Dethroning Moment of Suck (Darth Wiki)/Video Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Sometimes, it feels like the Disappointing Last Level is oncoming within these games, but it's really the bitter aftertaste from these moments. Sequence Breaking is perfectly acceptable if it means not having to view these scenes.

Keep in mind:

  • Moments only, no "just everything he said," or "The entire game" entries.
  • No contesting entries. This is subjective, the entry is their opinion.
  • No natter. As above, anything contesting an entry will be cut, and anything that's just contributing more can be made its own entry.
  • Explain why it's a Dethroning Moment of Suck.
  • Please make sure the moment is fictional and is neither an event that occurred in real life nor something gameplay-related. We have a perfectly good Scrappy Mechanic page for the latter.
  • No ALLCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSs out loud.

Examples of Dethroning Moments of Suck in Video Games include:

  • Near the end of The Answer, a Playable Epilogue included in Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 FES, after finally getting through the hell that was The Abyss of Time, each member of SEES(except Metis) is given a key that would allow them to either leave the dorm(which would make the Abyss disappear) or use the door the the Main Character's dorm room(which is impossible to open normally for some reason) to travel back in time to the date of their final battle against the Nyx Avatar. Everyone is in agreement to leave....except Yukari, who wanted to use the keys to save the Main Character's life. This leads to a disagreement about whether it was right or not to undo his death, both for ethical reasons and for the possibility of fighting the Nyx Avatar again, and possibly losing.Yukari ignores all of this, says Junpei is just afraid to die, Calls Aigis out on not saying goodbye with the rest of SEES to the Protagonist after he died, says everyone else only cares about themselves, and single-handedly causes SEES to fight for the keys with the winner having them all. All of this unnecessary drama could have been avoided if she just accepted the past and the action of the Main Character like everyone else and just left the dorm, goddammit Yukari.
    • It was not Yukari's decision to fight for the keys to go back in time to save the Main Character's life. that was the moment of suck (her grief was partly understandable). It was the fact that the supposed smartest person in the group backed her up for no apparent reason (other than probably having an even playing field) knowing full well of the possible implications of going back in time. So much for being an honor student.
  • The last 10% of Suikoden V. While an otherwise refreshing game that wonderfully shows the implications of leadership of a queendom, the last bit is a horrid, horrid, Asspull to the story. Just after the last War battle, and fighting Allenia and Zahaak, the story spews out Ass Pull so Creator Pets, Gizel and Marscal Godwin are redeemed. I expected that after having every last of his plans destroyed, all of Falena agianst him after their Genocide plot, and even losing his home, I expected resident Smug Snake Gizel to go out into one of the biggest Villainous Breakdown in video game history. Instead, he goes off on a tangent about how the sun rune warped his and his father's minds into doing the worse things they did, and before you can call them on it, he then says they still knew what they were doing all along and were doing it for Falena's prosperity. There is so much wrong with this namely, they say the rune affteced them because they were near it. There are many, many, times where you see scholars in the same room as the damn thing, and they aren't afflicted at all! and the Godwins spend maybe 5% of the time they are in the room with it. Hey, if it afflicts those near it, how could anyone ever approach the Queen without being influenced themselves? Gizel's death after his duel with the Prince is handled in such a way that Tear Jerker is impossible. After everything he did to screw with every citizen of Falena, players are supposed to feel Sympathy for the Devil which is very hard to do after watching the Meanwhile scenes: his Smug Snake personality is Up to Eleven as the new Knight Commander. Despite the fact the game could have ended there (Lym even points out how dumb it is that there's still more to do), developers felt the need for a textbook example of Xen Syndrome with Ashtal Mountain. It is the Scrappy Level of the game (Minus Twilight Forest) with Let's Split Up, Gang! which, filled with Demonic Spiders and while done before in ruins, this time apperantly, the game needed padding for the dungeon of a boss (All That One Boss for bonus points) for each of the three parties (when you likely have maybe a party and a half of leveled characters to this point) and an extremely unsatisfying final boss which is a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere. Marscal taking the sun rune here is an absolute Wallbanger. The final boss comes about because he's testing whether the Prince will be a good royal...except there's only ending in which he even becomes Knight Commander, and most probably shelled out for the 60-107 star ending. Afterwards, Lyon will die if you didn't 60 or more stars, or they will have a Disney Acid Sequence, and see the Prince's dead parents. What makes even this a fail? Zahaak and Allenia are there, and happy for them. The same girl who was going to kill the prince for Gizel is clapping for him. It is such a jarring Character Derailment for her after that it ruins the whole scene. Worse still, Gizel and Marstal are there, and happy as well, as if the whole thing was just for the Prince to be a better himself. This almost ruins the entirely because of how Out of Character everyone is. The final nail in the coffin? The Antaganists are five feet away from Ferid and Arshtot, and they don't even so much as repremend them, let alone call them out on everything they've done and how they haven't the right to act as if every death was just so the Prince could beat the Sun rune.
  • Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne has the True Demon Ending. You kill everything and everybody just to help some emo kid who's sore about getting his ass kicked grind his ax with God. Granted, God is supposed to be evil up until and through this game, but clearly you are too if you did this just to go after him.
    • Made worse by the fact that you have to work hard to get this ending. You must complete a Bonus Dungeon, and face the game's True Final Boss.
  • The end of Chapter 15 in Mortal Kombat 9. Cutscene Power to the Max is taken to ridiculously absurd levels when Sindel of all people (she's normally weak both in game and in universe) effortlessly rofl stomps 10 people at once. Johnny Cage and Sonya get beat up. Cyber Sub-Zero dies from being punched 3 times (despite Cage's blows looking more serious and being protected by armor). Kabal dies from being stabbed in the upper-left pectoral (near the shoulder) by a shoe. Striker is killed by a punch to the jaw. Smoke gets a Groin Attack followed by a neck snap. Jax gets stabbed by a shoe. Jade gets an organ pulled out. Kitana gets her lifeforce drained. Sindel is only killed by Nightwolf blowing himself up. Also gets combined with Idiot Ball as the defenders weren't smart enough to simply wolf-pack her (all 10 attack her at once from all sides) and by not using their powers. All of this is just an excuse to kill off most of the cast for the next game, much like Mega Man Zero 4's plot to Zero. One could compare this to the revelation that it was Dalton that defeated Guardia after the end of Chrono Trigger. Saying that a very large chunk of the fanbase considers this scene to be an outrage is an understatement (a lot of people are angry with it). It also has the effect of causing Sindel to develop a Hatedom.
    • Adding to that, Raiden then goes to the Netherrealm and offers their souls to Quan Chi in exchange for his service is a sickeningly, disgustful and immoral act. With that, Raiden's transformation into the Thunder Idiot God of Blunder was complete.
    • Baraka's Arcade Ladder Ending. It's the only ending where Shao Kahn doesn't actually die, but rather, it was Shang Tsung pretending to be Shao Kahn. Worse, the tarkatans, a race of savage JerkAsses are elevated in Kahn's ranks because of this. Sure the Shokans and centaurs aren't much better, but they're not as bad as the tarkatans. It even surpasses Cyber-Sub-zero's Ladder ending in its suckage.
