Games with the best multiple endings system (or choices overall)

[leberkaese]

I cherish Suikoden II for its different endings. It has not many - only 3 or 4. But they fit the overall atmosphere of the game very well.
Two of those endings depend on a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer at the end, but they're still well made. A special 'good ending' can only be achieved by doing an insanely amount of stuff. Nearly impossible without a guide.

Spoiler: Minor spoiler

There's even the possiblity to say at some point in the game 'That's it! I'm done with this war, I can't take it anymore'. And your character will just leave the place and the game ends.

Also good endings: Fallout 3. Bethesda promised hundreds of different endings and they did that. You have so many choices and... nah, just kidding Fallout 3's ending is horrible.

 

[votemarvel]

Dragon Age: Origins has a pretty decent selection of ending combinations

 

[elvor0]

Does Chrono Trigger count? Because that had a gob load of different endings and technically allowed you to choose how things played out.

 

[karkashan]

Mass Effect 3. Whether or not Garrus lives or dies decides the fate of trillions.

But in all seriousness I'd go with Dragon Age 2. Whether or not Anders lives or dies (he better die) decides the fate of nobody you actually see just text in a war table mission.

...

Lemme try once more.

Pokemon Blue. I mean DA: Origins/Inquisition. Yeah, just little epilogue blurbs but it did feel like every decision you made was the wrong one by the time you sat through it.

praisegrima

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I like the Arcanum/Fallout endings. A little snippet about what happened to areas where you had influenced them through quests. I really don't like the convoluted super good or super bad endings with no middle ground that bioware churn out...my brain requires more than 4 year olds mentality.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I never figured out the multiple ending system in Silent Hill 2. I thought I had, but the second time I played it I got a totally different ending (which felt completely unwarranted by the way), and then I hadn't done much different between both playthroughs.

There're a six endings. The first three are the "organic" regular endings and you get one of them based on your overall behavior around certain characters and items that is INCREDIBLY vague and hard to gauge. The other three you can only get if you follow very specific instructions during a replay, and at least 2 of them are joke endings (which include the dog one).

I did a mini cue card guide for this but like I said, the regular endings are hard to predict.

Spoiler

It's the only Silent Hill game to do multiple endings "right". Every other game has you either trigger a specific event or choose X over Y during a Plot Twist, adding up to a predictable result.

In the first game it's all about whether you save Cybil and do an incredibly unintuitive sequence of events known as the "Kaufmann sidequest".

In the third and fifth (Origins) games you get the canon ending first time, and a bad/joke ending on a replay if you perform X. Silent Hill 3 is easy to gauge, you have to score X points by killing X enemies.

In the fourth game it's based on whether a certain character dies during the final boss fight, and just how fucked up your apartment is at this point. That's two variables, so you get one out of four endings.

Homecoming and Downpour do the Crucial Choice thing several times.

Shattered Memories is the one that comes the closest to an organic multiple ending system. While you can force the ending through a set of Crucial Choices, these are completely masked (and feel quite random). I think the questionnaire you fill in at the beginning also makes some sort of impact. Actually the system is super weird. There're three kinds of endings, and then after one of these plays, you get one out of four possible "epilogues". I think Round 1 of endings was easier to predict than Round 2. Then again Round 2 doesn't have much narrative impact on the story, basically a home video plays to let you know what kind of life the protagonist led up to that point.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I really don't like the convoluted super good or super bad endings with no middle ground that bioware churn out...my brain requires more than 4 year olds mentality.

I might be missing something because I haven't managed to play any BioWare game to completion outside of the Mass Effect games, but I'd hardly call their endings nothing more than choosing between a "super good" or "super bad" ending.

Anyways, normally I don't make a big deal out of alternate endings. I get one, get attached to it, and then hardly ever go back and play the game because I know that it will just ruin the attachment I have to the original story I had. There are exceptions (e.g. Mass Effect), but that tends to be the way things are. Not to mention, normally they are just based on recounting the events of the game. This can be done compellingly (e.g. Fallout 3), but a lot of times, it just feels like they are talking down to me as if I can't remember what happened or that they are patting themselves on the back for how clever they were.

I guess if I had to choose, though, it would be Mass Effect 2. Knowing that anyone who went on the suicide mission could have died just made the choices I made throughout the game feel far more worth it, and it made me cherish my time with those characters in ME3 even more.

 

[sageoftruth]

The Withcher 2. It doesn't have to do with any morality system or preparedness system, it just takes into account the choices you made in the game.

Ah, ninja'd so I'll just add Witcher 1. Both were pretty good when it came to the endings system.

 

[Mikejames]

I'm gonna have to go with Silent Hill 2.

It's never really thought of as a multiple ending/choice game, and that's because it never shoves it in your face. You simply get an ending depended on how you behaved. Did you spend a lot of time with Maria and kept her safe, did you take care of your health and/or checked out that knife one too many times.

Another thing I appreciated about Silent Hill 2's ending was the fact that the most prominent conclusions (namely Leave and In Water) both had emotional weight to them and held up a central theme of the story. Most Silent Hill games have definitively good or abruptly bad results, but SH2 (and arguably Shattered Memories) still follows through on its tragic character arc, whether it's for better or for worse.

