Great video games with unsatisfying endings

I remember beating Bioshock. It had a semi-good ending, but what ticked me off about it was that it only took somewhere between fifteen to thirty seconds to watch. Felt cheap, spending hours and hours on a game, then get an ending that pretty much says "Good job. You win. Sunshine and roses. Get off my lawn.". I know this was common place on the NES (refer to Ghostbusters) but we're into 2011 now. That was twenty years ago. Bioshock was 2007.

In those thirty seconds, I'll admit that they summed the following events up nicely... But I feel an ending shouldn't be a summary. I would like a lot more elaboration with my endings. The ending should feel like it was worth the wait. I remember games that have fifteen minute ending cinematics. Even if I don't bother watching it all, it's still makes you feel a bit more accomplished than thirty seconds would.

I Am a Knock Off wrote:

Oops, I just sparked a Oblivion debate. Personally, my biggest problem with the game is the level scaling, it doesn't make every fight challenging or hard, just so damn infuriating and needlessly long. I'm also not a big fan of all the dumbing downs they did (and they are numerous) or the story as a whole and I don't think that the new stuff (revamped combat system, for example) make up for it, but it's not a particularly bad game either, just a disappointing one.

I actually liked the auto-leveling, because with Morrowind, I would inevitably hit that point where none of the enemies you can fight normally really presented a challenge. From there, game-play gets boring pretty quick, as you just run-down anything the game puts in your path.

Oblivion remedied that to a degree.

The Dude wrote:

I actually liked the auto-leveling, because with Morrowind, I would inevitably hit that point where none of the enemies you can fight normally really presented a challenge. From there, game-play gets boring pretty quick, as you just run-down anything the game puts in your path.

Oblivion remedied that to a degree.

Well, at least it worked for someone.

I don't remember Morrowind getting too easy for me until I completed most, if not all, of the main quests and side quests and when it finally did, well, it didn't bother me at all because I like that in a RPG, you start out as a weakling and by the end of the game nobody can touch you. To me that's RPG realism. In Oblivion it's like everybody is always at the same level you are (as well as the loot). You break your equipment and use tons of potions for just a couple of random enemies. Traveling NPCs get killed by minotaurs on the main roads. Why are the're freaking minotaurs on the main roads? Plus it really feels backward that as you level-up the game becomes harder and harder (one of the only RPG where not level-upping makes thing easier). The sense of progression is really screwed up and even if your character stats are boosted and you're wearing some of the most powerful armors and weapons, you still won't be much stronger than your common foes.

I might be a bit biased because Morrowind is one of my favorite game of all time, but it's not like I didn't want to like Oblivion. When I first played it I was ecstatic and after finishing the main quest for the first time I was ready to declared it much better than it's predecessor, you know, the early play-through hype (exactly the kind of mind set in which a lot of game critics seem to write their reviews). But once I replayed it and replayed Morrowind, the disappointment really started to sink in (and my appreciation for Morrowind began to grow). It seems like there is always a flip side to the ameliorations and that a lot of the times it makes it not worth it

I'm still relatively hopeful for Skyrim.

I Am a Knock Off wrote:

The Dude wrote:

I actually liked the auto-leveling, because with Morrowind, I would inevitably hit that point where none of the enemies you can fight normally really presented a challenge. From there, game-play gets boring pretty quick, as you just run-down anything the game puts in your path.

Oblivion remedied that to a degree.

Well, at least it worked for someone.

I don't remember Morrowind getting too easy for me until I completed most, if not all, of the main quests and side quests and when it finally did, well, it didn't bother me at all because I like that in a RPG, you start out as a weakling and by the end of the game nobody can touch you. To me that's RPG realism. In Oblivion it's like everybody is always at the same level you are (as well as the loot). You break your equipment and use tons of potions for just a couple of random enemies. Traveling NPCs get killed by minotaurs on the main roads. Why are the're freaking minotaurs on the main roads? Plus it really feels backward that as you level-up the game becomes harder and harder (one of the only RPG where not level-upping makes thing easier). The sense of progression is really screwed up and even if your character stats are boosted and you're wearing some of the most powerful armors and weapons, you still won't be much stronger than your common foes.

Look, I'm not going to argue that the system in Oblivion worked perfectly, because Lord knows it didn't. I do think that you're dramatizing the issues to a degree, however. I played the game on the medium difficulty, and by the time I reached level 20, I felt appropriately powerful. Never did I find myself being overcome by garden variety enemies, and I could usually bring down the harder ones with a fair amount of effort. It felt very well-balanced to me, as opposed to Morrowind. And I do love Morrowind dearly, but the beginning of the game is cripplingly hard, with you being weaker than virtually every creature. In the end, by contrast, you may as well be a God, at which point, combat ceases to be engaging and merely becomes tedious.

