Post-credits scenes have become increasingly popular in recent years. Movie and video game franchises have decided that since they’re planning on making a sequel, they might as well tease that sequel in a post-credits cliffhanger! Unfortuꦺnately, that can be a really harmful way to end an experience. Instead of giving us proper resolution, developers throw unnecessary cliffhangers at us so we come back for future installments.
Of course, not all post-credits scenes relate to sequels and cliffhangers. Several post-credits endings on this list contradict with the rest of their game. They either clash with game🥃 lore or stupidly complicate the game’s simple, well-written ending.
Then there are the post-credits scenes that reveal the entire game was a dream. Only a few games on this list utilize this trope, but those few games are awful! This trope is old and cheap at this point. It doesn’t work particularly well in movies or books, but it’s especially harmful in video games. As an interactive medium, video🎶 games give us more control than other media. By ending a game with “it was all a dream,” the developers take away our control and 🃏make our actions feel pointless.
Warning: this article contains major spoilers! After all, I’m talking about post-credits endings, which usually relate to the 🐓major pre-credits endings. But I hope you’re fine with spoilers, because these game-breaking scenes are worth discussing! Hopefully, these developers learn from their mistakes and design post-credits endings that benefit their games instead 💦of ending games on a wrong note.
25 🍨 Mass Eff🥃ect 3... Enough Said.
The post-credits scene in Mass Effect 3 takes place long after the game’s events—and it’s even worse than the regul🔯ar ending. A father or mother tells their son stories of “the Shepard.” When he/she begins another story, the scene fades, and a message from the developers says Shepard’s story isn’t truly o💫ver: there’ll be DLC that expands his/her story.
This scene is terrible in every way! Poor voice acting combines with boring, cheesy writing. The developers blatantly advertise DLC instead of letting players immerse in Mass Effect 3’s ending. When I play the last gam🥀e of a choice-based trilogy, I want𓆏 a satisfying end for the characters; I don’t want a message saying “give us your money for the true ending.”
24 Darth Vader Wins! – Star Wars Ro♏gue Squadron II: Rogue Leader
The regular ending of Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader ends like the original movie trilogy: the Rebels💧 defeat the Empire. But 🥂once you beat the game and watch the credits, you have the opportunity to unlock two secret missions.
In these final missions, you actually play as Darth Vader!
This 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:secret alternate ending takes you back to the beginning of the game, where you defend theඣ Death Star as Darth Vader and subsequently destroy the Rebel base. It’s fun playing as Darth Vader, but it’s also brutal. Destroying Luke and Leia feels awful, and it completely contradicts the rest of the game.
23 The Ending That Lets YOU Break The 🌜Game – Halo: Reach
The post-credits ending of Halo: Reach is amazing! Instead of ending with a sad cutscene where the Covenant overwhelms your character, you battle overwhelming Covenant forces! You fight against impossible odds and eventually fall at the hands of the Covenant. Bungie wonderfully utilized the game’s central mode (fight challenging, endless waves of enem𒉰ies as long as you can) to create a devastating interactive ending.
I included this ending because players found ways to break the game. Since it’s an interactive ending, you can survive forever with either incredible skill or the game-breaking tactic of hiding behind boxes, where enemies can’t🐽 hurt you. But be warned: your Xbox will overheat.
22 🌊 There’s No WAY He Could Have Sꦍurvived – Metal Gear
You destroy Big Boss at the end of Metal Gear. There’s no question. You fight him, and he literally disappears. Yet the postܫ-credits scene comple🦩tely discards the ending by revealing that Big Boss is alive and looking forward to the next fight.
If Konami really wanted Big Boss to miraculously survive the explosion at the end of Metal Gear, Big Boss should have fallen and not disappeared when you defeat him. That way he co🐎uld have conceivably escaped the facility after you abandoned him. As it is, the post-credits cliffhanger m𒁃akes absolutely no sense.
