10 Video Game Ending Tropes That Need To Die

COMPLETIONIST ENDINGS

Congrats, player? You got to the end? Here, look at these credits! You finished the game- or did you? No, see, as it turns out, if you want to see the real ending, you’re going to have to do more than what you just did. You either collect all this stuff – and you better collect all of it – or you play through the game again and make some different choices.

Alright, we’re being a little hard on such endings. They can actually be a great blast, especially when they’re done right. I mean, look at the Drakengard games, and look at NieR: Automata. Replaying those to get to the true ending is always fun. But when that ending is gated behind doing something ridiculous? That’s not fun. Assassin’s Creed 2 took this one step further- not because you couldn’t get to the true ending, but because you just couldn’t get to the only ending – or Sequence 14, to be more specific – until you’ve collected every single codex page. Now go back and scour the entire game up until this point to make sure you haven’t missed any of those. Fun, right?