Least satsifying game endings?

[KnightOfTwo]

Different categories of least satisfying.

Games that ended with a clear sign THIS WILL BE RESOLVED IN THE SEQUEL SO BUY IT YOU FOOLS:
Halo 2 - WE WILL FINISH THE FIGHT WITH ANOTHER PURCHASE IN A FEW YEARS!

Dreamall: The Longest Journey - I still hold out hope for seeing this resolved in my lifetime

Half life 2 EP2 - The ending itself is fine, but since it seems the series is going to end there, its a shit place to leave things.

Dragon Age 2 - I really love this game and will defend it to high heaven while being HIGHLY critical of it, but the last hour really did just collapse into nothing to the point where you might as well have just asked us if we liked templars or mages more with a button prompt since that is all that matters. You still fight both sides, they both act the same regardless of whom you choose, its just gonna change a variable in the sequel.

Games that actually had an ending but the ending was lackluster:
Bioshock - Love the game but the endings were rather pathetic. Nothing too offensive but they had no real bite. Plus the "moral choice" system you used to get them was dumb.

Bioshock Infinite - I just hate this game all around. I'm finding that the more I think about it, the more i despise it. I've gone from being somewhat disappointed, to apathetic, to frustrated, to straight-up anger. The ending had no effect on me since I spent the whole game screaming at Booker and Elizabeth for being absolute idiots. I had no connection to the characters and so the ending to that game, I like to think, is that there is no ending and they will be stuck repeating exactly the same stuff forever as an eternal hell.

Fallout 3 (Pre Broken Steel): Why can't we just send the super mutant or the ghoul to go push the buttons?

The Last of Us: Now I really didn't enjoy the game and will forever be highly critical of it, though I can at least respect it (unlike infinite). Like Infinite though, I couldn't care less about the main characters so the whole riding off into the sunset ending just felt utterly meaningless to me. If I was invested in the characters, I might have enjoyed it, however I was anything but. I can't stand them as characters since they seemed blatantly designed (imo) as heartstring tuggers. No Naughty Dog, I do not care about Joel and Ellie, I do not like them, or sympathise with them, or am invested in seeing them be happy. You spent the past 15 hours telling me this is a cut throat world where bad things happen to anyone and everybody has to do morally awful (by our standards) things to survive. I accepted that, so don't try to make me feel all warm and fuzzy when these characters, who are on an equal level to everyone else, get to live happily (by the standards of this world) ever after. I. Don't. Care.

 

[Bebus]

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

Do you remember the first version, where we watched an identical cutscene under 1 of 3 colour filters, before dumping us right back into the Normandy with a crappy screen that said, and this is a direct quote from the finale of what was supposed to be the epic space opera of a generation, "Commander Shepard has become a legend by ending the Reaper threat. Now you can continue to build that legend through further gameplay and downloadable content."

I'd have preferred a screen that just said "well done". Out of absolutely everything wrong with that ending, the very final thing we see of Mass Effect being the words "Downloadable Content" were spitting on our bruised and broken dreams.

 

[Zetatrain]

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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 actually thought R6V2 ending was ok. The only thing i found particularly dumb was how you ended fighting a helicopter and swarms of mercs alone when just moments ago your buddies were like less than 50 yards away (seriously where were they).

In the end we found out Gabe's reasons for betraying the team which in IMO fits with his character since he does come off as an arrogant prick who's full of himself throughout both games (though one does have to wonder how a headcase like him ever got past R6's screening). Plus it was very satisfying to shoot that prick in the face with the raging bull.

But I agree, R6V1's ending was a slap in the face, though lucky for me i beat it like a couple of weeks after R6V2 came out so i just rented R6V2 shortly after beating R6V1.

 

[Scarim Coral]

These two come to my mind-

Alone in the Dark Wii version and Conduit 3 (it was lame and leave alot of questions which will not be answered due to a sequel is no longer in plan of making).

 

[Raggedstar]

Assassin's Creed was one of those endings that STOPPED rather than ended. I can't think of anything likeable with that ending. AC2 gets special mention for at least trying to end, but ultimately felt too anticlimactic in the final boss and the sequel bait of a final revelation. Bah.

Far Cry 3 has been mentioned already and I agree, and Bioshock for similar reasons. You just can't force "and everything turned out ok" endings like that (as for the evil ending of Bioshock...no comment).

Ratchet and Clank:Into the Nexus had a surprisingly weak ending. Not saying that the series is known for really good endings (except for ACIT, that had a REALLY good ending) but considering it was an epilogue, not a whole lot was accomplished or learned. I guess that's part of the fault in the story in general, but meh. Game was good though.

 

[go-10]

Darksiders 2, I love and I do mean LOVE this game everything's amazing, the music, the setting, the gameplay EVERYTHING'S amazing, it should be one of the best games ever and then you get the ending... basically "to be continued" and then the studio goes bankrupt and all hope of ever seeing a third game is thrown out the window

 

[Imre Csete]

I'm just going to list them based on time of exposure:

The vanila Gothic 3 ending. A slideshow and a short narration after tons of reputation grinding and bugs galore, oh boy I was pissed. After an interesting third choice, that was all they could do.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2 gets a honorable mention because it elevated Valve into the greatest trolls of the industry. I don't get it how their jokes about HL3 and fanbase baiting gets a free pass just because they maintain a sweet digital distribution platform.