21 What’s This Have🥃 To Do With The Game I Just Played? – Kingdom Hearts 2 🍷
The default post-credits scene of Kingdom Hearts 2 is great! The lighthearted ending brings together the main characters, who happily reunite and set off for more adventures. But if you fulfill the right requirements, you’ll unlock a ꦇsecond, secr🏅et post-credits scene that abandons resolution for over-the-top cliffhangers.
The post-credits scene is epic but way too vague.
Three knights grab Keyblades amongst hundreds of Keyblades, which lie scattered across a battlefield. That’s it. We haveꦛ no idea who these characters are, what they want, or how they’re connected to the protagonist. For all we know, they might not even be villains! If you want a good clif🅘fhanger, Square Enix, you need to connect it to the game we just played.
20 It Was All A Simulation! – Prey (2017) ꦕ
Prey (2017) presents some awesome, high-stakes ꩲchoices! Some choices save other characters; some determine your own character’s fate. But those outcomes drastically change in the post-credits scene, where you learn the entire game was a simulation! You are actually a Typhon embedded with a human’s memories: the humans are testing you to see if the Typhon show empathy toward humans and can be reasoned with. If you made the wrong choices, the humans destroy you and prepare another test subject.
This ending is awesome in some ways, but it’sཧ also frustrating. I enjoy this meta ending and the final choice given in the post-credits scene, but I wishꦯ the developers hadn’t thrown the game’s epic main story out the window.
19 Aꦜll Those Tears For Nothꦡing – Final Fantasy X
Before the credits, Final Fantasy X has an incredible—and incredibly sad—ending. You spend most of the game fearing that Yuna will sacrifice herself, but Tidus sacrifices him💧self instead. He and Yuna embrace before he disappears, and Yuna’s left to lead the world forward.
The post-credits scene ruins this powerful ending.
Instead of s✅ticking with this incredible ending and leaving fans in bittersweet tears, Square added a post-credits scene in which Tidus awakens underwater and swims to the surface. This teases Tidus’s survival in the vaguest way possibl൲e, which I find more aggravating than relieving.
18 ❀ Is That Dark Samus’s Ship!? – Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
When I finally earned the 100 percent ending for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, I was sev🤪erely disappointed by the post-credits scene I unlocked. Admittedly, my disappointment came from personal misinterpretation. As Samus flies away, a mysterious spaceship follows her—and I misinterp🍒reted that as Dark Samus’s ship! After all, the ship looks like an “evil” version of Samus’s ship, and the cockpit resembles Dark Samus’s helmet.
Actually, it’s Sylux’s ship.
But the spaceship looks very little like Sylux’s original ship in Metroid Prime Hunters. So the ending isn’t all bad, but it can mislead players (like me) into thinking Dark Samus is still alive—which would make a poor ending to the Metroid Prime trilogy.
17 If They’re Clones…Why Di𒁏dn’t Anybody Notice? – Metal Gear Solid
The post-credits scene in Metal Gear Solid reveals that the President of the United States is actually the villain behind the scenes! That reveal is fun in the most ridiculous way, but the scene also reveals that the President is a clone of Big Boss—which I find incredibly dumb. I’ve never enjoyed the clone trope in the Metal Gear games, but it’s especially weird here. Would nobody recognize that the Presidentﷺ bears an uncanny resemblance to Big Boss and Soli☂d Snake?
16 How Could You? – Detroit: Become🐠 Human
After the credits roll in Detroit: Become Human, you return to t💟he menu—wh⛎ere Chloe awaits you. She comments on your playthrough and various choices.
I’m fine with some of these comments, but when she criticizes you, she breaks the game. If bad things happened to your characters, Chloe angrily asks why you would be so cruel to them. That’s fine if players are specifically trying to unlock bad eꦅndings, but it unfairly scolds players who accidentally lost their characters. Yes, I could’ve restarted the chapter, but I didn’t want to break the immersion; I wanted to follow through with my choices and endure heartbreaking consequences. Chloe’s comments also b🏅latantly tell players to replay the game for better endings, which I find annoying.