Worst Video Game Endings

[Xaositect]

Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3 come to mind (pre-Broken Steel).

Fallout 3s ending was just stupid and crap in every sense of the words.

Mass Effect 2s ending was just an idiotic restatement of the first games ending minus the coolness of standing before the council (whose asses you just saved) and declaring it. It even added an idiot friendly cutscene of "ZOMFG! TEH FUHKIN REPAZ!" The whole thing was just a waste of time building up to a "were still where we were at the end of the first game".

 

[MacGuges]

Red Dead Redemption. It made no sense, was written in only to have a "tragic twist" for the sake of melodrama and on top of it all the rest of the gameplay that came after made even less sense. A spectacular low point in one of Rockstar's biggest fumbles.

I'm surprised you feel that way, but then you will find all kinds on the internet. I felt that game had one of the best game endings I've had the pleasure to play. Without spoiling it for others, I felt such mounting dread playing those final missions...! It was a quintessential Western ending, IMHO.

Melancholy has always been an essential feature of Westerns. Watch Shane, The Magnificent Seven, or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This genre is not known for its triumphant endings.

 

[Jezzascmezza]

Borderlands.
Words cannot describe the disappointment I felt when I got to the vault I had spent all game trying to get to.

 

[Tornd]

I was very disappointed by the ending of Dragon Age: Origins. Not because of the actual ending...but the way it was displayed. Text screens with fancy backgrounds and no narration. WOOOO!

 

[RossM]

Mafia 2 that ending was terrible, to be honest it ruined the game for me and i traded it in soon after.
All the fable games had awful endings as well

 

[AVATAR_RAGE]

Viking Total Warrior

I actually sat there looking at the screen thinking "was that it?"

 

[Outright Villainy]

Bioshock. Not so much the end specifically so much as most of the final act. (the bit where you see the little sister's rooms was pretty great though.) The ending is weak as hell too mind, it's just that there's a large amount of disappointment leading up to it too, which makes it a pretty egregious example.

I could go into detail, but luckily Tom Francis already did this. [http://www.pentadact.com/index.php/2009-04-15-ending-bioshock]

It should also be noted that Bioshock 2 took a flawed moral system and made the absolute best of the framework in place. Specifically: adding a chance at redemption if you've been slightly evil[footnote]The best ending for all the games, by far. In fact, I think they should have made moral choices far more difficult to make this option more likely.[footnote], and instead of treating your actions post game as your own, when they're clearly not, have them extrapolated via elanor, who you've influenced. As a way to end the game, that bit was fucking genius. You can have set endings that make sense. Bioshock 2 just ended a lot stronger overall in general, with no silly unnessecary boss fight, and a much more emotional drive to finish it, unlike the original which felt a bit dead in the water. Hurrk hurrk.

 

[RossM]

Mafia 2 that ending was terrible, to be honest it ruined the game for me and i traded it in soon after.
All the fable games had awful endings as well

Hello casual gaming under 13 year old. Fable is for realz menn >

OK......

 

[AndrewC]

Ninja Gaiden 2.

 

[idunnowutiam]

Advent Rising...

If you don't know what that game is, I don't blame you.

 

[Ignatz_Zwakh]

Vanquish. It made the whole game feel like a big shiny trailer. The final boss fight was an utter anti-climax...I literally beat it and was like "Wha...it's over...?"

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

Motherfucking Bioshock. The bad ending didn't even make sense.

The bad ending did make sense. Basically, Fontaine didn't want to control Rapture for the lulz or because he hated Ryan, it was so he would control the supply of ADAM. His ultimate goal was to bring ADAM to the surface, and the rest of the world, as a commodity with him being the sole provider. It would wreck havoc on civilization, but he didn't care as it would make him rich. He tells you this in the radio transmissions. So, if you harvest the Little Sisters, you're basically just being an uncaring bastard, so the bad ending is that you basically take Fontaine's place. You re-enable surface travel and take Fontaine's (now your) army of splicers to the top where you jack a sub and do what he was going to do.

All that being said I do wish the cinematics would've been longer and elaborated more after all that work. I wish the good ending would've shown more how Jack turned out. Oh well, I still think the game kicked ass.

For me, in a weird way, Half Life 2 was a wall-banger. It looked awesome, but then... "Time Mr. Freeman? Yes, it's time to put you in the freezer again." And then it was just like the end of Half Life 1. This was until Episode One came out, and then it made the ending totally awesome.

