The ending is the most important element of any story. This applies not only to books and films, but also to video games. The ending sums up the results, reveals secrets and gives the final answer whether the game turned out to be worthy or not. Moreover, the ending can be not only good or bad, but also shocking. Most often, it is the last option that leaves the player with the most vivid and complex feelings: resentment, sadness, anxiety, and sometimes real rage. In this material we have collected the most evil, bloody and truly bad endings that caused us the same mixed emotions. Beware, spoilers!
The creation of MachineGames itself was cruel and bloody. The studio managed to resurrect from the ashes a dead franchise that spawned the entire FPS genre in the early nineties. The ending of Wolfenstein: The New Order was truly shocking and frightening. BJ Blaskowitz finds himself in the lair of an evil genius who experimented on innocent people. The last creation of the Nazi scientist was a giant robot into which the brain of the protagonist's deceased comrade was implanted. The protagonist needs to destroy the cyborg and deal with the main villain once and for all.
The ending of The New Order is damn dark. Right up to the credits, the developers manage to keep the player in suspense, and the ending causes an explosion of emotions. Unfortunately, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus ends much weaker, but the developers clearly have a few trump cards up their sleeve for the last game in the trilogy. All that remains is to wait for her.
The horror game from the French Cyanide Studio came out as an extremely controversial game. It mixes great RPG makings straight out of the tabletop versions of Arkham Horror and Call of Cthulhu, the stunning atmosphere of Howard Lovecraft, and, of course, an intricate story with multiple endings. But in fact, it was an absolutely linear walking simulator, in which it didn't matter which dialogue lines to choose or what to do in a given situation. The ending, as in Mass Effect 3, was chosen by the player himself directly in the last act of the story. But the endings in Call of Cthulhu are difficult to divide between good and bad. No matter what end the gamer comes to, he will still be in for an unpleasant surprise.
The most memorable outcome will be available if you call Cthulhu into our world. The planet will plunge into darkness, and all living things will drown in endless horror, as demonstrated by the post-credits scene. Call of Cthulhu: The Official Video Game is worth going through solely for the story, which has room for intrigue, investigation and head-scratching troubles, for which Lovecraft is loved.
The main project of Telltale Games, thanks to which the studio rose to a new level and became the main producer of interactive series in the industry. The first season was a real emotional ride. The players themselves, participating in the development of the story, got used to the heroes more than to the characters of television series. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the writers wrote a truly cruel and dark ending.
The dying Lee leaves little Clementine in a world filled with zombies and maddened people, completely alone. A tragic outcome that already brings tears to my eyes. But we still need to decide the fate of the protagonist and choose one of two actions that will change the child's life forever.
The authors of the first season left the Telltale Games studio, which is why the sequel came out much weaker in terms of storytelling. But we will definitely never forget the story of Lee and Clementine.
After the extremely unsuccessful second Far Cry, the third game revived the series and made the franchise one of the flagships of Ubisoft. The cheerful gameplay here is cleverly combined with a fascinating plot, and the user has two endings available: traditionally good and bad. And the latter turns out to be the apotheosis of madness and cruelty that haunted the main character throughout the adventure.
The main character will have to kill his friends in order to finally get rid of his past life and receive a «deserved» reward. But the game doesn't end there. Cruelty must be paid with cruelty, and the protagonist gets what he fought for throughout the game — death. The hard ending is the climax of Far Cry 3, which gives more satisfaction than an unpleasant aftertaste. Sometimes bad endings aren't so bad.
Outlast itself is a very tough and dark thing. Journalist Miles Upshur makes his way through the creepy rooms of a mental hospital full of dangerous madmen. Violence and cruelty accompany him throughout the game. Having gone through all the circles of hell, the player finds himself in a giant laboratory where experiments are carried out on human consciousness, and learns the whole truth about what happened in the clinic. But the game doesn't end there. We need to destroy the main project of the laboratory — Wallrider, a creature that does not have a bodily shell, but has powerful psychokinetic abilities.
Having dealt with the main boss, our tired and wounded hero tries to get out of the cursed place, but his way is blocked by the military, who do not need witnesses. They shoot the journalist, releasing the Wallrider, who managed to inhabit Miles' body. A cruel ending to a cruel game. But if the developers had ended Outlast with a happy ending, it would have destroyed all the emotional baggage in the bud, which is unforgivable for a good horror game.
The Hotline Miami dilogy is entirely dedicated to ultra-violence. The main characters do nothing but kill opponents in the most sophisticated ways. The first part received a positive ending, which cannot be said about the sequel, which came out very controversial. The reason for this was the gameplay concept of its predecessor that was killed in the bud. But what the second part could surprise was the plot. Throughout the game, we observe events from the perspective of several heroes, which is why the overall picture emerges only at the end of the story.
