I dunno, saw it on another Message Board and I thought I’d ask everyone what they thought were the worst video game endings ever.
S03
Eternal Sonata
FFX-2
KotoR 2. No question.
Yeah, SO3 really ranks way high on the bullshit scale.
I lose points for picking the most obvious one though.
I’m not sure. I can’t really think of many games that I’ve played that had really sucky endings.
(SO3 I guess, but I never finished it, so can’t really say anything about that.)
The only thing that comes to mind is the unlockable extra ending for Jak & Daxter (the first game) which is basically:
Get everything. Everywhere. In the whole game.
You can’t even miss one little Precursor Orb. (And the Orbs are a bit like coins in Super Mario. So they are everywhere.)
And then you get to see what’s behind a giant door.
Or actually, you don’t. You just see the characters going sort of “Wow! What is it?”, and that’s it.
Not much to put in a spoiler tag since the second game picks up at almost the exact same point where the first ends, but meh.
So yeah, that’s a disappointing extra ending.
And an ending that isn’t disappointing per se, but still leads to some massive disappointment, is Vagrant Story.
Just because the ending reveals that the entire game is just the prologue for “The story of the Vagrant”. The game literally ends with (not sure about the exact wording, but…) “Thus began the story of the Vagrant”. Which was, apparently, supposed to be “Vagrant Story 2”… Except they never made that sequel. 
This. Oh God this. I felt like someone was laughing at me with that. I’ve said it before, but VG feels like how FFT would have turned out if the story ended abruptly after Chapter 1. There’s just this huge “What? That was it?” feeling all about it. It’s beautifully presented, but it’s like they forgot whatever the hell they were supposed to present.
Double Dragon and half these oldies where you’re lucky to get an ending screen that says more than Congratulations!/THE END.
Zelda:Majora’s Mask had a bit underwhelming ending, compared to the rest. Not worst ever, but probably worst Zelda.
VS’s ending was gorgeous. Not every ending has closure, and while VS definitely gave hints of a sequel (same as Xenosaga 3), it was still self-contained.
Has anyone else seen the ending for Angel (the TV series)? …I hate Joss Whedon. He plays such evil games with me.
Aside from obvious SO3…Rogue Galaxy’s ending pissed me off. Thought that was contributed to the lame-ass last chapter or two.
Basically, “Hey! Let’s save Mariglenn from Mother and Rune so we can get our Treasure.” Beats Mother/Demon Battleship “Ok, we won’t take your treasure or anything, just had to do the right thing.” Then Kisala has to go and be their Queen, and it just felt kinda crappy.
Anything else would have to be old games where it just gives you a default The End screen.
No, not it wasn’t. For fucks’ sake, no it wasn’t. I notice you have a fairly benign outview on some plots in which you tend to appreciate the finer points of narratives which reside more in your hopes and dreams than the actual game code, but this is one thing I cannot just let slide.
The “script” may be beautiful, but the “plot” is at the very best anecdotal. Ashley and Sydney’s chats around Lea Monde were beautifully written as a buildup to something, until you realize that that was all there was to the story, the greedy evil boss jumps in to remind you that he was meant to be important and the game ends. The rest of the characters don’t even merit remembering their names. VS didn’t need a closure because it presented nothing to close. There was no conflict outside of Ashley’s past beyond the crawling through the city’s bowels alone fighting zombies, despite the plethora of one-shot characters that tried and convince you otherwise. As if it were a premonition of how XII would turn out, you get the feeling that something major is going on somewhere but you’re entirely excluded from it while you’re fighting magic genies in dark caves. Except this once, there wasn’t a war or major manipulative conflict going on anywhere, just some guy screwing around with dark magic.
The whole game builds up to something happening, which would be whatever happens after Ashley leaves Lea Monde. But there’s nothing about that. So you’re left with a beautifully written introduction to nothing.
Zelda 2: The Adventures of Link!
“Thanks a million. Push start to replay.”
XD
I haven’t played it yet, but I understand one of the endings of Disgaea 2 has the main character kill and eat his friends. Kinda gross for a humorous game, even if it parodies Hell…
That’s true. The plot of Vagrant Story is curiously devoid of substance. Most of the dialogue is a beautifully stylized way of saying nothing. The most human element in the story was Hardin’s loyalty to Sydney, which was a minor side plot. The “guy screwing around with dark magic” was anticlimactic after the game dropped so many hints at complex political conflict. I don’t think they were planning to explain any of that in a sequel, I think that the director and writer were themselves confused, and didn’t quite understand what they wanted to say.
At the same time, I don’t really care, because the stylization was exceptional. In my opinion, the design of the city was, to this day, amazingly moody and impressive. The cinematic direction in the cut scenes was also excellent. In some sense the abandoned city was the only well-developed protagonist in the story, but that was enough to carry the game. Many RPGs involve some kind of ancient artifacts or civilizations in their plots, but few are able to actually create an air of ancient mystery. I think Vagrant Story does that from the very beginning. I have the same attitude toward Xenogears – a lot of the plot is inane, but many individual scenes are brilliantly atmospheric.
There isn’t much to the plot, but what little is there centres around the past and intentions of Ashley and Sydney, and the ending did a good job of tying that up while leaving certain things open. I wasn’t commenting on the plot as a whole, just the ending - wasn’t that what we were discussing?
Very few amongst you will have played Tactics Ogre, but this one sucked: I finished the game after a certain character important to the plot had died (its not random, its an actual plot event) and was crowned king. During my coronation, a knight runs in, calls for my death and shoots me. Tactics Ogre is a long and hard game. That was my first ending. I was shocked to say the least.
KotoR 2 still wins. Has no one played the fucking thing?
I’d prefer to forget KotR2 from begining to end, if you don’t mind. But I will agree: craptacular ending, indeed.
Chrono Cross’s true ending wasn’t anything more than an ambiguously mediocre montage that only references one of the 44+ characters in the game. Seriously, the extra endings offered both more closure and less hoops to jump through.
How did you do to unlock that ending?
I’ve played through Tactics Ogre several times, but it was a while ago, so I can’t remember if I got that ending or not. (Although TO has so many choices for you to make that don’t do anything until half the game later, so maybe that’s a bit of a stupid question.)
I do remember that you will get crowned king if you let Kachua commit suicide, but I don’t remember getting shot, since I played on for a while after that.
In fact, I usually did that every time I went the Lawful route since there are so few (if any) useful Lawful male classes, and by becoming king you become a special class.
Although I would say that that is a very fitting ending, even if not satisfying, since Tactics Ogre has pretty many people hatching different political plots and a lot of of them don’t go well with each other.