Rampant Coyote said,

Nope. I mean, maybe your character was out of inventory slots or something, and it was all he / she could think of at the time…

Noumenon said,

I’d like someone to change the ending of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for Nintendo so it comes before that hall with all the robot troopers so I could actually get to it.

Melissa said,

I’m also grateful to the Rampant Coyote for letting me watch him play the ending of Diablo I so I didn’t have to do it myself. It was so idiotic I even wondered if something had been left on the cutting room floor that made it make sense.

Ruber Eaglenest said,

I love the Diablo ending. Was amazing at the time and now. Feels ok in the fiction, feels ok for the fans (Diablo 2 is possible), and feels ok for the money (Blizzard got for this franchise).

Xian said,

I may have mentioned it here before, but the worst ending in my opinion was the PC version of Eye of the Beholder. A one line congratulatory message and it drops to DOS. It would have required another floppy and they figured most people never would get to the end anyway, so they left it out to save on costs. The Amiga version that came later had a proper ending.

Davzz said,

Yeah, Diablo 1 ending was supposed to be a deconstruction of the dungeon crawling genre.

Diablo needed a better host body than a weakly kid. What better way to do that than to create a huge dungeon filled with enemies and all those loot and goodies to make the adventurers powerful? I mean, if the adventurers had just sat in the tavern ordering ale and wenches all days, this ending would totally be reversed.

It just doesn’t come across very well storytelling wise that by the time you pick up the crystal, your character doesn’t really have any free will any more. Canonically all 3 classes became corrupted and different characters which you kill in Diablo 2.

Anon said,

FUCKIN’ SPOILERS AHOI! DON’T READ IF YOU ARE CONCERNED!

About “bad endings” in mainstream games:
That’s what you get if you hire second-rate script authors or none at all! 😉

About “twist endings” like in Diablo:
Somebody really creamed his pants over this at Blizzard and Blizzard fans are of course too happy about it.
But there *is* a problem with it: The whole game the gem is disregarded, only Diablo himself is seen as the enemy.
Then in the end sequence the player character takes the gem and – without hesitation – rams it into his/her forehead.
If they had at least added some struggle/fighting against it or gave the stone a voice to tempt the player to do it. Something like that – instead of the cheesy music.
I knew the end for years but had I actually finished the game back then I would have been very disappointed, to say the least.

About players craving for dramatic, realistic endings:
Read carefully: These games are all about fantasy, every single one of them. Simply adding a dramatic ending doesn’t change anything!
The ending in ME3 where one destroys an entire class of beings is pure and utter fantasy, too. This fits the game, but don’t tell me the ending is “realistic” as life is sooo hard.
You may like the ending because it makes Cmdr. Shepard shine a bit more (like a knight or samurai that sacrifices himself if the need is there) but this isn’t realistic, it’s wishful thinking, too.
Compared to this the movie Armageddon is excellence in storytelling (not even mentioning the far better Deep Impact which is leagues above it).

About players wanting a “V8” ending:
That’s equally unrealistic – but as games *are* unrealistic they have at least the charm to leave most of the players in good mood. If the game sucks in the first place nobody will remember the ending anyway as either nobody will see it or nobody will remember it. They will only remember it to be a bad game.

One should also consider this: A bad ending (for the title character) makes the audience THINK more about it and not forget the entertainment piece as quickly (especially popcorn movies).
One should have a good reason for a bad ending, though, like an actual “message” (greed is not good, nuclear energy is harmful, masturbation shouldn’t be overexercised).
Simply killing off the title character betrays the player and everything he fought for.

I remember a Half-Life mod where you practically had to replay the game: Survive in an underground complex against loads of enemies. Then, when you actually leave the complex you were surrounded by an Army troop that shoots you without hesitation and no chance of survival.
This was one of the few times in my gaming life I was downright PISSED.

So what do we need to make a player swallow a tragic end?

There are indeed two major ingredients to make a good tragic ending:
a) What LWR said: The player must be in control to some extent. Simply giving him three options where his character dies is not interaction. It’s idiotic.
Killing him off without warning is utter nonsens, too.

b) The ending must make sense.
Remember the final God of War (part 3)? Without going into details: There is exactly one ending where the player character dies in the end. And guess what: Nobody really complained. No public outcry. Nothing. A Greek tragedy is a Greek tragedy, after all. With tits for adolescents. 😉

c) Players expect closure to some degree.
This depends on what game we have: Is it a linear story-based game with a definitive end point or is it more of a sandbox game with an integrated story?

The linear game can’t do without an end and here is where it is easier to install a tragic end because you can streamline everything to it. The player usually also has more limited options compared to sandbox games.

The first Deus Ex for example offered three endings – but you could “comfortably” select between them in the final mission, depending on what you did.
This was nothing more than a gag, though, as the end sequence and text was different and the sequel didn’t expand on this. Add to this that it didn’t matter what you did in the plenty missions before the final one.

Now, for sandbox games players demand that they can continue to play infinitely. This is both their right (it’s a sandbox game, after all) but harder to implement as a story.

Let’s compare two recent sandbox games: Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption

Skyrim:
We have a classic single-player first-person fantasy CRPG, based to large extent on something that looks like nordic mythology, where 90% of your enemies are already dead or reanimated (the others are mostly generic wolves, trolls and bandits).
In the course of the main storyline you die and go to some sort of Valhalla, meet up with some dead NPCs and fight the big boss enemy. Nothing out of the ordinary but you get pretty colors in the sky and some nice music.

