Did That Ending Earn It? Ranking Video Game Finales From 'Standing Ovation' to 'What Was the Point'
Let's be honest: finishing a video game is a commitment. You've sunk hours — sometimes embarrassing hours — into a story, and when that final cutscene fires up, you want to feel something. Closure. Catharsis. Maybe a little emotional damage, if the game is good enough.
But not every game delivers. Some endings are the reason people still talk about a title years later. Others are the reason people leave one-star Steam reviews at 2 a.m. We're breaking it all down into a tier list that ranks video game endings by how well they actually paid off the journey — because not all credits rolls are created equal.
Buckle up. We're going to have opinions.
S-Tier: These Endings Lived Rent-Free in Your Brain
The Last of Us — Look, love it or hate it, the ending of the original The Last of Us is one of the most morally gutting conclusions in gaming history. Joel's lie. Ellie's face. That final "okay." The game didn't give you a triumphant victory lap — it gave you something messier and more human. That's exactly why people are still arguing about it at Thanksgiving dinner.
NieR: Automata — This game doesn't just have one ending. It has twenty-six. But Ending E — the one you unlock after going through the emotional meat grinder multiple times — is legitimately one of the most beautiful and hopeful things gaming has ever produced. The developers breaking the fourth wall to ask players to help each other? Sir, I was not prepared. S-Tier for life.
Red Dead Redemption 2 — Arthur Morgan's death hits different every single time. The slow crawl to that hilltop, the sunrise, the whole "I gave you all I had" energy — it's a masterclass in earned tragedy. The epilogue with John Marston adds another layer that makes the whole thing feel complete in a way most open-world games never bother attempting.
A-Tier: Solid Finales That Delivered Without Breaking You
Hollow Knight — The true ending (Embrace the Void, obviously) requires you to actually work for it, and that's part of why it lands. The base ending is fine. The secret ending is transcendent. Team Cherry understood that the best conclusions in games feel earned, not handed to you.
Hades — Technically a roguelite, so the "ending" is more of a long-form revelation, but when you finally break out of the Underworld and the story resolves? Chef's kiss. The writing team at Supergiant understood that an ending doesn't have to be a mic drop — sometimes it's a slow, satisfying exhale.
Persona 5 Royal — The base game's ending is good. Royal's true ending is better in almost every way, adding emotional weight to a story that was already doing a lot. The Maruki arc resolution alone could carry an A-Tier placement.
B-Tier: Fine. It Was Fine. We Said What We Said.
Mass Effect 3 (Extended Cut) — Okay, the Extended Cut patched a lot of wounds, but let's not pretend the ending controversy didn't happen. The core issue — that your hundreds of hours of choices largely collapsed into a color-coded decision — was a real problem. The Extended Cut made it more bearable, not great. B-Tier is generous, and we stand by it.
Cyberpunk 2077 — The multiple endings here range from genuinely moving to deeply bleak, and credit where it's due, some of them hit hard. But the lack of a truly "good" ending — where V just wins — is a deliberate creative choice that not everyone vibes with. Valid artistically, frustrating emotionally. B-Tier is the correct home.
God of War (2018) — The ending is good! Kratos and Atreus's arc lands. But it's also clearly a setup for Ragnarök, which means it never fully closes the loop. More of a very satisfying season finale than a true conclusion. Still B-Tier because Kratos carried.
C-Tier: The Ending Existed. That's About All We Can Say.
Dragon Age: Inquisition — The Trespasser DLC is the real ending, and BioWare made you pay extra for it. The base game ending is functional but weirdly anticlimactic for something that took 80+ hours to reach. Points docked for making fans do homework.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla — There are so many endings here — regional arc endings, the main story ending, the mythological stuff — that the game loses the thread entirely. By the time the credits roll, you're not sure what you were supposed to feel. Tired, mostly.
D-Tier: Fumbled on the Final Stretch
Metal Gear Survive — This game did not need to exist, and its ending did nothing to argue otherwise. A story that went nowhere, wrapped up in a way that felt like a shrug. The real tragedy is that it carries the Metal Gear name.
Fallout 4 — After everything — the factions, the settlements, the companions — you get a slideshow and a generic "you did it" conclusion that barely acknowledges the choices you made. In a series defined by the weight of your decisions, this ending felt like getting handed a participation ribbon.
The Verdict: What Separates a Great Ending from a Wasted One?
Here's the thing — a great game ending doesn't have to be happy. It doesn't have to be clean. It doesn't even have to answer every question. What it does have to do is feel intentional. The best endings on this list, from Arthur Morgan's last sunrise to 2B's sacrifice, work because every moment before them was building toward something real.
The worst endings fail because they treat the finale as a formality — a checkbox at the end of a content list rather than the emotional payoff the whole journey was pointing toward.
Games are one of the only mediums where you can spend 100 hours with a story. That's more time than most relationships. When a game nails its ending, it's one of the most rewarding experiences in entertainment. When it doesn't? Well. That's what the comment section is for.
Drop your most controversial ending takes below. We promise we can handle it. Probably.
