Least satsifying game endings?

[LongAndShort]

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.

 

[GabeZhul]

Mass Effect 3.
Nothing much to say, as you should know how outrageously dumb it was already. We are on a gaming site, after all...

Kingdoms of Amalur.
I have complained about this a lot, but there are not enough complains in the world to express how silly it was. In the end-game you finally discover that you female elf eyecandy companion, who was so powerful it took her about thirty hits to kill a mook you could beat in two, belonged to a secret order all along whose job was to hide the existence of the big bad outer-god from the world so that people wouldn't try to worship him and bring about the end of the world. Well, since you spent a good two thirds of the game directly fighting against the other elves who were corrupted by this "god" and have been shouting his name from the top of their lungs all the time, it already sparks some snarky "Nice job you did." comments.

Then you finally square off against this god at the end, who turns into a giant-ass dragon... and you don't actually fight him, but grind his minions until you max out your superpower gauge, at which point your character engages in a brief QTE sequence to hit him a few times, then back to the grinding and repeating the process a few times. This was already pretty anti-climactic...

But then your character wakes up in a house a few days later with your other companion briefing you about how things turned out after the battle and handing you a letter from your female eyecandy companion saying that if you ever tell anyone about the existence of said god, she will be forced to kill you.
...
I repeat: The woman, whose greatest contribution to any battle that far was ineffectually stabbing at a guy while you killed his thirty companions (and then him, because she didn't even manage to kill that one guy in that time), threatens you, the demigod who casually waded his way through an entire army and killed a GOD, to kill you if you ever tell anyone about the GOD YOU JUST KILLED, which also happens to be the same god EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS ABOUT, since his followers were shouting his name all the time whenever they went into battle! Seriously, writers? That is the note you end your game on? Seriously?

As for my other big WTF ending:
Fable III
So, I suppose we all know how incredibly stupid it was how in the end-game the calendar suddenly jumps from you having 121 more days until invasion to the invasion immediately (if you don't know what I'm talking about, see the relevant Zero Punctuation episode for pointers), a real dick move by the developer team, but the final battle was also just duuuuuuuumb beyond measure.

So, the enemy is attacking. I wade my way through the attacking monsters and I even found myself having some fun there. Then the enemy possesses your mentor, Walter, and you have to fight him. Well, duh, I expected that. That's what mentors for, to die at an opportune moment to give a resolve to the hero. So I went ahead and beat him in about ten seconds. Then we had the expected dramatic scene between him and the protagonist, some tears and such, I was getting pumped up for the final boss... and then cut to Walter's funeral and you get quickly told how good or evil you were and... that's it. as it turns out I have just finished the game and beaten the final boss without me even noticing it...

 

[Caiphus]

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.

Yeah, I've heard this as well. They wanted their overarching nihilistic plot to make sense while presenting the player with, as you say, a morally ambiguous final choice, and couldn't make it work in time. And the end result was just awkward.

Oh wells.

Actually, I'm going to guess that running out of time/resources was the case for a good number of games listed in this thread. I know for sure that it was the case for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and for KOTOR II. Not that it makes it any better, necessarily. But awkward or sudden endings are often borne out of poor management rather than purely incompetent writing.

 

[Auron225]

Also, INB4 Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

As an ending, I actually really liked it. The only thing that majorly sucked was that it ended since Valve no longer give a shit.

The ending of Half-Life 2 (not the Episodes) would have pissed me off had they left it there and never continued.

 

[GabeZhul]

I seem to remember the entire final act of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines being reasonably pants. And the actual ending sequences were all disappointing too (and a kick in the nuts if you made certain choices).

What? Okay, I admit the final parts of the game were bad because they were entirely combat-centric and the game had a pretty bad combat system (and you were doubly fucked if you were playing a sneaky Nosferatu or a charismatic Toreador with low combat skills), but the actual endings were great. Yeah, you could most certainly get fucked over... if you made the wrong choices, you know? Like, say, siding with the obviously evil and manipulative LaCroix? Or siding with the obviously evil and manipulative Kuei-Jin lady?

