This might be a bad way to start off a “top 10 video game endings list,” but I strongly believe that video game endings are a bit overrated.
A poorly done ending in a video game often brings outrage that I think is a bit over the top. I believe that people are too quick to write off an entire experience because of a poorly done conclusion. But also, I do get it to some extent. It’s disappointing when an ending misses the mark because almost nothing hits like when a story has the perfect finale.
It’s especially disappointing because I truly think that endings hit harder in a video game than any other form of art. That extra level of interactivity and, at times, player agency, can lead to experiences that feel much more profound and personal. Many of the best gaming moments of my life have come at the end of a game, when everything comes together in a way I didn’t quite expect.
In honor of my piece on SOMA this week, I decided to finally put together my 10 favorite video game endings ever. I’m not going to lie, this was a very emotionally taxing list to put together. All of these endings made me feel incredibly strong emotions when they happened. Reliving them all again was amazing, but I don’t always like feeling things as much as I have while working on this the past few days!
For many of these, it was the first time that I had rewatched the ending since becoming a parent, and it’s incredible how many of them hit completely differently now. Because of all that, making this list was a real journey for me, and I hope it’s a fun but emotional journey for those of you who read it as well. There are a lot of sacred and very special memories in this list.
Let’s get to it!
10. BioShock
There are many endings out there that are much more elaborate than this one, but the good ending in BioShock has stuck with me for almost 20 years now, and it has had a real impact on my life.
Throughout the game, you can choose whether to save the “little sisters” you find or harvest them for more upgrade materials. If you choose to save them, you get fewer upgrade materials. The big reward for doing so comes at the end. The main character in the game, Jack, takes the little sisters that he saved out of Rapture and ends up raising them all, giving them the normal lives that they never would have had before. You see the hands of the little sisters change as they graduate from school, get married, and then appear to be there for Jack when he is on his deathbed. It’s a simple happy ending, but it’s so beautifully done.
I think most lists might have the BioShock Infinite ending, which is a wild ending in many ways, but this ending means a lot to me. I played this game when I was 19, and I had never really even thought about becoming a father one day up to that point. In roughly one minute, BioShock somehow showed the value and power of being a parent more than anything else I had seen in my life.
Over 15 years later, I was married and my wife wanted to have conversations about having children. I was very hesitant about doing so for a long time. Many factors eventually led me to decide to make the foray into parenthood, and at least one was remembering how much this ending touched me. There are “better” endings out there, but few have meant as much to me, and I’m certainly glad it helped lead me down the path I am on.
9. SOMA
I wrote about this ending earlier this week. I actually had several issues with SOMA, but the ending was so good that it honestly covered for quite a few of them. I haven’t completely stopped thinking about this ending since I beat the game a few weeks ago, and I expect that I won’t forget about it anytime soon.
You actually play as four different characters over the course of SOMA. Several times during the game, a “copy” of Simon’s brain is made. Each time this occurs, leading up to the ending, your perspective shifts to the new Simon.
Once you reach the end of the game, Simon is copying his mind for the last time in order to put himself on an “ARK,” which is the last method of preserving humanity. While we all inherently know that Simon will still be stuck on the station after the copy is made, every expectation is for the game to shift once again after it happens. Instead, it leaves you in the current Simon’s shoes. He realizes that he is stuck on the station and lashes out at his companion, Catherine, who ends up dying because of the confrontation. Now, Simon is completely alone. It’s haunting and fascinating all at the same time. After the credits, the game does show you what the ARK looks like, which is a nice way to cap things off. So the ending gives you a shock but then still manages to provide a nice conclusion (which is still kind of haunting when you know how it ended for the other Simon). It’s a best of all worlds ending.
8. Ghost of Tsushima
There’s something I really love about when a game gives you a choice at the very end, when there have been no choices to make until that point. It’s beautiful because it totally throws me off guard. It becomes an extra “twist” just by being a choice in and of itself. I’d easily say that Ghost of Tsushima is one of the best examples ever of this.
If you zoom out, the ending to Ghost of Tsushima seems unremarkable. When you reach the end of the game, you must choose whether to kill or spare Lord Shimura, the final boss in the game. Shimura has a complicated backstory with the lead character, Jin, so this is not a simple decision.
