10 Final Levels That Almost Ruined Incredible Video Games
10. Halo 2
How it ended: "Sir, finishing this fight." Those four immortal words left fans of the Halo series foaming at the mouth when they finally reached the climax of Halo 2's campaign mode. After spending what felt like an eon fighting your way to and defeating Tartarus (the brute leader) as the Arbiter, focus was immediately placed back on Spartan 'Master Chief' 117 just as he reached Earth's atmosphere aboard Covenant leader Truth's Forerunner ship. Only, instead of one final mission as the Chief, where many expected to be tasked with the mission of stopping Truth's journey to Earth, Halo 2's narrative ends on a total cliffhanger without so much as a goodbye. Bungie saw fit to leave players hanging in the balance until Halo 3's eventual release in 2007. How it should have ended: Instead of the cheap bailout that was the game's abrupt ending, Bungie should have pushed disc space and included one final mission to wrap events up tidily. Now that everyone knows what happens directly following the events of the second game, there's no reason why Halo 2 couldn't have ended with Master Chief landing on Earth and attempting to stop Truth from activating the Ark. A glimpse of what would happen when the Forerunner structure was activated would have been a far better closing scene than what was eventually decided upon.
Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.
