Bad Endings vs. Non Endings

[Hawki]

So, little hypothetical for you:

Series A: "I really like this series. Started off good, kept good...but the ending was bad. Really bad. So bad that it might have tainted the rest of the series for me."

Series B: "This series is good. Started good, kept good...only it was never finished. Damn it!"

There's no shortage of real world examples for both of these scenarios, and I'm sure that you all have your personal examples. Question is, which would you say irritates you more? Or, outside that, what would you say is worse - a series with a terrible ending, or a series that never has an ending (leaving unfulfilled plot points and all that)?

Personally speaking, on average, I'd say the Series B scenario tends to irritate me more. I can certainly name plenty of series that I thought ended badly, but if I had to choose, I'd generally take a bad ending over no ending at all. You could certainly say that the lack of an ending gives you the freedom to imagine your own, and that's true, but I can imagine a lot of things, it doesn't make them true. And if I look at bad endings, I can't think of many where I can say "oh, if only they'd stopped there, it would be better." Note that this isn't the same thing as artificially extending a series that ended naturally, which is a different conversation, more outright cancellation that leaves a story hanging.

Still, that's just me. How do you roll on this?

 

[CyanCat47_v1legacy]

A bad ending is at least closure, without which the story will always feel hollow. Of the endings i consider bad endings, it was usually because of the endgame, the plot adopting a pace that does not serve the narrative well, whether too fast or too slow. when i wish series had ended earlier, i usually wish that in the sense that I wish a earlier part of the story had lead more directly to the conclusion so that there would not be a need for the unsatisfying final arc inbetween, for example the Shinobi War Arc in Naruto. I've seen a fair few shows where, if asked how to improve the ending, my solution would have been to cut a subplot, or even an entire season to achieve closure at a better pace. Non-endings satisfy no one but narcicistic fan-fic writers who either think they alone 'get' the creator's mindset and could replicate a perfect carbon copy of the 'true ending' or view themselves as better writers who would have come up with something better no matter what. They are all wrong, every time

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

What even was the last videogame series that "ended" at all? Everything always keeps going either via spin-off or soft reboot like inFAMOUS or Mass Effect or simply due to the anthological format of the series, like Mario or GTA or Assassin's Creed. There's always one more.

The closest thing to a series "ending" is a series getting cancelled, which is tantamount to a non-ending.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Depends on how long a series has been going. If it only has 10 episodes/chapters and then just gets cut off without an ending I'd get fucking pissed. If it's been going for 10+ years without an ending I probably wouldn't care too much, because by that time I'll either have gotten tired of it or the quality will have gone down significantly. Like for instance, I wouldn't care if Berserk never got an ending.

And there have been instances where I'd rather the series had stayed in a state of being uncompleted than the ending we got. Like Prison School, which was just the biggest middle finger to the reader.

 

[EvilRoy]

I don't love a series having no ending, but at least I can understand it. Fact is, sometimes the series gets pulled, real life jumps the creators, or shit just goes wrong. I can't blame anybody for that - I don't work for free and I don't expect others to, so beyond a creator tantrum its hard for me to get upset about a missing ending. Chances are there was a good reason for it.

A shitty ending sucks because of course it does, but its rare for an ending to be shitty because the writer clocked out. A lot of times its the best they can actually do whether they aren't that skilled of writers or they got stuck in a corner or they can't turn hay into gold, and I find it easy to dismiss on the basis that the series probably wasn't as good as I thought it was if the ending sucked so hard. A lot of series carry themselves on big kabooms, dramatic twists, serialized monsters of the week, or extreme forward momentum, but those aren't that hard to write and even though they're entertaining they probably aren't the peak of today's media. Any of those having a crappy ending shouldn't be surprising because as much as I liked the big fights in DBZ or Naruto, or enjoyed seeing Inspector Frost be upset at people for telling porkies those series don't lend themselves to a satisfying conclusion because what you liked about the series can't be easily bashed into the shape of an ending. You get the "even BIGGER fight" or "even CRAZIER porkies" but they've been doing that over and over for years to keep the series going in the first place so an ending involving the actual content of the series is gonna feel like a lead in to next season no matter what.

Which brings me to the thing I actually hate the most... When you have an ending that's a sequel hook or you have an ending and then it cuts to a new bad guy giggling or a secret backup plan being activated. Two cartoon examples being Shadow Warriors and Reboot for me - they had adequate endings. Pretty good if a little forced, and they what do you know they have to throw in a crazy twist and then NEVER get another season. I would take a shitty ending or a sudden cut to black any day. Even though the Sopranos might be able to fuck themselves.

 

[Agema]

So, little hypothetical for you:

Series A: "I really like this series. Started off good, kept good...but the ending was bad. Really bad. So bad that it might have tainted the rest of the series for me."

Series B: "This series is good. Started good, kept good...only it was never finished. Damn it!"

