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The "bad ending" needs to die

S

Skii

Member
I absolutely adore multiple endings in video games. It is one of the few things unique to the platform. You can actively change the decisions you make in the game and it affects how it'll end for you. That is something special.

It's mainly something used by Japanese games though which is a shame. Rarely see Western developers utilise it.
 
T

Trigonometrize.

Member
Bad endings are not inherently bad, but 99% of the time they're designed like absolute shit. I feel like games should be ushering you in the direction of the good/true ending(s) making it the player's fault if they wind up seeing "bad ending," but instead they leave you to look up the obscure thing that you missed that has little bearing on what you were trying to accomplish at the particular point. I can't endorse multiple endings at all despite their uniqueness to video games when developers so rarely understand them.
 
G

Gentleman Jack

Member
LegendofLex said:
When I say "obscure," I mean things like
Click to expand...

No I feel you there, I was just thinking that KH is in a strange place where there are no 'bad' endings, only that your reward for driving yourself crazy on silly minigames doesn't also feel like an earned 'good' ending. It's just kind of confusing and unsatisfying because it's also kind of a cliffhanger.
 
R

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
Having finished 999 this morning, I can't agree. It's true that some endings are almost impossible to find on your own, as they required a very specific series of choices, but the game gives them a reason to exist. An excellent reason, and without them it wouldn't have been the same.

Nachos said:
999 was fun, but (ending spoilers)
there's no real indication that there's more to the story, and certainly not in that way. I think the only way you'd find the ending naturally is by lucking out. The game lets you go on the true ending path and stops you before the finale if you haven't gotten the safe ending, and treats that as its own. Even if you exhausted all the other possibilities, if you assumed that the path you took previously still lead to the coffin ending, you'd have no reason to retrace your steps.
Click to expand...
I used a guide for the
coffin, safe and true
endings. The first 2 of them give you a short video that shows some events from the next ending, and
the doors you must go through
in order to reach it. With that information, I'd say the most difficult one is the first in that list, because there's nothing pointing to it and you can only unlock it by chance.
Even if you discover that you need to give the bookmark to Clover and go through the right doors (as I did), you still won't get the coffin or true endings unless you also talk about ice-9 twice during that playthrough (since I was trying a different conversation option in each playthrough, I failed this check).
 
L

LegendofLex

Member
Gentleman Jack said:
No I feel you there, I was just thinking that KH is in a strange place where there are no 'bad' endings, only that your reward for driving yourself crazy on silly minigames doesn't also feel like an earned 'good' ending. It's just kind of confusing and unsatisfying because it's also kind of a cliffhanger.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I can level with you there.

I don't think I'll ever try to get best endings on lower difficulties in those games ever again.

-_-
 
D

DedValve

Banned
I thought this was gonna be something where your given a choice between the logical good ending and betraying the story for the sake of having an evil ending. Which I agree I don't like those .

Bad endings in general are ok to have.
 
O

OneAndDone

Banned
If anything, we need the return of the "playing on easy, aren't we? Ready to play the last 10% of the game? NOOB! Start over again in normal!" ending.
 
B

beril

Member
paragonpro said:
I like how souls does it where every ending feels satisfying, and the other ones are worth going through ng+ to get.
Click to expand...

Satisfying endings in Souls games? It's like 5 seconds tops and if we're lucky we get one line of dialogue.
I've come to accept it, and in a weird way appreciate it, but beating Dark Souls for the first time was just a massive wtf, and youtubing the other ending didn't really give any more closure
 
G

Gentleman Jack

Member
OneAndDone said:
If anything, we need the return of the "playing on easy, aren't we? Ready to play the last 10% of the game? NOOB! Start over again in normal!" ending.
Click to expand...

I just remembered Jamestown, where you aren't even allowed to play the last two levels if you're on 'medium' or lower difficulty.

