Worse Endings (Spoilers) [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

CowardlyPaladin

2013-08-01, 08:42 PM

When it comes to any form of media, one of the most difficult things to pull off is the ending, because it has to provide closure. At the end of the work, we are suppose to be able to put the book away, satisfied in the exciting and fascinating journey. Even works that have been cancelled can sometimes have a good ending, disregarding the movie, Firefly's ending really was good (though) because reminded us that the adventure continues and life goes on. The Kingdom (a danish horror show) was cancelled but its unfulfilled plotline and implications of total doom actually worked in the favor of a surreal horror, where one's imagination more scary than anything else. A bad beginning can be tolerated, a bad middle is difficult, but a bad ending can ruin an otherwise fantastic series. here are some of the most frustrating endings

Everybody please name a terrible ending to a good work, explain why it doesn't work, and offer an alternative ending.

Logic

2013-08-01, 11:13 PM

warty goblin

2013-08-01, 11:44 PM

Maybe not prominent, but I'm fairly certain the ending of Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles doesn't work for me. Part of it is that she gets into the period of the story actually covered directly by the Iliad, and she doesn't write as well as Homer. Which is forgivable, basically nobody does. The narrator being dead doesn't really help either. But the real kicker is the need to bend the fall of Troy around until it has something that sort of resembles an ending that works for a modern audience, by which I mean isn't a horrificly bleak tragedy. Which just doesn't work, since the traditional narrative she does such an excellent job of cleaving to the rest of the book is quite clear that the Trojan War was immensely destructive of everybody involved. A happily-ever-after afterlife ending feels a bit saccharine.

Which is something of a shame, since otherwise the book's marvelous. Gorgeously written, with a clear love and respect for the source material, and an excellent blending of the mythic and pseudo-historical into a sensible whole. Even more impressively Achilles actually works as a character, which is to say understandable as a character in a modern novel, but not completely constrained by that form. He's still mythic in scope.

Also the hottest sex scene I've read this year. I had no idea man-on-man made for such steamy reading.

I can't really offer an alternative ending though. Everything it does 'wrong' is essentially a fault dictated by trying to cajole a three thousand year old poem into something that makes sense as a modern novel. Some things that fit in the context of a bronze age epic just don't work with the restrictions of a novel. Ending with the shade of Achilles cursing his choice to die beneath Ilium's gate for all eternity doesn't really work as the ending of a novel, however marvelously ambigous his appearance in the Odyssey makes the entirety of the Iliad. In trade though it allows Miller to tap into the wellspring that is the Epic Cycle, a resource of which she makes capital use.

Selrahc

2013-08-01, 11:56 PM

I think I am in the minority, but the ending to the Re-imagined Battlestar Galactica doesn't work for me.

I don't think that's a minority view.

Anderlith

2013-08-02, 12:10 AM

AdmiralCheez

2013-08-02, 01:15 AM

I think I am in the minority, but the ending to the Re-imagined Battlestar Galactica doesn't work for me.

It didn't work for me either. I mean, the final battle inside the accretion disk of a black hole was pretty awesome, but everything after that was kind of dull. Then again, I thought the whole of season four was rather dull with a few exceptions.

Back on topic though, the final episode of Stargate SG-1. Great series, probably my all-time favorite. Final episode was kind of thrown together because they got cancelled without warning in the middle of a major plot arc.

The Asgard, one of the most powerful species in the galaxy, and ally of Earth, figures out that their race is doomed. Their race's DNA has degraded too badly to fix after centuries of tinkering with it. So, they all collectively decide to commit mass suicide by gathering on their homeworld and blowing it up.

Before they go, however, they hand off all of their technology and knowledge to SG-1. Keep in mind that the entire rest of the series the Asgard refused to give tech to Earth because they wanted them to "earn it."

So, then they get ambushed by an enemy ship with superior firepower, and instead of getting wiped out and losing the entirety of the Asgard knowledge, they freeze time for decades in order to trigger a time loop that sends one of them back in time.

It all comes really suddenly, with a huge shift of tone from the rest of the season. Granted, they did get two DVD movies to wrap it up, but still. The obvious alternative would be to just keep the series going until they ended it when they were ready, but a decent solution could have been:

Have a sort of "final trial" type thing where at the end the Asgard determine that humanity is ready to take their place as the "fourth race" that had been hinted at since season 3 or so. That could be where they hand off some of their knowledge base, if they absolutely had to do that.

Alternatively, they could have ended it by making the Stargate program public knowledge and ushering in a new era for Earth. Or, for a darker ending, end it by burying the Stargate forever. Some sort of closure would be nice. (I'm not counting the decades they spend on the ship because the time jump overwrites it.)

Hawriel

2013-08-02, 02:12 AM

I have vary rarely seen an ending that truly pissed me off, or just ruined the story as a whole for me. I've had several let downs, and endings that made me shrug and say meh. At worst making me just toss the experience on the pile of seen it, read it, what ever next.

Mass Effect 3
Is one of the glaring exception to endings that piss me off, and sower my memories and want to reread, play, or watch story. EA, hold on, Bioware with EA's hand up it's ass... Yeah cutting that right there. I'll just say I even found the DLC ending smug. As if it was saying I was to stupid to see how great the original ending was, so it talked down to me so I would get it.

Daus Ex Human Revolution
It was kind of Meh. Boss battle press button for slightly different reasoning in a monologue. Would have been better if there was a cut scene. Gave me flash backs of Mass Effect, but it did not piss me off. I found it underwhelming. In no way effected my opinion on the rest of the game.

The Last Samurai
The ending almost made me face palm. It had this wonderful end scene in the Emperor's throne room. Then it continued on to show us that Tom Cruse really did go back for the girl. Uhg. That could have been left on the cutting room floor. It was not important. The director should have left it up to the audience to decide whether or not He went back to continue the relationship, or have it ended. Both would have been natural.

Watchmen
Snyder made the story more comprehensive and tight with his reworking. Giant Clone psychic fake space squid was just, so comic book ridiculous. Then again the comic was a commentary on comic book heroes so maybe it was poking fun at over the top cosmic BS, and over complicated super villain plans, in comic books. Never really thought about that until now. Not that I hated the squid. Just thought it was done better in the movie.

Lincoln
Like the Last Samurai there was a perfect moment for an ending. Then it continued on. However the last bit was not bad. It just was not needed. Well the bate and switch was irksome.

I find the longer the novel series the more likely the ending will be mediocre. The ending to the Malazan Books of the Fallen was ok, however it felt kind of brief and left some things hanging. Not plot wise, there were a few important characters that kind of faded out that I wanted more closer with. However even with a small feeling of meh, it in no way effected my enjoyment of the series. This is one of the few book series I will most likely read twice.

Same with Wheel of time. However because that series was so damn long, and had so much content I don't think any ending would have fully satisfied me. When I finished the series I just tossed it on the dun pile and moved on.

Super 8
No JJ Abrams you cant turn the monster into lovable ET at the very end of the movie and have it work. This movie defines my opinion of Abrams. He is good at doing a lot of things. But will fall short as a whole.

Kitten Champion

2013-08-02, 02:21 AM

So many endings to Stephen King books.... so many.

Even when I'm kind of enjoying his works, much disappointment comes later. The thing is, you can't really improve them since you'll just be replacing bull**** with more bull****. So, just don't bother. Go post-modern on us, it's fine, stop mid sentence in the fourth quarter of your book, leave us wondering. Have the build up just sort of peak, and done.

Moak

2013-08-02, 02:51 AM

VariSami

2013-08-02, 03:20 AM

90% on anime since the endings are rushed and leave way too many threads hanging. Also, Gainax Endings (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GainaxEnding).

tensai_oni

2013-08-02, 07:50 AM

The ending of Negima.

AAAARGH THE RAGE!!!

I agree, but there was an unfortunate RL reason for that. Akamatsu was afraid (and for really good damn reasons) that his publishing company would try to wrestle the franchise away from him. So he was desperate to wrap it up as soon as possible, take everything home and jump ship.

90% on anime since the endings are rushed and leave way too many threads hanging. Also, Gainax Endings (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GainaxEnding).

Yeah, that's not generalizing or anything. I'm pretty sure I can give you more than 1 example of an anime with a satisfying ending for every 9 rushed ones you give.

Also for being the trope namer, Gainax was actually good with endings. I found them all satisfying and a fitting conclusion to their respective shows. Yes, even Gurren Lagann. Even Evangelion. You heard me.

Deathkeeper

2013-08-02, 07:53 AM

Wait, there is a significant number of people who don't like the ending of Gurren Lagann? It was very, very good IMO.

Eldan

2013-08-02, 07:55 AM

It was damn near perfect. How could you dislike it? Thatl ast episode was the best twenty something minutes ever put on TV.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 07:58 AM

Wait, there is a significant number of people who don't like the ending of Gurren Lagann? It was very, very good IMO.

Well, there are a significant number of people who missed what the entire theme of the show was, so yes.

Also, I'll submit as another unambiguously great ending by Gainax Gunbuster, although again you have to be willing to accept bittersweet endings. And also rushing. It was a six episode show, okay?

Also since we're on the subject of mecha anime I'm going to submit Martian Successor Nadesico. The anime ending was terrible and resolved nothing except the main love trapezohedron, the movie was terrible because it was a planned trilogy that bombed hard and never got concluded and therefore resolved less than the TV show, and don't ****ing get me started on the manga.

Tengu_temp

2013-08-02, 08:05 AM

Why people don't like the ending to TTGL:
"Wah Nia died and Simon became a hobo, Gainax can never give us a happy ending!"

Which of course completely misses the point and the general message of the show. We talked about it several times on the General Anime Discussion thread.

You know what would make the ending to Mass Effect 3 so much better?
It should end when TIM is taken care of, Shepard activates the Crucible, and sits down next to Anderson, both of them looking at the sun together. What will the Crucible do? Will it even work? Shepard did all s/he could, and only time will tell what will the future bring... Cue credit roll.

Sometimes the uncertain is better than an unsatisfying explanation. Also, the rage of the fandom would make it even more worth it.

The ending of Negima at least had one good thing to it:
Konoka and Setsuna got married.

Andrzej Sapkowski is the Polish equivalent of Stephen King - he can't write a good ending no matter how hard he tries. His short stories are okay, but both the Witcher saga and the Narrenturm trilogy ended in very tired, stupid ways. Bonus points for Narrenturm putting the main character to prison for a few years just before the final chapter.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 08:12 AM

Andrzej Sapkowski is the Polish equivalent of Stephen King - he can't write a good ending no matter how hard he tries. His short stories are okay, but both the Witcher saga and the Narrenturm trilogy ended in very tired, stupid ways. Bonus points for Narrenturm putting the main character to prison for a few years just before the final chapter.

Ooh, you know who else can write short stories but not novels?

Arthur C. effing Clarke.

Although his novels are more terrible in general than having terrible endings. Seriously, the only good novels he wrote were movie adaptations (or, in 2001's case, more of a collaboration with the film's director than an adaptation). They also have terrible endings, though.

Deathkeeper

2013-08-02, 08:15 AM

Speaking of Mecha, I want to nominate the ending of the Zeta Gundam movies. First, know that I hate the anime's ending too, but the show was so dark that while I dislike it, it wasn't really out of place. Not really bad even in the movie but if they wanted to fix the downer ending it could have been handled better. It just came off as "it's not depressing because you hated it last time, here you go" without any explanation of why the bad stuff didn't happen, and just sort of falls flat a bit.
Oh and 08th MS team, one of my favorites. What the heck was up with episode 13?

And I totally agree with ME3, TT.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 08:24 AM

Deathkeeper

2013-08-02, 08:37 AM

I admit, I kind of had to ignore GodShep's tone in the Control ending to actually enjoy it, although I think that's because they wanted me to pick Synthesis.

Screw you, Bioware, Synthesis is insanely creepy.

Oh yeah it is. Although my friends like to joke that Kid Ex Machina only recommends it because you take him out of the picture with the other two endings. Me, having seen that one creepy part of Getter Robo with its weird machine future thingy, heard "combine" and said NOPENOPENOPENOPE.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 08:45 AM

On the other hand, making three different endings with three wildly different consequences for people to argue over was probably the point, as Bioware is kind of obsessive about dilemmas (or trilemmas in this case), and they let that tendency get more than a little bit out of hand when designing ME.

It's just that none of the choices are presented well at all, even with the Extended Cut. And as usual, the writers were heavily biased towards one of them thanks mainly, I think, to not thinking it through.

Tengu_temp

2013-08-02, 08:54 AM

Eldan

2013-08-02, 08:57 AM

Yeah, Transhumanist here: Synthesis is as badly written and presented as all the endings, but I still think it should work.

Feytalist

2013-08-02, 09:00 AM

I feel like this whole thread should be wrapped in a large spoiler tag.

Andrzej Sapkowski is the Polish equivalent of Stephen King - he can't write a good ending no matter how hard he tries. His short stories are okay, but both the Witcher saga and the Narrenturm trilogy ended in very tired, stupid ways. Bonus points for Narrenturm putting the main character to prison for a few years just before the final chapter.

I really wish they would hurry up and translate the rest of his books into English. I'm this close to just learning Polish already. It's can't be that hard, right?

tensai_oni

2013-08-02, 09:03 AM

Also, everyone becomes superior biomechanical lifeforms.

This.
This is the creepy part about the synthesis ending.

Whether you are a transhumanist or not, you must admit that Shepard rebuilding all life in the galaxy without asking them if they want that is intensely creepy. It has a serious Big Brotheresque "I know better what's good for you than you do" vibe, and the change rebuilds everyone on such a fundamental level that what happens is Shepard pretty much severely violating all living beings in the galaxy at once.

Also two cases of fridge logic:
1. You can't expect everyone to be happy with this change. Either a wave of riots and suicides followed, or there was some brainwashing at work. Which is even creepier.
2. Remember Stalkers husks? They are all sentient now. That stalker husk head from that one DLC that is still alive somehow despite being only a head? It's sentient too. I don't think those people are happy to suddenly wake up and find themselves as mechanical zombies. If you ask me, they'd be better off dead.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 09:04 AM

What's creepy about the Synthesis ending? I thought it's unambigiously the best one until I realized it requires Shep's sacrifice (which is stupid, there's no reason you couldn't just drop some blood there, or even just a finger or something). Also, everyone becomes superior biomechanical lifeforms... But Joker still can't walk. Guy can't catch a break.

Mostly for me it's that it's the involuntary and completely out-of-nowhere alteration of every thinking being in the galaxy. It's a personal violation on a galactic scale. Also, an "enlightenment" that's literally forced on the world by the decisions of one person isn't a true enlightenment.

My Shep, at least, wasn't willing to make a decision like that for the whole galaxy. Only reason she was willing to trust herself as far as needed for Control was because it was a tossup between that and sacrificing allies.

Deathkeeper

2013-08-02, 09:06 AM

Mostly for me it's that it's the involuntary and completely out-of-nowhere alteration of every thinking being in the galaxy. It's a personal violation on a galactic scale. Also, an "enlightenment" that's literally forced on the world by the decisions of one person isn't a true enlightenment.

My Shep, at least, wasn't willing to make a decision like that for the whole galaxy. Only reason she was willing to trust herself as far as needed for Control was because it was a tossup between that and sacrificing allies.

Actually, in the Sythesis ending the leaves have glowy circuit lines, so it doesn't stop at thinking beings...

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 09:10 AM

Actually, in the Sythesis ending the leaves have glowy circuit lines, so it doesn't stop at thinking beings...

Non-sapient plants can deal with it, although that does answer a few questions I had about the new ecosystems.

