The Worst Game Endings - Or How to Ruin Good Gameplay with Bad Writing (Spoilers, duh)

PPSSPP has a fast-forward feature.

Just sayin'.
I considered mentioning that I thought about that, but that wasn’t a thing when FF4 PSP was new. Besides, having to plug my Vita into my PC and copy over the save file would be troublesome and not worth the hassle

Just add a flag that I’ve seen the ending and if the flag’s active, add a skip button. There, problem solved.
 
Personally I liked that because it basically put yourself in a situation where if you didn't remove those factions, they'd disrupt the future of the commonwealth. It was cold and evil, but it had to be done.

People want difficult choices in RPGs and then when they're given one it's not fair.

I'd take that over every single 'compromise where both parties win' cop out choice you can get in games (I'm looking at you The Outer Worlds)
There's a difference between difficult choices done cleverly and ones that feel difficult in a cheap way, which is what Fallout 4 felt like, having to just murder a bunch of former allies is cheap, it's not a clever moral quandary that gets you thinking, it's just a cheap way of resolving things.
 
The Darkness 2

The game itself was a decent sequel to a good early PS3/Xbox 360 game. Its based off The Darkness comics but it doesnt require you to have read them to know the game but it rewards veterans.

Either way...

Jackie frees the love of his life from inside the darkness, which may or may not be Hell itself, while they finally embrace and you think the credits will begin rolling, suddenly she turns into the host of the darkness's anthesis, The Angelius (I think that was the name). She basically tells Jackie to get fucked and that she is free to do whatever she pleases on humanity now. She decides to leave Jackie and the darkness stuck in this hellish dimension. Jackie can only shout a bone chilling "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!" while it pans away. Roll credits.

I know, they obviously were setting up The Darkness 3 Im sure but it never came to happen for various reasons I wont get down to but now the dualogy ends on a heavy downer with Jackie stuck in hell and forever separated from the woman he loves. What a shitty ending with no pay off.

It says something about the game when 2's intro summarized everything that happened in two lines.

Granted, I've been enjoying the game more that I expected to, but BL1 is so oddly irrelevant to the series.

I say to people that ironically, the DLC of 1 have more impact than the base game itself. Almost all DLC introduce characters that would become recurrent in the sequels and some of its events are mentioned through 2 and TPS (even 3).

Borderlands 1 was just a fun glorified tech demo, its the DLCs where the devs saw the potential of more complex storytelling with this universe.
 
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Jackie frees the love of his life from inside the darkness, which may or may not be Hell itself, while they finally embrace and you think the credits will begin rolling, suddenly she turns into the host of the darkness's anthesis, The Angelius (I think that was the name). She basically tells Jackie to get fucked and that she is free to do whatever she pleases on humanity now. She decides to leave Jackie and the darkness stuck in this hellish dimension. Jackie can only shout a bone chilling "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!" while it pans away. Roll credits.

I know, they obviously were setting up The Darkness 3 Im sure but it never came to happen for various reasons I wont get down to but now the dualogy ends on a heavy downer with Jackie stuck in hell and forever separated from the woman he loves. What a shitty ending with no pay off.
The "Bad" ending of 2 is the way to go. Jackie says fuck it and decides to live in his illusion with Jenny, Mr. Miracle style.

If they hadnt done the cliffhanger than the actual ending might've been alright. Darkness 2 is a fine game, pretty fun mechanics and its the only one out of the two that is easily acessable nowadays (also Darkness 1 hasnt aged that good), but it didnt need to exist.

The first game had a really tight plot and it ended great. Jackie has his revenge, Jenny is dead, sure, but he learns to deal with it and it all wraps up in a very sweet scene of them hanging out in a sunny park one last time. Bringing her back as a damsel stuck in hell seemed like a cheap way to get you invested in the dumb Brotherhood plot, IMO it ruins the character work done in 1.
 
