Worst Videogame Ending Ever

[The Random One]

Many comments reminded Chris that ambiguity is not necessarily a bad thing, such as the ending moment of Inception. But is the ambiguity of the FF VII ending appropriate? I would say it goes against the manner in which the rest of the story is conveyed, definitely.

Since I was one of those people, I suppose I'll defend my position. The difference between an ending that is ambiguous because the creator willed it so and one that is ambiguous because the creator ran out of time and just slapped whatever is indeed something that cannot be quantified and only by looking at each work specifically you can tell what is the case, although it is usually quite unambiguous which case it is. (Ha!) Personally, even if the FFVII ending was abrupt, Chris didn't argue that, he argued only that it was bad because it didn't 'explain everything', and the fact that the game earns this criticism does not mean this argument can be excused.

Furthermore, I find the tendency of gamers in general to demand that everything be explained to be irksome and counter to our interests. Taking the ME3 example, there are two camps that embody this. Those that demand that the ending explain everything and refuse to come up with their own explanation, and those that flat out deny Indocrination Theory because they say Bioware has to say it's canon, which is just not how narrative analysis should work (if your theory fits the work, then it's a valid interpretation, the author be damned). These are small camps within the Retakers movement and not the reason why I dislike them, which is not what they demand but rather that they demand something at all, and more emblematic of a general endemic problem with gamers than with the ME3 brouhaha specifically.

To elaborate, there is a profound lack of symbolism and subtletly [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/04/03/its-time-for-games-to-offer-us-solid-food/] in games, and it arises, I feel, mostly from the idea devs have that gamers are dumb and that it's better to insult smart gamers to make sure the dumber ones get the story than to force people to think a little to understand stuff. Ever notice how every plot twist in a game is either telegraphed so hard your character has to be a complete moron not to realize what's going on or coming so out of the blue that there was no way you could have figured it out ahead of time? This is because devs can't do subtle, which is what you need for a good plot twist, and without subtle they either outright tell you what will happen or don't tell anything and the surprise falls flat. And this is the most basic of basic stuff; when you get to things like symbolism it gets even worse. What is the last time you saw actual symbolism in a game? The only recent, mainstream title to do that was Bioshock, in which an objectivist isolacionist society was symbolized by... an objectivist isolacionist society. Games never dare to make us read something between the lines because they hardly trust us to be able to read the lines themselves.

I find that to be a massive problem, and one of the ways gamers can help the industry to come out of this funk (other than the probably simpler solution of grabbing Gamemaker and making a game more subtle than the mainstream could dram of) is to show themselves to be able to decode things that aren't obvious. To jump in defense of the obvious and of the well explained as opposed to the ambiguous is anathema to what I think we should be doing. I personally haven't seen FFVII's ending, but from what is described the problem is not that it doesn't explain anything, but rather that it was jarring and left you unfilfilled. Why not identify that as the problem instead of phrasing your complaint in such a way that your problem appears to be that the game won't do your thinking for you?

 

[Shavon513]

GTA's ending can't be as bad in comparison to ME3, nor can any other game that is not *story-driven*. The main problem lies in the disparity between the Mass Effect player's role of choice within the story, and the ending. The ending took away any sense of choice built up over three games, through a series of lazy, non-nonsensical cut-scenes. ME3's ending may not be the worst in the world, but it certainly ranks high.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

And don't even try and argue that it was about ambiguity, because when it's another game that presents itself as more 'arty' you'll defend it to the death. What the fuck is actually happening at the end of ICO, or Shadow of the Colossus? Sure there are fan theories out there and a lot of supporting evidence for some of them in the games, but are we ever actually told what is happening?

Another person who has no clue what they're talking about being snarky.

1. ICO and SOTC had vague, hazy and obscure themes, atmosphere and stories throughout. The endings kept the tone of the entire games - and both end in a way that is clear and satisfying for the characters in relation to the rest of the story.

Mass Effect dramatically and suddenly shifts its tone, central mechanics and themes completely in the final 10 minutes.

Everything the player has learned about the universe, every choice they have made, every conflict they have resolved in all 3 games and even the character of Shepard himself is abruptly nullified, violated and rendered void by a nonsensical and new character that appears from nowhere at the final moments and introduces so many questions and plotholes it would take a whole new thread to list them all.

It literally feels like the last ten minutes is from a completely different game and story. That's why it's so bad - not because it wasn't 'happy'.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Why not identify that as the problem instead of phrasing your complaint in such a way that your problem appears to be that the game won't do your thinking for you?

Because when people do start thinking about the ending they realise how utterly nonsensical and game breaking it is.

Full of plot holes, inconsistencies, self contradictions and most importantly a series of idiotic, never explained acts of stupidity by Shepard and his squad that go against everything the characters stood for and that the player has no way to prevent. We are robbed of the game's central mechanics and themes at the most crucial moment of the entire series.

