It’s Falcon, on Gameranx,10 ridiculous video game cliffhangers

We’ve all felt the sting of an unresolved ending.

A good cliffhanger gets us pumped up and ready to see the next start of the story,and a bad one can really stilt a series.

Now, we’re not really talking about the quality of cliffhangers today.

Though some that we will talk about are pretty bad.

What we’re looking at are when a series

just kinda runs out of steam
or it’s killed prematurely,

and it’s telling you that there’s
more and you don’t get it.

And for that reason, sometimes
it’s genuinely heartbreaking.

Sometimes it’s absurd
and the height of hubris.

Hi folks, it’s Falcon,
and today, on Gameranx,

10 ridiculous video game cliffhangers

that never got resolved.

Starting at number 10.

The three words I’m about
to say are truly amazing.

I’m gonna knock ’em out for you.

Time-traveling Lincoln.

Yeah, the “Conduit 2” had
probably one of the all-time

most insane cliffhanger endings.

Clearly, one that’s not gonna be resolved,

and really couldn’t be to
anybody’s satisfaction.

So this is an alien invasion

first-person shooter on the Wii,

where you explore Washington, DC

while shooting it up against
an army of invading aliens.

Sounds pretty straightforward.

It’s fun.

Probably one of the
first and only shooters

custom-built for the
motion controls on Wii.

And it actually worked out pretty well.

But the after-credits ending,
totally, totally bonkers.

So the rest of the game is kind of like,

in aesthetic, at least, “Halo” lite.

You got glowing power armor,

kind of cartoonish but menacing
aliens, spooky corridors.

Then it just throws all of that away

and introduces this team of
time-traveling presidents

wearing steampunk armor.

And yeah, it includes Honest Abe Lincoln.

If there were a “Conduit 3,”
you’d be probably working

alongside steampunk Lincoln
from the past in the present,

and/or future, or maybe going
back to the past, who knows?

I don’t know. None of it makes any sense.

You’re talking to time-traveling Lincoln.

I don’t think that I could possibly

truly describe the feeling that you get

when you aren’t expecting this.

Like you’re watching a
list where you’re like,

“Ah, there’s gonna be ridiculous twists

“and things that they didn’t resolve,

“possibly because they couldn’t.”

So you’ve got a bit of
an expectation here,

and I cannot convey what
it’s like to beat this game

and have Abraham Lincoln
and George Washington

walking out of a time
portal saying a badass line

and having the music crescendo
up to this insane thing

and then cutting the credits

and then never having anything happen

ever again in this series.

It’s insane.

So at number nine, the
president is Number I

from the game “XIII.”

Yeah, we’re going with presidents for now.

There’s a few other
presidents that we’ll talk…

Presidents are funny and weird, okay?

That’s why.

But this is probably the
biggest hit of the bunch.

“XIII” you play as an
amnesic secret agent,

played by David Duchovny,

who is very low energy in this game.

But by the end, you defeat a fascist coup,

you take down a variety
of their top staff,

you shoot your way through multiple bases.

And that feels like you’ve done a lot,

but you never find out
the identity of Number I,

who is the leader of the conspiracy.

At the very end of the game,

XIII stumbles onto a
very plot important boat,

and the story catches up
with your earliest memories.

Before the events of the game,

XIII actually discovered
Number I’s identity

and was shot for it, which
is what led to his amnesia.

Now, the memories start flooding
back and the new president,

the guy that you helped get elected,

is actually the mastermind
behind the conspiracy.

That’s where the game ends.

You can go into the comic
book source material

to see where more happens.

But it’s not clear whether or not

that’s exactly what would’ve
happened in the video games,

so not really resolved.

At number eight is multiple evil moons.

Do you remember the “Dead Space 3” DLC?

“Dead Space 3” is an overstuffed
bloated corpse of a game,

the kind that kills a franchise.

And well, they managed to
kind of surgically remove

the horror elements from the game.

The first one’s primarily a horror game.

The second one had elements of horror

and was an action game,

that really found a way to balance it out

and keep it faithful to the first.

“Dead Space 3,” while I’m not going to say

that everything about it
is bad, ’cause it’s not,

it would be a questionable statement

to say that the decisions
that went into the game

were not questionable.

