General RPG Lists: Worst Endings

Well, all, you know how it is: it’s been what they call a hot minute since I posted this list rant, and I’ve played enough relevant games since publishing that the time feels right to add onto it, transforming this from a list of 5 to a new list of 10.  A little new, a little old, let’s see what my experience with the crappiest endings in the RPG genre looks like 8 years later.



Never actually intended to do a companion to my Greatest Endings List, but (at the risk of spoiling the below content) Bioware’s works alone more or less necessitate this compilation.

I explored what made a good ending in the other list. But what makes a bad ending, really? Sure, poor writing, stupid ideas, plot holes, these are part of it, but to me, the greatest crime an ending can commit is to disappoint. There are a lot of lousy endings to games out there. The ending to Suikoden 4, for example, is amazingly boring, and provides no particular satisfaction beyond a reassurance that the torment of playing Suikoden 4 is finally over. Yet you won’t see it listed below. Why? Well, it’s not that it’s of better quality than those below, necessarily. It’s that Suikoden 4 is already an insanely boring and unlikable game. You get a lousy ending to a lousy game, you’re not surprised. It’s no worse pain to experience than the rest of the game was until that point.

Sure Final Fantasy 8’s ending makes no goddamn sense at all, but neither did anything else in the game. Its ending is stupid and nonsensical, but not unexpected, so there’s not much reason for disappointment. Sure, Crystareino’s ending is so utterly forgettable that I have, well, utterly forgotten it, but it’s a Kemco game--the entire package makes no single mark upon the player’s sensibilities, not just the ending.  Sure, you can barely call Etrian Odyssey 5’s final events an ending, but then, you can barely call everything that preceded it a story.  Sure, The 7th Saga’s ending boondoggle of time loops/corrections and a cross-species rebirth that was totally unasked for by its recipient is brief, poorly explained, badly conceived, and incredibly frustrating, but, aside from its brevity, that means it’s completely on point with the game as a whole.  It’s when you have a bad ending whose effects are felt upon a game whose quality was better, that the ending truly becomes terrible.

The other major problem I think an ending can have is a lack of closure. Now, I’m not saying that every single detail needs to be wrapped up in a game’s ending. I’m not even necessarily saying most of them have to be. But if you don’t have some feeling of satisfaction, of completeness, after seeing an ending, then that ending has failed utterly. An ending must END a game in at least some significant capacity; it must reflect a closing of the story, or at least, a closing to this part of a story. I don’t necessarily mind an ending that is a transition, such as the ending of Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1. The SMTDDS games are 2 parts of a whole story, and the second picks up where the first left off. But the ending of SMTDDS1 still provides all the closure the gamer needs to enjoy it. Even if it’s not the end of the story (in some ways, it’s just the beginning), it’s still the end of the first major part of the characters’ journey, a turning point in their tale of great significance. It provides closure for how far the characters have come, even as it promises that there will be more trials for them ahead.  If a game has no closure in its ending, then it has no true ending, just a poorly executed stopping point.

Lastly, just as an ending needs to have comparable (or even superior) quality to the product it’s concluding, an ending should also be thematically consistent to everything that’s led to it. You don’t end a standard whimsical Pokemon game with a gritty, blood-soaked gorefest as the Pokemon Champion fights to the violent death against overwhelming odds, for example. A developer should have an ending kept consistent with the ideas, tone, and traits of the product. Otherwise you just get a mess. You’d think this would be patently obvious, but plenty of writers are so obsessed with having their work be edgy, unpredictable, and/or some gross misunderstanding of the word “deep” that they’ll throw such a curveball at the player that said ball loops full circle and winds up hitting them in the ass.

Anyway, that about covers the most major reasons an ending can be bad, at least for me. So let’s see which RPGs have the worst ones, which games trip and fall right at the finish line.

One note: at times, the last part of the game itself is fairly inseparable from the actual ending, so some of these picks may be more a case of the finale being terrible, not strictly just the ending. I doubt the non-distinction really matters to you, but all the same, just gonna state that in advance.

Other note: Spoilers. Duh.

UPDATE 11/17/23: Shin Megami Tensei 5 added; Final Fantasy 7 has been bumped off.  Additionally, Fire Emblem 15 added as Dishonorable Mention; Fallout 3 has been bumped off.



