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how is "Waiting for Godot" false advertising? The whole play is about waiting for Godot. It's not called "Godot Arrives".

What we want is not necessarily different endings. We want customized player-specific epilogues. In Mass Effect, I shouldn't need to make one big final choice. I spent the entire game making choices. The finale should show me *the culmination of those choices*.

my favorite part of a fire emblem game is not the ending, but the slides afterwards that detail how everybody choose to live their lives and with who. They feel so unique and personal to my playthrough, its all the alternate ending I need and a solution I'd always encourage

I think this gets to a truth far beyond alternate endings or even video games: _A good ending is one that resolves character development, not just the main plot._ In all the cases you mention the "true ending" is the one that does precisely that, and the games whose alternate endings provide different conclusions to the plot but are irrelevant to the individual characters are unsatisfying. ME3 shows this so clearly. So does the ending to HIMYM. Because this is universal and goes beyond games with alternate endings, it shows that the whole discussion about choice is a bit of a red herring. I don't want choice in the ending, I want the ending to be _consistent_ with what the characters have experienced. This implies that if I have choice in the characters actions through out the game, then there better be different endings that reflect that. Otherwise the game is writing cheques that it can't back. But even then, the variety of endings is a necessity mandated by the possible different choices made earlier, not a choice of itself.

Everyone forgets about the most popular ending in Souls games: the one where you give up (e.g. basketball timeline from BDG's LoZ vid). While that is a funny joke, it's also kind of not a joke, even being codified in Dark Souls by the concept of going hollow.

So people want the subplots to have a good ending, like relationships with people or organizations. Just like in Lord of the Rings the film doesn't end when the ring is destroyed but when sam gets home to his wife, it ties up the subplots. Okay not exactly what the whole video was about, but a part of it

Regarding true endings, I remember in a conference Yoko Taro explaining that the feeling of freedom in game isn't when you have a lot of options from the start and can do whatever you want, but when your options were limited and suddenly expand. I feel that the same thing applies to true endings. You thought the story had to end in a few restrictive ways, but then you find out that by doing certain things, you can unlock more options. That's what makes it feel like you're in control when you're just playing an extra part of the game.

The true endings are actually hard to avoid even if they are not created explicitly. We humans tend to value stuff according to the effort it takes to achieve. So some endings that are difficult to achieve are valued more. But we also expect as humans that the rewards we get are according to the effort. If an ending is very difficult to achieve, but it's "meh", it feels disappointing. So for game designers is very easy to fall in the pitfall of matching the value of the ending with its difficulty. If the ending matches the expectations a hierarchy of endings emerge. So you end up creating "true" endings even if it's not the original intention. On top of that, players usually expect that the hardest and coolest ending to be the canon ending, so...

Fallout New Vegas is the gold standard for multiple endings in my opinion. It does lock you into a specific ending once you go far enough down one, but you can still go do the independent ending if you want to.

I think Dragon Age: Origins had a good ending system. Each zone/area was affected by your decisions there and the final ending is also dependent on your choices.

The main thing about me3 that bothered me was that I had literally brokered peace between organics and synthetics and now this kid tells me that war between them is inevitable.

Interesting to note that the gameplay derived endings you mentioned working early on - with the example of Pikmin - fit neatly into the true ending category for all the same reasons. They're a culmination of the journey you undertook to get to them, and reflect what happened. The difference is that the changes aren't based on moral decisions, but rather player skill - the better player gets the better reward.

I think something that pushes Undertale over the edge is that, while most of its endings follow a pretty standard structure of getting something that more closely approximates the best ending with proportion to how much effort the player puts into the game, the ending that requires the MOST effort, i.e. the genocide ending, is explicitly a bad ending that exists not to be a satisfying conclusion to the story, but instead as a means of further fleshing out the rest of the game by giving story and lore details that can't be found anywhere else. I think the potential to use alternate routes as means of fleshing out the story of a game in ways that enhance the player's appreciation for more "correct" paths is pretty underutilized. I want to see more games with some absolutely _wacky_ endings that aren't satisfying on their own, but elevate the experience as a whole.

You make a good point I think. The ending of A Short Hike is the same regardless of how you managed to collect the feathers needed to get to the top, or even how many you got, however, your character will mention all the optional things you did throughout the game, the different characters you've met, etc. And that was enough to make me feel like it was my own ending which was very cool.

