Worst Ending(s)?

[Dragon]

As the title suggests... what were some of the worst video game endings that you've ever seen? What was your initial reaction from that.. particular ending?


For example, the worst one one I saw was the one for ghostbusters for the NES:

Ugh, those grammatical spelling errors... and just a black background with text? Come on, now! But then again, it was the NES when the data and space were limited, so, there wasn't much they could of done, but.. they could of at least spelled this all right; even if it was from overseas, it became a game in english for North America, hahah.

 

[Hi!]

ghostbusters..more like the best ending ever and will never be topped

CONGLATURATION !!!

On a serious note, Mass Effect 3's ending was almost comical, even after they did the 'extended ending'. I wasn't furious like a lot of people were, but cmon what was up with that. I'd say for the most part games have good endings, since it's not really hard to do a good ending if you just go with the safe HAPPY ENDING route.

 

[mew_nani]

Oh dear... NES Ghostbusters... That ending is so infamous the Angry Video Game Nerd spent an entire episode simply addressing it.

I know I've said this in another thread but for me Sonic '06 has the worst ending. Imagine this: you have played through Sonic '06 to its entirety. You endured through Radical Train, you facepalmed at Silver's stupidity, you laughed at Shadow speeding around on roller skates, you probably bypassed that billiard puzzle (you know the one,) and you busted a few controllers. Now onto the Last Episode. Sonic is rendered mostly dead and your resident useless princess is like "lets get the Chaos Emeralds and revive him" as space and time are breaking apart around you. You spend several hours traversing through Video Game Platforming HELL as you just barely skirt around huge black holes that absorb everything (including you) and kill them (including you!) Sonic is revived through bestiality, everyone goes super and you then fight the bird emblem from the Hyrule Shield in Legend of Zelda and wonder what horribly stupid and comedic ending you could possibly get. You and Princess "Carrot Bottom" Elise go back in time, go to the bad guy at his weakest point... and blow him out. Everything that happened in the game is retconned out and you're back at the opening cutscene. Happy End!

This is more of an insult to the player than anything else because the heroes have the means to time travel throughout the entire game, and even do travel through time, but never actually go back in time to stop Solaris a.k.a Hyrule Birdman for good until after the world is destroyed. Anyone who has ever played this game even halfway through suffered to get to that point, trudging through borderline unplayable levels, horribly remixed music, blatantly ripped off places from other video games, a story more poorly written than most Sonic the Hedgehog fan fics and more loading screens than there are bars of gold in Fort Knox. Only a hardcore Sonic fan, a masochist, or a person who enjoys playing glitchy games and laughing at them could possibly bear to get to the end of the game, and they are rewarded with the heroes pressing the reset button and rendering all of their hard work for naught. The game makes you cry and wail in hopelessness and despair and then gleefully feeds off your bitter tears. Truly it is demonic, a relic of vile darkness and born from the despair and lamentations of the damned. (Also a LOT of drugs.)

A honorable mention for terrible ending to end all terrible endings besides NES Ghostbusters would be the ending of Ghosts and Goblins. You beat The Devil and rescue the princess and what? It's a trap devised by Satan? I have to do all that again!? The ending you get beating the game once is a false one; you have to beat the game twice to truly see the ending. The game is infamous for being bone-shatteringly difficult, so just beating the game once is a challenge few have surpassed. The real ending isn't much better; your hero just feels strength welling up within him and is like "hey lets do that again!" No.

 

[Nolafus]

I'm going to have to say Mass Effect 3.

It's not like the ending itself is that bad, because it's really not. From a writer's perspective, it was a smart ending. It got everything done, left only a few loose ends, and kept everything under control.

The problem comes from the game itself. You spend hours on top of hours going through the galaxy, choosing how you want to handle things, basically building your own story. You've made some amazing friends, evil enemies, and it's come down to the final points of the story. The screen is shaking violently, there are explosions everywhere, your heart is racing from the excellent set-up, and the final choice is finally here. All of your hard work making these tough decisions is about to pay off, and you're wondering what consequences your choices will have on the end.

The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing. It doesn't matter if you do every side quest, helping out everyone you can, or ignore everything and be the biggest bully the galaxy has ever seen. The three options are the same, and all of that work just seems a little wasted going to three cookie cutter options. It was a smart writing move, but an atrocious game play one.

 

[Fun Size]

The worst endings I ever have are those ones where you beat the game but there's no after game like WTF! Like they just drop you back off at your last saved spot after you've beaten the final boss and make you go "Ok... now what?" Ugh I get soooo mad about those endings.

