I just finally got around to beating Fable 2. I kept turning the console on and off to get all 3 achievements for the choice at the end, but when all was said and done I chose the worst one, the one that gets you 1 million dollars and makes the entire world hate you.

I felt bad about the dog and sort of missed him, but I stop playing shortly after anyway.

Still, I liked that you were forced to make that choice. I was happy with the way the game ended overall.

Just about everyone who beat Fable II contemplated writing him something saying it was inadequate. In my opinion, it was literally the worst ending of all time.

@EDS
"Still, I liked that you were forced to make that choice"

What? A one button boss battle, with zero choices in a game billed as a "choice game"? Give me Mass Effect, or something good, please!

Every Bioware end-boss battle ever is a shining example of where Molyneux went wrong.

Just read the wiki for the original little shop, yes that would've been much better.

I didn't say the end fight was good Magnalon. I said I liked the choice at the end and the fact that taking the million gold so I could get the Real Estate king achievement fucked me over on a bunch of other achievements I needed the dog for.

It was almost like my selfish choice came back to bite me in the ass. Bad karma or something.

I thought the game was good, not great. It was entirely too simple and admittedly not very immersive.

But I only rented it, so it was worth my rental.

The happy ending of Brazil sucked hard. Director's cut all the way. I'm not a happy ending person.

I didnt really like the end, because it was so anti-climatical. I mean after whats-his-face killed the dog and all, that stuff was fine. The moral choice at the end was interesting, too. It just didnt really do much in-between. I think what was missing was some kind of final challenge to overcome, it doesnt need to be a boss battle at all (because EVERYTHING does that, and in most games you can see it coming from damn near the start. Such as Mass Effect, to use Magnalons example). It just kind of... ended. You didnt even get to kill the guy.

I cried like a baby at the end of Mario Galaxy. :( All those little lumas... Baaaawwww!

I just thought it was a shit ending.

It's the first game where I actually thouroughly THOUGHT of what kind of impact the world was going to go through and I had to resurrect the dog, it was a no-brainer. I actually liked the ending because of that.

What a bunch of pussies those people.

That photo is so spot-on brilliant!

See the ending should have been in a big arena, Lucien transforms into a giant monster, your hero is beaten to a pulp and your just about to die when the ghost of your sister and dog appears to you in a vision.
With this new found courage and strength you push Lucien off run to the wall, back flip off the wall (in slow motion of course).
Now you have to face off against the boss picking off his weak points and then delivering the final blow to head, cutting it off.
Then you turn around and look at the camera and say "See you in hell..." and Lucien explodes in a big bloody explosion saying "You haven't seen the last of meeeeeeeeee!, you walk out and everyone cheers.

If the dog thing was a spoiler, I'll rage.

My only problem with the ending was that, without the dog, a lot of the post game adventure becomes problematic. From a story perspective, the ending was very nice, I thought. Less so from a gaming perspective.

The 'final challenge' that ajaxender speaks of was the decision to leave the perfect world at the end, in favour of going back to the real one. But that was entirely story based, rather then a gaming challenge.

i would like people to spam hate mail @ Moly' for NOT BRINGING FABLE 2 TO THE PC ><

The suck of Fable 2's ending has nothing to do with it being "happy" or not.

@flabzilla

I lol'd.

I dug that it wasn't a big boss fight at the end. That wasn't the point, in my opinion. The point was the completion of the story. What good story ends, really ends, with an uber-boss fight?

It's called Fable not Brawler, ya know?

Most of time I don't care is the ending good or bad as long as it suits rest of the game. Say prototype, you are the most horrible thing that could happen to the city and yet you are, in the end, some kind of saint, it doesn't make sense.

I don't like it, and I don't agree with it, but it seems like that if you want to play a game which contains game-altering choices, then you will have to settle for slides with a voice-over as an ending.

@Magnalon

Its almost like we played two different games, which in itself is really fascinating...