It is a bullet hell shooter so I can kind of see where the devs were going with this, but I still didn't like that decision very much because of how short the game already is without locking away any semblance of closure to the story behind the hardest difficulties.

It's a brilliant game but damn they really expect godlike perfection for a meager reward. Again, the narrative isn't the game's selling point but dang, it stings.
 
B

bomblord1

Banned
Bad endings give stronger emotional weight to your decisions

Significantly increase replayability

And are just generally fun
 
I

Inidet

Member
OP I'm so with you. Nothing ruins my enjoyment of a game faster than finishing, getting a flaccid ass ending, only to find out that I made the wrong decisions like 30% through the game.
I don't have time the play a game like six times to get an ending that makes sense or is satisfying.
 
V

vulva

Member
If you enjoyed 95% of a game, but were unhappy with the last 5, does that make a game bad?

If you got 95%on an exam but failed the last 5, should you fail the test?
 
N

Narroo

Member
It depends on the game, really.

The "B" ending in Valkyrie Profile is BS. It's a 40 hour RPG and the "Bad Ending" is incredibly anti-climatic and leaves all the loose ends hanging about. Getting the "True Ending" is almost impossible without a guide and will require to replay the 40 hour game. The true ending is much longer and better than the "B" ending.

THIS is an example of a bad game choice.
 
T

That1BlackGuy

Member
I can't necessarily agree as it depends, I've never had a particular issue with multiple endings but I could see how it can be a issue, especially if you don't want to immediately replay a bunch of content or in the worse case, start over. Now though thanks to YouTube I can play video games however I want and just YouTube all the other endings/missable content. I generally use FAQs/guides while playing these days as well though so I rarely run into this issue. I think a good designed game that has multiple story branches will always show a way to funnel you to your likely preferred ending. What use to grind my gears was locking "true" or extended endings behind harder difficulties/content or subsequent playthroughs, but again I use YouTube as a workaround to that now.
 
Y

yophlow

Banned
vulva said:
Then just fucking watch it on youtube and let the people who enjoy these things have their fun
Click to expand...

It's not the same experience.

What if you were watching a movie in the theatre, then it stopped 5 minutes before the ending and the filmmakers popped up and said "this isn't a good ending, we filmed a good one though. Just go home and fucking watch it on Youtube."

Games are games, Youtube is not a game.
 
C

Cyframe

Member
In Clocktower for the PS1, if you didn't pick up a random oil can in scenario 1, in the last scenario you couldn't open up a door that would allow you to get a key item to get the best ending.

Bad endings dependent upon random items aren't good ones. Who would think an oil can would be that significant?

At the core of things, people don't want to feel as though their time is wasted. Bad Endings can be implemented in way that makes people feel satisfied, but it's rarely the case.
 
P

Peter Ian Staker

Member
I don't like bad endings unless they are thematically consistent with the game(Do you really expect silent hill 2 to end well?)
Getting a bad ending in a lighthearted game always feels like this
 
Shadax the wizard

Shadax the wizard

Member
I'm not entirely sure if this thread will end good or bad, or if I could say something to influence the direction? Wait, I just fucked up didn't I?
 
S

SeanTSC

Member
Aeana said:
It's interesting how things have changed. Multiple endings used to be a positive thing, but now people feel entitled to the best outcome regardless of what they do in the game. One of the strengths of video games as a medium is that branching storylines are so easy to do, but apparently they need to end in the same place for people to be happy anymore.


I don't think the penchant for labeling endings as "good" or "best" or "bad" helps things, either. A lot of the tkme, they're just different.
Click to expand...

I absolutely LOVE them, especially in stuff like Bioware games. I do my best to play through them making the choices that I think will go my way. Then if I end up not being satisfied with it I will completely replay one of them making sure that I get what I want.

I went so far as to replay Dragon Age Inquisiton, doing every single thing both times, just to really end up where I wanted to be. I ended up with Vivian as my Divine the first go round, and didn't really intend to at all and didn't have a save far enough back to fix it, so the second time through I looked stuff up and made absolutely sure that Leliana would get the job.
 
