7 Most Disappointing Endings That Weren’t Worth the Effort 

Not exactly. Something she didn't expect happened. Because Desmond doesn't die there. He goes into the simulation, or rather between the simulations, something like that.

If I were trying to escape eternal imprisonment, I wouldn't be above a little bit of lying. I wouldn't even have told him he'd die. Just touch the orb. Everything will be great

Perhaps his death wasn't instant, but the modern-day sections of the franchise becoming entirely pointless did happen in an instant. The instant Desmond hit the floor dead, it turned out.

Maybe she thought he'd be a little resistant to touching the death orb if he knew it'll be agonizing.

@@daviddaugherty2816 That's because Ubisoft wanted to milk the franchise while Patrice Desilets wanted to end it at 3. Desmond was supposed to use what he learned in the animus to take down Abstergo, you know the obvious thing we were building to over the course of the previous 4 games, but Ubisoft wanted it to go on indefinitely, so now we have the modern day story which is just useless baggage more than anything else.

That would be a disappointing reward, not a disappointing ending.

@@kyuubinaruto17 Yes, the disappointing ending of the last Lego Star Wars game was having to play through anything related to Rise Of Skywalker

100% completion rewards are often a bit pointless. Insomniac Spider-Man gives you another costume for you to wear while not playing any more of the game you just 100% completed.

I'd love a list of disappointing 100% rewards.

@@mattyt1961and no custom characters

“Very Thanks!” -Blaster Master

Conglaturation!!! You have completed a great game. And prooved the justice of our culture. Now go and rest our heroes !

Ghost N Goblins where the ending is it telling you that you have to play it a second time to get the actual ending.

"Congraduration. You feel strongeth as are happy ending. Defeat our boss and gain many thank for playing. Again?" - Pretty much every NES ending

Rampage. The end screen says “congratulations”.

glad someone else pointed it out first! if you do all the resident's quests before entering the end game, the final sequence becomes less of a struggle to keep everyone alive, since everyone wants to rely on themselves instead of eating away their problems. if a bugsnax gets close to them, they just knock it away and continue helping, so you could do the ending with no need to panic and no struggle to save everyone. elleeeeen, did you go into the final sequence /without/ doing all the residents' quests?

I think that 7 final missions made easier by doing side quests would be a neat video

"people"

It was a very bold move to make every side quest end with disappointment, but it wound up being the best possible ending.

@@ka-mai Better “grumpuses”. My bad. XD

“There is no iron in the iron used to iron shirts, which is ironically, both ironic and unironic.” -Jeremy Irons

He died??? ​@@SimuLord

@@elizabethmjjones no, but he is dead to us for leaving outside xtra (Just kidding we still love him)

So, were you disappointed or not?

Paradoxical isn't it?

I think that's if you also complete the DLC (which is optional if you want people to live) Edit: the Lizbert + Egg normal I mean

​@@shaden.l.m.9506egg plus lizbert...... Egbert?

​@@shaden.l.m.9506what DLC?

@@bestaround3323 Broken tooth Island? (It was added for free to the game, but it is DLC)) if you don't know about it I'm not giving spoilers

@@bestaround3323 The Isle of Bigsnax. It's another area full of giant Bugsnax.

That is where I checked out. It was obvious that continuing the series because it sells mattered more than anything.

The series died with Desmond. That's the hill I'll die on

After 3 never cared 4bpresent in the games

I think this was a result of listening to the audience that said that they only want to see the assassins in the past and not Desmond. They should never have listened to them

No, no.... Montana is real. It's Wyoming that is fictional. Seriously, have you ever met someone from there? 😂

😅

As a "Montanan", can confirm. I don't exist.

I am unreasonably happy that none of the above comments are from That Guy. (You know the one.)

I think it's because Desmond didn't actually die. Something that Juno didn't plan on happened. Because now he's in the matrix so to speak. If you've played enough of the sequels it's heavily implied that even the modern day people are in a simulation too.

@@RamblyBear Ubisoft is making the AC universe too convoluted. I doubt we'll ever get a real answer as to how Desmond is "in the system" now so to speak. And if we do get one I bet it'll just be confusing.

@@ThwipThwipBoom I wish they focused more on the future stuff and less on the past nonsense.

@@jadedheartsz i feel itd be appropriate to split the franchise into a 'the past' franchise and a 'modern day/near-future' one, but the one id truly like to see is a generation ship based Ass Creed

And I really feel like they shot themselves in the foot, story-wise, by killing off Desmond. The bridging future narrative stopped having any meaning at that point.

