Some games are hard to put down, their gameplay loop and story pulling you in immediately. And sometimes, you just don’t want that feeling to end. Every mission feels like it is building towards a beautiful climax. Everything so far has been incredible, but this ending feels like it’s going to put a pretty little bow on it to wrap up this adventure.
But then it ends. All of a sudden you’re looking at the credits when it seems like there was so much more to come. Sometimes, this is an effective tool to keep you on the edge of your seat, begging for more. Others, and ending falls flat, either cut short by development or just unsure of what it was doing. And these are some of the most notable.
Each Fable game is dramatically different from the one that came before it, even if they all share the same world and, at times, characters too. The Fable series is also well known for spurious claims that never quite come to fruition, with Fable 3 promising a game of halves. Half reclaiming your throne, half ruling from it.
Except that split is not quite even. Once you become ruler, you are given a time limit to build up the kingdom’s treasury to survive the coming storm. Except when it finally the deadline, you fight this great evil in a typical boss fight, and then it’s all over. The time skips by in large chunks, passing in what feels like a matter of hours. Not quite the triumphant end to such a long journey.
Spawning a rather large series of games, Sniper Ghost Warrior has alwayslived in the shadow of Sniper Elite, which focuses squarely on real-world historical conflicts. The original Sniper: Ghost Warrior takes place in the modern day in a fictional Latin American country after the government there is toppled in a coup d’état.
For such a typical story, the game has a decidedly sudden ending. No big fanfare, nor greater message. After all of this journey, seeing the conflict from various different angles, the game ends with a single bullet. You boot into the final mission, aim your rifle from exactly where you start, and pull the trigger. Once your bullet lands, you are hit with a simple black screen that reads ‘The End’. Game over.
The Dragon Age series has had a rough run, with none of its four major entries ever quite having a steady development. All of them feel dramatically different, though Dragon Age 2 tends to be remembered the most for just how much of a style jump it was from Origins. It had plenty of good ideas, though never quite the time to implement them.
However, it also had a hilariously rushed ending. You spend the whole game choosing your side, Mages or Templars, only for you to ultimately have to fight them both anyway and leave Kirkwall. And that final act? A grand total of four main quests, and the game immediately ends after the final boss.
LA Noire is game like few others. Touted as having incredible motion capture tech on its faces, it ended up feeling incredibly overacted to a comedic degree. But on top of that, the game was just incredibly incohesive. Character motivations were all over the place, and the plot was almost non-existent.
That made the sudden shift to a more linear story structure with a brand-new character all the more jarring. Phelps is suddenly killed in a dramatic sacrifice, the plot becomes extremely focused on missing morphine and a larger plot of corruption that game only lightly touched on beforehand, and then it’s over after it suddenly wraps up all its loose ends without ever fleshing them out.
While Rage may be better remembered now for its more consistent, colourful sequel, Rage 2, the original had a grittier Mad Max aesthetic. But while it had enjoyable gunplay and an interesting setting, what really made it memorable was its story. Or lack thereof by the end.
The earth has been ravaged by an asteroid collision, and after awakening from an Ark designed to help humanity survive, Nicholas Raine sees a world ruled by bandits and The Authority, who helped make the Arks in the first place. Hoping to end their rule, Raine plans to awaken the other Arks to build an army to take down the Authority. And what happens after you finally awaken the arks? The game ends, and the sequel never says what happens here either. It ended before answering its own plot.
The original story of Halo wasclearly always built as a trilogy, and every entry in a trilogy is subject to its own challenges. After an incredible start with Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2 had to carry that torch forward into an independent story of its own while leaving enough story for Halo 3 to cap off. And it did a fairly commendable job.
However, the story ends just where it felt like it was about to begin. You return to Earth, ready to fight off the Covenant invasion. And despite so much marketing focusing on the assault on Earth, the game ends instead, with you ready to finish the fight. In a few more years, anyway.
If you wish you could see more of Halo 2’s version of Earth, the E3 demo was actually officially released on the Steam workshop for its 20th anniversary.
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Dragon’s Dogma is an incredible game, feeling quite different even from its own sequel. And for all of the amazing content within it, it is also famously a game that had to cut quite a bit of its planned ideas to meet its deadline. And that is never more evident than than when you reach the ending.
You spent the game in fear of the Salvation Cult. You sought to reclaim your heart. Then, it is revealed that the world you dwell in is controlled by the Seneschal in service of some greater force. You defeat the Seneschal and don the title yourself, until you ultimately decide to pass on, leaving the world to its own devices. And after spending tens of hours to get there, everything after this twist can be seen within about 2 hours before coming to an abrupt end.
While the series has long strayed from it, Assassin’s Creed used to be renowned for the manner in which it handled its story. The original Assassin’s creed was repetitive, but by design. Every day, you woke up, completed a memory sequence and went back to sleep, day after day. And when you finally reach the ending, it is obscenely anti-climatic.
After discovering the Piece of Eden in Altair’s memories, Abstergo cuts the memory short, their own goal now achieved. They leave the room, locking Desmond behind. All you can do is stare at the all in your room for a series of bloody riddles, and then the credits roll. You’re just a test subject kept in the dark. You don’t get to have a conclusion.
Sekiro was a big shift for FromSoftware, moving away fromthe Souls formula that had defined the studiofor a decade. Its deflection mechanic was a roaring sucess, and the more focused, directly-told story was surprisingly well done since it wass such a departure from its previous method of storytelling.
What makes the ending of Sekiro so fun is that it is actually a very well-paced game, and you will only get this premature ending if you’re not paying attention. Sekiro is all about defying what you are told, and supporting Kuro ending immortality. So when your father demands you take it for him instead, you really should say no. If you say yes, you get a unique boss fight, but also a premature end to the game that you can’t just reload to fix.
Perhaps the most infamous example of an unfinished ending, Metal Gear Solid 5 is a long game. By all means the story it told overall was completed, and it was intended to plug some of the gaps in between other games. That’s what makes the fact that it introduces new things, does not resolve them, and opens up even more questions.
Even better, the game actually has two final missions. One is brand-new, functioning as the conclusion to Quiet’s story. The other is the prologue, but this time with a new cutscene at the end. The game does not deign to tell you which is the actual final mission, and it is very possible you will finish the game without actually realising you’ve even complete it.