10. Shin Megami Tensei 5

Anyone who thinks that Shin Megami Tensei 5 is a good RPG needs to look into getting a more competent surgeon to handle their lobotomies, but even by this cheap, lazy slop's standards, its stable of endings are pretty shitty.  Nothing about any of its conclusions is any good, as I have detailed previously, but since you expect a shitty, careless game to have a matching ending, what really qualifies SMT5 for this list is the fact that whichever philosophy you chose to stand by, the game spends its final moments making sure that you know either A, You're Stupid, B, You're Wrong, C, Your Efforts Were For Nothing, or D, Any Combination Of The Above.  It's like Atlus wants you to feel like a loser for having played their game, and if you somehow were still feeling good about slogging through SMT5, this was their final resort to make damn sure you regretted the experience.


9. Millennium 5

Oh, yeah, sure, absolutely.  I’ve spent 5 games’ worth of time on this series, gone all in on a quest that fixates itself on the recruitment and participation of its party members, to the goal of a social revolution of upturning class inequality...but yeah, you’re right, Aldorlea Games, completely and totally.  You’re 100% correct that after over 80 hours of my time, being there every step of the way in the herculean effort to form and maintain a team of heroes for the dream of a new and greater society, all I want is a 4.5 minute ending of Marine making an inspirational speech and a little fade-to-black text saying that she succeeded, and everything was good times from then on out.  Not-quite-5-minutes’ payoff for almost 100 hours of my time, that’s the perfect ratio!

No, no, don’t trouble yourself, Millennium 5, I didn’t want to actually SEE the society that this whole goddamn quintology has been about creating for myself.  And don’t concern yourself, Aldorlea Games, because I didn’t expect to get even the slightest idea of what the 12 allies, to whom 90% of the journey was devoted to recruiting and training, wound up doing with their lives after the game’s events--let alone all the other party members who also were major participants in the story.  I mean, I got to know that Marine hooked up with a guy who’s been on screen for about 20 cumulative minutes, what more could I possibly want from the human interest angle?  That’s certainly better than knowing whether her father, whose failing health was the instigating event of this entire adventure, got better or not!

Really, Indinera Falls, don’t worry, I never expected you to put an ending into the conclusion of your game.  That’d just be madness.


8. Deus Ex 4

Hey, SquareEnix!  You think you could maybe deign to use your ending for the purpose of concluding the game, and not just as a fucking ad for the next?  I think I had more closure to the events of Deus Ex 4 before I started playing it!

Just about the only part of DE4’s ending that actually seems more interested in wrapping up the game’s events than being sequel bait is the part that talks about the outcomes of some of the sidequests that you did...and this stupid game can’t even do THAT right, because said outcomes are reported through the Picus News Network, which DE3, 4, and Breach have all gone out of their way to point out is untrustworthy.  So the most closure you can get out of any part of DE4’s ending depends on how well you can read between the lines of a fake news report on some (not all) of the sidequests you completed.  Awesome.


7. Squids Odyssey

There is no ending.  This is an unfinished game marketed and sold as a finished game.

And I don’t mean that it was just the first of a multi-part story, which never got completed because the sequels were never made.  This ain’t Anachronox, or Ash, or Mark Leung: Revenge of the Bitch.  Not every planned multi-part epic can be a successfully completed Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga, The Banner Saga, or Millennium, and I don’t count that against a game whose series never took off past its first step...as long as it’s still a finished game.  The Banner Saga 1 and Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1, for example, ended before their stories were complete, but they were finished works, each reaching a reasonable, organic stopping place in the overall tale to go out on, and await the next game’s continuation.

But Squids Odyssey?  Squids Odyssey isn’t that.  It does not end at a clear, natural stopping place in an overall journey.  There is no moment of transition from this first stage of the adventure to a theoretical second.  There is nothing.  It does not end, it just stops.  This isn’t a fade to black, this is just a succession of moments, 1 moment in which the story is being told, and the next in which it isn’t any more.  I’m not even sure it’s technically accurate to include it in this rant, because to say that Squids Odyssey has 1 of the worst endings in RPG history is still to credit it too highly, to exaggerate that the game possesses something that it simply doesn’t.

Not making the situation any better is the glib, arrogant attitude that the game’s creators, The Game Bakers, seem to have toward the situation.  Besides the fact that they sell the game for $15 without any indication that what you’re purchasing isn’t a complete product--not a huge amount of money, but $15 is still the full price one might expect to pay for a comparable simplistic, shovelware-esque title--their approach to inquiries about the game’s incomplete state leaves maybe just a bit to be desired.  To wit, when asked by myself whether Squids Odyssey would ever be completed, a representative from The Game Bakers responded with, and this is a quote from the actual fucking email,

“What is completed and what is not, that is the question.”

