Poll: Do you think it's right to hate a game just because of it's ending?

[Krantos]

If it's a story based game/experience (like ME3), then yes. The story is the most critical part of the experience, so ruining that will ruin the whole experience.

If the game is more focused on other engagement techniques, a bad ending can be forgiven as the story isn't what you're there for.

So the real answer is: Depends on the game.

 

[krazykidd]

Yes. The ending to me if the most important part . Not "good" or "bad" to me does not me "good guy wins" . As long as the ending is not anti-climactic i'm okay with it . If the game ends and i'm like "that's it?" It's a bad ending and i probably won't replay the game . But i play for story , so for me the story is important , and how the story ends is even more important .

 

[Cry Wolf]

Now, I'm not trying to bring up Mass Effect 3's ending, but I've been seeing a trend lately since that games ending. I've been a lot of people hating a game based on its endings alone. Again, not just Mass Effect 3's. I've seen it on AC III, Fall of Cybertron, Prototype 2, and so on. Do you think we should dislike a game because of how it ended?

Yes, I think it's entirely fair to dislike - or even hate - a game due to a poor ending. Assuming of course that it was a primarily narrative driven experiences, as in the case of Mass Effect. That said, all the games you listed we're sub-par in a lot of other areas as well. Likely the ending was just the focus of the hate in these cases.

For example, Mass Effect 3's ending was only the cherry ontop of the steaming pile of shit. It was aesthetically lack-lustre compared to the other games (yes, even the second!), it took away even more player agency in dialogue and narrative that Mass Effect 2 did, it's game-play was worse than the orginal Mass Effect, with the exception of a few key moments the writing was horrendeous in more ways than the ending and it was even completely uninspired musically. I could actually go on with these broard issues for quite sometime, and I had a lot of little issues with the game as well.

 

[Dimitriov]

Is it right? Of course.

Let's say you are having a great day: you are hanging out with your friends, maybe eating your favourite meal for lunch, whatever.

Then you fall down some stairs and break your arm. Or maybe your girlfriend/boyfriend dumps you. Or you find out one of your parents has cancer. Hell maybe it's nothing worse than a seagull shitting on your new jacket.

Guess what part of that day is going to stick with you?

The end matters.

 

[Legion]

Like others have said, it's subjective opinion, people can hate a game for any reason they like.

The issue isn't always going to be down to the ending itself though. I think Mass Effect 3 would have been given less flak had it not been the final chapter in Shepard's story. The fact that they chose to finish the entire story arc with that atrocity is more of an issue than it may have been if they were going to continue (and explain) it all.

That said, I consider the finale to a story to be quite important. If the ending is "okay", then I am unlikely to be that bothered, but if it has some glaring fault or comes across as being lazily written, then that can affect how much I feel like playing the game again.

The only reason Assassin Creed 3's ending did not bother me is because the overarching story has always been pretty crap, and I have never played them out of any interest in regards to what happens outside of the animus.

 

[kasperbbs]

In ME's case yes, it pretty much ruined the whole trilogy for me. That game was all about choices and i wanted to know how did it all turned out in the end, the ending didn't explain anything, as far as i knew everyone got stuck on a burned down earth and my crew got stuck on some unhabited planet somewhere, the end. The DLC fixed that for me.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

If it's a story based game/experience (like ME3), then yes. The story is the most critical part of the experience, so ruining that will ruin the whole experience.

If the game is more focused on other engagement techniques, a bad ending can be forgiven as the story isn't what you're there for.

So the real answer is: Depends on the game.

agree with this (although this is for me personally, i don't really care if other people follow this motto.)

