[Glam Grimfire]

So I've been playing Sleeping Dogs and a few other games recently, and while Sleeping Dogs has an ending that at least serves to tie up its story, I can't help but feel the fact that the protagonist is still alive at the end of the game kind of holds back from establishing anything he does in the game as 'meaningful' because keeping him alive doesn't seem to fit the theme of where the story was going.

This had me thinking of other videogame endings, not necessarily in any sort of 'best of' way, but that in general Videogame Endings are in some form held back, sometimes they don't ever bother to tie the story up at all (Halo/Gears of War 3) and are either left too open, or have endings contrary to the theme of the story.

Can you guys think of any other examples than what I listed?
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##SKELETON PARTY (new article as of 04/26/14)Grim

[CubaLibre]

It's a particular problem in open world games because they have to let you keep playing to get all the side missions and whatnots for the 100%ers.

Probably the entire main theme of RDR is dealing with this dissonance. It is the best open world game. But you're asking for bad endings, not good ones.
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[Wall of Beef]

Honestly one of the most memorable endings for me is that depending on how dominant you are in Super Punch Out!! you get either a full color photo or one that is in Gold of you knocking out Nick Bruiser.
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[Adilegian]

Ground Zeroes' Jamais Vu mission has something like this. In some of the alternative missions, you can get different "endings" (meaning different post-op breakdowns from a black screen and Miller's voice) depending on how you handle the mission. In one mission, for example, if you extract rather than kill your assassination targets, he will talk more about the guys you extracted, elucidating upon a mini-theme that seems implicit in the title of the Phantom Pain.

On of the big "Well let's accept this premise without too many questions" foundations of the Jamais Vu mission is that Raiden comes from a dark future. No matter how well you perform (even getting an S-Rank on Hard), Miller's post-op voiceover doesn't accommodate for Raiden's presence. Even one sentence, like "We'll take you back where we found you," or SOMETHING even mildly cryptic would have made me feel as though the victory earned in-game was matched by accessing new content, which the MGS games are typically pretty good at doing.
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[Deets]

[Rud31]

What no. The Dragon Quarter ending is fantastic. 3 seconds and flash it's over. There is the other ending to Dragon Quarter that any true player experienced at least once.

If you didn't then you are super hard and tough.
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[RT-55J]

[misadventurous]

mother 3 wraps up the story effectively, but it leaves the fate of the characters way up in the air.
(the original japanese ending for fc mother is also a pretty "well now what??" ending)

beyond good and evil has a terrible shit shitty 2-second ending that creates a bunch of ridiculous questions and then leans back and grins smugly at you and its stupid because the sequel will never come out. way to go michel ancel.

[MattCD42]

There's Bioshock Infinite's ending, which is just self defeating, but I guess it kind of ends, then never ends, but that's the point, to make me hate myself.
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[CubaLibre]

Why would you hate yourself when you could just hate Bioshock Infinite instead.
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[scratchmonkey]

GTA IV's ending is both perfect and horrible in that it's a culmination of an open-world game where you have to decide which NPC will die. I say 'perfect' because it totally fits in with the design choices made in the game, where the designers make a certain amount of assumptions for you, then leave you with a limited choice constrained by those assumptions. It stands in contrast with RDR's ending because it doesn't have an ounce of the same sort of thought put into it and is instead a Choice for Choice's sake, with no real relevance to how the player played the game and therefore a corresponding lack of resonance.

[Felix]

Ico and SotC both have wonderful endings in this regard, in that characters who would've rightly died are shown to live not as a cop-out but as a fanciful possibility

RDR is definitely one of the only recent/AAA/western titles to hold up to most ic-era sacred cows in this respect, though, yeah

[Mikey]

It doesn't matter what the ending is, I"m just sad when the good ones are over :'(

[RadRad]

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days.
Running up into the airplane.
Dogs chasing you.
"Camera man" goes down.
Credits.
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[MattCD42]

[boojiboy7]

[Glam Grimfire]

Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days is, according to the Guy Tim a better example of a videogame ending at least sticking true to the theme of the game before it?
I haven't beaten a whole lot of games, so I dunno why I asked this. Maybe it's the reason I haven't beaten more games.
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##SKELETON PARTY (new article as of 04/26/14)Grim

[evnvnv]

I know it's just a shitty NES era non-ending, but the Congratulations! and fade to black as your horrific gargantuan avatar stomps out the last signs of life from the entire United States in Rampage has always felt kind of poetic to me. Maybe because it ends in LA.
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[cake]

The traditional videogame ending is starting again.

[sponkmonkey]