Some of the triggers might seem a bit obtuse and impossible to figure out unless you looked them up though. Seriously, I can't imagine anyone in Silent Hill being able save Cybil without a guide.

Yeah... Even after someone told what to do, I think SH1 took me three replays to get the best results.

 

[Gladion]

Oh, and WotS4 is coming to Steam this month. Worth playing.

I came for the Silent Hill commentaries and received the best news of the year so far. Thank you!

Edit: By the way I'm legally obliged to mention Nier. Not the best endings system, but one of the most interesting ones, definitely.

Spoiler

I wouldn't have thought that having your savegame deleted would hurt so much

 

[MetalShadowChaos]

Chrono Trigger did it really well.

If you are a foolish enough person to have no played it, essentially in the game there is the option to go and fight the final boss pretty much any time. You won't be able to beta it of course, it's still the final boss, you need the best equipment etc in order to kill it. So you essentially have like 2 actual endings you could get your first time.

But then in New Game Plus of course, you have all your stuff and are still a high level. So you CAN actually beat him any time. So there are a total of I think 12(?) endings you can get for beating him at different story points. Some are legitimate, the rest are essentially jokes or bonuses. One of them is two of the female party members commenting of the quality of the guys in the game in a huge game of bang/wouldn't bang in some universe of their own creation, and ends with the silent protagonist speaking. It's the best.

 

[direkiller]

Vampire the Masquerade
Most of the choices did not come across as you playing the paragon of goodnees vs kicking puppies like so many games with choices.
Often it was a choice between faction, power, or humanity.

The two main factions were not directly at odds with eachouther and was a choice between freedom or order and security rather then a Good vs bad thing. It also had the option to just say fuck those guys or put a 3rd faction in power(that were outright dicks).

 

[Augustine]

When I think of multiple endings, first thing that comes to mind is venerable "Contra: Hard Corps" for Sega Genesis.

First of all, you'd never expect the game like THAT to have like... SEVEN endings, I think?
It's not just the endings, mind you, the game changes it's second half-ish completely depending on your choices(first part is has a few variations as well). New levels, new bosses, everything. Even a gag, hidden ending is available.
I can't think of any other game since that pulled it off.

Fun, fun, fun.


edit: Yeah, VtM:B is certainly up there, sadly it was such a diamond in the rough.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I never figured out the multiple ending system in Silent Hill 2. I thought I had, but the second time I played it I got a totally different ending (which felt completely unwarranted by the way), and then I hadn't done much different between both playthroughs.

I think you would always get a different ending then the one you got before. So, say you got the 'In Water' ending during your previous playthrough, then the game would almost automatically choose a different ending during the follow up playthrough. Unless it was the 'Dog', 'UFO', or 'Rebirth' ending. I don't know exactly, but I seem to remember it being something like that.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Nobody mentioned Planescape:Torment? I thought it was pretty cool all the different ways that you could finish the game, even a couple well before the story end. Not to mention the story was simply fantastic and all the endings were icing.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I never figured out the multiple ending system in Silent Hill 2. I thought I had, but the second time I played it I got a totally different ending (which felt completely unwarranted by the way), and then I hadn't done much different between both playthroughs.

I think you would always get a different ending then the one you got before. So, say you got the 'In Water' ending during your previous playthrough, then the game would almost automatically choose a different ending during the follow up playthrough. Unless it was the 'Dog', 'UFO', or 'Rebirth' ending. I don't know exactly, but I seem to remember it being something like that.

That's probably it. I got 'Leave' the first time I played it. I knew about the endings but didn't go for any in particular. Second time I played it I went for 'Leave' again (because I'm a sucker for happy endings, if you can call it that way), stressing all the little things that are supposed to swing you in that direction. I got 'In Water' instead. Even though I never so much as examined Angela's Knife once, and re-read Mary's letter at least 20 times.

 

[ObserverStatus]

For many reasons, I thought that The Stanley Parable had a great system of endings and choices, but the most important was the narrator's comment that the ending was whenever I stopped playing the game, and his constant insistence that if I wanted something to end I could simply exit. The narrator saved Mass Effect 1 & 2 for me. I learned that I could simply feed Shepard to Morinth at the end of the game, stop playing the trilogy, and it would be just as "real" of an ending as that pretentious tripe we know to be generally know to be canon.

 

[communist gamer]

planescape: torment have some cool endings, some that you can achive very qucikly (undead throne ending, the skull master ending) and the last three ending depend on your actions and how much of the story you went through). Vampire the masquerade blodlines has some cool endings, the best part is that they are not based on your choices through out the game, but based on what you learn. You can do any ending not matter what you do in the game. Deus ex of course

 

[G00N3R7883]

I really like how Mass Effect 2's suicide mission works. Based on your choices in missions throughout the game, whether or not you've upgraded Normandy's systems, and choices in that final mission, you can have pretty much any outcome from everybody surviving or everybody dying and everything in between.

 

[Xaio30]

Chrono Trigger had 13 different endings depending on when you beat the final boss.
The world changed accordingly. It was quite amazing for its time.