"A fun house is a linear sequence of scares, the only choice is take it or leave it" "Makes you think about free will"

The Zero Escape trilogy's endings are interesting to me, since with the time travel plot point/mechanic, all of the "alternate" endings lead directly into the "true" ending. It doesn't have the issue of any of the endings being underdeveloped, because they were all planned to be part of the main linear storyline anyway, it's just a matter of which order you see them in before the true ending.

Sometimes, the condition to reach the true ending is so specific to the point of feeling like a checklist. Like finding this hidden item and give it to an NPC who will only appear in an area you already passed by, no sooner or later or else you fucked up. Or you can't receive this item from this NPC or being nice to other NPC, or else they will die or kill someone else and you will never get any kind of hint about that.

_Because_ endings are actually about good _synthesis,_ I think the more satisfying question is about 'routes.' Fire Emblem: Three Houses works so well because hard-locking the player into distinct routes has carried Japanese visual novels for decades. Sometimes it's an explicit choice point, like which team to ally with; sometimes it's obfuscated behind affection meters you did or did not max out, turning left on a road instead of right, etc. It still sidesteps 'this story can't put its foot down and _say anything,' by committing early and seeing how the aftermath plays out for 90% of the runtime._ Instead of writing every mission as though Tali is simultaneously _dead and alive,_ or Agent Lucy Kuo is simultaneously _friend and foe,_ it's able to explore the full implications of these state-changes. A love interest throughout one route, may be a terrifying Nemesis pursuing you through another, letting you reflect on your ability to love or _hate_ this person equally depending on how your relationship develops. In terms of routes, Disco Elysium's mostly-linear ending is dotted with sidequests another player _might never see._ The route is predetermined, but the path to get there _is the playground._ The DE fandom _exists_ to compare experiences. I think a synthesis between these two styles has a lot of potential.

Fallout 2 does this perfectly. When I first played the game of was amazing to me. There is a "big" ending which describes how you resolve the main quest but this is followed by a half dozen subsidiary endings. So there are independent dialogues like "meanwhile in Klamath..." describing your personal resolution to that sub plot. As a player I hit the main ending and felt good but then it was followed by "meanwhile in" covering the most obvious side quests making me realise I did not get great resolutions to other choices. This goes to combinatorics. By treating the different subquests as independent you get an ending nuanced by every sub part and you feel all of the main choices are reflected reasonably in the ending. In my first playthrough it turned me from feeling "oh I triumphed" to "I am so awful look at the good people I forgot to help". Weirdly felt good because I mattered. For me it is the single most memorable video game ending - really bittersweet showing your good and bad choices together.

Fallout new vegas does the alternate endings very well, with dozens of potential endings, based on faction rep, who you have as companions, who you let live or killed and many other factors

i feel like the CRPG trope of the ending montage that describes the aftereffects of all your choices, like what FNV does, was basically the perfect ending technology and it kills me that it never became more popular

One of your earlier examples, choose your own adventure books, are a actually a really good example of your point. Nominally have many endings, but really have only two; the "good" ending, and many endings that mostly boil down to, "you done screwed up and died".

There's probably a reason that many of the very best use cases of alternate endings in games are explicit commentary on the nature of player agency in games, from Undertale to NieR to The Stanley Parable to a few others I don't want to mention because finding out their actual point was a pleasant surprise. I'm not sure *what* that reason is, metacommentary isn't inherently better than traditional narratives, and many of these games only have effective endings because of the strength of their stories on top of the meta elements, but it a very interesting trend to see.

I haven't played the mass effect series, but hearing you talk about this made me thing if a possible way to make that ending better: Don't put you up there alone. Adjust the choices a bit, and sort the characters you can interact with into categories based on which one they'd have strong opinions on. Then have whichever member of each section the player interacted with the most make it there with them. That way they could shrink the scope back down. You aren't wiping out machine life, you're looking Legion in the eye and telling him his very existence jeopardizes the galaxy. And if you elect to control synthetic life, you're doing it side by side with your friend who is very quickly going a bit mad with the power. Maybe if you got everyone in one section killed there's a moment where shepard looks at that button and gets flashbacks to one of them, before muttering about what they probably would have wanted. Maybe some characters will try to stop you and you literally have to put down one of your friends in order to keep your agency. And when you make your choice, the game shoves it in your face. It takes a nice, slow moment to show how the characters react to this decision. From pained betrayal, to smug arrogance, to just silently nodding along and saying "Whatever you say commander." If a game's about social interactions, they can't just leave you alone at the end. That's a stupid idea. No, you've got to bring them with you all the way to the credits. Unless the point of an ending is to make you feel overwhelmingly alone, that is.