The Darkness 2

The game itself was a decent sequel to a good early PS3/Xbox 360 game. Its based off The Darkness comics but it doesnt require you to have read them to know the game but it rewards veterans.

Either way...

Jackie frees the love of his life from inside the darkness, which may or may not be Hell itself, while they finally embrace and you think the credits will begin rolling, suddenly she turns into the host of the darkness's anthesis, The Angelius (I think that was the name). She basically tells Jackie to get fucked and that she is free to do whatever she pleases on humanity now. She decides to leave Jackie and the darkness stuck in this hellish dimension. Jackie can only shout a bone chilling "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!" while it pans away. Roll credits.

I know, they obviously were setting up The Darkness 3 Im sure but it never came to happen for various reasons I wont get down to but now the dualogy ends on a heavy downer with Jackie stuck in hell and forever separated from the woman he loves. What a shitty ending with no pay off.



I say to people that ironically, the DLC of 1 have more impact than the base game itself. Almost all DLC introduce characters that would become recurrent in the sequels and some of its events are mentioned through 2 and TPS (even 3).

Borderlands 1 was just a fun glorified tech demo, its the DLCs where the devs saw the potential of more complex storytelling with this universe.
I wouldn't call borderlands 1 a tech demo. It's just the looter shooter equivalent of diablo 1. The story takes a major backseat to both the second to second gameplay, and also the rpg and loot systems. Both stories are competent and give the player a driving force, but the gameplay and systems are why you want to play.
 
Any game that ends on a cliff hanger, especially ones that advertise it being the first part on the box. If i had to pick an example, Shenmue which even with a fucking trilogy, doesn't seem to come close to being resolved. Alternatively, The corpse of the third Chrono Trigger FF XIII-2 where you have to buy the fucking ending as DLC.
 
I don't think its a game many people have heard about, but I had a very mixed time with Kentucky Route Zero.
1632850154498.png

I only got to know it because the Disco Elysium devs mentioned it as one of their bigger inspirations, I have not seen anyone else talk about it, even tho it took the devs 10 years to release the full game. Its just a very unique experience overall, if David Lynch ever made a game Id say in many ways this would be it, it has a lot of magical realism in it.

You start the story as an antique delivery driver named Conway, trying to make his final delivery to 5 Dogwood Drive, but no one really knows where its at. Along the way you meet many side characters, some who become part of your travelling group, and you move along the Kentucky Route Zero, which is this sort of metaphysical radio wave road of ideas and places, very Twilight Zone-esque.
1632850582633.png

There are 5 Acts and in them you travel along the Zero, meeting strange people at strange places and trying to find out where the fuck Dogwood Drive is. There are many choices to be made, but there arent multiple campaign paths, your input only really changes the atmosphere of a scene. Between Acts there are little interlude chapters, somewhat related to the main story, with very different gameplay. I have never played something quite like it and its still an experience that lingers on my mind.

My problem with it is that nothing really seems to get done by the end of the narrative. I guess it was my fault for going into it expecting the story to be somewhat straight forward and to reach a satisfying ending. Conway becomes a debt ghost and is taken away halfway through, I was not as invested at the rest of the cast, so that was a big letdown. Their stories dont really go anywhere either, you reach Dogwood Drive and you find a city who just got through a big flood that destroyed most of it. You control a cat through the entire chapter and you just go around listening to people talk. The habitants are leaving to find a new home somewhere else, but before going they decide to have a funeral for a group of horses that died during the accident. 5 Dogwood Drive turns out to be an empty house, with nothing inside of it. Thematically it makes sense, I guess, but its all very anticlimatic and melancholy.

Soundtrack is kino tho
 
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I don't think its a game many people have heard about, but I had a very mixed time with Kentucky Route Zero.
View attachment 2577644
I only got to know it because the Disco Elysium devs mentioned it as one of their bigger inspirations, I have not seen anyone else talk about it, even tho it took the devs 10 years to release the full game. Its just a very unique experience overall, if David Lynch ever made a game Id say in many ways this would be it, it has a lot of magical realism in it.