Such as a game like Mount and blade, I couldn't give a shit if it has a bad ending (has anyone finished a full campaign WITHOUT using cheats?) but when it comes to a game like mass effect, part of a trilogy where the decisions are SUPPOSED to matter, then yeah, it is bloody damn important. After having some fine dining on a juicy steak, i don't want to find out a piece of shit is on the inside of my piece of cake for dessert, it'll make me upchuck that steak faster than you can say "catalyst"

 

[cip_raziel]

Hate is kinda strong...I can't really say I HATE all the Mass Effect games cuz the last 5 minutes of the last game were bad and I'm saying the last 5 minutes cuz I'm talking only about the sudden appearance of that ghost kid and the whole green/red/blue(or was it yellow?) flavored explosion choice. I was expecting the main character to die and for me that's how a game becomes memorable with a hero character that sacrifices himself for the rest. Bioware's choice to add those really bad extra 5 minutes kinda destroyed my wish to replay all 3 games. So as others mentioned, the ending matters alot.
Also if you look at this kind of "trend" for trilogies, you see that it's not happening only in games, it's in movies too...like Dark Knight Rises the most recent one that comes in mind, Matrix Revolution, Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I can't really think of a trilogy that was good from start to end...maybe Lord of the Rings.

 

[Gylukios]

Endings are extremely difficult to do "correctly." Endings and people's perception of them are a subjective thing. Everybody tries to do them and so many fail that I can't ever blame anyone for flubbing an ending. It's the hardest part of a story to do.

 

[Erttheking]

This is a massive "maybe" If the ending manages to invalidate everything you've done up to that point and made 100+ hours of gameplay seem like a waste of time, and completely fucks over the narrative, the tone, and common sense, then certainly

 

[A.A.K]

Nope.
The ending doesn't have any bearing or relevance to me.
I haven't played too many games with a shit ending anyway. .. but I'm playing for the experience and because it's a time-sink. The ending is a very very small part of the overall experience.

 

[Vault101]

dpeends on the ending

I dont think its "hating" the game so much as the game being retroactivly ruined

 

[shrekfan246]

I assume some of my posts have been spotted by the OP lately.

The endings to Fall of Cybertron and Assassin's Creed III disappointed me greatly, but I don't hate the games because of them.

Fall of Cybertron in particular probably would've been one of my favorite games released this year had it not had such a lazy ending. And it's not even that the ending is necessarily bad, per se, it's just that from a writing standpoint it's one of the worst ways you could end your game, because you're making a video game, not a television series, for crying out loud. And as an aspiring writer, it's things like that that really stick out to me and bug at the back of my mind.

 

[spartandude]

it really does depend on how heavily invested you are with the story, the ending can completely ruin it

 

[Valdus]

I find it hard to hate a game just for it's ending, if only because I feel far too many games have wasted plots or endings to begin with (so hating endings would leave me with few games I like). Having said that, I find it's easier to hate a game with a bad ending like Mass Effect 3 if it's played in part for the story - Just like how I would dislike an action game if part of the combat was heavily flawed despite being otherwise well-designed.

Truth be told it's something I see a lot more of lately. I can't tell if it's because triple A game's run out of budget so easily now unless it's a monster like COD so the ending's are rushed or if game developers just aren't as good at telling stories as they think. Though given my earlier explanation it could also just be that too many games today try to force in a story when sometimes it's better to put more focus on other game elements.

 

[Autumnflame]

If you buy a sandwich from sub way and every bite is better than the last.

but in the last bite there is a piece of poo.

Does that ruin the entire sandwich for you?

the climax of a game is just as important as the rest of it. if it is unfulfilling it will marr the rest of the experiance

 

[SajuukKhar]

IMO, a game having a bd ending is a lot like a movie having a bad ending, am I disappointed that the ending was shit? Yes, but does that remove all the fun I had with the rest of the film/movie? No.

 

[Coffeejack]

It's an overreaction to hate what you know you have enjoyed playing up to the ending, although there is a temptation to feel that the entire experience has been soured by the final disappointing moments, not least because they are so fresh in your mind. We need to shelve the overreaction, take a walk, sit down and think over the game as a whole.

The ending has greater importance in some games than others. The ending of a trilogy, for instance, has roughly three times the importance (assuming that all 3 parts of the trilogy were building up the same story rather than being separate). So sadly, if it fails to deliver satisfactory closure, the negative player reaction is likely to be about three times as bad. It is not only the ending, it is the ending of endings, so to speak.

The importance of the ending is also affected by previous installations in the franchise. Borderlands didn't have an exciting or noteworthy ending, but that was hardly what the game was about. It isn't fair to hate something entirely because of a few bad moments, even if replaying the game is rendered considerably less enjoyable by the knowledge of disappointment to come.