After waxing evasive for a bit on the matter, they concluded the email with a suggestion that maybe if I bummed them a cool $500,000, they might finish the game.  When it comes to customers daring to expect to receive promised goods they’ve paid for, apparently Bethesda isn’t the only developer whose knee-jerk response is, “We’re not planning on doing anything about it.”

So yeah.  An “Incomplete” is different from an “F” only if you actually have the opportunity and intention to turn that incomplete work in, and as it looks like no one at The Game Bakers has any inclination to bother completing what they’re selling as a finished product, the fact that Squids Odyssey’s ending couldn’t make it to the party makes it well worthy of its spot here.


6. Neverwinter Nights 2

You've guided the Kalach-cha through countless dangers on his/her quest, from humble beginnings in a rural swamp town to a crusade against a worlds-threatening being of antiquity. You've seen this protagonist through assaults on evil lichs, assassination attempts by otherworldly cultures, criminal trials by the highest court in the land, adventures both great and small. You've allied and formed friendships with people of many races and walks of life, creating lifelong bonds with many men and women of the greatest integrity and loyalty, and also that drip Qara. You've stood against the King of Shadows, stayed strong and defied the odds and fate itself to defeat him. And so, how does Obsidian decide to end this long, grand adventure? What is the reward for your culminated effort and investment into this story and its characters?

Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies.

Yeah, thankfully Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir actually do continue the protagonist's story, and clear up a lot of the missing details of the main campaign’s ending (otherwise you can bet that this would’ve taken the fifth spot on this list instead), but like I said with FF7 and its shitty knockoff continuations earlier, the fact that secondary media retroactively fixes a problem doesn’t mean that the original work doesn’t stand on its own as flawed to some significant degree.  And taken by itself, Neverwinter Nights 2 has 1 of the laziest, most dissatisfying endings ever conceived. It feels like the writers at Obsidian were angry with you for playing their game to completion.


5. Witch Hunt

I’m concerned that, in terms of ending its creations, Aldorlea Games may be the Bioware of Indie developers (this will make more sense once you see some of the occupants of the lower spots on this list).  I encourage you to read my rant dedicated to how bad Witch Hunt’s ending is, but I’ll try to summarize here.  Brief, disappointing, thematically contrary to the game as a whole, and utterly baffling as a narrative choice, Witch Hunt is what would happen if “But our princess is in another castle!” was actually just the end of the game.  The ending to Witch Hunt appears to be the result of Mr. Indinera Falls’s enjoyment of low-quality horror movie endings and his misunderstanding that they can be just as functionally applied to any other genre, and/or any other medium.  The creator has said emphatically that the ending to Witch Hunt was not a case of his simply wanting to wash his hands of the game and move quickly onto his next project, and I believe him--but the fact is that if that had been the case, the result would likely not have been very different.  Honestly, if I’d gotten as invested in Witch Hunt’s cast and story as much as I did some of the games below, there’s a very real chance it would have placed even further down on this list.

Indinera Falls, if you ever read this, please try to understand and take this to heart: a decent open ending is the careful building of a story's end around a planned and thematically consistent gap in the audience's knowledge.  It is not simply the absence of material.


4. Wild Arms 4

Now how is it, after all that yakking I did earlier about a bad ending needing to disappoint to be truly bad, that Wild Arms 4’s ending can be on this list? Surely if there is any game terrible enough that its ending cannot possibly disappoint, it is Wild Arms 4. Well, you would think that, logically, but WA4 is the worst RPG in existence for a reason, folks--it manages at every turn to confound your expectations and get worse. As unparalleled as its shittiness may be, WA4 still manages to find a curveball to throw at you with its ending to piss you off.

Basically, this ending is not just wretched in the ways you would expect, given the game. It is even wretched by the game’s own wretched standards. Throughout this shithole of a game, the repulsive little irritation that serves as its protagonist has never, not once, shut his yap about how grownups should be more like kids because kids trust each other and work together and grownups only destroy and blah blah blah SHUT UP JUDE JUST SHUT UP. He has reassured his friends time and time again how they will totally be BFFF (Best Friends Forever Forever) and how unbreakable their bonds of friendship are and so on and so forth. They make pacts to always be friends, to meet up together after the game’s events, to help each other always, and on and ON. It’s safe to say that a major theme of this game by the time of the ending has been that if you are friends with someone then you should HOLD THEIR HAND FOREVER AND NEVER LET GO EVER, NOT EVEN IF ONE OF YOU HAS TO GO TO THE BATHROOM, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND GUYS THE GROWNUPS MIGHT GET YOU IN THE LAVATORY AND MAKE YOU EVIL LIKE THEM USING THE DIABOLICAL MIND-CONTROL MAGIC THAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU TURN 21.