Lucien isn't the pinnacle of villian-dom, but I think he was well developed considering the POV of Fable II's story. You meet him at the beginning and he's a dick. You find the guy's diary, and you can hear the progression of this guy down a really bad path, for an arguably worthwhile cause: The ressurrection of his family. He's heartless, and pretty unwaivering in his cruelty by the time you catch up to him in the Spire mid-way, and all the way through to the end.

And then, at the end, you pretty much steal his wish! How awesome are you if all you want to do is bring your family (heh families) and dog back? Are you any better than that guy, or are you truly just as cruel?

We never get to see him brooding and twirling his curleh mustache, sure. But he serves his role, which I think should matter even less than most villians by the time you get to the end of Fable II. I personally had stronger feelings about The Hero of Skill by the end than I did for Lucien, considering the connection I felt for Fable I's Oakvale. There's a lot of grey in Fable's story, as a series, that doesn't pronounce itself in the main arch. While that arguably diminishes the main storyline, I think the world is more robust for it.

Separately, giving points to ME for having an effect on ME II? That's a parlor trick for ME II: Does that really make the first game itself any better?

It was a bad ending to a bad game. I still don't understand why this game was so popular. If it was just an action adventure, it would have bombed. Shitty, boring, repetitive action, the menu and item systems blow. It's got the worst rpg elements of any game with rpg elements, and the whole marriage, buying furniture, participating in society is just a complete waste of time. The most depressing moment in recent gaming was suffered when I realized I had been farting and dancing for a crowd of people for 5 minutes hoping one would like me enough to give me a gift. If that's your idea of fun you are a lonely, depressed person. Fable II fucking blows.

"Don’t expect us to be as merciful as that in the future"

AMEN, brother.

J03yyz has it right. There was no final boss. It was stupid.
Also the 1mil gold was the dumbest incentive ever. Any hardcore player would have had so much real-estate money by that point they'd be swimming in it. Hell, last time I played I gave a random hooker 1mil to get enough good points to learn laugh (the last expression I needed). I earned it back in a good 2-3 hours of play.
Picking to not save the dog was awful. The dog is essential for like a good 50% of the game, if not more. It was stupid to leave him dead (unless you give Peter some of your money for expansions, hur hur).
Ending was stupid, game was disappointing. It wasn't bad, it was just disappointing.

Though i haven't played Fable II after reading some comments it seems to me that perhaps the flaw of the game isn't if the ending was happy or not, but if it was suited to the very core of the game which was the moral choices that make you a hero or villain, in a weird way i find valid points in both Tubatic and Magnalon. Tubatic seems right to me here:

"And then, at the end, you pretty much steal his wish! How awesome are you if all you want to do is bring your family (heh families) and dog back? Are you any better than that guy, or are you truly just as cruel?"

sound like a valid way to interpret the outcome, and that may just be the problem, it was left to the player to infer that point. On the other hand Magnalon's point:

"What? A one button boss battle, with zero choices in a game billed as a 'choice game'? Give me Mass Effect, or something good, please! "

Which proves the old adage "it's not what you say but how you say it". In a game which main point was the options you take, being forced to take the same final choice no matter what does feel anticlimatic, even more when it's forced by another character is you don't make it. Besides that the choices feel somewhat empty if your previous actions have seemingly no effects on them (I.E. they are always the same 3 choices and consequent effects when could have been better if different options appeared according to your "alignement").

We could argue that a moral choice game should be different, but haven't we already heard how complex that is and how so very few games actually go beyond complete saint or absolute asshole (i think The Witcher is about the only one i can think of right now).

It all comes down to waiting for the next step in game evolution, where true moral choices are implemented, or rather implemented beyond the simplest way, specially when most attempts get so harshly criticized. It took a fair amount of fails before successfully getting to proper 3D jump from old 2D, but we got there, let's try to keep or minds open and criticize constructively instead of ranting wildly, at least that's my opinion.

@Magnalon

Agreed. The end of Mass Effect was, bar none, the most satisfyingly epic ending I've ever experienced in a videogame.

I had no problem with the ending, really. Only thing that bugged me is that no matter what choice you choose, Hammer puts you down and you don't have any chance to get vengeance on her talkative self. Honestly, each time I played the game I wish there was a way to make her shut up from the start...