I just feel that Oblivion fixed this problem by not letting you achieve God status, which keeps the combat interesting because you still stand the very real chance of losing.

The Dude wrote:

Look, I'm not going to argue that the system in Oblivion worked perfectly, because Lord knows it didn't. I do think that you're dramatizing the issues to a degree, however. I played the game on the medium difficulty, and by the time I reached level 20, I felt appropriately powerful. Never did I find myself being overcome by garden variety enemies, and I could usually bring down the harder ones with a fair amount of effort.

Well, I guess I am dramatizing a bit. As far as random enemies are concerned, they're not as hard as I've implied, it's just that some of them are inappropriately strong for what they should be (especially considering where they are, like those big fellows who hang out near the roads and kill guards and other travelers). And it's not really the random enemies that become troublesome, but the quest enemies. If you do the main quest after you've gain a lot of levels they become far too strong (again, shouldn't it be the other way around?), they take forever to go down (making fighting a chore) and they slaughter your NPC friends like they were insects. Recently, my brother did Kvatch at level 20-something (dunno why he waited that long, but hey, it's an open world RPG, you should do what you want to do) on normal difficulty and it was just insane, especially since he's an assassin. If he didn't sneak attack the enemies, they barely registered any damage at all and apparently they just refused to die anyway. After a while he just gave up and turned the difficulty way down. I'm not against level-scaling (although I prefer how it was in Morrowind), but Oblivion's system is not nearly balanced enough for me (and I think Morrowind's balance, while not perfect, is a lot better). And since I don't mind the fact that you can attain God status, I guess we just have irreconcilable opinions.

Umm... moving on from that elder scrolls discussion and back to the matter at hand.

Contra for the NES. I know it was old and didnt have very many system capability's but come on contra is hard as hell even with the konami cheat code, and im pretty sure its impossible if you beat the game legitly and all we get is a 2 second explosion and the end credits? Now it goes without saying that i love contra, and its one of the best side scrollers out but come on.

Yes, sorry for derailing the thread (maybe we ought to have one about video game heresy, for controversial video game talk). To contribute to it's real purpose : Chrono Cross. Now, this is another one of my favorite game of all time, I'd recommend it to anybody in a heart-beat! The ending, while not bad, is a little problematic. I like it's bittersweetness, but it also feels very rushed, there's a lot of questions that remain unanswered and important revelations that are simply brushed aside. I found that a bit disappointing.

Leonard McCoy wrote:

Umm... moving on from that elder scrolls discussion and back to the matter at hand.

Contra for the NES. I know it was old and didnt have very many system capability's but come on contra is hard as hell even with the konami cheat code, and im pretty sure its impossible if you beat the game legitly

Not impossible, I've seen it done in a matter of minuets. One just needs balls of steel.

Believe it or not... Doom 3. Yeah, Doom isn't exactly a series where you try to invest yourself into what is going on beyond "DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!" but Doom 3's ending really disappointed me. I actually loved the game, even looking past the cheap-ass scares. Yet the ending just peeved me. Not the ending cinematic really, once again the story I could care less about as long as my Marine got to see another day as reward for all that demon ass he just kicked - which he did. The thing that pissed me off, was the actual ending fight itself and then the tease in the outro cinematic. I bought a computer in 2004 to salivate over the prospect of playing Doom 3 on the highest quality possible (Something I'm rarely nerdy enough to do.) and when I saw the redesigned CyberDemon in action at the end, I was hyped as hell. He looked Awesome and frightening, and then he turns out to be a pushover - even when compared to all the other bosses in the game. So as if that disappointment wasn't enough, the outro cinematic showed us that crazy Betruger-tongued Dragon, and I'm sitting here thinking "So they give us a pushover boss, and then flaunt the fact that they basically turned the games villain into a big nasty boss - that we can't fight. Grr, why can't I be fighting this guy at the end instead?!"

TBH I'm not a massive gamer anymore, in fact the old Doom games are 90% of what I play even 18 or so years after its release and 12 years after I discovered it. So honestly - I can't recall many games with endings that peeved me.

Mirrors Edge. Damn I love that game but story just kinda stops, you never really confront theperson behind the plot or really find out that much of what's going on (there is more plot in the iPhone game) you just punch a lackey out of helicopter and it finishes and credits roll.

I remember also being slightly jipped by Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver but they make it part of an epic continuing story so it does work.