​@UrpleSquirrel Hey, they kind of brought things a little bit back to the Renaissance, at least. In that Renaissance artists put deliberate flaws in their work because only God can create perfection. That's the only explanation for AC4's modern-day section that makes sense.

:O You used "nonplussed" correctly, bravo.

It was abrupt because earlier games leaned into the 2012 apocalypse fad, and they had to resolve it before the year ended. At the same time, they were planning more games, so they couldn't break too far from status quo.

​@@jardex2275​​​Ah, the 2012 Apocalypse. I still can't believe people didn't realize it was just the end of the "12th Cycle" in Mayan Timekeeping and time for a new Calender. People like Counting in 12s. 12 months in a year. A dozen items. You'd think it would be 10, but items and things are grouped by 12 because it is divisible by 2,3,4, and 6 so better for Commerce. Its also why 13 is "unlucky", because its one extra than 12 so always is a left over odd". I did read past the first sentence of your comment...it's just "2012" is something I've been laughing about since learning about it in 2002 in 6th grade for this very reason.

hahahaaha, Russian efficiency at it's best! :D

@@marhawkman303 to be fair, he finished the Japanese version, as he was playing on the NES. I'm not sure that the original Electronica-60 version has this problem. If it doesn't, it literally makes the game unwinnable. No matter how hard you try, you lose eventually. Peak defiance.

And then you get mocked by some Karen newscaster in Britain who rightfully gets lambasted for it

@@Cerg1998 haha, the goal was always the high score, and in that regard "beating" the game means maxing the high score.

Yes, but there's a secret new-game plus mode, only accessible by a terrifying gauntlet of hardlock avoidance, weird colours to mess with your concentration, and even an extra endurance run that's practically as long as the entire game you just played up to that point. :V

Everyone want hoping Desmond would keep getting built up and we would wind up getting a modern era one with his skills. It's insane that they didn't capitalize on the players obvious desire.

​@@zragon3kit was the obvious setup. Hell, his outfit is "Altaiir with sneakers." There was pretty clearly a change of direction somewhere along the way.

Ubisoft have never been able to make good decisions.

@@zragon3k yes, they even set up levels where you use techniques you learned from ezio and set up the importance of learning and adapting so he can be a modern day assassin. Assassins creed is still that to me so I refuse to play newer games.

​@@chadmcfly1299to be fair, Black Flag and Odyssey were pretty fun, I haven't played Mirage, but I'm excited for the samurai one.

I think we all really wanted to like it. I still do. But I think what it comes down to for me is that the game makes me feel lonely. Ratonhnhaké:ton lost his whole family and in contrast to AC2 they were replaced by characters that didn't really connect with him. Bro just wanted to to kill Lee and Achilles is like "No, you gotta play through the game first."

I read so much about the ending, I never finished it. Just left Joseph isolated alone on his island (which is a viable option for law enforcement) while the rest of us hung out at 8 Bit Pizza Bar.

Tbh I think its a great ending. I mean sure its sad, but it hits you quite hard.

@@Daniel-kq4bx My pet bear says differently. Also, the ending where you're "going to help rebuild the cult" was truly disgusting while playing the female character he had tied up in his bunker.

Yeah, Fry cry's ending was peak disappointment. What's the point of a game that you can never win? Also playing a female character made the ending absolutely vile.

@@DavidCruickshank The only way to win is to not play.

The end of Star Field should've been the end of the first arc of the game

I've always wanted to make a game like that. It would take a lot of work, and it would be very expensive, but it would be fantastic.

I felt like the NG+ gimmick was just a way to get out of having to create a definitive ending for the game, given how their last 2 Fallout games had extremely crappy endings.

It certainly feels that way. It just doesn't seem meaningful enough to be a feature and not a cop-out. A shame really.

And, depending on your choices, occasionally you'll have to fight a grown up and DEEPLY pissed off Cora lmao

Honestly, that ending isn't even that much harder to get than the Ranni ending or the Madness ending...

@chrismanuel9768 I thought someone would say that and to that I say true but by the time I found put legitimately what to do with limited spoilers it would have been asking me to toss that first run in the garbage and I was too invested by then. But for me even a lil hard is too much work in a massive rpg for the bad or dissatisfaction ending. I get to play most main line big budget titles once these days

​@@TheIMMORTALKAHNHDThat's fair, but look at it this way... if you're listening to the characters, you know the entire time that what you're doing isn't good. They actively oppose you and you have to kill good people to do it. When the ending is "You managed to succeed in the awful thing you've been doing", I guess it's like... congratulations, you successfully ruined everything? I don't mind it is what I'm saying. It's a choice. Definitely not a great one though. Ranni for life.