Tengu_temp

2013-08-02, 09:12 AM

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 09:14 AM

Hungarian. Even Polish at least relates to another nearby language.

tensai_oni

2013-08-02, 09:20 AM

ME 3 Synthesis
Eh, everyone looks exactly the same as before, only with some glowing green lines over them, and they react with confusion and/or marvel to what's going on, rather than pain, so the transformation cannot be too traumatic. It's no less Big Brother-esque than the Control ending, where you literally become the whole galaxy's big brother.

We're using spoiler tags now? Okay.
It's not about how everyone just looks or how painful was the transformation. They are fundamentally different beings post-Synthesis.

That they are marvelled or surprised about the change rather than shocked either proves my mind control theory or that (more likely) the writing sucks and is unrealistic. So many people in Mass Effect are defined by their hate towards mechanical life, I cannot see them react to becoming part-mechanical with anything else than abject horror.

How much does Shep interfere into other peoples' affairs in the Control ending is at least partially dependant on your alignment. Which makes at least some sense, rather than suddenly deciding that, regardless of if you were Paragon or Renegade, you want to suddenly remake everyone into "superior" beings just because a holographic kid told you to.

Morty

2013-08-02, 09:21 AM

Andrzej Sapkowski is the Polish equivalent of Stephen King - he can't write a good ending no matter how hard he tries. His short stories are okay, but both the Witcher saga and the Narrenturm trilogy ended in very tired, stupid ways. Bonus points for Narrenturm putting the main character to prison for a few years just before the final chapter.

Well, Reynevan being thrown into jail did let Sapkowski fast-forward a couple of years, and then have people tell what happened in the interim. Otherwise, yes, I agree. Much like with King, it feels like Sapkowski just doesn't really know what to do with all those plots and sub-plots he's built up.

I really wish they would hurry up and translate the rest of his books into English. I'm this close to just learning Polish already. It's can't be that hard, right?

Unfortunately, the market for translations of Polish books into English is... small. So you might be in for a disappointment.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 09:22 AM

tl;dr ME3's endings are executed terribly, but they succeed incredibly well at their real purpose: free advertising through nerds arguing about them on the internet.

Feytalist

2013-08-02, 09:22 AM

Well. I do sort-of understand Swahili. Does that help? :smalltongue:

I had heard that Polish was ridiculously difficult though, yeah. I mostly just want to read the rest of his books.

Tengu_temp

2013-08-02, 09:25 AM

Mass Effect:
I'd chalk up the issues and the fact that they're handwaved away to bad writing. Good writers create an unambigiously good ending when they mean one, instead of creating millions of issues that are a result of not thinking things through. Which just further showcases the issues with ME3's endings.

I think we can all agree that the Destroy ending is 100% anti-robot racism though.

Well, Reynevan being thrown into jail did let Sapkowski fast-forward a couple of years, and then have people tell what happened in the interim.

Yeah, and what's the point of all that? It just horribly breaks the in-world flow of the narrative.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 09:27 AM

Eh, the pro of Destroy to me is that you don't have to trust Starkid to do it. It's the practical, immediately solve the problem in the short term, no obvious ways it can backfire choice. The con is that it requires you to sacrifice people you damn well better care about by now, though.

Deathkeeper

2013-08-02, 09:37 AM

My friends and I like to joke that the Destroy ending doesn't make much sense because it's extremely unlikely that you could have energy that only affects machines of a certain level of sophistication. Thus, Starkid lied, it doesn't affect the Geth or EDI at all, it's just the self destruct button and he doesn't want you to kill him.

MLai

2013-08-02, 09:43 AM

Can y'all stop talking about ME3 now please? I still have ME1 and ME2 in my Steam library uninstalled (BUT I'LL PLAY THEM SOMEDAY JUST YOU WAIT!).

Worst endings...

Matrix 3: The entire movie was horrible, yes. But the thing is the ending could have partially rescued it. And the better ending was so clear, and so foreshadowed, I thought the Bros was gearing up for it. But they didn't, somehow they didn't see it despite I'm sure months working on the script. And instead gave us a nonsensical "Neo is Jesus, and machines have samurai honour" bull**** ending.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 09:47 AM

Eh, I could buy the machines agreeing to a ceasefire not so much out of honor or appreciation as out of Neo's whole plot reminding them that they and humans aren't really all that different.

Plus Smith probably ****ed a lot of the infrastructure code right to hell and they probably needed time to repair that.

The self-sacrifice ending was still pretty trite and dumb though.

Dark Elf Bard

2013-08-02, 10:07 AM

legend of freakin' korra.

The Rose Dragon

2013-08-02, 10:08 AM

Considering The Legend of Korra is still three books away from ending...

Sunken Valley

2013-08-02, 10:25 AM

Now You See Me
The ending ruins both all previous tension (as the Horsemen were guaranteed as their main opposition was their friend) and our perception of events (as the audience surrogate lied to us the entire time).

Morty

2013-08-02, 10:53 AM

Yeah, and what's the point of all that? It just horribly breaks the in-world flow of the narrative.

I imagine that the point was to make the end of the story coincide with the battle of Lipany and the end of this period of the Hussite wars. I do agree it could have been handled better. The circumstances in which Reynevan was thrown into jail in the first place seemed rather contrived.

Considering The Legend of Korra is still three books away from ending...

The ending to book one was pretty damn awful, though.

Tengu_temp

2013-08-02, 11:39 AM

I imagine that the point was to make the end of the story coincide with the battle of Lipany and the end of this period of the Hussite wars. I do agree it could have been handled better. The circumstances in which Reynevan was thrown into jail in the first place seemed rather contrived.

Well, there are many ways he could've done it better - he could've made more time flow naturally over the course of the books, or decide to start them later, or end them earlier, or do one of many other things. "But I want it to end then the war ends!" is a bad excuse for a crap ending.

Arkhosia

2013-08-02, 12:13 PM

Just to throw my two cents in there for ME 3:
I am sort of surprised that, when the indoctrination theory came out, they didn't just say "uhh... Yeah. That's what we were thinking." Then just keeping the awful ending. It didn't mess with the whole artistic vision thing that much.
Agreed with korra's ending

CowardlyPaladin

2013-08-02, 12:17 PM

The end to Sword of Truth series.
Firstly the series is terrible. While the first few books are enjoyable the series drags it's feet around & stars John Galt wannabe as the wizard warrior who can do no wrong. But the whole ending is terrible & pulled right out of Gookinds ass.

A though do not read.

Another ending that was bad was Eragon. Although the series was weak & generic it had some good parts. The ending was terrible.

While I agree with you on both points, what I am looking for is bad endings for good works, not bad endings for things that were bad anyways.

Also guys, can you please offer an alternative ending which you feel would have been better? For example, with Mass Effect 3,

Honestly, I wish that their wasn't optional endings, I wish that no matter what you did, all of humanity got wiped out by the Reapers, but you were able to warn the next cycle. It ties in to the inevitibily theme Mass Effect had going for it, but also really helps provide a moral defeat of the Reapers. What makes the Reapers terrifying is that they wipe out history, they literally render entire civilizations mute with nothing to remember them by. By preserving the information from out culture, we are able to at least pass things on to the next civilization.

Eldan

2013-08-02, 12:23 PM

Hungarian. Even Polish at least relates to another nearby language.

Hungarian relates to Finnish and Basque.

And again, I think we can all agree that all three endings of ME3 were horribly written. Just theoretically, though, I'm pro-Synthesis.

The Rose Dragon

2013-08-02, 12:28 PM

We can't all agree to that, no.

Incidentally, I don't think the ending of Air was so terrible compared to the rest of the season, which as a whole suffered from compressing a 22-episode story arc into 11 episodes without getting rid of the filler parts. If the whole book was handled well, the ending could have come off much better.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 12:35 PM

While I agree with you on both points, what I am looking for is bad endings for good works, not bad endings for things that were bad anyways.

Also guys, can you please offer an alternative ending which you feel would have been better? For example, with Mass Effect 3,

Honestly, I wish that their wasn't optional endings, I wish that no matter what you did, all of humanity got wiped out by the Reapers, but you were able to warn the next cycle. It ties in to the inevitibily theme Mass Effect had going for it, but also really helps provide a moral defeat of the Reapers. What makes the Reapers terrifying is that they wipe out history, they literally render entire civilizations mute with nothing to remember them by. By preserving the information from out culture, we are able to at least pass things on to the next civilization.

Well, there's always Refusal then, but that is an option rather than the definite.

I like Tengu's idea that he copied from Fri. Just cut to black when Shep and Anderson are looking down at Earth. Just as infuriating, but a lot more appropriate.

As for Nadesico, actually wrapping up the war on-camera would have been nice, as would a lack of random-ass grimderp.

Deathkeeper

2013-08-02, 12:36 PM

Hungarian relates to Finnish and Basque.

And again, I think we can all agree that all three endings of ME3 were horribly written. Just theoretically, though, I'm pro-Synthesis.

Actually, my biggest problem was simply how it was handled. First, "artistic vision" is bull because there were leaked drafts of the script dated to have been scrapped just a few months before the release, so clearly it wasn't planned in advance, and moreover there is testimony that a large portion of the writing team were left completely in the dark in terms of the ending. Moreover, during one of their own videos advertising for the EC the producer said "well, some people didn't like how it was presented, some just thought they wanted more closure to the series, and SOME people asked us to write a new ending completely." The 'some' being toned as if those people were complete nimrods, even though their own site's poll said that the new ending crowd was over 60% of the fanbase.

warty goblin

2013-08-02, 12:54 PM

Actually, my biggest problem was simply how it was handled. First, "artistic vision" is bull because there were leaked drafts of the script dated to have been scrapped just a few months before the release, so clearly it wasn't planned in advance, and moreover there is testimony that a large portion of the writing team were left completely in the dark in terms of the ending.

I was unaware artistic vision required adherence longstanding plans and an entire team. How silly of me.

Moreover, during one of their own videos advertising for the EC the producer said "well, some people didn't like how it was presented, some just thought they wanted more closure to the series, and SOME people asked us to write a new ending completely." The 'some' being toned as if those people were complete nimrods, even though their own site's poll said that the new ending crowd was over 60% of the fanbase.
I work with data. And data gathered from a voluntary website poll with no selection method at work is basically devoid of meaning.

And sixty percent of the population being nimrods is hardly implausible.

Anyway, what I mostly find confusing about Mass Effect 3's ending is why anybody thought it was going to be any good in the first place. It's a science fiction story about cycles of existence, which is not a plotline known for sticking the dismount.

Deathkeeper

2013-08-02, 12:59 PM

It requires it when they write in their response memos "this was something the team envisioned." Saying The Team requires the entire team to have participated.
And while it's entirely true that the poll's exact number was meaningless, it should have been clear that the group was sizable, not twenty people whining, and certainly not worth lashing out at.

The Rose Dragon

2013-08-02, 01:01 PM

Anyway, what I mostly find confusing about Mass Effect 3's ending is why anybody thought it was going to be any good in the first place. It's a science fiction story about cycles of existence, which is not a plotline known for sticking the dismount.

It's not what it's about, but how it's about it.

warty goblin

2013-08-02, 01:10 PM

It requires it when they write in their response memos "this was something the team envisioned." Saying The Team requires the entire team to have participated.

Individuals do stuff in a team, it's still a team project. It's rather why people work in teams, so the labor can be subdivided. I've 90% of entire projects, and still had it be a team credit.

And while it's entirely true that the poll's exact number was meaningless, it should have been clear that the group was sizable, not twenty people whining, and certainly not worth lashing out at.

The exact number being meaningless is not what I meant. The entire thing is meaningless. Because the selection process for response is completely opaque, a convenience sample carries no accessible information about any population wider than its respondents. Such data does not give any basis for sound inference of any sort.

And the inflection of one word is lashing out? Methinks the fans doth protest too much.

Deathkeeper

2013-08-02, 01:19 PM

Perhaps I'm just not expressing myself properly. The example given was not the only example. Personally I thought the fanbase was completely being a bunch of whiny losers over the whole thing. Yes, the ending was poorly written, big whoop, half my favorite book series won't get endings because the authors I like keep dying.
They essentially did this multiple times is why I got miffed. From my interpretation of their statements there were a LOT of screw you statements very early on. When people carried on for months after the EC then I can believe that they were just fed up, but I just think it's not right to insult your fanbase even if a solid chunk is being immature, because some share the opinion but are much more polite about it.
And once again, a small number can do work and give group credit. When the group wants to do something and a small number says no and locks themselves in a room and publishes it without giving it to the rest of the group to review, you can't say it was a group effort. But since I can't prove that's what happened I won't press it, since for obvious reasons they can't outright say that's what happened.

Tavar

2013-08-02, 01:46 PM

Well, there's always Refusal then, but that is an option rather than the definite.

I like Tengu's idea that he copied from Fri. Just cut to black when Shep and Anderson are looking down at Earth. Just as infuriating, but a lot more appropriate.
My preferred ending would have been the following(this would require a different ME2&3, but I don't mind that due to sections of 3 being ridiculously stupid, and 2 being narrative dead weight):

The current Galaxy as we know it dies, but in doing so it either destroys the Reaper threat/renders it impotent.

This is because the Reaper Cycle is, actually, surprisingly fragile. After a complete Reaping they get 1 Soverign class, which are the big threats, and couple dozen destroyers. So, starting from ME1, this cycle is essentially a wash in terms of the Reapers power.

So with every sovereign class destroyed, the cycle is weakened to a large degree. The problem is that it doesn't matter for the current ME galaxy: they're toast, but by playing their cards right they are able to do enough damage to the reapers that they cannot continue the cycle.

For me, this also plays into the Shepard/Saren dynamic of the first game. Saren was all about the survival of the species, no matter the cost(and while unknown to him, this is exemplified by the Reapers themselves). Shepard takes the view that such an act is wrong, and that it cannot be condoned, and this would play out in the conclusion.

Of course, the main issue with this is that ME2 doesn't really fit in the arc in any way, not as a full game at least. But it doesn't really fit as a full game in the normal arc, so you could leave it without too much trouble.

McStabbington

2013-08-02, 02:07 PM

I personally would love to have a cut of "Unbreakable" that snips the last 20 seconds off the film. That's all that needs to be cut.

BlackDragonKing

2013-08-02, 04:36 PM

I've gotta admit, one of the things I found most disappointing about the ME3 ending is that those endings don't take into account what kind of person Shep was as long as you did your homework and got the resources together. With adequate preparation, Jesus H. Shepard, calm and omnibenevolent savior of all things that live who has never made a decision that resulted in needless lost of life, will be presented with the EXACT same choice with precisely the same parameters as Shepard-Who-Is-Called-Morgoth, backstabbing sociopathic monster who kills for fun and whose continued survival beyond the reaper threat would be a bad ending for any galaxy, the absolute LAST person that should decide the fate of all life.

Like, crap, I was expecting some branches so that Renegade and Paragon could not possibly end up in the same place. With having morality choices, I was expecting something like Kaidan and the others going Ides of March on Renegade Shep's ass if they go too far at the end of it or a solution ONLY the Paragon can achieve. It felt...wrong that the selfish ******* who has never done right by the people of the galaxy can end up the same way as the halfway-messiah character.

I also thought the most emotionally satisfying ending would have been if Shepard and the galaxy died fighting the reapers but damaging the cycle too severely for the reapers to survive the next Harvest War. Refuse worked towards that, but then creative came out and said "no, the next cycle did the same thing and picked a color. Everyone died for no reason in your cycle." There's no way out of the star-kid's deal, no matter what you chose or how you played, and that seems wrong in a series based so heavily on what choices you made.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 05:16 PM

I've gotta admit, one of the things I found most disappointing about the ME3 ending is that those endings don't take into account what kind of person Shep was as long as you did your homework and got the resources together. With adequate preparation, Jesus H. Shepard, calm and omnibenevolent savior of all things that live who has never made a decision that resulted in needless lost of life, will be presented with the EXACT same choice with precisely the same parameters as Shepard-Who-Is-Called-Morgoth, backstabbing sociopathic monster who kills for fun and whose continued survival beyond the reaper threat would be a bad ending for any galaxy, the absolute LAST person that should decide the fate of all life.

