7 Most Disappointing Endings That Weren’t Worth the Effort

Juno: "[Your death] will happen in an instant. There will be no pain." Desmond: Dies in ten seconds of voiceless screaming agony and enough awareness to have second thoughts, trying to pull his hand off the sphere and failing I guess Juno really was a liar, huh? Hell of a way to find out.

If this video doesn't end in a funny attempt at a disappointing ending, I'll be disappointed. Ironically, if it does, I won't be disappointed

What do you get from 100% Lego Star Wars? Infinite health and wealth... in a game where you've done everything and gone everywhere, making the gesture completely meaningless.

Pretty much any NES era game that is ruthlessly difficult and ends with a simple "you win congratulations", sometimes without proper spelling or grammar.

You know, the funny thing about Bugsnax and its ending is that, as I've heard, if you manage to help each of the residents solve their personal problems and become better people, they will completely ignore the Bugsnax and you don't HAVE to be so meticulous about killing them before they reach your friends.

The satisfaction in Bugsnax’s ending is in finishing all the sidequests to make all these grumpuses no longer reliant on bugsnax! They aren’t gonna just eat them during the finale if you did their sidequests and even Lizbert and Eggabel revert to their normal grumpus forms during a slideshow in the credits!

"You will die but it will be instant, with no pain." Desmond touches the orb and proceeds to flail and smoke as if he's getting cooked from the inside out... "And the lie detector determined that THAT WAS A LIE."

You know my problem with the Desmond thing? She said it would happen in an instant and there would be no pain. Then you see him scream; THAT had to hurt AND it was more than an instant. And I think it was Ellen's playthrough of Bugsnax that finally made them put "horror" in their description. Now I am off to replay Skyrim, again, sigh...

Killing Desmond has to be one of the worst decisions in video game history. Fucked up the whole franchise.

I remember watching my brother play the ac3 ending and we both were nonplussed. ".... It's he like... Dead dead? Just like that? Did we at least fix things? Is there not going to be any more games???" Lol it felt so abrupt and yet anti climatic to us lol

Almost all the issues that the AC franchise has can be traced back to that ending. Killing Desmond off after building him up as the main protagonist of the series was so out of left field. The whole franchise lost focus. After that none of the games had anything to do with each other. They also tried to make Juno the main antagonist, but then dropped it only appearing in Black Flag briefly and that’s it. They killed her off in a comic. It’s clear they had no idea where to take the story when the early AC games kind of felt like they were building to a game set in modern day with Desmond as the main character.

I had my suspicions, but hearing confirmation that Montana is in fact a fictional place is a relief.

One game that has a really disappointing ending is Tetris. It is so not worth the effort that no-one even got there in 34 years (until Willis Gibson from Oklahoma did so in late 2023). SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING: The game crashes. It just ends.

The ending to Assassin's Creed 3 is such a wild, baffling left turn. The solar flare plotline feels thoroughly unconnected to the plotline we've been following with the Assassins and Templars, getting a little bit of foreshadowing in the form of vague, "something is coming " messages in previous games, but nothing much beyond that. And the fact that Desmond MUST die in order for the machine to activate feels so contrived. Why would demigods devise a machine that requires someone to get electrocuted to death in order to activate it? At least the endings in Mass Effect 3 where you die all had some kind of justification for why Shepard can't live, whether it involved their enhancements shutting off via EMP, them needing to shed their body to transfer their consciousness or their cells getting repurposed to re-write the galaxy's genetic code. The door lock killing Desmond just feels entirely arbitrary and also feels like they could have had someone else do it, like possibly his Father who's a dick for the whole game and has a lifetime of mistakes to atone for.

AC3 never had a chance. It's hard to top having a fist fight with the Pope in the Sistine Chapel as an ending.

yeah i never caught on with the whole " the worst ending is the most difficult and or obtuse to get" trend. I see a guy called lothesome dung eater and i nope out and attack.

Halo 2: You left out the part where in order to 'finish this fight', a player wouldn't only have to wait three years, but buy an entirely new console to do it! (Halo 3 was an early XBox 360 exclusive.)

Imagine a timeline where the NG+ in Starfield gave you genuine alternative universes. One where there was a clear winner in the colony war, or perhaps one where terramorphs became rampant. Even one where aliens exist. Instead you get a few minor changes and some one-liners.

While Kirby made me not trust cutesy aesthetic games anymore, I still didn’t see Bugsnax’s ending coming 😂

in the distance, you can hear Mass Effect 3 starting to rumble ominously for not being included in this list