What are your thoughts on multiple endings?

[necromanzer52]

Personally, I can't stand it.

I don't believe I've ever seen it done well. It always seems to boil down to one of three things:

A. You choose it at the very end, rendering it kind of worthless (See Deus Ex, Mass Effect 3, etc.)
B. The "Evil" ending versus the "Good" ending (see Fable, Infamous, etc.)
C. Just a bunch of really shitty endings because they have to account for everything you've done (see basically any multiple ending games)

In fact, I would love for someone to point out a game that did multiple endings well. Maybe they do exist somewhere but I sincerely doubt it.

Have you ever played silent hill 2? I always use this as an example of how to do multiple endings well. None of the endings are obviously good or bad, and it picks your ending based on your actions throughout the game, such as how protective you are of an npc.

 

[Yopaz]

Personally I'm not too keen on them. There are games that do them extremely well and all that, but I often get a feeling that there's a "best" ending out there. Also when there are multiple ways to play a game I feel like I have to play it again just to see the possibilities and I barely got enough time to finish games as it is. I really want to see the best ending in Pandora's Tower because I thought the one I got was a downer, but I don't have time to play it. Multiple endings may be awesome and they may add replay value so I like the concept. I just wish I had the time to enjoy them.

 

[dimensional]

Really depends on the game to be honest as to whether I enjoy them or not. I generally dislike multiple endings that are the same but with extra bits tacked on or taken away (depends on how you look at it) basically its telling one story but little details in it are interchangeable to slightly offer a different ending. These just feel to me like someones not sure on what happened in a story and it loses weight because it sounds unsure of itself, the story has a structure but too many hazy details, same reason why I tend to dislike create your own character in story driven games they are just a nobody someone I made up.

However if the story does properly branch then multiple endings are really good and add replay value I dont really play visual novels but Katawa Shoujo did multiple endings right imo and I am sure many others do it even better. But usually its too expensive to create mutiple paths like this in most games so you just get one ending thats altered a little bit depending on how well you did (i.e who gets an epilogue) or a choice right at the end and while these can work if done right usually they end up falling flat.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

It adds replay value for me if it`s done right. DE:hr was lazy regarding the different endings. Like someone already said i would`ve preffered a single solid ending too.

The last game where i liked it was Segas Binary Domain. Regarding on the trust level of your team mates there are a few differences. It`s not the best way to handle multiple endings but it is a good motivation for another playtrough to get the best possible outcome.
The ending itself was cheesy as hell but god i loved it. Finally after a long run of games with short and/or bad endings this one was a great reward.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

A. You choose it at the very end, rendering it kind of worthless (See Deus Ex, Mass Effect 3, etc.)

While it's pretty much unanimously agreed that Mass Effect 3 really cocked it up at the end, having that ridiculous Deus Ex Machina style segment appear out of nowhere (among a boatload of other issues), the original Deus Ex is one of my favourite examples of a game with multiple endings.

It really felt to me like the entire game had been building up to this final choice, that the entire game had been communicating the evils of each potential decision to the player since the beginning of the game. In addition, you aren't just walking down a hallway (ME3), pushing a button (DX:HR) or some similar thing to make your choice and end the game, you get to instead play a little mission within a mission of sorts for whichever outcome you choose. Overall it felt like the endings were very distinct, all tied in with the game and it's themes very well and that the developers did not go out of their way to make any ultimate choice seem more 'good' or evil than the rest, something which FAR too many games do.

(On the other hand Human Revolution's ending was very...meh to me. The options themselves seemed quite sound, with pros and cons to each without a heavy bias from the developers, and the entire game had given the player a hell of a lot of information and viewpoints to go on to choose their option, but boiling it all down to going into some sort of magic room and literally pushing a button while one of the potentially most unlikeable characters in videogame history drones on, then having the ending cutscene show absolutely nothing of the impact your choice has made on anything, just blows.)

The the DX method is an approach I'd love more games with multiple endings to try, but way too often if the player gets a choice of ending at the very end of the game there will be a clear cut bad option and a good one, the choice will have little relevance to whatever the game has been trying to convey or build up to, and the player often doesn't get to really do anything in game to, in a sense, earn their ending.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Multiple Endings are kind of pointless if you tack them onto the end of a shitty game. I do like how multiple-endings encourage people to play a game more than once of course. My favorite example of multiple endings being used well would be Dragon Age Origins which takes multiple factors from various points of the game into consideration before the game ends. To a lesser extent, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Sith Lords had something like this too (especially Sith Lords if you were charismatic enough to convert everyone over to the Dark Side of the Force).