1. I understood all that, but the game did a horrible job of explaining it. What does Tanenbaum say at the end? "You have uncovered the most terrible secret of the world" or something like that? I mean, I know english is her second language, but...What? Is she talking about Adam? Is she talking about nuclear bombs? (The camera zooms in on a "radioactive" symbol on the side of the sub as she's says this line) I don't know. I mean, when you explain it like that, it all fits, but the game just didn't get all that across very well. It seemed like the game just kind of...stopped. Plus, I don't like how they de-humanized Fontaine by having him beef up on Adam. He was a great character that was already established as the villain through his actions, he didn't need to be visually demonized as well, and it just sent him over the top.
2. Don't get me wrong. Despite all that, Bioshock is in my Top 3 favorite games of all time.
3. I actually love Half Life 2's ending. The G-Man is so damn awesome. Plus, I always love a good cliff-hanger.

 

[gmergurl]

Army of two. Nothing different, nothing new. It just ends.

Seriously! At the end of the first game I was like "Ooh! Helicopter boss!" and what do I get? A cutscene of them doing it for me end game. Hardly an epilogue, and hardly anything was explained... played it over several times just to try to understand what was going on. Army of Two (2)(or the 40th Day) was the same way. Of course I didn't even know what the goal of the game was until like the second to last level... I didn't even know the main antagonist, of course that could be because I didn't know that the radios you collected actually told the story... and then.... if you chose to save your partner.... wtf happened? I watched that like seven times and I still don't understand what's actually going on... lol perhaps I'm just that oblivious

 

[DanielBrown]

Dante's Inferno

Spoiler

All we got was a shot of his wang and a "The end?" bullshit. I for one won't buy a sequal!

 

[Reece Stevens]

super mario brothers is so anticlimactic...

 

[Woodsey]

EVERY ASSASSINS CREED GAME EVAR (so far....)

EDIT: Oh, and Clive Barkers JERICHO.

I agree, AC Brotherhood's ending made me confused, disappointed, and pissed off all at the same time.

Otherwise known as a good cliffhanger.

OT: KotOR 2, Mafia 2 and Dragon Age 2 (only because its recent).

Oh, and Enslaved. Dear fucking god that ending was terrible. I am so tired of people writing ambigious endings because they think it makes them clever (goes for Mafia 2 as well) - what ever happened to resolution?

 

[THEMILKMAN]

Saint's Row 1.

Midsentence, BOOM! Ship blows up.

Me: -_-

o_o

0_0

O_O

O_*pop*

 

[repeating integers]

I've already ranted about Bad Company 2's ending.

But I'm going to rant about it again.

The last level is a series of 3 or so extremely short and tiny linear corridors. You could argue this is justified, since it takes place on a plane, but I would argue that you should not set your last level on a plane if it forces that kind of level design on you.

Also, between each corridor, the game forces a new gun into your hand and essentially tells you to play exactly the way it wants you to. What happened to all the freedom I got in the other levels, BC2? Why are you being so restrictive all of a sudden?

When you encounter the bad guy, he is confident he is invincible in his cosy little flying office, which contains his evil superweapon. Evidently, he did not take into account the possibility that a military squad with a known demolitions expert might bring some demolitions with him and blow up the wall to his office. You then have to shoot the superweapon to destroy it... with your pistol. There's no explanation as to why you can't use the uber-assault rifle the game forced into your hands earlier on in the level - it's gotta be a pistol. For drama, I guess.

When this is done, the plane explodes. You all parachute out. Mr. Supervillain evidently forgets to put on a parachute, and ends up just jumping out of thep lane and falling like an idiot. The boss fight big bad, the guy who you spent pretty much the whole game chasing, turns out to be nothing more than shooting him several times with the pistol while falling down. Oh, and if you don't do this within the arbitrary time limit, you have to try again. Evidently, the big evil boss has limited control over the space-time continuum.

And then the end credits have no music accompanying them. It's just the ambient sounds from the main menu. Never before has an end credits sequence been so ridiculously boring - though I still sat through it, since I had taken the time to beat the game and enjoyed most of it, so I felt it deserved that much respect.

Still... the ending nearly ruined my impression of the entire game. So disappointing.

 

[jbchillin]

i would say assassins creed 2. I was really diggin the serious until they added aliens into it.

 

[DirgeNovak]

Beyond Good & Evil. Hands down.
WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?!