I'm not sure if I was in the minority or what, but I liked it better when I thought Final Fantasy 7 ended with:
All the human's being wiped off the face of the earth. Sure it was a downer and completely ruined everything you had worked for the whole game, but it actually made sense within the context of what numerous in game dialogue.
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BerkshireEarth Federal ForcesMassachusettsRegistered Userregular
I find myself liking aspects of a lot of modern game endings, if not in totality. For me, the standout is what I consider to be the best game of the last several years, and that's Mass Effect 2.
Unless you're a TOTAL FailShep, the game ends with a realization that you have only just begun the fight, as befitting the second stage of the trilogy. You may have lost some friends, and you may have done some unsavory things in the course of fighting the Collectors, but the point is that the punishing fight you've just come through has just been a warmup, and that shit is well and truly about to go down.
I think the runner-up is Halo: Reach.
Going into it, you know Noble isn't coming out of that fight. We know from previous experiences what happened to the Spartans and to Reach, and it wasn't pretty. Losing the rest of the team on the way wasn't actually all that impactful, save for Jorge's death because that was exceptionally well-done. Kat was whatever, Jun goes off with Halsey and you don't really find out what happened, Carter and Emile both have Hollywood Badass deaths, which I can appreciate. There's a really nasty fight to get Cortana off the planet, and a sense of urgency broken briefly with an exchange between Six and Halsey, then a final triumphant scene in which the Pillar of Autumn blasts off, the last bit of hope for a human race that is very clearly in peril. Pretty much from the end of Long Night of Solace on, you're aware that Reach is doomed, and the best you can hope to do is delay and evacuate. It adds of a weird sense of realism to a series that is otherwise kind of goofy sometimes, and was well-orchestrated considering the departure of Bungie from the franchise after the product was finished.
Later, I'll come back and trash some endings I didn't like.
"And don't you ever stand for that sort of thing. Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back."
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chiasaur11Never doubt a raccoon.Do you think it's trademarked?Registered Userregular
Oh, as for me?
Fallout 2
Considering how open the rest of the game is, the bit with Arroyo makes no sense.
Sure, if you're a goody-two-shoes who only did things to help the folks back home, yeah. You retire to your peaceful village.
But if you're killing small children for kicks, it doesn't jibe that you'd go back and play nice. Fallout 1 had a borderline perfect ending. This one, not.
I find myself liking aspects of a lot of modern game endings, if not in totality. For me, the standout is what I consider to be the best game of the last several years, and that's Mass Effect 2.
Unless you're a TOTAL FailShep, the game ends with a realization that you have only just begun the fight, as befitting the second stage of the trilogy. You may have lost some friends, and you may have done some unsavory things in the course of fighting the Collectors, but the point is that the punishing fight you've just come through has just been a warmup, and that shit is well and truly about to go down.
There is not enough time in the world for me to detail my problems with Mass Effect 2, or even with the ending alone, but let's just list a few issues:
I'm sorry, my only option is to destroy the base or give it to Cerberus? Really? No third choice?
They're building a human reaper... and it looks like the Terminator with an extra eye... okay? That's their dastardly plan? One extra Reaper to fight? Well boy howdy that's great, just toss Mr. Roboto there onto the pile of the 8,000 other Reapers that threaten the galaxy.
For a suicide mission it's surprisingly easy not to lose anyone. Hell, you go in with about 12 people on the Normandy total and you do just fine. I'm not really sure what the crew was for in the first place.
Of course the only reason the crew is missing is because we all hopped onto the shuttle just long enough for everyone to get kidnapped.
Frankly the entire plot of Mass Effect 2 was pointless. You are like 0% closer to stopping the Reaper invasion at the end of the game. You've gone BACKWARDS if you get Shepard killed in an attempt to... stop something that doesn't appear to be any kind of threat compared to the actual Reaper invasion.
I find myself liking aspects of a lot of modern game endings, if not in totality. For me, the standout is what I consider to be the best game of the last several years, and that's Mass Effect 2.
Unless you're a TOTAL FailShep, the game ends with a realization that you have only just begun the fight, as befitting the second stage of the trilogy. You may have lost some friends, and you may have done some unsavory things in the course of fighting the Collectors, but the point is that the punishing fight you've just come through has just been a warmup, and that shit is well and truly about to go down.
There is not enough time in the world for me to detail my problems with Mass Effect 2, or even with the ending alone, but let's just list a few issues:
I'm sorry, my only option is to destroy the base or give it to Cerberus? Really? No third choice?
They're building a human reaper... and it looks like the Terminator with an extra eye... okay? That's their dastardly plan? One extra Reaper to fight? Well boy howdy that's great, just toss Mr. Roboto there onto the pile of the 8,000 other Reapers that threaten the galaxy.
For a suicide mission it's surprisingly easy not to lose anyone. Hell, you go in with about 12 people on the Normandy total and you do just fine. I'm not really sure what the crew was for in the first place.
Of course the only reason the crew is missing is because we all hopped onto the shuttle just long enough for everyone to get kidnapped.
Frankly the entire plot of Mass Effect 2 was pointless. You are like 0% closer to stopping the Reaper invasion at the end of the game. You've gone BACKWARDS if you get Shepard killed in an attempt to... stop something that doesn't appear to be any kind of threat compared to the actual Reaper invasion.
My responses, in order:
Like what? Keep it for yourself? Just because you've wrecked their science experiment doesn't mean you have a lot of time before the rest of the station swarms you, so either you detonate the station and flee, or you irradiate the area and Cerberus likely swings in to snag it whether you want them to or not. I mean, I like to think outside the box, but I don't think there were exactly a ton of options present unless you wanted to swap "give it to Cerberus" for "Give it to the _______".
There's concept art for the "human reaper" fitting in with a final phase that looks much like the others we see at the end. If I recall correctly we were originally going to fight something less human, and I wouldn't have minded that, but oh well. And considering the raw devastation that was wrought by one Reaper (and apparently the shit kicking that's going to be done in ME3), it's not like adding "just one more" is a small deal either. Numerically it might not be much compared to the rest of the species, but it'd be another avenue of attack, having one suddenly show up from somewhere, perhaps before the rest show up to help clear the way like that slacker Sovereign was supposed to.
It's a game. They had no way of knowing who people would get attached to, so sure, they left it reasonably straightforward to get through with few or no losses (damned exaggerating biotics. "anyone" my ass). That does, however, entail a whole lot of loyalty missions/babysitting (I kid, I enjoyed them). You and I might've ensured every last i was dotted and t was crossed, but I wonder how many people lost someone on their first run through? A good number I bet, from my reading of the forum thread on the game.
The shuttle thing I totally give you. I didn't mind that it happened overall and I was gungho about getting my crew back, but it could've been done in a less ham handed way.
