Best, Worst, and Weirdest Video Game Endings

[whitewhiskey]

Just throwing this out there, what are some of the Best, Worst, Weirdest, Creepiest, and/or Scariest game endings you can think of.

Warning, there are sure to be spoilers

For me, while the THE weirdest, one that certainly ranks up there is the Saku ending of .Hack G.U.

For those who don't know, at the end of G.U., you get an event item, a Promise greeting card that, when sent to a friend with a maxed affection rating, will trigger a special scene. For the guys it's kind of a bonding thing (Mostly, I tell you in a moment), but for the girls, it's an in-game marriage.

There is the exception of Natsume, who Kinda goes batshit crazy (not that she was all that mentally balanced to begin with), and Endrance, who you marry as if he was a girl.

Now while Endrance's ending can be a bit...offputting, the clincher is the Saku Marriage Ending

[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeN3GYc5i3E[/video]

Seems like a little Tsundere getting married. Yeah, she looks young, but why exactly is that creepy beyond needing a Chris Hanson appearance?

Again, for those who don't know, Saku...Is kinda not real. And I don't mean she's a computer program like some of the other characters, Saku is a split personality of the character Bo, hence their character name Sakubo, who is an eleven year old boy with multiple personalities, the other being a mental representation of his stillborn twin sister that formed when their bitch of a mother told him she wished he'd died and his sister lived.

So, in essence, you are having your character marry, even in pretend land, the dead-girl split personality of an eleven year old boy...

I'm not sure there's enough therapy in the world to fix that sort of thing...

(Personally, I liked the Tabby Ending or Pi Ending, gotta like a cat-girl and a babe in glasses)

 

[Contrabardus]

A list like this can't exist without the ending to Portal. One of the best endings ever.

Also, for weirdest, Katamari Damacy the whole game is disturbingly weird, but the ending is just...wow. Also MGS 2 SOL, the first real WTF Kojima moment. Later entries were weird too, but after MGS 2 it was expected.

Worst...um...ME 3. The ending so bad the developers actually had to go back and fix it to keep from being swallowed up and destroyed by hatred and rage.

A special shout out to Chrono Trigger for being all of the above.

 

[whitewhiskey]

Now, shooting for an Old School achievement...

One ending that creeped me out was for the old NES game, Monster Party

So, you've teamed up with an alien/monster/gargoyle warrior and stopped evil from destroying the world, universe, whatever, and what happens?

This...

[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNrEJYnx5VI[/video]

And things start all over again...

Maybe you were on the wrong side of this fight the whole time...

 

[seitora]

The Matrix: Path of Neo

 

[Capito Celcior]

Mass Effect 3. It's been complained about to death, but nearly two years after it's release I still feel a burning hatred for that ending. So that's a nominee for worst ending. There are possibly even worse endings out there, but they belong to games that were bad all around, so the shock value is less. Except those endingsprobbly make more sense using the ingame logic and story than this one.

 

[Fellgrave]

Rise of Legends. It's not the worst, and on the whole I don't mind it, but several things do irritate me to the extreme.

#1. While the hero does 'sacrifice' himself to take down the big bad, it's implied that he not only survived, but that the big bad's call for back-up made it through. The game ends, and there is no sequel. That is my first problem, sequel set-up, and no sequel.

#2 The two romantic interests and their respective sub-plots are tossed to the side pretty much. You even have to make a critical decision between the two of them on starting the final act, but it is effectively meaningless outside of gameplay. They both say the same exact things in the same exact cutscene.

#3. It was too damn short for my tastes. It took me a good four hours to make it through on normal difficulty, and I'm three hours in and two of three acts complete on hard, and that's with aiming for maximum completion. According to the game files, there were supposed to be one if not two additional races, implying that there would have been two more acts, since each act encompassed a single races gameplay.

Still one of my favorite games, and now that it has been bought from the defunct Big Huge games at their auction, I have hopes that it will be revived at some point.

 

[Ordo]

Best: Baldur's Gate 2 - Throne of Bhaal
Runner-up: Mass Effect 2

ToB wraps up the story of the last Bhaal spawn nicely, and provides a satisfactory ending for your character based on your rep and final decision. Also, even though it's just text, you learn the fate of your final companions and LI.

ME 2's golden ending is the most triumphant ending in the ME series. Telling off the Illusive man and seeing that everyone has survived a suicide mission is a highly satisfying conclusion to a great game

Worst: Prince of Persia (2008)
Runner up: Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within

PoP 2008 has the main character do something absolutely stupid that made me hate them after spending an entire game growing to like said character. It just boggled my mind that after everything he'd seen and done the Prince would make a deal with evil.

Warrior Within is a 'Too be continued' ending of the worst kind, and I hate those types of endings

Weirdest: F.E.A.R. 2

Watching the last moments of this game....left me very weirded out and disturbed.

 

[Kibbles]

Alright, let's take a crack at this.

Best: Mass Effect 2. Honestly, there were a lot of game endings I liked, but the ME2 one felt like an actual achievement. It's triumphant and grand when everything works out. It helps that my first time through, I did screw up at a few points and lost people.

Worst: Mass Effect 3. I debated between putting Divine Divinity II here, but I ultimately decided to put it under weirdest because on second thought ... I like that ending (note: I'm talking about Divine Divinity II: Ego Draconis, not the ending of the expansion Flames of Vengeance which is made of awesome). In many ways, the two endings are similar, but Mass Effect 3 fumbles it so badly ... which puts is squarely up here because it's a great game up until the ending.

