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

[BiggerChungus]

Any game where Bloober Team writes mental health problems.

The Medium You spend the game learning of this little girls abuse because she has an unkillable demon in her. You have the choice of killing her or yourself, since the invincible demon wants a stronger vessel. Even if you kill yourself (Which is done off screen to sequel bait), you are leaving a child (Who is your sister you've been told was dead the whole game, mind you) with all her mental problems and processed.

Blair Witch You are a war veteran who has severe PTSD from both being forced to kill a pregnant woman during a mission, which ends up getting your squad killed. You come home and are a cop that has an episode and kills an innocent kid. When he decides to help find a missing kid, his ex-wife shit talks him on the phone the entire game and the sheriff does the same behind his back, but is a two faced bastard when the MC talks to him. You end up getting the choice of killing the bad guy, which breaks your mind and you become him via witch time travel shenanigans, or kill yourself and break the time loop.

The Layer of Fear games which are just PT but built around obsession in one form or another.

And these are the fucks that are handling the Silent Hill 2 reboot/remake.

If you want a good game about mental health, play Omori. Yes it is a RPG maker game, but the creator uses a lot of hand drawn assets and handles how people handle guilt and death spectacularly. It's even on Gamepass right now, so it's worth the $1 trial to play it.

I think anything involving time travel is almost always gonna be a pointless waste of time. Baffles me that games like this think they're deep by going "oh, everything you just did? meaningless, teehee". Even fucking Silent Hill, which is almost entirely based on the MC's psychological delusions, has meaningful endings based on your choices.

 

[Dollar Store Sentai]

I think anything involving time travel is almost always gonna be a pointless waste of time. Baffles me that games like this think they're deep by going "oh, everything you just did? meaningless, teehee". Even fucking Silent Hill, which is almost entirely based on the MC's psychological delusions, has meaningful endings based on your choices.

Time Travel and Suicide endings out of nowhere are my two biggest pet peeves. Speaking of Suicide, the Suicide of Rachel Foster is probably the game that made me the most angry over a story in a while.

You go through the game hearing about it was normal for a 50 year old man to impregnate a 15 year old special ed girl he was teaching. (It's totally okay though, since the AoC in the state just happens to be 15 and everyone describes her as acting so much older and mature than her age suggests.) When you find a shrine dear old dad made for this child, the main character is more upset that the shrine is depicted as a little girls room with toys than she is disgusted that her father was a pedo.

You eventually discover that your mother murdered this girl for getting pregnant and ruining the family reputation and your point of contact you've been talking to all day is her brother who promptly goes and kills himself in the blizzard keeping you at the hotel. You then have the choice: Keep the hotel (Which is the BAD ENDING, btw) or go to your car and kill yourself.

The kicker to this is you never really blame your father for grooming and impregnating a child. You know he had "an affair" with Rachel who then "killed herself". Except you knew your mom killed her as well and you just suppressed it. So instead of taking this information to the police and giving the girls family some closure, you pop off to the garage and kill yourself via car exhaust while thinking that you can't wait to see your Dad and Rachel again

Fuck this game

 

[Destro's Last Stand]

Yep, if you spent your time helping people in need and putting your head on a chopping block, in the end you will genocide the entire world, INCLUDING YOUR BEST FUCKING FRIEND, but if you were a psycho who blows things up just for fun and doesn't care for people, somehow you will end up dying for the cause. You are not hero or villain, you are either bipolar psycho or a retard, who accidentally saved everyone!

This part is partially incorrect. You can match your karmic alignment with your karmic ending. In the original game when Kessler was projecting his story, the Beast did favor Cole in looks more closely than John Wolfe, iirc there was no mention of the conduit spawning plague that wiped out the East Coast in that timeline, just destruction. InFamous 1's Beast was depicted differently, it seemed to have a different power set as well, I know Wolfe gave his power to Cole in the bad end, but Wolfe's version was pretty underwhelming and not the guy Kessler was shitting his pants over, which I can buy into the idea of that being a third Cole. In my opinion, the population wiping plague that inFamous 2 introduced is fucking retarded, doubly so when Second Son came about. Zeke was a scumbag in the first game wanting to sacrifice people for power with the Ray Sphere and preach against it in 2, because his life on the line, I forget if he sided with Kessler after Trish was set up to be killed by him, which makes things look worse for anyone who sympathized with Zeke. "Ah man, things are cool between us even though you attempted to suck the life out of a large group of people to power yourself up and took the side with the guy who killed my girlfriend, but yeah, I can let bygones be bygones after giving you the cold shoulder for a few years."