If nothing else, what I find interesting is that all the reasons you hate ME2 are often cited as reasons people love Empire Strikes Back. They're no closer to beating the Empire and in fact lost Han, a fairly major base and the main character suffered a rather major injury (cybernetic prosthesis aside). But what else happened in ME2? You came back from the fucking dead! Pulled a new/another crew together, honed them and took out a baby reaper while handing Cerberus a massive tech jump (if you're crazy and wrong) or blew it the shit up. It wasn't perfect, and I'm not saying that you're opinions are unfounded, I just respectfully disagree, and think it doesn't take much suspension of disbelief to make a 'hole' into something palatable.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I find myself liking aspects of a lot of modern game endings, if not in totality. For me, the standout is what I consider to be the best game of the last several years, and that's Mass Effect 2.
Unless you're a TOTAL FailShep, the game ends with a realization that you have only just begun the fight, as befitting the second stage of the trilogy. You may have lost some friends, and you may have done some unsavory things in the course of fighting the Collectors, but the point is that the punishing fight you've just come through has just been a warmup, and that shit is well and truly about to go down.
There is not enough time in the world for me to detail my problems with Mass Effect 2, or even with the ending alone, but let's just list a few issues:
I'm sorry, my only option is to destroy the base or give it to Cerberus? Really? No third choice?
They're building a human reaper... and it looks like the Terminator with an extra eye... okay? That's their dastardly plan? One extra Reaper to fight? Well boy howdy that's great, just toss Mr. Roboto there onto the pile of the 8,000 other Reapers that threaten the galaxy.
For a suicide mission it's surprisingly easy not to lose anyone. Hell, you go in with about 12 people on the Normandy total and you do just fine. I'm not really sure what the crew was for in the first place.
Of course the only reason the crew is missing is because we all hopped onto the shuttle just long enough for everyone to get kidnapped.
Frankly the entire plot of Mass Effect 2 was pointless. You are like 0% closer to stopping the Reaper invasion at the end of the game. You've gone BACKWARDS if you get Shepard killed in an attempt to... stop something that doesn't appear to be any kind of threat compared to the actual Reaper invasion.
My responses, in order:
Like what? Keep it for yourself? Just because you've wrecked their science experiment doesn't mean you have a lot of time before the rest of the station swarms you, so either you detonate the station and flee, or you irradiate the area and Cerberus likely swings in to snag it whether you want them to or not. I mean, I like to think outside the box, but I don't think there were exactly a ton of options present unless you wanted to swap "give it to Cerberus" for "Give it to the _______".
There's concept art for the "human reaper" fitting in with a final phase that looks much like the others we see at the end. If I recall correctly we were originally going to fight something less human, and I wouldn't have minded that, but oh well. And considering the raw devastation that was wrought by one Reaper (and apparently the shit kicking that's going to be done in ME3), it's not like adding "just one more" is a small deal either. Numerically it might not be much compared to the rest of the species, but it'd be another avenue of attack, having one suddenly show up from somewhere, perhaps before the rest show up to help clear the way like that slacker Sovereign was supposed to.
It's a game. They had no way of knowing who people would get attached to, so sure, they left it reasonably straightforward to get through with few or no losses (damned exaggerating biotics. "anyone" my ass). That does, however, entail a whole lot of loyalty missions/babysitting (I kid, I enjoyed them). You and I might've ensured every last i was dotted and t was crossed, but I wonder how many people lost someone on their first run through? A good number I bet, from my reading of the forum thread on the game.
The shuttle thing I totally give you. I didn't mind that it happened overall and I was gungho about getting my crew back, but it could've been done in a less ham handed way.
If nothing else, what I find interesting is that all the reasons you hate ME2 are often cited as reasons people love Empire Strikes Back. They're no closer to beating the Empire and in fact lost Han, a fairly major base and the main character suffered a rather major injury (cybernetic prosthesis aside). But what else happened in ME2? You came back from the fucking dead! Pulled a new/another crew together, honed them and took out a baby reaper while handing Cerberus a massive tech jump (if you're crazy and wrong) or blew it the shit up. It wasn't perfect, and I'm not saying that you're opinions are unfounded, I just respectfully disagree, and think it doesn't take much suspension of disbelief to make a 'hole' into something palatable.
I don't want to turn this into a Mass Effect thread so I'll just say:
Give it to the Alliance.
The "raw devastation" wrought by one Reaper was the destruction of like 8 ships. The Geth fleet did the rest. Plus this was BEFORE everyone scavenged Sovereign and developed new Collector-proof armor, Thanix cannons, etc. "One more avenue of attack" is a little silly because within 20 seconds of jumping in through the main mass relay the 80,000 strong Reaper fleet is going to split up and be everywhere, including, if they wanted, the Omega Relay, so it's not like having a human Reaper sitting there is some massive coup that will let the Reapers strike from behind.
"Suicide mission" doesn't mean "some people die on the mission," it means "nobody comes back." If losing people counted as a suicide mission, every mission a soldier goes on is a potential suicide mission. In Mass Effect 2, the worst case scenario is that the Normandy gets back fine. Suicide mission my ass!
SHUTTLE DUMB
The difference between Mass Effect 2 and The Empire Strikes Back is that what you did in ME2 was pointless and needlessly constricted by Bioware because that's how they wanted the narrative to go, whereas in The Empire Strikes Back what the Rebels did was fight for their life and just barely survive. ME2 wasn't "fighting for your life and nearly surviving," it was "let's cobble together a bunch of ridiculous contrivances to keep the story going." Why does Shepard need to die and them come back from the dead? I have no idea. Why does Shepard have to work for Cerberus? Because they're the only ones who take the threat seriously? There's no threat! I mean, yes, humans disappearing, but that's small potatoes compared to the 65,000 Reapers waiting in darkspace, and you're no closer to solving that problem at the end of Mass Effect 2. Why does Shepard need to board that Collector ship that's obviously a trap? Well, because Shepard is retarded and doesn't realize it's a trap. That's okay though because the Collectors are also retarded and instead of just blowing up the ship, or blowing up the Normandy, or just JUMPING INTO LIGHTSPEED AND KIDNAPPING SHEPARD or something they let Shepard get away. Then you need to go grab the IFF, because Cerberus is stupid as hell and sent another batch of scientists to get brutally killed, and I guess it's super important that you jump through the relay with the IFF instead of just camping the relay on the exit point and blowing away the Collector ship when it tries to get through.
And that is where I will end my Mass Effect 2 rant, again cut super short because we're not in that thread and this isn't even about the end of the game anymore.
I find myself liking aspects of a lot of modern game endings, if not in totality. For me, the standout is what I consider to be the best game of the last several years, and that's Mass Effect 2.
Unless you're a TOTAL FailShep, the game ends with a realization that you have only just begun the fight, as befitting the second stage of the trilogy. You may have lost some friends, and you may have done some unsavory things in the course of fighting the Collectors, but the point is that the punishing fight you've just come through has just been a warmup, and that shit is well and truly about to go down.
While I loved Mass Effect 2 overall, this is my least favorite part about the game. The first game already established the reapers as the real threat, and in the second game we spend the entire time prepping and fighting for a battle with...their previously unmentioned underlings? Buh? You could cut out the entire second game and, as long as they don't mention the Collectors in the third game, you wouldn't miss a beat. ME2 ends exactly where ME1 did.
