Multiple Endings: Difference between revisions

* The ''Good+/Best End'', where all the available content is opened up or shown.

* The variably-used ''Poor End'', when the player makes an immediately quick, game-ending decision, making this ending effectively a [[Nonstandard Game Over]].

* The ''Joke End'' perhaps the rarest of all, some games contain joke endings which are usually the most difficult to obtain, generally requiring the player to use some [[MacGuffin]] or play in a totally nonstandard way.

** Kirby games are fond of this in general, stopping at the boss of the last area and giving a mildly cryptic ending unless you collected all of their respective plot coupons. Dream Land 2 and 3 both gave the player a rundown of all the enemies in the game before showing a question mark on Dark Matter.

* In ''[[Gekisou Sentai Carranger]]: Zenkai! Racer Senshi'', if the Rangers get 250 gears, RV Robo will be formed, and the good ending will be obtained (though it's rather perfunctory). Otherwise you get the "BAD END," where after the [[Final Boss]] the Bowzock run wild and cause an [[Earthshattering Kaboom]].

* ''[http://twofoldsecret.com/games/whereweremain/ Where We Remain]'' has three endings:

** Normal Ending: You collect at least one flower over the course of the game and find the girl normally. She kisses you and the two of you presumably escape the island.

** [[Bittersweet Ending|Definitely Bittersweet]] (and a bit of a [[Downer Ending]]) Ending: Available only on Expert difficulty. {{spoiler|When you find the girl, don't talk to her just yet. Keep on going into purple-doored caves until you find a black-haired girl who gives you the power to kill one spirit. Go back and touch the blond girl, take the raft, and leave the island. You've escaped, but you've done something terrible in the process, and you suspect that it's not the only terrible thing you've done in your life...}}

* [[In The First Degree]] has four endings as follows: First-Degree, Second-Degree, Manslaughter, and Not Guilty. The ending you are trying to achieve (because you are the prosecutor) is the First-Degree ending. Achieving this ending requires you to look at ''all'' the evidence, interview 3 witnesses before the trial (asking the right questions and the order of the questions ''will'' make a difference), and then going to trial which will have you question the 3 witnesses again, as well as questioning the defendant himself (and possibly a medical doctor the defense calls up). There is apparently more than one way to go through the questioning and achieve the First-Degree ending.

** In Normal mode, the final boss dies, but his last words are left ambiguous.

** In Hard mode, the ending is the same as Normal, except the final boss' body turns into a skeleton and there's an extra scene where Billy and Jimmy return to the city to find Marian restored to life.

** There is also the [[Nonstandard Game Over]] if you die with no cotinues left, in which [[The Bad Guy Wins|Mortus is unleashed upon the real world.]]

** Jun the Swan's ending parodies the above Chun-Li ending in ''[[Tatsunoko vs. Capcom|Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars]]''.

* ''[[Rival Schools (Video Game)|Rival Schools]]: United By Fate'' has a "poor" ending for each character if you didn't fight the [[True Final Boss]], Hyo; these endings are all the same -- the character and their partner standing over a defeated Raizo, the narrator noting they had not yet met the "real power" behind the story. Meeting certain requirements unlocks the fight with Hyo, who can be defeated to get the character's "good" endings. Of the "good" endings, the one for {{spoiler|Hyo}} is actually a "bad" ending: {{spoiler|his plan to take over the schools succeeds, but Hyo regrets defeating his twin brother Kyosuke in order to do so}}.