I would argue that ME3 endings were GOOD in principle, because they were broad enough to cover all major possibilities. But they were BAD executed. The game already had actions/dialogue options that could predetermined the ending. Like: - aligning with the Illusive Man sets the synthesis - being skeptical of cerberus sets the reapper annihilation. - having many lost teammates pushes Shepard to wanting to be a God or wathever. Those could set an unique ending fitted to the player tastes. Without the "big three buttons". And then more unique cutscenes (like having to battle the illusive man or being defeated by him) just to make then more memorable.

I recently reset my 150+ hour file of Elden Ring, and the reason why actually illustrates the point made here. Without spoiling too much, I followed the advice of messages left by other players, and accidentally destroyed my relationship with my favorite character and locked myself into the "bad" ending. This made my progress up to that point feel so pointless that I immediately reset my game, even though I had put in 154 hours into it. I have no regrets about doing it, and honestly I'm not even that salty about it because I'm enjoying my second playthrough. But yeah, just knowing that I was slowly marching toward an ending I didn't want made everything I had done up to that point feel worthless.

Adam: it's kinda lame how sometimes games have a bias for certain endings also Adam: true endings are great!

The Witcher 3 does an interesting job with endings- a good number of Quests have endings of their own that don't have a massive effect on Geralt in the long run. Some quests do the true ending treatment where there is an obvious best outcome that takes extra work, but others are moral questions like if these kids have more value than this small village of cannibals. The result is that I'm generally most engaged by the game in... dialog. It's great.

I love the way radiant historia does alternate endings. It's a jrpg about time traveling to save the desertification of the planet, but there really is only 1 ending. All other endings happen right after making a "wrong" choice in history and send you back in time after a little epilogue. It's great to see all the possible outcomes and what characters might do if the planet wasn't destroyed and makes the actual ending even more satisfying.

I remember a small game I played many years ago called Cute Knight that had multipule ending. It was the first game that truly felt like it tried and succeded at that. It was one of the first to have a set of cards representing all the different endings (36 I think) that you flipped and the game saved them so you could try to find them all. I remember I loved that you could be a fighter, a knight or diplomat just as easily as you could become a librarian or a beggar. You could discover you were the real missing princess, pretend you were the missing princess, rescue the princess or just convince the prince to marry you. Or you could brow up the world helping the university professor with his weird experiments.

It seems really stupid how morality systems are often balanced to force you to go all in on one of the directions rather than deciding on a case by case basis. Essentially, they take choices away from you, rather than giving you more, that way. The worst offender for this is probably Mass Effect 2 (and, to a lesser degree, ME1 and 3), where you are essentially forced to mindlessly click the top or bottom dialogue option all the time so you can unlock the special red or blue dialogue options allowing you to get the best resolutions to many problems. Also, good and evil are often pretty indistinguishable, as both special blue and the red dialogue options tend to have the exact same outcome, only that the red one involves more yelling - strangely, that is not (always) true for the normal dialogue options.

i think the problem isnt that games have alternate endings, but how they're delivered. you work so hard to get an ending that fits a style of play that its almost just a self fulfilling prophecy - and they lived happily ever after... like you wanted. i think a better delivery method for most games with multiple endings is to have them function the same way as secret endings, letting you see an ending the developer intended as well as options to reward a committed play

I just wish more games did a New Vegas (and other early fallouts), and just showed how the characters and locations ended up.

Games with sandbox elements, like civilization sims or strategy games, inherently accomplish multiple endings. I'd say that a sandbox is the perfect solution to the multiple-ending problem. For games focused on smaller casts instead of towns, nations, or civilizations, the genre labelled "immersive sim" attempts this approach. It just takes a *really good* sandbox mechanic to produce the depth that ad hoc writing can. For now.

