Least satsifying game endings?

[SonOfVoorhees]

People being to hard on ME3. Atleast they had some kind of ending. Remember games in the 80's, all you got was a "Well Done, Game Over" for all your hard work....imagine if you got a "Well done" screen at the end of ME3. Yeah, gamers would be bitching way more. lol

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Crap, just remembered the ending for Kane & Lynch 2. That ending was so short and out of know where with zero information on what happened. lol. Terrible ending.

 

[Storm Dragon]

Knights of the Old Republic II comes to mind, it ends so abruptly and isn't really satisfying at all. The first time I finished it I thought I had inadvertently clicked my mouse and skipped a cutscene.

More recently, Reaper of Souls.

To be fair to KotOR II, Lucasarts made Obsidian rush a Christmas release when they still had months of work left to do. There are still some dummied-out audio files buried in the code for the dialogue from unfinished scenes.

 

[Shuguard]

I vaguely remember what happens at the end of Risen. Apparently some rock titan is super angry in a volcano (pulled out of its butt at the last minute). Then I have to equip some cardboard looking rock armor with a hammer (so sword speccing is useless). Then fight this titan and the game just ends. Nothing really satisfying just kinda rolls the credits after you beat the titan.

 

[Mikejames]

Considering how much I enjoyed the rest of the story, Beyond Good and Evil didn't feel very conclusive with all of its hints at a sequel that has yet to come. Someday...

Initially, I thought Dark Souls' ending was kinda underwhelming, but considering most of the game's story revolves around backstory and personal interpretation, the endings were kinda fitting.

After all the build-up, I'd have to second that. The Dark Lord ending's a bit more satisfying, but it still feels abrupt either way.

 

[Ham Blitz]

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I'm by no means attempting to defend the R6V2 ending. It's dumb as all hell, and I doubt you'd find many people to say otherwise... but at least it had an ending. I find it far more insulting to the consumer to hold a game's ending hostage for two years then charging $60 to see it than it just being dumb. A game ending on a "TO BE CONTINUED" screen just seems sleazy to me.

I don't know if I would say it is sleazy to plan for a sequel, especially is the game is good (I don't honestly know, I've only ever played the second one, and I do enjoy that one), though I can definitely see ending on a TO BE CONTINUED screen to be a very unsatisfying ending I suppose.
You know, until you talking about this I would have never guessed R6V2 was continuing off a story from the first game. It didn't really feel like it.

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

The Fallout 3 endings, both vanilla and Broken Steel. The original endings (with added Broken Steel features) praised you for making a stupid sacrifice and condemned you for not making a stupid sacrifice. Gee, game, I'm sorry for not pointlessly throwing my life away for the sake of a "glorious death". As with Broken Steel, you blow up an Enclave base and that's it. You probably know the Enclave reinforcements aren't coming since the Western chapter was destroyed in Fallout 2 so the story of the Lone Wanderer is left on one blank note.

The biggest crime of these endings is that they barely hint at the fate of the wastelands (like the locations you've visited) akin to Fallout 1 and 2.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I don't know if I would say it is sleazy to plan for a sequel, especially is the game is good (I don't honestly know, I've only ever played the second one, and I do enjoy that one), though I can definitely see ending on a TO BE CONTINUED screen to be a very unsatisfying ending I suppose.
You know, until you talking about this I would have never guessed R6V2 was continuing off a story from the first game. It didn't really feel like it.

Planning for a sequel is fine, but if you're going to do that, you should at least plan for some form of closure to each installment. Advertising a complete experience and then handing out a "TO BE CONTINUED" screen is just kinda bullshit.

And if it makes any difference, I did play both... and no, R6V2 still doesn't really feel like much of a continuation.

Granted, the stories for most of the Tom Clancy games are pretty lackluster. Anyone remember the story for Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.? Trick question. There was no story.

 

[Karthek]

I'd have to give the award for least satisfying ending to three games:
Indigo Prophecy, for being stupid and confusing.
Beyond: Two Souls, for also being stupid as well as meaningless.
And finally, Conker's Bad Fur Day.
Special mention goes to Bad Fur Day, for making me feel like everything I had done up until that point had been all for naught.

 

[josemlopes]

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I'm by no means attempting to defend the R6V2 ending. It's dumb as all hell, and I doubt you'd find many people to say otherwise... but at least it had an ending. I find it far more insulting to the consumer to hold a game's ending hostage for two years then charging $60 to see it than it just being dumb. A game ending on a "TO BE CONTINUED" screen just seems sleazy to me.

I wouldnt call it exactly holding the ending hostage for 60$ since it was a full story of the same lenght but I guess they should have made it clear that the first game was the first half of the story (in the same way as Gears of War was already known to be a trilogy before the second game released). At least the first ended in a somewhat climatic way (stopping a nuke), its season finale material and thats what they went with.

Could have been worse if the second game never got made (Star Wars Republic Commando) or it just ended without any indication that it could even be an ending to anything (Sniper: Ghost Warrior, seriously, just watch this one).

 

[Alexei F. Karamazov]

I recently finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and I thought that the entire game really started to tank near the end. I'm not entirely sure WHY, but it might have something to do with the fact that I was playing the endgame after revisiting Detroit on godmode, since I had around 100 bullets for my exploding-round revolver with pin-point accuracy. The last boss, while visually interesting, was mostly nonsensical, COMPLETELY unexplained, and just about the easiest thing in the game. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I had an overheating-resistance plasma rifle with over 200 rounds, along with a dozen stimpaks. The ending-ending itself was alright, but it didn't feel like there was much weight, again, perhaps due to how the game played near the end for me.