*** The second bad ending in PJ happens in the Gedo High story. If {{spoiler|Wild Daigo isn't finished off with a Team-Up or Party-Up}} in Chapter 4, the player's team of Edge, Gan, Akira, and Zaki fight him again in Chapter 5, with Kurow and Momo backing up {{spoiler|the brainwashed Daigo}}. After winning that fight, {{spoiler|an ending is shown where Kurow and his group escape, leaving Daigo dead, Akira in tears over his corpse, and Edge and Gan swearing revenge for Daigo's death.}}

** HELLHOUND TAKES CHARGE! SCORCH RULES! THE PLANET BURNS!!

*** I just saw that. Wasn't expecting it. [[Nightmare Fuel|Yikes!]] [http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/arcade/a/blostohel.htm\]

** ''[[The King of Fighters (Video Game)|The King of Fighters]] XIII'' also has two endings: If your score is too low by the time you beat stage 6, {{spoiler|Saiki's plans fail and Ash leaves the scene without doing much.}} Otherwise, {{spoiler|you will have to fight Saiki and later Evil Ash, and get the true ending where Ash is [[Ret Gone|RetGoned]].}}

** Several other SNK fighting games also have multiple endings: ''[[SNK vs. Capcom SVC Chaos (Video Game)|SNK vs. Capcom SVC Chaos]]'' has a true ending which can be achieved by beating the [[True Final Boss]]; otherwise, you'll get a generic ending saying that your character simply vanishes. Then, depending on how well you play, ''[[Neo Geo Battle Coliseum (Video Game)|Neo Geo Battle Coliseum]]'' gives you four endings (and four final bosses) to choose from.

* ''[[Choice of Games]]'' is often fairly stingy with these; their games have many and varied choices, but they're more about the journey than the destination, and their writing team considers [[Railroading]] to be a best practice for a [[Choose Your Own Adventure]]-style game, due to the ridiculous amount of writing required otherwise.

** ''Choice of the Dragon'' is perhaps most notable for averting this trope; at the end of the game, {{spoiler|you go into hibernation}}. Of course, it's possible to get a [[Nonstandard Game Over]] before then.

** ''Choice of Romance'' lacks a [[Nonstandard Game Over]], but has three possible romance options, plus several [[Downer Ending|Downer Endings]] where you get none of them. However, [[Cutting Off the Branches|you can only continue to ''Choice of Intrigues'' if you end up with the Queen]], an ending that has several variations of its own. ''Intrigues'' has only one ending, and ends on a [[Cliff Hanger]]. Presumably, the third installment will have multiple endings, as it concludes the series.

** ''Choice of the Vampire'' is, as of yet, unfinished.

* ''[[Jade Empire]]'' did most of the above for well over 20 variations on its ending. It had different endings based on your [[Karma Meter]], the romantic relationships between yourself and your followers, and their Karma meters as well. It also had hidden pasts for two characters resulting in about three or four different endings per follower on top of the three main endings for your own alignment (Good/Evil/Dead/In Love With Hero/Secret Past/Secret past and In love with Hero/Evil with a secret past whilst in love with the hero... and you get the idea). These epilogues were only played after the main ending cutscene, however, which was chosen from 3 possibilities depending on whether the main character was good/evil/an idiot.

* ''[[Live a Live]]'' has no less than four endings, three of which are bad, and two versions of the good one. (The second bad one is triggered by the best battle choice box in gaming history: Fight / Pass / Item / Armageddon.)

* Recent games in the ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' series have a feature called "support", in which characters that spend a lot of time together in battle can have conversations which increase each of the supported characters' stats when they're near each other in battle. Certain preset supports change the ending, with the supported characters getting married and having children, and supports for the main characters will get an extra scene in the ending.

** Contrasting this, if you let characters die during your playthrough, at the end of the game when you would hear about how they went on with their life, you get a "Character died during Chapter" message for unimportant cast members or "Character critically wounded during Chapter" message for main characters that aren't the Hero.

** Also, ''Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals'' has three possible endings: the standard ending, the complete ending, and the best ending. The standard ending can be obtained by simply defeating Zephiel. If all the sacred weapons have been obtained, two extra chapters are unlocked, leading to the complete ending, {{spoiler|in which you defeat the dark priestess Idoun}}. The best ending occurs if {{spoiler|Idoun is finished off by Roy using the Sword of Seals, and it shows Idoun's soul being saved}}.