It is also not a satisfying way to conclude a 100 hour story that, until that final ten minutes, was never vague or 'symbolic'. It was a jarring tonal shift.

Peoples' problem with the ending is not that it makes them think or that they can't see the 'symbolism' in it. They see it alright, they just think it sucks and is broken and it makes the entire story fall apart.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Y'know, Final Fantasy VII's ending wouldn't have been better if you got to choose Red lifestream or Blue lifestream in place of the standard Green, because pretty much all the complaints made about it in this article are exactly the same as people are making about the ending to Mass Effect 3.

Except at least in FFVII you got to Omnislash Sephiroth in his smug face. Which means it is automatically +1 better than the ME3 ending.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Now, regarding the ambiguity of the ending itself... I'm pretty sure that most, if not all, the characters in FF7 had their resolution before the final battle.

The main ambiguity surrounding the FFVII ending, and I've been around the nets long enough to remember this from when it was pretty fresh stuff, was whether anyone actually survived at all.

There was a significant faction within the fandom whose interpretation was that the Lifestream's solution to the problem was to kill all humans, leaving only Red XIII's people alive. This was supported by the final scene of the world's most significant human artifact, Midgar, abandoned and reclaimed by nature.

I'd also disagree that the story of the characters was secondary to the story of the Planet. The story of the Planet was only important because of the way it shaped the story of the characters and their relationships.

The fact that the ending doesn't focus on the characters is one of its key failings. (NB: Again, this criticism is equally true when applied to both FFVII and Mass Effect 3)

 

[GloatingSwine]

I'm pretty sure I addressed this already, but perhaps it's worth saying again.

The ambiguity of the ending, specifically regarding whether humanity survives or not, is a deliberate reflection of the same situation we find ourselves in regarding the environment. FF7 is a game where environmentalism dominates the themes, symbolism and imagery.

Whether it's deliberate or not doesn't mean it's not a shitty ending.

Here's the thing, plots are about characters. Going by Forster's definition in Aspects of the Novel that's pretty much the defining element of a plot, that it is driven by characters and motivations. Without that it's just a bunch of stuff that happens. If the ending stops worrying about the characters in favour of stuff, it's not an ending to the plot, it leaves the plot hanging (and even if the characters have achieved resolution before the ending, that is rendered meaningless if they are shoved offscreen in favour of stuff in the ending. The plot is about characters, in order to be an ending, the ending must also be about them.

This is why if you randomly sampled players of Final Fantasy VII about what the most memorable thing in it was, the overwhelming response would be what happens at the end of disc 1, not what happens at the end of disc 3, because that was about characters, and redefined characters and motivations for the rest of the game.

If your plot blows its narrative load halfway through, to the extent that nothing that happens in the second half can achieve notice above that halfway element, and your ending can't even be bothered to address the plot because it's about stuff, you've done it wrong.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Whether it's deliberate or not doesn't mean it's not a shitty ending.

Here's the thing, plots are about characters.

Nope. That's your first mistake right there.

Plots do not need to be about characters. They can use characters if needs be, and they can be about characters, but there is no law of narrative that says they must be about characters.

You should have picked up on the second part of that sentence, and gone on to research the specific essay I named, Aspects of the Novel. See, plot and story are not the same. A story is just a list of events in the order they happen, and all it can do for us is make us want to know what happened next. A plot, on the other hand, concerns causality and the reasons why things happen. Meaning, in other words, and meaning requires agents to appreciate it within the story.

To give you an example: Alan Moore, he of Watchmen fame, recently wrote a novel called Voice Of The Fire, which isn't about any characters. Instead, it's about Northampton, and 4000 years of history of the Northampton area. It's a work of fiction, and therefore couldn't in any way be called a history book or a reference novel. But it is a work of fiction that is about the idea of Northampton, not about any single characters.

Have you even read Voice of the Fire? It's all about characters, it's a sequence of short stories, each about a character or group of characters going through a plot driven by their nature as characters. The evolution of place is a theme which runs through the sequence of stories, but each of the stories is a plot driven by a character or characters. (It's also not recent, it was first published in 1996)

Narratives do not have to be defined by something as simple as characters. Many of the greatest stories in the world aren't about characters, they're about ideas. Animal Farm, for instance, is not about Nelson or Snowball. It is about the rise of Stalinism, and the blatant hypocrisies at the heart of the Soviet Union. At The Mountains Of Madness is not about William Dyer. It is about humanity learning that it lives in a chaotic universe, and is only ever a heartbeat away from annihilation by forces far greater than we can comprehend.

Again, plot and story are different. Story is about stuff happening, plot is what it means, and meaning implicitly requires agents capable of seeking and appreciating meaning driving the plot with their motivations and desires. Remember, you can have a story without having a plot, but you can't have a plot without having a story.

Nope. Go watch the Sopranos. One of the greatest endings to a TV show in the history of television, an ending that has lead to dozens of different interpretations and ideas... and an ending that specifically leaves character threads untied in order to provide ample room for viewer interpretation.