Like, crap, I was expecting some branches so that Renegade and Paragon could not possibly end up in the same place. With having morality choices, I was expecting something like Kaidan and the others going Ides of March on Renegade Shep's ass if they go too far at the end of it or a solution ONLY the Paragon can achieve. It felt...wrong that the selfish ******* who has never done right by the people of the galaxy can end up the same way as the halfway-messiah character.

I think this all stems from the fact that Bioware is completely incapable of differentiating "anti-hero" and "puppy-kicking evil overlord" - or at least, of not giving you a slew of puppy-kicking evil overlord options that give you anti-hero points. This leads to bizarre differences between authorial intent, audience expectation, and the text of a "Renegade Shepard" run.

That said, Shepard gets to decide the fate of the galaxy pretty much because he or she has the luck and willpower to get to the point where he or she can. The Catalyst out and out states that it's giving you these choices because you're the one who made it there to make them.

Refuse worked towards that, but then creative came out and said "no, the next cycle did the same thing and picked a color. Everyone died for no reason in your cycle." There's no way out of the star-kid's deal, no matter what you chose or how you played, and that seems wrong in a series based so heavily on what choices you made.

I don't subscribe to Death of the Author as a general policy, but I think in a case like this that if the author didn't put it in the text, it doesn't count unless the audience wants it to. Mostly because that's ****ing stupid and means they put in Refusal purely out of spite.

BlackDragonKing

2013-08-02, 06:09 PM

I think this all stems from the fact that Bioware is completely incapable of differentiating "anti-hero" and "puppy-kicking evil overlord" - or at least, of not giving you a slew of puppy-kicking evil overlord options that give you anti-hero points. This leads to bizarre differences between authorial intent, audience expectation, and the text of a "Renegade Shepard" run.

I noticed this big-time. Attempting to be renegade often went awry for me because I simply didn't believe that the abrasive, racist, and often just incredibly petty dialogue options presented fit a character of Shep's reputation...of course, even when I went for a way more nuanced Shepard who talked rough and intimidated people but always did the right thing and looked after his crew with genuine fondness, I got penalized for mixing options and some characters like Samara had their alignment-based commentary suggest Shep was being evil as opposed to hot-blooded. I like Bioware's games, but I'd like more ambiguity in characterization for Mass Effect 4.

I don't subscribe to Death of the Author as a general policy, but I think in a case like this that if the author didn't put it in the text, it doesn't count unless the audience wants it to. Mostly because that's ****ing stupid and means they put in Refusal purely out of spite.

That was the impression I got. I also just don't see the Yahg running this campaign the way the humans did and negotiating with the Star Child. To be honest, if you pick Refuse, I'd honestly expect the Yahg to take over the universe in a fairly short order and then launch a pre-emptive strike on the Reapers in Dark Space. That's the impression I got of them from the Shadow Broker.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 06:43 PM

CowardlyPaladin

2013-08-02, 07:03 PM

On the other hand, the yahg could have overly-aggressived themselves into a footnote of history like the krogan did. Hard to tell how the next cycle would go, really.

(And no I haven't done Refusal to look and see if it has a slideshow).

Also, Bioware just needs to stop putting in alignment meters. Hell, I'm this close to saying they should stop with the damn moral dilemmas in the first place. Who's with me?

I actually want more expansive AL systems in the games, I always love morality meters.

Actually Avatar the Last Airbender had a pretty awful ending, I think boiling rock part 2 is the exact moment when it fell apart.

The show kinda set itself up by making Azula a far more interesting and compelling villain than her two dimensional dad, and she had a massively flanderized and hamhanded break down (complete with one of the most epic misunderstanding of The prince since the Alice and wonderland movie, there wasn't much of a sense of threat. Honestly, they either should have made Ozai more interesting (fraknly making him more like his grandfather would have been interesting, or Tywin lannister, cold but understandable other than a sociopath) and Azula being defeated after a massive mental break down felt like they knew the character was overpowered and wanted to break her down. They just lost sight of one of my favorite villains of all time, notice how in the last few fights she didn't even quip in the fights (also why was she even at boiling rock?) What I would have done is have her be defeated by A) her terrible social skills that aren't crazy, just her plain insecurity/literalism in social situations B) Bloodbending, for a hyper control freak like her that would be enough to spark an emotional break down on its own, making it less forced. Other than that, I really just wish that they had inserted "The Promise" cartoon into the cannon, as it basically sums up all of the ethical issues the extremely simplistic ending of the show proper ignored. The other problem is that Ozai never really felt like a threat, the only times we had seen him bend was against a 13 year old boy who wasn't fighting back, and an attack on the same kid which back fired and got him defeated. Azula is dangerous, but Ozai never really established why he is suppose to be so scary, is he a prodigy too? Is he decended from another Avatar? Does he have some sort of secret Technique? Why is this guy so scary when most of his power comes from his political position? Also why needlessly antagonize his daughter, she is his heir? If he was making himself immortal or something then that might make sense, but he is going to die and Azula will suceed him, considering that she has been nothing if not loyal why discard her? Is it because she screwed up in caughting the Avatar? Then have him say so, or imlpy that he doesn't trust her because she lied to him. Also, the episode the beach in some of the flashbacks show Ozai being really loving to his kids, and his kids being loving to each other, why is none of that followed up upon. Ozai is a bit like Joffrey from Song of ice and Fire but actually powerful, not really a character just an empty void of evil that morphs to kick the dog in waht ever scene he is in. Azula, Long Feng, Zuko and all of the other villains have consistant personalities and motives. Also seriously, why did Tai Li betray Azula, Mai i totally understand that makes sense, but Tai Li is an azula fangirl, she seems to even have a crush on her. The whole thing just felt rushed and confused, without much of a resolution .

Calemyr

2013-08-02, 07:04 PM

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 07:10 PM

CowardlyPaladin

2013-08-02, 07:30 PM

I agree the ending was bad and that Bioware handled the fan reaction so poorly I'm almost certain it had to be intentional. All I'm going to do here is point out that the Star Wars Christmas Special happened before The Empire Strikes Back even came out and let you think about your franchise-killing analogy for a minute.

EDIT: And Avatar has just been getting progressively worse ever since the creators started trying to pander directly to their periphery demographic without actually understanding them. That explains about half the problems with season 3 and every single one of the problems with LoK.

I haven't seen LoK yet and could you expand on what problems you saw. I will say the only think I did like about the Avatar ending was the killing question, I thought that fit well with the theme, it would have worked better if Ozai had you know...a personality, but still I liked his struggle.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 07:36 PM

I haven't seen LoK yet and could you expand on what problems you saw. I will say the only think I did like about the Avatar ending was the killing question, I thought that fit well with the theme, it would have worked better if Ozai had you know...a personality, but still I liked his struggle.

The problem with the killing bit is actually that it had never been brought up before (except tangentially with Aang's angsting over the Koizilla incident), despite the large number of people that would have logically died in combat with Team Avatar if not for the fact that it's a kids' show and it was therefore all offscreen. It made it feel like the only enemy whose life Aang actually gave a crap about was Ozai, of all freaking people.

Anyway, LoK. Look, Avatar creator guys (Bryan and Mike, I think?) I appreciate that you appreciate how into shipping your fans get, but the fact of the matter is that shipping is fun because it requires reading subtext and using your imagination. Letting the goddamn romance "subplot" take over most of the second half of your 13 episode series when everyone in it acts like an unlikeable jerk for the sake of melodrama does not require imagination, is not fun, and completely removes any time for following through on all those character themes you spent five freaking episodes setting up.

Also they somehow managed to make Energybending even more of a copout than it already was in TLA, what the hell.

CowardlyPaladin

2013-08-02, 07:37 PM

As I recall, Refusal doesn't have a slideshow, just little boy blue turning red and giving a "So be it" in Harbinger's voice. The Shep watches helplessly out the window as the battle rages, one of Liara's time capsules goes off, and then a pair of women (Asari?) talk about Shepard as the hero of the last cycle, who gave them the tools to save their own.

A nice, short, sweet middle finger to anyone who didn't agree with them and all the youtube videos of people unloading ammo into the starkid for great lengths of time rather than give him an answer.

Bioware's response to the whole thing was horrible. Beyond horrible. They acted smug, dismissed anyone who disagreed with them as "not understanding it", and only opened their mouths to make the situation worse. Their DLCs helped a little - if Leviathan had been in the main game, I would have been fine with the ending - still sucked, but there's a difference between a bad ending and a franchise killing ending. ME3's ending is the Ewok Christmas Special of video game endings.

I still play the game by getting to the final part, and just do the party from the Citadel DLC as the ending for the game. "We came, we saw, we won (don't remember how - it was a blur), we got rip snorting drunk at the after-party."

Actually I don't think its a middle finger for a few reasons

1) The ending was more EA's fault than Biowares, the fact that Bioware never really came out and tried to justify their ending implies to me that they kinda agreeded with fans, they just didn't want to deal with the public humilation. Remember, EA rushed them ALOT near the end.

2) The fact that the kid's voice is in the voice of a Reaper implies that we are suppose to be happy that the htree endings were rejected, if it was just a middle finger to us, then it would be more effective for the kid's voice to say it, by making it the voice of the first reaper, then it implies that their is something sinister to the whole premise

3) I kinda think the refusal ending is the only one that actually had a good set up. It was established that there is no way in hell the Reapers could lose and the Reapers won, but this time unlike every other cycle the war was able to distract them long enough to send a message, and so while the cycle continunes, not for long.

Calemyr

2013-08-02, 08:04 PM

1) The ending was more EA's fault than Biowares, the fact that Bioware never really came out and tried to justify their ending implies to me that they kinda agreeded with fans, they just didn't want to deal with the public humilation. Remember, EA rushed them ALOT near the end.

You're not wrong. But their handling of it was like throwing water on a grease fire. They did everything in just the right way to make things worse.

2) The fact that the kid's voice is in the voice of a Reaper implies that we are suppose to be happy that the htree endings were rejected, if it was just a middle finger to us, then it would be more effective for the kid's voice to say it, by making it the voice of the first reaper, then it implies that their is something sinister to the whole premise

I didn't mean to suggest Harbinger Starkid was the bad thing. No. It was the "You mean you'd rather let it ride? Okay. You lose. Seriously, it won't even be a close match, whatever made you think you could possibly win? These numbers you've been watching the whole game? HA! What, you think that's okay because it means you did so much damage the next cycle will triumph? Ha! No, because they were smart enough to pick a color. You killed everyone and accomplished nothing, you failure." That's the big glowing middle finger that started in the game and then extended through the internet.

3) I kinda think the refusal ending is the only one that actually had a good set up. It was established that there is no way in hell the Reapers could lose and the Reapers won, but this time unlike every other cycle the war was able to distract them long enough to send a message, and so while the cycle continunes, not for long.

No argument here. Self determination and the refusal to accept the fate handed to you are kind of big themes in the series. It could have been so satisfying. Hell, it almost was as it is, until Bioware opened its mouth to take away the one redeeming aspect from it.

CowardlyPaladin

2013-08-02, 08:13 PM

See, i mostly agree with you, except I don't see how the refusal ending is a middle finger, because in it we realize that the AI is explicitly evil, he is a reaper tool and cannot be trusted. We are right in taking this route. Sure, we lose against the Reapers, but we do more damage to them than any other cycle in the history of the Milky Way, and preserve our knowledge, that is pretty good in my view.

CowardlyPaladin

2013-08-02, 08:16 PM

Tyndmyr

2013-08-02, 08:18 PM

I think I am in the minority, but the ending to the Re-imagined Battlestar Galactica doesn't work for me.

Having a prominent character Karasimply disappear at the end does not work.Despite the fact that she was already dead, yet still managed to be the savior of mankind as an "angel." Sorry, but this religious allegory doesn't work for me.

You are not in the minority here, the end of BSG was pretty widely panned as a horribly unsatisfying end to a very good series.

Lotta failing to explain, and it sort of leaves humanity in a place where it's straight up doomed, yet it expects you to accept it as a happy ending.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 08:34 PM

also another problem with the Avatar ending, If azula can earlier use fire bending without her hands to escape from an earth bending prison during the day of black sun, why can't she break her chains and escape?

I don't remember that part EDIT: now I do, but during the ending I'm pretty sure she just lost any semblance of her remaining coherent thought when she lost to a Waterbending peasant and Zuko. Frankly I was half expecting her to electrocute herself in her freaking out before I remembered it was a kids' show.

And then Amon A Boat happened...

Tavar

2013-08-02, 08:47 PM

CowardlyPaladin

2013-08-02, 09:40 PM

Also, there's a difference between metal and earth. I mean, from what I remember, she used the concussive force to blow the earth away. Metal would require more concussive force. Or fire, but using fire hot enough to melt the metal could have it's own problems(molten metal....).

Ok maybe, they might burn themselves in the process your right, has anybody escaped from metal chains with fire bending before? That might now actually be a plot hole fair enough. Still, everything else with azula was pretty terrible and horribly managed.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-02, 09:45 PM

CowardlyPaladin

2013-08-02, 09:59 PM

Eh, as far as purely villainous character arcs go, she had a decent one. As powerful as she was, intimidation and fear were her main tools, and they were bound to stop working eventually. The subsequent unhinging was kind of abrupt, but it made sense with her established perfectionism and pride getting the better of her.

Ozai was a dull endboss, though, I agree. He could have used a few more pre-finale appearances doing something other than scenery-chewing evil for evil's sake, and maybe a personality trait other than sociopathy and egomania.

And The Beach was a terrible episode.

I mostly disagree (except on Ozai) Azula's main issue wasn't really intimidation and fear, it was manipulation and confidence. What made Azula dangerous was that she was fearless, powerful, and cunning, with a good ability (as seen in the earth kingdom) to exploit people's weaknesses, like all good bullies she could detect people's weak spots very well. What here weakness is when she is in a none competative setting, where dominination is not the end goal, and here she fails miserably, as she is very insecure, self concious, and kinda fake. I think the Beach had ALOT of problems, and i have a really hard time watching it, but I love the scenes where Azula tries desperately to do well in a social setting and fails miserably, because she is too literal, too confident, to self absorbed and extremely stiff. The key to defeating her should be something alone those lines, putting her into a situation where her brute force and emotional exploitation can't solve the problem. Maybe while hunting for the Avatar she ran into Zuko and instead of fighting zuko somehow was able to turn her taunts back at her, make her lose her focus and screw up her lightining powers. She does kinda care about him, as shown in the Beach and in Zuko alone (in a weird way), but she doesn't really understand how to deal with loving emotions. Or, have her get blood bended by Katara, she'd have no defense and losing control of herself on such a level would most likely cause an emotional break down on its own considering she is such a control freak. Maybe have Mai and Tai li betray her not in combat, but in a conversation, have them try to talk her out of killing the avatar and in doing do cause her to be emotionally confused. We've seen how much firebenders rely upon a single emotion to be funcutional, if Azula had doubt she might get sick or cease to fire bend like Zuko did. Honestly, there were ALOT of potential plot threads dropped to make her fail miserably and get defeated, choosing her mommy issues was one of the least interesting ones, and honestly felt like them trying to power her down so that Katara and Zuko simply had a chance. Even when it comes to her mommy issues, they made it about her parania rather than the fact that she felt like a monster. It was awkward and rushed, and considering she was the only interesting villain left that that point as all of the others had been disposed of, really just felt disappointing.

