Left Hanging / Video Games

• The Metal Gear saga surprisingly avoided this problem. The fourth game filled up pretty much all plot holes, with the exception of Fortune's Last Stand in the second game. According to Word of God however, it was originally supposed to be played straight, with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty being the last game chronologically in-universe; so whether or not Metal Gear counts as an example depends on whether one wants to invoke Fanon Discontinuity.
• Of course, due to a buttload of behind the scenes problems, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is an absolute mess. From a narrative standpoint it's a chaotic heap of unresolved plot threads barely held together by Voodoo Sharks, Plot Holes, Remixed Levels, and an entire final act that went unfinished (it only exists as a slideshow narrated by the developers in the special edition of the game). That said game somehow managed to actually be good in spite of this is nothing less than awe-inspiring.
• Arcane – Online Mystery Serial ended with a cliffhanger, since the story was Cut Short before it could be completed and the game was eventually removed from the Warner Bros. website entirely^note although it can still be played on BlueMaxima's Flashpoint.
• James Bond game Blood Stone ends with a Tomato Surprise that could been resolved in a new game, also the credits start with "James Bond will return..." But we know Bizarre is done for good and the next Bond game won't follow this one. You could however stretch things up and pretend somehow that Skyfall's villain was The Man Behind the Man.
• Chicory: A Colorful Tale: In the postgame, whether or not Blackberry and Chicory reconcile is up in the air deliberately, as neither is sure they'll meet again and Blackberry feels things went too far to make amends.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy VII has references to "Techno-Soldiers" replacing human agents of Shinra early in the game, but is never elaborated on and is forgotten once Sephiroth is introduced into the game. It is believed by many fans that the original plot of the game would have revolved around a Turned Against Their Masters scenario, which was abandoned in favor of Sephiroth. The techno-soldiers themselves finally turned up in Dirge of Cerberus, and even that game's storyline is an example of this trope with its secret ending, where Genesis Rhapsodos appears in a cave and flies away with Weiss in his arms, his motives and goals still unknown. And the next game he appears in is a prequel. The remake might bring this to fruition, due to it being a Continuity Reboot.
  • Early in Final Fantasy VIII, the heroes are assigned to help the city of Timber gain its independence from the Galbadian Republic. This storyline is quickly folded into the main plot, but the question of whether Timber becomes free in the end is never addressed. However, since the Timber mission was a low-paying and therefore low-importance goal, when the sorceress showed up and became a threat to Garden and the world itself, it sort of makes sense that no-one cared about that so much when the main plot kicked off.
  • Final Fantasy XII at some point completely forgets to resolve the Occuria situation. Yeah, the Sun-Cryst is destroyed, but why can't they make another? Why do they just seem to give up without any word? The sequel does not address this at all either. If the canceled sequel Fortress might have expanded on this issue is now a mystery for the ages.
• At the very end of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II, the player sees an ominous-looking cutscene showing the rise of a new Big Bad. This was intended to be a teaser for DA III, which was never made. Dungeon Keeper III suffered the same fate.
• The Fallout series has the Followers of the Apocalypse in the first game and the very similar tanker vagrants in Fallout 2, both are due to bugs. Although Fallout: New Vegas does feature the Followers, meaning they survived in canon even though it's impossible to get their good ending in the first game. The Fallout 3 expansion Broken Steel leaves Colonel Autumn's fate unresolved if you let him walk out of the purifier. Was he killed or captured, or did he leave the Wasteland entirely?
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War ends with Brother-Captain Gabriel Angelos swearing to defeat the demon he had accidentally unsealed from the artifact sealing it. Neither Gabe nor that particular demon have been seen for the three expansion packs that followed. The plot line is completed as of Dawn of War II: Retribution.
• Dreamfall, sequel to The Longest Journey, tied up about two of the many different plot threads left hanging over the course of the game. It doesn't even tell you what happened to the main characters. To be fair, though, it is the middle part of a trilogy. With the episodic release of Dreamfall:Chapters, the fates of the main characters were quickly resolved and slowly but surely a lot of the other plot threads are being tied up.
