5 Game Endings that are worse than Mass Effect 3

[Eggbert]

"Final, critical moments"? The game was effectively over. Death was imminent. Freeman had done the job he was supposed to, so the G-Man showed up to reclaim his 'asset.' At least in my opinion, it did a brilliant job bookending the idea that Freeman, for all his skill and almost messianic image, was a pawn for powers far greater than himself.

In the context of Lord of the Rings: Just as the ring falls into the lava, Saruman appears out of nowhere and imprisons Frodo in limbo.

...so it was Saruman who originally set Frodo on his quest, then?

... You have said everything I wanted to, only better. And there's points for this theme all over the place: nobody ever explains what happened to you. Why? It doesn't matter how little you know, only that you get the job done. And once the job's done, you don't need to hang around, so why waste time/risk losing an asset? Back into stasis.

FO3, on the other hand, is the point where I get to link everyone who likes the main plot to Spoiler Warning. Watch the Fallout 3 season, then tell me the plot makes sense (don't actually, I don't want an inbox full of sarcastic comments in 10-12 hours).

For newer bad endings, though... I'm going to go with... I've got nothing that hasn't already been said.

 

[Vigormortis]

I actually liked HL2's ending.

From a dramatic standpoint I found it to be lacking. It was a big "that's it?" moment with a big buildup and an abrupt end after firing 3 of those thingies in the right spots. But after some thought I found it to be rather refreshing in a world where you literally came up to expect a big baddie just before the game ends.

And the final words of the G-Man were so... extreme. Add to this his monologue from the beginning and it actually shows a lot of thought put in every setpiece and event through the entire game up to the end (The right man in the wrong place can change the world).

Exactly why I loved the ending. The abruptness to it was startling. And, the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

The biggest point I took away from it was, the ending makes it superbly apparent that you (Gordon Freeman) were never really under your own control. Everything you did wasn't entirely your doing. You're just the puppet of some unseen master.

As such, being that the story is only told through Gordon's eyes, the sudden, abrupt ending makes sense. It's not like the G-man would take the time to explain everything in some long, drawn out monologue to someone that is essentially just a tool for his own machinations. It's just, "Job done. Pluck him up and put him back in the freezer."

The endings to games like Borderlands, Mass Effect 3, and Daikatana on the other hand...

 

[Oro44]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution was on par with ME3 because, well, it was the same. MGS2 left me scratching my head. The first Assassin's Creed. And...I'd say Dragon Age 2. The whole "and then they all went their separate ways" was really unsatisfying. And the shoe-horning of Leliana.

 

[NeuroticDogDad]

Gears of War 2's ending sucked worse as well.

Ah, but Gears of War 2's ending had the promise of a real end to the story in the next game.

Spoiler: Gears 3 Spoilers

GoW3 ending however was the end of the trilogy. And it was bullshit.
The whole theme of the games - world is going to hell.
The tone of the gameplay - relentless death, violence and war with so little peace.
The whole theme of the end of Tai, Maria and Dom's stories - death is the way out of perpetual suffering.
The whole theme of the marketing for GoW3 - we're all going to die but at least it's together.

The ending of the series? - Happily ever after.

Bullshit. Complete bullshit.

I haven't played ME3 or any ME but I've got to imagine GoW is up there.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

... You have said everything I wanted to, only better. And there's points for this theme all over the place: nobody ever explains what happened to you. Why? It doesn't matter how little you know, only that you get the job done. And once the job's done, you don't need to hang around, so why waste time/risk losing an asset? Back into stasis.

Exactly. He didn't do anything throughout the entire game save for appear in the distance if you were really looking for him, but when he shows up at the end? It's a stark reminder of your status as his puppet. He shuffled reality like a deck of cards to move you through space and time, and then once your job was over, and I mean exactly once your job was complete, he reemerged to collect his weapon for deployment at another time.

FO3, on the other hand, is the point where I get to link everyone who likes the main plot to Spoiler Warning. Watch the Fallout 3 season, then tell me the plot makes sense (don't actually, I don't want an inbox full of sarcastic comments in 10-12 hours).

Ah, good 'ole Shamus. I miss Stolen Pixels.

But at any rate, I know what you're getting at by linking to Spoiler Warning. Fallout 3, even outside of the main quest, was rife with terrible plot holes, the worst kind of railroading, and some straightforward stupid writing.

