Least satsifying game endings?

[Qage]

About 2 games leap to mind at present, although all of them have been mentioned at some point during the thread.

Borderlands 1 and Fallout 3

For me, Borderlands was a mixed bag of experiences. I remember having fun with it at times (although usually when a friend was playing it with me), but the rest of the time was just a long, dull slog of shooting the same enemies with the same weapons in the same environments over and over again. Then to finally get to the end of it all and that is the ending?

Don't get me wrong, I get what the ending of Borderlands was trying to go for and what it was trying to achieve (at least I hope it's what the devs were going for), but from a gameplay perspective, all of that time sunk into getting to the end and enduring that slow, boring boss fight to not only receive nothing special in the way of loot, but to then have the game say "Ahh wasn't that fun! How would you like to try that again, only harder?!" Just felt like a huge slap in the face and even manages to cheapen the already lacklustre ending.

The pre-Broken Steel ending for Fallout 3 has already received quite a bit of discussion here and for the most part I feel the same way, but continuing with the theme of cheapening endings, doesn't the Broken Steel DLC cheapen the supposed sacrifice the game strongarmed you into making? Since it just turns out that you didn't actually throw your life away and you eventually recover from death in a hospital bed rendering the "destined sacrifice" of vanilla Fallout 3's ending completely moot.

 

[ABLb0y]

Also, the antagonists attitude does not mesh with her motivation. She wants to save all conduits, So she gathers them all up, and she tortures them. Never explained why but she does. She also gets a few of them "mission ready", although we are never told what that mission is or why after they're trained for it she just decides to try putting them in a hole.

I'm pretty sure she was just a sociopath who was using 'I'm going to save them' as an excuse to lock them up to make herself look good.
I mean, if she really cared about the conduits, she'd campaign for equal rights or something, not bang them up and throw away the key.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Shadow of The Colossus.
What a moron for a main character who would be tricked into letting a demon/god/whatever free all to save his lover...but she never gets to be with him anyway. Great game, but it was a waste of time because of the ending.

Uhm, he's told that the price he'll pay for Mono's resurrection may be grave. He wasn't tricked at all, he was told straight out about the consequences in the very first cutscene.

And it's never made clear they are lovers. She could be his sister, or he could even be her guilt stricken executioner.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

there's a couple.

Spoiler: Prince of Persia 2008

The main character single-handedly undermined everything he was working toward the entire game in a couple of seconds. Worse, the game forced the player to do this, rather just let him watch the character be stupid. The dimwit saved the girl, even if he knew that doing so would result in the world ending and everyone dying, including her. WHAT WAS THE POINT?

Spoiler: The Last of Us

See above. Not quite as dumb and much more understandable, given that Joel IS a horrible, selfish person. It made sense plot-wise and it provided closure. So it wasn't a bad ending at all, it just hate it when a game forces me to carry out the player character's horrible decisions by myself. It's frustrating. Kind of like shouting at a horror character not to start having sex in the middle of a forrest populated by murderous psychopaths. Except now I'm forced to buy their condoms as well.

Spoiler: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Such a wonderful world I just spent 40 hours in. So many decisions I've made. I was really hoping for an ending that would take those decisions and show me their consequences, rather then let me pick which one of the 3 generic slideshows I wanted to watch.

Spoiler: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2

It seemed like I was teleported to the final bossfight halfway through the game. Then a planet exploded. Roll credits. Come on.

 

[Nadia Castle]

Simon the Sourcerer 2. Not only is it a blatant sequel hook, it ends on one hell of a downer (the villain makes off with your body to take over the earth leaving you stuck in fairy tale land) and the third game went through absolute development hell so even if you did manage to get the game it was a broken mess with no satisfying conclusion.

That is one series that is in dire need of a good remake.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Spoiler

Mass Effect 3.

I am not going to shout from the rooftops about why its bad, I just think its goddamn horrible really bad as an ending.

I will end my point there.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Halo 2. The ending was basically "HEY GUYS WERE MAKING A HALO 3 WOOOOOOO" and nothing else. It was just a cliffhanger, and you knew there was going to be a Halo 3.

That's a good one to mention. I remember it being completely anti-climatic for that reason.

I'm going to mention Red Dead Redemption.

