Some bad endings can be sad, but they can be cool too. Seeing Tails die for not getting the Chaos Emeralds was really shocking, and Spider-Man turning evil with the black suit and taking over the city was insane.
Oh, absolutely. And I was stunned that Shaba's idea for a Web of Shadows follow-up wasn't following on from the bad ending. That's what everyone who played the thing wanted to see.
The Shura ending in Sekiro leads to you fighting an older variant of the normal final boss. While I don't think it's as good as the normal one, he pulls out the coolest looking attack in the game: One Mind. It's undoubtedly the worst ending, but there is something badass about seeing this man who's hours away from dying stand up to kick your butt.
Fun fact, in the Mega Man art book, the devs for Super Adventure Rockman actually explicitly apologized for making the game and said it was a huge mistake.
Lmao, I'll never understand why everyone at Capcom treats that game like the plague when they're perfectly fine with releasing Megaman X7 as if it were any other Megaman game. I actually really like how different super adventure Rockman is in terms of tone.
That's unfortunate. I love how bold the game is. Death and defeat are part of life, I don't understand why people are so sensitive with children watching it.
@@davidsenra2495 I mean, yeah you got a point, but i don't think any children will be happy seeing their favorite character being blown up to pieces in their faces.
Bad endings in gaming tend to be fascinating. They're basically a "what if" kind of scenarios if you end up not doing things properly throughout your journey. Not to mention that theres a bunch of bad endings in gaming than people think.
@@DavidStowers-o7kDishonored. Even the neutral higher being makes it sound like you seriously fucked up when you let an important character fall on high chaos.
It's also gotta be The Most Heart wrenching Quotes that Hits Hard in Reality as it does in Fiction when we Get Older or Learn it big time while we're Young, Years Generations and Decades Later.
Yeah, there are other games out there that have bad endings, such as Splatterhouse 3, Nosferatu, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea, Grand Theft Auto 5, etc.
The persona 3 bad ending really sticks out to me because you have to actively go against not only your friends but the message of the game as a whole (also poor aigis)
It also sticks out because even the good ending is bittersweet. If you want a happy ending in a Persona game play the one that starts with the MC getting drugged and tortured. :D
i would say p4g wins the bad ending prize with the accomplice because not only you betray your friends and the whole truth you been searching, everyone is going to slowly "die" (become a shadow) and there's literally nothing the world can do to stop it. At least on 3 your character can have a fast, peaceful death while narukami has to take all that guilty to his grave.
The endings of Disco Elysium are amazing. Your character can just decide he doesn't want to participate in the plot anymore and wander off, becoming a hobo, going insane, or literally 'leaving the genre'.
I think maybe one of the most famous Bad Endings is the one in the original Dragon Quest. If you accept the final boss's offer of giving you half the world, he softlocks your game and you have to reset. The fun part is one of the spin-off games takes place in a world where the hero actually did take that offer.
Also, even if you decide to fight Dragon Lord, saving the princess is completely optional and would change the ending as well. Honestly, pretty ahead of it's time
I think what’s worse about Knuckles' Chaotix is that you’re screwed if you get the bad ending due to how the save system works of that game. Meaning you have to play through the entirety of it just to get the good ending since you can’t revisit levels you've completed. Also, I've never really noticed how small a face Frank West has wtf.
Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion and the Splatoon 3 story mode have some incredibly dark bad endings, both obtained by not defeating the final boss in time. Those endings still mess me up to this day
As a kid the Banjo Kazooie "bad ending" FREAKED ME OUT ON A SPIRITUAL LEVEL, I was so terrified to ever turn off the game because I knew that I would have to deal with seeing it.
@@prince_nocturne Remove the hyphen and we're good. X-COM are the old games, XCOM's the reboot. Much easier to distinguish and that's also the how the titles are spelt on steam.
Sonic 2 on the Genesis is one of the weird cases where the "bad" ending is better than the good one. Having Tails save Sonic at the end instead of Super Sonic flying away from the Death Egg felt very heartwarming.
I guess technically the only thing 'worse' about that one is that Sonic was technically more in danger with the bad ending, as if it _weren't_ for Tails, he would've definitely died from fall damage. Still, I think it's better than the alternative of having different endings depending on how many Chaos Emeralds you got where neither are 'bad' endings, as it just makes sense to. After all, you saved the day from Robotnik either way. (Besides, I suck at Sonic 2's special stages anyway.)
I wouldn't necessarily call it a bad ending. It's still a good ending, just not as good as the true ending. I'm assuming it's the canon ending. Actually, yeah, as I write this I remember the start of Sonic 3 has you Super Sonic and then Knuckles punches you or something... it's been far too long since I've played Sonic 3.
Maybe neither is exactly what happened. Maybe Sonic hadn't quite gotten the hang of Super form flight and it kept flickering on and off, making Tails necessary regardless. Plus it's clear they kept the Emeralds in between Sonic 2 and Sonic 3&K, so that way Sonic gets to practice the Super form and Tails gets to study it as well as the Emeralds themselves. Only after S3&K do they do the Sonic 1 thing with the Emeralds-and trigger their eye color changes in the process.
Funnily enough, I'm pretty sure Sonic 2 is the only one of the classics to not have the "Try Again" screen. Makes me think the developers knew what they were doing, and also makes it so I pretty much never go for the Emeralds lol
In Splatoon 3’s main single player campaign, you have to stop the villain form infecting the world with a fuzzy ooze that they hope will bring back mammals to the earth (mammals are extinct in this world btw) If you die at any point during the final boss fight, you’ll get a cutscene of the villain shooting the earth and the ooze raining down on all of civilization below Also, if you die in Splatoon 2’s dlc on the final climb up to the surface, you’ll get dialogue of your friends trying to call out to you from their radio
Also in the Splatoon 2 DLC, if you die or run out of time during the final boss, you get a scene similar to the Splatoon 3 bad ending where Inkopolis gets annihilated by Commander Tartar's cannon.
ohhh wait. i remember that splatoon 3 quote from the bad ending. "one day, a fuzzball was created in space" or something like that. thank you, mr grizz. why? what i feel is worse is that if you do lose, you get a "message" from one of the idols accompaning you depending on if you die, or if you run out of time. one of the messages you may receive is litreally just along the words of: "Ay Ay (we were too late...) ...welp
This video's thumbnail image of Dr. Light and Megaman hugging looks heartbreaking. Dr. Light's facial expression looks like he's telling Megaman, "No matter what happens, YOU are my most proudest achievement." ❤❤❤
Majora’s Mask is an interesting one because it’s not really an ending. You watch the moon kill everyone and scorch the earth and are immediately thrown back into a new time loop to stop it again. You rewind the impact but Link will still remember seeing it happen, even if you win later on. Just makes the moon hanging there so threatening
iirc someone said that when that happens, the 3DS version forces you back to main menu, reloading your last save really hammering the point home that there's nothing left to save, go back to your last save
I imagine Link probably would lose his mind with his death loop, repeating the cycle of 3 days trying to stop the moon from crashing into the planet, but getting crushed to death by it countless times.
I think the biggest tragedy in majora's mask isn't even the game over - it's that so many people have to endure their own bad endings because you don't have the time to save everyone. Even with all equipment, it's impossible to do every quest in a single 3 day cycle. Every cycle is full of bad endings, and even when you do win there's the sinking realization that dozens of people even in the winning cycle still have their bad endings. Romani and Kafei quests come to mind as the two most tragic, especially because you can doom either of them in their respective questlines by not being fast enough. It's really dark
You can actually complete every single quest save for one in a single cycle. It is difficult. You will suffer. But you can give everyone a happy ending. Which quest are you incapable of completing? I forget. But it is one of two and it's up to you to decide. After all, the quest you chose to complete locks you out from finishing the other one.
@@redstonewarrior0152 You can't complete the Kafei quest and the Romani quest in the same cycle as they occupy the same time slots with a very far distance between
Having bad endings in video games is so effective. Just the thought of the developer going the extra mile, and making you witness what happens if you do in fact lose instead of giving you a simple game over screen is honestly terrifying. Stuff like Donkey Kong 64, where if you fail, King K. Rool straight up blows up DK Island. Its so simple yet disturbing that these endings exist in the first place, it motivates us to not get the bad ending so we can see our heroes get the happy ending they deserve
The Batman Arkham games were so effective on this. The villain coming over your dead (or dying) body and celebrating your defeat, or telling you their plans now that you're out of the picture. Chilling...
Donkey Kong 64's Game Over screen even lives on in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as part of King K. Rool's Final Smash; even showing the destruction of DK Island. Sheesh...
One recent example I really like is Splatoon 3’s bad ending if you lose to the final boss. It may not be as objectively dark as a lot of the ones in this list, but it feels more like a disturbing nightmare. The sound design for it really adds to that feeling. Also I really loved this video and the ending it has, its a message I didn’t know I needed to hear today! :D
Also, a bad ending that always scarred me was the game SOS on Snes. It's a tragedy survival game and it's full of bad endings depending on time and conditions. But the most anxiety inducing is that if you run out of time, the ship sinks and you are forced to PLAY your final moments as the ship floods and there is no hope of escaping anymore. All while a funeral tune plays in the background.
An example that always intrigued me is Zero Time Dilemma: The good ending can happen instantaneously at the first choice in the game, so the rest of the game is kind of one long bad ending. I'm sure there is another similar example, but if so I haven't played it.
Only thing I can think of close to it off the top of my head is Far Cry 4. The dictator you'd find yourself warring against across the game tells you to wait a few minutes, and if you do you continue your day's itinery for a nonstandard end.
*SPOILERS* You either watch the universe get destroyed in all the eras or Odio gets to live in a lifeless husk of a world all alone. Either way it’s sad to think about
Legacy of Kain was brilliant for not only being one of the first games to give the player a choice as to whether they get the good or bad ending, but stands apart from every other IP by making the "bad ending" the one that actually allows for the circumstances to truly save the world they inhabit from an underlying threat introduced in the sequels. It's brilliant as a story, gameplay varies between meh and kind of good. The fan base largely adores the story, making that a show and adapting it faithfully would actually be a smart choice.
I'm a gigantic nerd, so the lines, "Hurt people, hurt people" and "Nothing is set in stone. We control our own destines and we can make our happy endings come true" really hit me. Fantastic video with a lot of great comments about the games and some interesting examples!
Bro, the bad ending of Super Adventure Rockman shattered my heart into pieces and had me in tears. This is quite literally the first time I've seen Mega Man cry
I wasn't even certain Rock _could_ cry; the _X_ games strongly imply that the robots before X and Zero weren't fully self-aware. Mind, it's _also_ disturbing that my thought about seeing that bad ending was that that sounded a lot like setting up the world of _MegaMan Zero,_ only with a memory-edited X rather than a copy running the 'perfect' city.
@@boobah5643I thought the whole with with mega man is that he was actually more human. I mean in one of the games he was literally about to murder dr wily (or dr wawee)
I've had a morbid fascination for games that traumatize you with bad endings when you least expect it, but making sense in retrospect and maybe even getting a laugh out of you when you realize what you just did was prooobably your fault. The one that REALLY caught me off guard was Wandersong having a bad end. It's a heartfelt little adventure game about a bard wanting to stop the end of the world through song and has a very hopeful and meaningful story and characters, and yet it lets you find a way to throw it all into the void. Highly recommend playing it by the way, vague spoilers here: Basically, there's all these songs used to access the Spirit World that you're supposed to learn to progress, usually by helping out and making friends with the local townsfolk, and then sing the songs while standing in a specific Nexus spot. However, if you've played the game before and happen to have memorized all the songs (which isn't as easy as it sounds), you can head to the nexus spots early and sing them manually, and it'll bring you to the spirit world anyway. Some characters will change their dialogue to include stuff like "How the heck did you get there so fast? Nevermind..." The kicker though is that you never get to bring people together like you would in a regular playthrough, which (among other details) is pretty important for your goal of saving the world from the apocalypse. Stuff from putting together a band to revitalize a dying town to *putting an end to a multi-generational war* never get fixed, yet the story goes largely on the same path _until_ the finale. When it all comes down to you, when it's time to unite the entire world to rage against their impending death, to save them from oblivion... nothing happens. Where the finale sequence normally happens, the game instead goes silent, cuts to black, and credits roll. The world doesn't persist with a bang, but ends with a whimper. It's really chilling to see happen in practice, especially considering how optimistic the regular ending is. Though another part of me can't help but find something profound and funny about the idea, as if the developers were saying "So you ignored the main point of the whole game... what else did you expect, a get-out-of-consequences-free card?"