Granted, the side stories in there are great, especially the character stuff, but man talk about a lack of forward momentum with the central plot. The ending just drove that home for me and so I really didn't care for it.
Should have ended with John's final shootout at the barn. From a gameplay perspective I understand why it ended with Jack getting revenge; you can't free roam with a dead character. But that would have been a fantastic ending to the game, and one of the best endings to a western ever. Unforgiven's ending struck me because it took everything about the "good guy defeats the bad guy in a shootout" ending, which Eastwood played no small part in cementing into pop culture, and twisted it all around. RDR could have taken that a bit further, but opted for a more traditional ending.
I thought the ending for RDR was just fine.
I agree that just ending at his death would be poignant but a part of the game is John Marston's past catching up with him and what kind of legacy he wants to leave behind.
In three years after his death, Abigail is dead and Jack went from the timid school boy to about as much of a vigilante/bandit as his dad; his abilities even imply he met up with Landon Ricketts to teach him the Dead Eye skills. But John was trying to keep Jack from this life and instead he gets swept up in John's past instead of forging a new future. All that is left for Jack is tracking down Edgar Ross to make him pay for the latter's past--despite him thinking by retiring from the Bureau that he moved beyond his past just like John.
I'm not sure if I was in the minority or what, but I liked it better when I thought Final Fantasy 7 ended with:
All the human's being wiped off the face of the earth. Sure it was a downer and completely ruined everything you had worked for the whole game, but it actually made sense within the context of what numerous in game dialogue.
I can't imagine why anyone would desire an ending that basically sticks the proverbial middle finger at everything you struggled to accomplish for 50+ hours.
That might work for a setting that's already established as hopeless or grimdark, but in something like a Final Fantasy game, I expect at least a satisfying conclusion that doesn't immediately kill everyone off.
That said the idea could have worked with enough proper development, but with the abrupt way the game cuts off like that? That's just trolling.
Also, the way they throw in the last "everyone is okay!" scene also failed in retrospect.
Let's show Red XIII 500 years later based on that one line he says if you randomly talk to him! That's totally a fitting ending that closes the entire game, right?
Edit: Comparatively, I'd like to say that Red Dead Redemption probably has my favorite "abrupt end" ever in a videogame.
The timing of the final scene followed by the credits was just perfect. It totally fit with the setting, tone, and homage to Westerns in general.
It's basically the counterpart to FFVII's abrupt ending.
Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
I prefer that interpretation of the FFVII ending too.
It's not like it comes out of nowhere. There's a big deal about what Holy will actually do. I believe it's even alluded to that humanity being wiped out is a possibility.
At the very least, Midgar is destroyed, and it's not unreasonable to assume most of the population there died.
Is it really all that depressing? At the start of the game, AVALANCHE were risking their own lives to save the planet. The 'grimdark' ending is exactly what they wanted.
Of course, Advent Children and Dirge Of Cerberus tore this idea apart, but hey, what's an expanded canon for if not to undermine fan theories?
I prefer that interpretation of the FFVII ending too.
It's not like it comes out of nowhere. There's a big deal about what Holy will actually do. I believe it's even alluded to that humanity being wiped out is a possibility.
At the very least, Midgar is destroyed, and it's not unreasonable to assume most of the population there died.
Is it really all that depressing? At the start of the game, AVALANCHE were risking their own lives to save the planet. The 'grimdark' ending is exactly what they wanted.
Of course, Advent Children and Dirge Of Cerberus tore this idea apart, but hey, what's an expanded canon for if not to undermine fan theories?
I assume that that's what would have happened if the Planet hadn't intervened. Meteor and Holy both had the same target priority of Sephiroth then Midgar, and when Sephiroth ceased to be a threat and Holy was released, they both immediately shifted to Midgar. Ultimately the summoning of Holy was completely pointless because Sephiroth just sealed it and it otherwise did pretty much the same thing as Meteor, but by dying and becoming part of the Lifestream, Aeris was able to influence it to save humanity from Meteor and Holy.
That might work for a setting that's already established as hopeless or grimdark, but in something like a Final Fantasy game, I expect at least a satisfying conclusion that doesn't immediately kill everyone off.
Sometimes people can't appreciate endings unless they end on a mega-downer. FFVII's ending was fine as it was. You knew enough to make your own interpretation but it wasn't vague enough to be unsatisfying. I'm sure some people disagree, but when you think of what happened when they actually did try to detail what happened after, you get Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus and that's shit I could have done without.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
A game whose ending I'd change; MGS2
I love MGS2. The meme theme has a lot more potential for exploration than MGS1's gene theme.
But man. That ending is a cluster eff.
Firstly, there's the vague threat of Arsenal Gear. We see it go out of control and head towards Manhattan. Now, I know after 9/11 there was a kind of media blackout on any notions of disaster in New York, so maybe avoid showing the Twin Towers, sure. But as it is, we get this really weird leap where one minute it's in the sea, the next it's parked on top of Federal Hall. We can use our imagination, but that had the potential to be one of those iconic scenes of the series.
Next is the big Codec conversation. A long ass summary of what Raiden's role was. I don't have a problem with the huge codec calls. But that was a pace killer, right there, sandwiching it between the action of Arsenal's crash and the final fight. Maybe cut it down, maybe move it, either way - get rid of that.
The worst though! Raiden kills Solidus. The whole point of Raiden was that he was a blank slate getting filled with another personality by force. At this point though, he knows exactly what's up; the simulation is over, and he's finally free to make his own decisions. But Solidus wants him dead; Raiden's blood contains nanomachines that are transmitting to the Patriots. Raiden is Solidus' last chance to get at them, so he has to kill him.
Now, I don't expect Raiden to just roll over and die. He has to fight, but I think it'd have been much better if non-lethal beating Solidus resulted in him not dying at the end. I dunno, it just irks me that after finding out he's been a puppet the whole time, his first free action is to go ahead and do exactly what his masters wanted.
You were sent to kill the Jackal. After doing a lot of black bag work and selling out both sides of a civil war, you were no closer to finding a solution. After getting paid to broker a peace agreement and then steal the payment for the agreement so you and your friend could leave the country, you get knocked out and imprisoned while the diamonds are stolen and your friends are stuck in said shit hole. You knock off the leaders of these armies who are still ready to fight over this country.
The jackal convinces you to make for the border with the civilian population and leave the warlords to fight over the country, contain this violent disease by sealing the border and saving lives. After dropping into this plan, you track your way to the jungle and murder the coalition leadership. After trying to get the diamonds a weapons deal was using to get out of the country, you discovered your friends caught up to you and made their own deal, which you weren't a part of.
This is what I would have changed. After murdering your friends, you walk to a shack and then either walk to a cliff, kill a handful of mooks along the way, then blow yourself up....or walk to the border, kill a handful of mooks along the way, and then kill yourself.
