Sheperd’s Pie

The internet has shit itself over the ending of Mass Effect 3: Electric Boogaloo. This has led to a campaign demanding the company Bioware change the ending post-release, which is like asking them to bring a unicorn back to life with their tears. Not even the much reviled mid-sentence ending of The Sopranos had people asking for a do-over. Imagine if they really had gone ahead and changed the ending of Gone With the Wind ending from, “Quite frankly Scarlett, I don’t give a damn,” to The Simpsons’ version, “Quite frankly Scarlett… I love you, lets remarry!”

Once a product is out the door, it’s considered a done deal. There might be Director’s Cuts versions where the main character turns out to be a robot, etc, but no one takes those versions as cannon. Even George Lucas has only altered the ending of Star Wars by super-imposing another actor over the original. That’s doesn’t make it a different ending. It’s absolutely unheard of in terms of a video game, but through the miracle of paid DLC it can become a very expensive reality.

People who bitched and complained about there being on-the-disc day-one paid content for Mass Effect 3: Tokyo Drift turned around and said they’d pay good money to get a new ending. That blows what’s left of my mind. That’s the reason video games are a multi-billion dollar industry out-grossing Hollywood Box Offices: because “gamers” are goddamn ridiculous. They fought tooth-and-nail against a subscription service for Call of Duty, then paid for it.

Personally, of all I’ve read, I’ve yet to read a single article describing the actual ending due to people being terrified of dishing out Spoilers.

For all I know, it could be awesome, and there’s nothing in the series that guarantees a certain ending. It’s not like your character is “fated” to succeed in one way or another. Mass Effect 2: Meet the Fockers starts with your character dying and can end with your friends and lovers dying, for God’s sake. Beyond that, I’d be satisfied with all the in-game gay sex you’re getting.

It does open up intriguing possibilities. What if we could go back in time and re-write terrible video game endings? Which ending is the worst, anyway?

A lot of games come to mind. For instance:

Super Mario Bros. 2: Luigi’s Revenge. This game was barely recognisable a Super Mario Bros. game, mainly because they super-imposed Mario and friends over the original sprites. It was a fun game, but the ending made people want to punch things in the dick region. SPOILER ALERT! to a decades-old game: It was all a fucking dream, or rather the game took place inside a dream. The game ends with Mario waking up. Super Mario Bros. 2 was Inception. Did I just blow your mind?

Ghosts’n’Goblins: No one ever beat this game, because it was ridiculously hard, but if you did, you’d be rewarded by having to play the entire game a second time to get the ending. Yes: the first run though the game sends you right back to the start, just to fuck with you.

Super Metroid: If you finished the game fast enough, you’d see Samus without her armour on. This revealed the then-shocking twist that Samus had a vagina where her balls should be. It also made thousands of horny teenagers obsessively play the game in the hopes that a quicker runtime would result in seeing the pixelated sprite naked. This was not to be.

Kids jacked it to this.

Final Fantasy X: I could put any Final Fantasy game in here, because all their endings are either baffling or disappointments (with the possible exception of Final Fantasy IX. The original Final Fantasy ended with your heroes being wiped out existence without anyone knowing what they accomplished. Final Fantasy X ended with Tidus being erased from existence as well, as it turns out he was just the whiny dream of a dead civilization that lives inside the body of a giant monster which is made out of essence of his own father who also doesn’t exist. In other words, a Phoinex Down wouldn’t suffice to bring him back. The sequel to the game focused solely on his girlfriend trying to bring him back to life, which is technically impossible because he was never real to begin with. Also: the man she thinks is Tidus is really just an insane organ-playing maniac. You could get a secret ending to Final Fantasy X-2 where she finally reunites with her totally made-up boyfriend, but it takes 100% completion ratio. One mess-up and you have to replay 60+ hours of gaming.

The RPG endings really tend to stick in people’s craws, because they’re not just playing for the fun of it: they’re investing dozens, if not hundreds of hours into the same game hoping to get better results.

What about game endings people liked? They’re still terrible. The #1 voted video game ending according to Guinness? Call of Duty: Black Ops.

Here it is:

I repeat: this is the greatest ending in video game history, according to voters, which proves that many gamers either haven’t beaten a lot of games, or have memories like starving squirrels. Nothing in this ending is the “big reveal” it’s hoping to be. You spend the entire game strapped in a chair and forced to live out drug-induced memories as you’ve been brainwashed by Commie Nazis. Your best friend is imaginary and you killed Kennedy. It’s not exactly the Sixth Sense in it’s subtlety.