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

For me, it was Kingdom Come.
I throughly enjoyed the majority of the game. I was looking forward to the final fight and then it just ends basically. The story was great the whole game and then it was wrapped up quickly. More than that, I was surprised that more people didn’t dislike the ending.
 
chunkygoth said:
For me, it was Kingdom Come.
I throughly enjoyed the majority of the game. I was looking forward to the final fight and then it just ends basically. The story was great the whole game and then it was wrapped up quickly. More than that, I was surprised that more people didn’t dislike the ending.
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I feelt blueballed over that we didn't get a final fight, but I was not mad over it. It made me hungry for the next game.
 
Command and Conquer Renegade was a real bad experience for me. The whole thing felt like a bad made-for-TV movie, and two-thirds in it turned into a exhausting bloody grind. To have Havoc say he could have done it left handed was not the ending I wanted or deserved.

Unreal 2 was similar. The ending felt more anticlimactic than complete.

Jazz Jackrabbit 2s ending could be described as disappointing - Devin Shell getting completely destroyed felt like it went against the cartoony slapstick the previous game had.
 
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Assassin's Creed III. Much of the game was a botch job but I was invested in the modern day Da Vinci Code bullshit with Desmond and the way they unceremoniously snuffed him out by making him touch a magic disco ball of death was beyond a joke.

Prey's twist was pretty obvious too and its choice of endings (and how short they were) had it coughing and wheezing a bit over the finish line. Didn't really ruin the game for me like some other endings have though.. some of its best moments were reached in the sidequests.

MGSV was a shitshow as well. People had guessed the twist since the release of Ground Zeroes and they didn't even think to to try and formulate anything more interesting. I know the commonly held belief is the game is lacking an entire final act and all but even so.. I'll probably never get over how disappointed I was with it. For those who believe that was the point, revenge leaves you empty blah blah.. I get it but if your intention with your final installment of a beloved series is to basically let your audience come to the conclusion that I'm not the cool hero cartoon guy I thought I was all along - well yeah we kinda knew that Kojima. That's why we're playing a videogame. You dumb bastard*.

*Think his work genuinely started getting getting alot dumber when Tomokazu Fukushima bailed out
 
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The Shadow said:
You just sound salty that there's no mega-happy ending.
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More the final boss is super underwhelming. Every other dungeon in the series leading up to the last requires carefully picking a team and micromanaging everything just to have a decent chance of getting to the end but you can really just pick four random complete idiots and win the final boss, it's just "lol kill two of them for no reason." The actual fight is nearly impossible to lose, though.

It's too bad because I'd say the actual storytelling at the end isn't bad, it's just that the lead-up to it was so anticlimactic that it doesn't have any real impact. Actually having a downer ending was pretty obligatory.

Also surprised nobody mentioned HL2E2, not that it was bad writing, but just suddenly killing one of the best characters in it and then leaving it on a cliffhanger FOREVER. Fuck you Valve.
 
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BigRuler said:
starcraft 2 was a collosal letdown compared to its predecessor in terms of story
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I liked the gameplay of SC2 better because I've never been good at SC1 but SC1 and Brood War blow SC2 away in terms of story and writing.
We go from Kerrigan simultaneously bitch slapping the Dominion and Protoss and destroying the UED outright at the end of Brood War to Kerrigan being "Redeemed" and becoming a Xel'Naga space goddess so she can defeat Xel'Naga space Satan and his Space Burning Legion in SC2.
I don't dislike Starcraft 2 as whole but the shift from the gritty Warhammer 40k esque tone of the first game to the more space opera tone of the second just didn't do a whole lot for me.
 
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Kotor 2 is worth a mention since the game was released before they managed to actually make an ending. You just suddenly arrive at the climax and then the credits roll and you're like wtf. There is no ending because they evidently didn't have enough time to put it in so the game just sort of stops.
 
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EurocopterTigre said:
Not sure if it's been mentioned, but the cliff-hanger sequel bait ending of Star Wars: Republic Commandos always grated on me.
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I second Republic Commando, and any game that ends on a cliff hanger but never got a sequel.

Freedom Fighters was a great game, has the usual "you beat the bad guys" ending, but implies more are coming but there's no sequel.

Zone of the Enders. I haven't played it since the PS2 release, but if I remember right the annoying kid finally stops whining and decides it's time to take the fight to the enemy. He psychs himself up then the game ends.

I haven't seen Kane and Lynch 2 mentioned. Not a good game, but the end is so abrupt and out of place that it makes you wonder if you skipped the ending scene or if the game glitched.
You are running through an air port. Security sets some dogs after you. You board a plane and the credits roll. No boss fight, no fanfare, nothing.