There are also games where all endings have some sense of a bad ending, like Silent Hill. The endings can range from James talking with his wife about how she died - which beleive it or not is the best possible outcome - to him drawing on an evil power trying to bring her back to his new girlfriend being terminally ill like his wife was to... him being confused that a dog was controlling everything.
53:03 Fun fact: even if you don’t use auto fire if you mash the too button quickly, then the game will think you’re using auto fire and you’ll die anyway.
Really? That's so weird. I was able to use a turbo controller with my original PSX copy of the game and Ocelot didn't do a damn thing. What in the world...
I wonder if this is one of the other versions of MGS? I've beat that scene with and without auto-fire and nothing ever changes. Would be interesting to see if it's in a version included in the Collection...
I'm sure it didn't have enough content to make it into the video, but the bad ending that I specifically remember is from Golden Sun. You can choose to just not go on the journey pretty early on, and the fact that they actually let you follow through with that decision stuck with me. Nothing special happens, but much like the Chrono Trigger ending, you do get a screen explaining what happens because of your choice. I believe the words were "And so, the world looms towards its fated destruction" or similar.
I recently finished Tales of Xillia 2 (wonderful game btw, holy shit) and the bad ending truly threw me for a loop. You're asked to kill your brother and if you refuse a certain number of times, your 8 person party all battle you. They yell at you through battle dialogue for not listening to them. Some even mutter out last words once you kill them. The battle goes on til you're met with an animated cutscene featuring the main character covered in blood. As his brother sees him after slaughtering his only friends, he pulls him into a hug and says "part of me wanted this, too." Before you two limp off screen. Roll credits. Shit hurt so bad.
One of the classic "bad endings" that stands out in my mind from my childhood is Golden Sun. Not long after the game's first dungeon, you're asked if you're willing to take on the burden of saving the world. The game allows you to say "No" and leave. The screen then fades to black and white, and displays the text "...and so the world drifted towards its fated destruction." and fades to black. After that you're asked if you want to go back and change your answer, and if you say no, it takes you to the title screen.
One of my favorite bad endings is from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity. After beating the game and your character leaves from the pokemon world, they are destined to be forgotten by its inhabitants. However, those closest to you in your journey resolve to remember you. This prompts the embodiment of nature to guide your partner throughout the story to the "Hill of Universal Order" to make a wish so that you're character can traverse between worlds freely. If you choose not to return during this wish, the vision of your partner standing on the hill collapsing is the last thing you see. It gives a bit of text explaining how this was the decision you made and you chose never to return to the pokemon world. But by far the most disturbing part is having a black screen with just the text "No Regrets."
I never finished Gates, but I really think its story was way better than Super. Gates felt original, whereas super felt like a mix and retread of previous games, abandoning its original ideas so quickly. Super just refined the gameplay so if Gates had Super’s gameplay I feel like it would’ve been perfect. That ending sounds so haunting.
@@ma.2089 I do like gates, but I feel like that secret bad ending is kinda the only part where it feels like it pulls off any sort of edge well. The story is like "The world is going to freeze over because there are no good pokemon left". But then half of the scenes are like odd romantic plot lines and "V-WHEEEEL!" I think the dialogue is good, but I personally just find it too tonally confused
when i was younger, i never had the balls to say no to returning, even when i finished the game several times. lowkey glad i saved myself from that haunting ending bc if my 12 year old self saw this, i would have nightmares lol
Surprised you didn't mention the other bad ending for Comix Zone, which is a similar deal to Spider-Man vs. the Kingpin: at the end of the game, Mortus re-enters the comic, trapping General Alissa Cyan inside a nuclear bomb's coolant chamber and challenging Sketch to one final battle to the death. Fail to beat him and free Alissa before the chamber fills up completely, and she drowns, but Sketch still manages to escape the comic as it's destroyed. However, he's so depressed and guilt-ridden over Alissa's fate that he considers recreating it just to have another chance at saving her. Then again, as you mentioned, the game is balls-hard, so I don't blame you.
Yeah, my immediate thought was that Clement just never got far enough to see that one; dude didn't do some kind of search for 'bad ends,' it's apparent that these were all bad ends that touched him emotionally.
God, there ain't anything Super about the Super Adventure Rockman: seeing Dr Wily be so happy and ecstatic that he won by causing the death of Roll and gleefully seeing the suffering of his nemesis, is not a good look. I much rather prefer the Wily from the Ariga comics: he is still hellbent on beating Light, destroying Megaman and conquering the world, but in the racing chapter, he clearly has a sweet spot for Roll since she is just "an innocent girl" and he doesnt want her to get hurt.
Bad endings are neat. What-if scenarios are interesting to think about and explore, and bad endings are one way to do that. Live A Live's bad ending is probably the coolest bad ending ever. Spoiler warning for Live A Live, please check out the game if you have the time. The 8th chapter, the medieval chapter, covers the origins of Odio, the demon whose incarnations have haunted every era. In truth Odio was once a knight called Oersted, whose quest to save Princess Alethea went horribly wrong. In short, Oersted was tricked into killing the king, found out his ''best friend'' Streibough betrayed him, and then Alethea reveals that she resents Oersted for not initially saving her and stabs herself professing her love for Streibough. Oersted does not take any of this well at all. He takes it so poorly he stops being a silent protagonist and becomes the demon king Odio. At this point the player is offered a choice for the final chapter of the game. You are allowed to choose any of the 8 main characters to be the protagonist of this part. Yes, including Oersted. If you choose Oersted, you get to play as the villain! You get to play as the final bosses of every chapter and completely decimate the heroes if you want to! Playing as the bosses sounds like something you'd only see in a silly rom hack, but no, Live A Live does it and it's cool as hell. Oh and if you get any of the bosses to low health, the flee command will be replaced with ARMAGEDDON. It does exactly as it says on the tin. If you beat all the protagonists without resorting to wiping the entire universe clean, Odio will make a short speech and then go about his way in the ruins of Lucrece as the credits roll. Yes, he suceeded in his goals- but all Oersted is left with is the ruins of Lucrece. Alone, victorious, thus ends his tale. It's a surprisingly poignant bad ending. I don't think any of my descriptions can do this ending justice, honestly.
What still blows me away about how genius Live A Live handles the endings & choices therein is that this was originally on the Super Famicom. That era of RPGs, especially from Squaresoft & Enix (they hadn't merged yet for those confused), were already peak but the fact us in the west didn't get to officially experience this game until the remake on modern consoles a few decades later is insane with how good the quality is. And on the note of extra endings, the fact said remake gave us a new final boss that lets us actually SAVE Oersted from himself. That fight became one of my favorite final bosses INSTANTLY!
@@Triforce_of_Doom tbf if this was released in the west it would have prolly been a big a hit as chrono trigger. but however the original true ending only added extended credits compared to a new finaler boss the remake adds (doing all side dungeons in the finale). The original true ending is much more tragic. He fades away as he explains his wrongdoings rather than fight one last fight then do that.
Definitely remember Banjo-Kazooie's bad ending kept me from finishing the game when i was younger, but Drakengard messed me up! I stayed up for 24 hours trying to get 100% completion in hopes of finding a good ending among the 5. My sister took a picture of me when i got the final ending utterly defeated
@@tatltails3923 Not really. Humanity is dead 100% in the NieR timeline, but at least the androids can carry on humanity's legacy after finally breaking free from their self-imposed YorHa cycle and finding their own reason to exist. NieR Automata is literally the only Yoko Taro game with a happy ending, unless you count those weird card RPGs on Switch.
Yeah in Yoko Taro games almost every ending is a bad ending. Ironically, DG1's standard "ending A" is actually the "happiest" ending by far in spite of its bittersweet nature. DG1 Ending A: Your dragon buddy dies but you save the world. Leads to Drakengard 2. DG1 Ending B: Seed of resection creates army of monsters. Everyone dies. DG1 Ending C: Apocolypse is triggered. Everyone dies. DG1 Ending D: The apocolypse is triggered, but the entire main cast sacrifices themselves to stop it with each one dying gruesomely. The world is saved, but at what cost? DG1 Ending E: MC goes to another world (aka modern day Japan) to kill the queen beast. The queen beast is killed, but the MC is shot down by the Japanese military and dies. The queen beast's death spreads a virus that causes humanity's extinction, with humanity coming up with a master plan to preserve their species leading to the events of NieR Replicant. NieR Ending A: Cliffhanger ending leading to the second half of the game. NieR Ending B: Yona dies, humanity is doomed. NieR Ending C: Yona is saved but Kaine is killed. Humanity is doomed. NieR Ending D: Yona and Kaine both survive, but the MC erases himself from existance to save them, erasing all the players save data. NieR Ending E: Alternate route in a post-ending D save that's exclusive to the HD Remaster. When meeting Kaine for the first time it cuts back to modern day post-ending D and you play a new 3-5 hour senario as Kaine. NieR is revived (meaning that your save file is restored) but humanity is still doomed. DG3 Ending A: Everyone dies. DG3 Ending B: Zero game ends herself. DG3 Ending C: Zero turns evil and destroys the world. DG3 Ending D: Zero is revealed to be the queen beast and now her dragon has to seal her away. Automata Ending A: Adam and Eve are defeated and it's revealed that androids and machines might be the same after all. End of part 1. Automata Ending B: Same as ending A but from 9S's perspective. Automata Ending C: A2 defeats 9S and sends him to safety. She then sacrifices herself to destroy the tower. Automata Ending D: A2 and 9S kill each other, and 9S's conciousness joins Adam and Eve on a spaceship to visit other worlds. Automata Ending E: With the player's help, everyone is revived and the world is restored. Only truely happy ending made by Yoko Taro.
@@KrimsonKattYT Dude. While your recaps of all the endings were delightful, I said a good ending for US. The PLAYERS. Because we ended up getting to play the Nier series, a set of life-changing games that base their entire timeline off of Drakengard 1's joke ending. And therefore wouldn't exist as we know them without that ending existing first.
I still find it REALLY cool that Force Unleashed decided to make its DLCs a continuation of the bad ending to give us a further glimpse into how things may have changed here. Disney would never let evil Starkiller go on a "what if" rampage and kill all the heroes. Another one that stuck out to me was the bad endings of Persona 4, especially a later one where Naoto calls you in a panic and you can hear her being killed by Shadows.
I knew about a bunch of these endings from whoisthisgit’s Creepy Bad Endings series, but that honestly made the video more enjoyable because I could go, “Hey, I know that ending! It sure does fucking suck! :D” There were also the ones I didn’t know, and they let me learn something new. All in all, great video.
Undertale's post-genocide pacifist ending is one of the few that impacted me the most. If there's something not too known about is doing the pacifist ending after a genocide ending, that ending will make you forget your previous run and remind you in the very end. Making the ending even worse than the Genocide ending. Go look it up, or play it.
I think my personal favorite will always be Xillia 2's bad ending. Not only does it take place right before the final dungeon of the game, it makes you go off against the party you've been traveling with the entire time, killing them all off, knowing fully well it'll doom the entire world, just to protect your brother who's already doomed to die. It's so tragic and bittersweet
I just wanted to add that in Crash Bash if you play the main campaign with 2 players using one character from both Aku Aku/Uka Uka's team you'll be forced to fight each other after facing Oxide to prove which side is stronger! It'll be based on the fighting mini game with it's own background and everything! Me and my sister actually did this when we were kids and managed to collect all the collectibles while doing so giving us 201%! One my favorite and best video game memories since it was quite the challenging experience!
