10 Gaming Endings That Basically Doomed The Franchise

10. Choices Mean Nothing - Mass Effect 3

It's tough to think of a AAA gaming franchise that burned its bridges with fans more thoroughly than Mass Effect, which for its first two games was unquestionably one of the most immersive and smartly written blockbuster video game IP ever made.

Fans were chomping at the bit to see how BioWare would wrap up Commander Shepard's story in Mass Effect 3, while factoring in the choices they'd made throughout the series...only for the ending to reduce dozens if not hundreds of play-hours down to a simple choice: pick a colour.

That's right, Mass Effect 3's ending lays out three rigid, delineated choices which take zero account of the player's decision-making up to that point, leaving an entire fanbase feeling like they'd been bait-and-switched. The release of a "clarified" extended ending didn't much help, either.

In addition to souring fans on the third game entirely and retroactively lessening the power of the two prior games, it ruined all of BioWare's goodwill moving forward, surely contributing to the fourth game, Mass Effect: Andromeda, flopping commercially.

Reports subsequently emerged that EA had put the franchise "on ice" for the foreseeable future, and though Andromeda was hardly a great game, the series' downfall was clearly caused by Mass Effect 3 aggravating so much of the fanbase.