    • Among the new features in the game: a 300-level "challenge tower" in which you must complete various different tasks, such as defeating a certain character with new rules applied to the match or shooting down enemies as they approach. Many of these challenges are very difficult, and before the game was released, the creator promised that a "substantial reward" would be unlocked for completing all these challenges. So, what do you get for getting through every last difficult challenge? Is it a cool new character? Nope. Is it a new mode of gameplay? Nope. Emulated versions of the old games? Nope. It's an alternate costume for Mileena that's even more Stripperiffic than her normal one. That's it. The fact that it was advertised as being a worthy reward for beating the mode, and the fact that the achievement for unlocking it is titled "Best Alternate Ever!" just makes Ed Boon look like a massive pervert, and it isn't even sexy because her mouth isn't covered, not to mention that playing it as a big reward alienates straight female and gay male players, and there's more of them out there than you'd think. Couldn't you have thought of something worth the trouble?
  • Resident Evil 2 may not have such Narm howlers as the first game, but that can make the bad acting even worse. It's not even So Bad It's Good. Sherry frantically shouting about her father getting caught by the monsters, and the very next sentence having a neutral tone, was probably the worst for me.
  • The "reveal" of Dhaos' true intentions in Tales of Phantasia. Not only does it come completely out of nowhere, but the game seems to expect us to believe that it completely justified him launching a genocidal war against mankind. Protip: No, it doesn't. It actually makes Dhaos less sympathetic, since it makes it appear that Dhaos brought his end on himself by never bothering to explain his actions when he had multiple chances to. The Tales series has many sympathetic villains, but Dhaos does not deserve to be one of them. Wanting to help your own world is no justification for wanting to cause the destruction of another.
  • Tales of the Abyss, I love you, but I'll never forgive how Anise's betrayal subplot was handled. Let's count the ways; 1) It all begins when Anise was being a spy for Mohs for the sake of her parents. A little retarded (since she should know that the party is more than strong enough to take matters into their own hands), but understandable, since she's just a kid, and a desperate one at that. But it all goes to hell when she's asked to bring Ion to Mohs. She knew that he would get rid of him as soon as he read the Score, and she supposedly freakin' loves him! And yet she carries him to his death. 2) After the party kills Mohs for that, they feel sorry for him. Namdai, you're trying to make us feel sorry for Mohs, that's easier said than done (actually, scratch that; it's not even easy said). 3) After the whole thing, Anise gets no comeuppance whatsoever, particularly egregious since Luke got a much harsher treatment after committing a much more justifiable mistake. And 4) When Anise meets Arietta (another who cared deeply for Ion), she doesn't even bother to tell her of his death, and just kills her. There are no words.
  • Alright, it seems unnecessary at this point to even bother going into this one, but no Dethroning Moment of Suck page featuring video games would be complete without that one moment in Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. After clearing all of the characters' stories, you unlock Final Story. And Sonic dies immediately after the chapter starts. You then have to go through the Very Definitely Final Dungeon... without the main character, the one whose name is on the fucking box. They still need him to defeat the final boss, and then comes the greatest Ass Pull the series has ever indulged in. The Chaos Emeralds apparently can bring one back to life now, something that's never been either established in previous games nor this one, so long as they're coupled with True Love's Kiss. Who delivers the kiss? The human princess, of course! The scene wouldn't be so squicky if the game's design didn't make the humans and the main cast look like they're from completely different universes, and if Sonic, of course, weren't a goddamn corpse. The game literally needed to write itself out of existence in order to avoid having to make Sonic commit to that sort of relationship. To this day, all anyone needs to do to poke fun at Sonic is mention this moment, and no fanboy would be able to counter that point.
  • I just recently completed the Nintendo DS version of Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter... and now I wish I hadn't. Why? Because of the ending. In short, what it shows is that the whole thing was All Just a Dream of minor character Mike, and everyone else (Save for Heather) no longer exists. All those characters and towns I saved over the course of two games and You just erase them all from existence?! This is how you end the series?! It's quite possibly the most jarring, infuriating, depressing and pointless ending I've ever laid my eyes upon! Thank goodness for Fanon Discontinuity and alternate, fan-made endings...
  • Let it be known that thus far I love StarCraft II, but one revelation really frustrates me. During The Reveal of the Bad Future, we learn that the Overmind, the world-devouring nightmare from the first game, didn't do any of said world-consuming of its own free will. Instead, it was forced to do that by its masters, and the Queen of Blades, implied in the first game to be the Zerg's ultimate weapon against the Protoss, was really created because she was the only way the Zerg could hope to be free of their enslavement. Not only does this Retcon contradict the way the Overmind acts in the first game's Zerg campaign (where it seems to be quite happy about its mission and never angsts about its children being "slaves"), but it turns an extremely cool Big Bad that turned against its masters and ate them before tearing across the galaxy with the desire to absorb the Protoss, into a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds with no free will of its own, which inevitably brings on a large amount of Villain Decay. I like the way the new Eldritch Abomination Big Bad is shaping up, but did Blizzard really need to neuter the Overmind to get us here?
  • World of Warcraft Cataclysm probably has the ultimate Dethroning Moment Of Suck for Thrall. He's just teamed up with the player and a wily goblin called Sassy to defeat their former traitorous Trade Prince Gallywix. What does Thrall do after defeating him, make him racial leader again! This is after Gallywix betrayed the player twice, enslaved his own goblins in an abusive mine, teamed up with pirates, and right after he personally tried to kill Thrall and the player. Worse is that the player and Thrall killed tons of mooks to get to Gallywix and other goblins such as Sassy showed themselves to far more capable and caring then Gallywix. This moment totally derailed Thrall into a caricature that no no longer resembles his old self.
    • Further to the World of Warcraft example above - what in the sassy Francis with the derailing of Kael'thas and Illidan in Burning Crusade!? Wrath of the Lich King seduced me back to the fold (fist shaking goes here) but that little bit of WTF had me trying to throttle my keyboard. Blizzard, please don't let people who have never played WCIII write scenarios involving characters from WCIII.
    • I found the entirety of the Goblin starter area to be a dethroning moment of suck. Let's see...for the first time ever in WoW, your character is given a canonical sexual orientation (straight). I tried to engage in some proactive suspension of disbelief ("Um...okay, my character is culturally being forced towards having a relationship with a guy but she doesn't like! Yeah, that's it...") Only to find that after the game-appointed S.O. leaves my character, my character is so overcome with jealous rage that she killed him, ripped the still-beating heart from his chest (I'm quoting), and then killed the goblin woman he left me for. It's worth noting that unlike all previous races, the Goblin and Worgen starter zones are completely unskippable and MUST be completed to progress to the rest of the game. Combined with the Bizarre Fanon Discontinuity of making every single goblin player character the previous "next up and coming trade princess/prince", the entire goblin starter area was a Wall Banger that I decided was a hallucination brought on by Kaja-Cola overdose.
    • Another one from Cataclysm. Not the overall appointment of Garrosh Hellscream, but rather the precise moment they show it in the pre-event. He's suddenly a humble guy that wants what's best for the Horde and is being respectful to everyone. He says things and acts in ways that are radically inconsistent with his previous characterization in Wrath purely for the sake of revisionist history so Blizzard can force him down the player's throat. This moment specifically sets the tone for all future encounters with Garrosh, because it's nothing but shilling the Creator's Pet from there on out, with him suddenly being a competent badass due to events in Northrend that we as a player never got to see. Garrosh Hellscream, you made me, a fan of Warcraft for over 10 years and a hardcore raider, quit the god damn game.
    • A minor one from Cataclysm, but one that still made me mad. In the expansion, the Deadmines were completely re-done and even had a storyline in Westfall to explain. After discovering that the daughter of the former end boss has been reviving the defias brotherhood, you are sent in to defeat them. After running through an entire dungeon with completely new bosses, you fight the end boss. Oh but's not who you think it is, it's Cookie, you know that morloc who wasn't even required to down for completion. You can only fight Vanessa in the Heroic version. It's a complete and utter waste of time, and a crappy "twist" to boot.