@chrismanuel9768 agreed. My fav gta is v. I've beaten it several times but not ONCE done the a or b option, lol ( Its not hard either just more work for doomed// lacklister outcome for efforts put in. Yes that ranni line had me all in. No way dug shite head was gonna fool me. Plus from soft known to punish curiosity 🤪

Neptunia 2's conquest ending is... An insane amount of work, and a horrible nightmare. Poor nice girl GeGe (has to?) kill everyone she knows (except IF and Compa), and is left to regret what she's done. Alone. Forever.

whelp good t know demond died for nothing c:

agreed. That was AC's biggest mistake: finishing of what should have been the central villian for the modern day segments in the supplementary material, thus making the modern day segments even more pointless than they already were.

True, although they could make an explanation to unlock the door it requires genetics of the ancient civilization or whatnot. And then said his blood/genetics is too impure for him to open the door with no harm.

@@killertruth186 Makes it even weirder that Desmond's dad didn't do it instead, unless all of the assassin DNA was on his mother's side, which I don't think was the case. It's so painfully obvious that the devs didn't know what to do with Desmond and got cold feet about going with their original plan (there was going to be some REALLY COOL stuff with Desmond being the main protagonist modern-day), so they just tossed in a half-baked plan to kill him off and not have to worry about writing a satisfying ending for him.

OR, call me crazy the 'Demigod' AI whose systems Desmond has experienced hijacking his body is lying. It says solar flares will set off volcanoes and kill near everybody on the planet which sounds screwy. Add in the inconsistencies from the rest of the scene and here is an alternative. Juno is hoping to reprogram humanity to more fit with the original intentions. Juno needs access to other artifacts across the world to accomplish this. Juno detects artifacts frequencies and maybe potential access codes in Desmond from his interaction with Apple of Eden and wants it as quickly as possible. Juno supplies a story of how humanity is threatened by an inaccessible force (the sun) that it knows causes damage (solar flares hurt technology consistently). Juno presents two options to Desmond due to records of lack of choice causes resistance. And either way offering protection or knowledge have him touch the access panel. Killing him as you rip everything out just means he cannot stop you with his access later. then the green field does its intended purpose all over the world as shown in scene. everyone modded won't know to think to stop you. this would kind of make the Templar correct as well? maybe?

To be fair, I think these can be remedied a la well-thought side material, not unlike how Star Wars Legends did with the Prequel Trilogy.

They're definitely disappointing endings. The entire game has a theme of synthetic life being valuable and even good for the universe, and then the game basically pushes you to the weirdest extremes of the various options. I initially chose synthesis when I played the series for the first time recently because that seemed the most on theme and then it turned out it wasn't at all what I was expecting and not satisfying. Destroy and Control were such extremes and didn't feel right. Refuse obviously not a good option. Destroy feels the most canon to me with the update they added for it, but highly disappointing.

So true. I don't remember being disappointed at all in the H2 ending. I took it as a "yes, there will be a Halo 3"

I mean it’s not a terrible ending in context with the third game.

I never owned a console, got into Halo through the books, played CE and 2 on PC, then was like ".......well crap guess I have to save up for a 360 now"

Pains me everyday 😪 it was meant to be Avengers: Endgame before it was cool, but unfortunately...

Significantly better than far cry 5's

Kirby 64 and Kirby Superstar were interesting last boss fights... Superstar's Kirby and Meta Knight's final bosses were out there.

Oh, I saw it coming. the entire game reeked of eldritch evil to me.

Oh, they did the same thing as in Far Cry 4? I didn't know that was a thing!

@@MilanBen10 Far Cry 6 too.

@@MilanBen10 No, in FC4 at least there were different options for the ending if you actually played the game. In 5, it was "the bad guy wins and everyone else dies" or "the bad guy wins and everyone else dies."

At least Far Cry 6 makes it so that the nuclear launch at the end of 5 did not actually happen.

Unless I’m remembering wrong, wasn’t Joseph the one who set off the nukes to begin with? So walking away is basically just letting him win anyways.

reminds me of a video by "rerez", where he was wearing a cook's hat and an apron...

Seems pretty faithful to the movies - except the 1st one. The only difference between the start and the end is a whole lot of dead bad guys and a few good ones

@@armelior4610 Yup, Road Warrior aka Mad Max 2 ends with Max just wandering the desert again, just as he was at the start.