So what does Mr. Codependent Friendship is Forever wind up doing in the ending? Why, he becomes a forest ranger, living a life of solitude in which he never sees his friends again.

What.

So...so you’re telling me that the game that would not stop harping on the immeasurable value of positive, lasting human connections of childlike innocence and solidarity from start to finish for 50+ hours...has its theme’s poster child become a fucking HERMIT!? Why...what the...how...but...

The.

This game’s ending is not only crappy from the player’s perspective, but it’s completely inconsistent and totally opposed to every annoying, unexamined value the game has held! Jude’s ending throws his character, his outspoken never-shuts-up character, completely out the window! You literally could not have an ending more opposite to everything the game has been trying, in its terrible and idiotic way, to say. Just...words cannot describe how completely unfathomable this decision by the development team is.

Hell.

Also, I hate the ending of WA4 for the fact that, after having had the game more or less promise to the player that Racquel, the one shining light of great characterization and innovation in the whole game, would live, it kills Racquel off, off-screen, using the same method (her illness) to do so as was explicitly stated would be prevented. Thanks a lot, WA4, and fuck you, too.

Wild Arms 4’s ending: it flips you off with one hand, and flips itself off with the other.


3. Mass Effect 3

Originally, Mass Effect 3 had, no exaggeration, the worst ending I had ever seen or conceived of, in any media form. I wasn’t alone in this belief, not by a long shot, and so Bioware released an addendum DLC package to the ending, altering it somewhat to improve it. You can read all about it in the 2 rants I did about it, but in short, they succeeded in improving it, by a LOT, and addressed each of the biggest problems I had with the ending. It's still unacceptably horrible, of course, one of the most spectacular failures in the history of human storytelling that still to this day makes me ill to think about, make no mistake! But, y'know, a little less than it was before.

I still can't believe this thing's not at the top of the list. What kind of species are we, that I cannot objectively say that the ending to Mass Effect 3 is the worst ever created?

Anyway, as it stands now, ME3’s ending is not the absolute worst I’ve ever seen, but it’s disappointing, stupid, out of place (feels like someone shoving a poor imitation of Isaac Asimov into Star Wars), and makes it impossible to achieve a victory that stays true to the ideals of the series and its protagonist. ME3’s ending basically gives you 4 options:

Destroy: You sacrifice an entire race of life, along with a cherished companion and friend of Shepard (the protagonist). Needless to say, this is unacceptable to anyone who ever played a good guy Shepard, who has, on multiple occasions, spoken out against any mindset that sacrifices innocents for a cause.

Control: Everyone but Shepard lives, but only by taking the action endorsed by the game’s main villain. In addition to making the game’s focus on opposing the villain largely meaningless, this option directly opposes a running theme of the Mass Effect series, which is the danger of finding and using advanced technology that your culture is not ready for yet. Major characters in the series like Legion, ones we’re obviously supposed to take seriously, warn against this. Events in the history of the series, like the shortsighted uplift of the Krogan people, warn against this. Hell, using technology that one’s society has not earned through its own discovery is how the bad guys of the series set their trap against the galaxy’s people to begin with! Sovereign, the main bad guy of ME1, says himself that by leaving ultra-advanced technology behind for people to discover, those people’s technological advancement follows the paths that the bad guys want it to. Sorry to go into too much detail, but I want to make my point clear--as attractively death-free as Control is, it is VERY much against this major theme of the Mass Effect universe.

Synthesis: The option that Bioware obviously likes the best and wants us to pick is quite definitely the worst. It’s morally repulsive (Shepard basically violates every sentient being in the galaxy’s right to bodily self-determination, and it implies that the best way to guarantee peace is to make sure everyone is the same), it completely disregards some important character development (Legion’s Geth and Javik would be philosophically and morally opposed to this, EDI claimed to have felt alive through Shepard’s influence in the game, yet in this ending acts as if it’s a new concept to her, and more), and it’s ridiculous and makes no sense in countless ways. It also doesn’t seem to solve the problem it aims to address, since the conflict of the created rising against their creators can be easily recreated by any of the surviving people in this ending who happen to want to build new machines. It also incorporates a very similar instance of the galaxy's people suddenly gaining access to technologies and knowledge they have not yet earned themselves, so it contains the same violation of series themes that Control did. And lastly, if the Reaper-ized beings regain consciousness, as the ending seems to imply in its cinematics, it’s just creepy and horrible--they live now as twisted, sad, freakish abominations. No thanks.