Spoiler

You die while your family escapes then your son grows up without a father and ends up following the same wondering path the father fought so hard to prevent him from having to take.

I really liked the ending or Red Dead Redemption and found it pretty fitting.

Spoiler

You spend the entire time trying to get back to your family, protecting them, sheltering them from the evils of the world. You're forced to do morally questionable things in order to be together with them, and you never question the "good guys" when they tell you that after you've fulfilled your job you'll be able to have a nice quiet life again with your family. Then in the end all your hard work ends up being for nothing, you're shot down like a dog by the men you trusted to uphold their end of the bargain, and your son grows up to be a criminal just like you.

When I played the game as John Marston I played through the whole thing trying to kill only the people I had to, generally being the good guy, fixing the mistakes of my past because Marston is looking for redemption. When the game switched me over to playing as Jack at the very end I calmly rode over to each checkpoint, talked to Ross's family and friends, and when I had a clue about his location I calmly executed them with a shotgun. Jack wasn't looking for redemption, he was looking for revenge.

I thought the whole thing was very poignant (I just wish Jack had a better voice actor).

 

[Childe]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I can't be arsed to explain or spoil it, but let's just say that I don't understand why ME3 is remembered with such bile by so many people and Deus Ex:HR isn't.

Absolutely loved and still love both games, and will defend both of them when called upon.

Dragon Age 2's ending was the more frustrating for me, actually, if we're talking about Bioware. Spoiler warning, and all that, although it probably doesn't matter by now:
Forcing you to take sides with either the Mages or Templars, then revealing your chosen side to be a healthy mixture of stupid, evil, deeply hypocritical and corrupt right pissed me off. It screamed of the writers being too desperate to pull a Witcher and go "Der r no rite choyces!", and just blegh. Didn't like it at all.

Yeah, felt the same way about this ending. Even given how both choices go down, siding with the Mages seemed like the only reasonable thing to do as well (what with either you or your sister being a mage). From what I understand they were planning much better endings (or at least properly morally ambiguous ones, not just 'I'm a monster now. Roar.') but ran out of time and money.

The ending was interesting though and kept with the whole you make the choices sort of thing. I give it bonus points for being a completely philosophical ending.

OT: for me Batman AA. It's not how it ended per-say just the ending cutscene shows croc getting the titan formula and sets up a cool super beefed croc and then the only time Croc shows up in the second game is to tell you to go away. I was disappointed

 

[porous_shield]

OT: for me Batman AA. It's not how it ended per-say just the ending cutscene shows croc getting the titan formula and sets up a cool super beefed croc and then the only time Croc shows up in the second game is to tell you to go away. I was disappointed

There are a few ending you can get for Batman AA. There Croc, like you got, Scarecrow, or Bane and neither of them have significant roles in Arkham City. Bane is in the game but just a side mission and Scarcrow only has a few neat Easter Eggs.

 

[OneOfTheMichael's]

Rage's ending made me rage pretty hard. The game was going good and fun but the last part was just blank and unsatisfying. Mass effect 3 had a much better ending in comparison, at least it felt like a climatic finale.

 

[Something Amyss]

Army of Two, and its sequel. The third slides because it wasn't that good to begin with, so I didn't care.

Spoiler: Army of Two

Barring optional DLC, you don't actually get to go after Dalton. You fight his Dragon, then cutscene and he dies

Spoiler: Army Of Two: The Fungal Decay

Similar to the first game, though the decision to go after Jonah is one that happens only after some major events. However, one of those events is the death (or apparent death) of Alice Murray. After that, I really did want the pleasure of boss fight with Jonah. Instead, the final fight of the game is just another cooridor full of dudes. After that, you get a cutscene with two unsatisfying moral choices--kill your partner or let China get nuked. The only upside of AoT: They Didn't Care is that they seem to have completely forgot about this. Much like Alice, until the last scene of the game where she's just randomly brought up

I know a lot of people didn't care, but I enjoyed the games for the most part. Except 3. Screw The Dingo's Callous.