Now, they did add some short DLC episodes

after the game’s release.

And they attempted to add
some spooks to the game,

little scares.

And this…

(exhales) How do I put this?

They kind of failed at this stinger.

That’s probably the best way to put it.

So in “Dead Space,” you
got the scary Necromorphs

that are reanimated flesh.

You know, that stuff.

So the final stage of that life form

is actually a moon-sized version of it.

Like enough flesh is
consumed that it is a moon

and it’s a sort of
floating-around-big-moon Necromorph.

They’re the source of the marker signal.

It’s first mentioned in “Dead Space 2,”

but they decided, “You know what?

“Let’s make it a thing in ‘Dead Space 3′

“Let’s do it. Let’s do this thing.”

And obviously, the people who
were working on “Dead Space 3”

were either different people

or the same people under duress.

So yeah, you fight one of these moons

at the end of “Dead Space 3.

Um, yeah. You just fight it.

But then, if you complete all the DLC

and you return to Earth, you
find out that it’s surrounded

by a bunch of the Brethren Moons.

So if it was real, it’d
probably be pretty scary,

but it’s not, and it makes you laugh.

“Oh, no! The Earth is
surrounded by evil moons!”

At number seven, when
you don’t fight Lan Di.

Some people say cliffhangers

and unresolved endings are
a product of extreme hubris.

Like the creators just assume
there’s going to be a sequel.

Which sometimes, sure, yeah,

that’s already something
that’s been taken care of,

and they know.

A lot of the time they don’t.

You can’t know how something
is going to perform

when you put it out there in the world,

and sometimes people
aren’t gonna respond to it

the way that people who put cliffhangers

and assume that they just
get to continue the story,

might predict.

The thing is some
cliffhangers are really great

and the next thing’s gonna happen,

maybe even because of the
cliffhanger, who knows?

The case of “Shenmue 3” having
a cliffhanger for the ending

is probably the greatest
example of hubris of all time.

So, there’s two games.

We assume that story was never gonna end.

So obviously,

when they struggled to
get funding for this one,

it took 18 years, and
finally, “Shenmue 3” here,

um, you still don’t fight the bad guy.

You basically train with kung fu masters

and spend a bunch of time
preparing to do battle in China

to take down Lan Di, the
guy who killed your father.

And he just beats you down.
It’s hardly even a battle.

And it just leaves you
exactly where you were before.

Like, “Oh, well, guess I can’t beat him.

“Guess I’m gonna need to train

“with a bunch more kung fu masters

“and become a more unstoppable badass.”

I don’t know. It’s really weird.

At number six, the president
having a heart attack

in “Condemned 2.”

Back to the president’s stuff, thank God.

A little less disappointing

than the total blue balling
that is “Shenmue 3’s” ending.

“Condemned 2” is a
very, very silly sequel.

And in the grand tradition
of silly sequels,

you build an absurd cliffhanger.

After traveling to a futuristic lair,

with sound-based devices
that spread insanity,

the game cuts away to a
presidential conference.

So he addresses the growing
violence across the nation.

Mid-speech somebody
delivers a cryptic note

saying that “remedy is among us,”

which implies that the
president is a member

of the evil Oro organization.

And also, that the vague
message just killed him.

Like he got a note and had
a heart attack and died.

What is that? What is happening?

At number five,

in “Freedom Force vs the 3rd Reich,”

Entropy meeting the
embodiment of Energy X.

This one hurts.

The “Freedom Forces” games
of these tactical RPGs,

where you control a team of superheroes.

Due to low sales and the
breakup of Irrational Games,

we’re probably never
gonna see a real sequel.

And “Freedom Force vs the 3rd
Reich” really ends on a doozy.

So despite the title, the true villain

is actually a transformed
version of your ally Alchemiss,

who becomes the
universe-destroying Entropy.

Eventually, she tries to stop
all the harm she’s caused

by erasing herself from existence.

It seems to work,

until Alchemiss appears
before a glowing figure.

It’s the living embodiment of Energy X,

the strange stuff that gives

all the heroes in “Freedom
Force” their power.

It’s a pure old-school comic book premise,

and it is a ludicrous cliffhanger.

Also, just like a lot of
other great comic books,

this one, the story just stopped

before it could actually
get a proper ending.