• The Interactive Fiction version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984) ends with Arthur setting foot on the planet Magrathea. The game promises a sequel, which of course never came.
• Gears of War series:
  • Gears of War 2 is paced from beginning to end by dropping the latest subplot and introducing a new one.
  • Gears of War 3, which Word of God confirms is definitely the last game in the series, does do a good job of wrapping up each characters' personal plot arcs and finally explains Imulsion and the Lambent, but still leaves unaddressed the Sires/New Hope Facility sub-plot from the second game, the true nature of the Locust (if any), as well as the question of who or what Queen Myrrah really was. This was solved with old forum posts and the tie-in comic The Slab. Though, Adam Fenix's disk is never brought up again.
• No More Heroes really ends with just Travis Touchdown and Henry striking each other by the Santa Destroy flag. This leaves many things to consider, such as what the UAA really is, who Travis's parents were, who Darkstar was, and, of course, if the events affected the video game's real world or if it really was Silvia's daughter Jeane day dreaming about a picture. Some, but not all, of these questions are answered in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle.
• The original Japanese release of EarthBound Beginnings ended like this. After sending Giegue packing, Ninten and his party start to walk away from the battle field... and then the scene pauses, the credits roll, and you're left with a "To be continued..." for your troubles. The then-cancelled American localization averted this, adding an epilogue that gave a proper resolution for all the characters in the game; this was kept in the game when Mother 1 + 2 was released on the Game Boy Advance years later.
• F.E.A.R. has one of your allies, Spen Jankowski, in a different area of the same operation as you. He disappears on the site. Eventually, the support guy stops mentioning him, and he never comes up again. You finally find his body in Project Origin.
• Persona 4 seems to be doing this deliberately; while the main plot is resolved well enough, there's a fair few details, large and small, left completely dangling. The largest one by far is that, despite defeating the thing that was shrouding the "Other World" in fog, the TV-based portals to the other side still function, in stark contrast to the cessation of the Dark Hour after the Big Bad of Persona 3 is defeated. The cast themselves briefly note that this has potential issues for the future. It's quite possible that Atlus has simply left hooks in for another sequel. One seemingly Left Hanging detail is actually exploited by the game: in order to get the game's Golden Ending, you have to refuse the Good Ending that the game hands you in order to find out where the protagonist and Adachi got their Personas, a detail you may have completely forgotten about.
• Medal of Honor: Rising Sun ended with the Big Bad escaping with the protagonist's captured brother. Thanks to the game performing poorly both critically and financially, the intended sequel was cancelled.
• When Mega Man 9, and later 10, were announced, people wondered if Capcom would finally fully tie together the Classic series and the Sequel Series Mega Man X. It didn't happen. If an X9 is ever announced, people will probably ask about the Elf Wars. Mega Man X8 ended on a cliffhanger that doesn't look to be resolved any time soon.
• Mega Man Legends 2 ended with Mega Man Volnutt stuck on the moon, and Roll Caskett and Tron Bonne working together to rescue him. This was left to hang for an entire decade, and with the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3, it seems it's not going to be resolved any time soon.
• Mega Man ZX Advent mostly ties all the plot points together in a satisfying conclusion...until you unlock the secret ending, which ends on the blatant Sequel Hook of Master Thomas going evil and the four thought-to-be-dead enemy Mega Men standing with him to carry out his plan. It's been over a decade since then, to the point many fans will tend to treat it as non-canon until an actual release of ZX 3 comes out.
• The Viewtiful Joe games were planned to be a trilogy, with a character in the first game even outright telling the protagonist that he'd have two more fights for justice on his hands in the future. This made it all the more incredible and infuriating when come the end of the second game, Joe's father turns out to be an evil villain, powered by a mysterious black V-Watch he acquired somehow, the superpowers and other craziness of the movies have somehow made their way into the real world, and a fortress of evil rises out of the earth in the distance, signalling the final and oh-so-presumably-epic battle and the answers to all our questions... but then, OH DEAR, the studio shut down, and we never got closure on any of that, or the overall story of the games.