    • The "Elemental Bonds" questline, full stop. This thing takes one of the longer-running plotlines in Warcraft lore, the festering hatred Fandral Staghelm had for both Malfurion Stormrage and the Dragon Aspects, one that had been ongoing for several years in real time, and a few millenia in-game, and completely shunts it aside to give Thrall center stage. And then both Alliance and Horde are "treated" to a long, obnoxious, overblown, irritating, and downright nauseating love letter from the developers to how "awesome" Thrall is. And, since Chris Metzen is so butthurt over the Fan Preferred Pairing for his little Thrall, we also get to hear over and over again about how awesome the utterly one-note character Aggra is, and how she and Thrall luurve each other so much. Oh, and the player is brought into this travesty under the pretext that they were going to witness the Cenarion Circle, the Earthen Ring, and the Dragon Aspects working together to restore the World Tree. What comes of this? NOTHING! Apparently, the developers thought that Thrall's wedding was more important. To get an idea of how bad this was, this quest line was enough that even many of Thrall's own fans were sick of him afterwards.
  • In the Neverwinter Nights module, Maugeter - The Keys to the City, the final mission. And what's truly a shame is that everything before it was pretty good. It was a module with a unique premise, with your character moving to a city divided into seven districts (kind of like Ba Sing Se), and slowly establishing yourself there. You are contracted to complete tasks, most often to deal with all the criminals robbing everyone in sight, even though the city guard is everywhere you look. You use the money, reputation, and opportunities you get from this to buy houses, join the mercenary guild, and most importantly, obtain the gate passes that give you access to the more important and prosperous districts. And then with the final mission, it all goes horribly wrong. When you are investigating a possible criminal hideout, you are suddenly knocked out, taken prisoner, and strapped to a machine that drains you of your power, with no chance to avoid this. Some wizard you've never seen before turns out to be behind this, and he also turns out to be responsible for every criminal in the game. He did all this, you learn, because he used to be a hero, but he overestimated himself and got beat up by a Beholder, so he started draining peoples lives for power so he could be strong enough to 'save the world' (from what exactly is never established), the criminal activity was just to supply him with money, and the whole thing seems to be some kind of poorly thought-out Take That to every RPG ever. You are freed by one of the criminals you had fought earlier, and after helping you the guy goes to try to and kill his boss, dieing in the attempt, without ever explaining why he's doing any of this. Then, after you kill the wizard, you are taken prisoner again, this time by the totally incompetent city guard, and thrown in prison. You get some weird dream sequence of waking up in prison and escaping repeatedly, only to wake up for real to find out that city officials, being totally embarrassed that they didn't notice one of their heroes going crazy and eating peoples lives, have decided to charge you with everything from trespassing to murder in an attempt to cover up what happened, have decided to exile you from the city, and will send you to fight in some pointless war they're having with a neighbour of theirs. You are given no opportunity to do anything about any of this, you lose everything you gained, everyone you helped just abandons you with a "It was nice knowing you" attitude, and the game ends with you being sent to fight and most likely die in some war you don't care about. Also, you never get to see the seventh and last area of the city.
  • The "Blue Hard Mode" ending for Gunstar Superheroes. Congratulations on completing the highest difficulty setting with the more difficult character! As a reward, you get to see the entire Gunstar crew die horribly in a random ship accident, making the entire game *ding dong* entirely pointless.
  • Samus's Heroic BSOD in Metroid: Other M upon seeing Ridley is still alive, a character she has already killed at least four other times at this point in the story line.
    • Agreed, but this example needs some elaboration. Other M more or less legitimizes the Metroid manga series that was produced in the late 90's. In that story, Samus is the sole survivor of a massacre on her home colony by the Space Pirates and Ridley (who eats her parents), just like in the game. However, in the manga, Samus at one point experiences post-traumatic stress disorder during a battle with Ridley, where he goads her by mentioning how he murdered her parents. Samus shuts down for a period of time (and even contemplates suicide) before overcoming her demons and facing Ridley in an epic confrontation, monologuing that she's not afraid of him anymore. Why is this relevant, you ask? It's because by the time she encounters Ridley on the Bottle Ship, she's already fought him several times in several different forms. She should be at a point where the appearance of Ridley shouldn't even phase her (and has left several different versions of him in circumstances that shouldn't have been normally possible to come back from). In short, Sakamoto reintroduced a character flaw Samus already overcame in a prior story for the sole purpose of overcoming it again.
    • By far the moment where I lost all hope it was gonna get better was the Sector Zero scene. I could ramble on about it, but I will sum it up in a few words: Adam shoots Samus. Without any provocation. ...What the hell, Nintendo?
    • While the Sector Zero scene is the worst entire scene, the worst part of that entire scene isn't where Adam shoots Samus. No, it's the Ian Call Back. Because it says everything the game wants to say about Samus Aran. Samus never gets to avenge her mistake with Ian. She was wrong when she was a girl, and she's still wrong now. Even though the entire point of that trope is to give the protagonist the opportunity to overcome their greatest failure, to redeem themselves. But not here; in this case, it exists solely to show that Samus is still childish, she still needs a man to tell her what to do. It shows that the true protagonist of Metroid: Other M is Adam Malkovich.
    • In contrast with about half the people who played the game, I generally liked the gameplay but found the story to be passable, neither great nor abysmal. The part that really left a bad taste in my mouth, however, was the whole sequence between the awesome battle with the Queen Metroid and the end credits. The whole introduction of Melissa and her backstory felt very rushed and contrived, and the "boss battle," which consists of you merely aiming (not shooting) at Melissa, was very poorly done, especially in contrast to the previous battle. I hope that next time, Nintendo will look back at this game when making the next entry in the series and preserve the good parts while avoiding mistakes such as these.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky. The Perfect Apples incident. You're supposed to go to Apple Forest to collect Perfect Apples because Team Skull ate the stock while the guild was sleeping. Team Skull, being the jerks they are decide to give you a hard time (again) and follow you. When you get there, Team Skull has beaten you to the punch and ambushes you, then steals the apples. Chatot decides this is somehow your team's fault, and he punishes you by making you go without dinner and face the wrath of the Guildmaster, only to find that Team Skull has saved one apple just for Wigglytuff just to rub salt into the wounds. The next morning, Ted Baxter Chatot pretty much tells you "Don't get your hopes up" when asked about being picked to go on the upcoming expedition. This is what solidifies Chatot's status as The Scrappy of Time/Darkness/Sky by the way...
  • And speaking of Pokemon, its other spinoff series, Pokémon Ranger, has the infamous Yellow Gem incident in Shadows of Almia. After going through Hippowdon Temple and defeating one of the Gem Masters, Heath shows up and offers the gem for your partner. The kicker when you say "No"? "Oh? You not care about Keith? Not a very good friend?" That's right, you have to give the gem up for your partner despite him/her not being in complete danger. All that hard work ruined. Nice work, GameFreak, Creatures, Inc., etc., for doing such an infuriating scene.
    • That was the one major Wall Banger in the entire spinoff. I mean, Keith pretty much stated outright that he was less important than the Gem, and yet the game itself contradicts him. It just comes off as really contrived. Chugga chugga chugga chugga...