At number four, Darth Vader
being captured by the Rebellion

in “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II.”

Now, “The Force Unleashed II,” is kind of,

(sighs) it’s murky what to call it.

In some ways, you kinda just
wanna call it a bad game,

but in others, I enjoyed
the action of it, at times.

I don’t know.

Anyway, the original game
features two open endings

that are kind of a little
more ridiculous than this,

but nobody expecting them
to get follow through.

They’re kind of alternate universe endings

that exist just for fun.

The light side ending to
“Force Unleashed II,” however,

demands an explanation.

As a like clone thing,
you gotta track down

your evil science dad,
Darth Vader, and defeat him.

Defeating him doesn’t lead
to killing him though,

’cause the Dark Lord is
handed over to the Rebellion.

There’s just something
completely absurd to that.

Darth Vader.

Darth Vader being held
prisoner by the Rebellion.

Where do you put him?

What do you feed him?

You’ve seen what he can
do with the Force, right?

How do you hold onto that guy for a while,

just to see what happens?

That just seems like a bad decision.

And over three, Jackie’s dead girlfriend

turning into a sexy evil
angel in “The Darkness II.”

I’m one of those people that
loves “The Darkness II.”

It’s smooth, fun, frenetic,
actions fantastic.

And all the eerie interstitial visits

to the asylum are pretty effective.

Ending, however, woof.

After defeating your current nemesis,

Jackie encounters his
dead girlfriend, Jenny,

only now she’s hijacked by an evil angel

called, uh, Angelus.

After taking her over, she leaves Jackie

and his demon pals trapped in
an endless void, game over.

Weird enough to leave
Jackie seemingly defeated,

but it’s even weirder how
sexualized Jackie’s dead

and practically naked
girlfriend is depicted.

She’s like completely
innocent in the original game,

so she becomes this ludicrous,

generic M-rated video game character.

I don’t typically criticize
that type of thing,

but it’s tonally strange.

At number two, being
still stuck on the moon

in “Mega Man Legends 2.”

An old timer in the hallowed halls

of video game cliffhangers.

The original ending that made
us go, “What? That’s it?”

“Halo 2” maybe had a more abrupt ending,

but that was always going to get a sequel.

Even “Rage,”

another game had simply
stopped kind of mid-action,

that got a sequel.

“Mega Man Legends 2”
never got a follow-up,

and fans have been
begging for decades now.

At the end, our hero travels to a planet

orbiting Terra called Elysium.

Up in this empty paradise,
you do battle with Mother,

all part of a surprisingly in-depth story.

The only problem

is after you complete
your objectives there,

you’re just stuck.

There’s no way to return home.

Which we all thought
was gonna get resolved

with “Mega Man Legends
3,” and didn’t, and isn’t,

and kind of seems like it won’t.

And finally, at number one,

Eli Vance’s death from
“Half-Life 2: Episode Two.”

We all know about Eli Vance’s sudden death

at the end of this game.

He’s this beloved father figure.

He’s a source of warmth and
comfort in an unfriendly world.

And taking him from us
very much raised the stakes

on Gordon Freeman’s war
against the alien Combine.

For the longest time seemed like

we’d never get any resolution to this,

’cause Valve just basically

has refused to develop a sequel to it.

There is, however, a semi-resolution.

Don’t wanna say a full-on one.

But if you don’t want to get
spoiled by “Half-Life: Alyx,”

and you’re gonna get VR,

that’s probably gonna be the
thing that gets you there.

It’s still, in my opinion, probably

the most worth-it VR game there is.

But if you don’t wanna get spoiled,

this is that, you’re gonna get spoiled.

At the end of “Half-Life: Alyx,”

Alyx Vance meets up with G-Man.

He offers one wish,

and she changes the ending of
“Half-Life 2: Episode Two.”

She saves her father

but is placed under the control
of the G-man as payment.

Now, we do not know if this is canon.

We also don’t know if this
means there’s not going to be

a “Half-Life 2: Episode
Three” or a “Half-Life 3.”

We have no idea what this means.

It actually makes things more confusing.

Which is, of course, a
very good note to end on.

That’s all for today. Leave us a comment.

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I’m Falcon. You can follow me
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