Though it's similar to the ending of Deus Ex and Mass Effect 3, as others have pointed out, Deus Ex's endings were actually pretty interesting and coherent (implying that those of ME3 were not...), and fit the ideas and themes of the game quite well. The ending-endings to Human Revolution weren't quite as good for me personally, but they weren't BAD, and again, they were coherent and fit the themes and such of the game.

On a side note, for future reference, how do I make the spoiler tags that people have been creating throughout the thread? (I'm a bit new to posting here.) Is there a link to somewhere on the website that tells how that I have overlooked?

 

[gamernerdtg2]

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.

 

[Eve Charm]

Indigo prophecy. From the like 25% point it was just keep on going how bad can this game get... And it doesn't do anything but get worse all the way through the ending.

And one for Jim, Dynasty warriors. It doesn't matter What game, What side, What character you are, What you do in battle... All 3 kingdoms are doomed to fail along with every one after.

 

[LongAndShort]

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I actually agree with you on all of those points. Ultimately the (original) ending felt like a disservice to a great game and great franchise. I think the extended cut went a long way towards fixing a lot of the problems and I wonder if Bioware simply wasn't given the time or resources to do something better to start with (if heresay and rumour are correct -not saying they are- something they have frequent problems with, which points to much different management and talent issues at Bioware, or mismanagement by EA).

I guess I take issue at how the shitty ending of one great game is forgiven and forgotten because of a precedent, while the shitty ending of another great game is held against the entire franchise and company because... people loved the game so much? and were disappointed that it didn't hit their expectations because everything else was great? At least that's how it seems from my perspective.

Man, I need to stop trying to defend Bioware on these forums. I'm starting to sound like a broken fanbo- ... er... record.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

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I think you actually hit the nail on the head there as to why the ME3 ending tends to be so much more vocally despised than the DX:HR ending.

Riiiiight....

...while the shitty ending of another great game is held against the entire franchise...

...there.

The Mass Effect games were almost always sold to us as an epic trilogy. One where each game was leading up to some grand finale that they'd been hinting at for years. We, the players, made our decisions to tailor our characters and our worlds in the hope that it would give us a more meaningful conclusion when that day came. A conclusion that would feel unique to us, regardless of how many other thousands of players out there made the same choices. The ending of the trilogy had multiple years and multiple games worth of build-up, only to conclude with a cheap cop-out ending. An ending that showed us that all of that decision making we'd made over the course of three games was all for nothing, because none of it had any meaningful impact whatsoever on the final choice.

Deus Ex never had that issue, because it's never been billed as a trilogy. While the overarching story of the series is connected from game to game, the individual character stories are self-contained. The ending might still be garbage, sure... but it's not like you spent multiple games and years of waiting to get to that garbage.

 

[scorptatious]

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.

WEEEEEELLLLLL technicallyyyyyyyyy...

Spoiler

She does get to be with him, but he's a baby. So it wasn't a total waste of time.

 

[JagermanXcell]

I'm going to go a step further and say Dark Souls 2's ending for being more ambiguous than it needed to be.

Spoiler: Run down of entire plot.

So you start of looking for a curse (the motivation advertised even prior to the game release, ok neat, a different direction)... then looking for the King (ok treading some old ground... let see where this goes!)... then looking for a dragon (wait, what does the cure have to do with memories and a dragon?)... then looking into memories (I found Vendrick's thing that he stole from the Giants... is it the cure? No... ok)... and then... and then... linking the fire AND taking the throne from Manus 2.0...

Why?! To make an excuse to turn NG+/Dks3 into lore.

What a goddamn cop out. When Dks1 endings are more coherent than the sequel, you know they f***ed up.

 

[LongAndShort]

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I think you actually hit the nail on the head there as to why the ME3 ending tends to be so much more vocally despised than the DX:HR ending.

Riiiiight....

...while the shitty ending of another great game is held against the entire franchise...

...there.

The Mass Effect games were almost always sold to us as an epic trilogy. One where each game was leading up to some grand finale that they'd been hinting at for years. We, the players, made our decisions to tailor our characters and our worlds in the hope that it would give us a more meaningful conclusion when that day came. A conclusion that would feel unique to us, regardless of how many other thousands of players out there made the same choices. The ending of the trilogy had multiple years and multiple games worth of build-up, only to conclude with a cheap cop-out ending. An ending that showed us that all of that decision making we'd made over the course of three games was all for nothing, because none of it had any meaningful impact whatsoever on the final choice.

Deus Ex never had that issue, because it's never been billed as a trilogy. While the overarching story of the series is connected from game to game, the individual character stories are self-contained. The ending might still be garbage, sure... but it's not like you spent multiple games and years of waiting to get to that garbage.

True enough mate. As I said, I think I need to stop trying to defend Bioware.

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

Arkham Origins' ending was pretty unsatisfying. It didn't feel like an ending at all - the end credits just come out of nowhere.

 

[Crispee]

Birds fly, fish swim, people are still angry about Mass Effect 3's ending. The death count was in the trillions about midway through the game, I don't see why people got the impression they could still choose a happy ending.

On topic though, I can't say I was very satisfied with Arkham Origins recently. I barely remember what the ending even was, something about beating the Joker within an inch of his life, credits roll and then you get plopped back into the game as if to say "Carry on".