• Hydrophobia ends abruptly without dealing with a lot of the plot points: the credits roll just as the heroes encounter a new danger, you never find out about the person you're trying to save, the full details of what the heck was going on is never revealed, as is info about the Big Bad and the organization behind the plot. You can get the bare bones from the various collectible documents spread about the game, but that still only gets you the lead-in to a possible reveal, which never comes.
• The original Dead Rising left off with Frank and Isabella escaping the mall and defeating an insane military general. However, Carlito spread infected orphans all over the country and Frank himself is infected. It also isn't mentioned as to whether or not Otis escaped with the survivors successfully (and there's the fact that a few of the survivors were infected anyway). The sequel pretty much confirms that the country-wide infection has more-or-less succeeded. Case West reveals that Frank and Isabella have survived, Frank is suppressing his zombification via Zombrex, and the two are hard at work to get to the bottom of the whole mess.
• Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse leaves the final fate of Misaki unmentioned, last seen finally figuring out the indentity of the 'Miya' she had been searching for all the time and fainting. Averted when finishing the game on Hard Mode, as the Photograph Ending shows that Misaki survived and managed a final goodbye to Madoka's spirit.
• The bizarre ending to Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge has never been resolved — by the time The Curse of Monkey Island came around, Ron Gilbert was no longer working on the series, and the devs for that game decided to Hand Wave it away rather than come up with their own explanation. A Word of God answer to what happened didn't seem likely, either, as Ron Gilbert was unwilling to share this (or the true Secret of Monkey Island — they appear to be connected) unless he could make a game out of it. Decades later, he made a game out of it, but in a way that still leaves the most important parts not entirely clear.
• Return to Krondor had an ending that was clearly intended as a Sequel Hook. Let's see...Sidi is still alive and active, and puts the amulet back together. He intends to release the Dark God into Midkemia and the amulet is clearly a part of his plan. Meanwhile, there is the matter of the Crawler still alive and and active...somewhere. A sequel has never been made.
• Touhou Project's Hisoutensoku has three story arcs centered around three heroines searching for the owner of a giant shadow/silhouette. Only Sanae's arc has sufficient closure - that she had, in fact, found her "giant." Cirno gets sidetracked twice by Marisa and ends up fighting one of Alice's experimental spell cards, pegging it as her Daidarabotchi. Meiling gets it worse: either she dreamed the whole thing, or she did see something but never even got to her first stage battle.
• Legacy of Kain has lain dormant since 2003's Defiance, with the Pillars of Nosgoth still destroyed and the future of the world uncertain. Crystal Dynamics' shift to the Tomb Raider series, the series' creator's move to Naughty Dog, and the death of Tony Jay make the chances of a resolution appear unlikely.
• The details of Nero's background in Devil May Cry 4 remain very blurry. We still don't know whose son he is (claims that he's Vergil's remain Fanon), when or how he got his Red Right Hand, or how much Dante knows about him. Devil May Cry 5 however, finally gives us an answer, as it reveals that Nero is in fact Vergil's son.
• DmC: Devil May Cry game ended with Dante defeating Virgil to keep him from taking over the Big Bad position to rule humanity. Despite this, however, demons have now been outed and the world is in a state of confusion and chaos with it being uncertain how things will turn out. If that wasn't bad enough, the DLC for Virgil shows him casting his empathy aside and amassing an army of demons for his own conquest. What happens next? No clue, as there's no word from Capcom on if they'll continue this continuity or not.
• This trope is one of the many complaints regarding Mass Effect 3's ending.