 

[Vault101]

Bioshock : Burial at sea

[spoiler/]its obviously not as bad as that other ending..since it fits with the themes and all

but for Elizabeth to go like that its just....ugghhh just to much of a downer, the Bioshock Infinite ending was satisfying in a way even if it initially looked like "our" elizabeth vanished from existence (which seems to not be the case..I'll have to play again)

the problem with this is the little sister "Sally" doesn't hold much emotional weight, theres a reason we all love Elizabeth and [i/]oh but you saved sally[/i] yeah well I don't give a fuck about Sally! Brooker "dying" wasn't as bad because if it meant "saving" elizabeth (as I have demonstrated I still don't know exactly what happened) I did to some degree care for Brooker but his "sacrifice" made sense and was satisfying

this was one of those "sad" endings where you understood why they did it and you can't fault it for having an impact but...it feels cheap and manipulative [/spoiler]

 

[OpticalJunction]

Fallout 3's original ending was a major disappointment.

 

[Blitsie]

Holy balls did Lords of Shadow 2 have an unsatisfying conclusion to the series, so much that I went from really liking it to just wishing I never bothered playing it. The story right up until the final fight with the big bad was decent, you met some cool characters, some good twists happened, and most importantly...

Spoiler

Dracula himself was completely set on ending his life with the vampire killer once he kills Satan so that he can finally rest and peacefully hang out with his family in heaven or whatever. This was basically what the whole game was about and they used every chance they could get to build up to that finally happening.

So Satan appears, final fight ensues (pretty mediocre one too) and Drac' wins yay! Turns out they also coincidentally ended up right next to the church Dracula slumbered in for all those years, so its pretty obvious that he's going to sit in his old throne and impale himself, finally reuniting with his family which he missed so dearly. Alucard will most probably go fix the city or something seeing how its pretty wrecked from the demon attack and he's such a good guy. All ends well and life goes on.

But does any of that happen? Hahaha, no.

Instead, after offing Satan Drac' decides - out of nowhere for no valid reason at all - that he'll just continue living (unliving?) instead and Alucard is like "lol, ok" and they both walk into the church. The End.

What the flying fuck, MercurySteam?

 

[TBman]

Bioshock Infinite. In hindsight I think it's clever, but at the time it was just so confusing that I had to look up explanations for what the hell happened, that made the ending less holistic for me.

 

[Snydeclyde]

I know everyone hates the game anyway,
But Kane and Lynch 2's ending was a joke.

 

[alphamalet]

Going to throw in with Dragon Age II.

I CHOPPED LELIANA'S HEAD OFF!

What the hell happened, Bioware!?

 

[Edl01]

Xcom Enemy Unknown. So you beat the Incredibly boring Final Boss, who is just a regular enemy with a bunch of HP. Your troops run off the ship, it goes into the atmosphere and explodes. The end.
It's so lazy and doesn't explain anything, it just feels incredibly tacked on as if they didn't work on it until a week before release, it just leaves so many questions unanswered.

First of all I want to know what happened to my troops? You know all them guys who where on that exploding ship, some of them were injured in the fight, does that mean they were just left behind to die on the ship?
How did the world react to the aliens being defeated? Half the worlds population was probably wiped out since I didn't save Asia, so what happens now.

The ending just lacks all sense of closure and I was immensely disappointed.


Now to follow up to anyone who says that games in the 80s had worse endings - Yes they did, however we didn't care back in the 80s because games didn't focus nearly as much on story. In a story as simple as, "just save the princess", you're not going to expect Hamlet. But most modern video games do place a large emphasis on story, so we pay more attention to them when the ending is awful.

 

[ToastyMozart]

I'm going to say the ending to Hitman: Blood Money (the real ending, not the obvious fakeout).

So, you've spent the entire game being careful, cunningly finding a way to get places, devising ways of very subtly taking out your target, not causing any unnecessary fatalities, and not being seen.

Ok, here's your guns, now stand up in the middle of the room and very loudly shoot all these dudes (including the game forcing you to kill an unarmed bystander) then leave. The end.

 

[kortin]

Sonic Generations's ending. The boss is absolute shit, then it just goes "lol okay that's it sonic and his buddies golol bye".

Also ALL of the bad endings in Tomoyo After. Yeah yeah, whatever, "not a real game, it's a VN", but my point still stands. All of the bad endings are so out of character and so poorly written, I honestly think they just went online and looked up some really horrible Tomoyo-Tomoya fanfiction and threw it in.

I can't remember it too well, but I do remember really disliking the ending of Far Cry 3 as well.

Also CarnEvil's ending is just stupid.