Seriously, the biggest failing of ME3 was even including any final choice at all. Rather, the ending we got should have been entirely dependent on all the other choices we made along the way. Say what you will about most of Crono Tigger's endings being shallow or jokes, but how you achieve them is still done correctly. No matter what path you take through the game it always leads to the same final battle with Lavos, with no more choices to make after that. The ending you are going to get is locked in the moment you start the final battle, and is entirely a consequence of what actions you have or have not taken elsewhere in the game. The ironic failing of any game that tries to tie multiple endings to one final choice is that in doing so it basically invalidates every other choice made along the way. When it comes to acknowledging and rewarding player agency, the ending of a game shouldn't be about the DESTINATION, but rather a summation of everything you did on the JOURNEY to get there.

What really gets me about the ending of Mass Effect 3, is that they already had the galactic readiness score. They were halfway to executing on an ending that came about as a result of all your player choices to that point. The ending 100% should have just been the result of whatever your readiness score was, rather than having it just unlock the Synthesis ending.

This has reminded me of how good the endings in Cyberpunk 2077 are, which I'm kind of surprised you didn't touch on. They do everything right. You get a lot of unique content for each ending (2-3 hours worth), and you can unlock more options for endings by playing more of the game, and then there will be small detail differences depending on a bunch of things you did throughout the game, plus you get narrative updates on where most of the characters you fostered a relationship with and how they're doing, or what they thought of your final choice.

Imagine getting to the end of Mass Effect 3 and not making a choice at all, but having Shepard be influenced by the people you have made friends with and the absence of those you have pushed away or eliminated... Followed by an ending that is relevant to who your Shepard has become through all of those decisions

Divinity Original Sin 2 is probably the best way I've ever seen endings handled in an RPG. It gives you multiple choices at the end, some of which are only available by making certain choices beforehand and goes on to narrate all the smaller choices you've made in a fully voiced and elaborate slideshow epilogue. And THEN you're free to walk around a ship with all of the allies you've made along the way and can chat with them and they will acklowledge what you have (or haven't) done for them. After 4 playthroughs I still had meaningful differences at the end and since it can be played with several people locally, so did my girlfriend. Criminally underrated game.

Control versus meaning. That was a great conclusion. I think that might be related to to a lot of problems not only in game dev but the movie industry.

A lot of novellas utilize "open endings" that let the reader interpret their own conclusions to the story based on the content

Best game i've seen handle this in a long time is Triangle Strategy. The main game does a good job of showing you why you should/shouldn't make certain choices, the 3 main endings leave you satisfied but are also just flawed enough that you're also wondering "what if" so you'll check out the other paths and the "true" ending does an amazing job of addressing all of the problems you might have had with any other ending.

Alternate Endings along the lines of Tales of Symphonia are a nice option that I feel didnt really get accounted for here, and are really my preferred option. All paths are pretty much the same, but based on your choices through the game, 1 party member gets flagged as the most important/liked one at a certain point about 3/4 through, and the final act gives special dialogue / importance to that character, and the epilogue gives them a little extra with the main character. There's 1 party member that changes the end a little more than the other 7 options, but it's stil no more the 'true' ending because of it, it just kinda has to play out differently due to plot reasons. Definitely could've had that approach work in Mass Effect. It doesn't work for every plot, but I think its a pretty effective style.

I think it is similar to how we enjoy noninteractive media, the ending is satisfying because it is connected to the choices the characters made, not because they controlled the direction of the narrative.

Straight up, ME3 could've just given Fallout New Vegas exposition dumps detailing the domino effect of our choices

I think the game with my favorite alternate endings would be OneShot. The game's very story-focused and it's difficult to talk about its endings in a way that doesn't completely spoil them, so I'll leave everything under the cut. The entire game has you form a connection between both Niko and The World; In OneShot, you don't control Niko in the typical game sense, at least, not in-universe--you instead you can communicate with her and advise her on what to do, which makes your relationship with her feel more real than if you just controlled her like a typical game. The rest of The World has characters that are all important to the story and have distinct personalities, making them all stick in your mind, and ends up creating an attachment between you and The World as a whole. All of the game has these relationships built up, and the ending is spoken about in the way that it's a good ending where the world is saved from dying, but that's really just wishful thinking on the people's part. In reality, when you get to the end, you are offered a choice between which of the two you want to save; Niko, or The World. Something else is brought up just before that, though, which makes it far more difficult to decide, and thus makes the final decision far more impactful; The World is actually a simulation, and Niko *isn't*. One more thing is that there is a Solstice ending that's really this game's True ending, but unlike other games where the story just goes to the True ending from the beginning, the Player's previous playthroughs are canon in-universe in a way; a conversation very late into this route-- the route being something which you get locked into right from its start, even if both routes feel very similar at the beginning--described The World as having been created time and time again by the Player so that they can save both Niko and The World, but it wasn't possible until the Solstice route was activated. This, I feel, makes the True ending more than if it was just its own route, as being built on top of the other playthroughs makes it carry more weight than it ever would have otherwise.