Weirdest: Divinity II: Ego Draconis, without the expansion. In many ways the ending was a shock. You beat the final boss and ... you lose, instantly. Big bad traps you in stasis, gloats a bit and reveals you've been played for an idiot the entire time. Now you're made him more powerful, removed yourself from the equation and generally screwed up bad. That's what happens when you listen to the voices inside your head without thinking about the possibility that said voice might be lying.

Thing is, the ending ... though not quite telegraphed, works (there are a couple of lines here or there indicating it could happen, but I didn't make the connection). For all that was shocking, it was the shock of coming to understand you were an idiot. It was like Bioshock's most memorable scene, only before I'd played Bioshock. Why were you listening to mission control without question?

So, yeah. No player choice. No victory. Just utter devastation and defeat, making the world a worse place in the process (and possibly dooming it entirely). And it worked, for all that it was shocking, I ... like isn't the right word. Appreciated and approved of it, perhaps.

The expansion's ending is good in a different way, basically continuing from the original's ending and turning it into something awesome.

 

[whitewhiskey]

One of the most satisfying endings ever.

Super Mario Bros.

Yes, it's a simple, short end with just a couple lines from the princess before going back to the title screen, but I thought it was one of the most satisfying because, frankly, it took so damn long. really, after dying countless times, having to restart over and over and fucking over again, you did it, you finally reached the end.

 

[seitora]

One of the most satisfying endings ever.

Super Mario Bros.

Yes, it's a simple, short end with just a couple lines from the princess before going back to the title screen, but I thought it was one of the most satisfying because, frankly, it took so damn long. really, after dying countless times, having to restart over and over and fucking over again, you did it, you finally reached the end.

And then, SMB2a.

'It was all a dream'

 

[Thardoc]

Best ending for me would probably be P4 (golden ending)... The train scene was very bittersweet.

Worst ending.... ME3 at least for me... the game was good but the ending made me want to put my head through a wall...

 

[Watashiwa]

Ordo already said Baldur's Gate 2 Throne of Bhall, so I'll go with my second favorite choice: Planescape Torment's best ending. Having regained your power and memories and your mortality, you take a moment with each of your friends, send them to the place where they wish to go most, and wait for death to take you. Once you wake up in the hell you sold your soul to, you look around, pick up a weapon, and trudge off to your destiny, leaving behind the mark that twisted your destiny.

Adding to the list, Fallout New Vegas, Wild Card or NCR. In Wild Card you've claimed Vegas for your own purposes, good or bad, and Yes Man has (canonically) gone off to upgrade himself to prevent anyone from taking advantage of him again. It's up to your imagination whether you're going to build a paradise or become worse than the Legion, or stay neutral like House. On the NCR path, you've expanded the reach of the best hope the civilization in the states out to a whole new frontier and acquired enough power to continue California's development.

Most SMT games have abrupt endings, but the 8th Day scenarios in Overclocked are very satisfying capstones; I just wish there were more than the three there.

 

[LightningHunter]

Most of the ones I would've mentioned are already here, so here's my choice for weirdest.

Limbo of the Lost.

[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URcvdDtnM_0[/video]
You can thank me later.

 

[Sdebeli]

Hm. Well, most of the game's I'd put up on Good are already up there.
I love the Helios ending of the original Deus Ex. Man joins machine and becomes fitting conclusion of the game's many philosophies.
Weirdest though; E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy.
Worst... hm. I'd have to try at that, since the usual suspects are already taken.

 

[whitewhiskey]

One of the most satisfying endings ever.

Super Mario Bros.

Yes, it's a simple, short end with just a couple lines from the princess before going back to the title screen, but I thought it was one of the most satisfying because, frankly, it took so damn long. really, after dying countless times, having to restart over and over and fucking over again, you did it, you finally reached the end.

And then, SMB2a.

'It was all a dream'

But that's not the real Super Mario Bros. 2...

Although Super Mario Bros. 3 did seem staged...

 

[seitora]

That's why I said SMB2a, not SMB2j.

 

[KurokamiDG]

Okay, well I got a few that's a bit different from the others.

Best: I'd have to say...FF7 Crisis Core just from the fact that it's the only video game that has ever made me cry so much because of its ending. I mean, I knew what was coming for Zack, but...just watching it happen...it was really a tear jerker.
Worst: Metal Gear Solid SoL. Just for the fact that I was extremely confused and weirded out by the whole situation leading up to that and it pissed me off that Olga died.
Weird: Definitely God Hand. 'Nuff said.
But it was a good type of weird though.
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4WVDa78Wgs[/video]

 

[whitewhiskey]

Here's an odd one, the Simpsons Video Game.

You fight Matt Groening and his endless army of Benders and Zoidbergs before building a literal Stairway to Heaven to beat God at DDR, leading to...

[video=youtube]http://youtu.be/0Bg_COcrT6U?t=3m32s[/video]

Yeah, not the weirdest, but kinda funny weird.

 

[Nanya]

You're all wrong.

Weirdest ending, hands down, is Drakenguard.

 

[grant]

You're all wrong.

Weirdest ending, hands down, is Drakenguard.

Really? I've always put that down under Worst.

Weirdest would be Portal 2.

Best.

Depends on what I feel like.
Catherine (Katherine True or Catherine Good) Both heartwarming.
Devil Survivor Overclocked Eighth Day Chaos Good. Did I just summon the Bel's to fight for me? Sometimes even if they can't do match with the images, the nature of what they're showing is impressive enough.