What are your thoughts on multiple endings?

[Jfswift]

I prefer multiple endings if done properly, like in Fallout: New Vegas and if you go back in time, Phantasy Star III. Both games reflected your decisions at the end, showing very different endings. I think most games should have them, unless there's only one logical ending (like with a shooter like r-type for example).

 

[SajuukKhar]

Multiple endings are only good if they work like Fallout 3 with broken steel installed, aka you actually get to PLAY the consequences of your actions.

Fallout: New Vegas style endings are entirely pointless, they negate the very nature of games, and indeed remove any desire for me to go back and get different endings.

furthermore endings to morally grey games that you don't get to experience are even MORE pointless then sldieshow endings.

Case in point, all of Fallout New Vegas's ending can be described as "the wasteland sill sucks", there is no point in picking any different side in New Vegas because the ending will always be the same....... shit.

I would much rather play a game with black/white endings that I get to experience, and actually see the consequences of, like fallout 3's endings where you get to see how your actions with the purifier affect the wasteland, then play a morally grey slideshow ending that you dont get to experience.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

I get it, I see where you're coming from, and if you can play Xenogears dozens of times...dude, enjoy it, lol.

I'm just can't, usually, do that. As for books, yeah, I'm too ADD for books, I'm bored long before I finish them, then I put them down and never pick them back up.

Ah. Actually, I've heard similar from other ADD sufferers, so that bit of medical information explains much.

I still don't understand it myself, but then I don't understand how a blind person deals with being blind or a deaf person deals with being deaf or any other disease that I don't personally have. I can empathize, but I can't understand - just like I couldn't understand the very powerful, very mixed feelings associated with being a parent until I was one.

I mostly started arguing in the first place because I've heard non-ADD suffers make a similar argument, and that I don't get. I'm talking about people who can re-read a long book series over and over again, but can't play a video game through more than twice without getting bored with it.

If that made your lip quiver, you're gonna be really upset when I tell you I never finished Xenogears, the plot started to get all crazy at some point during the game, I went "what the fu..." and never played it again, I don't even remember where, it was years ago, shortly around its release. I should try and find a copy to play one of these days, give it a 2nd try 10 years later, will probably understand it more this time.

Actually, that surprises me less. Xenogears IS a fucking book. ^^ That's one of the reasons I love it.

Did you ever play the Xenosaga trilogy? It's a prequel to Xenogears (sort of) that helps make Xenogears make more sense. Again, sort of.

Or you could read about gnosticism on Wikipedia for a few hours, but somehow I don't think that would go any better.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

I don't mind them but what I DO hate is developers thinking I'm going to replay an entire game just to get a different ending. I'm not. After I've finished it picking the ending I want, I'll go straight to youtube and look at all the other endings. Thinking that a choice at the end of a game is going to leave a deep impact on me just because it's irreversible and meaningful is stupid and ignores the fact it's a game.

 

[LittleBlondeGoth]

Like anything, if they're done well then I'm all in favour of them. It's only when devices like this are implemented poorly that you start to run into trouble.

I think DA:O did it particularly well. You played through, made your choices and then had to deal with the fallout. And at the end, I was left thinking "Well that didn't all go how I wanted to, how can I make that better?". Then I'd go through and play it again, to fix it.

I also enjoyed in this the way that if you're a certain race, you simply cannot do certain things (barring hax, I guess). My elf warrior can't become queen, no matter what she does, the prejudices against elves are too rife. It's not fair, but it's the way of the world. Art mimics life.

 

[The Harkinator]

Seems to me from most of your comments that the best multiple ending games are the ones where your ending is due to decisions you made prior to the climax of the game.

Games such as Deus Ex: HR and Mass Effect 3 give you a choice right at the end of the game, regardless of what you did up to that point, your ending is decided by one little button press, all previous choices reduced to a means to get you to the decision room, having little bearing on the actual ending. These are games that do multiple endings badly.

Games such as Fallout New Vegas and in my opinion Dragon Age: Origins have an ending that is conclusive, yet allows for variation in the state of the game world. Not every choice you made necessarily affects the main ending but most areas of the game that you visited are given a nod, so you know what happens as a result of the choices you made throughout the entire game, not just in the last two minutes. This is how to do a good multiple ending because each choice creates part of the ending, everything done in the game matters.

 

[Eddie the head]

Multiple endings are only good if they work like Fallout 3 with broken steel installed, aka you actually get to PLAY the consequences of your actions.

Some chick is dead and some water might kill you Vs that chick is alive and some water won't kill you? Truly I have seen how I touch the world, 3 things are different and 2 of them I didn't notice. Don't get me wrong Broken Steel was fun but, to say you had to live with the consequences of your actions would imply there where consequences to your actions. As much as I loved Skyrim, Fallout 3, Marrowind, oblivion, ect... They are all a lake that is a deep as a puddle, and Broken Steel still falls under that. I don't get a sense for what I have done, and if you did I doubt you did much. Basically what I am saying is there where barely any consequences so it's not hard to live with them.

I would just prefer a definitive ending where my choices mattered more vs a not so definitive ending where I get to see 3 things are are slightly different.

 

[SFMB]

The recap-endings (fallout) are ok in my book. The last minute choice things (Mass Effect, Deus Ex)are not. Those is just lazy writing.