"Crappy End!"? What the hell is Crappy End?

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"Crappy End!"? What the hell is Crappy End?

Postby Snorb » Wed Sep 9, '09, 4:34 am

Today, I'd like to introduce a concept of video games I call "middle finger endings." That's my totally non-scientific term for when a still photograph of the scenario writer (or antagonist's voice actor, depending on the game's age) giving you, the player, the middle finger while the credits roll would have been a more emotionally satisfying ending than what made it to the disc. To qualify as a middle finger ending, the game has to have been enjoyable on some other merits, and just... fall apart when it comes to wrapping the plot up.

My nomination: Inca II: Wiracocha (released elsewhere as Inca II: Nations of Immortality.) It's an oldie, but for the most part, a goodie- half Sierra adventure game, half space simulator, half movie (three halves?!) It had a great plot, well-written characters (dialogue's a little clunky, but it was originally in French, so it gets a pass there.), awesome soundtrack (especially the space combat song, Tumi.), tough puzzles, it had everything I loved about Sierra gaming as a child.

Then... the ending, such as it was. Maybe it's the fact that I downloaded the floppy disk version instead of the (far superior) CD-ROM version. Maybe something was direly lost in translation from the French. Maybe I missed some plot points. Instead of watching the villain die in an asteroid fire, my Incan gold spaceship rocketing away to planet Cuzco to meet up with my '30s fighter pilot-dressed Han Solo clone buddy (If anybody from Coktel Vision is reading this, make an Inca spinoff about Kelt! He was awesome in Inca II!) I get... text.

More specificially, THIS. This resolves nothing. Did I live, or did I die placing the last Great Inca Power in the asteroid? What about the bad guy, Aguirre? What about the traitor in my midst who spurred my son to his death, starting this whole mess? Is my son Atahualpa dead or resurrected?! Was the asteroid Wiracocha, coming for His three Great Powers?! Are El Dorado (me) and Aguirre (bad guy) now the same person!? WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!

A still picture of Ivan Bond (Aguirre's motion capture actor, and I believe voice actor in the CD version) flipping off the camera would have been more plot-conclusive! I guess Coktel ran out of money and said, "If you want an actual ending, go buy the CD-ROM version, only $59.95 at your local software store, as recently as 1993."

So! Sorry for the rant! Post your worst video game endings and your thoughts on them here!
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Re: "Crappy End!"? What the hell is Crappy End?

Postby Wolf Bird » Thu Sep 10, '09, 4:30 pm

Hmmmm...I know some games in which I think the ending could be better, but having trouble coming up with a 'Middle Finger ending'. Actually, on second thought, this is probably the closest I can come up with for that...

*Sigh.* Why, Nintendo and Itoi, why? Why did you have to go from something so wonderful and awesome as Earthbound and take so many steps back without taking as many equal steps forward in Mother 3? Why? WHY?!

Okay, don't get me wrong, I still love Mother 3. I intend to get my hands on the handbook at some point, either by myself or I may ask for it for Christmas or my birthday. And the game remains generally fantastic, if rather flawed in many ways, up through the final boss fight with Claus. That boss fight will forever rip apart humanity's collective heart. It's AFTER where the ending falls apart. For the last two chapters, you were running around pulling needles to release the Dark Dragon, as was Claus. At the final battle, which is over the last needle, Lucas has pulled 3, Claus has pulled 3. Lucas ends up pulling the last needle. As I understand things, the dragon, which represents the power of the earth, once released, grants the heartfelt wishes of whoever released it. I also understand that a brainwashed cyborg who effectively has little heart and soul left pulled 3 of the 7. Anyway, after Lucas pulls it, you get to see images of the Nowhere Islands basically receiving apocalyptic treatment. Then you see the 'The End' screen, but you can move around and talk to unseen characters and it's basically impossible to tell who/what you're talking to most of the time.

This bothers me. I don't mind some ambiguity in endings, but there's a LINE and for me, Mother 3 crosses it. I'm not sure if everyone is dead but survives in some spiritual form. I don't know if the Dark Dragon destroyed the Nowhere Islands to cleanse it of Pokey's influence, and then rebuilt it. Did it completely follow Lucas' wishes or did it destroy things as well because Claus pulled some of the needles? Did Lucas get what he wanted? And if he did, wouldn't he probably also want his dead mom and brother back? Just too many unanswered, unclear questions. It's TOO ambiguous.

Given what happened in the previous game, I have my own personal theory that Ness could be the dragon...
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Re: "Crappy End!"? What the hell is Crappy End?

Postby SparkyIII » Wed Mar 10, '10, 6:34 am

This is totally unrelated, but the title of the post made me think of Demented Cartoon show.

HAPPY END!
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Re: "Crappy End!"? What the hell is Crappy End?

Postby newsblade » Wed Mar 10, '10, 1:05 pm

I can only think of this game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I7aGuOdtHo
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Re: "Crappy End!"? What the hell is Crappy End?

Postby Tanith » Wed Mar 10, '10, 1:52 pm

newsblade wrote:I can only think of this game http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I7aGuOdtHo


Holy cow. Thank goodness that's a fake game.
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Re: "Crappy End!"? What the hell is Crappy End?

Postby Rick » Tue Mar 16, '10, 5:56 am

Missionforce Cyberstorm 2: Corp Wars

I mean you can obviously tell the game was rushed to be put out and turned out worse than the first one..

The ending though is messed up. I think it was supposed to hint at a sequel coming but no sequel was ever planned even during it's construction.