* Some of the ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games feature this:

** In ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'', it is possible to finish the game with only Celes, Edgar, and Setzer; any characters you don't have in your group don't appear in the ending.

*** {{spoiler|Terra}} will be forced into the ending regardless of whether you recruited her in the World of Ruin or not. [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|There is an additional scene before the final battle to allow this scenario to make sense, even]].

* The [[Play Station 2]] game ''[[Shadow of Destiny]]'' had five different endings (actually six -- two of them have the same ultimate result, but achieve it in different ways), determined by the choices you made at certain junctures and whether or not you'd witnessed certain missable events. Each ending filled in different details of the overarcing plot, so it was necessary to play to all five of them to get the full picture of what was going on. Upon having seen all five of the endings, a new sixth (seventh) ending became available.

** There are actually two extra endings, one is the happiest possible ending and one is happy but leaves some unresolved issues. The first involves {{spoiler|the hero helping create the Elixer of Life instead of releasing Homunculus, thereby healing Dr. Wagner's wife.}} The other ending involves {{spoiler|removing the Homunculus from existence via a temporal paradox, but Dr. Wagner doesn't get to heal his wife.}} Both endings still achieve a similar result: {{spoiler|without Homunculus setting his plans into motion, underlying reasons of the story never come to pass, and Eike no longer exists because Wagner never wished for eternal youth.}}

* ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines]]'' has several endings, depending on which faction you decide to side with during the final stages of the game. Two of those endings also have alternate branches depending on your [[Karma Meter|Humanity Score]].

* ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' series managed to dodge the need to stick with just one ending for the plot with ''Daggerfall'', by later stating that the reality-warping powers of the Numidium that everyone was fighting for made '''all''' the endings happen, with two possible exceptions (it remains unclear whether the Underking earned the death that he sought, and [[Unreliable Narrator|in-game sources]] suggest intervention by divine agents made the King of Worms at least not ''entirely'' a god). On the other hand, Sentinel, Daggerfall, Wayrest, and Orsinium all simultaneously expanded over the smaller territories of the Iliac Bay region, while the Empire ended up with more control over the four newly-formed counties than it possessed when the region was more divided.

* ''[[Planescape Torment]]'' has five endings, ranging from bittersweet to downright depressing. The main effect -- the immortal player character finds out how to die -- is retained for all of them; the rest of it mostly deals with what happens with him afterwards, and if your NPC friends survive.

** Not to mention the [[Nonstandard Game Over]] endings -- one of which involves you {{spoiler|accepting the position of Silent King once the advisor [[I Know You Know I Know|knows that you know]] he's dead}} -- since this is a lifetime appointment, and you're immortal...

* ''[[Mass Effect 1 (Video Game)|Mass Effect]]'' has three endings, with a minor variation depending on which ending you chose and whether your Paragon or Renegade meter is higher. {{spoiler|If you save the Council, humanity is given a seat on the council with either Anderson or Udina as the representative of Earth. If you deliberately let the Council die, humanity becomes the ''sole'' species of the Council, with either Anderson or Udina as Chairman, and if you choose to concentrate on Sovereign, which leads to the Council's death, your ending will be decided by your [[Karma Meter]]: If more Paragon, humanity will establish a new Council, with a human Chairman (either Anderson or Udina) leading a multi-species Council. If a Renegade, Udina will use your ruthlessness to lead humanity into ruling the galaxy with an entirely human Council.}}

** ''[[Mass Effect 2 (Video Game)|Mass Effect 2]]'' has a few dialogue changes based on how you played the first one, and minor characters reappear.

*** As of late, Bioware has said they might consider allowing ''something'' to be imported for the everybody-dies ending, though for obvious reasons it's unlikely to include much in the way of actual gameplay.