 

[Zoroark Cutie]

There are 4 endings that I know right off the top of my head that I really can't stand. Those would be Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas, Borderlands, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, and Final Exam. I hate the endings to all these games equally.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas's ending ends with a "To Be Continued". I understand that there are a lot of games that have cliffhanger endings and I get it, they are set up for sequels, sometimes good, most of the time bad, and I think Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas's ending is the worst because it literally ends with the text "To Be Continued" and I honestly hate that, at least with a majority of other cliff hanger endings I can imagine what happened next, I can't with this ending because it says "To Be Continued", pretty much telling me "Hey, you want to know the rest of it, go buy Rainbow Six: Vegas 2.". I remembered when I first played Rainbow Six: Vegas back after a year it came out and saw that ending and I just sat there with my mouth opened, dropped the controller, and planted my face right into my hands.

Borderlands's ending is a giant tease. Before I purchased, played, and beaten the game I kept hearing the ending was bad and disappointing, and then I saw it, it was worse than what I imagined. A Vault full of riches and desires, yeah right, more like your reward is the final boss fight and you get absolutely nothing in return except for some randomly generated and dropped loot. The first time I saw this ending, I literally started freaking out and yelling at the top of my lungs.

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City's, just unsatisfying no matter which ending you choose. You either kill 2 longstanding RE protagonists or you say "I quit". It also sucks more because the developers said that there would be choices that you can make that could change the history of RE, and the ending was the only choice you had and it was done in such a poor way.

And Final Exam's is one of those "It was all a dream" ending, except instead of a dream it's a comic book story that a kid was reading.

 

[Yukari]

I'd say for the most part games have good endings, since it's not really hard to do a good ending if you just go with the safe HAPPY ENDING route.

But where's the fun in that?

Honestly, I usually forget bad endings in video games. If I didn't like it I won't wast time thinking about it... Unless it really pissed me off.

 

[TY]

Borderlands had a terrible ending imo, but then again that game had no story at all except for finding some Vault.

Destiny can fall in the same category, a crappy story and the ending also is not great whatsoever, it leaves with a bit too many question marks.

 

[Centipede Chan]

Not really a bad ending but it annoyed me to death. It was the ending to Half-Life 2: Episode 1. It was like 2 hours of a game then just cut off it felt like.

 

[zevarius kerensky]

the ending of RAGE, huge build up near the end aaaaaaand... HUGE DISSAPOINTMENT

 

[pinkguy]

Takeshi's Challenge. It's a sandbox-y action adventure game on the Famicom.

This. This is all you get when you finish the game, which happens to be one of the hardest and trickiest games if you play it without a walkthrough/guide.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

Probably Conquest ending in Neptunia mk2, I... just couldn't bring myself to like it the first time I played it...
It's just... too unNep-like...

Ugh, those grammatical spelling errors...

Grammatical spelling errors?

 

[Spinosaurus]

Metal Gear Solid 2

I'll just say it is worth experiencing though but FUCK

 

[mew_nani]

Metal Gear Solid 2

I'll just say it is worth experiencing though but PSYDUCK

Does that even qualify as an ending? I saw that when I watched my brother play through the game and we were both floored. I'm not even sure that was an ending at all; it seemed more like a bad joke from Hideo Kojima than anything else.

The worst endings I ever have are those ones where you beat the game but there's no after game like WTF! Like they just drop you back off at your last saved spot after you've beaten the final boss and make you go "Ok... now what?" Ugh I get soooo mad about those endings.

Uh... that's not really a game ending. That's just the developers having no postgame for you to go to so they put you back at the last point you saved. Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy have that kind of game design, which makes some sense seeing as how there really isn't much to do after the hero wins. I thought it was strange when I played Twilight Princess the first time but then again what's Link supposed to do, wrangle goats and do nothing else? You've already seen all there was to see.

 

[Morkula]

Borderlands immediately came to mind. You finally open the Vault, and rather than riches, inside you find some evil vagina monster which you fight and then...why? Nothing? Hm? Just a mess all around.

Mass Effect 3 for reasons Nolafus already stated. Extended Cut improved it slightly, but just slightly.

Finally, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. This one really hurt. You build up the game, gathering your powers for the final fight against the Black Hand of Sauron, who killed you and your family in the very beginning of the game (you're a wraith, hence the whole being-dead-yourself part). You get a match against your Nemesis and then...a terrible almost-scripted fight against one of Sauron's lieutenants and then a "fight" against the Black Hand that is literally a QTE. As in, push three or four buttons and it's over. Then a 30-second sequel tease as an ending. It's outright insulting and really marred an otherwise great game.