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

Skyrim: Alduin went down like a little bitch and all I got was this lousy song. I'm not even invited to Sovngarde.

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma
The virus that makes people go insane was barely a plot point.
Bad guy and his organization was retconned into have a "greater good" motive by catching this other bad guy (who we don't even see) that has his same MO.
The whole thing about how human consciousness is connected together like roots of a tree was never addressed.
Dio has no role in this game and after finding out the twist, his role in VLR became meaningless.
The fucking alien fax machine. The associated ending may be poignant but I hate the idea that some of the events in the series was caused by ayyy lmaos.
Akane acts like her facade pretending to be a vulnerable girl from the first game instead of the calculating chessmaster they made her be in VLR.
No Kyle.
I really want to see what Uchikoshi's original draft was like.
 
South Park: The Fractured But Whole

The final boss was just a previous boss battle but you're fighting two of them, afterwards you can a cut scene that doesn't close anything. The penultimate boss battle, where you fight against your past Stick of Truth character was far better.
 
I've never "played" (is even possible to play - you know, pressing buttons and not just watch - this game?) The Order 1985417103958210 for PS4. But if I remember correctly, the final boss is actually just a generic werewolf who appears throughout the game. Think about reusing assets in the laziest way.
 
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The entire plot of Diablo 3 is a bad ending that everyone speedruns because it's so embarassing. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it as far as I can tell tbh.
Diablo 3’s story is bad enough that it’s not worth talking about, as you won’t find any humor in its mediocrity.
Raping one of the most beloved characters of the franchise with that death scene so early in the game was enough for me to not want to play much longer

You know a story’s bad when the developers introduce a new gamemode that lets you skip it entirely after you’ve played it once.
 
South Park: The Fractured But Whole

The final boss was just a previous boss battle but you're fighting two of them, afterwards you can a cut scene that doesn't close anything. The penultimate boss battle, where you fight against your past Stick of Truth character was far better.
I liked the end of the Bring the Crunch DLC though.
 
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I liked the end of the Bring the Crunch DLC though.

The ending boss battles for both DLCs were vastly superior due to their hilarity and unique features. The Final Boss Music for From Dusk Til Casa Bonita is one of the best pieces of music for the game outside of Spontaneous Bootay's theme.
 
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WrestleMania XIX for Gamecube.

First of all, the one player story mode itself was the most insane thing ever for a wrestling game. Instead of having matches, you get fired by Vince McMahon and try to destroy WrestleMania on the orders of his daughter Stephanie. This involves you destroying the construction site of the venue, attacking a shopping mall where promotion for the event is being done, and other crazy stuff. In the game, you murder security guards just doing their jobs by throwing them off of buildings and into oncoming traffic. There are also parts where you have to take your wrestler and swing from chain to chain like you're Tarzan or Donkey Kong.

It is totally insane, and ultimately pointless. You spend all your time trying to destroy WrestleMania, and how does the game end? You fight Vince McMahon in the main event of WrestleMania...WHAT?! But, I thought I killed the show? How is it happening?

And the sprinkle on top of the nonsense is the ending. You beat Vince and then Stephanie comes down to the ring and then gets speared by Goldberg out of nowhere...and that's it! I was thoroughly perplexed after playing the game because none of it made any sense.
 
The ending boss battles for both DLCs were vastly superior due to their hilarity and unique features. The Final Boss Music for From Dusk Til Casa Bonita is one of the best pieces of music for the game outside of Spontaneous Bootay's theme.
Not just the boss fight, but the post-fight scene.

Oh, you definitely don't wanna go down that road.
 
What comes to my mind isn't exactly a bad ending, but something that completely ruined a game's ending post-release.
I love the end of Dark Souls, you have the choice to rekindle the first flame and postpone the inevitable end of the age of fire, or end it there and then and begin the age of dark. Before Dark Souls 2 was released, the latter was considered by many (including me) to be the "true" ending, as it's inevitable that that's what will happen in the future no matter what you do. Dark Souls 2 ruins this by making the link the fire ending canon and plopping you back into the world at some unknown point in the future to basically play out the same events again. It was a totally cowardly move, I always wanted to see a souls game set in the age of dark after the first flame eventually died out, but the cash grab that was dark souls 3 just did the exact same thing over again.
 
Fez, goddamn Fez.

