7 Video Game Endings Almost Everyone Hates

With hundreds of games released every year, there are bound to be some that have truly atrocious endings. Whether it’s by a poorly paced story, needlessly annoying cliffhanger or just a twist that doesn’t do the rest of the game justice. An ending is a reward for all of the player’s hard work, a chance to see what happens after a truly grueling boss fight or challenging segment. They are meant to not only be rewards for all your hard work but wrap up any loose ends within the story itself.

Then there are some video game endings that seem to forget that their job is to leave us walking away satisfied and not staring at the screen in pure frustration. When looking over the massive library of titles we picked 7 endings that bothered us the most for one reason or another. We judged these not only on their narrative influence over the main story, but how it fits in with the game itself and if the ending is generally satisfying for the player. We realize that not everyone may have the same experiences or even interpretations, but these are 7 endings that really needed to go back to the drawing board.

Borderlands

Starting off on the world of Pandora, this ending had been teased to the player since the very beginning of the game. Every action you make is to reach that sacred and elusive vault, which we could only assume is filled with glorious loot. Borderlands is a game all about gaining better and better gear, so when we finally reached the ending and got to the vault a twist was revealed. This secret vault was not a treasure trove of gear, but a big dumb monster dubbed “The Destroyer” that turned out to be just a huge bullet sponge.

Not to mention you got a pitiful amount of loot for your efforts that hardly felt like a true reward for beating the entire game. It also didn’t help that this boss wasn’t even terribly difficult, as it had easily avoided attacks and a less than challenging move set. Thankfully, we were given entire storerooms of courtesy of General Knox, but it was hardly enough to wash the foul taste out of our mouths from this lame video game ending.

Halo 2

Halo 2 is one of the best first-person shooters of all time, but sadly still has one of the worst video game endings in recent memory. After battling your way not only through The Flood and The Brutes, you are met with a fairly entertaining boss fight against the chieftain Tartarus. Then it decides to not tie up any loose ends, leaves Cortana with The Flood, teases a more interesting story and has Master Chief end it with the phrase “Finishing this fight”.

Essentially this makes the entire story of this video game feel less like a stand-alone tale, but a prologue to the next game. Just because this is the second game in the series doesn’t give it an excuse to basically ignore all of the storylines that it has conjured. Halo 2’s ending is nothing more than a big advertisement and set up for the finale, lacking in any sense of drama or flair that the franchise is known for.

Assassin’s Creed 3

Talk about a terrible ending to cap off one of the worst games in the entire franchise. The present setting for Assassin’s Creed has always been the series weakest link, but the final culmination to the Desmond story was nothing short of disappointing. Once you’ve beaten the game and your merry band of present day assassins have located the final artifact, Desmond is presented with two choices.

Survive the end of the world and help rebuild society (which will obviously repeat the same mistakes) or release an all powerful god who may or may not just kill everyone to begin with. It’s an interesting moral dilemma that could challenge players perception of what the “greater good” really is.

At least it would have been if the game just didn’t decide to make the choice for you, robbing you of any sense of reward or sense of accomplishment. If the game is going to go through the whole trouble of describe and showing the potential outcomes, they better let us pick which one we want. Not to mention, Desmond just up and dies on us, which gives the entire present day story arc a sour conclusion. Seriously, can we just go the simplicity of killing Templars and not weird, cosmetic world ending entities?

RAGE

RAGE was a fantastic post-apocalyptic shooter that put into in a beautifully detailed world full of colorful and interesting characters. The combat was solid and most of the game was leading you to discover some big mystery that had been plaguing the land. Part of us are still waiting for RAGE to show us what that big reveal is, because the ending we got was just lame and poorly displayed. Instead of offering an interesting twist to the post-apocalyptic setting, RAGE goes full on science fiction which is a jarring shift in both tone and genre.

The Order 1886

Was there been any game in recently that has been such a disappointment? The Order 1886 was a beautiful game with little actual gameplay to go along with all that impressive lighting. The story itself was weighed down by poor writing, cliche characters, and an over-reliance on holding the player’s hand through everything. Finally, we get to the actual ending, which decides that a cliffhanger will best serve this title.

Not only did the ending feel like a cop out, but the entire event leading up to it was anticlimactic. Players were forced to fight against a werewolf in another simplistic quick time event segment. You almost have to try to lose these fights, which saps all of the tension out of what should be a really emotional moment.

Mass Effect 3 (Pre-Patch)

Arguably the most notorious case of fans hating a video game’s ending, Mass Effect 3 had an incredibly divisive finish. As a franchise that not only built up the importance of choice but carried all of your decisions throughout all three games, the ending came as a bit of shocker. Originally you were given three options, none of which were based around your previous choices and all of which end up with Shepard dying. While the latter wasn’t as big of a deal, the concept of boiling down hundreds of choices to three basic ones felt shallow. In fact, the ending was received so poorly that BioWare actually had to add a patch to update these endings.

Super Mario 64

Surprised? Okay, okay, this might be a universally hated video game ending, but it’s still pretty bad. Throughout the entire game, Mario is battling out with Bowser and his army, only to culminate in an epic showdown between the classic rivals. Once he has been vanquished, Mario is rewarded for saving Peach how? By a kiss on the nose and the princess walking off to bake a cake like none of these events just took place. Excuse me Princess Peach, but we didn’t need to fight through lava filled levels and battle against terrifyingly giant eels for cake. Maybe next time we will just stay in the sewers.