What's So Difficult About Alternate Endings?

Comments · 1.1K

• AR

  @ArchitectofGames · 4 years ago · pinned

  Okay you&apos;ve got to trust me here, you need to be a patreon donator and have the twelve magic crystals in your inventory by the time you fight Ultimate Omega Forme Architect or you get locked into the bad ending! <a href="https://www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames">https://www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames</a><br>Twitter: the bad ending of social media, follow me there now!: <a href="https://twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot">https://twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot</a>

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• VA

  @vanderkarl3927 · 4 years ago

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

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• TH

  @ThomasAndersonPhD · 4 years ago (edited)

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

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• JA

  @jarrenraves · 4 years ago (edited)

  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&apos;d always encourage

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• QU

  @QuantumHistorian · 4 years ago (edited)

  I think this gets to a truth far beyond alternate endings or even video games: <i>A good ending is one that resolves character development, not just the main plot.</i> In all the cases you mention the &quot;true ending&quot; 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.<br><br>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&apos;t want choice in the ending, I want the ending to be <i>consistent</i> 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&apos;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.

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• TH

  @TheBlueWizzrobe · 4 years ago (edited)

  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&apos;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&apos;s appreciation for more &quot;correct&quot; paths is pretty underutilized. I want to see more games with some absolutely <i>wacky</i> endings that aren&apos;t satisfying on their own, but elevate the experience as a whole.

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• BL

  @BlueFrenzy · 4 years ago

  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&apos;s &quot;meh&quot;, 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 &quot;true&quot; endings even if it&apos;s not the original intention. On top of that, players usually expect that the hardest and coolest ending to be the canon ending, so...

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• BE

  @beauknol6696 · 4 years ago (edited)

  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&apos;t end when the ring is destroyed but when sam gets home to his wife, it ties up the subplots.<br>Okay not exactly what the whole video was about, but a part of it

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• LH

  @lhumanoideerrantdesinterne8598 · 4 years ago

  Regarding true endings, I remember in a conference Yoko Taro explaining that the feeling of freedom in game isn&apos;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.<br><br>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&apos;s what makes it feel like you&apos;re in control when you&apos;re just playing an extra part of the game.

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• LE

  @LeoStaley · 4 years ago (edited)

  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.

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• SH

  @shadedclan · 4 years ago

  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.

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• SA

  @samfriend3675 · 4 years ago

  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&apos;re a culmination of the journey you undertook to get to them, and reflect what happened. The difference is that the changes aren&apos;t based on moral decisions, but rather player skill - the better player gets the better reward.

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