The ending of Sopranos is explicitly about Tony Soprano. The hanging ending in that series is indicative of the fact that Tony Soprano, the character, will never feel safe or secure. He doesn't get an "ending", he gets endless paranoia where anything might be his number finally coming up. It's a great ending because it is about Tony.

Once again: there was nothing left to explore in the characters of FF7. They all had their relevant plots tied up before the final act of the game. Done. All finished. Meaning that the game's ending needed only to conclude the larger themes of environmentalism that had run throughout the story in order to be an artistically complete statement. Squaresoft did this. They addressed all the character plots, then left one large, overarching message at the game's end to act as a summation of the game's themes. There is nothing wrong with that form of storytelling.

Evidently fucking not, because Square have managed to spin an entire industry out of doing exactly that.

 

[sageoftruth]

This didn't occur to me until the end of the article, but in a sense, GTA3's ending wasn't completely pointless. You end up killing the woman who betrays you in the beginning of the game.
Still, I agree that it wasn't well-executed. Blowing up her helicopter rather than fighting her on the ground made it a lot less personal, and the rescue (followed by execution) kind of distracted from the fact that Mr. Leather Elvis may have wanted revenge above all else.

 

[Undeadpool]

I laugh when people tell me that Mass Effect 3 has one of 'the worst endings in videogame history ever' because they clearly have shorter memories than goldfish.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, the first Tomb Raider game on PSX, Soul Caliber IV, Medieval II: Total War, KoToR II, X-Men Legends II, and that's all fairly modern games with unbelievably crappy endings.

And don't even try and argue that it was about ambiguity, because when it's another game that presents itself as more 'arty' you'll defend it to the death. What the fuck is actually happening at the end of ICO, or Shadow of the Colossus? Sure there are fan theories out there and a lot of supporting evidence for some of them in the games, but are we ever actually told what is happening?

Remember Metal Gear Solid 2? Remember the shit storm gamers kicked up over that fucking ending? Did that just suddenly get downgraded from 'most disappointing ending ever' because Mass Effect didn't give each of you an individual blowjob from Jen Hale and a congratulatory handshake from Casey Hudson?

Well...I was going to point this out (maybe leave off the BJ part), but here you've done it for me! Particularly how on this very forum people are defending FFVII's ending tooth-and-nail, but apparently there's ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for the ending of a more modern games. And God forbid you try to actually defend the ending, then it's all "FINGERS IN EARS LALALALALALA YOU'RE WRONG WRONG WRONG!!" Because everything was better fifteen years ago forever. The only decent attack I've seen is that the ending represents a major tonal shift. I'd disagree somewhat (see also: the Geth collective, the Indoctrination sequence from the first game, Project Overlord to some extent), but that's at least more valid than the blind, frothing rage that so often gets spewed.

Once again: there was nothing left to explore in the characters of FF7. They all had their relevant plots tied up before the final act of the game. Done. All finished. Meaning that the game's ending needed only to conclude the larger themes of environmentalism that had run throughout the story in order to be an artistically complete statement. Squaresoft did this. They addressed all the character plots, then left one large, overarching message at the game's end to act as a summation of the game's themes. There is nothing wrong with that form of storytelling.

You could say the EXACT same thing about ME3. Pretty much the moment you enter the Cerberus base is the "ending." You talk to your surviving squadmates, you settle your affairs, you bid them farewell in case you never see them again. I'd go over how each of them has changed and achieved their goals, but the list is too long and the game is still new enough that spoilers are a no-no.

 

[Callate]

I'm pretty sure the only appropriate response to a critic who says that the value of a particular piece is entirely subjective is, "so why the @$#% should I listen to you?"

If the holder of an "opinion" can give ten clear, approachable, and arguable reasons why 'x' is good, bad, or better than 'y', that is of value, and deserves consideration and respect. "That's just your opinion" has become one of the laziest and most irredeemable arguments on the Internet.

 

[Silly Hats]

I'm not inclined to hate on ME3, it wasn't the best but I definitely won't write off the series.

I don't think that it is as intellectually insulting as what people made it out to be, there is decent subtext and I get that the writers wanted to bring a more Sci-Fi novel level of symbolism, suspense and shock and tried to give the fans some room for interpretation and reading into the subtext. The problem is that it doesn't really work for a AAA game and people wanted rewards for their actions and not care about the origin of the thing 'they hate'. We didn't get anything else, so we need to take the good with the bad.

I always found the ending to FFVII disappointing though, and it was clear that Square did as well... considering the 20 minute ending to FFVIII.

Endings usually suck anyway, I thought that the moral behind Bioshock Infinate was utterly depressing, though I don't know if the way I interpreted it was how it was supposed to be interpreted. But in the culture that we live in how, there's always going to be a hive mind and people side towards the one consensus that the majority makes, rather than having your own thing.