Dragon Age 2 was an obvious sequel hook. A painfully stupid and railroading Act 3 of a rushed game, with so many corners cut, it was basically a circle.

Yeah, Mass Effect 3, the clash of histerical fan reactions and douchey marketing PR, where nobody remembers the many valid criticism. Classic for the ages.

BioShock Infinite's Burial at Sea part 2. The whole DLC package turned into a crossover fanfiction for the original BioShock, but I'm more angry about stealing the spotlight from the main game instead of letting Infinite to do its own thing with its own characters. Not to mention the retcon saving throw for one of the antagonist, which outright pissed me off.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

The "Enlightened" endings of both Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light.

Just to be clear, I adore both games. They're some of my favorite of all time and I replay them often.

However, the endings deemed "good" by ignorant people are terrible.

In 2033, the endings utterly nullifies everything you've done in the game. All the people that died, all the effort, all the horrors, it was all for nothing. In addition, in the context of 2033's story, it isn't the smart choice.

As for Last Light, it already screwed things up by having there be extra Dark Ones hidden in someone's cupboard, but the non-destruction ending was just atrocious Disney-shit.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Well here comes the prerequisite retro-gaming example.

"Cannon Fodder" for the Sega Megadrive (Genesis).

This game took me TWO MONTHS to complete.

Two months of long, long campaigning, trying to get all of my soldiers out alive, constantly restarting that f--king island level where you had to get to the skidoo with every single damn enemy firing at you, constantly restarting the maze level where there was MAYBE a 1/20 chance you'd get to the friendly chopper before the enemy one would cut you down in a hail of rockets, constantly restarting dozens of other levels, battling on, gathering my thoughts, marshalling my persistence, and battling on some more.

And after 24 long, long, long campaigns with over a hundred missions, what do I finally get at the end?

The same "level over" music as I've heard after every single damn mission before, and the following immortal text, written in large white letters over a totally black background:

"CONGRATULATIONS. YOU WIN."

Yeah.

Even Dragonninja for the C64 had the President make a freaking hamburger joke!

You kids today with your Mass Effects and your Far Cries. You don't know how good you have it.

 

[Altorin]

KOTOR2.

Now, KOTOR2 had a botched ending due to running out of time/money, but apart from that, my first time through the game, I played a Sith Warrior who killed first and asked questions never. Just an angry guy who you didn't want to give the opportunity for him to pull out his lighsaber.

well, the very end, you fight the last boss and a conversation comes up and my character just said "screw it" and threw her into the core. Had no story conclusion really. No payoff. Just one final brutal death.

I suppose it was fitting in a way, but I did replay the fight and talk to her and at least get SOME information before killing her.

A similar thing happened with my friend playing Fable 2... cut that ending soliloquy a bit short, unintentionally.

I did love KOTOR2 though. I loved how you could manipulate your followers, turn them into raging lightsaber wielding sith badasses just by the fierceness of your willpower.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

I have to agree with Halo 2, as someone else mentioned earlier. Seriously, I know the second game in a known trilogy is generally going to have some kind of cliffhanger ending to get people amped up for the threequel, I mean you're almost guaranteed that anyone that played the second game is going to want to play the third one just to see the end by going with such a strategy, but there are better ways to do it. Mass Effect 2 had a competent ending, you accomplished something big and it felt like it mattered, and then of course we are shown that the real battle against the Reapers is nearly at our doorstep. A lot of games have this problem, but Halo 2 felt particularly abrupt.

Hey, speaking of abrupt endings, can I also ***** about Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2? Spoiler free, of course. The ending is, as I mentioned, abrupt. It's odd because the first Castlevania: Lords of Shadow game was pretty long, had a good intro and a good wrap-up, although the after-credits ending was an odd twist that you had to play DLC to make sense of. Regardless, it was still way more competent than it's sequel. Mirror of Fate also introduces a lot of new plot lines, all of which get too wrapped up in a completely unsatisfying manner (specifically the Toy Maker), compounding with the abrupt, hashed together ending and creating an utter sense of "lot of drum-roll for nothing." As someone that actually liked this new direction in the series, I feel especially let down for investing in it. Mercurysteam won't be making any more Castlevania games so sometimes I wonder if the entire end of that game was them saying "fuck it, we give up." I mean...

Okay, Spoilers:
The entire game is centered around helping Death (Zobek) hunt down the acolyte's of Satan to stop them from summoning him, which is a problem for Death and Dracula, since Dracula has lost his power. But they think Dracula is dead, so they wait 1000 years and start to summon Satan. Turns out the whole thing was an Ocean's 11-style plot between Alucard and Dracula to draw both Death and Satan out into the open so he can kill them both. The ENTIRE game we are leading up to the fight with Satan. He's more powerful than us now, we might not win. What happens when Satan finally appears? He possesses Alucard and fights you. And that is it. That's the final battle. Satan himself doesn't even fight you, you just fight a ridiculously easy boss battle against Alucard with Satan's voice actor.