I've honestly grown cold toward games that try to focus on moral choice and multiple endings, etc. Theres been some good examples of these things done right but there are so many examples where things end up feeling forced or contrived. Or they take the Dishonored route and make one route more or less fun than the other.

1 caveat for Pikmin's ending is that there are a specific 5 ship parts that are optional, and you only get the "average" ending if you failed to get those parts. If you are missing a part not on that list of 5 then you get the bad ending. I would also call the get all parts the "canon ending" because the sequels exist. Either way still happy to see a childhood classic included.

I'd say there are is another medium with open-ended/alternate endings, or, if you will, freeform endings created by the players themselves: table-top role-playing games. So, D&D, Savage Worlds, etc, are unique in that the story is driven by the players, and the conclusion depends entirely on their actions.

SMT games tend to make the different routes interesting as they all represent different ideologies that can be both argued for and against, the game even providing loads of different perspectives on these from numerous sides. But you can also often tell when a title has bias towards one of them, as there's usually one route that gets the most amount of content. Yet surprisingly these routes are rarely depicted as the one and true choice as all of the options are ideologically more or less grey. None of the scenarios are simple, none of them have a clear right choice, or that clear right choice simply doesn't exist. You have to pick your poison from the options you can find.

You know, until watching this video I don't think I ever thought of GTA5 as having a bad ending, or falling victim to the ME3 syndrome... It always felt to me like they had been building to that ending all along, that there was simply no way all these larger than life personalities could continue living.

He didn't mention the Witcher 3 alternate endings! I know it is a wee bit clunky when you know the mechanics behind it, but that first play through were I got the bad ending and had the showdown with the remaining Crone really hit home in a way no other games ending has for me.

I think I agree. Part of whether I find a game’s ending satisfying or not is linked to if it made me feel like I wasted my time. That can be due to the writing but more often that not it’s downplaying the journey to get there. Good video. 😃

I think the biggest pitfall games have when making endings is that they believe that the player wants all their choices to affect the MAIN ending, how the plot is resolved in the climax. This really isn't the case; the players often just want an acknowledgement of their choices along the way. Despite everyone and their dog talking about Undertale, they always talk about the True Pacifist and Genocide endings. Soulless Pacifist, too, if they want to get fancy. Nobody seems to acknowledge the Neutral endings, which I believe are a perfect representation of how a branching narrative game should handle it's ending. The choice you've made along the way don't change how the plot is resolved; You fight Omega Flowey, and then you exit the Underground. However, after that, the game gives you a phone call, where you're told of how the Underground has been since your exit. This is where all those choices you made across the game matter. Not in how the game ends, but in the game telling you what kind of world you've left behind. This is what Fallout New Vegas also does right (The plot always resolves in a battle for Hoover Dam), and I believe more games should take these two as an example of how to resolve branching narratives.

Disco Elysium has an incredibly linear ending and yet its the game where i've felt most connected to and satisfied with my decisions impacting the ending. It encapsulates the game and ties up the threads you've been interacting with in your own way, and I still felt like I did what I wanted through the game

video is only in 360p for me, just so you know

I never had a problem with ME3's ending, but I think it was because I treated the entire last half of the game as the ending. The choices you made in the game up to that point came to a culmination, determining whether, for instance, the quarians or the geth survive. It was a subtle culmination, not broadcasting the formula for determining how your choices interweave, but it still is there in the background. Of course, you learn that your choices are pretty much just set dressing by ME2, when who you saved in the previous game only leads to a different character saying the exact same things to you in certain scenes like Horizon.

thank you for bringin the grow video to my attention. For years I've been mentioning this game series and it is nice to see other people talk about it too.

Would have loved a section or mention of Shin Megami Tensei and the way the alignment system affects endings, giving player choices meaning even if the character is too weak in the narrative to do anything at the time. SMT Nocturne does this well by giving you alternate bosses or skipping some entirely based on if the alignment rep you're around is friendly to you or not, and makes many playthroughs unique

I feel like a lot of the time alternate endings are a bit of a cop out from making (possibly unpopular) decisions on a story, and it usually shows, because the story will feel half baked overall. I prefer a decided story over a branching story in all directions, if it's a story someone truly wants to tell, and they get the opportunity to craft it exactly like that. The kinds of game you make for a branching or for a linear story are very different by their very nature, and I believe that's often overlooked in both directions. On the other hand, there's another kind of alternate endings, which is emergent stories. If you're playing a total sandbox game, you can suddenly have really intense stories that nobody ever intended to tell. Like the time your City in an RTS game almost got run over but a few brave soldiers held it long enough to push them back. That's something you can't really plan for, because this kind of gamemode is free from story by its very nature. And yet that very thing is what turns it into the fertile soil of many interesting stories to emerge.

I've always read Undertale's genocide route as the true ending (considering subsequent pacifist route clears as an extension of the genocide route) since, when playing the game naturally, it's unlikely to get the genocide route unless you get the pacifist ending and then think "I wonder what would happen if I did the opposite of this". As such, doing a true reset (much to flowey's dismay) is the first step toward the route since it shows the player in question (assuming this is the same player who beat the game and not a new one) doesn't care about the characters and their happiness, but the game and its content.

Your shoutouts to other creators is really fantastic. Also love your vids.

Incredible video as ever! A refreshing and educated take on endings is something I didn't even know I wanted till I watched this :D

I love how Shadow the Hedgehog has become the go-to example of how not to make a game with branching paths.

So when are you uploading the other 2 scripts so that we can decide which one we want to accept as the true video?

just finished my FIRST ending playthrough for Citizen Sleeper. excited to hear you mention it.

20:11 Wow.... that's... It's really opened my eyes about stories and gaming as a whole, thank you. Really.

I feel like the best endings are for RPGs that built multiple "reads" into their script. Whether through questlines that lead into their own ending OR just having a more complex intellectual soup that has multiple things you want to see paid off. And it's BETTER if the game isn't requiring you do everything. To be able to slice your cut out of the game that you want is a great option and having endings that reward you for that slice are great. Games like RDR2 FAILED to do this miserably. The "good" ending...the honorable ending, is the only one that made any fuckin sense for why we watched him go through the struggle and what decisions he made throughout the story. To get the "bad" endings all felt like you got robbed of basic closure on the character you got to know. What's the point of the plot in the bad ending? Bad man gets what he deserved? lol ok Rockstar....if Arthur isn't honorable, the plot has no tension, it has no redemption, and the characters in it make no sense when opposed to each other. I thought Cyberpunk 2077's endings were some of the best "alternates" I've experience in an RPG. Not only did they build the script with 3 unique casts with 3 unique endings you WANTED to see the ending on, there were so many plot elements within that...while not paid off, the ending you got felt like a fantastic set of thoughtful endings to character arcs and decisions that you made from intuition and to see if you were right or if there even is a 'right' answer. You had "converted by Johnny"....to "Converted INTO Johnny" to "stuck to their idealism" and "sold their soul" OR "they left the system" and even "end it all" and each one feels like a thoughtfull conceptual framework to analyze the story that you witnessed and each pay off different arcs and sometimes accidently are meaningful due to the levels at play in the subtext of the game. Each endng is a response against capitalism and each ending gives you a different set of pros and cons to those responses. Join the system? Who are you at the end of it? Leave the system? Are you you anymore or are you a member of a group and almost nothing else? What if you change who you are? What does that mean? Does their agenda give you more meaning in capitalism? What about succeeding on your own terms? Is that even possible or do you just end up alone and working to work? The problem with Mass Effect was that they kept slapping more mystery boxes and more problems until they shoveled the ending onto some poor sap who got the fall for the whole line of terrible decisions leading up to it. It's not that Mass Effect 3s ending was bad, it's that Mass Effect as a series was not built for 3 games and it CERTAINLY structured itself so that whoever got the ending and had to write that script was fucked. Nobody down the line thought about how their choices meshed NOR did they account for the different versions of Shephard because they never wrote shepherd in any consistent way. Choices for the sake of choices without any regard for the MEANING of those choices and how they relate to the greater plot. Which is why the current genre of RPGs is plagued with Mass Effect fanboys who think there is some alternate reality where a good writer can write a story like that and it work...and frankly, no, that's impossible to give someone both MEANINGFUL CHOICES...A LOT OF THEM...and still have a coherent story with characters that develop and big payoffs...if every can die nobody matters and so therefor the plot doesn't have real characters, their archetypes built to eventually die.

My favourite ending might be Pyre's, you might lose sometimes, but it will never be a game over, and everything continues. It just shapes the story to everything you do and I love it

I like those ending cards that tell me what happened because I was doing optional stuff even if it did not effect the ending, like in Dragon Age or Mass Effect (happens in the next game thou, weird lag), but I like them only if it does not feel like they tried to pat my head by giving me "something" to read, I mean, those can be the best endings of the game, because they are way more personal and optional than the main campaign, but I did have to notice them (or overlook them by accident ... my bad) while playing to care they happened.

I feel like your insight into the subjects you explore is far beyond almost everyone trying to cover game design. You not only explore more crucial concepts in modern games, but drill into why individual examples are effective or ineffective in a way that most seem to just fail to address. Thank you for doing what you do!

I can't believe you made a video about alternate endings and talked about Fallout New Vegas for 9 seconds. The game has at least 4 different outcomes for a guy who is extremely easy to miss and has a great backstory.

personally i really enjoyed the ending of pillars of eternity. the main ending choice is not particularly impactful but you get to see how all the little decisions you made affected the world and your companions.

"no other media gives you multiple endings." 2 seconds later: "choose your own adventure books..." You might want to fix your original statement bub.

I love your videos, it feels like I'm getting as much information as a video essay without having to watch 3 hours on why Portal is actually an allegory to Kazakhstan or something like that.

I had this stance back when it came out and maintain it to this day: Mass Effect 3 should've had essentially two Endings: You beat the Reapers ass or you don't. Simple as that. The "Ending of Mass Effect" is the decisions you make throughout the game. The Ending should've been a last hurrah. A desperate last ditch effort that fails or a bittersweet final battle filled with scenes of tragic heroism that results in victory. The Reapers didn't need an explanation for their purpose or their motivation. They're ancient Lovecraftian Doomsday machines. That one conversation with Sovereign in Mass Effect is really all we needed as a setup for them and it's one of my favorite dialogues in the entire series. The last thing that is awful about the ME3 Endings is how thoroughly they wrote themselves into a hole. Krogans, Quarians and Geth possibly existing or being gone would've already been a huge challenge to continue writing on from, but even though the Endings all feel emotionally pretty similar their implied impact on the Galaxy as a whole is absolutely staggering and I'm interested how they go about this with the upcoming Mass Effect game.

"way of the samurai" on PS2 was my first truly branching story line game... it was great

God, you're such an amazing KZfaq channel. Your videos are insanely insightful

Been waiting to see a vid like this. Good job.

Elden ring has an interesting web of endings. No matter what you do, after killing the Elden Beast, Ranni can and will usher in the Age of Stars. You can not stop her, only the Elden Beast could. You also might not be the one to release the frenzied flame, after all you were not the only tarnished on this mission. The Dung Eater's curse may also be released into the world a little later, it's out there.It's still possible for all of the endings to play out, and have an effect on Elden Ring's continuation if it gets one. Not gonna call it a sequel, it might just be a "new game+ dlc".

Great video! And especially about Legion... he truly is the sexiest out of all the synthetics!

I'm surprised you didn't mention Specops: The Line for having multiple endings and choices without telling you what they are.

Lol Did you and Psych of Play synced your vids this week or what? Both go so hand in hand! :D Great vid! :)

I'm curious if you've played Triangle Strategy yet, and if so your take on its ending options. It has a "true ending" for sure, but how you get there is kind of neat.

20:39 Liked commented and subscribed for the most objectively correct statement in the whole video. I think to put your point more succinctly, gamers want endings to be about consequences. The same way choices don't matter if they don't impact the game world or characters in any way, a choice of endings doesn't matter if we don't get to see what effect that choice has. I think this is the real reason the original ME3 ending caused such a stink, because there was no ending that gave proper closure to the stories the player had been part of.