Captcha: om nom nom
No captcha, we are talking about vampires here! It's not "om nom nom", it's "slurp slurp"!

 

[FoxKitsune]

Star wars: Knights of the Old Republic .

Loved that game and indeed the series, up to and including the MMO which I played for a short time but yeah, it just ended and it seemed like they had forgotten to put the ending on.

 

[Caiphus]

What? Okay, I admit the final parts of the game were bad because they were entirely combat-centric and the game had a pretty bad combat system (and you were doubly fucked if you were playing a sneaky Nosferatu or a charismatic Toreador), but the actual endings were great. Yeah, you could get fucked over... if you made the wrong choices, you know? Like, say, siding with the obviously evil and manipulative LaCroix? Or siding with the obviously evil and manipulative Kuei-Jin lady?

Well, it's fine that you feel that way. Clearly they had the intended effect for you. I thought that a couple short cutscenes, which sometimes, at least for me, didn't reflect the choices you've made throughout the game, after a few hours of painful combat was just not good at all.

Edit: And that wasn't meant condescendingly at all. I loved the rest of the game, and wish that I could have been satisfied with the ending. I just realise now that I might have come across as being snarky there.

 

[Vegosiux]

Most recently? L.A. Noire. I don't mind the fact that Cole's dead, nor do I even mind that the fact that Earle gets to do his eulogy defies belief a little, seeing as there were better candidates available.

But the entire "Oh yeah let's just switch to a different protagonist and then have a shootout in the sewers" thing was just shitty. Also, fuck Courtney Sheldon. Easily one of the dumbest characters I've ever seen.

 

[Evonisia]

Somebody already said Halo 2, but I must say that in that series there are what? Three, maybe four games with 'good' endings. Halo: CE, Halo Wars, Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach?

In fact I'm going to say Halo 4's. Halo: CE closed itself off nicely, sure it was a bit of a cliffhanger but I doubt they thought it would explode the way did, nevermind have a sequel. 343 (or Microsoft) advertised the new Halo trilogy to be just that, a trilogy. Halo 4 ends beautifully if you exclude Cortana's god moding and her selfishness by defying Chief's wishes, but it closes itself off. The villain is dead as far as we can tell, all the plot threads have been neatly tied up and the hero saves the day (even if Cortana pulled a Jesus on us).
So as far as I can tell apparently the Didact survived Halo 4 and will be back in Halo 5. I'm sorry, what?

If Halo 4 was announced as the final game of the series I would've still hated it because of it's dodgy story and boring gameplay but at least it would have had a beautiful, well scripted ending. Instead I'm left angry and disappointed because they're going to ruin what little good there was by having sequels which were already in everyone's mind.

See, I can be nice to Halo 4 sometimes.

 

[Comocat]

Borderlands.

You get to the vault, turns out it's home to some sort of lovecraftian eldritch octopus beast, you kill it, credits roll. No phat loot after all.

I felt the same. To their credit I feel like Borderlands 2 really tightened up the story aspect of the game. It's nice to see companies improve on a feature.

TBH and I'm sure it's cliche, but ME3 is hands down the worst game ending I have ever experienced. A lot of games disappoint me on some level, but ME3 is unique in the level of disappoint the ending generated. To echo some other posters, ME3 is the only game where I am ever thought what a "terrible piece of shit I just witnessed", rather than shrugging my shoulders.

-----

To flip the thread I think my all time favorite ending was the SNES version of final fantasy III. I think it was one of the first games to have such an expansive ending depending on your actions with different characters.

 

[Zeren]

Well, since the first Borderlands has already been mentioned, I think I'll go with...

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas

There's a pretty lackluster battle, the bad guy that you'd been chasing gets away, and the last line of dialogue from the main character is, "We gotta see this through, this ain't over by a long shot!"

Fade to black screen with "TO BE CONTINUED" written across it.

Fuck you too, R6V.

EDIT:
Also, INB4 Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

To be fair, R6V2 did follow up and the ending felt good.

OT: All of Dishonored's endings felt lackluster. I had hoped for something more impressive.