  • The end of the June mission in Valkyria Chronicles II, with Cosette going through a sudden Heroic BSOD for reasons that, while reasonable, end up seeming contrived and artificial within the plot of the game (she had healed people before, where does that fear of blood come from? And she's a medic who has a fear of blood? What gives?) and Avan shooting himself in the gut just to make a point and motivate her to get over her demons. Thereby irresponsibly removing himself from the chain of command and diverting medical attention from injured civilians and soldiers who needed it more than him. And we're supposed to consider him heroic and admirable for that. Geez, and people get all worked up over the infamous Faldio debacle in the first game...
  • Final Fantasy VIII gave me a Dethroning Scene Of Suck. The entire damn Garden War between Balamb and Galbadia gardens prior to actually entering Galbadia garden. Rinoa's Distress Ball derails almost everything happening concurrently in regards to plot and characterization. Examples? The Garden War scene where she's hanging from the edge and the party comes back to get Squall to rescue her. Keep in mind that, at this point, Squall has been deemed the commander of this war and the life of every Balamb student (SeeD or otherwise) is his responsibility. Squall refuses to go and save ONE student as opposed to the dozens, if not hundreds that need him now—then the party completely disregards what he says and tells him to do it anyway while they make up their own plan. I'm sorry, who was in charge here again? Worse, they use the phrase "Rinoa is one of us" for their justification (as opposed to, you know, the other people in the Garden whom many either grew up with and befriended long before Rinoa came along). Next, when Squall actually mounts his rescue, the means to do so literally drops into his lap through Contrived Coincidence. Third, after he rescues her, he and Rinoa run through an intense battlefield with warriors from both sides killing and being killed mercilessly while they head to defeat the Big Bad behind the whole war. Then, they suddenly decide to stop and have a cutesy romantic conversation involving Squall's ring—while the people under Squall's command are fighting and dying a few yards away.
    • The dragged-out sequence where it was revealed that all the party members (sans Rinoa and including Seifer) all grew up together in the same orphanage, which was run by the apparent Big Bad Edea. This comes completely out of nowhere, as does the Ass Pull revelation that GF summons cause memory loss (Selphie's example of this happening is particularly forced) Irvine remembers everything though, which admittedly does add a much better motive to his hesitance to shoot Edea earlier besides "he's a coward", but the whole sequence is still very improbable, illogical, and in the grand scheme of things, adds little to the story other than a lame Shocking Swerve.
  • Vanquish. The ending. So, Burns dies. The Heel Face Revolving Door antics were annoying, but okay. Killed off the only memorable character, but okay! We get to the end, we get a phoned-in Token Romance. Not unusual in a game with a mostly Excuse Plot. Suddenly, Remote-controlled robot suits! Winters commits suicide! The Big Bad is winning! What climactic final confrontation will round off this epic - oh. Roll credits. 'Yaaaaaaay. I'm so looking forward to buying the (unlikely, given the anticlimax) sequel, which will probably cost exactly as much as the original game!
  • Sora falling to his knees while grabbing Riku's hand, crying and saying "I looked everywhere for you!" in Kingdom Hearts II. He won't cry over Goofy supposedly dying, but he'll cry when he's reunited with his friend even though he at least knew Riku was still alive. That emotionally over-the-top moment was really, really awkward to watch. And in a series with one of the most annoying Yaoi Fangirl bases out there, it's really unappreciated by the rest of us.
    • Also from Kingdom Hearts II: the entire Cloud vs. Sephiroth subplot. Sora, Donald, and Goofy literatelly do nothing to affect it, the fight against Sephiroth and his reasoning about wanting the Keyblade is dropped and never referenced again in favor of a generic showdown between him and Cloud that ends abrubtly with no resolution, and worst of all, the whole thing made no sense. Cloud is flanderized as his stoic, Wangsty Advent Children self with no explanation, his obsession with fighting Sephiroth isn't explained other than some weird bullshit about Sephiroth being "his darkness", and Tifa is his light, all the while she is derailed into some generic tough girl who single-mindedly seeks Cloud. Ugh, there is just so much wrong with this plotline and it's just so damn pointless save for pandering to the Final Fantasy VII base, just like that damn Complication.......sorry, Compilation.
  • The ending of the Mega Man Zero series, thanks mainly due to Capcom's Executive Meddling keeping this and the preceding two series going on longer than they should've. Not because that Zero died, but because of the implications. Even though the third game revealed Zero's mind was moved to a clone body, he's still the same Zero we all grew up playing, meaning he's still Dr. Wily's creation. Dr Wily is the one who basically, unintentionally mind you, saved humanity and ushered in a new age whereas Dr. Light ultimately failed to do just that. And on top of that, X and the guardians, who were cloned from his DNA data, are barely mentioned in the game. It's like after spending so many years with Rock and X, and following the morals that their games presented in their 20-something games, Capcom, in just four games, basically said "Yeah, that's actually a load of crap, just kill the human villain first chance you get. Let's just forget those Light Bots and acknowledge that Dr. Wily is the real hero."
    • The guardians were killed off screen by the blast (officially they shielded Zero, but if it didn't happen on screen, then it did not happen). This in itself is a major Wall Banger for one reason. They all have personal Trans-Servers, meaning that they can "Deep Strike" to a known location at will, including for the purpose of a quick escape. The finale of the first game shows that they have a quick cool down time of 15 seconds max. The time between their "deep strike" on Omega and Omega's death was WAY longer than the time spent after "deep striking" to Copy X's inner sanctum. In the words of Linkara, off screen character death is extremely lazy/bad writing. The fact that three major characters were killed off-screen makes it worse. In fact, Weil taking over in Zero 4 itself brings multiple continuity errors combined into Wall Banger grade snarl:
    1. His military power: To quote Harpuia "He's bluffing. He can't do anything in his current state." Weil's plan for domination was solely reliant on the use of Omega as a terror tool. Without Omega, he was powerless. Barring an Ass Pull, where did the vile forces and Craft come from. There was no hint of them existing in previous games.
    2. Weil having full control of energy: What about the Ciel system which was established in Zero 3 to be vastly superior to anything Neo Arcadia had (established by Copy X in his comments on monopoly on both energy and Zero). The development of said system to bring peace to the world was an uber important plot point for the entire series and it got Put on a Bus in Zero 4 to make Weil seem all powerful.
    3. Considering the events of ZX (especially Advent), Zero's sacrifice has become completely pointless as in a way (via corruption), Weil is behind everything wrong in the series. All and all, Zero 4 is a pointless sequel that only exists because some exec must of really liked Weil. We could of have ZX without Zero 4, as the Zero 3 ending left a perfect sequel hook for the ZX series. Weil could have just of easily created Model W as part of his next evil plans for world domination (without Ragnarock), placing his soul in it. Ciel's biometals could have just as easily been made via the willing interment of the souls of Zero, X (now in cyberspace), and the guardians eternally vigilant to combat model W if it shows itself.
  • Now, I loved Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I thought Subspace Emissary was good considering that no characters talked throughout the entire thing (except Snake's one introduction line). However, there's one thing that really, really irritated me: Sonic getting the shaft when it came to story in Subspace Emissary. Now, whether you love or hate him (or are just sick of him), there's no denying that he's the most widely anticipated character to appear in SSB. And all you give him is a single Big Damn Heroes moment with absolutely no explanation? What the hell, Sakurai? Where did he come from? What was he doing? How did he get there? Why was he there? One of the things I looked forward to the most was seeing him interact with the Nintendo characters. Hell, it would've awesome if it was Sonic that Mario had to travel with, forcing two of gaming's biggest rivals to work together and maybe overcome their bitter rivalry throughout the course of the story. But nope. Fans played through hours of story, going through a painful and tedious maze, and what was the payoff? A single, short moment with no context. To this day, it still grinds my gears.