Malaria marked you for death already and it was a real messed up situation you got into, the execution of that final decesion was so painless....I'm running to seal the border between two rival armies and a civilian exodus and all I face is 5 guys? I should have walked into that border patrol in a hail of gunfire or reached the top of that cliff with everything burning (in turn making full use of that fiery graphics engine.
An absurd boss battle in which you defeat Fontaine and save the day. He doesn't die when you complete the battle, but rather is attacked by Little Sisters who drain all of the Adam out of him. The worst part occurs after the fight, where you either...
A. Return to the surface with the little sisters, and live out the rest of your days surrounded by them, ultimately looking up at them all from your death bed.
B. Send all of the splicers to the surface in bathyspheres (???) so they take over the world or something.
Your grotesque transformation into a Big Daddy should have mattered. Knowing you could never be human again, the last level should have involved buying time for Tenenbaum and the Little Sisters to escape to the surface. The final battle should not have required beating Fontaine directly, but should have rather involved you demolishing the structural foundation of Rapture, bringing the city down around you and Fontaine in a final sacrifice (or redemption, should you have harvested the Little Sisters throughout). This ending would have had a more singular conclusion to the game and the story of Rapture, and also would have prevented Bioshock 2 from ever occurring. Win-win.
Ryan built Rapture, and Jack (his genetic son) destroyed it. It's poetic, really.
I also agree that would have been the ideal ending. It also shows how compassion unravels objectivism.
After defeating the force trapping you in an endless cycle of undying torment, you accept your guilt and die so that you can begin to atone for all the suffering you have directly and indirectly caused.
What should have happened:
After defeating the force trapping you in an endless cycle of undying torment, you accept your guilt and die so that you can begin to atone for all the suffering you have directly and indirectly caused. And then you suddenly come back to life. And then you suddenly die again.
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DietarySupplementStill not approved by the FDADublin, OHRegistered Userregular
edited January 2012
DCS: A10
What should have happened:
Meeting up with other flight sim enthusiasts, we load up a co-op game and plan a mission. I climb into the cockpit of the A10 and boy is it a beauty. I FLIP ALL THE SWITCHES and dials and I take off from the runway. I take a steer from a controller and drop ordinance on some enemy tanks. And the gun! I shoot all sorts of vehicles with the gun. Then, sated, we head back to base and execute a perfect landing, all the while whooping and bro-fisting over ventrilo.
I'm not very creative so I can't come up with a better ending, but Borderlands' ending was pretty craptastic.
Surprise! The Vault contains a tentacle monster who you fight in a a very boring (and easy) battle. That corporate chick who's been harassing you? Yeah, she's killed in a cutscene. You never get to fight her.
You beat Space Tentacle monster... and that's it. Nothing really happens.
Anything could have been better. Great game, the ending was just so lackluster.
Should have ended with John's final shootout at the barn. From a gameplay perspective I understand why it ended with Jack getting revenge; you can't free roam with a dead character. But that would have been a fantastic ending to the game, and one of the best endings to a western ever. Unforgiven's ending struck me because it took everything about the "good guy defeats the bad guy in a shootout" ending, which Eastwood played no small part in cementing into pop culture, and twisted it all around. RDR could have taken that a bit further, but opted for a more traditional ending.
I thought the ending for RDR was just fine.
I agree that just ending at his death would be poignant but a part of the game is John Marston's past catching up with him and what kind of legacy he wants to leave behind.
In three years after his death, Abigail is dead and Jack went from the timid school boy to about as much of a vigilante/bandit as his dad; his abilities even imply he met up with Landon Ricketts to teach him the Dead Eye skills. But John was trying to keep Jack from this life and instead he gets swept up in John's past instead of forging a new future. All that is left for Jack is tracking down Edgar Ross to make him pay for the latter's past--despite him thinking by retiring from the Bureau that he moved beyond his past just like John.
I love RDR's ending. Just about perfect. Especially after
Jack kills Ross. There's a very heavy feeling of "What now?" that's just perfect. John was already becoming a relic of an age in its death throes. Jack is completely out of place after he gets his revenge. The only thing that could've added to it would have been more overt signs of progress. A more built up Armadillo, or more cars, or more mention of WWI, or something else noticeable about the setting.
After defeating the force trapping you in an endless cycle of undying torment, you accept your guilt and die so that you can begin to atone for all the suffering you have directly and indirectly caused.
What should have happened:
After defeating the force trapping you in an endless cycle of undying torment, you accept your guilt and die so that you can begin to atone for all the suffering you have directly and indirectly caused. And then you suddenly come back to life. And then you suddenly die again. Then Morte quips about gaining a new taunt.
Going into it, you know Noble isn't coming out of that fight. We know from previous experiences what happened to the Spartans and to Reach, and it wasn't pretty. Losing the rest of the team on the way wasn't actually all that impactful, save for Jorge's death because that was exceptionally well-done. Kat was whatever, Jun goes off with Halsey and you don't really find out what happened, Carter and Emile both have Hollywood Badass deaths...
I thought the way Kat bit it was the best of them all. It was so un-hollywood, just in the wrong place and wrong time then *CRACK* day ruined. And they didn't even get the jackal (I assume) who did it! It was more real and really in keeping with that Nylund book about Reach where spartans are not bulletproof.
In a bizarre 11th hour turn, Gabriel fights Satan of all people, wins, and is left to wander the Earth while his love ascends to heaven. We're then treated to a flash forward where Gabriel is revealed in the second least shocking twist of the game - the first being that the character voiced by Patrick Stewart, named Zobek (I guess it's a little more subtle than Moustachio LeTwirler, but not by much) - turns out to be Dracula. And instead of using that as a jump off point for an interquel, there's two crappy DLCs that show Gabriel going to some kind of dark world, defeating the MOST EVIL SPIRIT EVER by absorbing the power of darkness, and having that transform him into Dracula.
So, wait...
There are two Draculas?
Like Mega Man Legends? Then check out my story, Legends of the Halcyon Era - An Adventure in the World of Mega Man Legends on TMMN and AO3!
In a bizarre 11th hour turn, Gabriel fights Satan of all people, wins, and is left to wander the Earth while his love ascends to heaven. We're then treated to a flash forward where Gabriel is revealed in the second least shocking twist of the game - the first being that the character voiced by Patrick Stewart, named Zobek (I guess it's a little more subtle than Moustachio LeTwirler, but not by much) - turns out to be Dracula. And instead of using that as a jump off point for an interquel, there's two crappy DLCs that show Gabriel going to some kind of dark world, defeating the MOST EVIL SPIRIT EVER by absorbing the power of darkness, and having that transform him into Dracula.
So, wait...
There are two Draculas?
I accidentally cursed god twice so now I am Twodraculas!
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I'm not very creative so I can't come up with a better ending, but Borderlands' ending was pretty craptastic.
Surprise! The Vault contains a tentacle monster who you fight in a a very boring (and easy) battle. That corporate chick who's been harassing you? Yeah, she's killed in a cutscene. You never get to fight her.
You beat Space Tentacle monster... and that's it. Nothing really happens.