It becomes even more complicated when you think about experiencing this decision in the modern day. In 2026, killing someone is generally viewed as the ultimate punishment. It’s the most ruthless thing you can do. However, with Shimura’s honor code, killing him is actually the “merciful” choice, as letting him live after his defeat would be the ultimate shame. Meanwhile, as Jin, you have been breaking this honor code left and right in order to save the island you are on. In some respects, killing him doesn’t make any sense, as that code of honor wasn’t able to get you to where you are today. However, because of the backstory between the characters, the “merciful” killing also feels right.
No matter what you do, it perfectly ends the journey, and I’d say it was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made in a video game. It was masterfully done.
7. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
Most of the endings on here are less than 10 minutes. The Death Stranding 2 ending feels like it might be two hours, but god damn, it is just an incredible ride.
There’s too much going on here for me to even briefly summarize it, but you can see a lot of my thoughts on the ending here.
Essentially, it just weaves together many plot threads so perfectly. There is one mind blowing moment after another for over an hour. It also really touched me as a parent. It made me reflect on how often I like to think ahead to the future, and how much I need to also spend some time in the present. The reunion of Sam and Tomorrow is so wonderful. I also had no interest in a Death Stranding 3, but the ending actually set up a scenario where I think I’d like to see it. This is a very recent ending, but I am still thinking about it months after completing it, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
6. The Walking Dead: Season One
This is another example of a game giving you a simple choice that feels so difficult and devastating thanks to all the context built around it.
You spend most of The Walking Dead getting attached to both Lee and Clementine during their journey together. More than anything, this series is about Clementine’s growth and the tragic need for a young child to adapt to what is now an incredibly cruel world.
When you reach the end of the game, Clementine discovers that her protector, Lee, has been bitten. You must make the awful choice to have Clementine shoot Lee to prevent him from turning into a walker, or to simply walk away and let him turn.
In pretty much every zombie media ever, the choice here is clear. You always shoot someone who is going to turn. This prevents them from harming others later on and is just the merciful thing to do. We have no idea what existence is like as a walker or if part of that person is still in there. Allowing someone to turn instead of giving them a quick death makes no sense.
And yet, Clementine is still a child. She has grown close to Lee over their several months together. Forcing her to shoot her friend and protector is also unbelievably cruel.
When I originally played the game, I reluctantly had Clementine kill Lee. Now, as a parent, I think I’d choose the other way. But the fact that I still struggle with the right call all these years later really shows how great this was.
5. Hades
Like any roguelike, Hades is all about repeatedly confronting the same foes and bosses until you finally emerge victorious. To achieve the game’s “true” ending, our hero Zagreus must defeat his father, Hades, ten times throughout his various attempts to escape the Underworld. Unless you consult a guide, you won’t know how many times you need to beat Hades to “truly” complete the game.
Finally, when you reach Hades to try and defeat him for the 10th time, something I never could have imagined happens. Rather than fight him again, he steps aside and lets you pass. The fight you are gearing up for doesn’t happen. I was absolutely stunned.
It’s such a brilliant move because it’s something that could only really happen in a roguelike game. In almost any other genre, people would be furious if you didn’t have to fight the final boss to complete the game. But because I had already fought Hades plenty of times before that, it ended up being the coolest way that they could have possibly ended the game. Roguelikes on the whole tend to have a hard time with storytelling, as the format of the games and the repetition make it difficult. But Hades somehow used the genre to enhance the storytelling instead of letting it be a detriment.
The actual ending from there is also wonderful, as Zagreus gets his whole family reunited. This was shocking and lovely all at the same time.
4. Journey
Journey is a bit abstract in nature. I think the coolest element of its ending is that you can take many messages from it, depending on how you interpret the way the game plays out.
Your goal in the game is to reach a mountaintop where a glowing light is present. You also play the game with silent co-op partners whom you randomly find online. Near the end of the game, as you try to climb the final mountain, your character collapses. You are rescued by mysterious figures that allow you to fly to the ending location before you finally walk into a glowing light. From there, a shooting star slowly returns to the start of where the journey began.