  • The last dungeon in Final Fantasy III. Kind of boring and annoying the first time through but not so bad. Then you have to fight six bosses without saving, enduring long, boring, poorly written unskippable cutscenes. If you lose you have to go through the overly long boring dungeon, fight the same bosses and watch the same f-ing scenes over and over. It gets really really annoying and repetitive after a few times. The DS version makes this "better" by adding a completely unneeded Scrappy Mechanic where you need to grind your jobs to make them not suck, and of course only gives you jobs most useful for that dungeon right before it, so you have to grind those even more.
  • Mega Man Battle Network, I played through all the games with only one real motive: To see where Roll.exe and Megaman.exe's romantic subplot went. Just like Mayl and Lan's romance, it gets absolutely no development, but in the very least, Mayl and Lan had the epilogue to tie things up.
  • Jade Empire has a pretty big one, all game other characters have reported seeing a flaw in your fighting style, The reason for this is that Master Li purposely put one in that he could exploit later on to kill you, after roughly 12 hours of gameplay, with all this build up and foreshadowing, you finally kill the Emperor who you've been lead to believe was the real villain, and how does the scene where Li betrays you pan out? With your techiques being quickly exploited in a fight and him defeating you? Nope, you get distracted by something shiny and he kills you without anything save your attention span being exploited
  • While the DLC for Force Unleashed was always letting you be the bad guy. It seems that the Endor DLC proved to be a complete sacrilige to everything Star Wars stood for as you play as Starkiller as he takes out everyone in Endor in a tasteless matter that is stoking the creator's ego and the Kratos inspired sith sadist who indulges in the slaughter of not just Ewoks and Chewie but the entire Star Wars franchise.
  • The Tennpenny Tower quest from Fallout3. The quest revolves around a pre war fancy hotel that a group of ghouls (mutated people that are immortal and look like zombies) want to get in while the owner Alistair Tennpenny refuses them entry. Throughout the entire quest it paints the ghouls as the downtrodden good guys who just want a home while it paints everyone in the tower as racist assholes. But that isn't the real moment of suck. The real moment is taking the peaceful resolution to the quest and letting both the ghouls and the humans live together through negotiating. However, when you return a few days later, all of the humans are dead including the ones who were indifferent to, or even liked ghouls. Ok, grey on grey morality, I guess I can kill their leader who committed mass murder... The game begs to differ. When you kill their leader Roy Phillips you take a hit to your karma therefore making it bad that you killed a mass murderer. It's just one of those moments where someone tries to shove black and white morality in a place that has clear grey on grey, black on grey, or even black on black, (depending on how you view the situation) morality. It's safe to say I'm not the only one who hated this moment.
    • Indeed you aren't. What really made me hate this outcome was that if you confront Roy about this, he actually threatens to kill you as well. Fortunately, there's a mod that changes Roy's karma level to Very Evil, allowing you to kill him and not be criticised by Bethesda's warped morality system.
    • Not only does the karma hit suck, but to me, it's just the mayo-filled cherry on the ice cream of shit that is this quest. As a PC gamer, there's a developer console, and this is one of the situations where "cheating" can easily be justified (rewards about double the karma I lost for killing him - and removing the karma hit from killing any named ghoul-NPC). This quest was supposed to give a sense of grey morality, but instead you just get either manipulated into aiding mass murder - no matter how intelligent or charismatic your character may be. This quest could have been pulled off way better, such as not showing it as another black/white morality issue. Not only that, but to add to the suckiness, there's another unmarked and easily missable quest called Election day. This quest is about making the election in the Republic of Dave happen. There are 3 presidental candidates, Dave, Rosie and Bob. Dave has a rather isolationist policy, but he does a good job defening his people against the Crapsack World of the Capital Wasteland. Rosie has a more open policy about trading and such, but doesn't really have any combat training. The thrid is Bob, Dave's son, who will turn the place into the Empire of Bob if he wins. Dave will leave the place if he doesn't win, and since he is fairly badass in-universe, the place will have problems. They could have made a bigger deal out of this once, since every option has a bad and a good side to it, it would require some thinking to earn the best ending for these people. It frustrates this troper to see a quest which had what it takes to be a good experience, then makes it such a small, missable thing.
  • For sheer story derailment, the "Arrival" mission for Mass Effect 2 (which is intended as a tie-in to the third game) is quite possibly the worst DLC in the franchise. This is due to the fact that many of the gameplay elements and plot points are designed to railroad the player into one choice, and one choice only: blow up a Mass Relay by ramming it with an asteroid that has 300,000 Batarian colonists living on it. Admiral Hackett forces Shepard to go on a solo mission for no other reason than "because the plot says so" - after 10 minutes of sneaking around (which is optional anyway), Shepard's cover is blown and he has to escape with Dr. Benson. Later on, Shepard is knocked out for two days by the indoctrinated Benson and her research team, and instead of killing him and/or dismantling the asteroid so that it won't be used as a weapon for his plan, they sit on their hands and leave him in a cell with two woefully-inept guards, access to a sentry robot and all his gear lying right outside the door. Really?
    • There's a bit of Fridge Brilliance regarding their decision to merely sedate Shepard, though - the indoctrinated research team was acting at the order of the Reapers, who we know have massive egos from interactions with Sovereign, and a particular hatred/fascination for Shepard himself. So odds are that the Reapers were able to command the research team to keep him "Alive so that we may study him upon our arrival", and they probably didn't have any access to long-term stasis. As to the guards, that's a fair point.
  • There's one absolutely groan-worthy moment in L.A. Noire during a flashback to Cole Phelps' memories of Okinawa. Cole, then a Marine officer, is trying to control his squad's bloodthirsty desire for Japanese casualties, and asks them why they're even fighting the Japanese in the first place. One says it's because the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, but Cole responds that the Japanese attacked Pearl because the US had cut off their oil supply to Japan. Then, with almost a wink at the audience, he wonders what they would all think if the US ever invaded another country for their own lack of oil. Realistic or not, it was such an awfully blatant Take That that it ruined the entire scene. That being said, the rest of the game is so amazing that the amount of damage caused by this ultimate moment of suck is minimal at worst.
    • Phelps' affair with Elsa. There is absolutely nothing to establish Phelps' relationship with his own family beyond a passing comment that he even has a family at all. His initial interaction with Elsa is through questioning about the stolen Army surplus goods and she's rather curt throughout the whole line of questioning. Literally the next thing that happens is the player tailing her cab to her apartment, she and Phelps sleep together, and he is demoted to Arson at the end of The Manifest Destiny case. Considering the game builds Phelps to be a By-The-Book Cop, this is quite a 180 degree turn for him..
    • The end off the homicide storyline ended on a very sour note that left a bad taste in my mouth.To eloborate, you spend an entire case figuring out who the Werewolf killer is and where he's hiding. The case itself is thrilling and makes you think by reading excerpts from famous poems to discover the next clue. After going through a maze, walking over the tar pits, climbing a to the very top of the library tower, and most dangerously, tight rope walking to a chandelier that is very high up to find a clue, and then almost falling with it when it collapses, you find the killer at an abandoned church. after a rather lackluster chase, you kill the Werewolf, only to have the Captain Donnoly tell you that his identity can't reveled to the public and the case will be closed... simply because the guy is the half-brother of a influential politician. The only good part is that the people whom you've wrongly accused are set free.