Anything could have been better. Great game, the ending was just so lackluster.
Well. Borderlands didn't have much of a story to begin with. One of my main complaints about the game but I mean you couldn't really be surprised that the ending was lackluster when the rest of the narrative was too.
This is what I would have changed. After murdering your friends, you walk to a shack and then either walk to a cliff, kill a handful of mooks along the way, then blow yourself up....or walk to the border, kill a handful of mooks along the way, and then kill yourself.
Malaria marked you for death already and it was a real messed up situation you got into, the execution of that final decesion was so painless....I'm running to seal the border between two rival armies and a civilian exodus and all I face is 5 guys? I should have walked into that border patrol in a hail of gunfire or reached the top of that cliff with everything burning (in turn making full use of that fiery graphics engine).
This ending really could have worked, especially given
how grim the setting was and how disappointing the scale of the actual ending turned out to be. Of course, the idea of sealing the border of a war-torn African hellhole carries its own share of logistical WTF, as the recent history of that continent has shown that human misery doesn't respect national borders, and it's never the offending warlords who bear the brunt of it.
My only issue with your new take: Malaria is by no means a death sentence. Particularly since your character has been receiving antimalarial drugs for much of the game. With modern treatments and an otherwise healthy infected individual, treatment is an outpatient procedure with a near 100% success rate. The real tragedy of Malaria is that most of the people who get it live in such poverty and squalor that basic medial care and sanitation (let alone said "modern treatments") are unheard of.
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MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
In a bizarre 11th hour turn, Gabriel fights Satan of all people, wins, and is left to wander the Earth while his love ascends to heaven. We're then treated to a flash forward where Gabriel is revealed in the second least shocking twist of the game - the first being that the character voiced by Patrick Stewart, named Zobek (I guess it's a little more subtle than Moustachio LeTwirler, but not by much) - turns out to be Dracula. And instead of using that as a jump off point for an interquel, there's two crappy DLCs that show Gabriel going to some kind of dark world, defeating the MOST EVIL SPIRIT EVER by absorbing the power of darkness, and having that transform him into Dracula.
So, wait...
There are two Draculas?
I accidentally cursed god twice so now I am Twodraculas!
Dammit, I need to stop breaking my sentences apart so much. They're like Frankenstein with the way I shoehorn thought fragments left and right.
No,
The twist is that Gabriel is Dracula, and that Zobek betrays him (and Zobek is also Death).
Wouldn't have known from the confusing-ass way I write.
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Deus Ex had so much potential. I bet the team was running out of time. The speed and deftness with which they closed out the title shows that. Personally, I think that it's alright for sequels and prequels to have possible endings that don't necessarily fit with each other. It's lame to think that nothing you did the entire game matters just so that the developers can feel happy that their games fit perfectly together. The fact that there were so many choices in deus ex was what made it so appealing. It's the lack of real choice in the end that crushes your spirits.
Here's how I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution should have ended:
If Adam saved Malik then after he stops the transmission he gives her a call for evacuation. Malik picks him and Sarif up while the rest of the folks are evacuated normally. While Adam is debriefing with Sarif about Megan Reed Pritchard phones in that Megan has gone missing from her safe house. Adam goes back, looks for traces of her and quickly finds his way to Bob Paige's lair. Adam finds out what he is planning and decides he has to take him out. After ending Bob Paige he meets Megan for the second time. She starts trying to make excuses, he just gives her a haymaker and drags her out of the building before demolishing it.
I'm not very creative so I can't come up with a better ending, but Borderlands' ending was pretty craptastic.
Surprise! The Vault contains a tentacle monster who you fight in a a very boring (and easy) battle. That corporate chick who's been harassing you? Yeah, she's killed in a cutscene. You never get to fight her.
You beat Space Tentacle monster... and that's it. Nothing really happens.
Anything could have been better. Great game, the ending was just so lackluster.
Well. Borderlands didn't have much of a story to begin with. One of my main complaints about the game but I mean you couldn't really be surprised that the ending was lackluster when the rest of the narrative was too.
Borderlands is one of my most favorite games and I agree with you both entirely. The narrative was the worst point of the entire game and the "backstories" for the player characters only existed in the manual. Thankfully we got some degree of closure with the Knox DLC, which did provide a pretty good ending for Borderlands.
On retrospect, it is amazing how funny the game managed to be in both dialogue and action (not to mention the Claptrap videos) without a decent narrative.
There seems to be a major problem with developers not bothering (or not allocating resources) to finish games. For many games the most impressive bit is the opening and the most shoddy bit is the ending. Possibly three reasons for this:
1) People making games in a linear fashion and running out of time (unlikely, if not: PLANNING).
2) Reviewers won't often see the end so it's much better to polish the opening. (cynical, but probable)
3) Players often don't finish games. If the completion rate is 10%, why put a lot of effort into something 90% of people won't see.
I think it's likely a mix of 2 & 3. The problem with 3 is that it's a vicious circle. If your games end badly then people won't bother finishing them.
Deus Ex had so much potential. I bet the team was running out of time. The speed and deftness with which they closed out the title shows that. Personally, I think that it's alright for sequels and prequels to have possible endings that don't necessarily fit with each other. It's lame to think that nothing you did the entire game matters just so that the developers can feel happy that their games fit perfectly together. The fact that there were so many choices in deus ex was what made it so appealing. It's the lack of real choice in the end that crushes your spirits.
Here's how I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution should have ended:
If Adam saved Malik then after he stops the transmission he gives her a call for evacuation. Malik picks him and Sarif up while the rest of the folks are evacuated normally. While Adam is debriefing with Sarif about Megan Reed Pritchard phones in that Megan has gone missing from her safe house. Adam goes back, looks for traces of her and quickly finds his way to Bob Paige's lair. Adam finds out what he is planning and decides he has to take him out. After ending Bob Paige he meets Megan for the second time. She starts trying to make excuses, he just gives her a haymaker and drags her out of the building before demolishing it.
DX:HR really dropped the ball on both:
1) Making you care about Megan as anything other than a plot device.
2) Actually doing anything with that half of the story (which is weird, because it seems like they want it to be what Adam is focused on).
The irony is that a bit more work on 1&2 above would have let them give the game a satisfying ending that didn't mess with the canon. Adam seems like he'd be happy to get his personal life sorted first and foremost (the Bioshock "Good" ending did a decent job at this). Putting that spin on the story would even add depth to DX1 by showing how "inhuman" JC is by comparison.
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darklite_xI'm not an r-tard...Registered Userregular
I'm not very creative so I can't come up with a better ending, but Borderlands' ending was pretty craptastic.
Surprise! The Vault contains a tentacle monster who you fight in a a very boring (and easy) battle. That corporate chick who's been harassing you? Yeah, she's killed in a cutscene. You never get to fight her.
You beat Space Tentacle monster... and that's it. Nothing really happens.
Anything could have been better. Great game, the ending was just so lackluster.
