10 Worst Video Game Endings of the Decade So Far

10 Worst Video Game Endings of the Decade So Far

Welcome to MojoPlays and today we’re looking at video game endings from 2020 to 2026 that left us feeling dissatisfied or flat out disappointed. Naturally, there will be plenty of spoilers ahead.

“Deathloop” (2021)

While “Deathloop” has its strong points, the story leaves a bit to be desired. And that’s especially the case with the ending. Arkane's inventive time-loop shooter had players plotting the perfect assassination run across Blackreef, piecing together the history of the island and yourself along the way. When you finally pull it off, the ending boils down to a choice that ultimately feels thin and hollow, given everything you've just experienced. You can spare Julianna, your twist reveal daughter who’s been hunting you the whole game for justifiable reasons. In which case, you team up to live on through the loops. If you kill her and break the loop, but not yourself, you’re trapped in the loop alone. If both Julianna and Colt die, you wake up, with Julianna leaving you to brave the apocalyptic-looking landscape by yourself. Either way, it cuts to black before exploring either outcome. The devs had to release an update for this ending, to try and make it feel less empty. With how much planning you have to do to get here, we expected something a lot less ambiguous.

“Mortal Kombat 1” (2023)

Rebooting your universe can come with certain consequences, even from within the universe itself. “Mortal Kombat 1” promised a fresh timeline under Liu Kang's watchful eye, and for a while, it was genuinely fun seeing the story’s fresh ideas. But when the climax arrives and Titan Shang Tsung is finally confronted, everything the story had built up is thrown out the window in favor of a multiversal brawl. It’s pure spectacle over substance. Instead of payoffs for the character plotlines we had been following, it’s a mish-mash of ideas thrown into a blender and justified by the multiverse. It’s loud, messy, and rushed, but still takes a moment to set up the future paid DLC. It’s an unfortunate pivot, given the grounded, Outworld-based plot taking up the majority of the story.

“Hell is Us” (2025)

Rogue Factor's “Hell is Us” is an atmospheric, mystery-drenched action adventure game, and it does a great job pulling you into its world. But when the credits finally roll, it feels like you haven’t finished exploring that world. Far from it. After reliving his experiences in a war-torn, supernatural entity-infested country, Rémi is rescued from his captors by his mother, who faked her own death. It ends abruptly after that, with a lot of the interesting lore previously set up, particularly with the Eye of God, being left unexplored. It all feels incredibly rushed through, positioned as the first chapter to a larger story. It had us in its clutches, and then chose to go with sequel bait.

“The Callisto Protocol” (2022)

There was a lot of pressure on “The Callisto Protocol,” Glen Schofield's spiritual follow-up to “Dead Space.” And there are several ways in which it failed to live up to it. Jacob Lee's journey through the Black Iron Prison may have shown some promise in its story at certain points, if not its gameplay loop. But the abrupt, DLC-baiting finale feels like a slap across the face. After the final boss encounter, and getting your friend Dani to an escape pod, you’re told there might be another way out…before that final boss pops out for a jump scare and the game cuts to black. As if that weren’t bad enough, the “Final Transmission” DLC reveals Jacob survived, has you go through an entire escape plan, only to reveal that was a dying dream; a second offense given to any player who bothered to venture this far.

“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III” (2023)

The campaign of “Modern Warfare III” was criticized by basically everyone for being far too short. While it had the unenviable task of concluding the trilogy's rebooted storyline, it not only failed to stick the landing, it arguably retroactively dimmed some of the goodwill earned by its predecessors. It ends with the death of Soap, one of the franchise's most beloved characters, at the hands of Makarov. And after scattering his ashes…that’s it. It feels much more like a midpoint than an ending. Even the post-credits scene, with Price assassinating Shepherd, feels unearned. Where the members of Task Force 141 and their villains were treated with surprising depth in their original iteration, that’s the opposite case here. It’s all empty, and a sad follow up to the original trilogy.

“The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope” (2020)

Supermassive’s second entry in “The Dark Pictures Anthology” is, for the most part, a creepy little tale set in a town with ties to the Salem Witch Trials, where you’re hunted by demonic creatures. Like the studio’s previous games, it gives you decisions you think will matter. But the ending makes it abundantly clear that none of them do. It’s revealed that everyone who survived the bus crash at the start of the game, and even the creatures themselves, were hallucinations of the bus driver, brought on by his survivor’s guilt from being the only one left alive from the fire that killed his family, as shown in the game’s prologue. The ending erases the stakes of every decision you made throughout the game, and invalidates player agency rather than honoring it.

“MindsEye” (2025)

There are so many other problems with “MindsEye,” there’s no way a good ending would have saved it. Nevertheless, it has a bad one. As the rogue Silva bots open a portal to the world of the Kin, it’s perfectly set up for Jacob to play martyr and sacrifice himself to save Earth from invasion. It’s supposed to feel emotional and impactful, but none of this feels earned. And with no body, it’s set up for his return in a sequel. This belief that players would want more of this is enforced by a post-credits tease, as a robot rises back up. It's a cheap set up, and it doesn’t help that it arrived at the end of a campaign already strained by technical issues and pacing problems.

“Redfall” (2023)

Sadly, Arkane appears for a second time on the list. For anyone who could get through the broken mess that was “Redfall,” we commend you, especially since the finale was so underwhelming. You’ve got one vampire God left to defeat, the Black Sun, who should pose a promising threat as the final boss. Turns out, she does not; you go to three points in the arena, hold one button, and she goes down. The boss is far too short to be believable as the final threat, and the ending is even shorter. With her gone, so goes the Eclipse over Redfall and most of the vampires are left to run. The expectations were low, but something this anticlimactic is almost laughable.

“Twelve Minutes” (2021)

In retrospect, anything that “Twelve Minutes” could have been remembered for, like its time loop structure used to unravel a mystery, or its stacked cast of James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe, has now been completely overshadowed by its awful shock twist ending. It is revealed that not only did you kill your wife’s father, a murder she’s accused of at the start of the game, but that he was also your father. Yep, repressed memories reveal you’re in a relationship with your half-sister. The reveal doesn't feel daring or provocative; it feels like a shocking narrative choice made for shock's sake. There’s no lead up to this either, making it completely jarring when placed within the narrative context.

“Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League” (2024)

“Kill the Justice League” is another game whose problems far extend the boundaries of the narrative. Yet, its ending still fully deserves to be here. Although you end up defeating Brainiac, you learn there are multiple other versions of him scattered throughout the multiverse, which are also now in need of stopping. The story has already been widely criticized for mishandling its characters, so the audacity to set up further plotlines through DLC was pretty gutsy. That was bad enough. The game got four post-launch seasons as you hunted down the other Brainiacs. And when you finally finished things up, the game revealed the members of the Justice League you had killed were only clones, making the entire thing pointless anyway.

Did you reach any of these disappointing conclusions? What’s the worst ending you’ve seen in a game this decade? Share your thoughts in the comments, and we’ll see you next time!