    • Illuminatus: Manifest Destiny. The LA media learns at the beginning that the LAPD has been taking payoffs from a madam and basically running their own prostitution ring. Desperate to get out from under this, they jump at the opportunity to smear Cole when Roy Earle reveals Cole's affair. The problem is, the case itself is the climax of the side plot wherein Cole's former Marine underlings get so furious with his success that they rob the Army of crates of guns and drugs and become gangsters of their own - butting heads with the real-life Mickey Cohen. The case itself is a citywide bloodbath as Cohen tries to assassinate the Marines all at once, including attacking a public bus with a machine gun and murdering two of them right on the red carpet at the Chinese Theater. You also learn that the mafia has a mole inside the LAPD who fed them these names, leading to the deaths of most of Cole's old unit and indirectly to the death of several cops. Finally, the case reaches its high point when Cole arrests and confronts Courtney Sheldon, the mastermind of the heist and the man who shot him in the back on Okinawa, only for Capt. Donnelly to interrupt this pivotal scene to berate you for the affair and demote you to Arson. Almost none of these massive plot threads are mentioned again.
  • Duke Nukem Forever. Now this game was a dozen years in the making, and at best it was decent. There was a Capture the Babe mode that leaned towards Black Comedy Rape, and there was the Disappointing Last Level creeping in. However they're not on the list. What makes this the Dethroning Moment of Suck, I think we know where this is going, is the Alien Hive level. Now alien rape is something I'm fine with in the context of the story, however Duke comes across the twins he was with at the start of the game, who have been kidnapped, raped and are about to die a horrible death. For as much of a misogynist Duke is he's always been portrayed as genuinely loving and caring of women. How does he react to their plight?

"Guess you're...fucked."

  • Strategia: Heroes of Might and Magic V, the Hammers of Fate expansion. Good Is Not Nice / Light Is Not Good was well-established with Isabel and the Griffin Empire in the main game. It got jarring at some points, sure, when Isabel was carrying an Idiot Ball you could crush an elephant with, but that kind of fit with her character. In the first campaign of Ho F, the viewpoint switches to Freyda, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Isabel (minus the ruthlessness and being queen, ofc, and with a whole lot more naïveté), who gets sent off with a bloodthirsty murderer, an archbishop who's downright creepy when he's not being a total jackass, and an army of new, more than a little questionable troops (Griffins whose description hints that their "training" is little more than animal abuse, heavy infantry with horns and spikes all over their armour), to suppress some rebellions. The explanation Freyda is given is that the rebels are demonic cultists, evidenced by random low-level demons appearing out of nowhere, which means you get to murder hundreds of peasants, burn their huts, and then capture and raze entire cities, and watch Freyda's uncle get murdered in cold blood. She has deep misgivings about the whole affair, but continues with it anyway out of sheer bloody-minded loyalty, like someone combined Honor Before Reason with an Idiot Ball that would make Atlas proud. That's annoying to be sure, but it only forms part of this DMoS. Playing the scenarios themselves, when I go beyond mere gameplay and stats and think about what it is I'm doing, I get deeply disturbed and disgusted. I'm commanding an army of elite soldiers, ravaging the countryside killing everyone they meet, for trumped-up reasons, in the service of an all-powerful, unquestioned leader of an increasingly zealous empire. I'm roleplaying the fantasy version of a Waffen-SS death squad. There's Good Is Not Nice, there's Light Is Not Good, and there's this - after the first mission or two, there's no justification for what you're doing, and it makes me feel sick just to sit through the cutscenes or burn down another town or two. I can never finish a mission in one sitting. This goes far, FAR beyond establishing that Isabel is not a Good queen, even knowing the reason behind it. I cannot fathom why the developers felt it necessary to stretch that storyline, which could have easily fit in one, maybe two missions, into a whole campaign. Not cool, Nival. Not cool.
    • Fofa: Wanna know what makes this even better? It turns out Biara was disguising herself as Isabel all along. Then it's shown in the Dungeon campaign after the Dwarf missions that the real Isabel was with Raelag all this time, giving many players the impression that they were "spending quality time together". Later Word of God statements only served to send this further into Wall Banger territory: they answered that only Raelag caught on to Biara disguising herself as the fake queen, so he went to rescue Isabel by himself and it escaping from Sheog is a time consuming affair. First, this wasn't even implied at all in the cutscenes, so that could've been re-written, and second, why the hell didn't Raelag say anything?! If he told the other heroes who were with him at the time, all those innocent people might still be alive and averted most of the damage that was done. Definitely the lowest point of the series' writing, reminding me why I rarely play the campaign modes.
  • Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: While the vast majority of this game is superb, good story, good characters, good puzzles, it was wonderful. The full/True/100% ending had one horrific reveal that ruined this almost perfect game. I am quite happy with the background of the story, that Young Akane needed to connect with future Junpei so she could save herself in the past from being burnt to death alive. What completely destroyed the entire sturdy plot was what held it all together. The reason why Young Akane ended up in the incinerator in the first place. She, "young" 'Seven' and other people, including her own brother, were escaping from the incinerator and a group of insane maniacs forcing them to do life or death puzzles. She was ahead of them on the stairs when she realised she dropped something... a doll. So she went back down to get... a doll... and got caught by the then Big Bad and forced to do the puzzle before she burnt to death. Seriously! The whole story hinged on a piece of fabric! A meaningless piece of fabric shaped to be a doll! I had absolutely no intention of saving her. All that the other characters had been through (and since you need all the endings to get this one, you see everybody die at least once) because she wanted her doll. The sad music plays over all of this and the final puzzle and you're supposed to care and feel sorry that a Too Dumb to Live girl would go back to where she's been running away from to get a doll she got from a friend when another one could be bought easily. She even says she mustn't let anybody see her get it back because they would talk her out of it. Of course they would! They're smart! Any feelings I had towards the characters (cute and likeable) was replaced with utter disgust. I felt robbed and cheated. I bought this game, spent time on it, expecting something great and wonderful... and it all ended with a doll. And since the game is all about not judging things by its covers I think it worked out ironically for them. The game is great but was shattered by that... one little thing...
  • The ending of Castle Crashers. You rescue the orange princess and she removes a veil revealing Tricky The Clown who does a dance during an Acid Trip Sequence. Now, if this was a free flash game, that'd be fine, but not for something I coughed up money for. Honestly, I expected better than that. Doesn't stop me from playing the game, but still.
  • The ending of Don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story, a good free western Visual Novel about a teacher who oversees all of the students conversations and part way through a student kills herself. He starts getting creepy messages saying "why didn't you stop her?" etc, day and night, and eventually a woman will start talking to him asking him why he didn't help her. Throughout the story there's some other drama evolving a girl being a homophobic bully—the anvil is dropped onto your face that both of those are bad. Then at the end it all turns out that the students had set up a prank for the teacher to believe the girl was dead so he would lighten up and not take things so seriously... This is apparently okay! It was so... in your face that it wasn't just the darn characters! It was such a stupid prank! For starters there was a parent involved and she was fine with the possible mental and emotional scaring the man could have got from that, but no everybody was completely okay with such an outcome. It wasn't so bad that it was a free game but it felt like a waste of my time - after such lovely characters.