  • No matter what you did throughout the entirety of the series, you receive one of three endings with no closure outside of the fate of the Reapers. "Side" missions such as using/sabotaging the genophage cure, whether the Quarians or Geth (or both) were saved, and the fate of the Rachni have no narrative consequence outside of War Assets, and the fate of your squadmates is left completely unknown.
  • Another common complaint is that Shepard only can survive in the Red Ending if you do everything right, but even then, it's a split second of his/her torso taking a laboured breath in a pile of rubble. Smash Cut to credits, leaving his/her fate completely unknown.
  • However, it has been addressed with the release of the Extended Cut DLC, pretty much showing how the galaxy recovers from the war, changes the mass relays from being destroyed to being damaged and, with the exception of the Destroy ending with the lowest EMS possible on these two cases, Shepard's squadmates are safe.
• Killzone:
  • The ending of Killzone 3 abruptly smashes you in the face with the credits immediately after the climax. There's a short stinger scene in the middle of the credits which answers one minor question but that's as far as it goes. As far as the player knows: 1. The Helghast fleet has been mostly destroyed. 2. The nuking of Stahl's flagship on the surface of Helghan triggered a massive Petrusite chain reaction which appeared to wipe out all life on the surface, with the obvious exception of Stahl and a few of his soldiers as seen in Stinger mentioned. 3. Considering how powerful the Helghast weapons have become, and how some of their ships warped to Earth, it's possible the attack on Earth has already begun. 4. The ISA forces left at Helghan were either destroyed by the petrusite reaction or stuck flying around the planet in fighters incapable of warp travel, so they probably have no way to get to Earth.
  • Killzone Shadowfall dealt with the aftermath of the ending to Killzone 3, only to leave players hanging about the fate of the cold war. No new sequels have been made, and no information about the original protagonists has been given.
• Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich ends with Alchemiss/Entropy meeting the living embodiment of Energy X who implies that she still has a job to do. The third game in the series, which was intended to cover modern and Iron Age comics, was never greenlit.
• Golden Sun: The Lost Age resolved most of its major plot points, but left a few smaller plots open -Namely Anemos, Sheba's origins, and the ultimate fate of Alex. The sequel, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, revealed that Alex survived but otherwise did not address any of these points, and even introduced a few more: The quest Takeru is on, what happened to Felix, the Tuaparang Emperor, and especially the Psynergy Vortexes, particularly the huge one that has manifested over Matthew's home. Oh, and Alex is still The Unfought.
• What happened to Alis(a) after Phantasy Star Gaiden, and what exactly was the threat she was returning to Algol to face? At the time it was made, she was supposed to return as the protagonist of Phantasy Star IV and this game was the set-up for that, but when they ended up going with a different plot for that game, they just left this unresolved.
• Episode 2 of Sonic the Hedgehog 4 ended with Little Planet not being restored. No Episode 3 for you!
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II ends with Darth Vader captured by the Rebellion and the Rebel fleet makes the jump into hyperspace, little knowing that Boba Fett is following them. Unfortunately, the lack of sales, combined with LucasArts closing in 2013, suggests that it's not going to be resolved any time soon. At least Vader is somehow Saved by Canon.
• Star Wars: Republic Commando ended with Delta Squad (now a three-man squad after Sev was under heavy attack and stranded; Clone Advisor 1 was adamant on Delta Squad evacuating immediately) aboard a Republic Gunship, receiving a message from Yoda, and preparing for a new assignment, the Battle of Kashyyyk, followed by a Smash to Black. The planned sequel, Imperial Commando, was cancelled in 2005, and Republic Commando itself would be rendered non-canon to the post-Disney Star Wars Franchise.
• Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two ends with Mickey and Oswald saving the wasteland and defeating the Mad Doctor. The post credits scene features all the Petes of the wasteland getting together and plotting something while holding Gremlin Prescott hostage. However, due to the game's poor sales which led to the closing of Junction Point Studios, a third game is highly unlikely.