I'm kind of stretching this, but GTA IV. I say stretching because story-wise, I was fine with the ending. But honestly with the exception of some horror games like Silent Hill, "unhappy endings" don't work for me in games. When I beat a game, I want to feel like I've won. I just beat GTA IV after procastinating for a million years, and it didn't feel like I had one. When I found out both endings were unhappy, I kind of got annoyed. At least they remedied that in Red Dead Redemption, at least there was some satisfaction from finding the last stranger mission as Jack and kicking the government bastards ass.

Most horror games with unhappy endings usually are setting up sequels I think.

Frank Rizzo wrote:

Most horror games with unhappy endings usually are setting up sequels I think.

I specified horror because horror games don't have to have a happy ending for me, like Silent Hill 2. I know it had multiple endings; but the "happy" one actually made me go "... the fuck?" (The one where James runs off with Maria for fun times and joy.) yet the first one I got, the one involving the lake-bed and a van worked perfectly for me. I don't see how that could be setting up for sequels though.

Guess I see what you mean with some other horror games though, like the "Oh fuck, we forgot Umbrella is in other places" ending of the old Resident Evil game.

"Guess I see what you mean with some other horror games though, like the "Oh fuck, we forgot Umbrella is in other places" ending of the old Resident Evil game."

That's actually what I was thinking of when I posted my reply.

After putting it off for years (Namely that I didn't have a good enough computer) I just played through CrySis. I thought it was a damn fine game, but the ending PO'd me big time.

It wasn't really a game with much of a story (Koreans find Aliens, oh shit they're awake now!) but it was so abrupt when there was potential for more goddamned action! Seriously. You just barely unleashed the aliens and then 30 minutes later after two consecutive boss fights - you immediately get the credits rolling, not explaining ANYTHING about the Aliens (Other than a poorly handled explanation of how they lived on the island, but not why or when etc.) and you follow Prophet into the evil dome thing, yet nothing happens. It's bad when an action game ends with the words "We keep fighting!" and then ends. I'm kind of annoyed that apparently CrySis 2 doesn't lead out from #1, so we may never get the actual ending of #1. :\

Shenmue II. It ends on a cliff hanger ending that has not been resolved and probably will never be (10 years so far).

Slait wrote:

I remember beating Bioshock. It had a semi-good ending, but what ticked me off about it was that it only took somewhere between fifteen to thirty seconds to watch. Felt cheap, spending hours and hours on a game, then get an ending that pretty much says "Good job. You win. Sunshine and roses. Get off my lawn.". I know this was common place on the NES (refer to Ghostbusters) but we're into 2011 now. That was twenty years ago. Bioshock was 2007.

In those thirty seconds, I'll admit that they summed the following events up nicely... But I feel an ending shouldn't be a summary. I would like a lot more elaboration with my endings. The ending should feel like it was worth the wait. I remember games that have fifteen minute ending cinematics. Even if I don't bother watching it all, it's still makes you feel a bit more accomplished than thirty seconds would.

Bioshock as a whole felt to me like a game that they tried to stretch out waaaaaaaay too far to make a "long" game, simply since people bitch so much about the length of games nowadays, as though length is directly comparable to quality (honestly most of the best games I've played don't take that long at all). As a result, to me Bioshock felt like it crammed so much useless shit into the first 80% of the game that when it was time to end it they realized the game had to ship and they needed to tack on a shitty escort mission, a shitty boss battle, and some shitty endings.

Then again, I didn't like Bioshock at all, quite frankly. But that's just me. I simply think that the last 20% of the game hammered home why I dislike it.

Command & Conquer 3 had a disappointing end. Haven't had a chance to play it, but I saw the cut scenes on YouTube.

Pac-man.

Killscreen? Seriously? after all that?

Ok, I am going to say it. Ocarina of Time.

oh my god, Link gets set back in time, negating what you just spent days working on.

How about the Hard Ending to Chrono Trigger (The one you get from defeating Lavos in the city in the sky era)

Ok, I bet none of you have heard of this one.

The ending to Takeshi no Chozenjo. All it says is "The End" and if you leave it sit for 5 minutes, it says "Why're you taking this game so seriously?" If you throw 20,000 punches on the game's start screen, you can jump to the ending without playing the game.

As long as we're talking about worthless endings, one of the most infamous is Final Fantasy 8. Oh God... and Halo 2.

gunflyer wrote:

As long as we're talking about worthless endings, one of the most infamous is Final Fantasy 8. Oh God... and Halo 2.

I never beat 8, I get the the J-pop song in space scene and just bail.