  • I really liked God of War, but the ease in which Poseidon and Hades get killed off is seriously awful. Zeus gets a long battle culminating with being impaled repeatedly on the Blade of Olympus, leaps away essentially unharmed given an opening of about a second, oneshots Kratos when he makes it to the top of Olympus, and then needs two equally epic battles in quick succession followed by a No Holds Barred Beatdown to actually kill; and his brothers are supposed to be almost as powerful as him, which they demonstrate quite admirably against the Titans. Instead, Poseidon is appearently essentially helpless without his Leviathan and Hades can be killed by an almost totally depowered Kratos; both of which happen in the first hour or so of the game. Not only is this doing a colossal disservice to two of the greatest of the Olympians, but it also means that none of the other boss fights are ever going to compare with them in magnitude; seeing as how Helios, Hermes, and Herakles aren't even close to their league. The almost total lack of a boss fight against Helios, the bizarre absence of Artemis, and the anticlimactic ends to Hephaestous and Gaea are one thing; but this is just too far.
  • Saints Row 3 was pretty good overall, but it REALLY pissed me off that the writers felt the need to kill Johnny Gat off-screen in the first 15 minutes of the game in the most pathetic, contrived and half-assed way imagineable, at first I thought he would be back later in the game since we only heard gunshots over the intercom and we never saw Gat's body, but then later on, after the Saints get attacked on the bridge, the boss rants about how the gang attacked them during Johnny's funeral, and I was like WTF? Johnny's dead and they didn't even bother to show the funeral?! I would've been fine with Johnny dying, but not in such an asinine and ridiculous way so early in the game, come on writers! Have him die in a blaze of glory, not like some punk-ass bitch! Hopefully one of the DLC packs will rectificy this misstep.
    • At least Donnie wasn't part of the gang that killed him. Donnie is a bad luck charm that gets fellow saints killed.
  • The ending of the otherwise great expansion pack for Command & Conquer: Generals, Zero Hour. Basically, the GLA launches a counter offensive against the USA after they got the hell beaten out of them by the USA in not one, but TWO campaigns in a row. Their attack is successful beyond belief; not only do they completely obliterate US Forces in Europe and wreck the USA itself (due to the American leaders picking up the idiot ball), causing them to withdraw from all their strongholds in the world, but the GLA actually manages to launch a full scale invasion of Germany. What does NATO, the USA, and the EU do? Absolutely fucking nothing. They just sit on their hands while the dirt poor Middle Eastern / Central Asian army marches on Europe, leaving China to pick up the slack, which ends with China beating back the GLA and becoming the new world superpower. Regardless of your stance on current world politics, this ending is so improbable (requiring the US and EU to lose all semblances of competence and power, while making the Chinese a nation of Mary Sues) and unnecessary (completely negating the Crowning Moment of Awesome that was the Zero Hour US campaign) that it is ridiculous.
  • "Mass Effect 3's endings. After all the hard work and toil that one has done over the course of three games, and with the hopes of at least getting an ending that reflects your choices, it ends up being confined to three choices: destroy the Reapers, sacrifice Shepard to control the Reapers, or turn all life in the galaxy into organic-synthetic crossbreeds. No matter what you choose, Shepard either dies or wakes up in a pile of rubble, the mass relays are destroyed, and the Normandy is stranded on a distant planet with all your squadmates aboard. Not only does this completely go against the whole idea of having meaningful choices in a game, as they clearly had no impact since one is forced to choose between these three endings, it also feels like a slap to the face of all the fans who had invested in the series. All of this just so Bioware could try to squeeze in a Bittersweet Ending. It wouldn't even be bad if there was a way to get a happier ending.
    • Ditto, but for me, it's because the ending makes no sense, is completely contrary to the themes of the games, and makes all the things you did in the games completely irrelevant. I mean, you get pretty much exactly the same ending no matter which option you pick or how any war assets you have. That is not what they promised us the endings would be like.
    • I was willing to defend the endings but found that there was nothing to defend, there is nothing poetic or deeply meaningful about the ending, it was just a kick in the balls, the only difference between endings is how hard you worked to get to the inevitable balls kicking. I find it hard to believe that one of BioWare's more critically stable franchises could end on such a horrid note... The game itself is fine though.
    • What's even worse, we have to agree with the Catalyst on his claims even if the bastard is the biggest fucking hypocrite of the whole galaxy. Because 1. He creates the reapers so we can be saved from the synthetics rebelling against the organics... by killing the organics, 2. That, despise the contrary (ie: The geth and the quarians), we can't go to peace with the synthetics, and 3. His logic is fully flawed. If he created the reapers and that "the created will always rebel against the creators", doesn't that mean that the reapers might rebel against him? I always hated that when they introduced a character at the last minute, worse if it an important one. Because that they make this for a cheap plot twist. Sorry Bioware but this is hardly better than M. Night Shyamalan.
    • My experience with Mass Effect was something special. From the moment the title screen of ME1 popped up(while I was tripping out on a can of Drank), I was hooked into the rich setting, the excellent characters and voice acting, and the overall superb story written by Bioware, whom I'd been skeptical of because of Jade Empire(which wasn't bad, but was definitely not as good as the potential Bioware-helmed KotOR sequel). Thanks to Mass Effect, my dwindling interest in the Sci Fi genre was ignited anew. Then came the Even Better Sequel, Mass Effect 2. The expanded setting, deeper character arcs, and, again, excellent story damn near made Mass Effect 2 become my new #1 All Time Game, which is held by the classic Final Fantasy VII. Then came ME3, with, once again, an expanded setting, excellent character arcs, and a superb story that hooked me in and didn't let go. As I entered the endgame, ME3 was well-poised to edge out FF7, which to this day is seen as a titan of the RPG world, atop my list of greatest games of all time. This is why I'm particularly infuriated by the game's closing minutes.
    • That crappy-ass ending is not what I waited for. It's a goddamned cop-out! You spend all your hours on making it through this awesome plot, getting attached to these endearing characters, doing some good, and then they end it with a unexplained Deus Ex Machina in the form of a kid, and you're only given three choices, none of them actually different. Then Shepard dies...for real this time, and then it all ends with your crew being stranded and that's it. We expected an "amazing, defining ending", and all we get is the table scraps from Deus Ex. I'm disappointed in the fact that there was no epic, definite, final confrontation with Harbinger. Yeah, remember him? He hardly showed up in the game! So, retroactively, he becomes a Karma Houdini because of crappy writing (seems to me that there's a lot of these characters generating dethroning moments nowadays, and I'm really not big on them in general). The sacrifices you make in this game and the other two are all rendered moot and pointless all because of this sorry excuse for an ending! Bioware promised, and failed, to deliver, which in turn ruins the other two games and ultimately reduces the entire franchise to dust.
    • I loved Mass Effect. I loved the characters, I loved the universe, I loved the writing, the humor, all of it. As Mass Effect 3 played out, I got invested like I had never been before in a game. I cared for these people I had grown to love over the past two games. I felt elated when I put conflicts to rest. I felt really happy that all my work through the past games was coming to ends. And then came this fucking ending. You honestly thought that pulling this kind of bullshit, invalidating everything I worked for, everyone I fought for, and giving zero resolution would be fitting? Guess what? It ain't. Not only that, but Bioware somehow managed to strip the game of all replay value. It's one thing to end bad. It's another to end so badly, it actually makes the entire series worse.
    • Okay, just something I would like to add along with all the other issues with the ending. Where is the playable epilogue? Where is it? How would you be able to play it? Wasn't the game going to be able to be played after the ending? The mothers should have slapped the big fat dumb bird that delivered the ending writers.