For instance, Tenpenny Tower. Roy the ghoul wanted to move in, but the residents don't like ghouls and won't let him have a room. Apparently, doing something because you're racist automatically makes that choice wrong, no matter how much it flies in the face of logic. Feral ghouls aside, so what if they don't like him because he's a ghoul? I didn't like him because he vowed to murder everyone in the tower because they wouldn't let him buy an apartment, and then tried to get me to help him do it. I don't care if someone's an asshole, or even a racist. That doesn't give you the right to murder dozens of people in the most nightmarish way possible.

What cinched it for me was Dashwood. If the previous reasons weren't enough to not side with Roy, Dashwood was more than enough. He was the one good man worth protecting, and I sure as hell wasn't going to murder him for some sadistic monster's petty revenge. And the "good" option is even worse, because it involves convincing the residents to let Roy have an apartment by appealing to their better senses. NO. He's a hair-trigger psychotic. I don't care if he's a ghoul or not. Putting him down was a credit to society, and Three-Dog had the nerve to call me a murderer for it.

 

[Char-Nobyl]

So Rage was bad because it was realistic and didn't stroke your ego by making you think you were the most important being in all of creation?

Gotcha!

Your powers of deduction astonish me.[/sarcasm]

People get too upset about that games ending.

It was basically just a tech demo. They were showing off their new engine and I bet you had fun while you were playing it.

You know what would have made it more fun? Knowing that I was buying a tech demo. If I order an expensive steak and get served a cheeseburger, I don't care how good the cheeseburger is: I paid for, and expect to eat what I ordered, and this isn't it.

It never made you think you were playing something with an indepth story.

All those trailers about the story and characters seemed to indicate otherwise. And the first character you meet is voiced by John goddamn Goodman. Who hires John Goodman for a tech demo?

And I was just pointing out that what he said was retarded. Just because there's no resolution doesn't make something a bad ending, only realistic.

..."realistic"? Don't make me laugh. Their "resolution" was to wake up a bunch of random dudes with regenerating health and hope for the best.

And for the record: no. Having no resolution in an ending doesn't make a story more "realistic." It makes it a bad story.

Because you got a full games worth of content out of it.

I did? Sorry, maybe we're talking about different games. Because the Rage that I got was three discs and about a weekend's worth of gameplay, and that was doing all the sidequests, too.

Expectations? It didn't really have all that much of a story to begin with, so why were you expecting a dramatic ending? It did what it was there to do, show that id can still make a fun game. And one that looks incredible I might add.

I guess we don't have your powers of clairvoyance, because there's no reasonable way that someone could know that when they first started playing. See, every story has to start from somewhere, and Rage apparently had a story...it's just that it was the rough outline of one that didn't have a conclusion when the release date was looming.

Hogwash, people play games for a multitude of reasons. And a game can end without you saving everyones ass with your penis that shoots gold because you're just that awesome.

I'm starting to wonder whether or not a well-written story murdered your parents or something. There's no other obvious reason why you'd have declared such a vendetta against storytelling.

 

[tacotrainwreck]

I recall Sudeki on the xbox literally just ending in credits. Then again, I think I was one of the only people in the world to play that game through.

 

[Nyaoku]

If anyone remembers it ... Mystical Ninja to the N64.

The entire game was a boss setting up a stage for a show, there is no playing on that file except for the last fight that you're locked into over and over again so not post game freeroaming that the rest of the game allowed. The people you saved are mad at you. Everything just went downhill from there ... also, It tells you that you missed X number of collectables on that playthrough but won't let you try to go back and get them without starting from the beginning again.

 

[zehydra]

I was totally expecting Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is one of my favorite games of all time (I've been playing video games for a long time), and I'll admit the ending to the main quest sucks.

Game would've been better without a main quest (if it meant more side quests or bigger world)

 

[-Drifter-]

Did all of you guys forgot about how bad both endings were in the 2008 Alone in the Dark game?

I'm pretty sure no one played Alone in the Dark.

And those 5 shitty endings in Silent Hill:homecoming(none of them were all that good or satisfying)?

How can you call this unsatisfying?


The best part is that, unlike in previous Silent Hill games, the UFO ending isn't even secret. You could just play through the game normally and wind up with that ending, with no idea what the hell just happened.

Anyway, my vote goes towards either Fallout 3 or Borderlands, with Beyond Good and Evil as a close runner up (extra points awarded for slapping on a stupid cliff-hanger after the credits and then never making a sequel.)