I thought the best moments of the beach were some of the best in the entire series and the worst moments........unwatchable. The Breakfast club conversation at the end was very good, as were all of the character's specific interactions, Li and Azula in particulare, but then we had the "ember island will rough out your edges" parts and the weird comedy and it just got ehhhh

Edit

Just started legend of Korra today, I love the music and the plot thus far, but the main character isn't really established very well and the technology levels is a bit weird and annoying, not to mention the show is kinda humorless. I love the setting.

Logic

2013-08-02, 11:18 PM

You are not in the minority here, the end of BSG was pretty widely panned as a horribly unsatisfying end to a very good series.

Lotta failing to explain, and it sort of leaves humanity in a place where it's straight up doomed, yet it expects you to accept it as a happy ending.

I said I thought I was in the minority because in my circle of friends, I was the only one that really hated most of the ending. Only one other person I know was what they termed "mildly dissatisfied" with the ending.

Glad to know the INTERNET agrees with me.

Alabenson

2013-08-02, 11:40 PM

The ending of Negima.

AAAARGH THE RAGE!!!

I STILL love thah manga. The buildup, the pgs...Negi, Fate.

But that craptastic "UOPS! NO MORE mage of the beginning, and now Nagi is here because it must be a good ending" drove me nuts. I didn't cared about not revealing "who will be Negi's girl"... that is cool: everyone can tag him with who like (except Asuna. Because the author decided to make clear that wasn't her, his love interest. Even if was on top with Evangeline in my book).

If that was how they would have treated the Mage of the Life-maker, it would have been better to simply NOT awake him... and let him dead by Nagi's hand.

Honestly, no matter how bad the ending to the manga was, the ending to the anime had to have been worse. I get that they were trying to wrap up the series abruptly while the manga was just getting started, but to have the last three episodes go in a completely random and for the most part fairly depressing direction until the bizarre ass-pull at the very end was not the way to end it.

Another ending I hated was the ending to No Country for Old Men. It just kept meandering on after everything in the third Act was wrapped up for no apparent reason. What they should have done was simply cut to the credits immediately after Javier Bardem's character was hit by the car, leaving it ambiguous as to whether he was all right, which would have nicely with the character's penchant for leaving whether or not he kills people up to chance.

HamHam

2013-08-03, 12:34 AM

BSG has already been mentioned. Although I have salvaged that ending for myself by coming up with an alternative interpretation that I don't think is intended and yet works so well:

It was all a plan by God to kill off all the humans and cylons and bring the hybrid child to a new Earth where she could start a new race for iteration five hundred whatever. And it worked.

The only problem I have with the ATLA ending is that energy bending is kind of a cop out.

Strangely enough I got mad at the ending of Romeo x Juliet even though you know... should probably have seen it coming. But come on, if you're gonna make it more up beat action romance give it an appropriate ending. Also don't make up a bunch of magic bs that was barely hinted at before hand.

Forum Explorer

2013-08-03, 01:03 AM

Wait, there is a significant number of people who don't like the ending of Gurren Lagann? It was very, very good IMO.

My only problem with it was the justification they used for Nina's death. And how clean her death was (dissolving into bubbles?).

I admit, I kind of had to ignore GodShep's tone in the Control ending to actually enjoy it, although I think that's because they wanted me to pick Synthesis.

Screw you, Bioware, Synthesis is insanely creepy.

Eh, the pro of Destroy to me is that you don't have to trust Starkid to do it. It's the practical, immediately solve the problem in the short term, no obvious ways it can backfire choice. The con is that it requires you to sacrifice people you damn well better care about by now, though.

I'm one of the few people who actually liked the ending to Mass Effect 3. Of course when I went in I immediately thought the kid was lying and went with Destroy. I half expected Destroy to blow up in my face as it was and the Reapers to win anyways. Oh and since the ending didn't mention the Geth I'll take that as proof that I was right. :smallwink:

My problem with the ending was Joker running away. Not because of some loyalty crap, but because it's a galaxy wide attack and Joker knows it. His only chance is the faint hope that it only targets Reapers.

Honestly I would have been satisfied if the Destroy wiped out all technology above say medieval tech, thus undoing a large portion of what we did, exterminating both the Quarians and the Geth, as well as countless individuals dependent on technology at the time. And all of that would be worth it because the Cycle would finally be at an end.

You're not wrong. But their handling of it was like throwing water on a grease fire. They did everything in just the right way to make things worse.

I didn't mean to suggest Harbinger Starkid was the bad thing. No. It was the "You mean you'd rather let it ride? Okay. You lose. Seriously, it won't even be a close match, whatever made you think you could possibly win? These numbers you've been watching the whole game? HA! What, you think that's okay because it means you did so much damage the next cycle will triumph? Ha! No, because they were smart enough to pick a color. You killed everyone and accomplished nothing, you failure." That's the big glowing middle finger that started in the game and then extended through the internet.

No argument here. Self determination and the refusal to accept the fate handed to you are kind of big themes in the series. It could have been so satisfying. Hell, it almost was as it is, until Bioware opened its mouth to take away the one redeeming aspect from it.

I recommend my general policy of not listening to anything the creators have to say about their work. Best to avoid fan opinions as well til you have formed your own. That way you can't be infuriated by the idiocy of others.

Well it seemed pretty clear in that final fight that the good guys were taking massive losses and making little ground. The final battle was being lost and while the Reapers took casualties, something of a first as is, they were no where close to being put below their original numbers let alone below effective continuation strength. I mean the game was pounding into ours (or at least my) heads that the Crucible was our only hope.

Anyways on to other stories;

The Golden Compass series (His Dark Materials if you want the actual series name) ended on the most moronic anti climax ever. It really reads as if the author just wanted it to end. For one the Amber Spyglass sub-plot is pretty pointless and just sort of ends. Secondly the whole Eve thing doesn't really come to an ending either. Thirdly the portals. Okay all of them had to be closed (except the one from the Underworld) cause the dust was leaking out.

But now the dead were being turned back into dust so now we're actually getting more then before. So you could easily afford to have one more portal open cause it was implied that there were hundreds before. So two should be no problem. So F-off stupid random forced sad ending. And Amber Spyglass crap which didn't come to anything anyways. (I remember how it was solved, the two main characters fell in love (not aware of the problem) admitted it to each other, and thus the problem was solved).

I don't even know how to fix that crap! Or rather it takes either a lot more writing (actually using the Amber Spyglass plot) or just cutting the whole sub-plot out alltogether. Have it end on the two main characters confessing their feelings, learning that the Subtle Knife created those monster things, and the two pledging to travel and kill all the monsters and close most of the portals.

Tavar

2013-08-03, 01:15 AM

Forum Explorer

2013-08-03, 01:24 AM

Umm...where does it say that the have more dust than before? I believe it only stated that, with the current flow of dust(after the ghost portal was formed), they still could only really afford one portal open(which was the one for the ghosts).

They reversed the dust flow problem, and were now recycling the old dust at almost 100% efficiency (minus whatever it took for the portal for the dead) So they should be having more dust then what they were at before (unless there's a flaw in my logic somewhere)

I also seem to remember them saying that the portals only let a very small amount of dust to disappear. Only there was so many portals this was a problem.

Tavar

2013-08-03, 01:27 AM

They reversed the dust flow problem, and were now recycling the old dust at almost 100% efficiency (minus whatever it took for the portal for the dead) So they should be having more dust then what they were at before (unless there's a flaw in my logic somewhere)
There's the flaw in your logic.

Forum Explorer

2013-08-03, 01:45 AM

There's the flaw in your logic.

Except other then location that portal was completely ordinary. They had hundreds (or even thousands) of portals before. They reduced that to one. So with Dust loss reduced to such a small amount they should have more Dust then before.

Callos_DeTerran

2013-08-03, 01:50 AM

And again, I think we can all agree that all three endings of ME3 were horribly written. Just theoretically, though, I'm pro-Synthesis.

We do not all agree. ME3's ending was great for me, the EC only improved it and I sadly haven't even gotten a chance to play Citadel or Levithan yet and I really really want to.

Tavar

2013-08-03, 02:10 AM

Except other then location that portal was completely ordinary. They had hundreds (or even thousands) of portals before. They reduced that to one. So with Dust loss reduced to such a small amount they should have more Dust then before.
More than before=/=more than enough.

Forum Explorer

2013-08-03, 02:43 AM

More than before=/=more than enough.

Except there was enough before. After all the Dust was responsible for intelligent life (or something like that) and there seemed to be plenty of that around.

Mx.Silver

2013-08-03, 07:16 AM

Tom Holt has always been really bad at his endings, from what I've seen (with the possible exception of the Portable Door, which was setting upo for a sequel anyway). Out of Time and Falling Sideways stand out here, the first because it adds an entire second ending for no discernible reason which does nothing but undermine the perfectly functional first one. Falling Sideways is more a case of just massive contrivance and deus ex machina so as to solve problems for the characters that didn't need to be solved.

In terms of Anime, one of the worst endings I've seen is for the (not terribly well-known) Mushi-Uta. I suspect the reason for this may have been due to cancellation, because most of the series looks a lot like it was written with a 24+ episode series in mind, rather than it's actual runtime of 12. Characters are introduced slowly, supporting cast members frequently getting an episode to themselves to flesh them out, assuming they don't get their own arcs. Both main sides of the central conflict are portrayed as having a point, and the actual nature of the series' premise looks to be heading in an interesting direction.
Then the last three episodes happen. Characters start getting killed-off before the logical point, plot threads are dropped and whoops, looks side one side were just super-evil all along anyway. And even with that it still isn't even conclusive.
It's a real shame, particularly since it started very well. The opening episode basically accomplishes everything that, from a technical standpoint, an opening episode needs to do and does it well.

Confessions. Now, I will fully concede that this film may be trying to make a point about the Japanese criminal system that I, a British person, don't appreciate. If it isn't though, then it's a bit of a mess simply because by the last act of the film there aren't any sympathetic viewpoint characters left. This is largely thanks to the sheer amount of collateral damage inflicted as a result of the original confessor's actions. The upshot of which being that it's very difficult to actually care about what's going on during the film's climax.

More minor example: Oldboy. It's not that the ending is terrible itself, thematically it's actually reasonably strong. The problem is that the plan that the plot has been revolving depends on an at least one massively (un)fortunate contrivance (the fact that it draws attention to that doesn't help) and that even aside from that it's stupid enough that one has to wonder why so many people went along with it, including the woman whose skillset was vital to getting the plan to work at all (because she clearly has no loyalty to said plan, as evidenced by the final scene). Yeah I know, suspension of disbelief is subjective but in this case it broke mine and rather spoiled what was otherwise a pretty good film.

And finally, Deus Ex. Yes, the original. The phenomena of games having 3 terrible options for you ending at the end of a game? This is the game that first embodied that. As to why the endings don't work it isn't just because they're all obviously very bad options (which they are) suggested by varies supporting characters none of whom have ever come across as particularly trustworthy (which is also the case) but also because they're symptomatic of a deeper flaw in the game's writing. Simply put, the writers weren't able to marry the themes they wanted the game to be about with what the actual story was about. For all the speeches about the nature of human society and its relationship with technology, the game's actual plot really just consists of two elements: find-out that the moustache twirling megalomaniac Bob Page is trying to take over the world and then stop stop the aforementioned two-dimensional villain from taking over the world. Those themes very rarely have any in-game weight to them, and what little there is is somewhat undercut by how silly the setting actually is (which is what happens when you base your setting on the concept that 90% of all ridiculous conspiracy theories are true).

Gnoman

2013-08-03, 12:35 PM

I was pretty displeased with the ending to the Wheel of Time series, primarily the abruptness of it.

The series ends immediately after "Rand's" funeral while they are still cleaning up after Tarmon Gaidon. Half (or more) of the leaders of the nations who sided with the Light are dead on the field, the Aes Sedai are a shadow of their former numbers, and the primary stabilizing influence has been destroyed. Meanwhile, Taim's betrayal turned a large percentage of the Asha'man into Dreadlords (making learning to trust male channelers even more difficult than the now-vanished taint already had), machinations by the Forsaken caused Shara to side with the Dark One in the Last Battle, which was essentially a declaration of war against the rest of the world. There's no way to know if the Peace of the Dragon will hold, or for how long. All this would have been forgivable (since there will be unresolved threads unless they actually destroy the Pattern), except that a large portion of the book was given to possible weavings of the next age, and we don't even get a hint of what that age will look like, except that the three worst endings (Dark One triumphant, Dark One Dead, Light Dead) are closed off. We don't even know if the Aeil's vision will be averted, despite the attempts to change the details.

Tavar

2013-08-03, 08:00 PM

Except there was enough before. After all the Dust was responsible for intelligent life (or something like that) and there seemed to be plenty of that around.

Um...the whole plot with the Teacher person was that there wasn't enough dust. Yes, that's at least partially due to the portals, but at the end they directly state that, in the current situation, they have enough dust for one portal to remain open. So, why are you starting from the assumption that they had enough dust before hand?

Forum Explorer

2013-08-03, 09:23 PM

Um...the whole plot with the Teacher person was that there wasn't enough dust. Yes, that's at least partially due to the portals, but at the end they directly state that, in the current situation, they have enough dust for one portal to remain open. So, why are you starting from the assumption that they had enough dust before hand?

The Amber Spyglass plot (as I like to call the whole thing with the Teacher person) was how the Dust stopped falling from the sky or something like that. That problem was randomly solved by the two main characters confessing their love to each other. Afterwards Dust started falling once again.

My assumption is also based on the idea that there was plenty of intelligent life, therefore there was plenty of Dust. We didn't see what the actual effects of too little Dust would be, just that it would likely cause problems in the future. And while they state they can only keep one portal open it doesn't seem to make any sense.

Tavar

2013-08-04, 12:46 AM

The Amber Spyglass plot (as I like to call the whole thing with the Teacher person) was how the Dust stopped falling from the sky or something like that. That problem was randomly solved by the two main characters confessing their love to each other. Afterwards Dust started falling once again.

My assumption is also based on the idea that there was plenty of intelligent life, therefore there was plenty of Dust. We didn't see what the actual effects of too little Dust would be, just that it would likely cause problems in the future. And while they state they can only keep one portal open it doesn't seem to make any sense.

Ummm.....we kinda do see the issue: in the world that the Teacher goes to, the lack of dust is causing the ecosystem to seemingly spontaneously collapse, and do so in a way that would kill off the intelligent species there.

As for the random part...it's Adam and Eve. Seriously, that's it, just with a different tone due to the author.

Keep in mind too that the Dust issue is very much portrayed as something they knew about, but what is only becoming a true problem now: it's kinda like the overfishing problem we currently have. The situation isn't fine at the moment, despite the lack of total ecosystem collapses.

The issue with the dust is several fold:
A: they need to make dust(or, possibly, replace the dust lost to the portals in their heyday).
B: they need to re-integrate dust back into the dust-system after use.
C: they need to prevent the loss of dust.

Fulfilling those requirements turn it into, essentially, a completely renewable resource. Otherwise, you're looking at something like oil or coal: sure, you have a lot at the moment. But you will not always have a lot, because you're using it up faster than it's made.

Portals directly mess with C.

Derthric

2013-08-04, 08:54 PM

I'll throw in a vote for Mass Effect 3. For basically every reason everyone else has already stated.

For that matter, Dragon Age 2 as well. Railroading at its finest. They tried to go for some interesting themes in the course of the game. But by making the player a passive witness to the world and forcing you to witness the absurdly compounding levels of stupid rise all around you and cap it off with a pair of boring and meaningless fights, they strip the fun out. Nevermind that even picking a side still means you have to fight the one you side with and the one you don't. Which begs the question, why bother letting players pick? But that gets back to passivity and railroading.