So yeah. Thanks for letting me down, Mercurysteam. It'll be difficult to want to argue in favor of your work in the future.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Well there's the usual suspects that have already been mentioned, namely KoTOR II. I haven't played ME3 so I can't comment on that one. I was disappointed with the ending to LoZ: Link's Awakening. I mean shit you take Link on this epic quest across this stupid island and wake the Wind Fish and his only reward for it all is to

Spoiler

be left stranded in the middle of the ocean presumably to die of starvation and/or dehydration.

TES V: Skyrim's main quest was also, as a whole, absolutely pitiful and underwhelming. The final missions had you running between High Hrothgar and Whiterun so many times that the next twenty minutes or so of my game devolved to fast traveling and conversation menus. You're destined to fight Alduin, you kill Alduin, the end.

I'm going to second this one. There wasn't even an ending cutscene. Even Oblivion had an ending cutscene. Come to think about it, it didn't have an intro cutscene either. Obviously all the money that would've gone to cutscenes went to prettying up the scenery.

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

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.

What really annoyed me about Fallout 3's ending was when I brought Faust along and asked him to repay that life debt he(she?) owed me by going into the radiation filled room since she could easily survive it. Faust then told me something about not wanting to interfere with my destiny. It's like the writers going f- you, we don't want to do another ending.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

My quote button isn't working (workplace firewall), or I'd quote delta6042.

Assassin's Creed III.

Unlike many detractors, I was actually a fan of the future Desmond story. It was one of the things that kept me coming back year after year. And then, after 5 games worth of build-up about the precursor race and the end of the world...the final moments of the Desmond story were brief, strange, and unsatisfying. It went out with a wimper instead of a bang, and regarding the most interesting bits of the lore that was explored in II and Brotherhood, such as Adam and Eve and the origins of the Assassin bloodline? III does absolutely nothing with them.

Bleh.

Black Flag is pretty sweet though. So much better than III. After I finished III, I considered it lacking. Now playing IV, I consider III anemic and weak.

 

[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.

What really annoyed me about Fallout 3's ending was when I brought Faust along and asked him to repay that life debt he(she?) owed me by going into the radiation filled room since she could easily survive it. Faust then told me something about not wanting to interfere with my destiny. It's like the writers going f- you, we don't want to do another ending.

At least it's fixed with Broken Steel. The ending still calls you a coward, though, for not throwing your life away and sending someone who's practically healed by radiation.

It's drama for the sake of it.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

'Congraturation! A winner is you! Now try harder difficulty! Make rapid progress!'

Okay so maybe endings weren't held up to the same standards back then. A more modern one that I found disappointing was Blue's chapter in SaGa Frontier. Satan freezes up, the screen goes gray... and that's it. The end. You don't even get to see the final boss explode or anything. Also, no ending scenes at all for completing all seven character quests. Even the Game Boy SaGa games had better endings than that, and thanks to a focus on time travel the third one let you visit your party's kids grown up in a world free of evil.

 

[Arslan Aladeen]

At least it's fixed with Broken Steel. The ending still calls you a coward, though, for not throwing your life away and sending someone who's practically healed by radiation.

It's drama for the sake of it.

That's fantastic. I'm usually not bothered too much by lackluster story elements in games, normally a gameplay first kinda person. But I dunno, something about that just really ticked me off and made me not want to play it anymore.

 

[Tenkage]

Knights of the Old Republic 2, the ending was never complete...yeah

 

[DementedSheep]

I think Dreamfall takes the cake for that. I wasn't to impressed with it anyway but that ending...argh. Very little was actually resolved. The games just ends on some massive cliffhangers and I think that terrible idea for a game that isn't guaranteed to ever actually get another instalment and even if that dose we are talking years down the line. It's ok to have multiple games continuing the same story but you should try to make them work as self contained one as well and have relatively satisfying ending especially in one that is very story based (even more than the first one since it has little real puzzles). Dreamfall dose not.

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.

What really annoyed me about Fallout 3's ending was when I brought Faust along and asked him to repay that life debt he(she?) owed me by going into the radiation filled room since she could easily survive it. Faust then told me something about not wanting to interfere with my destiny. It's like the writers going f- you, we don't want to do another ending.

At least it's fixed with Broken Steel. The ending still calls you a coward, though, for not throwing your life away and sending someone who's practically healed by radiation.

It's drama for the sake of it.

That pissed me off so much. You're a coward because...you didn't throw your life away when solution to solve this with no deaths was standing right next you? though still better than pre broken steel with the whole "it's your destiny" thing. It would have been far less annoying had they not recognised his existence in that scene at all rather than having him use moon logic. Friendly or not I would pull gun on him for that.

 

[PureChaos]

Reiko's ending in Mortal Kombat 4; portal opens, Reoko walks through, portal closes, credits roll. Every other character's ending in that game was at least half decent but Reiko's was a waste of time.