The biggest failure though would have to be Heavy Rain. Watch Zero Punctuation about it and assume that I agree 100% with Yahtzee because...Well, I really do agree 100% with Yahtzee when it comes to that game and the ending.

 

[lunavixen]

as long as all the endings are sufficiently fleshed out and equally canon i have no issue with them

 

[getoffmycloud]

I think that games should always have one ending but can do things like having different characters live or die or different factions in power that kind of thing.

 

[karcentric]

Personally, I like the idea of multiple endings, it gives the game a little more replay value. and it's something to work towards.

 

[IronMit]

I love multiple endings if done right. Or multiple paths.

Has anyone played Streets of Rage 3? level 7 is a completely different place depending on level 6. Only one level 7 allows you to proceed to level 8.

But obviously to do this now will mean designing a completely different place + dialogue so is too much work.

What I can't understand...in decision based games (mass effect 3)... how much extra work would it take to lets say..make 12 different 5 minute ending cutscenes to account for variations of past decisions? you don;t need to use CGI...in game graphic/rendered will be fine. Just someone to plan out all the dialogue..i can do that in a basement with a massive spider diagram in 3 hours.

If metal gear solid 4 can have an unnecessary 100 minute ending cutscene surely someone can make 10 scenes of 10 minutes to account for decisions. It's just laziness.

Mass effect 3 was complete laziness at the end. when the fleet arrives at earth and you are treated to the epic CGI scene...there are 2 variations...one with geth added,,,one with quarians added, there is no scene for both and the Ascension is always there.

The next difference shows your fleets doing okay or being ruined by the reapers. This 20 second segment does not show the geth or quarians (because then they would have to make 2)...just alliance and turians. Pure laziness/cost cutting

 

[zidine100]

depends on how it is implemented, if its the ending o matic, aka make one choice at the end of the game for one ending another for another ending then i hate it. If it get you onto a different route in the game and makes it worth replaying it then its good.

 

[EmzOLV]

I don't know if I like multiple endings. I like being able to give different responses in conversations, or choose to make a decision to kill someone or not, but at the end of the day by the time I've got to the end of the game, if I have to play through the whole game again to get a different ending, I've usually lost the vibe and will move onto something else, then it will take me years to go back to it, and then I normally play it as I played it the first time, so nothing new.

I tend to save it at the last moment so that I can re-load and then pick the other ending. But I guess that's cheating (sorry, I'm lazy!!!)

 

[lord Claincy Ffnord]

As unpopular as this viewpoint may be, in light of things like mass effect 3's and deus Ex HR's endings. I don't think choice endings are necessarily bad things. Don't want to argue about whether or not ME3 or Deus Ex HR were good/rubbish examples because most of them have been argued to death. However overall I would maintain that if the game has built up the world and characters and then at the end asks you to make a serious decision *without* a blatantly good/evil answer, a question where you have to seriously consider the consequences of what you are about to do, Then its fine, good even. I'm going to proffer Bastion as an example of this done reasonably well, the only problem with it was that, for most people, the choice was too obvious.

 

[Batou667]

If they're done well, they're good, but if done poorly then that's not good, to engage in a bit of rampant tautologising.

I do like games that give me the ability to screw up and carry on regardless, even though the OCD part of me will probably want to come back and do the level/mission/game "properly" at some point anyway. For example, in the first couple of Splinter Cell games, the fail conditions were incredibly arbitrary (you got seen three times! Never mind that you quickly eliminated all three witnesses and weren't caught on camera once, we're pulling you out!) and only made sense as a gameplay meta-mechanic. I remember being pleasantly surprised that in Splinter Cell 3 you could screw up seven ways to Sunday - toss grenades about in stealth parts, execute civilians, miss bits of "required" data - and the show would go on.

