[POLL] WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MULTIPLE ENDINGS?

The importance of multiple endings is closely linked to the importance of choice in some video games, especially an RPG. Role Playing Game, that implies that you should get to make choices and that those choices should impact the world you inhabit. It could alter not only the ending but also the course of events leading up to the ending.

Obviously, this won't fit every RPG, in some games your character is set and you're more or less "watching" them, but in others, the characters have room for you to make your mark on them. Some games so to the extreme and you get entirely different towns and dungeons based on your decisions, different characters live and die, and you get drastically different endings. Those endings suit your choices and you get a sense of ownership and responsibility (of course, it's also a lot easier to disappoint a player if you screw the ending up and don't meet their expectations).

Some games don't need choice or multiple endings (Sonic or Mario), but others do (Mass Effect, though it royally fucked it up). You should know when developing a game whether you need multiple endings and whether you're doing it right.

That doesn't bother me nearly as much. What bothers me are the more typical bad endings, where scenes are simply left out or the game doesn't feel like it ended, that are just equivalent to "you didn't do good enough, now beat the game the real way." Disgaea's bad ending was just the first half of the good ending, and FF9's bad ending was the good ending with a scene missing from the middle. Suikoden 2's bad ending was closer to just being an alternate ending - except that one of the biggest things in the game is your quest to collecti all 108 stars, and if you get the bad ending, you're missing one, which makes it feel like the player's failure rather than just a change in the story. (the other alternate ending earlier in Suikoden 2, where you run away with your sister, is actually fantastic)

I don't like multiple endings so much because that's all they are. Endings.

For instance in most cases you'll play through the same game only making slight adjustments via dialogue or a few actions via events and as such just makes the alternative endings that much more boring.

I feel to do it right the entire game should change dramatically to the point that your choices actually make an impact so each game you do and choice you make doesn't lead to the same road travels, same people spoken to, and same monsters fought. It's just tiresome and boring to me otherwise. Plus it has to intertwine with that new story in the game well enough so it's not randomly taking you down a new road, but still changing the game.

(the following holds true to mostly gameplay-driven games)

Multiple endings are extremely interesting in a gameplay POV.
If a game offers different branching paths for character growth, different, optional gameplay-rewarding quests, and, well, straight on diversity in therms of gameplay, it might as well have different branching storylines and endings, even if slightly.
It'll increase the replay value - but that's considering that the real reason for the replay is gameplay.

So, in short, in games that offer unique and branching gameplay (irreversible class systems, stat-distribution systems, unique and missable quests, etc.), the replay value will be high (heck, i love replaying some games just so that i can minmax the stats differently). Plot choices and diversity serve as a booster to that.

I remember when I was younger, the idea of a game having multiple endings was really appealing, because it meant that you were responsible for not just what happened in the game, but what would happen to the in-game universe after you left it.

After actually playing a number of these games, the value of multiple endings has diminished for me, especially when you start to think about what they are in the real world: i.e. that they just function as a different cutscene to closer the game experience.

I would say that in story-driven games, as many RPGs are, it can help to have multiple possible endings just so that the player knows that their journey is somewhat unique, or at the very least, not simply inevitable.

For example, I liked that KotOR had two different endings, even if the ending cutscenes themselves were not especially rewarding, simply because it meant that the story and the universe had been shaped by the character I'd created.

And like LockeZ and others have mentioned, multiple endings can be rewarding where there is a gameplay reason for them. E.g. the cutscenes for finishing Street Fighter II on the hardest difficulty without losing were just a bunch of character sprites covering the screen, but I still remember them because it was a nice feeling that the game recognised the additional effort in overcoming that level of challenge.

author=mawk
creating replayability is more complex than just gating some of your content away from the course of a single playthrough, and making your ending branch in only a token sense for the sake of checking off 'replayability' on your arbitrary list of features isn't going to pan out as well as making an ending branch organically from the story.

author=DR1988
Although many reviewers state things like "And the 10 different endings certainly add to the replay value/ keep you busy for hours", I don't think they do.

I agree with these quotes - multiple endings are often cited as reasons for replayability, but in practice they aren't enough on their own. Going through a whole game a second time just to get an alternate ending often makes the playing experience pretty unenjoyable.

author=thatbennyguy
I prefer not to break the experience of my journey by seeing what would've happened if I didn't play it like I did. For me, it breaks immersion into the character, and seeing a different ending just takes away from my connection with the events that occurred.

author=Sam
The importance of multiple endings is closely linked to the importance of choice in some video games, especially an RPG. Role Playing Game, that implies that you should get to make choices and that those choices should impact the world you inhabit. It could alter not only the ending but also the course of events leading up to the ending.