In the last mission, the son of the head of the Russian mafia, in a drug frenzy, takes up a weapon and goes to shred all living things. Having killed both his enemies and his subordinates, he jumps from the roof and falls to his death. But the game doesn't end there. The developers wanted to put an end to the story of Hotline Miami, so as not to return to it in the future, so in the epilogue the USSR drops atomic bombs on Miami and Hawaii, where the main actions of the game took place. The main characters, of course, die from explosions, like all living things around. The ambiguous ending of Hotline Miami 2 caused a lot of angry reviews against the developers. But what's the point of judging the creators if they managed to achieve the main goal: to anger the players and get an emotional return from them?
Red Dead Redemption has perhaps the most dramatic ending of any Rockstar Games game. John Marston, having overcome dozens of difficult trials, returns home to his family to become a simple farmer. It would seem that the cruelty and shooting are long gone, but the American government does not want to leave the protagonist alone and invades his private property. He realizes that his wife and son will not survive the skirmish, so he helps them escape from the farm and enters into open confrontation with dozens of enemies. The latter are pressed by numbers, and the main character dies.
Many years later, Marston's son takes revenge for his murdered father. He finds the culprit and kills him, which is why he becomes an outlaw. The cycle of revenge ends, and the protagonist's son proves that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Unfortunately, the epilogue is unable to smooth out the emotions from the bitter ending.
Psychological horror in the cyberpunk universe from the authors of Layers of Fear asks the player philosophical questions. What is consciousness? What is the soul? Is it possible to separate it from the physical shell? Will the copy of consciousness remain the same person? All these questions will have to be answered by the player himself at the end of the story Observer. Adam, the son of the main character, created a digital copy of his consciousness to protect himself from the persecution of an evil corporation. But the copy acquired an independent consciousness and thought completely differently from the original. Adam realized that he had made a mistake and tried to destroy the duplicate, but it was faster and killed its creator.
The main character, having found his dead son, meets with a digital copy. She asks the protagonist for refuge in his head. The player needs to decide for himself whether this is the same Adam that was in life, and give him a chance — or recognize the digital consciousness as a copy, and try to destroy it, as the original Adam wanted to do. There are no good or bad choices at Observer. The ending of the game depends on the player's personal preferences. And whatever choice we make, its dark consequences will be on our conscience.
The story of a cycle of revenge received rave reviews from critics and mixed reviews from players. There are many factors to blame, including Joel's death. In addition, in the second half of the plot we gain control of Abby, at whose hands the main character of the first The Last of Us died. According to the authors, during the passage we should radically change our opinion about the characters and become emotionally imbued with the story — and the author of this text personally became imbued with it. Thanks to this, the ending of The Last of Us: Part 2 gives such unforgettable experiences and impressions.
As the game progresses, we take sides one way or another. In the final battle, one of the heroines begins to beat to death and drown the other, and the player cannot influence what is happening in any way — he can only watch. This approach is common for cinema, but not for game projects. The developers give us the opportunity to get into the skin of the character, worry about him, control him. And then they set a goal: go and kill your hero! And you have to do this, because there is no other way to finish the game.
The final scene of Half-Life 2: Episode Two is perhaps the biggest mockery of gamers in the entire history of the industry. Over the course of three games, we were prepared for a decisive battle with the invaders of the Earth. And then comes the grim ending, in which the rebel leader is captured by the villains. They pierce his skull with the goal of sucking out his brain and getting all the resistance plans. All this is happening before our eyes and the eyes of his daughter. At the climax, Dr. Freeman is saved by a robotic dog, but it is too late. What will happen next? How now to fight the enemy, who now has all the necessary information about further resistance plans? The answers to these questions remain unanswered for thirteen years, since Episode Three was canceled mid-production. Isn't this real cruelty towards the player?
In the recent Half-Life: Alyx, we got a tiny explanation of what was happening, but this is not what everyone has been waiting for. On the contrary, even more questions have arisen, the answers to which will have to wait several more years. It was the brutal ending of Episode Two that was remembered by players from all over the world. And the powerful cliffhanger still makes us follow the news from Valve in the hope of getting at least a grain of information.
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As you can see, bad endings are not always bad from a plot point of view. Our brain is designed in such a way that over time we forget a bad ending or a cruel ending, and only the pleasant memory of the experience that this or that video game once gave us remains in our memory. Isn't this the main thing?
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