The Worst/Most Dissapointing Videogame Ending Ever?

Classic. I also remember them saying in one of their ViDocs that Halo 2 was their 'sophomore slump'. Maybe not the worst ending ever, but still pretty fucking bad.

rage for me. very fun game, but it seemed like it ended half way through right when the story was actually starting to pick up and start going somewhere. it had a real bethesda feel to it in that way.

@xenphilos: "Crushed" would be an apt description of my emotional state after beating that game in basically 1 sitting.

My pick would be Red Dead Redeption. The game started great and the Mexico section was bad but it picked up and then they kill of the main guy. They could have gone full western and give you the one guy vs many and end up winning but no. You end up playing fucking Shooter Jennings SHOOTER JENNINGS!!!!! Yeah that was bad IMO.

@wickedfather said:

Really? I have some serious nostalgia for that game and enjoyed it when it was released. That said, it probably was bad and I don't remember the ending at all.

• Halo 2
• Final Fantasy 13-2
• Every Assassin's creed after 2
• Everything that happened after the reveal in OG Bioshock
• MGS4 (Although it's also on my best endings of all time list. It's a love/hate thing.)
• The real ending to Peace Walker
• Fallout 3
• Borderlands
• This is bumming me out. Basically ever video game ends terribly.

Seriously a better question would be what games have good endings.

Mass Effect 3 for ovbvious reasons #dealwithit

Assassins Creed 2 (and all the others I think)

@mikkaq: Yeah.

That ending was cool for like, ten minutes.

Once you stop to actually think about it you realize that it's actually kind of dumb though.

Mass Effect 3 ending was disappointing

But at least it's stupid and absurd in a way that is ironically entertaining. Anders blows up the chantry, expects you to forgive him, archmage guy resorts to blood magic like half the mages you encounter in the game, and of course the leader of the Templars is insane and uses anime powers to attack you with statues. And you leave Kirkwall knowing that you couldn't have fixed anything.

Mass Effect 3, by comparison, is just a wet fart of anticlimax.

@masterrain: MGS2 was the best ending ever. Don't even.

I mainly say that because of the song, but it struck a cord with me anyways. For all the BS Kojima manages to cram into the last 20 minutes, aside from all the Patriot shit, there's a thread of truth or truthity to it - about being the best you can be, and living for the future (despite the efforts of rogue AIs). Solid Snake is corny, but he's geniune, and you don't get a lot of that these days.

...ahem.

Personally, BG&E fucking broke my heart. An amazing game for 95% of the time, then some BS about Jade being "The One". Also, that post-credit scene with Pey'j sets a sequel that'll never come, by which I mean there'll be a sequel, but it won't address that bullshit at all, because it's old and tired and played out. Sucks that Ancel felt he had to add that in as a tease.

@abendlaender: That's amazing. Whenever a movie/game comes a complete stop with a "The End" slide, I'd like to imagine an usher comes into your room and tells you to get the fuck out (or turn the console off). Also, take your fucking empty popcorn tub with you, you goddamn slob.

@thehumandove: Alien kid still leaves a salty taste in my mouth, and i did not even mind the ending.

I would have to agree on it being poor, though it was not much of a let down due to how the story arc was moving along). Overall the 3rd game was still very enjoyable (bad ending do not spoil things for me). But getting to the end of a trilogy and hitting the ESC key after the first 30 seconds of the final cinematic is probably a bad sign.

I just beat it two days ago for the second time. I'm not going to claim that it isn't an exposition dump, but most of the plot there is hinted at throughout the game. The final 20 minutes of plot ties up all of the pieces quite nicely, actually, and nothing new is introduced. It's just shown to you in a weird way.

Oh, it's definitely a bit pretentious, but it isn't downright bad, and it's a pretty damn compelling exposition dump.

You know, I didn't hate the ending to 3, I was just sad that everything you've done in the 3 games leading up to that just...didn't matter.