I also strongly agree with these. The immersion of story-based games only takes hold the first time we play them. The idea of choice is really important, but how much difference it actually makes is a secondary issue. Going on YouTube to look up alternate endings, or reloading save files to watch them in-game, completely destroys the immersion of the game, the feeling that you are actually there, or that your avatar is really part of a living, breathing universe. During the first playthrough, we are given choices and can see immediate results of those choices, as well as imagine the further implications.

Although it's not an ending, the example I'll draw on is the fate of the Rachni race in Mass Effect. It is made clear through the story dialogue that deciding what to do with the Rachni Queen will have far-reaching and potentially devastating consequences for the entire universe. Making that choice weighs heavily on a player that is immersed in the story. This is analogous to the existence of possible endings in a game because it shows how simply the existence of a choice makes the story more personal and real for the player. If the decision were out of our control, we would simply be watching the character Shepard do the pre-destined thing. Similarly, to have one ending means effectively we are simply watching events unfold, and our only influence was to get the PC up to this point by controlling the physical actions.

This was much too wordy, but in short I think that multiple endings can add satisfaction if they provide reward for a difficult challenge, or they can allow a player to enjoy being more personally invested in a game universe.

SaGaFrontier is my favorite game of all time. =3

author=unity

author=RyaReisender
SaGaFrontier is my favorite game of all time. =3

I can understand that. It has a lot of charm and good points, despite its messiness. Even though I only played through it once, I'm glad I did.

Back to the topic at hand, I have a specific question. If I have a situation where the main villain of the story unleashes a greater evil, but at some point realizes that he's in error and tries to redeem himself and help the heroes, would it feel like a cop-out that when it comes time to deal with that villain's fate, the player doesn't get a choice in the matter and the story/characters just decide if the villain lives or dies?

Especially when giving them that choice would necessitate a separate ending to it. So either the story is told regardless of how the player feels about a major part of it, or there's the need for multiple endings, which could annoy the player.

If the game gave the choice to kill the main villain, would it work better if there really isn't a "right choice" and both endings are happy but different? Or at least neither of them feels like a "bad end?"

That's something that you have to decide for yourself. Either way would work fine, but it depends on the themes and intent of the story. If your game is about morality, then giving the player the option would work into that. That's not to say it has to, especially if you haven't been giving moral actions that impact the story/gameplay prior to this. Forcing your game to give the player a moral choice out of the blue could just end up seeming out of place and irrelevant. Think about the intent of your story and what would be best for it.

I always liked good/evil alterathens with different endings.
I hate, HATE when a game (like the original pokemon) where they offer you to be bad on a all good role, but you decline. Let me be bad!

Make it to where if you are good you kill the bad guys, and vice versa. It can make a entirely different playthrough.

I know a lot of players like them, but personally, I'm not a fan of "good" and "evil" endings. I mean, yes, they offer a substantial divergence in content which usually goes beyond a difference in some single choice at the end of the game, but I feel like a more nuanced or novel basis for distinguishing between endings is almost always more interesting. Besides, in life, who really decides between "good" and "evil?" Overwhelmingly, people decide between different conceptions of what's right, and trade their principles off against each other. Usually the game's writers have some particular ending in mind which they think is right, and if they let players do something else, it's jumping off some slippery slope of iniquity, but I'm more interested in games that offer the player multiple essentially viable ways to address the game's core conflict.

For example, suppose that you have the choice between saving a kingdom and returning the throne to the rightful heir, versus saving the kingdom and ruling it yourself. Conventionally, the latter would probably be the "evil" end, where you become some kind of decadent tyrant. But what if I want to rule the kingdom and do a better job? Maybe reform the country's infrastructure, and ultimately dismantle the monarchy from the top and then step down? I'd be much more interested in a game which offers a choice between passing up power in an attempt to stay morally pure, versus taking it in an attempt to accomplish greater good.

On the mechanical side, I'll add that if your multiple endings require replay to achieve, you should offer players an abundance of reasons to want to replay the game. The worst you can do is offer a highly linear game with consistent gameplay from playthrough to playthrough, where the most motivation the player will have is to get things they "missed" the first time. Offering choices which generate substantially different scenes is better, but will usually leave playthroughs mostly rather than almost completely identical. Multiple endings are most effective when you make your gameplay, plot, or both, sufficiently open ended that your audience would want to replay the game even if you didn't have them. For instance, the Elder Scrolls games tend to allow character creation with sufficient leeway that it dramatically alters how you play through the game; with that much incentive to play multiple times, leaving out multiple endings would be a major oversight. Many of the Might and Magic games offer options for party setup which make for a wide variety of different playstyles, but since most of them have only one ending, you're liable to end up playing through the same exact storyline repeatedly just to explore the different mechanical challenges.