gotten around to beating it).

Chrono Cross' ending is what you'd expect from a game that got it's budget cut and had to rely on a massive text-based exposition dump right before facing the final boss. I did always kinda like the monologue at the end though, whether or not it actually had anything to do with the plot at hand.

Halo 2's ending wouldn't have bugged me if Halo 3 had actually picked up where 2 left off.
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FF7

And then the planet was A-OK, and everyone lived happily ever after. Probably.

or Illusion of Gaia. Ten minutes of text epilogue, which results in you and your friend/love interest being transported back in time, the world being reformed, and then you and friend separated because magic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69bWVLu4sQU
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Rika_Furude posted...

I thought ardyn and noctis in god mod duking it out flying over the palace, along with their ending bout reminiscient of mgs4 was as good as the final battle in kingsglaive

I didn't think it was even close In Kingsglaive you had titans, demons, and airships battling while the two main characters fought on and around all of that. Those scenes where the two main characters would clash and it would zoom out to show one of the old wall and a demon trading a similar blow was amazing. Not to mention the stuff like the two main characters fighting inside a building and one of the old wall cutting the building in half during the fight.

Compared to the final battle of the game, where you just did the same thing you did against leviathan on a much smaller scale. Unless you lucked out on a summon, it was just a tired slug fest with not much changing until you trigger the final blow. They could have made the battle traverse the city more, or have more variety with how you used your armiger powers, all on top of making everything you did leading up to that point seemingly have no effect on the final fight.
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Force Unleashed 2.

Kisai posted...

The Last of Us.

TLoU ending was great.
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Honestly, Zelda BotW.

Fantastic game in general. The ending isn't even bad. It's just kind of mellow and nothing really happens.
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-RetroActive- posted...

green butter posted...

ah. sounds like the gaming equivalent to blue balls

It was much worse than that, as it also introduced a horrendous deus ex machina out of nowhere who claimed a whole bunch of bullshit that completely contradicted everything else in the series.

Plus, the developers flat out lied, saying multiple times, you won't just get an ending where you pick one of 3 options, which is exactly what you got.

masterpug53 posted...

Final Fantasy Tactics' endgame and ending were kind of letdowns to an otherwise-fantastic game, but part of the issue might have been the PSX translation (I never quite understood what Delita was getting at in the final cutscene

Yeah. The endgame was rather lacking (knights and archers in chapter 4, lmao), but I can help with the ending.

Ramza and Delita are foil characters. Ramza is the ideal, who operates on the ideal that the best means also lead to the best ends. He doesn't "use" any one, does all the work himself, and wants to save the world and get his sister back. Constrast this to Delita, who has no problem with political assassinations, overthrowing established powers, and uses allies to his own end; the ends of bringing peace to the land and removal of the noble class justifies all this.

However, he also truly loves Princess Ovelia. Ovelia, aware of the brazen sociopathy displayed by her husband, operates under the perception that Delita is just using her. She attacks him in a very pre-emptive form of self defense, and Delita is pretty much forced to kill her in literal self defense.

The moral of this is that the ends don't justify the means, or possibly something along the lines of "stare enough into the abyss..." Delita, aware that his own actions have caused him to lose the love of his life and the major reason he did his rise to power in the first place, then ponders on what end befell Ramza, who pursued better means.
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Xenoblade Chronicles
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philsov posted...

masterpug53 posted...

Final Fantasy Tactics' endgame and ending were kind of letdowns to an otherwise-fantastic game, but part of the issue might have been the PSX translation (I never quite understood what Delita was getting at in the final cutscene

Yeah. The endgame was rather lacking (knights and archers in chapter 4, lmao), but I can help with the ending.

Ramza and Delita are foil characters. Ramza is the ideal, who operates on the ideal that the best means also lead to the best ends. He doesn't "use" any one, does all the work himself, and wants to save the world and get his sister back. Constrast this to Delita, who has no problem with political assassinations, overthrowing established powers, and uses allies to his own end; the ends of bringing peace to the land and removal of the noble class justifies all this.

However, he also truly loves Princess Ovelia. Ovelia, aware of the brazen sociopathy displayed by her husband, operates under the perception that Delita is just using her. She attacks him in a very pre-emptive form of self defense, and Delita is pretty much forced to kill her in literal self defense.