You start the story as an antique delivery driver named Conway, trying to make his final delivery to 5 Dogwood Drive, but no one really knows where its at. Along the way you meet many side characters, some who become part of your travelling group, and you move along the Kentucky Route Zero, which is this sort of metaphysical radio wave road of ideas and places, very Twilight Zone-esque.
View attachment 2577682
There are 5 Acts and in them you travel along the Zero, meeting strange people at strange places and trying to find out where the fuck Dogwood Drive is. There are many choices to be made, but there arent multiple campaign paths, your input only really changes the atmosphere of a scene. Between Acts there are little interlude chapters, somewhat related to the main story, with very different gameplay. I have never played something quite like it and its still an experience that lingers on my mind.

My problem with it is that nothing really seems to get done by the end of the narrative. I guess it was my fault for going into it expecting the story to be somewhat straight forward and to reach a satisfying ending. Conway becomes a debt ghost and is taken away halfway through, I was not as invested at the rest of the cast, so that was a big letdown. Their stories dont really go anywhere either, you reach Dogwood Drive and you find a city who just got through a big flood that destroyed most of it. You control a cat through the entire chapter and you just go around listening to people talk. The habitants are leaving to find a new home somewhere else, but before going they decide to have a funeral for a group of horses that died during the accident. 5 Dogwood Drive turns out to be an empty house, with nothing inside of it. Thematically it makes sense, I guess, but its all very anticlimatic and melancholy.

Soundtrack is kino tho
I've been waiting to buy the physical edition now that the TV version is actually "finished".
 
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Beyond: Two Souls

All endings

You have only two choices that alter the ending and "spoilers" (tho anyone should care?).

1 - You pick if you want to remain in the world of the living or go off into the afterlife to join all the diseased characters, including your twin brother. Ironically I almost consider the afterlife ending to be the "happiest" ending for reasons I will get to in 2.

2- You pick to live on and has to choose who the girl stays with. The choices are "Abusive prick", "Forgettable native american boi", "Decent homeless folks" or "Be alone". Doesnt matter which one you pick, the final scene is always of our main character seeing the world destroyed Terminator styled because they were desperate to try to setup a sequel that would never happen (the only difference is that if you pick the homeless folks, you have a younger girl alongside our main character, so I guess its a "bit" better in comparison)

Imagine buying this game when it first came out, surviving through this mediocre (at best) game only to be met with a pointless sudden sequel tease that you know will never be picked up. (hint, that was me)

How many times was Bioshock Infinite mention in here?
How the fuck do retard autists call its ending deep high IQ tier narativerino when the ending's basically a clusterfuck of mass shovel thrusting for the last 5 minutes of the game where nothing matters in the end, you are the bad guy no matter what you do, kill yourself.

"A man chooses, a slave obeys"

Its funny how Infinite kind of made a mockery of such powerful line. I dont HATE Infinite but while you could say 1 and 2 were actually philosophical, Infinite felt psedo philosophic and intellecual. It only SOUNDS smart.

The worst part was always feeling this way about the game, even back then, and people rabidly defending it. Trust me, I couldnt dare say this game wasnt the best bioshock without people freaking out on me.

I wont say Im getting some satisfaction from Infinite being called what it always was but would you be surprised if I was? Lol
I just remembered what might mean the worst ending I've seen: Fragile Dreams for the Wii.
The game is in a post apocalyspe world and you are a boy that explores it looking for other remnants of humanity while surviving against the lingering ghosts of the dead. At the end of the game you meet the girl you've been tracking throughout the entire playtime and it seems like there will be some optimism in the ending, only to cut to a text saying "THE GIRL DIED SHORTLY AFTER AND YOU SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE ALONE".
What the fuck?