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

This part is partially incorrect. You can match your karmic alignment with your karmic ending. In the original game when Kessler was projecting his story, the Beast did favor Cole in looks more closely than John Wolfe, iirc there was no mention of the conduit spawning plague that wiped out the East Coast in that timeline, just destruction. InFamous 1's Beast was depicted differently, it seemed to have a different power set as well, I know Wolfe gave his power to Cole in the bad end, but Wolfe's version was pretty underwhelming and not the guy Kessler was shitting his pants over, which I can buy into the idea of that being a third Cole. In my opinion, the population wiping plague that inFamous 2 introduced is fucking retarded, doubly so when Second Son came about. Zeke was a scumbag in the first game wanting to sacrifice people for power with the Ray Sphere and preach against it in 2, because his life on the line, I forget if he sided with Kessler after Trish was set up to be killed by him, which makes things look worse for anyone who sympathized with Zeke. "Ah man, things are cool between us even though you attempted to suck the life out of a large group of people to power yourself up and took the side with the guy who killed my girlfriend, but yeah, I can let bygones be bygones after giving you the cold shoulder for a few years."

That's also a problem. The antagonist of the original game broke the time loop, albeit barely, but in the events of the sequel it seems that there was no point in keeping continuity. Why the hell didn't he just travel back in time and kept the Beast from appearing by killing him or preventing the events that lead to the creation of metahumans? Or just told the protagonist the truth and went to fight the Beast with him?

Time Travel and Suicide endings out of nowhere are my two biggest pet peeves. Speaking of Suicide, the Suicide of Rachel Foster is probably the game that made me the most angry over a story in a while.

You go through the game hearing about it was normal for a 50 year old man to impregnate a 15 year old special ed girl he was teaching. (It's totally okay though, since the AoC in the state just happens to be 15 and everyone describes her as acting so much older and mature than her age suggests.) When you find a shrine dear old dad made for this child, the main character is more upset that the shrine is depicted as a little girls room with toys than she is disgusted that her father was a pedo.

You eventually discover that your mother murdered this girl for getting pregnant and ruining the family reputation and your point of contact you've been talking to all day is her brother who promptly goes and kills himself in the blizzard keeping you at the hotel. You then have the choice: Keep the hotel (Which is the BAD ENDING, btw) or go to your car and kill yourself.

The kicker to this is you never really blame your father for grooming and impregnating a child. You know he had "an affair" with Rachel who then "killed herself". Except you knew your mom killed her as well and you just suppressed it. So instead of taking this information to the police and giving the girls family some closure, you pop off to the garage and kill yourself via car exhaust while thinking that you can't wait to see your Dad and Rachel again

Fuck this game

I still have no idea what the authors were thinking. It's either incredibly bad attempt at creating a provocative story about taboo subject, or you know

 

[Rakdos92]

Mortal Kombat 11: Jax ends slavery. This is exactly what MK needed on top of smearing the guest character feces on everything, a fucking political message of BRAKK PEEPOO SUFFERED

Funniest bit to me is, if the writers had any continity, they would've unmade him like his daughter. What, you think the niggers that got taken as slaves could build anything worth a damn?

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Funniest bit to me is, if the writers had any continity, they would've unmade him like his daughter. What, you think the niggers that got taken as slaves could build anything worth a damn?

The moral is that only men can do things right.

That's also a problem. The antagonist of the original game broke the time loop, albeit barely, but in the events of the sequel it seems that there was no point in keeping continuity. Why the hell didn't he just travel back in time and kept the Beast from appearing by killing him or preventing the events that lead to the creation of metahumans? Or just told the protagonist the truth and went to fight the Beast with him?