Well. Borderlands didn't have much of a story to begin with. One of my main complaints about the game but I mean you couldn't really be surprised that the ending was lackluster when the rest of the narrative was too.
Borderlands is one of my most favorite games and I agree with you both entirely. The narrative was the worst point of the entire game and the "backstories" for the player characters only existed in the manual. Thankfully we got some degree of closure with the Knox DLC, which did provide a pretty good ending for Borderlands.
On retrospect, it is amazing how funny the game managed to be in both dialogue and action (not to mention the Claptrap videos) without a decent narrative.
The final battle was really crap, and there's no one that would disagree as far as I'm aware. That said, I thought the narrative was pretty decent. I really enjoyed the beginning when you're doing all of the Fyrestone/Sledge missions. The middle section where you do the Mad Mel missions and the New Haven missions lagged a lot, but once you got to Old Haven w/ the lance and then Baron Flynt I thought it picked back up again, made the game feel like something big was going to happen.
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This is what I would have changed. After murdering your friends, you walk to a shack and then either walk to a cliff, kill a handful of mooks along the way, then blow yourself up....or walk to the border, kill a handful of mooks along the way, and then kill yourself.
Malaria marked you for death already and it was a real messed up situation you got into, the execution of that final decesion was so painless....I'm running to seal the border between two rival armies and a civilian exodus and all I face is 5 guys? I should have walked into that border patrol in a hail of gunfire or reached the top of that cliff with everything burning (in turn making full use of that fiery graphics engine).
This ending really could have worked, especially given
how grim the setting was and how disappointing the scale of the actual ending turned out to be. Of course, the idea of sealing the border of a war-torn African hellhole carries its own share of logistical WTF, as the recent history of that continent has shown that human misery doesn't respect national borders, and it's never the offending warlords who bear the brunt of it.
My only issue with your new take: Malaria is by no means a death sentence. Particularly since your character has been receiving antimalarial drugs for much of the game. With modern treatments and an otherwise healthy infected individual, treatment is an outpatient procedure with a near 100% success rate. The real tragedy of Malaria is that most of the people who get it live in such poverty and squalor that basic medial care and sanitation (let alone said "modern treatments") are unheard of.
Now this I found believable because it came from a guy who had been there for years, had the lay of the land, and could do such a thing and get the result he wanted. Its just that the enemy behavior in the lead up to that was just plain dull and had no noticeable difference from the rest of the game. At the very least, after I made the choice, I needed the option A or B to have had a lot more people than were present.
Deus Ex had so much potential. I bet the team was running out of time. The speed and deftness with which they closed out the title shows that. Personally, I think that it's alright for sequels and prequels to have possible endings that don't necessarily fit with each other. It's lame to think that nothing you did the entire game matters just so that the developers can feel happy that their games fit perfectly together. The fact that there were so many choices in deus ex was what made it so appealing. It's the lack of real choice in the end that crushes your spirits.
Here's how I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution should have ended:
If Adam saved Malik then after he stops the transmission he gives her a call for evacuation. Malik picks him and Sarif up while the rest of the folks are evacuated normally. While Adam is debriefing with Sarif about Megan Reed Pritchard phones in that Megan has gone missing from her safe house. Adam goes back, looks for traces of her and quickly finds his way to Bob Paige's lair. Adam finds out what he is planning and decides he has to take him out. After ending Bob Paige he meets Megan for the second time. She starts trying to make excuses, he just gives her a haymaker and drags her out of the building before demolishing it.
Deus Ex: HR needed a helluva lot of help turning into something decent.
I feel it's necessary to point out how it ended:
Regardless of game choices or what ending you choose, the whole mess is brought about because of this one guy who is super-smart and effectively creates augmentation, then turns out to be some petulant, utterly childish asshole who basically wants to screw everybody over because he's allergic to what he has created. This is soon after you spent hours tracking down Adam's lost ex and find out she's actually kind of an uncaring bitch and it wasn't worth finding her anyway.
Regardless of anything else, I felt that entire setup was a mortal blow to the story. Page was at least an epic asshole and it was a delight to destroy him; he had a vast, global plan reaching across decades. The "conspiracy" in HR is basically just a selfish prick being a selfish prick and the world suffers for it. He's not a villain, he's a minor annoyance with too much money and free time.
Making an effective ending out of that mess would've required rewriting basically the entire story almost from the very beginning; I doubt just tacking something onto the end could've redeemed it. At the very least
Megan should've turned out to be somebody worth saving and actually cared that she'd been saved and the "bad guy" should've, I don't know, been removed from the story completely or something. Cripes, having Adam's dead dog come back as the villain would've at least been entertaining and no more stupid than a self-centered rich old man with one arm and one leg out for revenge because life just isn't fair.
For the most parts it was a pretty satisfactory conclusion but it still left 3 massive gapping plot holes. 1. What were the locust 2. Why did their queen look and speak like a human and 3. What was the deal with that lab in Gears 2?
I guess a better ending would be one where they actually answer those questions. And before anyone says "oh it's explained in one of comics or books" the vast majority of players will never read the extended universe so when you start up a franchise primarily as a video game you should deal with the main plot points in the actual bloody games
I like it too! It just does the same thing all the PSX-era games did: go all Belushi on the crazyjuice midway through disc 3 and leave you wondering what the hell happened. If the end of the story had a little more continuity to it (and if the whole rinoa/ultimecia thing actually had been the big reveal) I think it would be considered one of the best of the series.
I'm not all the way through human revolution yet so I don't really wanna open spoilers; I agree that the plot in this one seems kind of 'small,' but I don't really think that's bad for a prequel. It should spend a lot of it's narrative time setting the stage for the second two games, and it does that.
Also I really like sneaking around knifing dudes
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
After defeating the force trapping you in an endless cycle of undying torment, you accept your guilt and die so that you can begin to atone for all the suffering you have directly and indirectly caused.
What should have happened:
After defeating the force trapping you in an endless cycle of undying torment, you accept your guilt and die so that you can begin to atone for all the suffering you have directly and indirectly caused. And then you suddenly come back to life. And then you suddenly die again. Then Morte quips about gaining a new taunt.
ftfy
My favorite part about Planescape Torment is that it doesn't try to do that. It just says, yep, the end, story over.
I'm sure in modern day there would be 5 DLCs that extend the story and let you play past the ending. Then the game get a sequel that shares only the title. It's so refreshing for the story to actually end and be complete.
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I think the runner-up is Halo: Reach.
Later, I'll come back and trash some endings I didn't like.
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Fallout 2
Sure, if you're a goody-two-shoes who only did things to help the folks back home, yeah. You retire to your peaceful village.
But if you're killing small children for kicks, it doesn't jibe that you'd go back and play nice. Fallout 1 had a borderline perfect ending. This one, not.
Also, the Enclave's plan was remarkably stupid.
Why I fear the ocean.
They're building a human reaper... and it looks like the Terminator with an extra eye... okay? That's their dastardly plan? One extra Reaper to fight? Well boy howdy that's great, just toss Mr. Roboto there onto the pile of the 8,000 other Reapers that threaten the galaxy.