At the time, the way you walk into the light at the end feels so much like what many imagine death to be that I couldn’t help but see it that way. As I’ve thought about it over the years, I’ve come to think of Journey as more representing what happens when we strive towards literally any goal in life. If we want something big, it’s always going to be a difficult path. But much like the robed figures and your co-op partners help you along the way, there’s almost no way to reach a big goal without some help from others. Journey’s ending is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever experienced on an audiovisual level, but the amount of different interpretations that can stem from it are equally thrilling to me.
3. To the Moon
Your goal in To the Moon is to implant memories into a dying person so that they can feel like they lived out their greatest desire before they go. And obviously, since the memories were implanted, they will be none the wiser and actually think that they happened. On this particular mission, you are trying to implant a memory into a man named Johnny so that he thinks he went to the moon, which was one of his biggest dreams in life that never came to fruition.
In order to implant memories in someone, it all needs to make sense. You can’t just randomly make someone go to the moon in their memories. There needs to be a logical life path that leads to that conclusion. Throughout To The Moon, you discover why Johnny’s life ended up how it did, and it is devastating. Johnny did not live the life that he wanted or deserved (and neither did his wife), and it wasn’t his fault in the slightest.
The team is able to implant memories and make Johnny basically live the life he would have always dreamed of. They are able to do this while still having him get with the same woman than he did in real life. Johnny’s relationship with his wife also ends up being significantly better in this timeline. Additionally, his brother, who died when he was young, is able to stay alive in his memories now.
In so many ways, it’s an incredibly happy ending, but it also makes me so damn sad. Does it matter that Johnny dies with memories that aren’t his? Does it make it better knowing that these are the memories he likely deserved but were taken from him due to actions outside of his control? I don’t know. After all these years, I still have no idea what the right answer is, but I do know that just thinking about it makes me emotional in a way few things do.
2. The Last of Us
I’m rarely one to think that any particular list explicitly needs a certain game to be valid. But, like, for real, any list of “best endings” should have The Last of Us on it. It just should. The conversations around this ending have continued for over a decade now simply because it is that good.
To me, I think what’s amazing about this ending is how something so powerful can be so subtle and understated. Elle asking Joel if he was telling the truth, the long stare, the lie, and then the reluctant but seemingly genuine acceptance. The writing and performances are just next level. A lot is said here without all that many words.
The ending also creates a lot of interesting scenarios to discuss. From an objective standpoint, it’s tough to justify Joel’s actions. However, I’ve also always been of the opinion that the Fireflies were pretty full of shit, and there was almost no way they were going to be able to both create a cure and be able to distribute it in any sort of effective way.
But somehow, despite Joel killing tons of people (which comes up in the sequel), the decision to lie is the one that really gets me going. And in the moment, despite Joel doing genuinely evil things and now lying to his adopted daughter, you desperately want her to accept the lie. It’s just unbelievable set up and execution. It makes me feel all sorts of complicated things. It made me think at the time, and it made me think even more after I became a parent. This is just pure art.
1. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
My friend Michaela from Dear Gamers has something called the “recency bias blast zone.” Essentially, when something is new, she is actually more likely to downgrade its rank when she thinks about it in an “all-time” context because she is so nervous about being a victim of recency bias in the other direction.
I really appreciate this measured approach. I didn’t love putting a game at #1 that I had just played within the last year. But I felt like this might be the best video game ending I had ever experienced right after it happened, and I still feel that way months later, so I’m starting to feel confident that this is legit.
I wrote extensively about the ending to the game here. There is too much going on for me to summarize it, but this has it all. As I detailed earlier, this has a surprise ending choice, which I always love (though this particular choice wasn’t hard for me personally). It makes me think about grief, the nature of existence, the nature of reality, and even a bit of utilitarianism.
More than anything, the reason I feel more and more confident putting this ending at #1 is because I keep having awesome conversations about it. Perhaps more than anything else here, I feel that whenever I discuss this ending with someone, I learn something deep about them. I learn about some of the things they’ve gone through in life, and often, those things lead people to make the decision they make here. My own battles with existentialism led me to my own choice, and I stand by the Maelle ending to this day. But the Verso ending is equally compelling. The fact that both endings are so awesome makes it that much easier to put this at #1.
Some of the best gaming conversations of my life have been in the past year, and it has been thanks to this ending. I think it’s been long enough that I feel comfortable saying this is the greatest ending I have ever experienced.
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