• Assassin's Creed III left three unsolved mysteries: Connor's ultimate fate, Juno's true plans for the world, and that mysterious voice at the very end. Only the last was ever resolved (an Abstergo tech guiding one of the company's Animus users). In Black Flag, Connor is only briefly mentioned with no new information, and Juno for some reason is helplessly trapped in Abstergo's network, only saying that "perhaps the Vault was opened too soon".
• The Epic story of Shenmue is said by creator Yu Suzuki to be a story in 11 chapters, and it's still far from being over. The first two games covered about the first four or five chapter, but the series was cut short mainly because Sega could no longer afford to make the games any more, leaving not only the whole driving revenge plotline hanging but introducing us to new characters that would apparently answer many questions about the mysterious MacGuffins, character motivations and if the world was Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane. Shenmue III came out almost two decades later, yet that would end on yet another cliffhanger. Suzuki said he planned the series to consist of about 4 or 5 games and said Shenmue IV is "going to happen", but the series' future is not set in stone.
• The entire continuity of Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. The game ends with a strong Sequel Hook, as Shadow Island and its gate to the shadow world are destroyed and Lamb, who arranges a cover-up, now has the Abkani tablets and knows the location of at least two more gates, but no direct sequel has been ever made. The planned comic book series was to follow Carnby and Aline after the events of Shadow Island, but only the first issue was ever made.
• In Telepath Tactics, Igor Bloodbeard and his bandits are the major antagonists of the first arc, but he's never confronted directly, and his forces end up vanishing from the plot rather abruptly with no proper resolution. His subordinate Fera does show up in the epilogue, however, so this may be an intentional Sequel Hook.
• In the two Left 4 Dead games and their accompanying comic, the Left 4 Dead 1 gang eventually get an ending that's fairly easy to take as conclusive, but the Left 4 Dead 2 survivors have their fate left much more ambigious. While the final canon campaign, The Parish, serves well as a close to the series overall due to it's excitingly paced finale and satisfying visual payoff in the ending cut-scene (compared to most other campaigns), all of the foreshadowing regarding the army's vile treatment of carriers makes it hard to take the survivors' final escape as being a conclusive end to their trials. With no further DLC for Left 4 Dead 2 on the horizon, and Left 4 Dead 3 unconfirmed, it's not looking like we'll know what happened to Coach and the gang for a long while, if ever.
• Although Five Nights at Freddy's 4 resolves most of its plot threads, the biggest one left unsolved is the locked box that appears at the end of Night 7. According to Scott Cawthon, it contains, "all the pieces [of the story] put together," and though he planned to include the means to open it in an update, he eventually decided to leave the box as it is after noticing how the fanbase, unlike with the other games, hadn't fully solved the story yet. This has yet to be addressed even after the main story was resolved in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator.
• Disney Infinity: The ending of the story mode of the Marvel Battlegrounds Play Set (which implies that Loki and Ultron were in league with Thanos, and that Thanos is coming after the Marvel heroes) was clearly a Sequel Hook, but the fact that Infinity has ended production means that this twist in the game's plot likely won't be leading anywhere anytime soon.
• The ending to Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is a sudden Downer Ending Cliffhanger with main protagonist Sly trapped in the distant past of ancient Egypt and the unresolved plot point of just why Penelope pulled a Face–Heel Turn and continues to stalk her ex-boyfriend with postcards. Unfortunately, a fifth game was never announced, and over a year later, Sanzaru Games unceremoniously confirmed that they had no intentions of releasing a new game, and that the franchise had been cancelled. Most fans accordingly disowned the game in response, and Sanzaru became a pariah of video game development.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has a player-dependent example — players who refuse to take their time and decide to rush straight to the Final Boss will be able to finish the game, but won't learn anything about the world, the nature of this Link's true identity, or the role Zelda had in the backstory.
• Haunting Starring Polterguy: After the Sardinis flee the fourth house, we never get to see them again and their fate is completely left ambiguous. However poltergeist Polterguy suggests that he will continue with his haunting but he does not specify where he will do this.