Refusal: This is the only option that allows Shepard to stay true to himself and that upholds the spirit and themes of the Mass Effect series. Unfortunately...everyone dies in it. Fucking hooray.  See above thoughts on Neverwinter Nights 2.

If there was ever a perfect embodiment of the concept of tripping at the finish line, it’s the finale of Mass Effect 3.


2. Dragon Age 2

Dragon Age 2’s finale is the one that put the thought of a list of Worst Endings in my head to start with. Whether or not you liked DA2 (a lot of people did, a lot of people didn’t), the game’s finale is terrible through and through. And I mean, perfectly. If you want a perfect example of how to make a lousy finale to your story, Dragon Age 2’s conclusion is a great guide. I may find Mass Effect 3’s ending to be far more disappointing and a greater betrayal of its game and audience, but objectively speaking, even I have to admit DA2’s ending is a greater storytelling catastrophe. Describing how bad, how utterly inept it is in detail would be a rant in itself. Which is why I already made a rant about it. Go read that if you want the details.


1. Valkyrie Profile 2

I’ve mentioned this one a couple of times, but man. This is so awful as to almost be inconceivable. Valkyrie Profile 1 is a legendary game, one of the most respected RPGs and arguably the biggest feather, artistically, in SquareEnix’s cap prior to the existence of Nier: Automata. On a system remembered for some truly groundbreaking and legendary RPGs, Valkyrie Profile 1 is one of the Playstation 1’s finest, and its original copies are some of the rarest, most sought-after RPGs out there, right up there with Suikoden 1 and 2, or an original copy of The Legend of Zelda. So, what did SquareEnix do in the long-awaited sequel?

Use the finale to kill off half the cast, including Lenneth, the unforgettable protagonist of the 1st game, and then make it so the original beloved, legendary, monumentally artistic piece of gaming history never happened. The ending of VP2 is slash-and-burn storytelling at its worst, its worst, not just eliminating most of the major cast of this game, but even rewriting the history of the VP world to prevent the possibility of the original game’s events from ever happening. Valkyrie Profile 1 was, from an artistic standpoint, one of the proudest moments of the combined history of SquareEnix, and they didn’t just disrespect it with a poor sequel, like they did with Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy 10--they actually decided to erase it altogether. Even Mass Effect 3’s ending only destroyed the intangibles of the ME series, the themes and spirit of its predecessors. This one does all that and more...this ending is not just a lousy ending to Valkyrie Profile 2, it’s also an active murder of Valkyrie Profile 1.


Dishonorable Mention: Fire Emblem 15

“Only one truth is clear: War will come again, when man grows proud and slothful once more, and its flames will devour one and all, raging until the very earth itself lies scorched and bare of life.  For whatever madness lay in the hearts of gods...a darkness deeper still beats wild in the hearts of man...”

..

...Is...is that...really what you want the last lines of this game to be, Nintendo?  

Seriously...?

Yeah, uh, thanks guys, super cool of you to end a 40 - 60 hour game about bringing peace to the continent and saving humanity from a mad god with the statement that a horrific world-destroying war is inevitable because humanity is actually even worse than the villain of the story.  You do a whole song and dance through the game about how important and better it is for humanity to be in control of its own destiny, take us through all the fanfare of Alm and Celica becoming joint rulers of a new united kingdom intent on leading humanity into a bright, cooperative future of self-reliance, and then you make THIS your parting shot?  It reads like Alm got depressed and left this as his suicide note, for Christ’s sake! 

I'm only sticking this in as a Dishonorable Mention, because up until this final passage, the ending of Fire Emblem 15 is...well, "good" would be a HUGE exaggeration, but I think somewhere in the range of "minimally passable" is at least reasonable, and you wouldn't expect much better of this subpar RPG.  But this IS the final, lasting sentiment that Nintendo imparts before dropping you, so yeah, it at least deserves recognition here.  Thanks, assholes, you really know how to leave your audience with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.



And that’s it.  Is there anything to take from this?  I contend that the answer is yes.  There’s a certain, fundamental wisdom to be gleaned here.  Something important, something with meaning and substance.  A truth of the heart and soul which we can take with us from here on out.  I think The Game Bakers put it best when they said, “When

















* Although, given its upper management as a whole, the removal of most of the current higher-ups from Shinra’s decision-making and overall operations could only be good for the company.  With self-important morons like President Shinra, Palmer, Heideggar, Scarlet, and Rufus in charge, all of them letting a thoroughly ineffectual, unfocused idiot like Hojo run wild with their budget while consistently producing no useful results, it’s a wonder they hadn’t folded well before FF7 even opened.


** And after seeing it, you may wish you had gone on not knowing.