I kind of respect the game for making you kill your waifu for the ending of your specific morality, but in the end it's bullshit trying to put self sacrifice as some grand moral good, and even worse putting mass sacrifice for the greater good as such.

 

[TVB]

Funniest bit to me is, if the writers had any continity, they would've unmade him like his daughter. What, you think the niggers that got taken as slaves could build anything worth a damn?

With writing feeling more like an elementary school essay, of course the writers are never going to give a shit about continuity and focus more on modern day real-world politics are their own solution.

 

[Wesker]

Funniest bit to me is, if the writers had any continity, they would've unmade him like his daughter. What, you think the niggers that got taken as slaves could build anything worth a damn?

If they had the ability to undo it with the push of a button, they wouldn't. It would immediately transport them back home to mommy Africa where there would be zero colonization, and it would be an even more blood thirsty cannibal continent than what the Portuguese found.

Niggers are too retarded to comprehend the fact that without European intervention through colonialism and UN handouts, they would be dead. They only survive through the infinite generosity of the European. They have all the hallmarks of a species that should've long gone extinct.

 

[Epoch]

Echoing what was said prior, but Xenoblade 3 was kind of a mess, and thats coming from someone who has played the entire Xeno series

The entire second half of the game feels like it was just added so that they could call it a 'xeno' game. The main bad guy just kinda shows up and all the development occurs right before and during the final battle. The final ending where they split the two worlds, based on what I got from it, is that they reset the realities back to the point when they collided, thats why they show the cutscene from the begining, but it actually completes instead of freezes. Essentially the entire game's story had zero impact on anything, and all characters are returned to their pre-merger state. But the end also has a notebook entry that takes place after the split but still in the game continuity?

I pretty much feel that they were either obligated or forced by nintendo to make a 3rd game, so they wanted to write something more character focused, but when it came to linking it to the previous games thematically they went the safe route of it all meaning nothing. The game felt like just a big Xenogears reference, but lacking the writing of Xenogears beyond some basic surface level Gnostic stuff that they referenced in XC1 or XC2.

I really hope Nintendo lets them either re-do Xenoblade X, or continue the story that they started with that. Nintendo already forced them to gimp the story for online features, which meant a custom PC, meaning no actual character, which made them change the entire plot. XCX truly felt like a successor to Xenogears, if only they could have stuck with the Neo Tokyo plotline and the tandem Skell, mysterious hero, and Elma's involvement in everything.

They ending of the released game feels like act 1 of the larger story they wanted to tell, and its clear that the large story still exists, some NPCs mention picking up distress calls from other ships after you finish the main plot. I have a feeling that if they do make a sequel, it will be from another perspective, perhaps allowing them to tell the original story. A lot of the Lifehold system stuff and Elma's identity were re-worked into the XC2 plot with the Blades, but I really disliked XC2 for quite a few reasons I wont go into.

The idea that planet Mira is a purgatory for extinct species is really interesting (and L's name is literally Lucifer), and thats why I want it explored further. Some Wrothian NPC dialogue mentions how Cauldros is almost exactly like their planet before it was destroyed, and the fact that the planet Mira exhibits strange things like translating languages, and somehow storing the human souls despite the lifehold being empty. Based on concept art in the japan only artbook, Mira is some sort of simulation, or at least artificial, and in artwork of the planet from space it shows that there are more continents than whats shown in the game, including what looks to be the Zohar at the northern pole. I am convineced they have some sort of grand plot at least outlined for X, but its up in the air as to whether we will see any of it because Nintendo doomed them from the start.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

The Sleeping Dogs ending feels weird somehow. Whenever I replay the final act of the game, I get the vibe that back when it was True Crime HK it had a branching story (or at least, multiple endings) like the other games did. My guess is it got cut when development moved over to UFG and they had to hack together all the pieces they had into a working game -- you may recall they descoped a lot of things, like the romance sideplots, for example, so I could buy it happening here also. Would explain the triad and cop points existing but only being used for upgrade trees, too.

On top of that, doesn't the MC go from nobody to head of the Tong in like a week? I haven't played it in a decade so idk.