I've talked a bit before about how I hate Fez. The game has some interesting ideas but a butchered execution implemented by some egoistical cock who thinks he's hot shit for making a mediocre platformer/puzzle game. I like the backstory parts though, the lore, all those tidbits, they're tiny and non-intrusive and seem to be building up to some kind of reveal, or at least some kind of satisfying ending, but that never comes. After you initially break the artificial universe and manage to reboot it again and the game's over, the bad ending zooms into Gomez, his organs, his cells, the atoms, strings, etc. while the good ending goes the other way around zooming away from Gomez and the world he lives in into the universe and multiverse before turning into static and turning the game off.

These endings, while cool to look at, aren't satisfying in the slightest. They don't have anything to do with the game, the story or its themes. It just screams to me that Phil Tacofish wanted to have these endings so the game would look deeper. I mean, I get what these endings are trying to do, they make you feel both big and small respectively, so it's not like I don't get it and I hate it because it's 2deep4me or other dumb bullshit. It just screams "pretentious".

After finishing the game I was like "That's it?". I liked the gameplay. But the whole "story" seemed absolutely pointless. Phil Fish is a pretentious loser who ragequit his sequel because "wah the fans are entitled and don't like me".:'(

99% of the NES library.

I know Ruin said it's cheating, but it's so true. A lot of those games were unfairly butal. You spent hours dying over and over again just to get some stupid "game over" or "congraturation" screen. If you were lucky maybe you'd get an extra graphic. But most endings were so low effort for the amount of effort you put in.
 
Fallout 4's ending if you side with the Institute really felt like they scrambled to finish it at 3AM the day before the game was due to ship. Trying to side with the Institute almost felt like you were pissing the game off, they gave you so many outs to change your mind and did everything they could to discourage you from going through with it.

I played it on PS4, and for whatever reason, my console's fans kicked on full blast during the ending, and the ending is just Shawn speaking to you on his deathbed quietly, passing the Institute on to you. So I could barely hear and enjoy the ending with my PS4 roaring away.

My fans didn't do that during the gigantic battle where you fought the entire Brotherhood of Steel shortly before the end, so I guess animating Shawn's dying face was just too much for my PS4 to handle.
 
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Deus Ex Invisible War: the original Deus Ex you can make the point that things might get better but I WILL You get a genocide of everyone that doesn't fit a fanatical madman definion of Mankind, a return to how things were pretty Deus Ex or humanity dies out in a nuclear war and a cyborg hivemind is what is left.

Nothing you do ends up mattering

Really every Deus Ex game except the first one have terrible endings. Invisible War and Human Revolution have the multiple choice endings where nothing matters, and Mankind Divided just sort of stops because the plot demanded it.
 
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2.

The first game is no masterpiece and both games play like ass, but the story in the first was great.

The opening segment is you playing as Darth Vader on the Wookie planet trying to kill a Jedi in hiding after Order 66. Darth Vader kills the guy then to be a dick takes his son to raise as his own apprentice so he can kill the Emperor and succeed him as Sith Lord. To train you to do that, he has you, the Apprentice, go kill some other Jedi. You fight one named General Rahm, later you fight that red twi'lek chick from the prequels. Eventually the Emperor finds out about you and makes Vader kill you. Vader revives you and makes you bring together the Rebellion to distract the Emperor so he can make his move. You find that Rahm guy again after you blinded him and threw out of a fucking spaceship, later rescue Leia and her adoptive father, and slowly turn to the Light side. You also pull down a goddamned Star Destroyer using the Force, but fuck that was bullshit. Eventually everyone meets to set up the Rebellion, but then Vader comes to arrest everyone. Twist is Darth Vader never meant to overthrow the Emperor and was just using you from the beginning to out the Empire's enemies. Everyone is taken to the Death Star to be executed in front of the Emperor for some re.tarded reason, and you have to fight your way to his chambers, but Vader blocks the entrance. You beat the shit out of him and are presented with a choice. Fight the Emperor or kill Darth Vader. Fight the Emperor, and die allowing the prisoners to escape, your death rallying the Rebellion. Kill Darth Vader, and the prisoners die, and the Emperor beats the shit out of you and turns you into an assassin, a sequence that is mildly disturbing.
There's some DLC filling in parts of the story and some that are what if scenarios following the Dark side ending, but otherwise they're irrelevant.