    • For me, it's The Stinger. After pissing all over one of my favorite franchises, they have the nerve to stick in that little 'everything turns out alright but we're not telling you how! teehee' disclaimer. Not only are you irrevocably destroying one of the best new video game franchises, but you're mocking me as well?
    • Hell, I haven't even seen any of the endings yet and I am appalled by just how nonsensical and poorly written they are. It all seems like something you would expect out of a really bad fan-fic, not from professional writters who spent countless hours crafting such an elaborate universe. What's more, Bioware promised that the endings wouldn't just be based on choice A, B, or C, when that was the exact case in every single one. Not to mention there are so many contradictions and plot holes and shear stupidity that you can make an entire list of them. Which someone already did.
    • What else could be said about the ending that has not already been said? The worst for me is not that it downplays the Reapers as villains after such a long buildup to a climactic moment, that it goes completely against the themes of the entire series, that your capability of choice is shattered beyond recovery, or that it has no sense of sensible conclusion and closure. The worst is that, apparently, the developers thought that it was meant to make sense! We, the players, are being treated like morons for saying that this godawful ending makes absolutely no sense!
  • Red Dead Redemption. Yeah, kill off the main character. Fine. Great artistic statement. Wow, what a great way to make me feel like I wasted the last 30 hours of my life. I don't have much tolerance for Downer Endings and Shoot the Shaggy Dog in the first place, but pulling it in a videogame, where I've actually done something as opposed to sat there and read/watched, just really fucking pissed me off. And while we're at it, losing a duel is not in any way an appropriate fate for Edgar Ross. Tying him up in the basement where I can beat him up whenever I feel like and kill him slowly over the course of several years is more like it. (And yes, that's exactly what Edgar Ross deserved, anything less makes - and did make - him a Karma Houdini).
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2. It's a toss up, the canon ending gives us another The Bad Guy Wins scenario, the only characters who are alive at the end are Lightning, Big Bad Caius, and maybe Yuel. As mentioned above nothing is more infuriating in a game than ending by invalidating your efforts, especially in a game that can take well over 40 hours to complete. Put in the effort to get the One Hundred Percent Completion Secret Ending, which due to all the Last Lousy Point and Guide Dang It will take over 65 hours even with a guide, and you're treated to a short scene of the Big Bad taunting you, and revealing that no matter what he won and everybody died.
  • Assassin's Creed II has one of the most ant climatic bosses ever.Ezio finally reach's Rodrigo after dozens of assassinations.What does he get?A fat old man holding a papal staff that has a huge amount of health, and there are five Ezio's fighting him (Don't Ask). He abandons his Pope staff and Ezio challenges him to a fist fight.The fight only lasts a minute at best and to top it off Ezio doesn't kill him.What.The.Fuck.Ezio finds the man who killed his family and finally decides to stop and let him live.At least Cesare kills him in Brotherhood.
  • Soul Calibur V, I have a problem with your writing. Pyrrha and Patroklos are the Spotlight-Stealing Squad and none of the other characters get any real story time. The Replacement Scrappy levels are too high, and the games' story could have just ended at IV. But I draw the line at how you wrote out my favourite character, Cassandra. Bascially, She was shocked into a one-blow submission from Sophitia's forced Face Heel Turn and somehow ended up in an alternate dimension, unable to return. Come on Namco, Cassandra was more badass than that! I'm calling Fanon Discontinuity on this one.
    • Not only this, but many of these new characters are completely forgettable compared to the originals. Characters like Xiba or the alternate versions of the Spotlight-Stealing Squad are unnecessary; being either flat-out cliched like the former (who likes to eat a lot of food; even crying "FOOD!" when he dies) or half-assed additions to fill the roster like the latter. The worst thing about these new characters is that they aren't fleshed out like the old cast; as the game lacks endings to the new character's personal stories in favor of a story mode that does little to even introduce these characters to the player.
  • Prototype 2. Much like the ending to Mass Effect 3, the ending here makes the whole series feel rather limp. Without going in too deep, you kill Alex Mercer, the main protagonist of the series. That alone is a rather poor story choice, but what makes it worse is just how they handled his character. In the ending of the original he had saved Manhattan, truly cared for his sister, was disgusted at the depravity of Blackwatch and Gentek, and was overall starting to become more human. 2 completely does away with all this, turning him into a generic villain that is too easily defeated, all to make way for a generic character to be the hero who doesn't even care about PARIAH or any of the evils of the corporations. To put it simply, They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.
    • Worst yet, the fact that when you kill Mercer, you magically shoot out a load of black tentacle thingys which somehow kill every infected person in Manhatten. Biggest. Cop-out. EVER.
  • My DMOS would have to be the death of Emma Emmerich in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. After Emma dies, Otacon decided to leave her corpse on the Big Shell, which is going to flood. ...what? I'm sorry, Otacon, but what you just said sounded like you don't care for your sister. Leaving your dead sister in the offshore facility that's going to be flooded does not solve the problem. A better solution would be to bring your dead sister safely to your hometown and give her a proper burial. Even worse, neither Snake nor Raiden called out on Otacon to make him change his mind. Although the security camera did not show Emma's corpse when the flooding happened, I had a hard time falling asleep because I was completely shocked and couldn't believe how uncaring Otacon was. However, I have high hopes that maybe Emma will be Spared by the Adaptation if, by chance, the game gets adapted into a film.
  • I'll admit that I'm having the time of my life playing Xenoblade and find it to be a very entertaining game that you can sink hundreds of hours into without growing bored with it. I find the storyline and overall dialogue quite satisfying... except for one jarring and incredibly stupid and terribly written moment in Sword Valley. After Shulk and the gang's final confrontation with Metal Face/Mumkhar, Dunban goes to finish him off and put an end to the bastard's villainy once and for all. But right before he gets the killing blow, Shulk decides to stop him and blocks Dunban's attack. The very same Shulk who swore to murder Metal Face for slaughtering tons of innocent Homs over in his hometown, including his friend and love interest Fiora and yells that they can't kill Metal Face because he's truly a Homs like they are. Not only is this sudden 180 in his motivation incredibly jarring, but after a few seconds of clashing weapons, Dunban agrees with Shulk and allows Metal Face to live. And keep in mind, this is the exact same Mumkhar who not only killed his sister, but left him to die in Sword Valley and willingly sold out his species to the Mechon just because he was jealous of him. I'll skip the part where I talk about how Metal Face truly deserved to die for all the shit he pulled and of course, the first thing he does is try to kill Shulk and Dunban again, only to accidentally kill himself, but Shulk insisting that they can't kill him due to being a Homs is hilariously hypocritical since you had to kill two other Faced Mechon in that same battle with Metal Face! While it doesn't really ruin the game for me, that part will forever leave a bitter taste in my mouth.
  • Just a 1itt1e bit further: The ending of Mario Golf: Super Rush. There just isn't enough build-up to the final boss of Golf Adventure in Bowser Highlands, the Snow King. He's not a Giant Space Flea From Nowhere as he is mentioned before the fight, but he doesn't really feel like a final boss at all. Bowser Highlands is all frozen up and Mario is a Distressed Dude, so your Mii goes up to fight the Snow King and defeats him and frees Mario and... Wait, that's it?! The ending barely feels like an ending at all! We don't hear of Mario being in distress or the Snow King causing trouble until late in the game, and it seems to just come out of nowhere at some point. I was expecting at least another world of some sort! They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot and substituted it for a random "save Mario" quest that borders on a Gainax Ending and Makes Just as Much Sense in Context! In general, the Golf Adventure mode just tosses around random plot points like ragdoll and doesn't do anything with them.
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