 

[Linksmash]

So many. I was furious with FF7 initially, where it was like ' You know all those sub plots and minor characters you've grown attached to? naaaahhhhhhh'

Also seconding KOTOR2. I'd be bothered by DA2 but i hated how shallow they had made the combat so i was just glad to see the bugger end.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

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.

Can't speak for anyone else, but for me...

1. There was already precedent within the Deus Ex series for a last-minute "A/B/C" style ending where you can choose whichever ending you want regardless of your previous actions/decisions within the game. Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Invisible War both did the exact same thing. It's disappointing, sure. But it's also kind of expected by now.

2. The endings in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, despite being unsatisfying, at least felt like natural endings to the game based upon where the story was going and more-or-less tied everything up. The Mass Effect 3 ending felt like it came out of nowhere to me, and left me asking a ton of questions that the series completely failed to answer.

3. The original Mass Effect 3 ending requires people to behave out-of-character to even work. Why was Joker flying away from a Mass Relay? Am I supposed to honestly believe that Joker, one of my most trusted allies, stole my ship and went AWOL mid-battle? Liara T'Soni, my Shepard's love interest, was apparently cool with abandoning Shepard too? And what about Javik, was he apparently fine with running away as well despite his whole "after this is done I'm going to kill myself anyway" speech? Why was Shepard so quick to trust an AI with a clear connection to the Reapers? If Shepard picks the "blue" control ending, isn't that a bit hypocritical seeing as how that's the exact same thing you spent the entire game trying to convince the Illusive Man wouldn't work? If you pick the "red" ending why does Shepard feel the need to stupidly walk into the explosion when he/she could have just shot at it from a safe distance? If you pick the "green" ending why doesn't Shepard question... anything... about the complete absurdity of it before enthusiastically killing him/herself for potentially nothing?

4. The Deus Ex: Human Revolution developers didn't spend every opportunity available to them prior to the game's release promising that the game would have a spectacular ending. Casey Hudson from the Mass Effect team is quoted promising that Mass Effect 3 wouldn't have an A/B/C choice ending, and that the ending you get will be based upon your decisions within the series. The Mass Effect team lied like crazy to their fanbase, and the fanbase called them out on it.

I still love the Mass Effect franchise as a whole, and I even enjoyed ME3 for the most part, but yeah... it's ending, to me at least, absolutely deserved more ire than DX:HR's.

To be fair, R6V2 did follow up and the ending felt good.

That doesn't really excuse the fact that R6V's ending is ridiculously abrupt and insulting to the people who played it. Not to mention that it held the ending hostage for two years with a $60 ransom.

 

[Angelous Wang]

The Game of Throne game.

3 everybody dies endings.
1 everybody dies except the main character ending, but the main character spends his life on wall.

I personally went with Alister over Mors and did everything in my power to save/serve Riverspring and become it's Lord. But once everything was said and done and Alister had control ... fucker hanged himself.

 

[Pierre Poutine]

Bioshock was mentioned, but I was also disappointed with the endings for Burial at Sea Part 1, and Part 2.

Part 1's ending tried to do what Infinite's ending [which I will defend as one of the best endings of a game I've seen], but here, it really made no sense. I guess there's a version of Comstock that somehow escaped when Booker drowned himself, but if that was even possible, then there could be an infinite amount of Comstocks who escaped making Booker's sacrifice at the end of Infinite pointless. And why would Elizabeth constantly save Comstock in-game if she was just going to kill you anyway. Yeah, I know that she says in Part 2 that he needed to know why he deserved it, but I'd think that after the 4th or 5th time the player is killed by splicers, she'd just throw up her hands and say "well, job's done anyway...]

Part 2 wasn't as bad, but it still left me cold. Mostly because while at the end of Infinite, I felt that Booker's transgressions made his drowning fitting, Elizabeth accepting her fate made less sense to me since her sins aren't nearly as bad as his. Still, the main sticking point is that we're supposed to feel hopeful because where Elizabeth failed in saving Sally, Jack of the original Bioshock will succeed. Firstly, that's not a guarantee since there are evil endings in that game, but the problem is just that it calls back to the original Bioshock's ending which, as mentioned by others is a terrible ending. It hinges entirely on your attachment to the Jack [who purposely has no character] and the little sisters who; as sympathetic as they may be have no character either and aren't who you get emotionally invested in.