The ending is just a generic corporation wins and then a jumpgate opens and it.. ends. Nothing gets resolved. Nothing resolved about the pre cybrids, the new enemies, nothing. It's just one big video of a ship entering the same jumpgate from the beginning.

All during the game you get missions that deal with something ancient and foreign and well.. That is forgotten.

Starsiege is another example of a game. Now Earthsiege 1 and 2 ended on a good note but come Starsiege, from the manual, nothing ended well. Then at the end of Starsiege, humanity is wiped out and all that is left is the ones that escape on the jump ship that eventually evolves into the Starsiege Tribes games.

I mean seriously, the whole Starsiege game was a waste of time. The end outcome is the same regardless and your efforts were futile. The same ending would have happened had you not intervened.
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Re: "Crappy End!"? What the hell is Crappy End?

Postby Thoul » Wed Jul 7, '10, 7:47 pm

I've got one for you now. Summoner 2 has a horrible ending! One party member is possessed by an evil demon or something along those lines. Another member's daughter is possessed as well. Both have to be fought and defeated as end game bosses. But instead of trying to save or exorcise either, the "heroes" just slaughter them outright. They actually encase one in ice and shatter it, destroying his body entirely.

Then the final boss appears. He warps one party member away and mortally wounds the main character (a queen whose prophetic birth caused a civil war and founding of a new country), leaving only the generic woman's-mind-in-android-body character standing. So the main character's spirit merges with the android, putting two minds in it and, powering it up to some super form. Then there's the final battle where I couldn't see the boss because of a lousy fixed camera.

After the boss dies, all this happens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g69PGoMBN6A
That's the PS2 version and the character designs are changed a little for the GameCube, which is what I played, but it's mostly the same. The ending cinematic makes the entire game pretty much pointless. Super-android explodes, killing the original woman in it and leaving the main character floating in air. Then the main character turns into a white tree, pointlessly dying again. That starts to tick me off because the royal-gal-changng-into-white-tree thing is more or less the ending of one of my favorite books, but the rest is even worse.

So then it tells what happens to the other party members (the ones that weren't pointlessly killed already, mind you). One, last of his people now that android-lady (who was also last of his people) returns to the "home" where I had to rescue him, and the whole party except the main character, from tons of people that tried to kill him earlier in the game. Another goes home after being forced to kill his own possessed daughter without a word about that. Two others, who expressed nothing but hatred and distrust of each other through the whole game, are suddenly really close! And the other guy, eh, he just went off to do something else, who cares what it was? No seriously, that's pretty much his ending. Of course, what happens to the queen's young country now that it has no one to take the throne and the neighboring king wants the land back in his kingdom (he's still sore over that civil war and his brother siding with the baby queen) is not even mentioned at all.

I feel like I wasted both my time and money on this game. Seriously, the "game over" screens of some games are better than this ending. I'm glad I at least bought it used and didn't pay full price. Then I would have been really ticked about it.
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Re: "Crappy End!"? What the hell is Crappy End?

Postby xellos667 » Thu Jul 15, '10, 6:16 pm

Only thing that come to my mind was the first Assassin's Creed. While I don't consider it crappy, many saw it as a big "WTH???" moment.

Basically, I will not spoil anything, but after the last battle, you go back in the real world. You're thinking "This is it!!! The big revelation is coming!!!" But then, everyone leave, you're all alone, you just go back to your room, and with your new eagle vision, you see a bunch of text of the wall...then the credits roll...WHAT????

This was indeed a big middle finger from Ubisoft "Sorry about that, just come back later with Assassin's Creed 2 where it will be more clear"...I know many people wanted to destroy their console back then

Another one I'm thinking, Saga Frontier, Blue scenario. This is it, after a big battle with your brother, and finally, when the truth is revealed, you'll go into Hell for the last battle. You're fighting with all your heart the very last boss, and at one point, without any warning, the screen freeze, take a more "sepia" tone, and then just like that, in the middle of the battle, the big words "THE END" appear in the middle of the screen. No explanation about what happen after the fight, or who won at all. It just ends like that, right in the middle of the last fight!!! I was kinda in rage back then.
Last edited by xellos667 on Thu Jul 15, '10, 6:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: "Crappy End!"? What the hell is Crappy End?

Postby Xander » Fri Jul 16, '10, 12:45 pm

You know I can't think of any I've seen myself, though I'm sure I have seen a couple. Some of the ones posted so far seem pretty lame. I know I heard about Assassins Creed and it's one reason I'm glad I don't have any of the new consoles. :p
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Re: "Crappy End!"? What the hell is Crappy End?

Postby Atlinsmere » Sat Jul 17, '10, 12:02 am

Honestly, I understand with Assassin's Creed. I beat it a few das before AC2 came out. I was rather ticked off at the ending and tried to decipher the wall and that but came up with nothing. Then AC2 came out and I starting playing that, having fun with the new features and what not. It was awesome. That reminds me, I really need to get around to playing AC2 again.

A slap in the face ending though was Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. In the ending you essentially become an AWOL soldier as you kill a General who was on your side, then you get carried to a helicopter with that being end of game. Too bad there won't be a MW3 due to the creators who got fired (I'll make a different topic on this if there isn't one) because of a dispute within the company.

As for my "WTH?" game ending I had recently, it would have to be in F.E.A.R. 2. After going through all what I did with Becket, just for the ending which I didn't understand what the heck happened (until after I read about it in Game Informer) it was a slap in the face, screw you no happy ending. I was expecting to fight Alma but instead I found mysel0f (Spoilers from this point on) strapped to a chair being quote"sexually assaulted by Alma." Though you don't really see anything, you do see Alma put Becket's hand on her stomach.
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