For a suicide mission it's surprisingly easy not to lose anyone. Hell, you go in with about 12 people on the Normandy total and you do just fine. I'm not really sure what the crew was for in the first place.
Of course the only reason the crew is missing is because we all hopped onto the shuttle just long enough for everyone to get kidnapped.
Frankly the entire plot of Mass Effect 2 was pointless. You are like 0% closer to stopping the Reaper invasion at the end of the game. You've gone BACKWARDS if you get Shepard killed in an attempt to... stop something that doesn't appear to be any kind of threat compared to the actual Reaper invasion.
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My responses, in order:
There's concept art for the "human reaper" fitting in with a final phase that looks much like the others we see at the end. If I recall correctly we were originally going to fight something less human, and I wouldn't have minded that, but oh well. And considering the raw devastation that was wrought by one Reaper (and apparently the shit kicking that's going to be done in ME3), it's not like adding "just one more" is a small deal either. Numerically it might not be much compared to the rest of the species, but it'd be another avenue of attack, having one suddenly show up from somewhere, perhaps before the rest show up to help clear the way like that slacker Sovereign was supposed to.
It's a game. They had no way of knowing who people would get attached to, so sure, they left it reasonably straightforward to get through with few or no losses (damned exaggerating biotics. "anyone" my ass). That does, however, entail a whole lot of loyalty missions/babysitting (I kid, I enjoyed them). You and I might've ensured every last i was dotted and t was crossed, but I wonder how many people lost someone on their first run through? A good number I bet, from my reading of the forum thread on the game.
The shuttle thing I totally give you. I didn't mind that it happened overall and I was gungho about getting my crew back, but it could've been done in a less ham handed way.
If nothing else, what I find interesting is that all the reasons you hate ME2 are often cited as reasons people love Empire Strikes Back. They're no closer to beating the Empire and in fact lost Han, a fairly major base and the main character suffered a rather major injury (cybernetic prosthesis aside). But what else happened in ME2? You came back from the fucking dead! Pulled a new/another crew together, honed them and took out a baby reaper while handing Cerberus a massive tech jump (if you're crazy and wrong) or blew it the shit up. It wasn't perfect, and I'm not saying that you're opinions are unfounded, I just respectfully disagree, and think it doesn't take much suspension of disbelief to make a 'hole' into something palatable.
Mass Effect stuff in spoiler:
The "raw devastation" wrought by one Reaper was the destruction of like 8 ships. The Geth fleet did the rest. Plus this was BEFORE everyone scavenged Sovereign and developed new Collector-proof armor, Thanix cannons, etc. "One more avenue of attack" is a little silly because within 20 seconds of jumping in through the main mass relay the 80,000 strong Reaper fleet is going to split up and be everywhere, including, if they wanted, the Omega Relay, so it's not like having a human Reaper sitting there is some massive coup that will let the Reapers strike from behind.
"Suicide mission" doesn't mean "some people die on the mission," it means "nobody comes back." If losing people counted as a suicide mission, every mission a soldier goes on is a potential suicide mission. In Mass Effect 2, the worst case scenario is that the Normandy gets back fine. Suicide mission my ass!
SHUTTLE DUMB
The difference between Mass Effect 2 and The Empire Strikes Back is that what you did in ME2 was pointless and needlessly constricted by Bioware because that's how they wanted the narrative to go, whereas in The Empire Strikes Back what the Rebels did was fight for their life and just barely survive. ME2 wasn't "fighting for your life and nearly surviving," it was "let's cobble together a bunch of ridiculous contrivances to keep the story going." Why does Shepard need to die and them come back from the dead? I have no idea. Why does Shepard have to work for Cerberus? Because they're the only ones who take the threat seriously? There's no threat! I mean, yes, humans disappearing, but that's small potatoes compared to the 65,000 Reapers waiting in darkspace, and you're no closer to solving that problem at the end of Mass Effect 2. Why does Shepard need to board that Collector ship that's obviously a trap? Well, because Shepard is retarded and doesn't realize it's a trap. That's okay though because the Collectors are also retarded and instead of just blowing up the ship, or blowing up the Normandy, or just JUMPING INTO LIGHTSPEED AND KIDNAPPING SHEPARD or something they let Shepard get away. Then you need to go grab the IFF, because Cerberus is stupid as hell and sent another batch of scientists to get brutally killed, and I guess it's super important that you jump through the relay with the IFF instead of just camping the relay on the exit point and blowing away the Collector ship when it tries to get through.
And that is where I will end my Mass Effect 2 rant, again cut super short because we're not in that thread and this isn't even about the end of the game anymore.
Granted, the side stories in there are great, especially the character stuff, but man talk about a lack of forward momentum with the central plot. The ending just drove that home for me and so I really didn't care for it.
I thought the ending for RDR was just fine.
In three years after his death, Abigail is dead and Jack went from the timid school boy to about as much of a vigilante/bandit as his dad; his abilities even imply he met up with Landon Ricketts to teach him the Dead Eye skills. But John was trying to keep Jack from this life and instead he gets swept up in John's past instead of forging a new future. All that is left for Jack is tracking down Edgar Ross to make him pay for the latter's past--despite him thinking by retiring from the Bureau that he moved beyond his past just like John.
I can't imagine why anyone would desire an ending that basically sticks the proverbial middle finger at everything you struggled to accomplish for 50+ hours.
That might work for a setting that's already established as hopeless or grimdark, but in something like a Final Fantasy game, I expect at least a satisfying conclusion that doesn't immediately kill everyone off.
That said the idea could have worked with enough proper development, but with the abrupt way the game cuts off like that? That's just trolling.
Also, the way they throw in the last "everyone is okay!" scene also failed in retrospect.
Edit: Comparatively, I'd like to say that Red Dead Redemption probably has my favorite "abrupt end" ever in a videogame.
The timing of the final scene followed by the credits was just perfect. It totally fit with the setting, tone, and homage to Westerns in general.
It's basically the counterpart to FFVII's abrupt ending.
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At the very least, Midgar is destroyed, and it's not unreasonable to assume most of the population there died.
Is it really all that depressing? At the start of the game, AVALANCHE were risking their own lives to save the planet. The 'grimdark' ending is exactly what they wanted.
Of course, Advent Children and Dirge Of Cerberus tore this idea apart, but hey, what's an expanded canon for if not to undermine fan theories?
Sometimes people can't appreciate endings unless they end on a mega-downer. FFVII's ending was fine as it was. You knew enough to make your own interpretation but it wasn't vague enough to be unsatisfying. I'm sure some people disagree, but when you think of what happened when they actually did try to detail what happened after, you get Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus and that's shit I could have done without.
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But man. That ending is a cluster eff.
Firstly, there's the vague threat of Arsenal Gear. We see it go out of control and head towards Manhattan. Now, I know after 9/11 there was a kind of media blackout on any notions of disaster in New York, so maybe avoid showing the Twin Towers, sure. But as it is, we get this really weird leap where one minute it's in the sea, the next it's parked on top of Federal Hall. We can use our imagination, but that had the potential to be one of those iconic scenes of the series.