Huge fan of Oddworld's bad endings! Especially Munch's Oddysee, that bad ending stuck with me forever. I found them all online of course, but if I ended a gane like that it would have hit so much harder. Even the promo gaurdian angel video was scarring to me as a kid.
It’s sorta goofy Just the “god” of fate letting one dead dude who didn’t even know him personally kill the person who was supposed to save all of their race
That Comix Zone section unlocked MEMORIES for me. I had the Atari system which basically had a whole lotta old games on it and Comix Zone was one of them. I remember being obsessed with the game but I could only make it past like level 3. I REALLY wish they made a remake of it because it genuinely is a really good game
All these games, especially Mega Man X5 and The Force Unleashed were the ones that stuck out to me the most as a kid and taught me how to be more observant of how to avoid the bad ending. So when it happened, it caught me off guard but made a lot of sense. It hit the right balance of being shocking and a consequence of action or even inaction
The Starkiller evil ending is also wild because that is the one they decided to expand DLC on as well. You rumble your way across Tatooine and Hoth chasing down Luke, murdering your way through the likes of Boba Fett, Ben Kenobi, and rebel troopers all along the way, with the final fight against Luke leading to Starkiller offering a place at his side as *his* secret apprentice. Literally, those who do not learn are doomed to repeat as you said.
Bugsnax has such disturbing body horror, it almost makes me laugh at how gruesome it is. Watching your friends slowly fall apart as they give into their insecurity’s and decide life’s not worth living. It’s definitely not what you expect out of the funny bug game. There’s a reason why it’s one of my favorite game ever.
If you ever do a sequel, Cave Story is a great contender. The choice to simply give up because the Doctor is just so many steps ahead of you is really powerful stuff. I think it's realistic answer, and something I always do at least once per playthrough, because boy can the game be rough on the player sometimes.
I LOVE Bittersweet Endings. Sure they're happy on the surface, but they leave you contemplating since something's not quite right. Gotta love the mix of emotions they bring to the table.
Have you played Firewatch? It has a great atmosphere, and great story. And really unexpected turns. I'm not gonna tell you anything more in case you haven't played it 👀
11:28 It's not at least 25 parts that you need, it's 25 specific parts that are mandatory to leave. You could collect 28 & fail to leave if the 29th piece you fail to collect is one of the necessary ones.
I think one of my favorite bad endings is in Armored Core for Answer. Long story short, you can commit an atrocity so horrific that your own Operating team leaves you in the middle of a the mission, to which the final mission after is you fighting 4 of the best AC mercy in the world who've rallied to take you down. And when you win, you get called literally worse then Hitler as you have literally killed 100 million people
@@littlebadassgaming Killing 100 million people in the span of 3 minutes. There are these stations called cradles where half of humanities population live. They're thousands of meters above the surface of the earth to keep them safe from the pollutants of the world below. And if you accept the mission, you can drop them from the skies. 10 cradles to destroy. 20 million on each.
Sonic Frontiers bringing back good and bad endings to the Sonic series in a roundabout way with it's much happier ending in Another Story is one of my favorite things to happen this year
I more see the base game ending of Frontiers as the Normal Ending rather than a Bad Ending because The End is still defeated, albeit at the cost of Sage but Dr. Eggman was able to bring her back none the worse for wear thanks to technology, and considering The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (it's not what it sounds like, it's a Murder Mystery party) doesn't seem to contradict the canon to my knowledge and Sage appears at the end of that game (and if you pick "Don't turn us into robots.", Eggman will mention Sage because she can control robots) I think it's fair to say that either scenario could be used.
I never actually understood Final Horizon DLC as I haven't played much of it yet. Is it an alternate timeline to what happened in the base game, forking off at Ouranos island therefore creating a new ending?
@@SocksFCGameArchives From a story perspective Final Horizon (or Another Story in-game) takes place immediately after Sonic's friends cure him of his Cyber Corruption (after Rhea Island), so yes it's an alternate Ouranos Island.
@@SocksFCGameArchives Yup. If you play through Rhea and then Another Story immediately afterwards, that first cutscene is Eggman and Sage stopping Sonic and proposing the idea to restore his Cyber Corruption and use it as power against The End
The first _Drakengard_ had five different endings. The first ending was a bit depressing, but as you progress further in the game, you unlock more endings, and each one is somehow worse than the one the preceded it.
Bad game endings always make me think of the first Dragon Quest game where the main villain offers you half the world for joining him. Accepting gives you the game over screen but the coolest part is Dragon Quest Builders picks up the what if story years later. It’s such a cool way to make a spin off game.
Skullgirls is a particularly interesting one, because each individual character has their own story mode, each one gets a unique ending, and they all sort of fall on a scale from good, to bittersweet, to bad, to apocalyptic. Originally, though, there was going to be two endings for each character, depending on whether or not they actually wish on the Skull Heart (or in some cases, the wish they make is different). There's actually dialogue for seven of these alternate endings that was found in the files, though for some of them it's kind of a decision between a "bad" ending and a "worse" ending.
In STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl unless you complete the secret canon good ending, you will get one of several bad endings that just immediately result in death, blindness, or existential crisis
I'm so glad that you brought up Dead Rising in this video, because I remember that game having so many bad endings that you could get on your first run. Hell, the first ever ending that I've gotten in that game was when Frank's pilot couldn't see him, automatically assumed he's dead, and gets eaten by a zombie afterwards. That shit was confusing because I was RIGHT on the Heli Pad when that ending triggered.
I've also seen that ending from Dead Rising. When I got it; I thought I did something wrong; letting the pilot get his ass killed by a zombie. And also; I got the bad ending in Pikmin. I hated the game. So I failed it on purpose. Sorry. But I loved playing Dead Rising; it's like the second best horror themed series Capcom theme has. Except for DR 3 and 4. But honestly; as much as I love Dead Rising; I always preferred Resident Evil/Biohazard(if you're in Europe/Japan). But Dead Rising is great too. Although it's lost a bit of quality lately. But that doesn't mean I don't like the first 2 DR games; and the 2 side games? Case West and the other one with both Chuck and Frank. I wish they'd go back to what made those 2 games fun in the first place. And also; Isabella(the girl from the first game); was the one who developed the virus to get revenge on the people; and she was apparently the one Brad and Jessie were looking for back in the Willamette Mall; not Carlito. Because she explains it during Dead Rising 3. I've seen every ending in the original Dead Rising. There's only one good ending; where you escape with everyone; or show up to the rooftop and the pilot DOESN'T see you; and crashes into a wall; or gets eaten by zombies. Because it's a Capcom horror game with zombies that's not Resident Evil. But it's impossible to save either Brad or Jessie; or the pilot. They're SUPPOSED to die; unfortunately. Along with Carlito; and the doctor. It's a great first game for a new series. Too bad it's declined...but maybe someday they'll bring Dead Rising back to star quality...
My favorite character imo is Mega man. And seeing this optimistic with full of hope robot having lost and crying like he failed really did it for me. I also was shocked how they just blew mega man up too. Mega man, X & Zero ftw
Megaman X5 was the first megaman game I ever played as a kid so all the different routes got to me hard. Considering Zero was my preferred character it felt even worse being forced to play as X to somewhat redeem yourself.
Great job on this, but I was thinking instead of a follow-up on "bad" endings necessarily, if you could make one on morally grey endings. Some examples are Ghost of Tsushima, Last of Us, Detriot: Become Human, Life is Strange and pretty much the entire Shin Megami Tensei series.
Clement you have truly open my eyes to the importance of bad endings and why making the wrong choices makes us realize that we must strive to be better and push ourselves to gain a golden ending while not forgetting what lead us astray into the path of Shadows and Doubts
Die Hard Trilogy 2 on PS1 was the first game I played that had a bad ending, it even had two of them! One with John McClanes body in a morgue and one where he walks into his captains office and throws down his badge and gun.
Same here. Is Yuri Lowenthal just everywhere? I thought Johnny Bosch was the dude who was everywhere? But whether it's Yuri Lowenthal or Johnny Bosch; they're my 2 favorite voice actors.
One of my favorite series to do bad endings is the disgaea series early games depending on how little you pay attention or just want to see them you can have endings were the protagonist eats their family or just wanders the world in a pointless search
I've been watching Clement since his early Sonic LPs. It's been a pleasure to see him flower from a weird looking kid playing with an Eggman plushie and doing Sonic and Mega Man LPs to a handsome man making some of the best gaming documentaries/video essays on RUclips.
Bad endings in video games are interesting because they show the player just how much they messed up. The often intentionally disturbing imagery associated with lots of the endings ensures that the players will never, ever forget what they did wrong.
I did the worst ending in Dishonored. This game shows a lot of stuff that happens after you do that. Also, you get this ending from regular bad ending, by letting gravity win at the end of the game on high chaos.
Fun Fact: In Majora's Mask the first cycles clock is actually like 3x faster than it usually is. Put the timer of the first deku cycle and the first human cycle side by side, and you will see the first deku cycle's timer moving far faster. This is probably due to how little there is to do on the first cycle, and them thinking it wouldn't take that long to gather everything. Hell, in glitchless runs, we use the scarecrow to get to Night of the Final Day, get magic, then sit outside the clock tower for like 5 minutes (you can do a weird turn in mid-air while backflipping in MM, so we use that to grab the ledge skipping the deku flower). The game devs may have forgot kids playing the game may want to explore and talk to everyone, nor would they know exactly what to do when booting into the game for the first time. It be how it be though.
If you ever do a part 2 to this, I have to recommend looking into the Conquest Route of Neptunia Mk2 / Re;birth2. You can play the game standalone, as it's not connected to the first game's story. The overall series is mostly a silly parody of the game industry and gaming in general with a lot of humor, but this game has a more serious tone and tells a story about the protagonist stepping up to take on her responsibilities. The True ending and Conquest ending have two very different answers for how she does that. The reason I suggest it is that, without spoilers, it is one of the darkest and most effective bad endings of any that I've personally played. Where a lot of games treat bad endings as an extended game over or more of an afterthought, this one goes full-on into a beautifully crafted (if incredibly depressing) dark spiral that even rivals the true ending route in length and writing quality. And the worst part? There are multiple timelines in Neptunia, so that route _actually_ happens to one version of the main character.
Haven’t watched the vid yet but already this one of my fav ideas for a video, always loved the way bad endings felt so raw and almost more realistic than the good ones.
Bruh your channel is dead af lmao, that's what happens when you wanna talk shit about the Persona franchise just because it's popular and way better than SMT
It depends on the game. P3’s doesn’t feel any more realistic than it’s actual ending, since it’s a personal and moral decision and what was going to happen was going to happen no matter whether you were there or not. And Some endings can be super out of character, like P4’s. It’s an interesting concept for an ending, but makes literally no sense for the narrative or characterization up until that point. Or like Paper Mario for the Wii, where you’re just given the choice to try and save the world or not. Most ppl wouldn’t want to die, so Mario deciding to let the world end makes no sense.
my favorite bad endings are from the blaster master zero series. They're pretty simple, but very effective. But the best part, for at least the first two, is that getting the good ending doesn't undo them, it just lets you continue from what would otherwise be your ending point, snatching your good ending from what would usually be a very somber and depressing ending.
I was going to comment on that haha In addition to what you said, the fact that each one revolves around Eve's fate makes them even sadder. If we think a bit more about what's going to happen later in the first two Eve is bound to become a mutant, the thing she was meant to destroy (for BMZ3 it's a bit different, since her goal is galactic peace) However, every bad ending gives a clue as to how to get to the real ending, so it's also a blessing in disguise. Except for BMZ3 lmao, cause I didn't had any clue how to reach it so I asked Inti Creates because I didn't want to search it online for fear of spoilers.
It's a shame that despite the rise of morality systems, developer seem to have dialed back quiet a bit with "bad endings" in their games and encountering them is only far and wide in between nowadays.
Part of this is an unwillingness to create fail states, and some of this is just that it's so expensive to do _anything_ in the AAA environment; bad endings are an obvious place to cut when things get tight.
@@boobah5643 frankly, with how complex and expensive it is to do anything, most triple a games can't even really have more than just the one ending let alone a bad end
Thank you for this video. Some of these endings were just wonderfully painful. I agree with you in the fact that we sometimes need bad endings to know how bad it can get, reminding us what to fight for.
I never finished PIkmin, but played it a lot when I was a kid. Best case scenario is that Olimar got scanned by the ship and someone out there knows he's out there, but we don't even know that for sure. Genuinely upsetting.
Final Fantasy VIII had a technically "bad ending" but you have to purposely do it in a way to get it. So at the missile base level, you have to adjust the missiles to have the highest error margin possible to miss the Garden. The game will tell you if the error margin is too low and try to make you keep doing it. If you start the self destruct sequence while the missiles still have a low margin of error, a cutscene will play as you escape the base and Balamb Garden will get hit and blow up.
I love how Persona 3, and also Persona 5 Royal bad endings are not "Bad stuff happens, the end", they are not on a white and black scale, the endings are more "phylosphical" Usually an "everyone is happy" would be a good ending, but in those games they are the bad outcome, they show us an empty and null happiness where the protagonists gave in on all that they believed in, they gave up without fighting, they gave up on living Because yes, is always easier to just quit, but running away, scapism, will not solve anything The lessons of these games is how rough life is, how tragic and depressing things can get and yet, life is still worth living In Persona 3 case, they prefered to ignore a huge problem and die on blissful ignorance, dooming themselves and everyone to a terrible fate, because they didn't even try to fight for themselves. In Persona 5 Royal, they straight up refuse to accept reallity, they scape to a fake world where no one ever suffers, where death doesn't haunts us giving us painful farewells, where everyone is "happy"... and yet, is an empty world This ending is like a reflection of ourselves, how many times have we played videogames trying to avoid living our reality? How many times we tried to scape all the pain and wish for it to never exist... But life is about good and bad experiences, thing will get rough, painful, you might lose it all... but you have to face it, you can get up and fight for yourself, fight to make your life and other's better, fight to keep living Because after all, life is worth living and we need to accept that not everything is perfect and there will always be pain, but for any painful memory, you can make 100 happy ones. After all, life is an experience, one that everyone deserves to live... The Persona Series is awesome
Bar the life is worth lifing, i agree. Life is rough. Tragic and depressing and unfair. But nothing more. I would take the fake happyness. As happyness and good things are always fake.
There was actually meant to be a Bad Ending in the Original Kirby's Return to Dreamland for the Wii, where Magolor wasn't liberated of the Master Crown. In the new Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe, there is a True Secret Final Boss which is hidden in the Arena (not Canon though). This Boss is a more epic, a more harder and especially more different Boss than from the Story Mode. In Phase 2 of this Boss, its eyes will fade out and an Apple Heal Item will appear from the mouth. This is a metaphor for "The apple of the eye". This Phase 2 is extremely depressing (altough epic nonetheless), as the music gets an added chorus and you can hear Magolor's cries for help in it. After defeating the boss, it will burn, a portal appears behind it and engulfs the whole body of *Magolor's Soul* which is still under the Master Crown's possession...forever. This boss was probably meant not only for fan service, but a Removed Bad Ending returning
I know it’s early, but Baldur’s Gate 3. Especially the Dark Urge route. So throughout that route, your character is plagued with an uncontrollable urge to kill. You later find out that the reason behind it, is because you were actually the Chosen One for Bhaal, the God of Murder. After killing the one who betrayed you, you were greeted by Bhaal himself who grants you a gift. If you accept it, you basically become all powerful with the Slayer form and Power Word: Kill. But you can also defy him, and you lose everything that Bhaal gave you. But ultimately gain a second chance at life, a chance to start over without the Dark Urge. Basically, it comes down to a story of either embracing your inner nature of what you were created to be, or a story of conquering that evil to become a better person than what was destined for you to be.
Over ten years ago I started watching this man’s let’s plays (and ofc the greatest Sonic 06 review ever made). The times and the content may change but he never lost his touch👑
As an self described entry level gamer by modern standards, this video was a really nice rundown of a bunch of popular titles I've heard over the years but never had the chance to play. Kind of re-ignites my desire to check them out! And thanks for the quality vids lately.
For me, RPG maker horror games were the catalysts for my love toward bad endings or just brutal death animations in general In such dark and grim games, making a "what if" scenario may not be as shocking as when it happens in more hopeful games, but some gave me nightmares when I was younger
The dark endings for me is tales of symphonia 2: dawn of the new world. The first time I saw the game over screen, and the music just hurts a lot and the bad endings is sad because the main character boy who suffers from DID pretends to be a bad guy of his personality and the last fight and you play as him defeating your friends. Then he turns the blade against himself because he played this entire time and is sad he hurt his friends and the person he loves. and no one knew until Lloyd at the end of the fight figured it out. Thus the game end with the girl he likes writing a letter saying if things could be better and didn’t have be like this. Also in another tales game, tales of xillia 2 where the only way to save your future daughter and saving the multiverse from is to kill another family member who has the power to make a soul bridge to the other side. The only person who is there is your elder brother and if you refuse to fight and kill him. You go into a state of insanity and doomed the multiverse. However your friends aren’t so kind to that kind of idea even though it is the only way to save the world. So your character in that insanity state kills all of their friends and the brother in shock just reacted that everything that is happening right now was all in vain and he says as they have a very nice bromance hug, “it is okay, I want the too.” Then the game ends.
Honestly tales of xillia 2 endings are all sad as well even the true end is so sad that as a player for me cannot decide to pick on or the other. In the neutral ending you like your future daughter die bc she knows she is not yours but from another universe. It fricking sucks because in the true ending you sacrifice yourself to save your future daughter even though she is not your child. Your character decides himself that she deserves to live because she is a person too and she needs to see until the end and promised he will come back someday and see her again.
Conkers bad fur day/L.A.R. has a lot of bad endings, and their aren't any good endings because when you beat the game as normal, Conker is just depressed after becoming the king because his girlfriend, Berri was killed.
Oh boy a video of Negative Consequences in Gaming outside of basic Running Out of Lives/Continue?/Game Over screens and honestly I'm here for it! It really helps motivate players to do even better next time. By the way I think this also planted the seeds for Creepy Pastas/Horror Fan Games to grow for games that don't have Bad Endings. Also small shoutouts to "whoisthisgit" for covering all the creepy bad endings out there in separate videos with text only not even with vocal commentary.
I love his content, best/worst/wierdest levels ever, creepy bad endings, the most powerful/weakest characters in gaming, creepy time limits, leave my eyes/ears/mind alone, all pretty good stuff!
I really hope there's more parts of this eventually. This was an interesting watch. Helped me discover games i never knew existed and endings i never got or didn't know was possible.
Clearly Majora's Mask needs a remake with voice acting, so I can pronounce Termina correctly.
There is the ZeldaUniverse dubbing of it with Chuggaaconroy in it if you want to watch it.
Funny enough, I was just about to post that!🤣
It already did, it’s called Majora’s Mask 3D.
Doctor: Im sorry. Weve tried every theropy we can. Im afraid its turmeenal. What? Oh sorry I only ever read it.
@@ShockwaveFPSStudiosdoesn’t have voice acting though
Some bad endings can be sad, but they can be cool too. Seeing Tails die for not getting the Chaos Emeralds was really shocking, and Spider-Man turning evil with the black suit and taking over the city was insane.
Oh, absolutely. And I was stunned that Shaba's idea for a Web of Shadows follow-up wasn't following on from the bad ending. That's what everyone who played the thing wanted to see.
The Shura ending in Sekiro leads to you fighting an older variant of the normal final boss. While I don't think it's as good as the normal one, he pulls out the coolest looking attack in the game: One Mind. It's undoubtedly the worst ending, but there is something badass about seeing this man who's hours away from dying stand up to kick your butt.
Bad endings are the best way to reach catharsis. Very important for mental health.
Cyberpunk Edgerunners anyone? (Tragic, sad, and impactful)
half if these weren't even sad just disturbing
Fun fact, in the Mega Man art book, the devs for Super Adventure Rockman actually explicitly apologized for making the game and said it was a huge mistake.
Lmao, I'll never understand why everyone at Capcom treats that game like the plague when they're perfectly fine with releasing Megaman X7 as if it were any other Megaman game.
I actually really like how different super adventure Rockman is in terms of tone.
@@thefollower2933probably because it'll ruin MegaMan legacy
@@NetBattler how would it ruin it's legacy?
That's unfortunate. I love how bold the game is.
Death and defeat are part of life, I don't understand why people are so sensitive with children watching it.
@@davidsenra2495 I mean, yeah you got a point, but i don't think any children will be happy seeing their favorite character being blown up to pieces in their faces.
Bad endings in gaming tend to be fascinating. They're basically a "what if" kind of scenarios if you end up not doing things properly throughout your journey. Not to mention that theres a bunch of bad endings in gaming than people think.
The best part though is that sometimes those what ifs turned out to be canon such as Blood Omen 1.
I wonder, which game has the most depressingly bad ending? And
when I say depressingly bad, I mean Infinity War depressingly bad.
Omori's endings hit hard...
@@DavidStowers-o7k I don't know if you know about Infamous 2 but the bad ending hits really hard. The good as well as I think about it
@@DavidStowers-o7kDishonored. Even the neutral higher being makes it sound like you seriously fucked up when you let an important character fall on high chaos.
“But the future refused to change” is one of the rawest lines in video game history.
Undertale ahh line
It's also gotta be The Most Heart wrenching Quotes that Hits Hard in Reality as it does in Fiction when we Get Older or Learn it big time while we're Young, Years Generations and Decades Later.
Kinda reminds me of the quote of Final Fantasy 6: On that day the world was changed, forever.
Along with THAT scream.
It creates the exact opposite effect of "but the world refused to die". Whereas Undertale's creates hope, Chrono Trigger's absolutely destroys it.
Clement, you honestly need to make a part 2. This is such an amazing video and unlimited possibilities for video game endings
The possibilities are never ending.
There's a channel called whoisthisgit that does stuff like this as a main series, also I'm pretty sure this video stole some script from him lol
@@frayzard yeah I used to watch them
Yeah, there are other games out there that have bad endings, such as Splatterhouse 3, Nosferatu, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea, Grand Theft Auto 5, etc.
The persona 3 bad ending really sticks out to me because you have to actively go against not only your friends but the message of the game as a whole (also poor aigis)
It also sticks out because even the good ending is bittersweet. If you want a happy ending in a Persona game play the one that starts with the MC getting drugged and tortured. :D
not only that, but against the whole meaning of Persona 2 too
@@TheBlackSeraph I heard they talk about freeing him in persona q
You could say the same thing about both bad endings from persona five and Royal
i would say p4g wins the bad ending prize with the accomplice because not only you betray your friends and the whole truth you been searching, everyone is going to slowly "die" (become a shadow) and there's literally nothing the world can do to stop it. At least on 3 your character can have a fast, peaceful death while narukami has to take all that guilty to his grave.
The endings of Disco Elysium are amazing. Your character can just decide he doesn't want to participate in the plot anymore and wander off, becoming a hobo, going insane, or literally 'leaving the genre'.
Isn’t there a way to lose because you choked on the ceiling fan at the start? I think that qualifies, because nothing changes for the better.
@@IamaPERSON You can have a HEART ATTACK immediately after waking up if you roll poorly. That's harsh.
@@bloodrunsclear dang!
@@IamaPERSON It's only possible if you have a one endurance, otherwise you just take a single point of health damage and the game continues normally.
@@bluishwolf makes sense.
I think maybe one of the most famous Bad Endings is the one in the original Dragon Quest. If you accept the final boss's offer of giving you half the world, he softlocks your game and you have to reset. The fun part is one of the spin-off games takes place in a world where the hero actually did take that offer.
What's the spinoff?
@@nickybluepants Dragon Quest Builders
@@MozillaVulpixlol your username in your profile picture
Also, even if you decide to fight Dragon Lord, saving the princess is completely optional and would change the ending as well. Honestly, pretty ahead of it's time
What's even funnier is that in that spinoff, the world basically becomes Minecraft.
I think what’s worse about Knuckles' Chaotix is that you’re screwed if you get the bad ending due to how the save system works of that game. Meaning you have to play through the entirety of it just to get the good ending since you can’t revisit levels you've completed.
Also, I've never really noticed how small a face Frank West has wtf.
unfortunately i suck at the special stages in sonic game's
Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion and the Splatoon 3 story mode have some incredibly dark bad endings, both obtained by not defeating the final boss in time. Those endings still mess me up to this day
Bro I can’t even LOOK at old style telephones to this day as that scene absolutely traumatized me
Thanks, nintendo, for traumatizing me in splatoon 2
As a kid the Banjo Kazooie "bad ending" FREAKED ME OUT ON A SPIRITUAL LEVEL, I was so terrified to ever turn off the game because I knew that I would have to deal with seeing it.
It happened to me but on a emulator, i was legit surprised and bursted in a nervous laughter when i saw Tooty.
Meanwhile I'm here thinking it's a good trade given what Gruntilda winds up looking like...
I was so conflicted as a kid. The ending scared me but Grundy’s new look woken up the puberty inside me. Imagine being terrified with a boner.
@@Unchainedful JESUS CHRIST DUDE! 🤣😈
@@Unchainedfulyou got erect from it? How. It’s not that hot. Then again tho I am asexual.
Special shoutout to Soul Edge, where they made Siegfried's bad ending canon and created one of the most iconic fighting game villains in the process.
Also, shoutout to Blood Omen 1 and Clock Tower 1 (SNES) since the sequel actually takes place where the bad ending left off.
Soul edge had some great endings / alternative endings. They even had the best fighting game intro
Shine on
Same thing for X-Com. The bad ending is canon for X-Com 2.
@@prince_nocturne Remove the hyphen and we're good. X-COM are the old games, XCOM's the reboot. Much easier to distinguish and that's also the how the titles are spelt on steam.
@@NealCamerlengo the fact the entire Legacy of Kain series spun off of the BAD ending of the first game is wild.
Sonic 2 on the Genesis is one of the weird cases where the "bad" ending is better than the good one. Having Tails save Sonic at the end instead of Super Sonic flying away from the Death Egg felt very heartwarming.
I guess technically the only thing 'worse' about that one is that Sonic was technically more in danger with the bad ending, as if it _weren't_ for Tails, he would've definitely died from fall damage.
Still, I think it's better than the alternative of having different endings depending on how many Chaos Emeralds you got where neither are 'bad' endings, as it just makes sense to. After all, you saved the day from Robotnik either way. (Besides, I suck at Sonic 2's special stages anyway.)
I wouldn't necessarily call it a bad ending. It's still a good ending, just not as good as the true ending. I'm assuming it's the canon ending. Actually, yeah, as I write this I remember the start of Sonic 3 has you Super Sonic and then Knuckles punches you or something... it's been far too long since I've played Sonic 3.
Maybe neither is exactly what happened. Maybe Sonic hadn't quite gotten the hang of Super form flight and it kept flickering on and off, making Tails necessary regardless. Plus it's clear they kept the Emeralds in between Sonic 2 and Sonic 3&K, so that way Sonic gets to practice the Super form and Tails gets to study it as well as the Emeralds themselves. Only after S3&K do they do the Sonic 1 thing with the Emeralds-and trigger their eye color changes in the process.
Ya know, I never collected all the gems to get super sonic, so the "bad" ending was the only ending I saw.
Funnily enough, I'm pretty sure Sonic 2 is the only one of the classics to not have the "Try Again" screen. Makes me think the developers knew what they were doing, and also makes it so I pretty much never go for the Emeralds lol
In Splatoon 3’s main single player campaign, you have to stop the villain form infecting the world with a fuzzy ooze that they hope will bring back mammals to the earth (mammals are extinct in this world btw)
If you die at any point during the final boss fight, you’ll get a cutscene of the villain shooting the earth and the ooze raining down on all of civilization below
Also, if you die in Splatoon 2’s dlc on the final climb up to the surface, you’ll get dialogue of your friends trying to call out to you from their radio
Also in the Splatoon 2 DLC, if you die or run out of time during the final boss, you get a scene similar to the Splatoon 3 bad ending where Inkopolis gets annihilated by Commander Tartar's cannon.
Snaaaake
ohhh wait.
i remember that splatoon 3 quote from the bad ending.
"one day, a fuzzball was created in space" or something like that. thank you, mr grizz. why?
what i feel is worse is that if you do lose, you get a "message" from one of the idols accompaning you depending on if you die, or if you run out of time.
one of the messages you may receive is litreally just along the words of:
"Ay Ay (we were too late...)
...welp
This video's thumbnail image of Dr. Light and Megaman hugging looks heartbreaking.
Dr. Light's facial expression looks like he's telling Megaman, "No matter what happens, YOU are my most proudest achievement." ❤❤❤
Majora’s Mask is an interesting one because it’s not really an ending. You watch the moon kill everyone and scorch the earth and are immediately thrown back into a new time loop to stop it again. You rewind the impact but Link will still remember seeing it happen, even if you win later on. Just makes the moon hanging there so threatening
Yo Just Reading This Made Me Wanna Go Watch A Retrospective 🖤
iirc someone said that when that happens, the 3DS version forces you back to main menu, reloading your last save
really hammering the point home that there's nothing left to save, go back to your last save
@@rokkraljkolesa9317so you fail the game and have to reload?
Doesn’t sound very novel to me.
@@mahmud7645 in a game where the gameplay is playing through the same 3 days using the song of time
I imagine Link probably would lose his mind with his death loop, repeating the cycle of 3 days trying to stop the moon from crashing into the planet, but getting crushed to death by it countless times.
I think the biggest tragedy in majora's mask isn't even the game over - it's that so many people have to endure their own bad endings because you don't have the time to save everyone. Even with all equipment, it's impossible to do every quest in a single 3 day cycle. Every cycle is full of bad endings, and even when you do win there's the sinking realization that dozens of people even in the winning cycle still have their bad endings. Romani and Kafei quests come to mind as the two most tragic, especially because you can doom either of them in their respective questlines by not being fast enough. It's really dark
But also realistic. That's just life, not everyone will get their happy endings
I believe there is a way to complete at least one of them on the same time loop that you save termina
@@ochuspin yes, you can save either of them on the final cycle, but not both
You can actually complete every single quest save for one in a single cycle. It is difficult.
You will suffer.
But you can give everyone a happy ending.
Which quest are you incapable of completing? I forget. But it is one of two and it's up to you to decide. After all, the quest you chose to complete locks you out from finishing the other one.
@@redstonewarrior0152 You can't complete the Kafei quest and the Romani quest in the same cycle as they occupy the same time slots with a very far distance between
Having bad endings in video games is so effective. Just the thought of the developer going the extra mile, and making you witness what happens if you do in fact lose instead of giving you a simple game over screen is honestly terrifying. Stuff like Donkey Kong 64, where if you fail, King K. Rool straight up blows up DK Island. Its so simple yet disturbing that these endings exist in the first place, it motivates us to not get the bad ending so we can see our heroes get the happy ending they deserve
The Batman Arkham games were so effective on this. The villain coming over your dead (or dying) body and celebrating your defeat, or telling you their plans now that you're out of the picture. Chilling...
Donkey Kong 64's Game Over screen even lives on in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as part of King K. Rool's Final Smash; even showing the destruction of DK Island.
Sheesh...
DK 64s bad ending is my absolute favorite!
The Blast-o-matic wasn't actually properly ready, so it may have exploded too, killing K.Rool and the Kremlings with it.
Obi wan whiffing on his lightsaber strike towards Anakin is actually pretty funny to me.
I imagine his last thoughts to be like like "wtf"
One recent example I really like is Splatoon 3’s bad ending if you lose to the final boss. It may not be as objectively dark as a lot of the ones in this list, but it feels more like a disturbing nightmare. The sound design for it really adds to that feeling.
Also I really loved this video and the ending it has, its a message I didn’t know I needed to hear today! :D
Also, a bad ending that always scarred me was the game SOS on Snes. It's a tragedy survival game and it's full of bad endings depending on time and conditions. But the most anxiety inducing is that if you run out of time, the ship sinks and you are forced to PLAY your final moments as the ship floods and there is no hope of escaping anymore. All while a funeral tune plays in the background.
ruclips.net/video/lz1DKQlo0A8/видео.html
Yeah, I made a comment about that last year.
I still have trouble playing that game. There's really nothing else like it on the SNES. Spooky and sad. Some of the endings are _bleak_
I guess you were too slow.
How
@vickygenga302 ....how what?
An example that always intrigued me is Zero Time Dilemma:
The good ending can happen instantaneously at the first choice in the game, so the rest of the game is kind of one long bad ending. I'm sure there is another similar example, but if so I haven't played it.
Not can. _Will_ happen. It's not a 50/50 chance. The game starts out by giving the good ending, and then the other choice upon reloading.
Only thing I can think of close to it off the top of my head is Far Cry 4. The dictator you'd find yourself warring against across the game tells you to wait a few minutes, and if you do you continue your day's itinery for a nonstandard end.
@@gratuitouslurking8610in Far Cry 5 you can flee to florida per boat
Would you really say that's the good ending? Considering where the flip winners end up...🥲
@@gratuitouslurking8610Far Cry 5 as well. You let the Father go, and the world won't blow up or neither will your friends get captured
Live A Live is one of my favorite games of all time. The bad endings within that game are some of the most harrowing.
Based Live A Live enjoyer.
**Armageddon go brrrrr**
That game always looked so interesting to me! I think I really do need to play it one day
*SPOILERS*
You either watch the universe get destroyed in all the eras or Odio gets to live in a lifeless husk of a world all alone.
Either way it’s sad to think about
@@unitlonda4925Ignore my other comment and play it for yourself, It’s really good imo
You gotta love when a hero gets a themesong with phrases like "take no prisoners" especially for Spiderman its peak irony
Legacy of Kain was brilliant for not only being one of the first games to give the player a choice as to whether they get the good or bad ending, but stands apart from every other IP by making the "bad ending" the one that actually allows for the circumstances to truly save the world they inhabit from an underlying threat introduced in the sequels.
It's brilliant as a story, gameplay varies between meh and kind of good. The fan base largely adores the story, making that a show and adapting it faithfully would actually be a smart choice.
I'm a gigantic nerd, so the lines, "Hurt people, hurt people" and "Nothing is set in stone. We control our own destines and we can make our happy endings come true" really hit me. Fantastic video with a lot of great comments about the games and some interesting examples!
Wtf does that have to do with you being a nerd? Other than those lines being fucking terrible and you having bad taste
Bro, the bad ending of Super Adventure Rockman shattered my heart into pieces and had me in tears. This is quite literally the first time I've seen Mega Man cry
I wasn't even certain Rock _could_ cry; the _X_ games strongly imply that the robots before X and Zero weren't fully self-aware.
Mind, it's _also_ disturbing that my thought about seeing that bad ending was that that sounded a lot like setting up the world of _MegaMan Zero,_ only with a memory-edited X rather than a copy running the 'perfect' city.
Plus the first time that Dr. Wily actually becomes victorious over our hero
True
@@retropixel1272 Yeah I said the same thing on riverscuomo7140 comment
@@boobah5643I thought the whole with with mega man is that he was actually more human. I mean in one of the games he was literally about to murder dr wily (or dr wawee)
I've had a morbid fascination for games that traumatize you with bad endings when you least expect it, but making sense in retrospect and maybe even getting a laugh out of you when you realize what you just did was prooobably your fault. The one that REALLY caught me off guard was Wandersong having a bad end. It's a heartfelt little adventure game about a bard wanting to stop the end of the world through song and has a very hopeful and meaningful story and characters, and yet it lets you find a way to throw it all into the void. Highly recommend playing it by the way, vague spoilers here:
Basically, there's all these songs used to access the Spirit World that you're supposed to learn to progress, usually by helping out and making friends with the local townsfolk, and then sing the songs while standing in a specific Nexus spot. However, if you've played the game before and happen to have memorized all the songs (which isn't as easy as it sounds), you can head to the nexus spots early and sing them manually, and it'll bring you to the spirit world anyway. Some characters will change their dialogue to include stuff like "How the heck did you get there so fast? Nevermind..."
The kicker though is that you never get to bring people together like you would in a regular playthrough, which (among other details) is pretty important for your goal of saving the world from the apocalypse. Stuff from putting together a band to revitalize a dying town to *putting an end to a multi-generational war* never get fixed, yet the story goes largely on the same path _until_ the finale. When it all comes down to you, when it's time to unite the entire world to rage against their impending death, to save them from oblivion... nothing happens. Where the finale sequence normally happens, the game instead goes silent, cuts to black, and credits roll. The world doesn't persist with a bang, but ends with a whimper.
It's really chilling to see happen in practice, especially considering how optimistic the regular ending is. Though another part of me can't help but find something profound and funny about the idea, as if the developers were saying "So you ignored the main point of the whole game... what else did you expect, a get-out-of-consequences-free card?"
"The world doesn't perish with a bang, but ends with a whimper"
Heard something like this from the main villan of Saints Row 3 in the "bad" ending
There are also games where all endings have some sense of a bad ending, like Silent Hill. The endings can range from James talking with his wife about how she died - which beleive it or not is the best possible outcome - to him drawing on an evil power trying to bring her back to his new girlfriend being terminally ill like his wife was to... him being confused that a dog was controlling everything.
"Oh my god, Dr. Robotnik killed Tails!"
Yeah, and in the Archie comic series, he also killed Tails' parents.
He decided to finish the job.
Holy shit...
53:03 Fun fact: even if you don’t use auto fire if you mash the too button quickly, then the game will think you’re using auto fire and you’ll die anyway.
Suffering From Success
Really? That's so weird. I was able to use a turbo controller with my original PSX copy of the game and Ocelot didn't do a damn thing. What in the world...
I wonder if this is one of the other versions of MGS? I've beat that scene with and without auto-fire and nothing ever changes. Would be interesting to see if it's in a version included in the Collection...
Made me tear up at the end there dude.
"Sometimes, to do the right thing, we need to be reminded of how bad it could get".
I'm sure it didn't have enough content to make it into the video, but the bad ending that I specifically remember is from Golden Sun. You can choose to just not go on the journey pretty early on, and the fact that they actually let you follow through with that decision stuck with me. Nothing special happens, but much like the Chrono Trigger ending, you do get a screen explaining what happens because of your choice. I believe the words were "And so, the world looms towards its fated destruction" or similar.
Just like a really short 1 screen explanation in Breath Of Fire 2 if choose not to hunt the demon.
I recently finished Tales of Xillia 2 (wonderful game btw, holy shit) and the bad ending truly threw me for a loop. You're asked to kill your brother and if you refuse a certain number of times, your 8 person party all battle you. They yell at you through battle dialogue for not listening to them. Some even mutter out last words once you kill them. The battle goes on til you're met with an animated cutscene featuring the main character covered in blood. As his brother sees him after slaughtering his only friends, he pulls him into a hug and says "part of me wanted this, too." Before you two limp off screen. Roll credits.
Shit hurt so bad.
One of the classic "bad endings" that stands out in my mind from my childhood is Golden Sun. Not long after the game's first dungeon, you're asked if you're willing to take on the burden of saving the world. The game allows you to say "No" and leave. The screen then fades to black and white, and displays the text "...and so the world drifted towards its fated destruction." and fades to black. After that you're asked if you want to go back and change your answer, and if you say no, it takes you to the title screen.
That kinda reminds me of the game over's you can get in the paper mario games, super and thousand year door if you make the wrong decision
One of my favorite bad endings is from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity.
After beating the game and your character leaves from the pokemon world, they are destined to be forgotten by its inhabitants. However, those closest to you in your journey resolve to remember you. This prompts the embodiment of nature to guide your partner throughout the story to the "Hill of Universal Order" to make a wish so that you're character can traverse between worlds freely.
If you choose not to return during this wish, the vision of your partner standing on the hill collapsing is the last thing you see. It gives a bit of text explaining how this was the decision you made and you chose never to return to the pokemon world. But by far the most disturbing part is having a black screen with just the text "No Regrets."
Had no idea choosing not to return led to a bad ending.
@@zer0w0lf94 Its very brief and sends you back to the start of the day. Or you can just reset the system and go to the last save
I never finished Gates, but I really think its story was way better than Super. Gates felt original, whereas super felt like a mix and retread of previous games, abandoning its original ideas so quickly. Super just refined the gameplay so if Gates had Super’s gameplay I feel like it would’ve been perfect. That ending sounds so haunting.
@@ma.2089 I do like gates, but I feel like that secret bad ending is kinda the only part where it feels like it pulls off any sort of edge well.
The story is like "The world is going to freeze over because there are no good pokemon left". But then half of the scenes are like odd romantic plot lines and "V-WHEEEEL!" I think the dialogue is good, but I personally just find it too tonally confused
when i was younger, i never had the balls to say no to returning, even when i finished the game several times. lowkey glad i saved myself from that haunting ending bc if my 12 year old self saw this, i would have nightmares lol
Surprised you didn't mention the other bad ending for Comix Zone, which is a similar deal to Spider-Man vs. the Kingpin: at the end of the game, Mortus re-enters the comic, trapping General Alissa Cyan inside a nuclear bomb's coolant chamber and challenging Sketch to one final battle to the death. Fail to beat him and free Alissa before the chamber fills up completely, and she drowns, but Sketch still manages to escape the comic as it's destroyed. However, he's so depressed and guilt-ridden over Alissa's fate that he considers recreating it just to have another chance at saving her. Then again, as you mentioned, the game is balls-hard, so I don't blame you.
Yeah, my immediate thought was that Clement just never got far enough to see that one; dude didn't do some kind of search for 'bad ends,' it's apparent that these were all bad ends that touched him emotionally.
God, there ain't anything Super about the Super Adventure Rockman: seeing Dr Wily be so happy and ecstatic that he won by causing the death of Roll and gleefully seeing the suffering of his nemesis, is not a good look.
I much rather prefer the Wily from the Ariga comics: he is still hellbent on beating Light, destroying Megaman and conquering the world, but in the racing chapter, he clearly has a sweet spot for Roll since she is just "an innocent girl" and he doesnt want her to get hurt.
Fascinating video. This is the first video I saw of you. But I’m already a fan. You did a great job
Bad endings are neat. What-if scenarios are interesting to think about and explore, and bad endings are one way to do that.
Live A Live's bad ending is probably the coolest bad ending ever. Spoiler warning for Live A Live, please check out the game if you have the time.
The 8th chapter, the medieval chapter, covers the origins of Odio, the demon whose incarnations have haunted every era. In truth Odio was once a knight called Oersted, whose quest to save Princess Alethea went horribly wrong. In short, Oersted was tricked into killing the king, found out his ''best friend'' Streibough betrayed him, and then Alethea reveals that she resents Oersted for not initially saving her and stabs herself professing her love for Streibough. Oersted does not take any of this well at all. He takes it so poorly he stops being a silent protagonist and becomes the demon king Odio.
At this point the player is offered a choice for the final chapter of the game. You are allowed to choose any of the 8 main characters to be the protagonist of this part. Yes, including Oersted.
If you choose Oersted, you get to play as the villain! You get to play as the final bosses of every chapter and completely decimate the heroes if you want to! Playing as the bosses sounds like something you'd only see in a silly rom hack, but no, Live A Live does it and it's cool as hell. Oh and if you get any of the bosses to low health, the flee command will be replaced with ARMAGEDDON. It does exactly as it says on the tin.
If you beat all the protagonists without resorting to wiping the entire universe clean, Odio will make a short speech and then go about his way in the ruins of Lucrece as the credits roll. Yes, he suceeded in his goals- but all Oersted is left with is the ruins of Lucrece. Alone, victorious, thus ends his tale.
It's a surprisingly poignant bad ending. I don't think any of my descriptions can do this ending justice, honestly.
Live A Live comment! Whoo!
What still blows me away about how genius Live A Live handles the endings & choices therein is that this was originally on the Super Famicom. That era of RPGs, especially from Squaresoft & Enix (they hadn't merged yet for those confused), were already peak but the fact us in the west didn't get to officially experience this game until the remake on modern consoles a few decades later is insane with how good the quality is.
And on the note of extra endings, the fact said remake gave us a new final boss that lets us actually SAVE Oersted from himself. That fight became one of my favorite final bosses INSTANTLY!
@@Triforce_of_Doom tbf if this was released in the west it would have prolly been a big a hit as chrono trigger.
but however the original true ending only added extended credits compared to a new finaler boss the remake adds (doing all side dungeons in the finale).
The original true ending is much more tragic. He fades away as he explains his wrongdoings rather than fight one last fight then do that.
"Let All Creation Yield To My Command
Let Blinding White Subsume And Cleanse The Slate"
Odio (most likely), 2023
Definitely remember Banjo-Kazooie's bad ending kept me from finishing the game when i was younger, but Drakengard messed me up! I stayed up for 24 hours trying to get 100% completion in hopes of finding a good ending among the 5. My sister took a picture of me when i got the final ending utterly defeated
Trying to find the good ending in a Yoko Taro game will always fuck you up
Hey, but the final ending led to the Nier series, so that's a good ending for us at least!
@@tatltails3923 Not really. Humanity is dead 100% in the NieR timeline, but at least the androids can carry on humanity's legacy after finally breaking free from their self-imposed YorHa cycle and finding their own reason to exist. NieR Automata is literally the only Yoko Taro game with a happy ending, unless you count those weird card RPGs on Switch.
Yeah in Yoko Taro games almost every ending is a bad ending. Ironically, DG1's standard "ending A" is actually the "happiest" ending by far in spite of its bittersweet nature.
DG1 Ending A: Your dragon buddy dies but you save the world. Leads to Drakengard 2.
DG1 Ending B: Seed of resection creates army of monsters. Everyone dies.
DG1 Ending C: Apocolypse is triggered. Everyone dies.
DG1 Ending D: The apocolypse is triggered, but the entire main cast sacrifices themselves to stop it with each one dying gruesomely. The world is saved, but at what cost?
DG1 Ending E: MC goes to another world (aka modern day Japan) to kill the queen beast. The queen beast is killed, but the MC is shot down by the Japanese military and dies. The queen beast's death spreads a virus that causes humanity's extinction, with humanity coming up with a master plan to preserve their species leading to the events of NieR Replicant.
NieR Ending A: Cliffhanger ending leading to the second half of the game.
NieR Ending B: Yona dies, humanity is doomed.
NieR Ending C: Yona is saved but Kaine is killed. Humanity is doomed.
NieR Ending D: Yona and Kaine both survive, but the MC erases himself from existance to save them, erasing all the players save data.
NieR Ending E: Alternate route in a post-ending D save that's exclusive to the HD Remaster. When meeting Kaine for the first time it cuts back to modern day post-ending D and you play a new 3-5 hour senario as Kaine. NieR is revived (meaning that your save file is restored) but humanity is still doomed.
DG3 Ending A: Everyone dies.
DG3 Ending B: Zero game ends herself.
DG3 Ending C: Zero turns evil and destroys the world.
DG3 Ending D: Zero is revealed to be the queen beast and now her dragon has to seal her away.
Automata Ending A: Adam and Eve are defeated and it's revealed that androids and machines might be the same after all. End of part 1.
Automata Ending B: Same as ending A but from 9S's perspective.
Automata Ending C: A2 defeats 9S and sends him to safety. She then sacrifices herself to destroy the tower.
Automata Ending D: A2 and 9S kill each other, and 9S's conciousness joins Adam and Eve on a spaceship to visit other worlds.
Automata Ending E: With the player's help, everyone is revived and the world is restored. Only truely happy ending made by Yoko Taro.
@@KrimsonKattYT Dude. While your recaps of all the endings were delightful, I said a good ending for US. The PLAYERS. Because we ended up getting to play the Nier series, a set of life-changing games that base their entire timeline off of Drakengard 1's joke ending. And therefore wouldn't exist as we know them without that ending existing first.
I still find it REALLY cool that Force Unleashed decided to make its DLCs a continuation of the bad ending to give us a further glimpse into how things may have changed here. Disney would never let evil Starkiller go on a "what if" rampage and kill all the heroes. Another one that stuck out to me was the bad endings of Persona 4, especially a later one where Naoto calls you in a panic and you can hear her being killed by Shadows.
Yea your wrong bout starkiller. Disney would not even give him the choice to go to the dark side.
I knew about a bunch of these endings from whoisthisgit’s Creepy Bad Endings series, but that honestly made the video more enjoyable because I could go, “Hey, I know that ending! It sure does fucking suck! :D” There were also the ones I didn’t know, and they let me learn something new.
All in all, great video.
Undertale's post-genocide pacifist ending is one of the few that impacted me the most. If there's something not too known about is doing the pacifist ending after a genocide ending, that ending will make you forget your previous run and remind you in the very end. Making the ending even worse than the Genocide ending. Go look it up, or play it.
For its time, that was such a gut punch
I think my personal favorite will always be Xillia 2's bad ending. Not only does it take place right before the final dungeon of the game, it makes you go off against the party you've been traveling with the entire time, killing them all off, knowing fully well it'll doom the entire world, just to protect your brother who's already doomed to die. It's so tragic and bittersweet
I just wanted to add that in Crash Bash if you play the main campaign with 2 players using one character from both Aku Aku/Uka Uka's team you'll be forced to fight each other after facing Oxide to prove which side is stronger! It'll be based on the fighting mini game with it's own background and everything! Me and my sister actually did this when we were kids and managed to collect all the collectibles while doing so giving us 201%! One my favorite and best video game memories since it was quite the challenging experience!
Huge fan of Oddworld's bad endings! Especially Munch's Oddysee, that bad ending stuck with me forever. I found them all online of course, but if I ended a gane like that it would have hit so much harder. Even the promo gaurdian angel video was scarring to me as a kid.
It’s sorta goofy
Just the “god” of fate letting one dead dude who didn’t even know him personally kill the person who was supposed to save all of their race
That Comix Zone section unlocked MEMORIES for me. I had the Atari system which basically had a whole lotta old games on it and Comix Zone was one of them. I remember being obsessed with the game but I could only make it past like level 3. I REALLY wish they made a remake of it because it genuinely is a really good game
All these games, especially Mega Man X5 and The Force Unleashed were the ones that stuck out to me the most as a kid and taught me how to be more observant of how to avoid the bad ending. So when it happened, it caught me off guard but made a lot of sense. It hit the right balance of being shocking and a consequence of action or even inaction
Ive been watching Clement's vids for about 13-14 years, im happy to see he still posts bangers to this day🙏
dam same i fell off a while back but i remember enjoying his old LP's back in the 2010's
I remember finding him in 2010 when he was doing Sonic Triple Trouble with that really crappy microphone. Yep, good times!
and this channel is about fifteen years old
Same here. He's the very first youtuber/lets player I ever watched, and only because I needed help for Sonic 3.
The Starkiller evil ending is also wild because that is the one they decided to expand DLC on as well. You rumble your way across Tatooine and Hoth chasing down Luke, murdering your way through the likes of Boba Fett, Ben Kenobi, and rebel troopers all along the way, with the final fight against Luke leading to Starkiller offering a place at his side as *his* secret apprentice. Literally, those who do not learn are doomed to repeat as you said.
I have never in my life seen an entire critical review of a tv show episode serve as an INTRO
Bugsnax has such disturbing body horror, it almost makes me laugh at how gruesome it is. Watching your friends slowly fall apart as they give into their insecurity’s and decide life’s not worth living. It’s definitely not what you expect out of the funny bug game. There’s a reason why it’s one of my favorite game ever.
Cellystix
@@Cellystix3.0 bro is out here reaping his favorite obscure bugsnax
@@gegnabean Cellystix :P
I find it weird that snorpy is roger craig smith aka sonic the hedghog
@@Randoomly-1 holy shit ur right I always forget that
If you ever do a sequel, Cave Story is a great contender. The choice to simply give up because the Doctor is just so many steps ahead of you is really powerful stuff. I think it's realistic answer, and something I always do at least once per playthrough, because boy can the game be rough on the player sometimes.
I LOVE Bittersweet Endings. Sure they're happy on the surface, but they leave you contemplating since something's not quite right. Gotta love the mix of emotions they bring to the table.
Have you played Firewatch? It has a great atmosphere, and great story. And really unexpected turns. I'm not gonna tell you anything more in case you haven't played it 👀
@@Litepaw I've watched a bunch of videos regarding the game. It's as great as they say.
@@blockeontheleafeon ❤️
It was heart-wrenching. And beautiful. It really made me think about life.
@@Litepaw I see.
@@HoxMouse That's fair.
7:25 hear me out.. is it really a bad ending ? 👀
No this is the good ending
Let him cook
11:28
It's not at least 25 parts that you need, it's 25 specific parts that are mandatory to leave.
You could collect 28 & fail to leave if the 29th piece you fail to collect is one of the necessary ones.
The Bugsnax bad ending personally hurts me so much. I love the game so much. I'm so attached to every single grumpus... well, except Cromdo.
I think one of my favorite bad endings is in Armored Core for Answer.
Long story short, you can commit an atrocity so horrific that your own Operating team leaves you in the middle of a the mission, to which the final mission after is you fighting 4 of the best AC mercy in the world who've rallied to take you down.
And when you win, you get called literally worse then Hitler as you have literally killed 100 million people
That sounds interesting as hell, unfortunately im poor. Time to watch someone else play it.
@@cdogthehedgehog6923 And the final bit after that ruclips.net/video/Y7D_gjytpnA/видео.htmlsi=3e-0FXlat5QCjXmb
What was said atrocity?
@@littlebadassgaming Killing 100 million people in the span of 3 minutes.
There are these stations called cradles where half of humanities population live. They're thousands of meters above the surface of the earth to keep them safe from the pollutants of the world below.
And if you accept the mission, you can drop them from the skies. 10 cradles to destroy. 20 million on each.
@@littlebadassgaming kill 140 million people on cradle ships.
Sonic Frontiers bringing back good and bad endings to the Sonic series in a roundabout way with it's much happier ending in Another Story is one of my favorite things to happen this year
I more see the base game ending of Frontiers as the Normal Ending rather than a Bad Ending because The End is still defeated, albeit at the cost of Sage but Dr. Eggman was able to bring her back none the worse for wear thanks to technology, and considering The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (it's not what it sounds like, it's a Murder Mystery party) doesn't seem to contradict the canon to my knowledge and Sage appears at the end of that game (and if you pick "Don't turn us into robots.", Eggman will mention Sage because she can control robots) I think it's fair to say that either scenario could be used.
I never actually understood Final Horizon DLC as I haven't played much of it yet. Is it an alternate timeline to what happened in the base game, forking off at Ouranos island therefore creating a new ending?
@@SocksFCGameArchives From a story perspective Final Horizon (or Another Story in-game) takes place immediately after Sonic's friends cure him of his Cyber Corruption (after Rhea Island), so yes it's an alternate Ouranos Island.
@@SocksFCGameArchives Yup. If you play through Rhea and then Another Story immediately afterwards, that first cutscene is Eggman and Sage stopping Sonic and proposing the idea to restore his Cyber Corruption and use it as power against The End
The first _Drakengard_ had five different endings. The first ending was a bit depressing, but as you progress further in the game, you unlock more endings, and each one is somehow worse than the one the preceded it.
"A wave of destruction fueled by one child's loneliness"
That was a damn haunting line, I gotta credit ya for that.
I feel like Oddworld doesn't get enough recognition so i was happy to see it in this video
Me too w/ Super Adventure Rockman, I've been a huge Mega Man fan for several years now and I found that one's story really underrated.
Bad game endings always make me think of the first Dragon Quest game where the main villain offers you half the world for joining him. Accepting gives you the game over screen but the coolest part is Dragon Quest Builders picks up the what if story years later. It’s such a cool way to make a spin off game.
Skullgirls is a particularly interesting one, because each individual character has their own story mode, each one gets a unique ending, and they all sort of fall on a scale from good, to bittersweet, to bad, to apocalyptic. Originally, though, there was going to be two endings for each character, depending on whether or not they actually wish on the Skull Heart (or in some cases, the wish they make is different). There's actually dialogue for seven of these alternate endings that was found in the files, though for some of them it's kind of a decision between a "bad" ending and a "worse" ending.
Really freaking awesome video. I hope more parts are made in the future
In STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl unless you complete the secret canon good ending, you will get one of several bad endings that just immediately result in death, blindness, or existential crisis
I'm so glad that you brought up Dead Rising in this video, because I remember that game having so many bad endings that you could get on your first run.
Hell, the first ever ending that I've gotten in that game was when Frank's pilot couldn't see him, automatically assumed he's dead, and gets eaten by a zombie afterwards.
That shit was confusing because I was RIGHT on the Heli Pad when that ending triggered.
I've also seen that ending from Dead Rising. When I got it; I thought I did something wrong; letting the pilot get his ass killed by a zombie. And also; I got the bad ending in Pikmin. I hated the game. So I failed it on purpose. Sorry. But I loved playing Dead Rising; it's like the second best horror themed series Capcom theme has. Except for DR 3 and 4. But honestly; as much as I love Dead Rising; I always preferred Resident Evil/Biohazard(if you're in Europe/Japan). But Dead Rising is great too. Although it's lost a bit of quality lately. But that doesn't mean I don't like the first 2 DR games; and the 2 side games? Case West and the other one with both Chuck and Frank. I wish they'd go back to what made those 2 games fun in the first place. And also; Isabella(the girl from the first game); was the one who developed the virus to get revenge on the people; and she was apparently the one Brad and Jessie were looking for back in the Willamette Mall; not Carlito. Because she explains it during Dead Rising 3. I've seen every ending in the original Dead Rising. There's only one good ending; where you escape with everyone; or show up to the rooftop and the pilot DOESN'T see you; and crashes into a wall; or gets eaten by zombies. Because it's a Capcom horror game with zombies that's not Resident Evil. But it's impossible to save either Brad or Jessie; or the pilot. They're SUPPOSED to die; unfortunately. Along with Carlito; and the doctor. It's a great first game for a new series. Too bad it's declined...but maybe someday they'll bring Dead Rising back to star quality...
It's nice to still see you making videos here and there, Clement. It brings back nice memories.
My favorite character imo is Mega man. And seeing this optimistic with full of hope robot having lost and crying like he failed really did it for me. I also was shocked how they just blew mega man up too. Mega man, X & Zero ftw
Megaman X5 was the first megaman game I ever played as a kid so all the different routes got to me hard. Considering Zero was my preferred character it felt even worse being forced to play as X to somewhat redeem yourself.
Hunting Grounds bad endings...Good God, those endings, Espiecially the one where the dog doesn't love you. I shiver at the thought.
I will *NEVER* get the "dog doesn't love you" ending. I love animals, especially dogs, way too much for that.
Great job on this, but I was thinking instead of a follow-up on "bad" endings necessarily, if you could make one on morally grey endings. Some examples are Ghost of Tsushima, Last of Us, Detriot: Become Human, Life is Strange and pretty much the entire Shin Megami Tensei series.
Clement you have truly open my eyes to the importance of bad endings and why making the wrong choices makes us realize that we must strive to be better and push ourselves to gain a golden ending while not forgetting what lead us astray into the path of Shadows and Doubts
Die Hard Trilogy 2 on PS1 was the first game I played that had a bad ending, it even had two of them! One with John McClanes body in a morgue and one where he walks into his captains office and throws down his badge and gun.
Ever since Spiderman PS4, I'm surprised how many old games and shows that I'll hear Yuri Lowenthals voice
Same here. Is Yuri Lowenthal just everywhere? I thought Johnny Bosch was the dude who was everywhere? But whether it's Yuri Lowenthal or Johnny Bosch; they're my 2 favorite voice actors.
One of my favorite series to do bad endings is the disgaea series early games depending on how little you pay attention or just want to see them you can have endings were the protagonist eats their family or just wanders the world in a pointless search
I've been watching Clement since his early Sonic LPs. It's been a pleasure to see him flower from a weird looking kid playing with an Eggman plushie and doing Sonic and Mega Man LPs to a handsome man making some of the best gaming documentaries/video essays on RUclips.
Bad endings in video games are interesting because they show the player just how much they messed up. The often intentionally disturbing imagery associated with lots of the endings ensures that the players will never, ever forget what they did wrong.
I did the worst ending in Dishonored. This game shows a lot of stuff that happens after you do that. Also, you get this ending from regular bad ending, by letting gravity win at the end of the game on high chaos.
Fun Fact: In Majora's Mask the first cycles clock is actually like 3x faster than it usually is. Put the timer of the first deku cycle and the first human cycle side by side, and you will see the first deku cycle's timer moving far faster. This is probably due to how little there is to do on the first cycle, and them thinking it wouldn't take that long to gather everything. Hell, in glitchless runs, we use the scarecrow to get to Night of the Final Day, get magic, then sit outside the clock tower for like 5 minutes (you can do a weird turn in mid-air while backflipping in MM, so we use that to grab the ledge skipping the deku flower).
The game devs may have forgot kids playing the game may want to explore and talk to everyone, nor would they know exactly what to do when booting into the game for the first time. It be how it be though.
If you ever do a part 2 to this, I have to recommend looking into the Conquest Route of Neptunia Mk2 / Re;birth2. You can play the game standalone, as it's not connected to the first game's story. The overall series is mostly a silly parody of the game industry and gaming in general with a lot of humor, but this game has a more serious tone and tells a story about the protagonist stepping up to take on her responsibilities. The True ending and Conquest ending have two very different answers for how she does that.
The reason I suggest it is that, without spoilers, it is one of the darkest and most effective bad endings of any that I've personally played. Where a lot of games treat bad endings as an extended game over or more of an afterthought, this one goes full-on into a beautifully crafted (if incredibly depressing) dark spiral that even rivals the true ending route in length and writing quality. And the worst part? There are multiple timelines in Neptunia, so that route _actually_ happens to one version of the main character.
Where can I find this game? I have heard, very briefly, about the Conquest Ending, but know very little. Can you point me in the right direction?
@@RedSpade37it’s on PS3, but there was essentially a remaster on Vita and Steam. The remaster is called Re;Birth 2
Haven’t watched the vid yet but already this one of my fav ideas for a video, always loved the way bad endings felt so raw and almost more realistic than the good ones.
Bruh your channel is dead af lmao, that's what happens when you wanna talk shit about the Persona franchise just because it's popular and way better than SMT
it's why i go for bad endings in visual novels, some of them are downright nutty & insane, but so very raw and definitely tug at your heartstrings!!
It's hard to look at the Yamato Reactor the same way after THAT ending... 🥲
He doesn't know he's about to talk about Persona 3
It depends on the game. P3’s doesn’t feel any more realistic than it’s actual ending, since it’s a personal and moral decision and what was going to happen was going to happen no matter whether you were there or not.
And Some endings can be super out of character, like P4’s. It’s an interesting concept for an ending, but makes literally no sense for the narrative or characterization up until that point.
Or like Paper Mario for the Wii, where you’re just given the choice to try and save the world or not. Most ppl wouldn’t want to die, so Mario deciding to let the world end makes no sense.
my favorite bad endings are from the blaster master zero series. They're pretty simple, but very effective. But the best part, for at least the first two, is that getting the good ending doesn't undo them, it just lets you continue from what would otherwise be your ending point, snatching your good ending from what would usually be a very somber and depressing ending.
I was going to comment on that haha
In addition to what you said, the fact that each one revolves around Eve's fate makes them even sadder. If we think a bit more about what's going to happen later in the first two Eve is bound to become a mutant, the thing she was meant to destroy (for BMZ3 it's a bit different, since her goal is galactic peace)
However, every bad ending gives a clue as to how to get to the real ending, so it's also a blessing in disguise. Except for BMZ3 lmao, cause I didn't had any clue how to reach it so I asked Inti Creates because I didn't want to search it online for fear of spoilers.
It's a shame that despite the rise of morality systems, developer seem to have dialed back quiet a bit with "bad endings" in their games and encountering them is only far and wide in between nowadays.
Part of this is an unwillingness to create fail states, and some of this is just that it's so expensive to do _anything_ in the AAA environment; bad endings are an obvious place to cut when things get tight.
@@boobah5643 frankly, with how complex and expensive it is to do anything, most triple a games can't even really have more than just the one ending let alone a bad end
Thank you for this video. Some of these endings were just wonderfully painful. I agree with you in the fact that we sometimes need bad endings to know how bad it can get, reminding us what to fight for.
I never finished PIkmin, but played it a lot when I was a kid. Best case scenario is that Olimar got scanned by the ship and someone out there knows he's out there, but we don't even know that for sure. Genuinely upsetting.
Final Fantasy VIII had a technically "bad ending" but you have to purposely do it in a way to get it. So at the missile base level, you have to adjust the missiles to have the highest error margin possible to miss the Garden. The game will tell you if the error margin is too low and try to make you keep doing it. If you start the self destruct sequence while the missiles still have a low margin of error, a cutscene will play as you escape the base and Balamb Garden will get hit and blow up.
I love how Persona 3, and also Persona 5 Royal bad endings are not "Bad stuff happens, the end", they are not on a white and black scale, the endings are more "phylosphical"
Usually an "everyone is happy" would be a good ending, but in those games they are the bad outcome, they show us an empty and null happiness where the protagonists gave in on all that they believed in, they gave up without fighting, they gave up on living
Because yes, is always easier to just quit, but running away, scapism, will not solve anything
The lessons of these games is how rough life is, how tragic and depressing things can get and yet, life is still worth living
In Persona 3 case, they prefered to ignore a huge problem and die on blissful ignorance, dooming themselves and everyone to a terrible fate, because they didn't even try to fight for themselves.
In Persona 5 Royal, they straight up refuse to accept reallity, they scape to a fake world where no one ever suffers, where death doesn't haunts us giving us painful farewells, where everyone is "happy"... and yet, is an empty world
This ending is like a reflection of ourselves, how many times have we played videogames trying to avoid living our reality? How many times we tried to scape all the pain and wish for it to never exist...
But life is about good and bad experiences, thing will get rough, painful, you might lose it all... but you have to face it, you can get up and fight for yourself, fight to make your life and other's better, fight to keep living
Because after all, life is worth living and we need to accept that not everything is perfect and there will always be pain, but for any painful memory, you can make 100 happy ones. After all, life is an experience, one that everyone deserves to live...
The Persona Series is awesome
Bar the life is worth lifing, i agree.
Life is rough. Tragic and depressing and unfair. But nothing more.
I would take the fake happyness. As happyness and good things are always fake.
And both games had at some sort of sentient character in it.
Persona 3 had aigis
And P5R had ren (or akria if you prefer the manga) and akechi
There was actually meant to be a Bad Ending in the Original Kirby's Return to Dreamland for the Wii, where Magolor wasn't liberated of the Master Crown.
In the new Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe, there is a True Secret Final Boss which is hidden in the Arena (not Canon though). This Boss is a more epic, a more harder and especially more different Boss than from the Story Mode. In Phase 2 of this Boss, its eyes will fade out and an Apple Heal Item will appear from the mouth. This is a metaphor for "The apple of the eye". This Phase 2 is extremely depressing (altough epic nonetheless), as the music gets an added chorus and you can hear Magolor's cries for help in it.
After defeating the boss, it will burn, a portal appears behind it and engulfs the whole body of *Magolor's Soul* which is still under the Master Crown's possession...forever.
This boss was probably meant not only for fan service, but a Removed Bad Ending returning
The worst bad ending in video games is pikmin 1 olimar LITERALLY CAN NEVER SEE HIS FAMILY AGAIN
I know it’s early, but Baldur’s Gate 3. Especially the Dark Urge route.
So throughout that route, your character is plagued with an uncontrollable urge to kill. You later find out that the reason behind it, is because you were actually the Chosen One for Bhaal, the God of Murder.
After killing the one who betrayed you, you were greeted by Bhaal himself who grants you a gift. If you accept it, you basically become all powerful with the Slayer form and Power Word: Kill.
But you can also defy him, and you lose everything that Bhaal gave you. But ultimately gain a second chance at life, a chance to start over without the Dark Urge.
Basically, it comes down to a story of either embracing your inner nature of what you were created to be, or a story of conquering that evil to become a better person than what was destined for you to be.
Over ten years ago I started watching this man’s let’s plays (and ofc the greatest Sonic 06 review ever made). The times and the content may change but he never lost his touch👑
As an self described entry level gamer by modern standards, this video was a really nice rundown of a bunch of popular titles I've heard over the years but never had the chance to play. Kind of re-ignites my desire to check them out! And thanks for the quality vids lately.
For me, RPG maker horror games were the catalysts for my love toward bad endings or just brutal death animations in general
In such dark and grim games, making a "what if" scenario may not be as shocking as when it happens in more hopeful games, but some gave me nightmares when I was younger
The dark endings for me is tales of symphonia 2: dawn of the new world. The first time I saw the game over screen, and the music just hurts a lot and the bad endings is sad because the main character boy who suffers from DID pretends to be a bad guy of his personality and the last fight and you play as him defeating your friends. Then he turns the blade against himself because he played this entire time and is sad he hurt his friends and the person he loves. and no one knew until Lloyd at the end of the fight figured it out. Thus the game end with the girl he likes writing a letter saying if things could be better and didn’t have be like this.
Also in another tales game, tales of xillia 2 where the only way to save your future daughter and saving the multiverse from is to kill another family member who has the power to make a soul bridge to the other side. The only person who is there is your elder brother and if you refuse to fight and kill him. You go into a state of insanity and doomed the multiverse. However your friends aren’t so kind to that kind of idea even though it is the only way to save the world. So your character in that insanity state kills all of their friends and the brother in shock just reacted that everything that is happening right now was all in vain and he says as they have a very nice bromance hug, “it is okay, I want the too.” Then the game ends.
Honestly tales of xillia 2 endings are all sad as well even the true end is so sad that as a player for me cannot decide to pick on or the other. In the neutral ending you like your future daughter die bc she knows she is not yours but from another universe. It fricking sucks because in the true ending you sacrifice yourself to save your future daughter even though she is not your child. Your character decides himself that she deserves to live because she is a person too and she needs to see until the end and promised he will come back someday and see her again.
Conkers bad fur day/L.A.R. has a lot of bad endings, and their aren't any good endings because when you beat the game as normal, Conker is just depressed after becoming the king because his girlfriend, Berri was killed.
My glorious King clement, I found you back in the ages of megaman tutorials and playthroughs. Still making awesome content in 2023, we love you man
Oh boy a video of Negative Consequences in Gaming outside of basic Running Out of Lives/Continue?/Game Over screens and honestly I'm here for it!
It really helps motivate players to do even better next time.
By the way I think this also planted the seeds for Creepy Pastas/Horror Fan Games to grow for games that don't have Bad Endings.
Also small shoutouts to "whoisthisgit" for covering all the creepy bad endings out there in separate videos with text only not even with vocal commentary.
Love that you gave whoisthisgit a shoutout.
I love his content, best/worst/wierdest levels ever, creepy bad endings, the most powerful/weakest characters in gaming, creepy time limits, leave my eyes/ears/mind alone, all pretty good stuff!
I really hope there's more parts of this eventually. This was an interesting watch. Helped me discover games i never knew existed and endings i never got or didn't know was possible.