You know.... considering i am a fan of multiple hour long videos, that are well edited but are just that long because how deep they go in their games- and you took it back okay you keep my like

Seeing the short clip of The Talos Principle got me thinking about the three options it has. It's really simple as you just kinda go to the goal you want, though all require a different amount of effort. But the underlying story of what the endings mean is interesting, and while there is nothing during the game that would determine what ending you get before you finally commit to one of them, the game attempts to tries to influence your thoughts on what you want to choose along the way in a very specific manner. I myself chose the ascencion option, as I imagine most players did (because who does not climb a forbidden tower when a game has one?), but I'm sure there are some people who reacted to the things happening in the game differently, or simply didn't get interested in any of the philosophising, and actually chose the transcendence. It's hard to imagine anyone managing to go for the transformation ending on their first playthrough, at least without any guides on how to find some of the stars, but maybe there are some people who were patient enough to find them all on their own without first going for one of the other options.

Just a quick correction, unless you are including the tonics that you are give by the little sisters Harvesting them objectively gives you more ADAM throughout your time in Bioshock's Rapture. Additional its an immediate benefit to the player to harvest but over the long term you will receive the gifts from the little sisters that bump you back up. For saving them, you get 21x80 +7x200 = 3080 ADAM; for harvesting them, you get 21x160 = 3360 ADAM.

I recently finished playing ReB, and I picked Zoe, I feel like I missed something.. but this is the ending I get, oh well. though it geniunly seems like it could be a good choice.. right???

The Ar Tonelico games did the thing where the story splits into two significantly different routes midway through, plus a third route once you've seen both, way back on the PS2.

Very interesting as always. Never thought too much about this before.

Not ending related but I feel that optimization problem in Kingdom Hearts a lot. The narrative makes a big deal about "Darkness=Bad" but when you actually get to use Dark powers in gameplay, its the most fun I have, I relished using Shadow-Sora in 2, Terra in Birth by Sleep, and Riku in Dream Drop Distance are my favorite characters to play as purely because their dark moves tend to have the most fun elements to em. (Three tired to mitigate Shadow Sora's moves into the Frozen world's Keyblade, and the Ice claws were cool but a sad imitation)

I think the best way to handle Mass Effect 3's ending would have been a single ending, rather than the choice. If so many people weren't focused on the ending, they might have actually enjoyed the rest of the game, and the massive impacts you have within. There is an alternate ending they could have done that would have worked. Spoiler warning (for a series that's 10-15 years old)! Mass Effect 1 had an ending to replace the council with exclusively humans. Everyone remembers that you let the council die, but nobody seems to remember your involvement in a human supremacist coup. By the start of Mass Effect 2, the council is multi-species because this isn't the trilogy of how Shepard voted Terra-Firma. Mass Effect 2 had an ending that let you die. If you got every single ally killed in the suicide mission, you end up dying at the end. Rather than sweeping it under the rug when you carry your save (as above), ME3 won't let you import a dead Shepard. Mass Effect 3's Refuse ending is a good alternate ending that would keep in line with the series' existing what-if endings. From what I've heard, the ending was rushed at the last minute, so scrapping the other endings and leaving the Destroy ending as cannon would have made the most sense. Even if it's not what everyone would have done, the game needs an ending.

ayn rand once wrote a play called "night of january 16th", wherein the play centers around a trial, and includes both an "innocent" and a "guilty" ending. its noteworthy as one of the few works by ayn rand that is enjoyable even if you disagres with her.

this whole video reminds me of how I loved pyre. which had a song based on your actions etc, and a bunch of story bumps for all the characters to see what happened in your story.

Visual novels manage to do alternate endings effectively all the time

On some forums there’s a genre of story where each chapter, the users get to vote on what the character does.

I really like the approach The Stanley Parable (original and Ultra Deluxe) takes with having several endings and no endings at the same time. There is technically a "real" end, but the credits roll at a completely different time and there's even an epilogue that just keeps it all looping backwards and forwards again and again. In the end, the player can choose where the game ends for them. I'd argue the game has already ended before you even start playing it, yet the end is never the end is never the end is never. I understand this is a matter of preference and not everyone likes it, and it would not work with most games. But it's also a narrative that can only work in a game, showcasing the possibilities of the medium. And it's a fascinating example of metamodern storytelling as well.

I liked how Atelier games during Arland did endings. They had one set of ending for how much of the game you progressed. And then you also got to choose at the end between like 3-ish choices that you got based on some of the special achievements you made in that run. It gave a lot of replay value to the game and made your choices you made with social links and other weird other things feel like it matters. Similarly games like Princess Maker and such has various ending for what you chose to focus on in your run of the game.