Personally, I'm alright with that ending, since the game is, from my perspective, supposed to drive home the idea that even after everything else that's happened, Max's connection to the Black on Black, one of the last remaining links to his old life, and his desire to cross the Plains of Silence is far stronger than any bonds he made with the people who assisted him. (Actually, just found out google-searching the Plains of Silence because for some reason I misremembered it being called the Long Quiet that the game is non-canon. Makes sense, honestly, but kind of a bummer, because that makes a line I made about the ending being required to avoid plot holes redundant, and I personally think it could fit the character quite nicely, though admittedly I haven't seen any of the movies yet, so I don't actually know if that's true LOL)

Ubisoft Gotta check their strong female protagonist box

@K.C-2049 That's the vast majority of reveals/plot twists in modern media to be honest.

^This. What a bizarre trilogy of games… They probably shoulda ended it after the first one and quit while they were ahead.

@@JohnDoe-uf3ljHonestly. Yeah, it would've been nice if the main gameplay element was introduced earlier than 5 hours in, and the world was more than a really pretty hallway sooner than 50 hours in, but it was beautiful, it was fun, I personally think all 6 characters are some of the best written in the series.... but they invested so much into making Lightning the next Cloud, and had to give her decent gameplay (by.... handing the trilogy over to her sister? okay...)

Yeah, my dad loves the FFXIII games, but they're infinitely ridiculous as far as endings go.

As far at it goes the best ending is still the one 'extra' ending from FF13-2 with Snow and Serah ridding off to next adventure.

Well, apparently what Juno thought would happen.... didn't.

I guess Desmond's consciousness got absorbed into the Matrix somehow or something like that which apparently hurts really bad. Juno just thought the guy was going to die, not get absorbed. So I don't think she was lying, she was just stupid and didn't know how her own tech worked.

We are not the metally ill ones, non-gamers are.

Because gaming is relatively cheap if you have Game Pass/PS+ Extra. Going on vacations or the movies all the time is real expensive.

Old arcade games did that if you played on any difficulty except Hard or 'Normal', "Try Again, on a higher difficulty!"

@@paulct91 Streets of Rage 3 for the Sega Genesis. If you play on easy the game ends two levels early, with the robot clone of the mob boss you're trying to find telling you that "you play this game like a beginner." The insult to injury is that this is purely a North American issue. The games easy setting is the original Japanese versions normal mode, and the game doesn't end early there no matter what difficulty you pick. Bosses were also given way more health, which makes getting the good ending nearly impossible since if you don't defeat the final boss within a certain time limit it sets off bombs around the city, and the boss is one of those that is constantly rapidly moving around and hard to land hits on in the first place.

So, Deponia, unless I'm misremembering?

@@kyuubinaruto17 not to mention the NA/PAL version basically guts the story (as little of it as there is a side scrolling beat em up, there was even less in the NA/PAL version, including some cut animated cutscenes) and did weird 'color swaps' with all the characters outfits, meaning Blaze went from her default red outfit she'd worn since SoR1 to a strange grey colored version of it. This stems from NA/PAL sides of the companies wanting to make sure they got their 'value' from the, at the time, booming rental business since they only got a fraction of money from each rental (keep in mind that the rental companies ALSO had to buy 'rental versions' of the games which usually had more robust plastic for the carts and thus the company charged an arm and a leg for them anyway). You find this with a lot of games from the 8 bit and 16 bit era. The NA/PAL side would have its difficulty massively jacked up purely so people couldn't complete the game in one 3 day rental cycle, whilst the JP version of the game would be easier back they didn't really have a rental market.

​@@michaelandreipalon359Pretty great example of a game with a well written ending that sucks, because turns out this fun game you are playing doesn't have a happy ending for you. But from a character growth perspective it's a great end.

Man I used to play the fuck out of the original Unreal (Unreal Gold, since it came with the expac). I was so upset the first time I played when that one survivor you kept finding logs about ends up dead ):

And then they all get delisted by stupid Epic Games and bloody Fortnite. Apart from Unreal II. Hope that never comes back.

Unreal is by far my favourite FPS of all time. I thought the game ended right where it should, stranded and hoping. People don't usually talk about the expansion... it was quite bad (though not as awful as Unreal II)

Tbf that ending made me think there was a chance for a some sort of sequel

@@johnshade1516 i'm sure that was the plan but Ghosts didn't sell as well as previous entries so it sadly didn't happen, I say that ending was just a bad dream.

Yes, thank you!! The point of the game isn't to get to the ending, really, it's examining how you play the game itself Sure, it can be annoying, but I'll usually only quit if i get bored of the repetitiveness, and it's a good way to learn how to deal with your anger in a fairly controlled setting, and remind you what you're capable of with perseverance :)

Having finished Valhalla, that smacked of desperation to me. They knew they f**ked when Desmond died, and now they're trying to get it back on track after the franchise went rudderless for so long.

48K of RAM doesn't really allow for a sweeping cinematic cutscene, but they should have at least been able to print more than 4 words on the screen....

