Seems to me from most of your comments that the best multiple ending games are the ones where your ending is due to decisions you made prior to the climax of the game.
Games such as Deus Ex: HR and Mass Effect 3 give you a choice right at the end of the game, regardless of what you did up to that point, your ending is decided by one little button press, all previous choices reduced to a means to get you to the decision room, having little bearing on the actual ending. These are games that do multiple endings badly.
Games such as Fallout New Vegas and in my opinion Dragon Age: Origins have an ending that is conclusive, yet allows for variation in the state of the game world. Not every choice you made necessarily affects the main ending but most areas of the game that you visited are given a nod, so you know what happens as a result of the choices you made throughout the entire game, not just in the last two minutes. This is how to do a good multiple ending because each choice creates part of the ending, everything done in the game matters.
Games such as Deus Ex: HR and Mass Effect 3 give you a choice right at the end of the game, regardless of what you did up to that point, your ending is decided by one little button press, all previous choices reduced to a means to get you to the decision room, having little bearing on the actual ending. These are games that do multiple endings badly.
Games such as Fallout New Vegas and in my opinion Dragon Age: Origins have an ending that is conclusive, yet allows for variation in the state of the game world. Not every choice you made necessarily affects the main ending but most areas of the game that you visited are given a nod, so you know what happens as a result of the choices you made throughout the entire game, not just in the last two minutes. This is how to do a good multiple ending because each choice creates part of the ending, everything done in the game matters.
