How Important are Game Endings to you?

[Regus]

Endings are extremely important to me. There is nothing more dissapointing than beating a game that you like, especially a difficult one, and your only reward for doing so is some lame ass two second long, meaningless ending, credits rolling, or even worse, the same static "GAME OVER" screen that you see when you die during the game.

I loved Soul Reaver. It didn't have an end.

Man, I love Soul Reaver as well, but I nearly punched a hole through a wall when I saw SR1's ending.

[RedCoKid]

I'd recommend Xenosaga to anyone just for the ending. It's that good.
Most of the replay value from Sakura Taisen 3 comes from trying to collect 5 different endings.
Dual Hearts was good, too. By the way, did Tumble come back to life in the end, or was that just his imagination? Was Tumble's death just a symbol of Rumble leaving the dream island? It seems to be left to the gamer's interpretation.

So yeah, endings are important and can leave you with a very good overall impression when you're through with a game.

[Yamcha]

They're more important in RPGs and adventure games where there's a story that drives or complements the gameplay and you have some emotional investment in the characters in seeing how they turn out. It also depends on how much the story is emphasized in the game. In a game like Zelda WW, there is a pretty good story, but the focus is on the exploration and gameplay, so the fairly subdued ending was fine with me. In some cases, a good or bad ending definitely affects my final opinion of the game. There are some cases where a less than great game had a great ending and I ended up liking it more than I would have, and vice versa. For other genres, it's nice to have an ending screen, but no big deal.

[Master]

Not for me. I never pay attention to the story anyway.

[Ojisan]

Game endings I really dont care for, unless its an RPG. In that case, for some reason I almost never finish RPGs, which I have no idea why I dont.

Maybe its because once you beat the RPG, thats it, nothing more. Unbeaten, you can always think and have an open mind about what the ending is like.

Ex. FF7, never finished it because I didnt want it to end eh?

[BioMechanic]

Originally posted by Regus
Man, I love Soul Reaver as well, but I nearly punched a hole through a wall when I saw SR1's ending.

Don't get me wrong, so did I. But the lack of closure (to put it mildly) didn't ruin the experience of playing the game for me. The rest of the game, up until the ending, was amazing. The fact that the ending sucked didn't change that for me.

I think a book or film can be totally ruined by a poor ending, but not a game - it's too interactive an experience.

A fantastic ending can make a game stand out (like Masters said), but if Klonoa hadn't had the ending it did, it would still be a masterpiece of gaming.....just not perhaps a masterful story.

[Megatron]

There are very important to me.

[StriderKyo]

I want one mother of an ending on my games. All the frickin' time.

Like, after playing more than 100 games I finally win the NBA championship, and I get a single screen with a rotating trophy. That's incredibly lame, and makes me wonder why I even bothered.

I also really hate it when the intro is longer/better than the ending, a la Code Veronica.

Of course the game's important, but the ending's a part of the game too. It should make you feel rewarded for your accomplishments. Too often a shoddy ending just feels like the devs ran out of time and had other things to take care of (hello, Halo!).

[NeoZeedeater]

I love good endings. Although my brain has a bad habit of never remembering endings, probably from too many games being beaten late at night.

[Thief Silver]

I love in RPGs an ending that closes the current plot, but gives you some hint that life goes on or some glance into the future of the characters (I like to use my imagination, so when a game ends open, I like to think of things that could happen).