And Fable 3.
The whole time that you are the monarch of Albion is a lesson in wasted potential. All the decisions come down to; side with Reaver and be an a******, or keep all your promises like a good little child. They were not any truly tough choices, like having two of the factions that supported you making demands at odds with each other. The tension is supposed to come from the threat of the crawler, but the economy is so borked that its not an issue to save the kingdom.

Lord Seth

2013-08-04, 09:15 PM

The problem with the killing bit is actually that it had never been brought up before (except tangentially with Aang's angsting over the Koizilla incident), despite the large number of people that would have logically died in combat with Team Avatar if not for the fact that it's a kids' show and it was therefore all offscreen. It made it feel like the only enemy whose life Aang actually gave a crap about was Ozai, of all freaking people.
Yeah, the whole thing was horribly contrived. To be blunt, Avatar's finale as a whole wasn't very good, and practically every aspect of it was messed up in some way. Energybending was just the most obvious and blatant problem.

Anyway, LoK. Look, Avatar creator guys (Bryan and Mike, I think?) I appreciate that you appreciate how into shipping your fans get, but the fact of the matter is that shipping is fun because it requires reading subtext and using your imagination. Letting the goddamn romance "subplot" take over most of the second half of your 13 episode series when everyone in it acts like an unlikeable jerk for the sake of melodrama does not require imagination, is not fun, and completely removes any time for following through on all those character themes you spent five freaking episodes setting up.

Also they somehow managed to make Energybending even more of a copout than it already was in TLA, what the hell.
While I didn't think Legend of Korra's ending was good (actually, I didn't think Legend of Korra was good), that's not really a great example because I can't say the ending is particularly worse than what preceded it. The finale of the original series came after a lot of actually pretty good episodes (which managed to win me back after my dislike of the first half of the third season), so it's far more of a disappointment than a series that was already fairly mediocre.

To be fair, Legend of Korra actually did have a decent start, it was just, as you indicate, midway through it fell off the rails when the series apparently turned into a game of "let's do our best to take every problem from season 3 of the original series and insert it into this, and for bonus points, let's try to make those problems even worse than they were back then." But it still fell off the rails early enough that I can't really say the ending was anything more than a symptom of the larger problems with the series.

Telonius

2013-08-04, 09:16 PM

Pygmalion (by Bernard Shaw); Eliza marries Freddy. Makes sense within the confines of the characters, but was a real downer for the audiences. "Better" ending was provided in "My Fair Lady."

Lord Seth

2013-08-04, 09:19 PM

I'd say St. Elsewhere's ending is honestly one of the worst I've seen. Generally, a bad ending comes across from sloppy writing or just simple incompetence, but "the entire series was really the imagination of some random autistic kid, so you just totally wasted your time watching this!" is the kind of thing it's hard to imagine wasn't written by people who had active hatred for their audience.

It was bad when Roseanne pulled a similar stunt in its ending, but at least Roseanne was a comedy rather than a drama (so such a thing is more permissible, at least in theory--see Newhart's ending, which I believe was considered pretty funny), and it didn't completely invalidate the series.

Gnoman

2013-08-04, 11:20 PM

It was bad when Roseanne pulled a similar stunt in its ending, but at least Roseanne was a comedy rather than a drama (so such a thing is more permissible, at least in theory--see Newhart's ending, which I believe was considered pretty funny), and it didn't completely invalidate the series.

I don't know about that. Roseanne probably got away with it because the final season was so bad that there was practically nobody watching it at the end.

Gettles

2013-08-04, 11:35 PM

I'm going to quickly jump on the Mass Effect 3 ending hatefest to add my 2cents to why it was so bad.

1. The glowing starchild immediately set off the audiences deus ex-machina alarm. As soon as he appeared everyone was looking for something to complain about.

2. When the hell was synthesis an option? How does that even work? At any point was everyone becoming a cyborg treated as a great idea prior to this final scene?

3. The fact that of the three endings, there was only a very small amount was actually different outside of the color of the laser/blast. It made the whole thing feel half-assed. Many people are more willing to overlook something that seems like a bad idea or a mistake, but laziness tends to be a lot more anger inducing.

Kyberwulf

2013-08-05, 12:21 AM

HamHam

2013-08-05, 01:43 AM

The ending of Law-abiding Citizen was pretty much a let down. I know he was suppose to be a bad guy. I ended up wanting him to get away. Also for a guy that was supposedly so smart, it was kind of dumb of him to not do more warding with his hideout. This character struck me as what would happen if Batman had gone the other way.

See what actually makes the ending stupid is that shoots it's message in the foot. Vigilantism is bad... so we're just going to blow up this dude with no due process or anything. So I guess he wins because he made them into him or something?

Kyberwulf

2013-08-05, 06:05 PM

Huh, I got a totally different message from the movie. I got, the justice system is not working. Given the fact that the lesson Jamie Foxx learned was, you don't make deals with criminals.

Mx.Silver

2013-08-05, 06:13 PM

The main message I got from Law Abiding Citizen was 'This film is really stupid'.

Alabenson

2013-08-05, 09:55 PM

The main message I got from Law Abiding Citizen was 'This film is really stupid'.

The strange thing about that movie was that it started out as a fairly interesting film, but once Russell Crowe's character was arrested it just started getting stupider and stupider, culminating in what I have to say may be one of the most asinine "twists" in cinema history.

Mx.Silver

2013-08-06, 04:26 PM

The strange thing about that movie was that it started out as a fairly interesting film, but once Russell Crowe's character
It was Gerard Butler. Russell Crowe wasn't in Law Abiding Citizen, due to having already met his 'villain in stupid crime film' quota with Virtuosity.

Jade_Tarem

2013-08-06, 04:50 PM

I once played a not-terribly-famous game called Divinity II: Ego Draconis. It was a fun game, with a first-act twist that got my hopes up for the rest of the story. You start out as a newbie dragon-slayer, learn your dragon-slayer tricks, and join a hunting party, but you've come late to the story: the dragon slayers have been very effective, and there's only one dragon left. You and your buddies fight and kill her, only for her to psychically jump into your head (your mental defenses were the weakest, since you were so new) at the last second and reveal the truth, a spin on the backstory you were given at the very beginning: the dragons aren't evil and never were, the world got suckered by the Big Bad's plan, and someone has to stop him. Of course, your allies can sense that you're now in bed with a dragon, and their dogma dictates that you've got to die, so you're on your own in terms of developing your powers, exploring the world, and keeping all your former friends form murdering you. Classic game setup. Decent scenery. Diabloesque skill trees. Amusing social-interaction mechanics, and best of all, you get to turn into a dragon in the second half of the game and go flying and rampaging around through the Bad Guy's armies. Great stuff!

The ultimate goal is that you find out that the Big Bad's girlfriend entered into some kind of magic ritual with him (like ya do) that would make him unkillable as long as she was alive. Unfortunately, whatever predecessors you had on Team Good rushed in and killed her just as the ritual was wrapping up, and in a nasty twist he now can't be killed as long as she's dead. So the whole game is trying to find a way to resurrect her so that Team Good can kill the pair of them in the right order this time. So far, so good.

Hours and hours of gameplay later, you do it! You pull it off and bring her back to life... only, surprise! You never had a dragon in your head. That was the dead evil girlfriend, the whole time, giving you the power to carry out this quest to bring her back so that the Big Bad can be stronger than ever (he's not any less immortal now that she's alive). Then she traps you in a crystal in the middle of nowhere. Then the game ends. It's the cheapest attempt at a surprise-twist downer ending I've ever seen. No foreshadowing was made that this would happen. None. What's more, it makes absolutely no sense. The evil girlfriend was able to talk to you and give you a huge boost in power from beyond the grave, so why didn't she just do all of that for the Big Bad? He could have brought her back to life in one tenth the time, and she wouldn't have had to pretend to be a dragon for however many weeks this went on. Even if, for whatever reason, she had to possess you, she can still communicate psychically with others - why didn't she just contact the big bad and tell him to maybe not send so many forces after you? Plus, even if you'd figured it out and committed suicide right at the beginning, the Bad Guy still wins. He was already conquering the world handily, this isn't a master stroke on his part, either. It's hideously contrived no matter how you look at it.

Heck, I was even glad I brought back the girlfriend. If there's literally no way to beat the Big Bad, then at least one of us gets to be happy. Apparently they fixed all of this with DLC, but I couldn't be bothered to buy it after that stunt, or play the game a second time. No writer in the world is skilled enough to fix that mess. I'd have forgotten about it completely by now, except that the ending was bad enough to burn itself into my brain. With any other ending, I can typically at least see what they were going for, but this was utter stupidity at its finest.

The Rose Dragon

2013-08-06, 06:07 PM

Anyway, I'm gonna suggest Y: the Last Man as a great series whose ending was a complete disappointment. Which is sad, because I was completely with it until the penultimate issue.

And then the time skip happened. Several times. At that point the characters I knew and liked for so many issues were gone, and I was left to imagine what happened to them during all the time skips that made them completely different. The only consolation I had was that apparently humanity was saved from extinction (somehow), and that Yorick was still kicking.

I don't quite know how I would fix it. I think a smaller time skip for the next issue, ending with the first successful clone and Yorick deciding to continue walking the earth after losing 355 would be sufficient, and would allow me to keep the image of the characters intact in my mind.

But that's just me. I will accept that other people might have enjoyed how the last issue unfolded.

Forum Explorer

2013-08-06, 06:15 PM

Ummm.....we kinda do see the issue: in the world that the Teacher goes to, the lack of dust is causing the ecosystem to seemingly spontaneously collapse, and do so in a way that would kill off the intelligent species there.

As for the random part...it's Adam and Eve. Seriously, that's it, just with a different tone due to the author.

Keep in mind too that the Dust issue is very much portrayed as something they knew about, but what is only becoming a true problem now: it's kinda like the overfishing problem we currently have. The situation isn't fine at the moment, despite the lack of total ecosystem collapses.

The issue with the dust is several fold:
A: they need to make dust(or, possibly, replace the dust lost to the portals in their heyday).
B: they need to re-integrate dust back into the dust-system after use.
C: they need to prevent the loss of dust.

Fulfilling those requirements turn it into, essentially, a completely renewable resource. Otherwise, you're looking at something like oil or coal: sure, you have a lot at the moment. But you will not always have a lot, because you're using it up faster than it's made.

Portals directly mess with C.

I'd forgotten that part. Still it was in the early stages.

I maintain that it was random. They didn't even know about the problem and it's not like their a cause and effect between the two.

This is true.

A) was solved by the whole Love confession

B) Was solved by the portal to the lands of the dead

C) Was reduced to 1 portal (for the lands of the dead). Since they had hundreds if not thousands of portals before I think reducing the portals to 2 would have been perfectly fine, particularly since it'd only be for a single lifetime.

Tavar

2013-08-06, 07:21 PM

I'd forgotten that part. Still it was in the early stages.
In the Early stages on that world: I think it's show to be unified over all worlds.

And even then, the Early stages were devastating enough, as it would have caused an ecosystem collapse.

I maintain that it was random. They didn't even know about the problem and it's not like their a cause and effect between the two.
I thought they knew at least a bit about it, though it's been a long time since I read that book. Oh, and something I missed, but it's implied to be a lot less than just a confession.

Maybe it was random, but I remember thinking that it made a sort of sense, back when I read it. It's been a long time though, so maybe I'm misremebering, but I'm certainly fuzzy on the details.

A) was solved by the whole Love confession

B) Was solved by the portal to the lands of the dead
It should be noted that even with this, it's not clear that the Dust level remains constant, just that it's not nosediving like before.

C) Was reduced to 1 portal (for the lands of the dead). Since they had hundreds if not thousands of portals before I think reducing the portals to 2 would have been perfectly fine, particularly since it'd only be for a single lifetime.
This only works if you assume the characters lie for no reason. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it's mentioned that the Dead turning into dust actually serves to counter the portal that allows them to do so. Which would mean the second point I was making is wrong, but in my defense it's been years since I read that book.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-06, 09:37 PM

Heck, I was even glad I brought back the girlfriend. If there's literally no way to beat the Big Bad, then at least one of us gets to be happy. Apparently they fixed all of this with DLC, but I couldn't be bothered to buy it after that stunt, or play the game a second time. No writer in the world is skilled enough to fix that mess. I'd have forgotten about it completely by now, except that the ending was bad enough to burn itself into my brain. With any other ending, I can typically at least see what they were going for, but this was utter stupidity at its finest.

Normally this happens in the middle of the game (and oddly sounds like Jade Empire's fourth-act twist in several ways, although with a different person as the lying mastermind). Was this a hamfisted sequel hook, maybe?

Anyway, I'm gonna suggest Y: the Last Man as a great series whose ending was a complete disappointment. Which is sad, because I was completely with it until the penultimate issue.

And then the time skip happened. Several times. At that point the characters I knew and liked for so many issues were gone, and I was left to imagine what happened to them during all the time skips that made them completely different. The only consolation I had was that apparently humanity was saved from extinction (somehow), and that Yorick was still kicking.

I don't quite know how I would fix it. I think a smaller time skip for the next issue, ending with the first successful clone and Yorick deciding to continue walking the earth after losing 355 would be sufficient, and would allow me to keep the image of the characters intact in my mind.

But that's just me. I will accept that other people might have enjoyed how the last issue unfolded.

Y had one of the better bittersweet endings I've read in comics, but it's very...thematic, more than narrative, if that makes sense. It's a good way to wrap up the overarching story, but pretty jagged for the characters individually.

Forum Explorer

2013-08-07, 12:15 AM

In the Early stages on that world: I think it's show to be unified over all worlds.

And even then, the Early stages were devastating enough, as it would have caused an ecosystem collapse.

I thought they knew at least a bit about it, though it's been a long time since I read that book. Oh, and something I missed, but it's implied to be a lot less than just a confession.

Maybe it was random, but I remember thinking that it made a sort of sense, back when I read it. It's been a long time though, so maybe I'm misremebering, but I'm certainly fuzzy on the details.

It should be noted that even with this, it's not clear that the Dust level remains constant, just that it's not nosediving like before.

This only works if you assume the characters lie for no reason. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it's mentioned that the Dead turning into dust actually serves to counter the portal that allows them to do so. Which would mean the second point I was making is wrong, but in my defense it's been years since I read that book.

The problem was shown to exist across all the worlds, the current state was not.

Early stages sure, but fully recoverable from.

It's been a while for me as well, but I remember being enraged by them not even knowing about the problem so I think I'm correct. And it was pretty much just the confession. Unless that one assassin priest dying was the solution, but I don't think they even met him.

If anything it was implied to be increasing before all the problems began.

Lie nothing, they don't mention anything about the world of the dead portal taking extra Dust. Other then location it's entirely normal. They just say only that only one portal can exist and then give no reason why one more portal would be such a big deal. It's why it's such a bad ending. It's nonsensical.

Tavar

2013-08-07, 12:59 AM

The problem was shown to exist across all the worlds, the current state was not.

Early stages sure, but fully recoverable from.
Recoverable from, but being able to recover from something doesn't make it a good idea. Someone can recover from a disease or Chemo therapy. It doesn't mean they will necessarily recover from it, and even if they will it doesn't mean they should seek such conditions out.

It's been a while for me as well, but I remember being enraged by them not even knowing about the problem so I think I'm correct. And it was pretty much just the confession. Unless that one assassin priest dying was the solution, but I don't think they even met him.
Um.....no. It was eating some fruit, followed by extremely passionate kissing and the realization of each other in a sexual way. Then there's a scene cut.