 

[TheHarbinger]

Time Travel and Suicide endings out of nowhere are my two biggest pet peeves.

Chrono Trigger did time travel endings in a unique way in that there were multiple endings. Even endings that relied on 'new game +' playthroughs which was a new mechanic at the time. Ratchet and Clank also had a time travel game that had a well done story. But neither of them have abrupt time travel endings they are part of the narrative from the start.

 

[skykiii]

Time Travel and Suicide endings out of nowhere are my two biggest pet peeves. Speaking of Suicide, the Suicide of Rachel Foster is probably the game that made me the most angry over a story in a while.

You go through the game hearing about it was normal for a 50 year old man to impregnate a 15 year old special ed girl he was teaching. (It's totally okay though, since the AoC in the state just happens to be 15 and everyone describes her as acting so much older and mature than her age suggests.) When you find a shrine dear old dad made for this child, the main character is more upset that the shrine is depicted as a little girls room with toys than she is disgusted that her father was a pedo.

You eventually discover that your mother murdered this girl for getting pregnant and ruining the family reputation and your point of contact you've been talking to all day is her brother who promptly goes and kills himself in the blizzard keeping you at the hotel. You then have the choice: Keep the hotel (Which is the BAD ENDING, btw) or go to your car and kill yourself.

The kicker to this is you never really blame your father for grooming and impregnating a child. You know he had "an affair" with Rachel who then "killed herself". Except you knew your mom killed her as well and you just suppressed it. So instead of taking this information to the police and giving the girls family some closure, you pop off to the garage and kill yourself via car exhaust while thinking that you can't wait to see your Dad and Rachel again

Fuck this game

I know I'm replying to an old-ass post... but this game was on sale for Switch and I almost bought it, but decided to look up reviews, and three minutes into a Youtube video I was getting "the vibes" as I call them (in this case the vibe being that Kiwis would have strong words for this game)... and a search brought me to your post and I decided to read the spoilers.

Thank you for saving me two dollars.

EDIT: I was talking with a friend of mine about Time Travel recently. I personally don't hate it as much as others but I agree it can feel dumb when its an out-of-nowhere plot device. Really, situations like Chrono Trigger are different because you go in knowing they're about Time Travel, unlike Blair Witch where you have no reason to think that's gonna be a thing until it happens.

 

[Scuttle]

I hated everything about the ending of Ai: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative.

I find all of Uchikoshi's masturbatory Wikipedia forays to be insufferable but the first AI game actually did a decent job at making me care about the small cast of characters because the dialogue wasn't nearly as pathetic as the ZE series.

But then the second game tries to do some meta bullshit that proposes the idea that the AI universe is just a video game, and multiple characters are aware they're in a video game, and that all the conspiracy theories were actually vindicated, and I just stopped caring about the characters. Worse, the main villain is killed hours before the final battle and you end up confronting a pre-recorded video of the villain trying to enact his plan from beyond the grave and the whole thing is so fucking retarded I wish they just stuck with the wacky but endearing stupidity of the first game.

 

[demicolon]

Chrono Cross true ending: your reward is being transported back in time to the very beginning at the beach, and your memory is wiped. Well fan-fucking-tastic, all I did and what happened was POINTLESS. It might as well have been a fever dream, hell it'd explain a lot about Lord Balthasar of Plot Exposition and Schalla the Loli Hippie.

 

[Jaimas]

Chrono Cross true ending: your reward is being transported back in time to the very beginning at the beach, and your memory is wiped. Well fan-fucking-tastic, all I did and what happened was POINTLESS. It might as well have been a fever dream, hell it'd explain a lot about Lord Balthasar of Plot Exposition and Schalla the Loli Hippie.

Chrono Cross also retroactively fucked over the ending of Chrono Trigger.

First, you have all the DS and PC Versions' expanded postgame content - which culminates in you basically failing to save Schala so the plots of Radical Dreamers and Chrono Cross can happen. Magus is banished into time after Schala basically tells him he's fucked and he's lost to history.

But we haven't fucked things up enough yet, so let's keep going and cover the Fall of Guardia ending.