Next is the big Codec conversation. A long ass summary of what Raiden's role was. I don't have a problem with the huge codec calls. But that was a pace killer, right there, sandwiching it between the action of Arsenal's crash and the final fight. Maybe cut it down, maybe move it, either way - get rid of that.
The worst though! Raiden kills Solidus. The whole point of Raiden was that he was a blank slate getting filled with another personality by force. At this point though, he knows exactly what's up; the simulation is over, and he's finally free to make his own decisions. But Solidus wants him dead; Raiden's blood contains nanomachines that are transmitting to the Patriots. Raiden is Solidus' last chance to get at them, so he has to kill him.
Now, I don't expect Raiden to just roll over and die. He has to fight, but I think it'd have been much better if non-lethal beating Solidus resulted in him not dying at the end. I dunno, it just irks me that after finding out he's been a puppet the whole time, his first free action is to go ahead and do exactly what his masters wanted.
The jackal convinces you to make for the border with the civilian population and leave the warlords to fight over the country, contain this violent disease by sealing the border and saving lives. After dropping into this plan, you track your way to the jungle and murder the coalition leadership. After trying to get the diamonds a weapons deal was using to get out of the country, you discovered your friends caught up to you and made their own deal, which you weren't a part of.
This is what I would have changed. After murdering your friends, you walk to a shack and then either walk to a cliff, kill a handful of mooks along the way, then blow yourself up....or walk to the border, kill a handful of mooks along the way, and then kill yourself.
Malaria marked you for death already and it was a real messed up situation you got into, the execution of that final decesion was so painless....I'm running to seal the border between two rival armies and a civilian exodus and all I face is 5 guys? I should have walked into that border patrol in a hail of gunfire or reached the top of that cliff with everything burning (in turn making full use of that fiery graphics engine.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
I also agree that would have been the ideal ending. It also shows how compassion unravels objectivism.
What actually happened:
What should have happened:
What should have happened:
What actually happened:
You beat Space Tentacle monster... and that's it. Nothing really happens.
Anything could have been better. Great game, the ending was just so lackluster.
I love RDR's ending. Just about perfect. Especially after
I kid though, that game is crazy and i wouldn't take that away from it.
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I thought the way Kat bit it was the best of them all. It was so un-hollywood, just in the wrong place and wrong time then *CRACK* day ruined. And they didn't even get the jackal (I assume) who did it! It was more real and really in keeping with that Nylund book about Reach where spartans are not bulletproof.
So, wait...
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Well. Borderlands didn't have much of a story to begin with. One of my main complaints about the game but I mean you couldn't really be surprised that the ending was lackluster when the rest of the narrative was too.
This ending really could have worked, especially given
My only issue with your new take: Malaria is by no means a death sentence. Particularly since your character has been receiving antimalarial drugs for much of the game. With modern treatments and an otherwise healthy infected individual, treatment is an outpatient procedure with a near 100% success rate. The real tragedy of Malaria is that most of the people who get it live in such poverty and squalor that basic medial care and sanitation (let alone said "modern treatments") are unheard of.
Dammit, I need to stop breaking my sentences apart so much. They're like Frankenstein with the way I shoehorn thought fragments left and right.
No,
Wouldn't have known from the confusing-ass way I write.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Here's how I think Deus Ex: Human Revolution should have ended:
Borderlands is one of my most favorite games and I agree with you both entirely. The narrative was the worst point of the entire game and the "backstories" for the player characters only existed in the manual. Thankfully we got some degree of closure with the Knox DLC, which did provide a pretty good ending for Borderlands.
On retrospect, it is amazing how funny the game managed to be in both dialogue and action (not to mention the Claptrap videos) without a decent narrative.
1) People making games in a linear fashion and running out of time (unlikely, if not: PLANNING).
2) Reviewers won't often see the end so it's much better to polish the opening. (cynical, but probable)
3) Players often don't finish games. If the completion rate is 10%, why put a lot of effort into something 90% of people won't see.
I think it's likely a mix of 2 & 3. The problem with 3 is that it's a vicious circle. If your games end badly then people won't bother finishing them.
I loved the plot of FF8, personally.
DX:HR really dropped the ball on both:
2) Actually doing anything with that half of the story (which is weird, because it seems like they want it to be what Adam is focused on).
The irony is that a bit more work on 1&2 above would have let them give the game a satisfying ending that didn't mess with the canon. Adam seems like he'd be happy to get his personal life sorted first and foremost (the Bioshock "Good" ending did a decent job at this). Putting that spin on the story would even add depth to DX1 by showing how "inhuman" JC is by comparison.
The final battle was really crap, and there's no one that would disagree as far as I'm aware. That said, I thought the narrative was pretty decent. I really enjoyed the beginning when you're doing all of the Fyrestone/Sledge missions. The middle section where you do the Mad Mel missions and the New Haven missions lagged a lot, but once you got to Old Haven w/ the lance and then Baron Flynt I thought it picked back up again, made the game feel like something big was going to happen.
Now this I found believable because it came from a guy who had been there for years, had the lay of the land, and could do such a thing and get the result he wanted. Its just that the enemy behavior in the lead up to that was just plain dull and had no noticeable difference from the rest of the game. At the very least, after I made the choice, I needed the option A or B to have had a lot more people than were present.
Still loved it.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Deus Ex: HR needed a helluva lot of help turning into something decent.
I feel it's necessary to point out how it ended:
Making an effective ending out of that mess would've required rewriting basically the entire story almost from the very beginning; I doubt just tacking something onto the end could've redeemed it. At the very least
Drakengard's E ending gets a pass because it goes directly into NieR, which has the BEST ending in the history of video games.
Nothing has been nearly as emotionally impactful than playing NieR and getting endings A, B and D - in that order.
I guess a better ending would be one where they actually answer those questions. And before anyone says "oh it's explained in one of comics or books" the vast majority of players will never read the extended universe so when you start up a franchise primarily as a video game you should deal with the main plot points in the actual bloody games
XBL, Steam & Tribes: elmartino333
I like it too! It just does the same thing all the PSX-era games did: go all Belushi on the crazyjuice midway through disc 3 and leave you wondering what the hell happened. If the end of the story had a little more continuity to it (and if the whole rinoa/ultimecia thing actually had been the big reveal) I think it would be considered one of the best of the series.
I'm not all the way through human revolution yet so I don't really wanna open spoilers; I agree that the plot in this one seems kind of 'small,' but I don't really think that's bad for a prequel. It should spend a lot of it's narrative time setting the stage for the second two games, and it does that.
Also I really like sneaking around knifing dudes
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
My favorite part about Planescape Torment is that it doesn't try to do that. It just says, yep, the end, story over.
I'm sure in modern day there would be 5 DLCs that extend the story and let you play past the ending. Then the game get a sequel that shares only the title. It's so refreshing for the story to actually end and be complete.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget