In the olden days, a high score was the only goal gamers had in mind. But once games went from being something you play at the arcade to something you do in front of the TV, things began to change. Suddenly, a threadbare story was slapped over the gameplay and some games even had endings! Granted, most were crap, such as a “Thank you for playing” message, but every now and then, you would rewarded with something truly special.
We tend to take endings for granted these days, with any ending to any game just a small trip to Youtube away, but some games have touched us with their endings. The nice folks at 1UP decided to gift us with The Best Video Game Endings, which is a nice feature to start the weekend off with. There are some obscure ones on there, but all are pretty deserving. The Streets of Rage is a favorite of mine, although we all know that Final Fantasy VI warms my heart the most.
What endings do you still remember vividly? Do you think game endings have improved or decreased in quality as the years have gone by? GO!
Source: 1UP
Cool list, I was glad Red Dead Redemption got on there. I feel like as time passes people will look back and say they want more endings like it. Now the wait for the Team Ico Collection is going to be even harder after seeing Shadow of the Colossus on the list, I need to play it again. More recently I liked Assassins Creed 2’s ending, anything that changes it up always sticks with me.
It’s already on the 1UP list, but I would go with Final Fantasy 6’s ending montage. It’s a huge, epic payoff for a huge, epic game, and the way it goes through each character and gives them a short send-off scene is perfect for the ensemble cast. You’ve spent time with these characters, seeing them build up into a party, get scattered to the four winds by Kefka, then bring them all back together again, and now you get to see each of them in a little vignette (covered beautifully by that character’s personal theme music). There’s even separate scenes if you fail to reunite with a character in the World of Ruin, to remind you that they’re gone but not forgotten.
The only real complaint I have about endings nowadays – as opposed to the Before-Time, when Men were Real Men, Women were Real Women, and Endings were Real Endings – is that you get a half-assed “to be continued” ending because the developer wants to make a sequel.
An okay list, Warcraft 3 and Red Dead are spot on though. Mine are Halo 3 (“Wake me when you need me” still gives me chills), ME1 and 2 both had phenomenal endings, and the final act of Dragon Age was great. Of course these are just off the top of my head.
I liked the original Halo’s ending, because it closed that game up but left room for a sequel.
They forgot the Ghostbuster game ending. Seriously.
I loved the ending of Ocarina of Time. Even though it was sad that you had to go back to your original time, seeing all the characters you’d encountered having a huge party at Lon Lon Ranch, the world having returned to normal and the final shot of the 6 Sages standing at the top of Death Mountain before shooting off into the heavens was a great way to end the game.
I am saddened not to see Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2 being mentioned anywhere. Sure I may be a bit bias but ME2’s ending still gives me shivers up my spine and I nearly cry.
Warcraft 3 is spot on also I’d like to mention the ending of the Knights of the Old Republic being great.
I’m getting tired of continually mentioning this game, but I love the ending of Final Fantasy VIII because it gives you a payoff to the soap opera romance (well, sort of…you don’t actually see Squall and Rinoa kiss, but you get a satisfying ‘fade to black’ embrace that lets you fill in the blanks).
Actually, I like the incomprehensible endings to most of those ps1 JRPGs because the cutscenes were still so impressive back in those days. I can’t remember what the ending of Legend of Dragoon was like (In a completely original and unprecedented plot twist, I think the bad guy turned out to be your dad, or something like that) but I’m sure it looked cool.