• Grand Theft Auto III left two plot points hanging (and those wasn't ever answered by future games either, due to all of them being prequels and starting a whole new continuity starting with Grand Theft Auto IV). The first one is the disappearance of Donald Love (which is never revelead the reason or where he went) and the second one is regarding the ambiguous last scene in which Maria Salvatore may be or may be not have been Killed Offscreen.
• The Stinger of the main campaign of LEGO Dimensions showing an unseen character picking up a bit of Lord Vortech and getting corrupted by it, clearly setting something up was never to be followed up on as the franchise’s second year consisted entirely of adaptions of movies and TV shows and then the game ended up being abruptly cut short as well.
• Pokémon X and Y has a bit of this due to the fact that Gen VI didn't get follow-ups or sequels of any kind unlike other gens. Examples include a Hex Maniac that says something mysterious before disappearing and Zygarde's backstory. Although Zygarde did get new forms that debuted in Pokémon Sun and Moon, it still didn't get any story pertaining to it.
• The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince's main plot point (the Wolf atoning for what she did) is resolved, but it's never explained where the Prince went afterwards. The forest is probably too dangerous for him to live in, even with his newly-restored sight, but his parents imprisoned him at the start of the story, so he wouldn't want to go back to them. At least it's explicitly established that he's happy.
• Conduit 2 ended with the protagonist accidentally signalling an alien spacecraft to Earth, and several former American presidents (including the Founding Fathers) wearing Powered Armor emerging from a portal offering their help against the coming threat. The third game, which was supposed to round out the trilogy, was never developed, due to a combination of poor sales, the developer suffering a disasterous falling out with Nintendo^note To make a long story short, Nintendo offered High Voltage Software a chance to develop a new first-party IP with them (as Nintendo was looking for a studio who had experience with first-person shooters to round out their library for the then-upcoming WiiU after Retro Studios had finished their work with the Metroid Prime Trilogy and turned their attention to Donkey Kong Country Returns, and HVS had found success with the Wii-exclusive The Conduit), which ended up being scrapped when an anonymous HVS staffer leaked everything, allegedly in response to poor working conditions at the studio. High Voltage couldn't determine who was responsible, after which Nintendo terminated their relationship., and the studio's other major project, The Grinder, being cancelled after a lengthy and costly Development Hell, all of which led to the studio suffering financial hardship and shifting gears towards developing ports for bigger studios instead of releasing their own original titles.
• Flight has the plot the whole game started with - Sandy wanting to be with her mother on Christmas. What happened with it, seeing as Santa received Yamato's composition and not the letter asking him for it she originally sent him?
• The Stinger to Anthem's single-player campaign ends with the discovery of the fresh corpse of an Urgoth soldier, hinting that humanity's ancient overlords were coming back and that a fight with them was soon coming. After months of delays and missed roadmaps, EA and Bioware announced in 2021 they would be ceasing further development on Anthem in order to focus on the new Dragon Age and Mass Effect games, leaving Anthem as a Stillborn Franchise and making it all but explicit that this plotline would be never be explored or resolved.
• Loom ends with the game's main character, Bobbin Threadbare, transforming into a swan to join the rest of the Weavers, while the evil Chaos has been unleashed on the world. The game was planned to be the first in a three-part series, with minor NPCs Rusty Nailbender of the Blacksmiths and Fleece Firmflanks of the Shepherds due to star in their own games Forge and The Fold in order to resolve the story (in Forge, Rusty was to lead an underground resistance to take back the titular Forge from Chaos, culminating in a battle that nearly destroys the world, while The Fold was to have Fleece try to unite the shattered guilds, with Bobbin and the Weavers ultimately saving the day at the eleventh hour). However, the game's creator, Brian Moriarty, got busy on other projects and ultimately never got started on sequels. He has since expressed interest in having them made, but no studio has shown interest, while a fan-based attempt to create Forge ultimately sputtered.

---