Destiny 1.
The entire base game story is people not explaining anything to you, and even has the infamous line "I don't have to explain why I don't have time to explain", then it ends with her handing you a rifle and disappearing. Nothing is ever explained, and Bungie considers that story arc to be done.

Then there's the DLC which has a story, but just as you kill the boss he makes himself "taken" and disappears. Want to know what happens next? Got to play the raid which is virtually impossible unless you have 5 friends who play Destiny and have raid level gear.
 
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Ghosts 'N Goblins. You have to play the game twice just to get the ending, and it's harder the second time around. The payoff isn't even worth it.

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Judge Dredd said:
Zone of the Enders. I haven't played it since the PS2 release, but if I remember right the annoying kid finally stops whining and decides it's time to take the fight to the enemy. He psychs himself up then the game ends.
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For what it's worth, the sequel, The 2nd Runner, is about a hundred times better and has a hell of a climactic showdown with the boss that blue-ballsed you in the first game. Easily in my top 5 PS2 games.
 
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Judge Dredd said:
I second Republic Commando, and any game that ends on a cliff hanger but never got a sequel.

Freedom Fighters was a great game, has the usual "you beat the bad guys" ending, but implies more are coming but there's no sequel.

Zone of the Enders. I haven't played it since the PS2 release, but if I remember right the annoying kid finally stops whining and decides it's time to take the fight to the enemy. He psychs himself up then the game ends.

I haven't seen Kane and Lynch 2 mentioned. Not a good game, but the end is so abrupt and out of place that it makes you wonder if you skipped the ending scene or if the game glitched.
You are running through an air port. Security sets some dogs after you. You board a plane and the credits roll. No boss fight, no fanfare, nothing.

Destiny 1.
The entire base game story is people not explaining anything to you, and even has the infamous line "I don't have to explain why I don't have time to explain", then it ends with her handing you a rifle and disappearing. Nothing is ever explained, and Bungie considers that story arc to be done.

Then there's the DLC which has a story, but just as you kill the boss he makes himself "taken" and disappears. Want to know what happens next? Got to play the raid which is virtually impossible unless you have 5 friends who play Destiny and have raid level gear.
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Zone of the enders 1 is just a copy of evangelion because kojima though it was cool lmao
Atleast zone 2 has a decent story
 
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the autist of dojima said:
Zone of the enders 1 is just a copy of evangelion because kojima though it was cool lmao
Atleast zone 2 has a decent story
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Speaking of Zone of the Enders, if anyone played it's GBA game "The Fist of Mars", which was so obviously channeling Super Robot Wars (especially if you turned off the aim mode in combat) it wasn't funny, while it HAD a decent ending, it still blue balls the player like the first game, just in a different way.

For one, you'd think having taken down what amounts to ZOE's version of Zeta Gundam's Titans and taken down the final boss, which recycles a ton of tropes from Metal Gear Solid with some Evangelion for flavor, the story would have a more definitive ending.

Nope. Instead, you get a Metal Gear Solid style stinger where one of the villains makes a reference to ZOE2 that is pretty vague in regards to how it ties into the plot you just finished, but there is no other resolution.

Kinda wish the actual SRW franchise would get their hands on it and fix that like they do many other series with "WTF, that it?!" endings.
 
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Antique Rice said:
For what it's worth, the sequel, The 2nd Runner, is about a hundred times better and has a hell of a climactic showdown with the boss that blue-ballsed you in the first game. Easily in my top 5 PS2 games.
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The gba Zone of the Enders: Fist of Mars might have a different story but it takes place between the first and second games
 
Ubiquitous said:
Life is Strange. It wasn't really bad as much as it was disappointing - you have all these dialogue options and it ultimately leads up to:
either let everyone die or let the unlikeable blue-haired brat die
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That Tumblr brat is the most unlikable character in anything. I don't understand how people like them.
The line about "I got to blame [somebody else] because otherwise this is my fault. Fuck that." should be enough to make any rational person hit the 'let this bitch die' button as soon as it appeared. Especially because everything IS her fault.

I did play ZOE2 when it came out, but didn't get far into it. I remember having a tough time on one level, put it down and never got back to it. Maybe I should go back and play it again once I get through my current backlog?

One bad ending I forgot to mention. Modern Warfare 3. The reason it went bad was because the talent at Infinity Ward basically quit after Activision decided to screw them out of bonuses (bet they're regretting that now). As a result the story is phoned in, and killing the big villain at the end has none of the satisfaction of the MW1 and 2 endings. It's not horrible, but a disappointment compared to what came before.
 
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