But this couldn’t really be how the game ends as Skyrim still has so much content, couldn’t it? I demand to play on! And also Bethesda wants to sell me some DLC, right?

So, after your glorious three minute fight you are being sent back to life, with your pals at Valhalla waiting for you when you are finally dead, some day (which you will never see again, even if you are getting killed by a troll. The only afterlife you will see is the main menu of the game).

You can then continue to play and the inhabitants of Skyrim won’t even know or notice that you saved all their lives. And even though the big boss dragon that revived all those other dragons is dead now other dragons are still popping up around you…

Read Dead Redemption:
A third-person action-adventure in a western setting.

I don’t know about you but I’m wary of anything with “Redemption” in the title. Usually this telegraphs the ending in advance and this game is no different.

The rough plot: You, after having worked as a bandit in your former, “pre-game” life, are now a “bounty hunter”, forced by the government to hunt down your former colleagues.
Apart from dealing with your former gang members it’s basically up to you how you play this one out – and in fact you can be completely legal about it, doing countless jobs without going on rampages, killing only in self-defense etc.
The end is always the same though: Your nemesis stands before you and let you eat some major lead. No way around it. But at least you saved your wife and kid.

But it’s a sandbox game! How can I die and play on?

Simple: Now the game skips several years and you are suddenly the barely adult son and your first (and last) story mission is to kill the nemesis, which of course is no major problem. The problem is that even though this happens in a duel you are now an outlaw yourself. Something that your father (your first and main character) wanted to avoid. Your future is uncertain but you can continue to play in this game world, use DLCs etc.

Lots of gamers were actually applauding on the internet about this one. Their argument is mostly that RDR is “like a spaghetti western” and most of these were as relentless with their heroes.
I’ll dispute this as I have seen loads of spaghetti westerns and in most of them the title character not only lives but usually reaches his goals, because HE is relentless.
Other things do characterize a spaghetti western:
The bleak world these stories happen in (usually filmed in a part of Spain that looks like a desert), the “dirty” hero (usually staying dirty) who tricks the even dirtier enemies in the end (remember the machine gun in Django or the metal plate in A Fistful of Dollars?). The hero in spaghetti westerns also never has a family in the first place. He either always was single or lost his family because of the war or murder.

In the classic American westerns – until Sam Peckinpah went amok with his triumphant Wild Bunch in the mid sixties – the hero usually lived in the end, wasn’t broken but healed, often got the gal (or the horse) and rode into the sunset.

While RDR doesn’t really mimic a western genre – it is perhaps close to what movie buffs call “a late western”.
Under the influence of the Vietnam war, the peace movement and people losing their beliefs in corporations and the government artists began to revolt against the system, too. Shortly after right winger John Wayne was making “The Green Berets” Ralph Nelson directed “Soldier Blue”, which translates the My Lai massacre into a Cheyenne village where the cavalry slaughters hundreds of innocent indian women and children. The “hero” of the story is nothing more than a spectator who witnesses what has become of his world and belief system. He lives but everything else just turned into blood and shit.

So is the RDR ending really that dramatic? Simple answer: Nope.
In the end the player character saves his whole family (shining knight) and gets shot (last stand and martyrdom). This is of course to make the player hate your enemies even more. It’s nothing else than an emotion trigger as the game isn’t finished, yet.
The game then skips three years to your young adult son as your rescued wife gets no added screen time (she lays buried next to you – didn’t get much out of the rescue, didn’t she?) and you then can avenge your father’s death to continue playing, with the exact same inventory and even your current horse (at least it survived!).

Here’s how RDR should have ended:

You reach your farm too late, your wife is shot before your eyes and your ranch burned down with your son still in it. You are wounded and captured to get hanged but some of the friends you made in the course of the game rescue you.
After your recovery you launch a final attack on the bad guy HQ with no intentions of survival. You bring down the whole house, murdering everything in sight except perhaps the hapless cook. In the final standoff the boss enemy will make it clear to you that even if you kill him and survive (which you will) your life will be over.

This is no V8-ending either, leaves no questions open and you can continue to play – as a totally broken character with no future (=no family) and nothing except values to cling on (and to get a 100% rating in the game).

Silent said,

The only endings I would change are cliffhangers that lead to non-existant sequels. Such as “Manhunter : San Francisco”, “XIII” or “Undying”. I’m not easily annoyed by endings. Okay, “Kotor 2” was special, I would have changed the last six hours – but I feel such cases are involuntary, so they hardly count (and “Stalker 2″‘s last extremely linear moments also felt artificially rushed).

I don’t know what the fuss around “Mass Effect 3” really is, as I try to avoid spoilers, but I’m already furious at the idea that I might not be able to see its intended ending because of the taste of whiny players. I think that one category of endings I would change are the retconned ones (and yes, “Portal” is an exemple), but I’m not even sure that changing them back to what they were count as changing them.

Vatina said,

Hmm, I’d pick Wing Commander Prophecy as well, for the exact same reasons as you. That was such a let down…

Completely forgot about the Diablo one though. Will have to watch that video later to freshen it up, the discussion about it here is interesting.

lempar said,

Wait, there were people, stupid enough to NOT GET the ending of Diablo ? *facepalm*