5 Game Endings that are worse than Mass Effect 3

[80Maxwell08]

I also say Asura's Wrath had a shit ending. Granted it wasn't some epic trilogy but the "true ending" exists solely for DLC. No debate about it Capcom is selling the "actual true ending" as DLC. They put it in the video for the DLC they are selling the true ending. So add that in with FF13-2 and ME3 for that BS.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I don't really have my own list to contribute, but something's bugging me.

I'll assume I'm not the only one who's noticed how game endings have drastically declined in quality over the past five years, particularly. We've gone from developers who take the time to craft a complete story with a good start, middle point and end, to developers who rush things so the beginning and middle point are somewhat up to par, and who then shrug and figure they'll get away with hawking the ending - or parts of it - off as DLC.

That honestly bothers me.

"Oh, sure, our AAA game is on sale for fifty-five bucks on Steam. Thing is, you'll have to pay us twelve extra smackers to actually get a decent epilogue. You alright with that, sonny-jim?"

No, actually. I'm not. This is one of the reasons why the whole Mass Effect 3 thing gets on my nerves, as I could see something along those general lines coming from a mile away. A decent ending? What decent ending? It's so much easier to hold simple things like closure and basic quality hostage and to stick a price tag on them! Voilà, instant 75$ game, if not 80 or 90$, once every piece of DLC is accounted for.

Not that it's compulsory, of course. You're entirely free to sit there with what's provided to you. I don't need publishers baiting the angry masses, I'd just like it if I could talk to a friend of mine and not hear a grunt of disappointment because His Company's Future Project just determined its DLC brackets and more or less hacked off a pretty important chunk of the endgame*.

*Long story short, a friend of mine is an animator. NDAs and all, I've been asked not to say where he works and what project he's working on.

 

[AbstractStream]

Ah, yes. Digital Devil Saga. How could I have forgotten that ending. At the moment, I don't see it as horrible as ME3, but then again, the ME3 ending is still recent and raw.

I just remember DDS being a big "...uh, the hell?" moment.

Oh and FFXIII-2. Good mention there. Had Mass Effect 3 not distracted me, I would have been upset with that ending still.

 

[OneTwoThreeBlast]

I think you forgot to mention the literal cliffhanger ending of God of War 2.

I actually thought God of War 2's ending was pretty clever and amusing. All I could think was, "a literal cliffhanger? Heh, that's pretty funnny."

 

[Pumpkin_Eater]

I was expecting to have finished at least one and be able to argue about it. All I can really say is that I feel retconned endings or games that deemphasize the main quest line should be excluded from the discussion.

I've easily played 100 hours of Morrowind and over 50 of Skyrim without finishing either game's main quest chain. If you do complete the main chain in either Elder Scrolls game, the game doesn't end. There are follow up things available to do, plus expansions (in Morrowind; Skyrim will presumably get them later) with big, scary monsters meant to be fought by high level characters.

The retconned endings are, well, retconned. They aren't the ending anymore, at least not the canon ending. Bioware could potentially save some face with heavy retconning, but rather than treading on thin ice, they've fallen into the water; I don't like the odds here.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Well I never played Digital Devil Saga, or FFXIII2 but I still doubt it.

The only endings who's poor quality can even hold a candle to Mass Effect 3's are Lost and Clannad: After Story's endings.

Mostly because they suck in the same way as ME3
And that was: taking everything you've worked towards and became emotionally attached to and wadding it up into a ball and throwing it out the window.

There was even the same sort of epic build up in all 3 cases where the ending ripped all that out from under you.

But Fallout 3 and Half Life 2 got new endings courtesy of DLC and nobody threw a fuss.

And you forgot Prince of Persia 2008 as far as shit endings go. (That also had a DLC alternate ending which I did not play)

 

[Zen Toombs]

How about the end to every Zelda game ever? Link does all this shit to save Zelda and she doesn't even have the class to give him a courtesy hand job.

Male entitlement ho! [http://www.cracked.com/article_19785_5-ways-modern-men-are-trained-to-hate-women.html]
wow that article is seeing a lot of play.

Pretty much everything in that article can be applied the other way. That's actually one of the most disappointing Cracked articles I've ever read. As if women don't expect society owes them a man?

Wait what does the article actually have to do with "entitlement"

One of the points talks about how guys expect (that is, entitled) to get a girl, and so I mentioned it when Fappy's post referenced the concept.

Also, while some of the points in the article can and are flippable, the gender flipped points tend to be less strong.

 

[sb666]

I will come back when I have move examples but for the momment.
Every Resident Evil game they all end the same you destroy the end boss with a rocket launcher they ride off into the sun set the end.

 

[sb666]

I did actually like the original ending to fallout 3 and am of the belief that broken steel completely ruined that game. The only thing they fucked up was by allowing you to have companions during that last bit of the final mission. The ending actually had meaning behind it and then they went and caved to the whiney bastards and removed everything that was good about it. Now instead of having two choices both of which said a lot about your character you have two choices that have no meaning and do the exact same thing. The new ending went against everything else the game was trying to do.

The only problem was that the game was forcing you into making a choice that made little to no sense. Here are your choices for Fallout 3's ending:

1)Sacrafice yourself to activate the purifier, despite the fact you are very likely to have a companion who is immune to radiation, there are radiation-proof suits thrown all over the room, and you have plenty of radaway and rad-x NOPE. NONE OF THAT MATTERS. BECAUSE BETHESDA SAYS YOU DIE, YOU DIE, FOR NO GOOD REASON.

2)Be monumentally stupid and send Sarah in to die.

3)Be an evil git, and sacrafice yourself so that the world may die.

4)Be grossly incompetent and let the purifier explode.

Wow, great choices there. Your choices are, essentially:

1) Be an idiot.

2) Be an idiot.

3) Be an idiot.

4) Be an idiot.

How is that a good ending? The only thing it shows about your character is that they're an idiot.

The reason for this is that Bethesda have terible and stupid writers.

 

[J Tyran]

but Episode 1&2 showed that he WAS needed, which makes the whole thing incredibly bizarre and nonsensical.

G-Man didn't care if he was "needed". G-Man wanted Gordon for a specific task and he completed it, after that he was going to stuff him somewhere until there was another suitable task for him. The Vortigaunts didn't allow that though because they felt that he was "needed".

G-Man later on finds other uses for Gordon and tells him to see Alyx safely to White Forest.

 

[archvile93]

You can't really say that Rage had a worse ending considering Rage didn't have one. How can you compare anything to something that doesn't exist? Needless to say I wasn't impressed with how Rage decided to stop going. I won't say how it ended because it didn't. I also agree that Fallout 3 was even worse since it didn't even try to explain why you couldn't choose the only sensible choice. I can't believe Bethesda didn't think everyone would hate it.

 

[llubtoille]

Someone told me one of the Neverwinter nights games (2?) had a shit ending,
apparently you go into a generic cave, beat some weak boss, then on the way out the cave collapses trapping you inside, the end.
apparently this was due to time contraints and was undone in an expansion or something,

 

[dagens24]

I really liked the Fallout 3 ending.

 

[Tanis]

Well, only reason I thought it was, is because there's a big, animated cut-scene in the Final Fantasy Chronicles version of Chrono Trigger. Serves as a big epilogue showing all the characters after the main game. At the very end, they add in a part that confirms the link Chrono Cross set up.
Don't know much about the history, or in-fighting though. It came out before I had internet or paid attention to gaming news and such. The final third or so of the game did feel a little...off compared to the rest, so some kind of development issues wouldn't really surprise me.

Yep, there was LOADS of nasty garbage.

Did you know there's a game called 'Radical Dreamers' that was SUPPOSE to link the two games but never got released state side because the Japanese thought it wouldn't do well.

So, during the development of CC they actually changed some of the character sprites and names to remove any reference from RD, except for the song.

Bah, humbug!

 

[Nicolairigel]

ME3 is the last game. That is a big difference.

Half life 2 had a shit ending. But I didn't really care since the story is so weak anyway. The KOTOR 2 ending was disappointing but not that bad. Maybe the ending to the KOTOR series was worse since there was no ending, Bioware just abandoned it altogether.

Are you talking about KOTOR 2? Because that was developed by Obsidian, not BioWare, and it was literally an incomplete game from what I hear.

Kotor 2 was really good but rushed unfortunately. Yes Kotor 2 was developed by Obsidian but Bioware owns the series so it's up to them to finish the series, which they didn't. They assumed that people wanted an MMO instead of a single player RPG. I would be happy if Obsidian made Kotor 3 instead but they are not allowed. Bioware chose to piss on their great series by making TOR. The 300 year gap is so stupid. The central conflict that the kotor series was building up to didn't happen until 300 years. So basically kotor is finished and nothing happens in those 300 years. The bad guys just waits and our hero from kotor 1 was actually the bad guy (ignoring the fact that we could choose to become a hero or evil). He freezes himself and reappears in the old republic waiting to be killed by some annoying kids.

I agree, dropping kotor 3 to make the MMO is something I will NEVER forgive Bioware for. I didn't really have a problem with ME3's ending, but damnit if Bioware is going to fix that can't they fix KotOR 3? Even if they have to declare it non-canon.

 

[AD-Stu]

I agree, dropping kotor 3 to make the MMO is something I will NEVER forgive Bioware for. I didn't really have a problem with ME3's ending, but damnit if Bioware is going to fix that can't they fix KotOR 3? Even if they have to declare it non-canon.

Unlikely, because anything even remotely Star Wars-ish they do in the next few years will run the risk of hurting TOR revenues. Basically, I think TOR will have to die before we see another Star Wars game from Bioware.

As for crappy endings... gawd, almost every game from the 8-bit console days had one of those. The difference was all in the expectations, I think. Back then, we all KNEW that game endings would suck.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

Everyone's heard of the ME3 controversy. Everyone has an opinion. But, we're not here to talk about that today. Instead, I'm here to show you games that I personally, felt were worse in the ending department, just to show the masses that no matter how things are, they could be a hell of a lot worse. I'll try not to give too much away, I'll just explain in basic terms why these endings fail, fundamentally, as endings. This list is in no particular order, and if you do like these endings, do feel free to share why you like them, or, feel free to share your own particular pet peeve endings. So, without further ado, Enjoy!

That's kinda missing the point, mate. The reason people cared about ME3 having a terrible ending is because it was such a stark contrast to Bioware's reputation and the ME series as a whole. Terrible game endings are easy to find: all you need are terrible games, and it's unlikely that the ending is much better. Or even in average games, the ending might be lousy.

But what made ME3 special was that an ending this terrible was like winning the lottery only to find that you were being paid in human fingers. It was as unexpected as it was horrific to experience.

Shin Megami Tensei

Didn't play it, so not much I can say. Moving on.

Shock! Horror! Blasphemy! How dare I criticize Half-Life? Well, before the massive Episode 1 retcon, Half-Life 2 had an utterly woeful ending. To be fair, the original did something rather similar, but at least it closed out the story to some degree. Half-Life 2 did not. In a massive case of Deus Ex Machina, we are snatched away from the story in its final, critical moments. This was an ending that was actually fixed, but it bears repeating just how bad this ending originally was.

"Final, critical moments"? The game was effectively over. Death was imminent. Freeman had done the job he was supposed to, so the G-Man showed up to reclaim his 'asset.' At least in my opinion, it did a brilliant job bookending the idea that Freeman, for all his skill and almost messianic image, was a pawn for powers far greater than himself.

In the context of Lord of the Rings: Just as the ring falls into the lava, Saruman appears out of nowhere and imprisons Frodo in limbo.

...so it was Saruman who originally set Frodo on his quest, then?

FFXIII-2

Didn't play, can't say.

Because there is no ending. The overarching threat is still out there, you haven't made the world any better in any meaningful way, you've really only gave Cthulu a rash, rather than punching him out. Rage's ending was fucking putrid, for a game that was turning out to have a suprisingly decent story. Shame it forgot to end.

What, are you joking? The ending was just as shallow as the game had been. It felt like a glorified tech demo: absolutely gorgeous, brilliantly animated, and with great gameplay, but everything is just propped up around those three things. Characters come and go in the blink of an eye, entire towns get closed down as soon as you do the last (read: third) side quest available there, and it feels like you're just being shuffled between demo missions because everyone acts as though their character was established "off screen" even though you've been there for the whole game.

Bottom line: if you were disappointed by the ending, you clearly weren't noticing the signs set by the game itself.

Here it is. The grand ************ of shitty game endings, mainly because it railroads you into doing one thing, and for a game that offers so many choices and so much freedom, that's unforgivable. You are forced into a situation, for no good reason, despite the fact that what you must do is entirely pointless and easily avoidable, if only the game would let you pick the options that make sense. Much has been made of this ending, and with damn good reason, and while it has been fixed with Broken Steel, it still stands, along with Digital Devil Saga, as the 101 guide of How not to make an ending.

The phrase "fixed with Broken Steel" pretty much forgives whatever sins were committed by this ending, at least from my viewpoint.

So, there we go. Five endings, which, in my opinion, suck worse than Mass Effect 3. Thanks for reading!

Right, here's the thing about Mass Effect 3: the ending, by itself, was horrific. It had every basic component of a terrible ending. It had a stupidly straightforward structure for determining the final cutscene, plentiful plotholes, and an implied holocaust.

But when you put it alongside the entire ME series? It becomes worse. It was such a stark contrast with the rest of the game and series that it became terrible beyond its components. If the previously mentioned game endings were tantamount to being betrayed and shot by some dude you didn't know, the ending of ME3 was like that, only the person doing the betraying was your best friend, a close sibling, or a parent. The action itself is still the same, but the source of that action matters oh so very much.

 

[Chaos42]

don't for get that on the ps3 it constantly glitched making it difficult to play and get through the end with out it stalling at least once

 

[putowtin]

How about the end to every Zelda game ever? Link does all this shit to save Zelda and she doesn't even have the class to give him a courtesy hand job.

Ok nearly choked to death on my toast!