Porre invades five years after the events of Chrono Trigger. Guardia Kingdom is destroyed, the Masamune is taken, and ultimately, Dalton, that shitty gag villain from 12,000 AD, fucking wins, not long after Chrono and Marle's wedding. The group's accomplishments were, ultimately, for nothing.

....All to tie Chrono Trigger to Radical Dreamers and Chrono Cross.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Chrono Cross also retroactively fucked over the ending of Chrono Trigger.

First, you have all the DS and PC Versions' expanded postgame content - which culminates in you basically failing to save Schala so the plots of Radical Dreamers and Chrono Cross can happen. Magus is banished into time after Schala basically tells him he's fucked and he's lost to history.

But we haven't fucked things up enough yet, so let's keep going and cover the Fall of Guardia ending.

Porre invades five years after the events of Chrono Trigger. Guardia Kingdom is destroyed, the Masamune is taken, and ultimately, Dalton, that shitty gag villain from 12,000 AD, fucking wins, not long after Chrono and Marle's wedding. The group's accomplishments were, ultimately, for nothing.

....All to tie Chrono Trigger to Radical Dreamers and Chrono Cross.

The whole ruination of the original Chrono Trigger is the main reason why I never played Cross, it just feel so wrong.

Also thread tax. Does DLC endings count? Any general "you killed the boss now return to the main game" is shit. I'm still seething a bit with the Elden Ring DLC ending with absolutely nothing except a 20 second cutscene of nothing happening.

 

[ChucklesTheJester]

Seeing how people talking about more mainstream shit endings here a far more obscure one. Shadowman 2, and it's final boss cut scene and final boss before it.

The game suffers from being heavily rushed. Literal characters from the opening cutscene never show up again despite clearly being very important like the Giant ass satan Demon guy who is made out to be a boss you meant to kill at some point. The whole book thing he reads each time time goes like "BY THE (imput number here) POWER" to open each next area. Well would but powers 5 and 6 are missing he skips right from 4 to 7. With 7 being the final boss.

Talking about the final boss That angel guy we see get his ass beat and then Michel screams " NOOOOOO!" to we literally see so little of him in the game. Like maybe 1-2 times if I am remembering right. The final boss fight is meh like most of them in the game. But what real seals the deal of how rush this is. Look how short the ending cutscene is after you beat the final boss. It's not even a minute long, and barely adds anything to the plot.

This game is also sold so poorly the dev team got closed down shortly after. Real shame this is how shadowman story went out.

I would put the stuff in a spoiler, but let's not kid ourselfs here no one but me around here gives two shits about shadowman 2 to even be willing to play it.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

A more appropriate bad ending from a Boulder Punch video, the Parasite Eve third entry - The Third Birthday.

tl;dw: The ending reveals you don't actually play the main heroine of the series but her (previously established) young clone who accidentally made her soul explode and become the monsters you fight until the end of the game. In the ending you must kill the heroine of the series MGS3 style and have the clone now living with the knowledge she is responsible for huge amount of death and for killing her surrogate mother. Pretty big fuck you to the fans, and adds extra levels of creepiness as the game really pushes hard the fanservice of a 12 year old girl trapped in a 20 something year old women's body.

 

[ChucklesTheJester]

A more appropriate bad ending from a Boulder Punch video, the Parasite Eve third entry - The Third Birthday.

tl;dw: The ending reveals you don't actually play the main heroine of the series but her (previously established) young clone who accidentally made her soul explode and become the monsters you fight until the end of the game. In the ending you must kill the heroine of the series MGS3 style and have the clone now living with the knowledge she is responsible for huge amount of death and for killing her surrogate mother. Pretty big fuck you to the fans, and adds extra levels of creepiness as the game really pushes hard the fanservice of a 12 year old girl trapped in a 20 something year old women's body.

I played this back when on a jail broken PSP. This was the first Parasite Eve game I ever played or even knew about at the time. Thank you for reminding me of it. Also Fucking what? That what the ending was? I was confused all those years ago what the fuck happen, and I kind of wish I didn't know now.

 

[demicolon]

...there was Shadowman 2?