Still, that's just me. How do you roll on this?

Do you mean unfinished as in it wasn't ended at all, for instance axed before the writers were ready? Or do you mean an open ending, without loose ends tied up?

In the latter case, I much prefer an open ending over a bad ending.

In the former case... hard to say. There is a huge frustration in an incomplete story, but it's not necessarily the ending itself, but can be the lack of general development or amount of story not told. If you imagined a stock hack fantasy that ended just before the hero plus magic sword took on the dark lord, you've pretty much got all the story and could do without the final confrontation. If you stopped at the end of book 2 of a trilogy, that would in my view be much more annoying and I'd rather take a bad ending.

 

[Nuuu]

A Bad ending Vs. Non Ending example I've experienced would be Toriko vs. Log Horizon.
Both were great, but Toriko's ending was so bad and out of left field that I actually just avoided the very last episode because none of it was in-line with the canon or story.
Log Horizon never got a third season, but I'm still wishing it continues purely to the fact it still kept that same level of quality throughout.

In a nutshell, Log Horizon would get my recommendation over Toriko purely because of the ending. A non-ending at least doesn't leave you sour.

 

[I can't enter my old name]

Series A = The ending made me so mad that I forgot that I enjoyed 95% of it, fuck this show/game/movie/whatever I'm going to wipe it from my memory. Every time I hear this series mentioned, I get angry.

Series B = I enjoyed 100% percent of it, I wish there was more. I'm going to look for content and discussions online, whatever obscure background info to fill the void.

Non-ending is clearly superior.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

A non-ending just lets me imagine what else might be going on. A bad ending tells me and I hate it

 

[Hawki]

Non-endings satisfy no one but narcicistic fan-fic writers who either think they alone 'get' the creator's mindset and could replicate a perfect carbon copy of the 'true ending' or view themselves as better writers who would have come up with something better no matter what. They are all wrong, every time

What even was the last videogame series that "ended" at all?

The closest thing to a series "ending" is a series getting cancelled, which is tantamount to a non-ending.

Excluding cancellations and 'artificial extensions'?

-BioShock (course that'll change if BioShock 4 is made)

-Command & Conquer (Tiberian series)

-Dark Souls

-Jak & Daxter

-Killzone (sort of, at least in the sense that there hasn't been a game post-Shadow Fall, and the series arguably doesn't need one)

-Marathon

-Metal Gear (debatable if this falls into "cancelled" territory though in terms of narrative)

-Metroid (discounting prequels)

-Resistance (same as Metal Gear)

-Spyro the Dragon (original and LoS series, though granted, the original had more of a string continuity)

-Star Fox (as in the continuity between Lylat Wars and Command)

-Uncharted

Granted, a lot of these are stretches, and there's many series that had definitive endings that were only continued after said ending.

Do you mean unfinished as in it wasn't ended at all, for instance axed before the writers were ready? Or do you mean an open ending, without loose ends tied up?

In the latter case, I much prefer an open ending over a bad ending.

The former. An open ending I can live with, especially if the ending itself is meant to be ambiguous in at least some aspects.

 

[the December King]

I loved Carnivale (2003, two seasons), but it never ended, and I sorely needed more. On the other hand, I felt like the ending to Lost was... dumb, and made everything I had seen before dumber for it- it tainted my memories.

Speaking of 'it', on the other, other hand, I thought the original mini-series (Stephen King's It, 1990) was great, even with a strangely unnecessary giant spider fight at the end.

But I may have been braced for that, as I think I had read the book just prior.

 

[Dalisclock]

I loved Carnivale (2003, two seasons), but it never ended, and I sorely needed more. On the other hand, I felt like the ending to Lost was... dumb, and made everything I had seen before dumber for it- it tainted my memories.

Carnivale was supposed to have 6 seasons divided into 3 arcs(each in a different time period, the last one being in the mid 1940's and ending with the Atomic Bomb test). Instead, it was cut to 2 and they had to slap an ending on it to bring it to some kind of closure, at least that's what I've read.

Yeah, it's hard to choose. With no ending you can just kinda draw your own conclusion and imagine the rest for yourself, which honestly is better then the real ending half the time anyway. Imagining what something could be is often far more interesting then what we end up getting when except when something is handled by either a good writer or planned out well in advance. Though it's always frustrating in cases where a show or something is cut off. Apparently due to Invader Zim's run being cut off mid season, a lot of cool sounding episodes(Gir apparently conquered the earth while Zim was off planet in one, and not Duty Gir either) got left unfinished and it makes me sad.

A bad ending, OTOH, at least brings a sense of closure.

-Metal Gear (debatable if this falls into "cancelled" territory though in terms of narrative)

Considering how schizophrenic the narrative is in the series, even with the mess MGSV is(and honestly, one could ignore MGSV and not miss anything considering), one can make a pretty good argument that the story is more or less told. There's plenty of things that either aren't followed up on or needed to be better explained, but there is a sense of completeness as a far as the big plot beats are concerned.