The moral of this is that the ends don't justify the means, or possibly something along the lines of "stare enough into the abyss..." Delita, aware that his own actions have caused him to lose the love of his life and the major reason he did his rise to power in the first place, then ponders on what end befell Ramza, who pursued better means.

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I wasn't quite sure how to interpret Delita's very last line, and I was never 100 percent certain as to whether or not he stabbed her or just gut-punched her.
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Zurkon posted...

Skye Reynolds posted...

I think the worst ending is probably anything where the lead character dies in the end anyway. It's like winning a contest only to have a biased referee disqualify you after the fact. I can understand if you're doing a video game adaptation of a movie where the protagonist dies at the end, but that should never work its way into any original video story except as a "bad ending."

I have to agree with this. When the MC dies it leaves you with such an empty feeling.

I'm sick of the "character does/offers a heroic sacrifice" thing in general. It's not bad in itself, but it becomes a problem when it's overdone and when games always accept said sacrifice. Let's get a story where the sacrifice is denied for once, especially if the sacrifice is not guaranteed to work!

Fuck, one game allowed me to deny it and I think there's way more potential if we follow the aftermath of that.
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MGSV
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AlisLandale posted...

Chrono Cross.

You travel through alternate dimensions, defeat the big bad, and the ending is some random Japanese chick walking down the street.

wut.

There are more endings
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Old NoiseTank posted...

final fantasy XV (this game was so dumb in general)

tagged for poor opinions
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The final act of Diablo III's story was complete garbage compared to the rest of the story.
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Neo7 posted...

The final act of Diablo III's story was complete garbage compared to the rest of the story.

ayyy same time post

https://66.media.tumblr.com/8240149bb247173e23958a8c88b41615/tumblr_inline_oayqbaMzGt1s09tlb_540.gif
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ChromaticAngel posted...

Honestly, Zelda BotW.

Fantastic game in general. The ending isn't even bad. It's just kind of mellow and nothing really happens.

This is a good point. Even the final battle was hype, but the ending is literally just "The End"
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Persona 3.

Great ending, but the way they depicted it (to the point where they needed a whole extra chapter to explain it) was terrible and borderline nonsensical
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thompsontalker7 posted...

Persona 3.

Great ending, but the way they depicted it (to the point where they needed a whole extra chapter to explain it) was terrible and borderline nonsensical

Huh, I suddenly don't feel so bad for not beating it. Great game overall, but I didn't get much further than his death.
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Mass Effect 3's original ending. Absolutely no closure and the way it was presented made it seem like everyone died no matter what.

Skyrim was bad too. The whole main story is just hype to what is supposed to amount to Armageddon. Then you go to the literal afterlife for your final confrontation with Alduin, and all it ends up being is a walk through some mist, asking some spirits to help you, and then just a generic ass fight that ends with him just disappearing. Like it's sad that the battle with Miraak ended up feeling more epic in scale, but that ALSO ended super anti-climatically.

Mortal Kombat 4 had so bad they were good endings.

Didn't Asuras Wrath have an awful ending until some DLC came out?

GTA San Andreas and GTA IV also had really lackluster endings I thought.

MGS V is probably up their with Mass Effect 3 for king of worst endings though.

Edit: Thinking back, Final Fantasy VII's ending was pretty bad I thought too.
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After seeing the trailers and getting hyped AS FUCK for MGSV, seeing the chapter 2 trailer after beating chapter 1, etc.

The plot twist and ending literally upset me. One of the only endings that actually pissed me off due to how bad it was.

The marketing for that game played me like a damn fiddle. I've been weary of marketing ever since and now only trust raw gameplay footage and general opinion when deciding if a game is probably worth my time.

Game was still worth it. 200 hours in it due to the AMAZING gameplay. But holy shit did that ending piss me right off.

Especially because I literally got into the series because of the marketing for MGSV. Played every game in chronological order which starred Big Boss. I loved that character and was so hyped for its conclusion and to see him become a monster.

I even had it spoiled on the forum on accident from a troll and didn't believe it because of how royally stupid it sounded.

But no.

It was true.

Fuck that ending.
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