The Best Game Endings
MAJOR, MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD IN THE NOTES!
17 Games
Somehow, you forgive a childhood friend who has hurt you so much. The game asks you not to return to it.
Don't wash your hands so easily.
The universe ends. The universe begins again. Life is made by music and love. Bittersweet.
Time again, Mr. Freeman?
Your distant companion approaches and congratulates you on a job well done. He offers you employment, and you realize just how much of a pawn you were.
Despite what you might have hoped, none of that violence meant anything in particular.
A showdown with a horrible beasts end in the ultimate sacrifice from a baby Metroid. This set a new standard for storytelling in games.
Snake is forced to kill his mentor, who, in fact, died for her country. He's manipulated by his lover. He turns down a handshake from the president, and you begin to see how he is to become Big Boss.
Everyone dies. Let them die.
At least a dozen endings, all of which deconstruct notions of player choice and will. Clever and inventive.
Your determined slugcat annihilates themselves and escapes the neverending Great Cycle of life and death. You discover just how small your problems were in the face of the void and its denizens. Awe-inspiring.
You learn just how much distortion was layered on by the narrator. Chilling.
You free caged animals and burst through the final gate, the drum solo finally giving way to Pharaoh Sanders' "You've Got To Have Freedom".
Heartbreak, gunfire, airplanes.
Go play this game already.
You were supposed to be the hero, weren't you?
You were supposed to be the hero, weren't you?
The classic.
