10 'Emotional' Video Game Endings That Fell Completely FLAT

Despite the premise of this article, it's not difficult to make this writer cry (hell, re-reading Aunt May's comic book death for the nth time was enough to set off the waterworks). Given that, Commander Shephard's self-sacrifice at the conclusion of Mass Effect 3 should have resulted in enough salty tears to short-circuit the laptop it was played on. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you look at it), the laptop remained dry as a bone as the credits rolled

More than a decade on, Mass Effect 3's ending has become a byword in the gaming industry for how not to close out a story. After three games and five years of fist-pumpingly great galactic space opera, Mass Effect stumbled at the finish line with an ending so abrupt it evoked memories of Monty Python and the Holy Grail's "everyone gets arrested" anti-climax. 

After stumbling into the final room, Shephard is essentially given a list of bullet points and asked to tick which noble death they'd prefer. It's a staggeringly blunt conclusion to the series, knocking all the wind out of the occasion like a lead pipe to the gut and ensuring Mass Effect ended on the flattest note imaginable. It's as if Bioware, having heard the old adage about it being the journey and not the destination, took that as a cue to spend years crafting the ultimate road trip only to ensure it ended by deliberately crashing into a tree.