** Being a game with a heavy emphasis on player choice, even the ''dungeons'' in ''[[Mass Effect 1 (Video Game)|Mass Effect 1]]'' can have slightly different endings depending on what order you tackle them in and the choices you make in each dungeon. A good example is in Noveria, where the boss fight with {{spoiler|Matriarch Benezia}} will play out slightly differently depending on whether or not you have {{spoiler|Liara T'soni}} in your party, whether your brought her along with you, and whether or not you choose to save or wipe out the rachni. You also get an extra cutscene if you bring Wrex and decide to save the rachni, where he chews you out for saving an obviously evil bug race that the krogan dedicated themselves to wiping out years ago. And all that is just in ''the final act of one dungeon''. Let's not get started on [[Wham Episode|Virmire]]...

** Interestingly, [[No Canon for The Wicked]] could be considered to be inverted -- if you start a new character in ''Mass Effect 2'', he/she will have made all the bad choices ({{spoiler|Wrex died, the council died, Shepard chose Udina rather than Anderson, the Rachni were wiped out -- the only highly significant one that may turn out 'as expected' is that Shepard will save Kaiden if female and Ashley if male}}). This led to many people starting from Mass Effect 2 to either import someone else's character with the desired decisions, or use a save editor to create the character they want. As discussed on [[Cutting Off the Branches]], some fans speculate this is a sneaky way of encouraging players to play the first game instead of jumping into the sequel blind. On the other hand. the [[PS 3]] version, due to the first game never being released for that system, includes an interactive comic book that allows the players to make decisions about major events.

* ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'' has three basic endings, details of which vary to some degree depending on the player's Readiness rating. Ultimately, the choice comes down to {{spoiler|annihilating the Reapers along with all other synthetic life in the galaxy, mind-controlling them and calling them off or fusing organics and synthetics into a new hybrid-form.}} The results however are very similar, {{spoiler|mostly in that the mass relay network blows up, Shepard dies, and the Normandy crashes on a jungle planet}}. This has ''not'' been [[Internet Backdraft|well received]] by fans.

* ''[[Sweet Home (Video Game)|Sweet Home]]'' has five endings. The ending you get is determined by how many members of your group are still alive at the end. The 'best ending' is actually a [[The End or Is It]] ending, while the rest are more bittersweet than [[Downer Ending|downers.]]

* In ''[[Phantasy Star|Phantasy Star Portable]]'' there are three endings you can get depending on what you say when you're with or even to Vivienne. The bad ending {{spoiler|involves [[Heroic Sacrifice|Vivienne sealing the Hive from the inside,]] leaving Helga to escape to later arrive at GUARDIANS HQ with Howzer.}} The neutural ending {{spoiler|involves the above, but Vivienne ends up taking Helga with her, leaving the Player Character to be suspended (which is treated more as a vacation).}} And finally, the good ending {{spoiler|has Vivienne sealing Helga inside of the Hive.}} However, this {{spoiler|[[No Good Deed Goes Unpunished|leads to both Vivienne and the Player Character being discharged from the GUARDIANS,]] turning this into a [[Bittersweet Ending]].}}

** ''[[Might and Magic]] VII'' had two, based on a mid-game choice. The good ending, in which {{spoiler|the colony's connection to an interstellar [[Portal Network]] is repaired}} was probably canon, but the evil ending, in which {{spoiler|the Heavenly Forge is repaired, allowing the evil guys -- which include your group -- to outfit their armies with blasters and other technological wonders}} ''was'' intended to be canon, before backlash amongst part of the fandom made the developers alter their previous plans for [[Heroes of Might and Magic|Armageddon's Blade]].

* The ''[[Shin Megami Tensei]]'' series is known for featuring multiple endings.

* ''[[Kara no Shoujo]]'' has no real good ending and a lot of downer endings. There are only two or three endings that can really qualify as bittersweet... {{spoiler|and the true ending is not really one of them.}}

* ''[[A Profile (Visual Novel)|A Profile]]'' has five endings, two each for Miku and Rizu and one for Miou, the last heroine. None of these are bad endings, and as a whole, are all rather optimistic.

** {{spoiler|Lilly's}} bad ending is unique in that the game stops after a certain scene late in the route, {{spoiler|when she says goodbye to Hisao and Hanako}}, instead of showing a scene you would not see otherwise. If, however, the player has made all the right decisions, the story continues until it reaches the good ending.