To be honest, the reason for the apocalypse was because some nitwit thought exposing humanity's thoughts to one another wouldnt backfire in a disasterous way. The setting already had a lot of weakness to it.
I can imagine the headlines

"People going to sleep and never waking up. We dont know how but we're sure that Covid is to blame for this."
 
Fuck Halo 2. I remember beating that game as a teen, super excited for this final epic three way confrontation, Chief is in the ship to confront Truth when Lord Hood asks what Chief is doing
"Sir. Finishing this fight. "
ONE FINAL LEVEL BOYS LET'S GO!
why are the credits rolling?

Fuck. You.
 
Fuck Halo 2. I remember beating that game as a teen, super excited for this final epic three way confrontation, Chief is in the ship to confront Truth when Lord Hood asks what Chief is doing
"Sir. Finishing this fight. "
ONE FINAL LEVEL BOYS LET'S GO!
why are the credits rolling?

Fuck. You.
To be fair it was rushed.
They meant for it to be much longer but had to divide it into two games.
 
Modern Warfare 2. But not the actual ending, rather the ending of the “Loose Ends” mission where Shepherd kills Roach and Ghost. Shepherd took his sweet time killing them, so why didn’t they shoot him while he was covering them in gasoline? I wanted to kill Makarov in MW2, dammit! And MW3 sucked.
 
The ending of Final Fantasy 6 made me feel like I was in an old russian novel. All that time spent and there was no ending. Someone at Square took the time to black out the ending when playing the legit NTSC cartridge on PAL consoles. At first you get a glimpse of it and it looks beautiful, some custom sprite playing cards twirling with the characters on them and it was already way beyond what game endings typically were like at the time... then it fades to black, and they added another wrinkle: an eye winks at you from the darkness and it stays dark forever. That's a dick move!
 
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Fuck Halo 2. I remember beating that game as a teen, super excited for this final epic three way confrontation, Chief is in the ship to confront Truth when Lord Hood asks what Chief is doing
"Sir. Finishing this fight. "
ONE FINAL LEVEL BOYS LET'S GO!
why are the credits rolling?

Fuck. You.
Shit like that is why I almost always look up opinions of a game's ending or if it's a cliffhanger before buying. It's not a big deal to me personally if it's something where the plot is the background for gameplay rather than equal or greater in value, but goddamn is it irritating to get invested in something and then find out that you have to wait at least 1-2 years to figure out what happens next.

Trails in the Sky: First Chapter was probably the worst game ending in this respect if you played it on the PSP originally. In-game
it ends with the second main character abandoning the first just after they profess their love for each other, while the actual bad guy reveals what was happening all along and how all that you did was just what he was wanting to happen.
In the real world if you played at release on the PSP in 2011 you'd have to deal with that epic lack of closure and heartbreaker of an ending for 4 years while XSEED got its shit together and released the sequel after the sadbrained goons at Crape Fulgur locked themselves in a room attempting suicide because due dates and properly formatting spreadsheets like a functioning adult are hard.
 
What did Notch mean by this?
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Its not really an ending I know but I felt like I was being indoctrinated into some new age woo cult reading this. It reads like complete schizo babble that's pretending to be deep and philosophical, in what is essentially a lego video game no less.
 
Assassin's Creed Odyssey's ending was awful, you had to get the dlc to continue the story. Fucking insulting.
 
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I'd say the ending to Duck Hunt

Yes you can beat it, all 99 levels of it.

Not really an ending so much as a forced fail state.

Addendum: I am fucking stunned with how a forum with as many oldfags as we have went this long in the thread without covering the slew of games from the 90s with basically no ending whatsoever beyond a single-screen textbox and credits. This wasn't a platform thing either, it happened with PC games, Console games, you name it, and from countless developers.

It was like the video game equivalent of that trend of bringing a character from a fantasy world to a modern setting so they didn't have to spend anything on sets or anything we saw in movies throughout the 80s and 90s.
 
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