Many argue that the ending of any piece of work is the hardest part to get right. It has to close most or all of the lingering plot threads, give the characters a satisfying resolution, catch the audience off-guard, and avoid being so happy as to be saccharine while also not being so dark and sad as to render the story pointless.
With all of these, a level of coherence would seem to be a requirement. Yet with video games, as with many other art forms, there are some that end in ways that just do not make sense. Whether they are missing information, feature a hard shift from the prior story, or are simply too weird, some video game endings just don't add up.
10 Bioshock Infinite's Ending Is Notoriously Convoluted
The Bioshock games have always been fond of their plot twists - with the "Would you kindly?" twist from the very first game going down in gaming history. Nonetheless, the climax of Bioshock Infinite hits the player with such a rapid flurry of twists and questionable quantum physics that debates still rage about it today.
After defeating the Vox Populi and fleeing to Rapture, Booker and Elizabeth learn that Comstock is none other than an alternate timeline version of Booker. To counteract this, Elizabeth and several other versions of herself drown Booker at the moment of baptismal choice to prevent any version of him ever existing - which should erase her as well. If that wasn't confusing enough, the game then has Booker wake up in his office, raising the question of whether anything has changed at all over the course of the entire game.
9 Assassin's Creed Brotherhood Leaves Too Much Of An Unexplained Cliffhanger
The secondary plot threat of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood follows Desmond Miles in the real world as he continues to suffer from the Bleeding Effect, a condition that causes his memories to become confused with the genetic memories of his ancestors.
In the game's finale, Desmond succumbs to the Bleeding Effect as he and his allies travel to an ancient temple, seeing apparitions of Isu deities who rant and rave about humanity. As he touches the Apple of Eden, he is possessed by Juno, one of these entities, and forced to stab his friend Lucy before falling into a coma. The later games explain some of the ending, but in the context of Brotherhood it is almost nonsensical.
8 Spore Ends On What Seems Like A Joke
Spore isn't necessarily a game that takes itself wholly seriouly, but its tale of a species going from from individual cells to a galaxy-spanning explorers is reasonably coherent and enjoyable. Its ending, however, is a different story.
After battling their way through the enormous 2400 planet-strong Grox Empire to reach the galactic centre, the player gets a cutscene with a high-pitched alien named Steve who congratulates them, gives them an item, and then invites them to a presentation to buy a time share. The ending forms part of the game's notoriety with how odd it is.
7 Fire Emblem Awakening Sees An Unexplained Recovery
The endings of Fire Emblem Awakening are unusual in that they are largely straightforward and make sense, except for one aspect of one ending. After defeating the dragon Grima, the player has to choose between simply banishing it for a thousand years, or having their Avatar sacrifice themself to kill it permanently.
If the latter option is chosen, it appears that the Avatar did succeed in killing the dragon, but died in the process. In a post-game cutscene, however, their friends come across them in a field in a recreation of the first time they met. Aside from a brief mention by Naga earlier in the game, no explanation is given for how the Avatar survives, and it distinctly undercuts the game's final choice.
6 Bloodborne's Yharnam Sunrise Simply Doesn't Give Enough Answers
The games made by FromSoftware are deliberately opaque in their storytelling, preferring to let players interpret the events of the game how they wish. Nonetheless, their endings are usually understandable enough, giving the player enough information to follow what is going on. This is true for two endings of Bloodborne, but not its "Yharnam Sunrise" ending.
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In this ending, the Hunter submits to Gehrman and is beheaded with his scythe, waking up in a deserted Yharnam in the morning. While the sequence of events is clear, there is simply no context given, making it impossible to tell if any of the game's events really happened, if Yharnam has been saved, or if the Hunter even remembers the night of the hunt. Ambiguity is well and good, but for some, Bloodborne takes it too far.
5 No Man's Sky Initially Ended In A Flat Reset
The initial release of No Man's Sky lives on in notoriety, but few can deny the huge strides made with the game since then, bringing it more than up to scratch with what was initially expected. One of the points of criticism in the game's earliest release is the story and its ending. After following signals to the centre of the galaxy, the player reaches it, and is promptly sent into a new galaxy to restart the game, with little explanation.
The story has been overhauled since then to give far more explanation and context, as well as to give players a choice in whether they enter a new galaxy. Nonetheless, its first iteration has gone down in history as not only nonsensical, but also nearly a non-ending.
4 Drakengard's Ending E Is A Joke Turned Canon
Drakengard is a classic 2000s RPG that, despite its strange story, has relatively normal endings in comparison. Its fifth ending, Ending E, however, is deliberately odd because it was conceived as a joke. In it, the characters fight the villain into a portal, which emerges into modern-day Tokyo, where the three engage in a rhythm battle before jet fighters kill the protagonists.
As odd as it is, it could be written off as a joke, and not meant to make sense. Since then, however, the games NieR and NieR Automata have been developed as canonical sequels to that specific ending and its effects on Earth. As such, it has to be taken as a canon ending, and how little sense it makes becomes obvious.
3 Knight Of The Old Republic II Is Literally Unfinished
Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic is an iconic computer RPG, and widely considered both one of the best Star Wars games and one of the best RPGs of all time. Its follow-up also has a huge amount of regard, but is notorious for its unfinished nature, being rushed for a Christmas release.
One of the areas worst-hit is the ending. The player battles through Malachor V, and confronts Kreia. There, after a short battle, they are told the fates of their companions - who are not seen during the ending - before being rescued by their ship which was last seen plumetting to its doom. Very little is explained, and the entire series of events is heavily disjointed.
2 Minecraft Gets Very Meta
As an open-world sandbox game, Minecraft has very little story about it. The game does have a canonical endpoint, however, suitably found in an area known as The End after the player battles the Ender Dragon.
After beating the beast, the player is treated to a screen where two entities discuss them. Not their character, but the player themselves. The two entities discuss how Minecraft is like a metaphor for real life and how the positive lessons learned from the game can be taken into the real world. The exchange is uplifting and wholesome, but also incredibly unexpected and entirely unlike anything else in the game.
1 Metal Gear Solid 2 Deliberately Makes No Sense
The games of the Metal Gear franchise are notorious for their unusual plotlines, strange characters, and all-around weirdness. Their plots are high-concept at best, and almost incomprehensible at worst. One game in particular, and especially its ending, stand out as particularly strange.
Creator Hideo Kojima deliberately wrote Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty to dissuade further sequels, and as such the ending features contradictory information, deliberately unclear plot twists, and ends with the revelation that the major conspirators behind the game's events have been dead for years. Even the characters stop pretending to understand.