Plus, the priest itself is a clue: he was sent, if I remember the dialogue correctly, to prevent Lyra from repeating Eve's sin, to make sure she didn't lose her innocence. And after that scene we know she lost her innocence, because the Dust clung to them.

Lie nothing, they don't mention anything about the world of the dead portal taking extra Dust. Other then location it's entirely normal. They just say only that only one portal can exist and then give no reason why one more portal would be such a big deal. It's why it's such a bad ending. It's nonsensical.
They don't say it takes extra dust. I'm pretty sure they do say that the dead turning to dust gives enough dust for one portal. That's why Will and Lyra are happy, until they realize they need a portal open for the Ghosts to become dust.

As for why they don't want more portals open....because having a whole in the world which drains a necessary component for thinking life is generally considered a bad thing. Never mind the creation of Specters. Yeah, there are ways around that, but those methods would take a lot of resources, resources needed in order to repair damage done to the worlds, for the sole benefit of two people.

Also, dammit, I don't even particularly like the book.

Blarmb

2013-08-07, 06:04 AM

Mass Effect 3 hands down. The worst use of literal deus ex machina I've ever seen. This is exactly what you get when the two people on the creative team with the least talent scrap the original plan, lock the other writers out of the room and bull-headedly go along with their personal vision against all good sense.

Jade_Tarem

2013-08-07, 09:53 AM

Normally this happens in the middle of the game (and oddly sounds like Jade Empire's fourth-act twist in several ways, although with a different person as the lying mastermind). Was this a hamfisted sequel hook, maybe?

You're correct that this would have been more acceptable in the middle of the game, but that's because that wouldn't have been the game's last impression. You can end a story on a down note if you're a good writer, but you can't end a game that way, because players play games in order to attain a sense of achievement, if only a fantasy one. If you just blast them with a big steaming pile of futility and then end the game, then, as in my case, all they'll remember is that they had no sense of achievement upon beating it - not the best way to convince them to come back.

You probably knew all that, but what I didn't say before was that presentation was a lot of the issue as well. The game ended abruptly, but the game itself did not - there was a long cutscene in which the last person the evil girlfriend stuffed in a crystal explains all of that stuff to you, droning on how there's absolutely no way out, how absolutely everyone you talked to throughout the entire game was wrong about everything, and how it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Evangelion ended on a more upbeat note than that, made more sense, and had better animation. Why would I want a sequel?

Contrast with Mass Effect 2 (not 3, 2). The "sequel hook" was maybe two or three seconds long, had no dialogue, and told you everything you needed to know to want to buy ME3. Why? Because Shepard has achieved things by that point. Sovereign is dead, the Collectors are dead, trillions of people are saved by your hand, but that brief shot of the Reapers closing in on your favorite galaxy tells you that you'll have to step up your game for the finale.

BlackDragonKing

2013-08-08, 10:42 AM

Contrast with Mass Effect 2 (not 3, 2). The "sequel hook" was maybe two or three seconds long, had no dialogue, and told you everything you needed to know to want to buy ME3. Why? Because Shepard has achieved things by that point. Sovereign is dead, the Collectors are dead, trillions of people are saved by your hand, but that brief shot of the Reapers closing in on your favorite galaxy tells you that you'll have to step up your game for the finale.

I think part of Mass Effect 3's problem was that it had to deliver on the Harvest taking place, and really, I don't think the Reapers work as an enemy in a series with Mass Effect's methods of interaction.

You're not controlling a ship or the big fleets; you're a guy or girl with a gun and some superpowers designed to go toe-to-toe with targets usually about the size of a human being.

Reapers aren't man-sized. The small ones are so big you need a fleet to generate enough firepower for one of them to notice, and the Reapers OUTNUMBER all the big fleets in the galaxy. There is absolutely no way to resolve the plot they were building towards the first two games without a Deus Ex Machina. The Reapers were too strong and too numerous to believably stand a chance against, so they needed to jump through hoops. The massive proxy army of Husks isn't strategically important to anything the Reapers were doing, so they're clearly just there to give Shep something to shoot at. The moments you take down a reaper are pretty awesome, but they made so many of the things there is no resolution that works besides "galaxy wide magic beam". If there were like, a dozen Reapers left after Sovereign died, 3's war arc might have worked, but with the legions of Reapers, I really feel that the ending was going to be unsatisfying from the moment they decided Shep had to fight the entire armada rather than finding a way to kill Harbinger and permanently stop the fleet from returning from darkspace.

Calemyr

2013-08-08, 12:48 PM

I think part of Mass Effect 3's problem was that it had to deliver on the Harvest taking place, and really, I don't think the Reapers work as an enemy in a series with Mass Effect's methods of interaction.

You're not controlling a ship or the big fleets; you're a guy or girl with a gun and some superpowers designed to go toe-to-toe with targets usually about the size of a human being.

Reapers aren't man-sized. The small ones are so big you need a fleet to generate enough firepower for one of them to notice, and the Reapers OUTNUMBER all the big fleets in the galaxy. There is absolutely no way to resolve the plot they were building towards the first two games without a Deus Ex Machina. The Reapers were too strong and too numerous to believably stand a chance against, so they needed to jump through hoops. The massive proxy army of Husks isn't strategically important to anything the Reapers were doing, so they're clearly just there to give Shep something to shoot at. The moments you take down a reaper are pretty awesome, but they made so many of the things there is no resolution that works besides "galaxy wide magic beam". If there were like, a dozen Reapers left after Sovereign died, 3's war arc might have worked, but with the legions of Reapers, I really feel that the ending was going to be unsatisfying from the moment they decided Shep had to fight the entire armada rather than finding a way to kill Harbinger and permanently stop the fleet from returning from darkspace.

Mass Effect 3 would be a perfect game if it were ten minutes shorter. Well, almost. It still has the Mary Sue Space Ninja who pisses me off for all the wrong reasons (you don't get to gloat when I kick your ass and then you only win by cut-scene fiat - it doesn't make me hate the character, it makes me hate the director).

Seriously, if the last line in the game was "Best seats in the house", with Shepard watching the explosions outside, I would have been satisfied. I would have cheered. If the Leviathan DLC was part of the story in the first place, Little Boy Blue wouldn't have been so out of left field and bloody stupid.

Shepard could never fight the Reapers conventionally, but frankly the entire third game is the boss fight. If it had ended the same way, the game would have been awesome.

I have never in my life see ten minutes steal so much potential in a video game.

GloatingSwine

2013-08-08, 01:23 PM

Shepard could never fight the Reapers conventionally, but frankly the entire third game is the boss fight. If it had ended the same way, the game would have been awesome.

It keeps saying you can't beat the reapers conventionally, and then keeps showing you beating them conventionally.

Jade_Tarem

2013-08-08, 01:34 PM

Mass Effect 3 would be a perfect game if it were ten minutes shorter. Well, almost. It still has the Mary Sue Space Ninja who pisses me off for all the wrong reasons (you don't get to gloat when I kick your ass and then you only win by cut-scene fiat - it doesn't make me hate the character, it makes me hate the director).

+100. The transformation of Cerberus from humanity's Renegade Side into Cobra Command was also highly disappointing.

Kai Leng would have been a much better character if he had never confronted you directly until the plot had room for you to do something to stop or hinder him. He could appear at a distance, kicking ass, attack the Salarian councilor before you get there and injure Thane (you could throw *that* cutscene in), cause trouble for Miranda, etc. Above all, you don't show Shepard repeatedly trying to kill him with the weakest weapon in the series when he/she has biotics/tech/The Black Widow that he/she could be using instead. If you can never quite catch him then he becomes less Mary Sue and more Space Carmen Sandiego. Tell me that wouldn't have been awesome. He might have even had something to gloat about!

I've seen discussions on ways to 'fix' the whole plot of ME3 before, and some of the following insights actually come from TheDarkDM, a poster here. Credit where credit is due.

For the magic space beam, there was a way around that, even with the Giant Reaper Armada. The first is to make the Reapers slightly less invincible and make Indoctrination the real threat. Then the tone of the game becomes a lot more paranoid and the plot involves trying to keep your plans, research, etc. secret when people keep getting subverted. The main plot becomes finding a way to beat the Indoctrination effect so that the Galaxy can rally properly. The other way to do it is to tone down Indoctrination's effects to where just being near it isn't enough to subvert all AI and biological cognitive function forever. Then the game is about killing reapers and harvesting tech to build better weapons and ships. Both methods conclude with a massive space battle that's heavy on the cavalry but refreshingly light on nonsensical deus ex machina.

I can put up more detail later, but that was the basic gist of it.

Before this becomes entirely about ME3, I thought the Animorphs book series had a really terrible ending, even as a kid. Legendarily bad, starting right after the time skip. It had nothing to do with the plots or characters shown to us so far and killed most of them in the process.

Calemyr

2013-08-08, 01:55 PM

It keeps saying you can't beat the reapers conventionally, and then keeps showing you beating them conventionally.

Not exactly. It shows you they are not immortal, not infallible, and not unstoppable. What they are, however, is VERY difficult in every case you fight them, even when the odds are horribly stacked in your favor. Against one, you might have a chance if you are an epic level badass with exceptional circumstances at your favor (i.e. You have the galaxy's largest fleet firing at your target, you have a god-like thresher maw that would rather kill it than you, it's an incomplete infant, or it's trying to fight off an entire fleet with one body while trying to assume direct control to fight you with a broken corpse). There are just not enough badasses with inhuman luck to fight as many Reapers as the game provides.

Conventional combat is possible on a small scale, but simply not feasible on the scale the Reapers have defined.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-08, 02:17 PM

Also, Shepard only ever takes out one functional Sovereign-class Reaper. Even Sovereign himself in the first game required the combined fleets of the Citadel and the Alliance and his own tactical stupidity/one-track mind. Also, I'm pretty sure Sovereign was the "youngest", but I could be wrong. The three or so "Reapers" you blow up in ME3 with insane plans, cutscene power, and Bigger Fish are their screen ships. The Husks you kill by the bushelfull serve no purpose except to disrupt planetside C&C through swarm tactics and put metaphorical boots on the ground after the big guys gain orbital superiority.

If ME3 was consistent about anything, it was "it's going to take an insane Hail Mary/Deus Ex Machina the likes of which the galaxy has never seen to stop a fleet of these things". The DXM just really failed to be satisfying in execution.

Lurkmoar

2013-08-08, 03:58 PM

Derthric

2013-08-08, 04:15 PM

I am going to add the last episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. It is the last gasp of Pre-Abrams Trek and effectively shows why Berman and Braga needed the franchise taken away from them. Nearly forty years of continued existence ends with what is effectively a boring holodeck episode that tells two unrelated half stories and doesn't even focus on the characters or plots from the show it was a finale to!

Add to that an uneeded time skip(that seemingly changed nothing about the characters), killing a character(one of the few with a personality beyond whatever their job was) and being a huge step back from the great strides the show took in its fourth season.

Mediocrity would be too lofty a goal for this episode.

Jade_Tarem

2013-08-08, 05:49 PM

I am going to add the last episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. It is the last gasp of Pre-Abrams Trek and effectively shows why Berman and Braga needed the franchise taken away from them.

Yep. There's a reason those two were dubbed the "Killer B's." To hear the other writers tell it, it was another case of ego versus talent, claiming that B&B wanted everyone to know that it was their show more than they wanted to write a good episode. Berman and Braga's side of the story, IIRC, was that they wanted to give the show one last connection to the other Trek iterations.

That said, if you trace the episode list and keep track of who wrote what, you'll notice the show's quality increases the less involved B&B were in the writing... leading up to the show's only arguably good season (the fourth), where that final stinkbomb of an episode was the only one they wrote. Most fans, I think, just count Terra Prime as the show's finale (it actually does okay as a season/show stopper) and pretend that These Are The Voyages never happened.

Wolf_Haley

2013-08-08, 06:32 PM

Man I'm still hella mad about what happened with Udina in ME3, I never hated the character in the series, yeah he was a **** but he ment well and it felt like every bit of small dvelopment he got was tossed out the window because. Even his death was a "because". All my firneds who hated the character hated how he died and how OOC it was.

Moving on from ME3.

Shoutouts to Legion having a really lame sequal hook ending for a sequal no one wants to see

Shoutouts to Negima for reasons already stated

Shoutouts to Mai Hime, I mean damn talk about completely destroying the whole premise

Shoutouts to Madoka only because I rep SAyaka hella hard and she still doesn't get a happy end

Mordar

2013-08-08, 06:49 PM

Stephen King has been mentioned already, but I thought I'd toss a specific example that annoyed me to no end: the last book of his Dark Tower series.

Strangely, I liked the coda better then the entire friggin' novel that proceeded it.

I seem to recall that King didn't want to write about what happened after opening the door...but I could be mistaken. In any event, I understand the point (I think) and it was certainly foreshadowed.

Rocky V would be an(other) instance of bad ending that the writer didn't get to have go their way...the story has it that Stallone wanted Rocky to die from complications following the street fight and end with Talia Shire reading her eulogy as the scene transitions from her to the statue in Philly.

- M

TheThan

2013-08-08, 07:46 PM

I’m still kinda pissed at the ending to X-men origins: Wolverine.

Sure, the entire setup for the weapon X project was botched, but still, adamantium bullet to the brain? Give me a break. The whole theater groaned on that one (and there was like 20 people). and yes, i know the movie isn't exactly good, but still for a lousy movie, this ending SUCKS.

navar100

2013-08-08, 08:10 PM

Not worse as in bad but in shock.

The Fox and The Hound

I think it's the only Disney movie that has an unhappy ending. Sure, Bambi's mother is killed, but that's not really the end. Bambi's life goes on and it's inferred he becomes the new leader of the Deer as his foal is born. However, for The Fox and The Hound, the ending happens on a sad note. The friendship is lost. Hound does not turn Fox in to the hunters, but the death of his Partner Hound breaks the friendship and it does not recover. I was quite upset leaving the theater.

For true bad, Sliders.

The Kromags ruined the show. The show became all about them, and the cast changes certainly didn't help any.

Kyberwulf

2013-08-09, 01:01 AM

For me... Sliders ended when Professor Arturo died. It just never was the same after that.

Also, The ending of Lord of the rings. When the eagles flown in,... I remember almost screaming... WHY DIDN'T HE FLY THE DAMN RING THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Axinian

2013-08-09, 01:06 AM

Tavar

2013-08-09, 01:13 AM

Also, The ending of Lord of the rings. When the eagles flown in,... I remember almost screaming... WHY DIDN'T HE FLY THE DAMN RING THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Well, it's more explained in some supplementary material*, but even with out that it can be explained by the fact that before the Ring was destroyed The Eagle's might have been stopped by the Wraiths, nevermind the rest of his forces(yeah, most of the travel wouldn't have been difficult, but getting into Mt Doom?). Remember, they said secrecy was key. Giant Eagles are not exactly subtle.

*The Eagle's are effectively servants of one of the Chief Spirits. Considering their whole objective was to get ME to rise on it's own, doing their work for them would be a somewhat suspect plan.

Winter_Wolf

2013-08-09, 01:41 AM

The film Dreamcatcher. The ending was just bad. The worst part is that in the extra features they show you the ending they didn't use, and it was So. Much. Better. They filmed it, and they made the active choice to use the worse ending.

The ending of the remake of The Amityville Horror featuring Ryan Reynolds was an atrocity. Well, at least the DVD copy of it I watched. In fact it looks like whoever was making the DVDs ran out of room or bumped the table or something, because the end of the movie was just not there*. Arguably, the "and it was all just a dream" ending would have been better. I thought I was buying the 70s version of it at the time, so that much is on me.

*Actually it probably ended exactly as the director/producers envisioned it, but for all intents and purposes as a viewer, it wasn't there.