Also, the whole appeal of these DLC to me was how they'd take place after the ending of Infinite, and what were the consequences of Booker drowning. Did it work? Did Booker and Anna reunite after the end credit scene? I still don't know and didn't get a satisfactory resolution.

 

[Arqus_Zed]

Well, Final Fantasy X-2's "perfect ending" was pretty much a raised middle finger towards everything that had happened in its predecessor (as was most of the story). Don't get me wrong, Final Fantasy X is far from a perfect game (especially in the story/characters department), but it was still downright insulting.

Also, everything that happens in Final Fantasy IX after you beat Trance Kuja. The ending - that being the sum of the endings for every character - is extra painful seeing how the rest of the game was just so freakin' good.

 

[Callate]

Having recently completed it, I'd put in a word for Sleeping Dogs.

The ultimate ending- the scene that actually ends the game- is just fairly typical mediocrity. But what leads up to it? Yeah, let's pull the "Ooh, you're badly hurt, so everything is slow and hazy" trick. How about a series of quicktime events? How about pulling control away from the player so you can be ambushed during cut scenes no less than three times? Instead of using all those abilities you've spent the game acquiring and learning how to use, let's use "slow and hazy" to make your fight against the final bad guy into a series of "counter, counter, counter, counter", and finish it off with a mandatory button-mash execution?

I recognize that it's not untypical in Hong Kong action cinema for heroes to take a lot of physical punishment in the climactic scenes. In this case, I would have been a lot less fed up with Wei if he avoided some of that punishment. It would have made for a better game.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I seem to remember the entire final act of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines being reasonably pants. And the actual ending sequences were all disappointing too (and a kick in the nuts if you made certain choices).

What? Okay, I admit the final parts of the game were bad because they were entirely combat-centric and the game had a pretty bad combat system (and you were doubly fucked if you were playing a sneaky Nosferatu or a charismatic Toreador with low combat skills), but the actual endings were great. Yeah, you could most certainly get fucked over... if you made the wrong choices, you know? Like, say, siding with the obviously evil and manipulative LaCroix? Or siding with the obviously evil and manipulative Kuei-Jin lady?

Oooh, another VTMB fan! That game is the BEST!

There's also the fact you can screw yourself over in the Anarch and Independent endings as well, if you ignore the huge tidal wave of warnings.

The woman who can see the future on the beach, who accurately predicts elements from everything else in the game tells you not to open it. As long as you don't take the sewers before going to the bar at the end, Beckett, the biggest skeptic about all this shit, suddenly flips opinion tells you not to open it or you deserve the consequences. The "friend" who sends you emails tells you not to open it. You'd have to be an idiot to open it, but some people do so anyway.

-
Also, I hated the climax of the game my first time through. I was a sneaky nosferatu. Who focused almost exclusively on melee. And since I was afraid of getting Violations for just being seen, I missed out on a ton of sidequests which left me with WAY less EXP than I should have had by the end. AND I was far too moral, meaning I didn't do the quest to get the Odious Chalice (would have helped SO much) or the Key of Alamut (would also have helped).

On every other playthrough, though, even when I replayed my Nossie run recently, I had a blast with it since I came in prepared.

 

[Zeraki]

inFamous: Second Son is the most recent offender I've experienced.

It was a fun game, but wow it seriously paled in comparison to its fantastic predecessor.

The game design and writing felt incredibly lazy, and the new touchpad gimmicks were more of a detriment than anything else. It's also incredibly short compared to inFamous 2.

I was actually surprised when I started the final mission, because I wasn't expecting the game to be over that early. Hell, I didn't even realize I was on the final mission until the final boss battle started. The whole experience felt very rushed.

When you compare it to what came before, all it really has going for it are the pretty visuals.

 

[Lightknight]

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.