* ''[[Frozen Essence (Visual Novel)|Frozen Essence]]'' has ''six'' paths to choose from, and each of them have both a Light End and a Dark End. The Light Ends generally have Mina being happily together with her love interest or at least being alive and reasonably happy, while the Dark Ends generally have her dying, being resealed, or being trapped in a [[Stockholm Syndrome|very twisted relationship]] with her love interest. In addition, the Life path has ''three'' more endings: two are more like [[Nonstandard Game Over|Non Standard Game Overs]] than anything else, but the third one happens to be the game's True End.

** '''Worst Ending:''' {{spoiler|Luka kills Alice,}} [[It Got Worse|and it just goes downhill from there]]. {{spoiler|The goddess Ilias comes down, mocks Alice's dreams, and takes Luka to Heaven and rapes him. Then she destroys the world and remakes it, repopulating it with a new race of people who will obey her every whim}}.

** '''[[Bittersweet Ending]]:''' {{spoiler|Luka loses to Alice}}. Alice then {{spoiler|seals both of them in a force field that no one--including Ilias or even Alice herself--can ever break. Ilias shrugs and carries out the same plan as above, since with those two sealed away, there's no one to stop her. Alice and Luka, on the other hand, spend eternity making love}}.

* ''[[Ib (Video Game)|Ib]]'' has five endings:

** '''Worst Ending:''' Ib fails to return to her world. There are actually three variations of this ending depending on whether Ib was lured away from {{spoiler|the [[Portal Picture]]}} by {{spoiler|a fake version of Garry or her mother}} or she simply didn't take the way out when she had the chance.

* The ''[[Ed, Edd n Eddy]]'' fanfic ''[http://www.edtropolis.com/fanfic/pg/pg2/eddfix-119.htm What The Ed?]'' by Dyl Man has 3 endings. The [[Downer Ending|Sad Ending]], the [[Happy Ending]], and [[Big Lipped Alligator Moment|Silly Ending]]. The Sad Ending has {{spoiler|Tuluta Bottoms a.k.a. [[Cow and Chicken (Animation)|The Red Guy]] calling the dog pound and having Ed and Nazz end up working in a glue factory.}} The Happy Ending has {{spoiler|1=Eddy realizing that he loves Nazz, not Tuluta, and sics SuperCow on Tuluta.}} The Silly Ending has {{spoiler|Tuluta butt-walk on Nazz, Nazz retaliating, Ed butt-walking on both girls, and Edd and Eddy butt-walking on Ed.}}

* In [[Relationships Series (Fanfic)|Relationships Series]], there is an [[Alternate Universe]] story called "Pain", which details what happens if Yuuno had been sent into combat. He gets injured and overtaxes his linker core, sending him into critical condition. In Ending A, {{spoiler|he dies, leaving Nanoha and Fate devastated, and the fic ends with his funeral}}. In Ending B, {{spoiler|he lives, but the main characters still have to protect him from some unethical scientists who want to get their hands on his damaged linker core}}. The authors indicated that this was already a hypothetical situation, so they should explore both outcomes.

** Similarly, there's [[Saw|Pattycakes]]. Both are a [[Downer Ending]], but it's a [[Troll Fic]]. You're not supposed to be happy.

* The ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' [[Doujinshi]] "From the New World, With Love" has a cautiously optimistic ending that would best be described as [[Bittersweet Ending]], but there are two sequels for it, one giving the characters a [[Happy Ending]] and the other giving them a [[Downer Ending]] instead. The good ending has {{spoiler|one character coming back wrong and ultimately dying, and the other character destroying himself to prevent the [[Enemy Within]] him from surfacing, and both of them being reincarnated as normal humans.}} If that's considered the ''good'' ending, you don't want to know what the bad ending is like.

[[Category:Ending Tropes]]

[[Category:Multiple Endings]]