You monster!

how could you spoil Die Hard for me D:

First sentence...

Personally, if I'm being given a 'self sacrifice' ending, I want to make that decision for myself. It's quite likely I will decide to, but even if I do, the scene will be much more meaningful for having that option not to than it otherwise would have been.

Bastion presents a similar choice to this, though for the spoiler related issues mentioned earlier I'll not say anything else about it.

Rosebud killed Dumbledore on the Orient Express!

Of course, there's also the "We-meant-to-make-a-proper-ending-but-the-publisher-wouldn't-give-us-the-extension-on-the-deadline-we'd-counte d-on-so-we-threw-some-half-assed-crap-together-at-the-last-minute"-ending. KoTOR2, I'm looking at you.

Because it is 25 years old. >:D

Aye, easily. Many of the posts have here have already used examples that I too would have used to explain what are good and bad examples already, but, yeah, you can most certainly get away with it; there's plenty of games that do so. It's really just a matter of good writing or storytelling, something many games persistently struggle with.

The problem, I guess (and the rest of this post will CONTAIN SPOILERS, by the way), is that games are interactive experiences and, often-times, very personal to the player, particularly in games - not necessarily just fully fledged RPG's - that involve choices, and consequences, which either influence the playable character or the game world in some way. What that creates is a situation in which the player feels that they're the one in control, that they are the one influencing the certain things like the main character, game world, other characters, etc., and I suppose that they then picture an ideal ending based on their experience thus far.

The thing is: games are a great platform for spinning a good tale, of course, but I unfortunately think that this sometimes creates a quarrel between the player's wishes and what the development team wanted to create, resulting in a knee jerk reaction from many people when something that's even heavily foreshadowed takes them by surprise. What springs to mind as an example is Red Dead Redemption. It has one of my favourite endings of a video game ever, but I was shocked when I read all these furious posts on forums declaring that it was a really shit ending, despite the foreshadowing from conversations with various characters about certain themes of the game; the "Strange Man" / Devil quests with their obvious allusions to what will happen; what certain characters represent (e.g. Ross as the approaching modern age and John himself as the dwindling Wild West); et cetera. Where the knee jerk reaction originated from is probably that, to a certain degree, you have enough influence on the game world and to your experience as John through several choices, some big and some small, that you really believe that all will end as you expect that it should in an ideal world, despite the killing off of characters like the young Mexican girl who was in love with the rebel to disprove such thoughts.

But, as I say, that isn't a bad ending to me, nor are others that have been mentioned either. The whole game is bloody well written, and that's all you need in order to pull off such an ending in any game. Another example, that I don't believe has been mentioned, criminally enough, is Spec Ops: The Line. There's not a single good ending in that game yet they're all really brilliant. Surprisingly, I don't believe I ever read any backlash over the game for not having at least one ending where there's just a hint of redemption, which perhaps suggests that we're getting used to notion that we can't always have what we want, no matter how attached we become to our perception of the game or how we want it to end. Or maybe not, I don't know. Games can get away with it, for sure, if the writing's good enough, but I suppose you can't please everyone.

You said it yourself - as for the second part, well, you might get that feeling, but if it really fits the context of the story, well, then it's okay, at least in my opinion.

I understand people who say they like to just disconnect from the real world when they play and then of course it's a real bummer when something like this happens (and I can't say I like bad endings), but it doesn't always necessarily have to be a proverbial Hollywood ending.

And I think you spoiled Fallout 3 for me. Ah well :P Well, they only expanded it, the endings themselves stayed the same.

How do you even complain about predictability in a film that is the middle of a series of 6?! :/

Well, to be honest, I felt much the same about Revenge of the Sith, but how could it be otherwise? They had to get from point A to point B, everyone knew where things were headed, so there weren't any suprises. No need to complain about it, or at least no need to complain about that particular aspect of that movie. All the prequels have plenty of other stuff to complain about anyway.

THANKS FOR THE SPOILERS!!

I think there's a big difference between a "bad" ending and an unhappy ending. In film, books or gaming, an ending isn't bad simply because it doesn't wrap everything up in a nice bow. There is however, the unsatisfying ending, more often found in gaming than anywhere else, where the player feels no sense of reward for all of their hard work. If an ending is done well, no matter how unhappy it is (The Walking Dead was mentioned earlier in this thread, really good example), then objectively it is not a bad ending.

Can games get away with bad endings? No, I don't think so, but again, that really depends on the game and how much the game focuses on the story. For example, I've been playing Rayman Origins and I've been having a really good time with it, yet there is pretty much zero story, it's all about the gameplay. Regardless, it's been so fun that plot didn't matter, so by the time I reach the ending, there's a high probability that I won't really care how it ends, because what matters is the JOURNEY. Like most art forms, games take you on a journey, and they bring out emotions in you that you might not experience otherwise.

On the flipside, I'm a huge fan of point and click adventure games, a genre which almost entirely focuses on the plot. It's essentially like playing through a movie or an interactive storybook. Here, the story matters greatly, as that is what you are playing the game for, as well as solving a series of crazy puzzles. It would be remiss of me to talk about this genre without mentioning one of the most notorious endings out there: Monkey Island 2. I won't go into detail as I would hate to spoil it for those who haven't played it yet (what are you reading this for? Go and play it NOW! :p ), suffice it to say it's a serious WTF moment and one that has really divided a lot of Monkey Island fans. On a personal note, I found it to be a satisfying ending because it shocked me and I love ambiguous endings, but that comes down to personal taste more than anything else.

So I guess what it comes down to is the genre of game, how much that genre focuses on the plot, and whether or not the journey through the game was enjoyable enough that you can overlook the lackluster ending.

Sorry for the long post!

I LOVE Koudelka/Shadow Hearts, and part of the joy of the games is SEEING the bad happening and where they took the story from there. Avoiding spoilers for those who haven't played the series, but using SH1-SH2 for example, going with the bad ending and seeing how it effected and influenced Yuri and how he grew from that experience helped create legitimate sympathy and wanting to see him succeed that much more.

I still need to get Koudelka again, I cannot seem to find my copy anywhere. Maybe I'll get it and the Berserk game together at the con I'm going to in August. :D

gotta love Drakengard and it's "Each ending is worse than the last for everyone. Everyone." philosophy. :p