Mercenaries 3, because that was cancelled due to Pandemic shuttering. Fuck you, EA. *sob*

@abendlaender: Dude... what the hell?

Dragon Age 2. Shit was absurd.

Rainbow Six Vegas was a really awesome game, but holy shit the ending, or rather, lack of one. They just have two people talk about what happened and talk about all this stuff they need to do in the next mission, all while you're stuck standing there. And then credits. It really feels like they decided to turn the game into two games at the last second, and did nothing at all to wrap the first game up except roll credits after something semi-cool happened.

@razielrioux said:

Seriously

Rage. End of thread. A company that made games with the best boss fights ever can't be arsed to have an end boss for this one.

Mass effect 3 all day. Took such a shit on the " your decisions matter " part of the game. Broke my fucking heart.

Batman Arkham City had a pretty bad ending.

Oddly enough I think two of the worst endings ever have been featured in videos on this very site. Namely Brute Force and Time Commando. Those were just awful.

I disagree with every single point you make. Plot twists necessarily introduce new plot elements towards a game's/book's/movie's ending.

Also, Bioshock Infinite's ending was pretty good. There are thousands of videogame endings that are way worse.

But this has eventually become one of those "name the worst game of all time > people name every great AAA title"-threads.

That's brilliant..

For me, most disappointing is Mass Effect 3. The rest of the trilogy was superb and truly some of the best writing in all of gaming with great characters and conflicts. Then, it just degenerated into a nonsensical deus ex machina with the illusion of choice. Absolutely terrible and stained my opinion. I remember thinking I'm going to replay the trilogy towards the end of this generation and make different choices with a female Shepherd to experience the series over again in a different light - I just can't do it with that ending though.

But for worst I personally experienced was Eternal Sonata. I loved that game from the beginning until the last 30 minutes and then if falls of the rails and I have zero idea what happened. It suddenly changes into some existential story (common of Japanese games) but it makes no sense and has no weight. That ending ruined an otherwise great gaming experience for me. Did anyone else play it

The worst ending ever is Way of The Exploding Fist on the Spectrum. I fought every guy all the way up to 10thdan or whatever. Then when you beat him, nothing happens, it just reloads the last fight and you keep going against the final guy again and again and again forever....man I was so angry.

Halo 2 and Mass Effect 3 come to mind straight away, but then I remember...Borderlands!

Man, that ending is a hot piece of shit! A lot of nothing basically happens! Though, I've yet to finish Borderlands 2, so maybe that's resolved, but still!

AC:3s ending was on the same level as Matrix: Revolutions.

Never again Ubisoft.

Either Bioshock Infinite or MGS4.

I played that game for the full 1000 points! Like an idiot!

I'm willing to let games setup like Halo 2 and FFX 13-2 skate by because it was clear they were a "middle chapter". I tend to be harsher later if the followup/conclusion didn't satisfy.

I dunno...the ending to Mass Effect 3 where Shepard faces down Illusive Man is a pretty good ending. The ending of a trilogy that comes after was pretty stupidly dumb where they couldn't even bother to build a proper deus ex machina correctly.

Force Unleashed II's endings were pretty poor. After an protracted and drawn out fight with Vader you get to pick either a light or dark ending.

The Light ending has you capturing Vader for the rebels and then you fly off into the distance with your girlfriend. Then in an obvious sequel bait Slave 1 appears in the wreckage of the imperial fleet you destroyed setting up another game .

The Dark side ending is a Dark-sided clone of Starkiller appears out of nowhere and kills you and everybody else. No explanation, just decloaks behind Starkiller and then stabs him and wipes out all the other rebels present, he then flies off in your spaceship.

Because most people don't play buttfuck obscure games?

Halo 2's ending shows why cliffhangers just don't work in games. Dev cycles are really goddamn long - especially if you just sit and wait for the next generation to come out, and aren't even making the conclusion a launch title. At least when TV shows do it, you usually only have to wait 6-8 months.