"the reapers were made as a response to robot racism" Why the fuck isthe subplot about the geth now central to the motives of the main villains? also, HOW DOES THAT TIE INTO THEIR GOD COMPELX AND THE FACT THEY REPRODUCE BY MELTING PEOPLE!?

It's not that strange, given that I think it's also true of 4's similar stunt ending.

​@@Nassifeh and 6. I went straight to Miami the first chance I got.

@@Nassifeh thing is, with FC4 at the very least the endings you have to work toward can still feel at least mildly positive 😅 FC5 is Nuclear Apocalypse or Slightly Delayed Nuclear Apocalypse...

Far Cry 6 also retcons the ending to 5. The DLC to FC4 also had a shitty ending with Ajay becoming a Yeti or something though the devs at least did say that ending was non-canon

@@jadedheartsz I've still yet to play FC6, felt kinda burnt out after all the others, but I'll pick it up some day I'm sure. Out of interest, does it mention the FC5 setting/ending, or is it just because it's not set i a nuclear apocalypse that retcons it?

Agreed. I see a lot of people praise it for "subverting expectations" but it just felt like I wasted my time playing the game.

yeah that ending was fucking dumb.

Oh yeah...D1... the Hero gets turned.... and killed in D2.

Not exactly a disappointing ending. More like demoralizing.

D1 is kind of a weird one. It doesn't have a happy ending but at the same time it ends in a way that you both won and lost. Then again the world of D1 is kind of a harsh and dark world anyway so its a bit to be expected. Good is really a struggle vs evil seem to run rampant...wait am I talking about D1 or real life?

@@knightrider4545 art imitates life. :p

​@@marhawkman303, then Diablo takes over his daughter. The D1 hero just can't catch a break.

I will always defend Halo 2. I don't get people that were surprised it stopped. You do a major boss fight, shut down the ring, and close out the Arbetors story. People seem to not realize that Halo 2 just isn't about Master Chief. I think it's one of the most intense endings there is.

The ending of Halo2 (along with the year long delay and features in the con footage that were completely absent from the game)...that's the exact moment I gave up on playing any future Halo games.

Ya, that ending was made to act like a 3rd game would be milking the series like it's CoD, all it ended up doing was making everyone I know upset. Worst part is the game had good ideas gameplay-wise, ironic for a game that claims sequels are bad.

I do think the Danganronpa V3 ending is shit, but I also didn’t take it as most people have. I took it as like “Yeah the characters are fictional, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter”. They say stuff like “I’ll change reality from within this fiction” and stuff like that. The message I got from it was that fictional characters are important and meaningful even if they are fictional. I like the idea they were trying to go for, but it was executed like shit. Though while I do hate it and chapter 6 of V3 is one of my least favourite chapters in the series, I do like it the most out of all 3 mainline games endings, especially 2. Though that isn’t saying much as all the Danganronpa endings are unfortunately quite bad.

It's Kojima, point that out to his -cult- fans and just watch them claim that it _means_ something but no mere mortal is fit to know.

I went there to visit my sister and it was… beautiful scenery and weird as fuck people. Also they were having their annual Testicle Festival. Weird weird place 😂

@@riveramnell143 I’m from Oregon. My opinion is that Montana isn’t half as pretty as Oregon. If you want weirdos you can visit Portland, Ashland, or Eugene. The rest of the state is normal.

@@Amaranthyne I live in Washington, I’ve been to Oregon. It’s beautiful there! Also I live in a town full of artists and hippies, it’s weirdos everywhere here (I fit right in lol). But the weird people in Montana were the unsettling kind, not the fun kind. I much prefer Washington and Oregon for beautiful and weird.

@K.C-2049 Yes. That sounds about right 😂

@K.C-2049 Having met my grandfather, yup, that checks out.

Did we play the same farcry 5? The brainwashing doomsday drug cult?

Agreed. The disconnect between the daft and fun gameplay and the serious story, including Faith's cutscenes where you learn that she's been groomed and exploited by Joseph, can be quite jarring at times.

Far Cry 6 at least does retcon it. Felt like they were saying something to me.

Playing FarCry 5 was such a different feel, such an ominous and eerie game they created. Not even fallout and i love fallout, has captured the same vibe i get from FC5 but i fuck with it heavily. And yes they definitely are sending some subliminal messages to players whether they were serious or not thats shits not far from the truth.

This is a minor point, because what you brought up is my main take, but also moment to moment story gameplay was awful too. I think I counted five "oops, you're captured!" fakeouts. They're always clunky when there's one, but it kept happening...which I'm sure in the developer end is supposed justification for how you're brainwashed, but purely as an experience was terrible.