The dreaded lame ending!! Doh! (1 Viewer)

[Dean Cooper]

As games get bigger and better I find that it takes me quite a bit longer to finish them, well for the PC anyway. Hell I consider myself lucky if I do manage to make it to the end ( I never use cheat codes ). Anyway, after 5 months of playing Blade of Darkness I have finally finished the game playing the knight. This game is insanely hard on my PC when I go up against a bigger or multiple enemy it would chug a bit. So after all of the effort to make it to the end of the game I was hoping for a nice ending to the game... Well frick! DISAPPOINTMENT to say the very least. Another great game that took me forever to finish was Halflife, it too had this cheap fucking have a nice day ending. Is it just me or does anyone else think that games should have a great ending as like THE prize to the player for making it.
Dean

 

[Adam Nixon]

That's one thing Square does right -- you receive quite a cinematic treat at the end of a game.
I LIKE having at least SOMETHING to tie loose ends up. Freespace 2 is one of the tightest space sims I've ever played, but its ending left far more questions than it resolved hanging threads. Even Nintendo, who has never excelled at opulent cut-scenes, managed to create a satisfying finale to Ocarina of Time.
[Edited last by Adam Nixon on September 18, 2001 at 11:27 PM]

 

[Derrik Draven]

Lame endings really suck. Look at all the backlash C.D. got from the ending of Soul Reaver. Kind of pissed me off as well.
Square certainly treats you well for all the work you put into finishing a game. The only Square game I've played was FFVII. I watched the entire ending, all the way through the massive ending credits and was suprised to actually see a short little movie at the end of the credits showing Midgar, delapidated and overgrown, with that lion character and his great-great-great grandcubs looking at it from on top of a hill. (?)
Makes you feel like the designers actually give a shit that you finished their game.
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"...better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it". - Slater, True Romance

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Final Fantasy VII had the closure ending, Final Fantasy VIII had the all-around ending (including a quite comical home video during the credits), and Final Fantasy IX had the happy ending (they all had happy ones, but IX was primarily focused around happiness). One thing that I like is that all of the FF games play the FF theme song during the ending, and each time it sounds better and still makes me get a sense of having completed something.
Games like Chrono Cross have the weird endings. CC has several of its own, and each is equally bizarre. One of them doesn't really give closure but is successful in telling the story beyond the game, which is a great thing to do (and was well done).
Ah, Soul Reaver. The ending was not bad, but thats because it didn't have one. Oh well, the game still rocked.
SquareSoft seems to make good endings for most of their games. The Lunar series has good ones, too. I find that RPGs always have better endings, so I suggest comparing the endings of RPGs and not games like Conker's Bad Fur Day (which had a great ending, too).

 

[teapot2001]

I didn't think FF9's ending was totally happy, it was bittersweet. Vivi's letter was quite moving.
~T

 

[Morgan Jolley]

So do you think FF9's ending was good? I certainly think 8 was better than 7, and 9 was better than 8 (though 8 had something special to it).
What do you mean by Vivi's letter?

 

[teapot2001]

7 is definately my least favorite of the three. 9 was the most satisfying ending, mainly because of its length and its great job of wrapping everything up. 8 was great because of the CG and the artistic way it was done.
What do I mean by Vivi's letter? The text in the ending, appearing with the Melodies of Life instrumental song and the scenes with each character, was a letter that Vivi wrote before he expired. On my first viewing, I thought it was pieces of text from each character or something that the Princess wrote.
~T

 

[Jeffrey Forner]

The greatest ending is still Super Mario Bros. 2.
It was all just a dream!!! D'oh!
By the way, Samus is a girl!
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-J.Fo
"And you can tell Rolling Stone magazine that my last words were... 'I'm on drugs!'"

 

[Dean DeMass]

One of my favorite endings to this day is Bionic Commando on the NES. What an awesome ending.
-Dean-

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My HT Equipment
"I've seen you and you are not cool."

 

[Jay H]

Squaresoft also has a way of putting in different endings in some of their RPGs. Parasite Eve 2 was like that, if you did a certain thing a certain way, you'd get the "good ending" which explained alot more and was just better, whereas if you didn't, you got this crappy boring ending. I finished PE2 the bad way the first time and had to go back and finish it a second time to get the good ending and stuff...
Jay
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HUGBEES! Link Removed
Rider in the 2001 Alaska AIDS Vaccine Ride
Wanna Link Removed

 

[Kelley_B]

A good ending to me is, do I feel satisfied after beating the game. Last game that I felt that was Silent Hill.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Hmmm...Thi, I thought the text that pops up (in big white letters after the princess and Zidane thing) was between Zidane and the Princess. It mentions a song, and there was a big scene early in the game where the princess was singing a song and Zidane heard her (its the closest thing to a voice that any character in a FF game ever had, besides X). I think maybe Vivi died (he was a black mage, afterall) but I don't think that the text was from him.
Nonetheless, FFIX had an excellent and moving ending.
One ending that I find is overlooked a lot is FF8. Yes, its sort of straightforward, but if you take into context the whole game, it can be complicated and there are some weird things. Some people have said that Rinoa is actually someone else from the future (who I won't say for spoiler reasons) and there are also some details that aren't exactly shown outright. Also, FF8's ending was amazing from a visual standpoint, especially how the music tied it together, even the FF Theme during the credits. I just love when the clouds parted over Rinoa and Squall while the music played. Man, I wanna see it again! Thank god I have that PSX video player on my PC!
Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger, and Parasite Eve I and II are all Squaresoft games with multiple endings.

 

[teapot2001]

Morgan, he really did die:
"I always talked about you, Zidane. How you were a very special person to us, because you taught us all how important life is."
"You taught me that life doesn't last forever. That's why we have to help each other and live life to the fullest."
"Even if you say goodbye, you'll always be in our hearts. So, I know we're not alone anymore."
"Why I was born... How I wanted to live... Thanks for giving me time to think."
"To keep doing what you set your heart on... It's a very hard thing to do. We were all so courageous..."
"What to do when I felt lonely... That was the only thing you couldn't teach me. But we need to figure out the answer for ourselves..."
"I'm so happy I met everyone... I wish we could've gone on more adventures. But I guess we all have to say goodbye someday."
"Everyone... Thank you. Farewell."
"My memories will be part of the sky..."
::sniff sniff::

~T

 

[Yoshi Sugawara]

"Panzer Dragoon RPG (Saga)" for the Sega Saturn was really good, until the very end. The ending just ruined it for me.
Spoiler:
In the CG-ending, the lead character, Edge, turns toward the camera (facing you, the gamer) and says, "So you are the one, the mysterious traveler" (or something to that extent) - totally ruined the whole sense of immersion for me, and the whole game. Ugh!

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[Morgan Jolley]

Thi-
Oh, yeah, that text is from Vivi. I thought you meant the text that talks about how Zidane sang Garnet's song to stay alive. Some people thought that was Vivi talking, which it obviously wasn't. I was just confused by which part you were talking about.
FF9's ending was emotional as hell. I'm surprised that Square is constantly able to toy with people's emotions like that over and over again, from the Aeris event in FF7, to a whole range of events in FF8 stemming from the love theme, to the ending of FF9. One thing I liked is that FF9's ending wasn't just CG, it combined regular in-game cinematics with CG and text to create a pretty lengthy ending.

 

[Derrik Draven]

I almost forgot about Aeris getting whacked in FFVII. That was pretty touching.
Sephiroth...what a prick!

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"...better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it". - Slater, True Romance

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Someone started a thread on RPG cliches, we should start one on memorable moments. I'm too lazy to.