The Force Unleashed 2?
After you die following the Light side ending, Darth Vader has an autistic moment and decides to try cloning you because you were really really strong in the Force or something even though everything in-canon states you can't clone someone's Force sensitivity. To this extent he had an entire cloning facility from Episode 2 made, and it's filled with re.tarded clones of you. Anyway, you're apparently a pretty good clone of the Apprentice, force powers and all, but you get a vision Vader will kill you because you can't destroy a training droid, and decide to escape. A lot of dumb stuff happens, you find General Rahm again, you're being tracked by Boba Fett, you find your love interest from the first game who was your ship pilot, you rip off the Empire Strikes Back scene where Luke goes into the cave and cuts off Vader's head only to see your own or something. It's hinted the Apprentice never actually died and you're not a clone, but it gets thrown right out the window in the last mission where it's hammered in you're just a perfect clone. Blah blah blah, you wind up fighting Vader after he seemingly kills your love interest, and like last time you have a Light side and a Dark side ending. You spare Vader so he can be interrogated and go off into space with your not dead space aryan gf. You try to kill Vader, and another clone of you who is completely subservient to Vader decloaks out of nowhere, kills you, Rahm, and everyone else there, frees Vader, then looks down at your dead gf. There's DLC where you play as the Sith clone and kill Han and Chewie on Endor then fight a Jedi Leia, then the whole thing ends with the Emperor ordering a fleet of Star Destroyers to kill you.

I heard Lucas was heavily involved with the first game but I haven't heard shit on who was involved with the second one. Star Wars was dead before The Force Awakens, change my mind.
 
Bumping this. Sorry!

I just finished Black Mesa, the standalone HL1 remake that got the green light (lol) by Valve, and what a treat. I have always been more fond of HL1 over 2. Whereas Black Mesa does copy a lot of parts straight from the source (again, lol), they did take a lot of creative liberties of their own for both good and bad. The majority of the remake is a masterwork, but there are two sections of the game that really infuriated me.

First, the engagement with the attack copter in the ‘Surface Tension’ (or was it “Forget About Freeman?”) mission really cranked up the difficulty to absurd levels. I do not recall ever having that much difficulty with that setpiece as a younger lad. An attack copter shows up, begins to mow down a bridge you need to cross to activate a switch that opens a grate beneath some water, and beneath the water are those huge mutated fish - forget their name. If the attack copter didn’t plow through half of my HP, activating the switch and then jumping into the water would instantly kill me. I reloaded this section about ~20 times before given a pass by the RNG Gods.

I’d spoiler tag this, but since HL1 is so old and one of the most iconic games.... the second, and worst thing of the game proceeded what I felt was the strongest part of the game, Lambda Core. As I’m writing this, they build up the passage to Xen so hard, and even let you go through the reactor gauntlet all the end the game prematurely with a black screen; to be continued.

Xen has always been the absolute worst part of HL1 and has been the reason I have been reluctant to replay the game. Even though the team behind Black Mesa has already confirmed that Xen is on its way, having the game just come to an abrupt end while the adrenaline was pumping so much was a shit experience.

Tl;dr - Xen in HL1 sucked huge wang. Xen in Black Mesa sucks because it doesn’t yet exist.
 
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Unreal 2. It's not a bad game, don't listen to the reviews, it's fine.

In some ways it's like a proto Mass Effect. A space ship with crew, talk to them between missions, ship going places, that type of thing. Then they all get blown up while you're not onboad, so you can shoot the bad guy. It was obviously set up for a sequel so there wasn't any real ending from what I recall.
 
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Unreal 2. It's not a bad game, don't listen to the reviews, it's fine.

In some ways it's like a proto Mass Effect. A space ship with crew, talk to them between missions, ship going places, that type of thing. Then they all get blown up while you're not onboad, so you can shoot the bad guy. It was obviously set up for a sequel so there wasn't any real ending from what I recall.
Agree. Unreal 2's gameplay wasn't bad at all as far as FPS mechanics go, it's just it's story was a huge letdown.

One review I read about it said it felt like they were trying way too hard to stuff Unreal Tournament lore into Unreal 2, and that seems to make sense.
 
The ending of Crysis is Bullshit. You beat the alien mothership, then you decide to go back to the island... what? It doesn't make a lick of sense, especially when Crysis 2 begins in NYC, with one of the two marines, prophet(you don't play as prophet btw in Crysis). What the hell happen?
 
The ending of Crysis is Bullshit. You beat the alien mothership, then you decide to go back to the island... what? It doesn't make a lick of sense, especially when Crysis 2 begins in NYC, with one of the two marines, prophet(you don't play as prophet btw in Crysis). What the hell happen?
I believe they made a shitty comic to try to link Crysis 1 and 2. But Crysis wasn't exactly made for plot as it is.
 
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