I really can't blame Konami for what happened to MGSV. Kojima had 5 years to work on the thing and even without Act 2 being woefully incomplete, the whole thing feels like a waste of potential(even leaving aside the big twist). Konami eventually had to call it and ship.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

What even was the last videogame series that "ended" at all?

The closest thing to a series "ending" is a series getting cancelled, which is tantamount to a non-ending.

Excluding cancellations and 'artificial extensions'?

-BioShock (course that'll change if BioShock 4 is made)

-Command & Conquer (Tiberian series)

-Dark Souls

-Jak & Daxter

-Killzone (sort of, at least in the sense that there hasn't been a game post-Shadow Fall, and the series arguably doesn't need one)

-Marathon

-Metal Gear (debatable if this falls into "cancelled" territory though in terms of narrative)

-Metroid (discounting prequels)

-Resistance (same as Metal Gear)

-Spyro the Dragon (original and LoS series, though granted, the original had more of a string continuity)

-Star Fox (as in the continuity between Lylat Wars and Command)

-Uncharted

Granted, a lot of these are stretches, and there's many series that had definitive endings that were only continued after said ending.

I tihnk in most of these cases there isn't a proper conclusion because there's no story to conclude, sequels keeps getting made on spec until interest dies out and the series is either forgotten or officially cancelled. So maybe Dark Souls is over, in the sense that there aren't any more games with that title coming out, but there's no overarching story to end; a hypothetical Dark Souls 4 doesn't need to justify its continued existence because narrative continuity is a joke to the series (and endless repetition is a motif anyway.

The only two series out of that list I'd say come close to ending are BioShock and Uncharted but even both have fluked the sense of finality by pushing spin-off games that continue the main story one way or another.

 

[Squilookle]

Considering how fundamental the Ending is to the whole structure of a story, I'd take a poor ending over no ending every time. If it's a story based series, and you have me onboard with that story, then finish your damn vegetables and wrap the story up.

I'd go further and say games should never be allowed to end on cliffhangers. Considering how fickle producers are and how fraught with danger a first game is when it comes to being allowed to start a sequel, unless it's already been greenlit before the first one releases, you just don't do a cliffhanger. Just don't do it. Too many games have promised the moon, rolled credits, and were never heard from again. And it sucks.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Considering how fundamental the Ending is to the whole structure of a story

Is it actually, or is that just convention? Why should fiction require this structure when history clearly doesn't?

 

[Squilookle]

Considering how fundamental the Ending is to the whole structure of a story

Is it actually, or is that just convention? Why should fiction require this structure when history clearly doesn't?

Because at some point, an audience likes to return to living their lives.

Life itself is not subject to such a restriction.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Life is a tangled labyrinth entirely built off frayed absence of closure, it's hardly difficult to accustom to the same in entertainment. The imagination is a wonderful thing. A bad ending is not. There may be exceptions depending on circumstance, but you can't forget a shit ending; it taints the rest of the experience as whenever you look back you can't not think of where the narrative leads. Also, there are more than a few stories that don't follow traditional structure and to the layperson would appear as not having a traditional ending. The ones that linger in the mind long after.

 

[Kyrian007]

Good question.

For me, A doesn't bother me much at all. People place so much importance on how a story ends... and I don't get it. Generally the ending of a story (in traditional 3 act structure) is the shortest part that just has the resolution and wrap up. Act 2 generally has all of the interesting build up, and I place way more importance on it and its transfer points between acts. Or, the journey is just as important as the destination. I can't understand anyone who could denounce 90 minutes of a great movie because of the 15 minutes of its bad ending.

And just as important, a story isn't told until it has an ending. That's why I prefer... say anime that has an ending as opposed to those shonen series that go on and on and on and on with no ending in sight. I can't stand that. That's (strangely) why I prefer episodic style tv shows as opposed to those with long story arcs. Episodic shows have proper story structure... every episode. Every episode has a beginning, middle, end. With long story arc shows they either break up the structure unnaturally with ending the story wherever time runs out for the episode... which is unbearably awkward, or trying (and usually failing) to give each ep proper structure WHILE keeping the arc going. Which is appearantly VERY hard to do as few shows reliably do it well and most have to rely on the crutch of a "previously on" segment as an opening scene. So b is worse.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

I would prefer a story with no ending over one with an abysmal ending. The most common of the former is a TV show or game series that gets cancelled before it can finish, but then I can just imagine my own ending, and it's usually better than anything the producers could have made on short notice.

I have witnessed some very, very bad, rushed endings to games, shows and book series' that would have been far better off left to the audience. Of course with games you never really know if they might try to resurrect it later- no ending is final enough to prevent that if the series is popular.

 

[Silent Protagonist]

I believe the classic adage of showbusiness is "Always leave them wanting more"