Derthric

2013-08-09, 02:55 AM

For me... Sliders ended when Professor Arturo died. It just never was the same after that.

'Cept he's not dead! There was that world where there was an evil Arturo(there was always an evil Arturo wasn't there?) and had tied up the professor in his basement and taken his place. Then they fought and did the "I am the real Professor" thing. I always liked the interpretation that the real Professor was left on that world and was going to make a new sliding device to get home. That'd be a spin off I would watch.

But yes the Kromags were stupidity personified. I remember when the show first when to what is now Syfy and they had an sci-fi entertainment news show hosted by chase masterson. And she was making a big deal how the show could finally find direction now. Seemed to have been doing fine till that point!

Kyberwulf

2013-08-09, 03:51 AM

Okay, well if the wraiths always had those Dragon things. Why didn't they ride around on horses looking for the ring. I never got that.

Anteros

2013-08-09, 04:11 AM

Silver Swift

2013-08-09, 04:32 AM

I think people saying that flying is un-stealthy don't actually realize how big the sky is. Normal eagles can fly at something like 10,000 feet. Presumably magical ones could go even higher, but even if they can't 10,000 feet is still high enough to be virtually invisible from the ground. It's not like Sauron had some sort of magical eagle locating sonar.

Except he kind of has. I don't know the exact details, but from what I've understood Sauron has low grade omniscience: he can see anything he wants to, just not everything at the same time. The eagles, being Maiar, are rather high on his list of things to keep an eye on.

So yeah, flying isn't unstealthy, marching into Mordor on freaking half gods is unstealthy.

Fly the thing in at night or on a cloudy day. You can even use Aragorn and the others as a distraction if you really want to tip the odds in your favor.

Also, you can't really drop a ring into a volcano from 10,000 feet, even if the ring-wraith didn't have their fancy dragon pets yet (which I think they indeed did not at this point) it should be clear what the plan is the moment the eagles cross Mordors borders so you can bet that there are some nasty surprises waiting for them once they reach mount Doom.

Now they probably could have used the Eagles to fly Aragorn and the rest of the fellowship to Minas Tirith (under the guise of getting Isildurs heir to the frontline) but I think that falls under the "they're half gods, not taxis" defences.

Edit: A bigger case of fridge logic, for me, was how completely unguarded mount doom is. Even if, for some reason, you can't just seal of the whole thing with rock, wouldn't you at least put some defences there? A few of orcs near the entrance could have saved Saurons ass (ok, so yeah, the hobbits slipped passed orcs before, but at this point they were completely exhausted, both mentally and physically).

At the very least have a fricking boulder block the entrance the good guys used to access your one weakness last time.

Krazzman

2013-08-09, 04:36 AM

The Wolverine: Ways of the Warrior (?)
Ok The whole movie was bad.
But the ending? AND the Cookie? No thanks.

First it starts that they weaken Wolverine and make a romance out of it. Then they DECLAW him. I still don't know why they didn't just cut off one of his limbs instead of actually wanting to declaw him. Why wait for him to come back to his senses? And why could they cut the one Metal that is indestructible (tm)? Then he has his "inner strength" back and still despite having the possibilities didn't get his adamantium claws back.

Then comes the "cookie" 2 years later and he still has his normal bone weapons.

This movie made me really mad. I know hope that Erik will be able to shape adamantium over Wolverines Claws. But now he is effectively the "Immortal Punchingbag!"(tm).

Anteros

2013-08-09, 04:41 AM

Except he kind of has. I don't know the exact details, but from what I've understood Sauron has low grade omniscience: he can see anything he wants to, just not everything at the same time. The eagles, being Maiar, are rather high on his list of things to keep an eye on.

So yeah, flying isn't unstealthy, marching into Mordor on freaking half gods is unstealthy.

I would imagine that his one weakness and source of all his power would be fairly high on his "to watch" list as well. If he wasn't able to see that as it slowly crawled closer to him on the ground, I find it a bit of a stretch that he could instantly locate a bird 10,000 feet in the air at night from miles away.

Besides, claiming that he would know the instant one with Maiar blood entered his realm doesn't really mesh with the fact that the original plan was for Aragorn and frigging Gandalf himself to accompany the ring to the mountain.

Also, you can't really drop a ring into a volcano from 10,000 feet, even if the ring-wraith didn't have their fancy dragon pets yet (which I think they indeed did not at this point) it should be clear what the plan is the moment the eagles cross Mordors borders so you can bet that there are some nasty surprises waiting for them once they reach mount Doom.

A volcano is a big target, but even so, there's nothing stopping the eagles from flying them in, dropping Frodo off at the entrance to the mountain, and letting him throw it in. Unless the Nazgul can teleport they aren't going to get there in time to stop him.

Silver Swift

2013-08-09, 04:55 AM

I would imagine that his one weakness and source of all his power would be fairly high on his "to watch" list as well. If he wasn't able to see that as it slowly crawled closer to him on the ground, I find it a bit of a stretch that he could instantly locate a bird 10,000 feet in the air at night from miles away.

Sauron didn't expect his enemies to attempt to destroy the ring, he expected someone with power amongst his enemies to rise up and claim it. Hence keeping tabs on all the great powers of middle earth. Saurons attention is literally one of his most valuable resources, he couldn't afford to waste that checking mount doom every five minutes for a threat the he considered minuscule to non-existent.

Besides, claiming that he would know the instant one with Maiar blood entered his realm doesn't really mesh with the fact that the original plan was for Aragorn and frigging Gandalf himself to accompany the ring to the mountain.

Yeah, I got nothing, that is a really good point. Maybe Gandalf expected to ditch the fellowship once they got close to Mordor? That doesn't really fit, though, as you would still have the heir of Isildur, the oldest son of the steward of Gondor and two of the most prominent fighters from the other races.

A volcano is a big target, but even so, there's nothing stopping the eagles from flying them in, dropping Frodo off at the entrance to the mountain, and letting him throw it in. Unless the Nazgul can teleport they aren't going to get there in time to stop him.

Except then Sauron would know they would be coming from miles away, and he would send every available force into mount doom. Not the Nazgul, no, but the Nazgul aren't Saurons only heavy hitters. And, laughably pathetic defences aside, some of them are probably a lot closer to mount down than the Eagles would be when Sauron spotted them.

Axolotl

2013-08-09, 07:31 AM

I'm surprised it's taken until page 5 to mention this but AI would have been orders of magnitude better if it had ended just a few minutes earlier. I get what they were going for with the ending but it doesn't work and the scene before it was the absolute perfect way to end the film.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-08-09, 08:20 AM

I still say flying in on a divine air force is going to attract significant attention from Sauron and his entire army, especially with Sauron's powers of divination. (Saruman keeping tabs on Gandalf with his palantir might have caught them even earlier, and Gandalf knew what he was up to by the time the "simply walk into Mordor" plan was established).

Giant eagles would have made a nice shortcut over the mountains to Lothlorien, though, at least if they'd actually been planning to split up the Obvious Targets from the Hobbits there instead of having Boromir and some orcs do it for them. Maybe Gandalf was afraid of calling in too many favors, or just wanted to make sure the bad guys' attention was on Gondor and Rohan and not them.

DigoDragon

2013-08-09, 08:31 AM

So many endings to Stephen King books.... so many.

Ditto. He can write some really good thrillers, but many endings feel pretty anti-climatic to me (to put it nicely).

I personally didn't like the ending to the TV series LOST...
However, that is probably because I was expecting something different. See, I watched the series for the island. The mysteries of that place was my draw more than the characters.

So when the ending focused on the characters and left so many questions about the island untouched, I felt let down. It isn't that I wanted all the mysteries solved about the island (I doubt half of my questions could be answered), but I'd love more than the trickle of crumbs they gave me.

Besides that, the plane taking off from the beach without a proper runway was kinda silly...

t209

2013-08-09, 09:01 AM

Wookieetank

2013-08-09, 11:04 AM

You're correct that this would have been more acceptable in the middle of the game, but that's because that wouldn't have been the game's last impression. You can end a story on a down note if you're a good writer, but you can't end a game that way

I'd like to respectfully disagree on this point. I thought the downer Ending of FF XIII-2 was very well done. Far as I'm concerned they could leave the FFXIII triolgy as a duology and I'd be perfectly fine with it. I'm totally psyched for FFXIII-3 don't get me wrong. I'm just hoping that it is sufficiently epic to contend with the ending of FFXIII-2.

Semi-related to ME3, if you're a sci-fi fan and haven't read it, Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space series to me feels like what the ME series was based on/inspired by. Haven't finished it yet, but its been fantastic so far.

Back on topic, Infinite Space's ending annoyed me. Umpteen hours sunk into this game, plot starts picking up, gets all sortsa interesting (and weird), then final boss, cue ending and.... a small number of still images with no dialog, no explaination, nothing. :smallmad:

Tavar

2013-08-09, 11:08 AM

A volcano is a big target, but even so, there's nothing stopping the eagles from flying them in, dropping Frodo off at the entrance to the mountain, and letting him throw it in. Unless the Nazgul can teleport they aren't going to get there in time to stop him.

Keep in mind that, per word of god, nobody could willingly destroy the Ring in it's place of power: in there, the ring can go from subtle twisting to outright command. At best, with someone like Gandalf or Galadrial, you'd get someone who replaces Sauron by taking control of the ring for themselves. At worst, well, Sauron comes in and gets back his ring.

As for the Nazgul, well, they can't teleport, but in that situation they would be right behind the Birds. So when the Eagles land and drop off the ring-bearer the Nazgul would land and dismount as well. Then it's Frodo vs a Ringwraith. I think I know how this one goes.

Okay, well if the wraiths always had those Dragon things. Why didn't they ride around on horses looking for the ring. I never got that.
The ringwraiths on horses can be stealthy. Not so much when they're flying on the beasts.

I think people saying that flying is un-stealthy don't actually realize how big the sky is. Normal eagles can fly at something like 10,000 feet. Presumably magical ones could go even higher, but even if they can't 10,000 feet is still high enough to be virtually invisible from the ground. It's not like Sauron had some sort of magical eagle locating sonar. Fly the thing in at night or on a cloudy day. You can even use Aragorn and the others as a distraction if you really want to tip the odds in your favor.
Yeah, because it's clearly shown that Sauron had no methods by which to observe far away things. I mean, this is part of the point regarding the second and third books: the ringbearers are on their quest, and everyone else is trying to create as big of a distraction as possible.

Logic

2013-08-09, 12:15 PM

Yep. There's a reason those two were dubbed the "Killer B's." To hear the other writers tell it, it was another case of ego versus talent, claiming that B&B wanted everyone to know that it was their show more than they wanted to write a good episode. Berman and Braga's side of the story, IIRC, was that they wanted to give the show one last connection to the other Trek iterations.

That said, if you trace the episode list and keep track of who wrote what, you'll notice the show's quality increases the less involved B&B were in the writing... leading up to the show's only arguably good season (the fourth), where that final stinkbomb of an episode was the only one they wrote. Most fans, I think, just count Terra Prime as the show's finale (it actually does okay as a season/show stopper) and pretend that These Are The Voyages never happened.
Speaking of Enterprise, the book The Good that Men Do, makes "These are the Voyages" marginally better.

For reasons that remained classified for (approximately) 250 years, Tucker was forced to fake his own death in 2155, days before the foundation of the Coalition of Planets, precursor to the United Federation of Planets.

In files de-classified in the early 25th century, it was revealed that Tucker had been recruited by the rogue spy agency known to some as Section 31 to infiltrate the space of the Romulan Star Empire and sabotage the Romulans' research into developing a Warp-7 stardrive.

Though I dislike fan-fiction that brings a character back from death, this one does it fairly well.

Forum Explorer

2013-08-09, 02:35 PM

It keeps saying you can't beat the reapers conventionally, and then keeps showing you beating them conventionally.

You mean how you beat three using unconventional methods or massive firepower when they are in vulnerable positions? When there are literally thousands of Reapers to fight?

My Worse Endings
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Season 3 Finale
(Spoilers from the same finale)
I don't know whether to like it or not. But that episode sucks and Alicorn Twilight's probably going to outlive her friends if it ran on real time. Seriously? Princesses wearing dresses that were probably made by Applejack with Rarity's cutie mark. Also didn't Pinkie used to work on Rockfarm as a filly? .Then again, it's probably for the girls demographic.

Don't know if this needs to be spoiled but...

I disagree that the episode sucks. It's actually one of my favorites. I'm fine with Twilight outliving her friends, why should she die alongside them? And just because Pinkie worked on a rockfarm (as a child mind you. So it's not like she's been maintaining those skills) doesn't mean she'd be good at or enjoy working an Apple Orchid. It's like asking a biologist to work in a physics lab. They're both science but it takes different skills and knowledge to do.

I won't say that the episode is perfect though, the dress aesthetic was poor (though I wouldn't say awful) and Rarity's part was weak. However I did like the ending of the episode as well as the ending of a season.

Anteros

2013-08-09, 03:40 PM

Keep in mind that, per word of god, nobody could willingly destroy the Ring in it's place of power: in there, the ring can go from subtle twisting to outright command. At best, with someone like Gandalf or Galadrial, you'd get someone who replaces Sauron by taking control of the ring for themselves. At worst, well, Sauron comes in and gets back his ring.

As for the Nazgul, well, they can't teleport, but in that situation they would be right behind the Birds. So when the Eagles land and drop off the ring-bearer the Nazgul would land and dismount as well. Then it's Frodo vs a Ringwraith. I think I know how this one goes.

The ringwraiths on horses can be stealthy. Not so much when they're flying on the be

I know that, but the characters didn't when they made their plan. In truth that point doesn't really hurt them any more for the flying in plan than it did for walking.

Yeah, because it's clearly shown that Sauron had no methods by which to observe far away things. I mean, this is part of the point regarding the second and third books: the ringbearers are on their quest, and everyone else is trying to create as big of a distraction as possible.

It's a lot easier to distract someone for a few hours than for a few weeks.

The only really reasonable explanation I've ever heard is that the Eagles simply refused to carry the ring due to it being an item of great evil/temptation/whatever.

Calemyr

2013-08-09, 04:31 PM

It's a lot easier to distract someone for a few hours than for a few weeks.

I think there's one factor there to mention: expectation. Sauron was sure that the anybody who wore the ring would be coming to depose him - whether they originally meant to or not. The ring would insist on nothing less. He was watching for any sign of the war he expected, which is why he bought Aragorn's assault on the front door so readily. It's what he would have done. Additionally, remember also that the whole reason their strategy had any chance of success was that Sauron could not fathom someone trying to destroy the ring - it has too much power, and to use it at all is to become its slave.

Flying across half a continent on the backs of semi-divine eagles is the kind of high profile, glorious advance of the new Dark Lord that Sauron was expecting. It wouldn't have been a long journey, but before the end of it Sauron's might would have been focused on everyone involved. The longer they stayed under the radar, and the longer that other forces in the world looked more menacing, the better their chance of success.

Going by land was a desperate move, but a measured one. The first instant Sauron recognized the danger was when Frodo claimed the ring for himself, moments before Gollum solved the problem for him. Had he ever caught on before that, or knew where to look at any time, the quest would have failed.

I mean, seriously, look at the basic theme of the trilogy: even the most humble of things can change the course of history. This applies to the hobbits and to the course they had to chart.

Ionathus

2013-08-19, 12:53 AM

Lincoln
Like the Last Samurai there was a perfect moment for an ending. Then it continued on. However the last bit was not bad. It just was not needed. Well the bate and switch was irksome.

I either have no eye for cinematography or a bad memory, but no one moment comes to mind. Which scene did you want it to end on?

And when you talk about bait-and-switch, do you mean the scene with his son in another theatre instead of the actual assassination at Ford's?