I'm playing the first Dead Rising at the moment and the multiple endings are fairly benign. Some of them are little more than glorified "game over" screens, but in particular the ability to choose whether you get in the rescue chopper or carry on pursuing the case affects gameplay (right now I'm aiming for a Saint run - rescuing as many survivors as possible - so I'm neglecting the "true" ending to do that). It's fairly tokenistic, but still, nice to see your actions (and inactions) represented beyond "you win" or "game over".

 

[Evilpigeon]

Fallout did it well, I loved the way the Witcher 2 did choice in general. To be honest though I generally really like multiple endings even when it's not quite so well done, I prefer a narrative that acknowledges the way I play a game over a strict story, you get to feel like you left a mark on the world, rather than simply passively following a story.

 

[BrotherRool]

There's too much focus on the end. It should be more about the journey, instead of the end reflecting our decisions we should have the world reflect our decisions as we play it. Instead of having a cutscene showing how the lightside decisions affected the world, we should have seen the lightside effects in the world whilst we played it and we should have the mindset to be satisified for that.

So for example Deus Ex:HR is much more enjoyable if you don't think of the end as an 'ending'. Instead you should take the saving the world from being turned into zombies as the end of the story and the actual end should instead be a moment of reflection on everything you've learned during the games story.

Sometimes you need multiple endings. In KotoR, the player was going to do a very different thing if they were light or dark and there was no one ending that could encompass both motives.

In contrast Mass Effect did not need multiple ending. There would probably be outcry if it didn't have them, but there was no narrative reason for having them and it makes the game stupid to have multiple endings. Whether you were Paragon or Renegade you're goal was always to destroy the Reapers and so the conclusion of your storyline is destroying the Reapers/ saving the galaxy.

The Paragon/Renegade thing comes from how you interacted with the world, and what you sacrificed to get to the end. It made sense for their ending to have various fail states. So if you didn't sacrifice innocents etc to win the day, yet didn't put in the extra effort, the world should be less destroyed. But it was ludicrous to have multiple choices of defeating the Reapers. There should have been one ending and maybe an epilogue that reminds you that you took part in changing the galaxy to get to this point.


So in choice driven RPGs the world should always reflect how you are changing it. But this doesn't mean multiple endings, it's only multiple ending if the way different playstyles would conclude is fundamentally different.

 

[tippy2k2]

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I considered singling out Silent Hill on the list (love those games!) as a game that did it right but I didn't think the endings were all that different unless you REALLY fucked up at the game (like if you sat there letting your NPC's get butchered while you think about soup) . However, I've never really looked into HOW the endings are chosen so for now, Silent Hill gets the benefit of the doubt and is a good way to do multi-endings.

 

[Zeren]

Fable 2 was a bad example of multiple endings to me. In Fable 1 you could chose to kill your sister or not, but in Fable 2 she is still alive and well. I was displeased with that because I killed her for a reason.

 

[VoidWanderer]

Multiple Endings work very well. But they can be easily destroyed by sequels.

I have just finshed Dishonored on a Low Chaos stealth runthrough and loved the ending. Since I am not likely to see the high chaos endings I watched them both... Yes, two evil endings and plausibly two good endings...

While Dishonored is one of the best games I have played recently, I truly hope it doesn't get a sloppy sequel, as it would ruin the endings.

 

[Loonyyy]

True multiple choice endings which are a consequence of gameplay-I'm ok with. Binary endings I actively despise (Screw Fable, screw Infamous, screw Dishonored). I really don't want to have to play through the thing twice to see the endings. Ending-o-tron things like Mass Effect or Deus Ex earn less of my ire, since while they're binary, they make it relatively simple to view multiple endings. I prefer not to have to go to youtube, to avoid playing half the game again at only a slight variation to gameplay, to find it out.

I prefer if they're going with the multiple endings gimmick that they scrap cohesive coherent cutscenes, and go with copy-paste approaches like the conclusions to Fallout New Vegas (Which I haven't personally finished yet, I'm going by Let's Plays), where it shows the consequences. Or games like Alpha Protocol, where the changes to the story are noticable, and actually seem to have an impact (Too bad it also sucked, wish there was a sequel). Good multiple endings requiring replay actually have actively changing gameplay, and more than one choice. If I'm just straight up paragoning or renegading my way to the appropriate ending, I'm bored as fuck. Rather than making choices about the game, I'm metagaming the heck out of it, and I lose all interest in the story.