Also, Final Fantasy XIII-2. Why the hell did I even bother if the ending is gonna punch me in the face like that. ME3 was better.

Fallout 3 had a shitty ending. That is the most recent one that comes to mind, but let me think back...Borderlands was also fucking awful. I can not really remember thinking endings were shitty when I was a kid. I do not think I had the critical capacity to smell bullshit.

Well if you really want to say worst game ending, then probably any old arcade game that gives you a poorly spelled "Congratulations!" message at the end. Boom, end of thread. For me it was not to bring up any AAA game, but a game that is narratively focused that failed to deliver with it's ending.

The twist at the very end wasn't my problem with it, it was the whole "Okay now let's take 20 minutes to discuss the nature of the multi-verse, wow you with some cool visuals and deflate all the game's drama. Okay done? Now here's the ending."

Also a plot twist can be good without introducing any new plot elements. Like any well written mystery for example, would have all the elements in place for the reader to solve themselves, they could derive that the killer was the kindly gardener the whole time, etc. A bad twist ending introduces new plot elements like a character introduced near the end or you know... do what Heavy Rain did and take a character who in no way could physically be the killer... and made him the killer. Luckily BIoshock didn't fuck that aspect up as it's possible to piece things together and figure out who is who before the twist if you're sharp enough.

While it's arguably just as much an issue as what you're saying, the game does actually set up basically every end-game plot point before it becomes important, thanks to the audiologs. I can't really think of anything that wasn't at least introduced via listening through a tear or listening to a voxophone.

The ending to Singularity is pretty dumb. It seems like it's building up for something really clever and switcheroo-ey, but boils down to a crappy moral choice and a two-minute resolution.

You're a crazy person. 999 had a fantastic ending that did a great job of making everything make sense.

Something about Mayan prophecy if I remember. And aliens. It was pretty bad,

Holy shit that might when my best ending ever.

His fuckin yell when he fall off the cliff is priceless.

I played the original Mafia when it came out and I was I in middle school. I hadn't watched any mobster movies before so I didn't know any of the cliches, so when everything went bad at the end and everyone gets killed, it was depressing.

*edit* I didn't realize this thread was about a shitty bad ending, not a depressing and sad but good ending.

When you're talking about bad videogame endings, there's an unwritten rule that you don't use fighting game endings. 99% of the time they're terrible but you expect them to be cringe inducingly bad and that's part of their appeal.

Wait a moment. What was "...introduced in the last 20 minutes of Bioshock Infinite..."? It was clear there were cross-dimensional things going on even from the start in the opening text and scattered across the world, let alone major plot points, and story turns.

The weakness in the plot was Songbird where it served no more purpose than a Chekhov Gun. The 20 minutes of exposition afterwards was the presentation of the conclusion of the events of the climax. Of course if the viewer didn't buy most of the story before the climax then the ending doesn't help but that would be more of a complaint that "the story is bad" not "the ending is bad".

Because "nine sounds like Q" is the most logical thing in the world.

@tarsier: RDR ending was great! It was very sad, and John Marston was one of the choolest videogame characters ever, but the ending was that much more special and unique by killing him off. Much better than some cliche ending where u kill all the bad guys and live on happily ever after. But I HATE Jack he is annoying and fugly lol. Also, the ending reminded me of that one Clint Eastwood movie where all the gangsters shot him up while he was reaching for his lighter.

The first Tomb Raider. Remember at the time cut scenes in game are still new. Games back then typically never had a mature outlook for game play, nore were not typically associated with consoles. So for 90% of the game, you followed Lara and you see some cool stuff. The cut scenes were interesting and had at least a primitive plotting and cinematic look...but then comes the ending.

The ending is just slide down a pyramid...run...jump in the water...swim to a boat..and the island you were on explodes. It doesn't even really tie up the story or give any meaningful exposition/explanation

All that just happens, and then nothing. It was a let down.

I actually really loved this game, but the ending was memorably cringe inducing.