-

On a side genre - and I am probably diving headfirst into rocky waters here - I was really disappointed with the ending of Mockingjay. After having Katniss think her way through pretty much all three books, I just could not wrap my head around what she was doing in about the last three-ish chapters. What is she thinking, why did she agree to start the games over, why is she okay with this, why did she kill coin and WHY is everybody suddenly okay with it? I had a friend explain it to me about a year later, and I understood most of the logic from that point on, but seriously Ms. Collins, would it kill you to give your trilogy a proper denouement? Oh, and I think your protagonist has lost consciousness enough times now. You don't need to leave us out of even more plot-critical decisions, once again, in the last three chapters.

The_Snark

2013-08-19, 02:12 AM

On a side genre - and I am probably diving headfirst into rocky waters here - I was really disappointed with the ending of Mockingjay. After having Katniss think her way through pretty much all three books, I just could not wrap my head around what she was doing in about the last three-ish chapters. What is she thinking, why did she agree to start the games over, why is she okay with this, why did she kill coin and WHY is everybody suddenly okay with it? I had a friend explain it to me about a year later, and I understood most of the logic from that point on, but seriously Ms. Collins, would it kill you to give your trilogy a proper denouement? Oh, and I think your protagonist has lost consciousness enough times now. You don't need to leave us out of even more plot-critical decisions, once again, in the last three chapters.

I wouldn't say I was disappointed in the ending, because after thinking it over I like how that trilogy turned out. But you're definitely not the only one who was confused upon first reading. I think those last chapters needed some more work to help make WTH she's thinking a bit clearer.

The bit about agreeing to start the games over was what threw me the most - I was baffled by that, the first time I read the book. In retrospect, I think Katniss decided Coin's proposal was unacceptable right away, and said 'yes' just to allay suspicion so she could get her hands on a weapon to kill Coin. Her initial reaction and later thoughts support this reading, but the narration doesn't say so, either during or afterwards. I suspect Ms. Collins was trying to keep her thoughts from the reader, so that Coin's death would come as a surprise, and I can understand that desire from an author's standpoint...

... but it doesn't quite work. Suddenly the 1st-person narrator is hiding thoughts from the reader, which she's never done before. It's odd and confusing, because there's no logical reason for Katniss to avoid thinking about these things. She's not avoiding thinking about these things. She's just not telling us. It feels a little contrived, like the author has come in and censored the text for dramatic effect.

So yeah, that part could have used some revision.

The trial and everything seemed... glossed over. Possibly she didn't feel that it would be that interesting, and wanted to focus on Katniss's psychological issues/recovery, rather than the repercussions of murdering a newly inaugurated president. We're given some halfway plausible excuses for why it's not a big deal, enough for me to imagine how it might have played out, so I suppose I can accept that.

As for missing plot-crucial themes, I think this is a deliberate thematic statement. Katniss is the series protagonist - both from a Doylian perspective, as the POV character and heroine, and from a Watsonian perspective as a victor and rebel leader. She fights the crucial battles, she wins the Hunger Games, she inspires the rebellion. But that was an artificial battle, constructed for mass media consumption. Mockingjay is about a war, and real wars don't have protagonists. It doesn't matter how much she hates Snow, what she endures and what (who) she sacrifices in her quest to kill him and end the war. Nor does it matter that she'd do anything to protect her sister. Her sister dies and the mission to assassinate Snow is ultimately a miserable failure, and there's nothing she could have done about either. Because she's just one person, and the war is bigger than her. The world doesn't work according to story-logic.

Her side wins, in part thanks to her contribution. But she isn't The Heroine Who Won the War. It's not all about her, despite what the announcers and propaganda and (at times) her own somewhat self-centered POV would have you believe.

I mean, it is about her in a sense - she's still the main character, and the book focuses on her personal struggles as much as (if not more than) the larger picture. But the author is willing to let her importance lapse a little in order to do that, rather than making her personal travails and triumphs the lynchpin of the whole war. Katniss thinks this is a story about Katniss trying to win the war, when it's really a story about Katniss trying to survive the war intact.

... okay, I think that's enough rambling about this subject. Been a while since I've discussed these books; I guess I'd built up a lot to say!

Lord Seth

2013-08-31, 05:09 PM

My Worse Endings
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Season 3 Finale
(Spoilers from the same finale)
I don't know whether to like it or not. But that episode sucks and Alicorn Twilight's probably going to outlive her friends if it ran on real time. Seriously? Princesses wearing dresses that were probably made by Applejack with Rarity's cutie mark. Also didn't Pinkie used to work on Rockfarm as a filly? .Then again, it's probably for the girls demographic.
I don't think this really needs to be spoilered, but just in case...
Is there any reason to assume that Twilight would outlive her friends? The series has never stated that alicorns are inherently long-lived; we know that Celestia and Luna have extremely long longevity (if not being outright immortal), but there was no indication that this was true for Cadence.

The whole "alicorns are immortal" thing, like a lot of things fans assume about the show, aren't anything that the show itself backs up, it's again things that fans assumed about it. Now to be fair, it can be blamed on the series for not bothering to properly expand on these subjects via worldbuilding, but criticizing the finale for something that's supported by fan speculation rather than anything in the series itself seems problematic to me.

The problem I had with the season 3 finale was that it took two plots (the cutie mark switching spell and Twilight becoming a princess) that could have filled up an entire episode each, but they squash them both into one episode and both suffer significantly for it, including the fact there's so little actual correlation between the two plots despite the attempts of the episode to convince you of it.

On an unrelated note, the ending for Shadow Star Narutaru was pretty epically terrible. It's like you took The End of Evangelion (which I didn't care for anyway) and then cut out the aspects of it that actually were redeeming. Heck, the whole thing just came across as an End of Evangelion rip-off that didn't have any understanding of why End of Evangelion at least sort of fit the series.

DoctorFaust

2013-09-06, 11:26 PM

Imma just chip in quick and say that the ending to CAD was pretty damn bad. Also, the ending to Sandman, while as fantastic as the rest of the series, seemed very abrupt to me and a bit out of character for Dream. EDIT: And having now read through the rest of the thread, it appears I'm one of the few people that thinks the ending to Mass Effect 3 was good.

Starbuck_II

2013-09-07, 12:10 AM

Ronnoc

2013-09-07, 12:56 AM

Throwing in another vote for ME3 and am I the only one who heard the name cruicible, heard that it was a weapon design that had survived multiple cycles of the Reapers clearing all evidence of previous civilizations and immediately thought "Oh great I get to build another reaper trap that is going to kill all of us."

Drascin

2013-09-07, 01:51 AM

Why people don't like the ending to TTGL:
"Wah Nia died and Simon became a hobo, Gainax can never give us a happy ending!"

Which of course completely misses the point and the general message of the show. We talked about it several times on the General Anime Discussion thread.

Or maybe because Nia dying was out of ****ing nowhere literally on the last ten minutes of the show and looked like Gainax remembering that they wanted a bittersweet ending but they completely forgot to set up any foreshadowing or ground work for it.

Yes, once it was established that Nia was about to die, Simon saving her would have been against the series motif. But establishing the fact that Nia had to die at all the way they did was an asspull that Gainax came up with because they just had to give one last hammer to the message. To make a comparison: you can't have a character die of a disease that nobody knew existed until ten minutes ago and expect that to be considered a great and poignant piece of narrative. It's going to read like an asspull.

So yeah, TTGL ending? Not exactly stellar.

Obviously, there is Mass Effect 3, as everyone has said, which managed to kill my enthusiasm for the entire series in an uncanny way.

What else is there...

Well, there's Oblivion, but the game already was rather bland, so a bad ending wasn't entirely unexpected.

Hmmm... well, I don't really make much effort to remember bad things, so nothing is jumping to mind mind right now.

Tavar

2013-09-07, 02:10 AM

Or maybe because Nia dying was out of ****ing nowhere literally on the last ten minutes of the show and looked like Gainax remembering that they wanted a bittersweet ending but they completely forgot to set up any foreshadowing or ground work for it.

Yes, once it was established that Nia was about to die, Simon saving her would have been against the series motif. But establishing the fact that Nia had to die at all the way they did was an asspull that Gainax came up with because they just had to give one last hammer to the message. To make a comparison: you can't have a character die of a disease that nobody knew existed until ten minutes ago and expect that to be considered a great and poignant piece of narrative. It's going to read like an asspull.

So yeah, TTGL ending? Not exactly stellar.
Wasn't it at least foreshadowed earlier? When she was first converted? Yeah, it's not said, but to follow your example, it's like someone's been coughing the entire show, maybe even getting some blood up, and then they die of TB. Yeah, it's not actually mentioned, but it's not as sudden as people think.

Equinox

2013-09-07, 02:33 AM

We're on page 6 and Twin Peaks hasn't been mentioned yet? Well, allow me to rectify this error.

Yora

2013-09-07, 03:04 AM

The thing with ME3 is, that it isn't a good story to begin with. To salvage the entire storyline, one would have to pick up again where ME2 ended.
Though I have to say there's a bigger problem at play, because when I finished ME2, I was thinking "Now what can they do for the last game? A giant battle in which the humans destroy the Reapers with a superweapon?"
They've been writing themselves into a corner pretty early on. I think it deserves credit that they at least tried to come up with something new.

That two of the three possible endings seem completely stupid to me isn't even my biggest problem, but that they explained too much.
Why create a fascinating unknowable villain that is basically mecha-cthulhu, that has an awesome intruduction about "you can never grasp our true nature" and "we're eternal", and then have everything neatly explained as "oh, there was a computer who had a programming error that made it think murdering everyone is an act of kindness".
And then even add a DLC that explains who build this computer. That was completely unneccessary.
The most important aspect of a mystery is not knowing. Once you explain it, there's no mystery left.

I would like to say that Half-Life has always had bad endings, but the truth is that in storytelling terms, these games don't have any Endings. They just stop.

A terrible-terrible ending is Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society. Even though apparently "officially" the animes are different alternative continuities, they all make perfect sense if you regard them as one single continous storyline. I think they even require it for everything to make sense.
SSS is not that bad for most of the movie, though the story is lacking, but the ending is what just kills it.
Ghost in the Shell is essentially the story of a person becoming more machine than human and the crucial ending of both the original comic and the first movie is about her mind merging with a truly sentient AI to create an entirely new form of being. It's a story about transcending the limitation of corporeal existance and turning into a being of pure thought.
And then SSS comes along and ends with "by the way, I had my fun being a transhuman spirit-being, but now I am bored and go back to my body being a police officer again".
Not only does it make absolutely everything that happened so far completely irrelevant, it isn't even neccessary for the plot of that one movie and just tagged on in the last 3 minutes.
Otherwise I could enjoy that movie for it's dumb but really quite pretty action scenes. But that atrocity of an ending had me get rid of that DVD right after watching it the first time and vowing to never see it again. Good thing it's a completely original story that only barely has anything to do with the manga written about 20 years earlier, so you can file it under terrible fan-fiction.

GloatingSwine

2013-09-07, 05:13 AM

Ghost in the Shell is essentially the story of a person becoming more machine than human and the crucial ending of both the original comic and the first movie is about her mind merging with a truly sentient AI to create an entirely new form of being. It's a story about transcending the limitation of corporeal existance and turning into a being of pure thought.
And then SSS comes along and ends with "by the way, I had my fun being a transhuman spirit-being, but now I am bored and go back to my body being a police officer again".
Not only does it make absolutely everything that happened so far completely irrelevant, it isn't even neccessary for the plot of that one movie and just tagged on in the last 3 minutes.

Except, of course, that isn't what Ghost in the Shell is about. That might have been what happened in one movie once, but even then the manga has a different take on it, and more besides, and the TV series is a completely different (and arguably better) thing entirely, and Solid State Society is explicitly not a followup to the other Ghost in the Shell movies, it's set in the TV series continuity, which is wholly and irreconcilably different to the movie continuity.

Your complaint that SSS is a "bad ending" to the Ghost in the Shell movies is like complaining that a lemon is a rubbish potato.

Nerd-o-rama

2013-09-07, 08:51 AM

I came back into this thread to further Mass Effect 3 and Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann discussion at the same time and now I just can't.

Alabenson

2013-09-07, 09:29 AM

Starbuck_II

2013-09-07, 10:19 AM

Derthric

2013-09-07, 12:29 PM

Farscape's original ending?

John Crichton destroys his wormhole home to stop Scarrens. He is stranded with the crew now.
Just as John Crichton and Aeryn Sun get together finally.... Crichton proposes to her, and she agrees. However, at the last second they are attacked by random aliens, who appear to kill them both.

They fixed this with a movie.

See I found Peacekeeper wars to be less satisfying than leaving a mysterious end "to be continued" end. Mainly because everything was wrapped up in a nice neat bow. And that never felt like Farscape.

Forum Explorer

2013-09-07, 01:39 PM

Wasn't it at least foreshadowed earlier? When she was first converted? Yeah, it's not said, but to follow your example, it's like someone's been coughing the entire show, maybe even getting some blood up, and then they die of TB. Yeah, it's not actually mentioned, but it's not as sudden as people think.

TTGL
Not really. Though personally I think her conversion was more then a bit of an ***pull as well.

Regardless we did get one brief moment in the final fight where she randomly glowed after her father sacrificed herself. I think that was meant to be foreshadowing.

Really my problem with the whole thing is that it was too clean. You want her to die? Then for the final fight, make it clear that she is in pain and suffering. Make it so that we can see her unraveling as the fight goes on. Then her surviving to make it to her wedding and even appearing normal and happy for a moment seems more a supreme act of will of a dying women, not she randomly transforms into bubbles

NihhusHuotAliro

2013-09-09, 01:07 PM

Little Women. That was an absolutely wrong ending for that book. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

Also, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had a dumb ending, but really, a dumb last third. Should have ended it with "All right, then, I'll go to hell". (sincere apologies for the swear, but the line is ruined without it, and it's not an obscene usage; and it's probably the best line in literature).

Frank Herbert's The White Plague has one of the best setups ever in my opinion, and one of the most disappointing payoffs; the last half to two-thirds of the book is, in my opinion, vastly inferior to the first third-to-half.

Arkhosia

2013-09-09, 03:51 PM

Mikeavelli

2013-09-09, 05:45 PM

Honestly, the ending to the anime of Flame of Recca was so bad it was almost physically painful. I get that the anime was canceled early, so I can almost forgive killing off the two main villains in a poorly animated, off-screen car crash, but to spend the last minute or so having the main characters discuss the various plot threads that are still unresolved is beyond infuriating. :smallfurious:

It's tradition for Anime that end before the end of the Manga plot to do this, sort of a ham-fisted way for the studio to let the fans know there's still more to the story. Maybe rabble rabble rabble for a sequel.

See Also: Claymore, Groove Adventure Rave.

That said, I always figured Kurei intentionally got hit by the car, and then beat it up with his fire powers. Sorta've like This guy. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlnOWb6qUtM)

It should end when TIM is taken care of, Shepard activates the Crucible, and sits down next to Anderson, both of them looking at the sun together. What will the Crucible do? Will it even work? Shepard did all s/he could, and only time will tell what will the future bring... Cue credit roll.

Sometimes the uncertain is better than an unsatisfying explanation. Also, the rage of the fandom would make it even more worth it.

I agree.

They sit down, see the Sun peak out over the edge of the earth. Radio comes in with an explanation for what the hell just happened. All that's intelligible through the static is "It worked, Commander." Fade to credits.

---

From what I hear, the original ending was going to have a less nonsensical answer to why organics had to be reaped every cycle, which depended on Dark Matter, and stars mysteriously dying like what happened in Tali's recruitment mission. Ideally, the Crucible would have been a magical thing that solves that problem, removing the need for reaping.