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The Ten Most Disappointing Endings
|  | | Next: Credits, anyone? |
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Star Control 3
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Star Control 2 was one of the best games ever created for any platform. It was a genre-bending masterpiece that wove together strategy, adventure, role-playing, and action elements. It had a huge cast of complex, endearing, and fun alien characters, wonderful dialogue, humor, and music. When Star Control 3 was announced, everyone, including the fans and the designers of Star Control 3, knew that it would be a monumental task to live up to Star Control 2. What made it worse was that Star Control 3 would be a near duplicate of Star Control 2 in terms of gameplay. But we were all rooting for the third game, because everyone who played Star Control 2 was enthralled by the Star Control legacy and wanted it to continue.
Certainly, Star Control 3 did recapture some of that feeling. There were fun aliens; the Doog and Ktang were hilarious. In fact, with the game answering many questions - such as who the Orz and Arilou were afraid of and where the Precursors ran away to - there was a lot to like for Star Control fans. Of course, the game wasn't as good as its predecessor, due to the absence of the creativity that marked Star Control 2. But while playing it, we felt it was a good adventure game nevertheless. But there was one last metric for determining whether this game would enjoy fond memories from the fans. That last metric was the ending. Star Control 2 had a great one. Star Control 3 did not.
The ending wasn't even good. In fact, there was barely an ending at all. The final battle was a letdown compared with the showdown against the Sa-Matra, and the actual finale in which you had to build the Sentience Collector was suspiciously similar to the building of the Sunray Device in Star Control 2. After the victory, there was no cutscene and no fun send-off with each alien race. Instead, the ending was just a bunch of stills and scrolling text. This was not an ending worthy of the Star Control name. It was a travesty, and it was the final nail in the coffin for a game that could have continued a much-loved legacy, if only the design team had taken the time to craft a rewarding conclusion.
Next: Credits, anyone?
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