D

Drazgul

Member
Bad endings for bad players, what's not to like.

I like to replay my games so it's a non issue for me personally, but I could see people getting pissed if they felt cheated out of getting the "proper" ending.
 
V

VelveteenTouch

Member
Road of Ease said:
I remember playing Silent Hill on PS1 and getting a bad ending.

I looked up what I had to do to get the good endings and played it again only to get the same fucking ending as before. I was so pissed off with it I gave up entirely. It's probably in part why I never played any other Silent Hill game since.
Click to expand...

The bad end of Silent Hill is probably my favorite end to any game ever. In fact my primary interest when the following Silent Hills came out is what the bad endings were!

I'm trying hard not to be too harsh here but I've always been annoyed with the "Hollywood ending" where movies always have to have a happy end otherwise audiences will be upset and ticket sales will suffer. In this age where everybody complains about the homogenization of video games, to have people complain that there needs to be MORE because they need to feel their time was well spent, boggles my mind.
 
J

jonjonaug

Member
Nachos said:
I
999 was fun, but (ending spoilers)
there's no real indication that there's more to the story, and certainly not in that way. I think the only way you'd find the ending naturally is by lucking out. The game lets you go on the true ending path and stops you before the finale if you haven't gotten the safe ending, and treats that as its own. Even if you exhausted all the other possibilities, if you assumed that the path you took previously still lead to the coffin ending, you'd have no reason to retrace your steps.

I know people thought VLR's flowchart killed the tension of decisions, but I really appreciated how it respected the player's time, even if was still full of unskippable conversations that said the same basic point and had tons useless walking animations.
Click to expand...

The game informs you that there's multiple endings from the save menu, and getting either the
safe
or
coffin
endings plays a video that explicitly tells you what to do next. It is entirely possible, in fact it's rather easy, to reach the true end without a guide just by paying attention.
 
N

Neoleo2143

Member
Fire Emblem 3/12 and 6 handle the bad ending in both a good and bad way. The Good way is the method to access the good ending with establishing a relatively smart objective in the Star Shards which by themselves are broken as hell in FE3 so you're going to get them most of the time assuming you can nail the thieves on the maps. Fire Emblem 6 is a bit iffy with consistency but has more varied objectives to get the good ending and reward you with awesome weapons and some really neat (if a bit cruel) maps.

The issue is that the bad ending is pretty much a cut short good ending for both games. It works for FE6. But it makes no sense in the case of Fire Emblem 3 and 12.
 
kamineko

kamineko

Does his best thinking in the flying car
bigdaddygamebot said:
I was gutted by and loved the bad ending of Witcher III.

Boo on you OP.
Click to expand...

I'm glad you mentioned W3. I didn't get the ending I wanted, but I still found it satisfying. It seemed in-sync with the game world and the story I experienced. It didn't occur to me to change it or even watch the other endings. It was my ending. CDPR handled it really well.
 
S

Syril

Member
Unless it's something like 999 where the bad endings fit into the story well and work somewhat logically, I'd rather have bad endings be the ones you have to go out of your way for, like in Disgaea 2 where the unbelievably disturbing worst ending required you to reach high requirements on the main character related to minmaxing and teamkills and then beat a level 1200 boss.
 
B

bigdaddygamebot

Member
kamineko said:
I'm glad you mentioned W3. I didn't get the ending I wanted, but I still found it satisfying. It seemed in-sync with the game world and the story I experienced. It didn't occur to me to change it or even watch the other endings. It was my ending. CDPR handled it really well.
Click to expand...

Indeed. I went and youtubed the other endings and it just didn't feel nearly as enjoyable despite being the "better" endings.

With all that said...endings tied to seemingly random items/actions can indeed be a bit frustrating.

Bad endings aren't the problem.

Bad developers/storytellers are the problem.
 
K

KyleCross

Member
Vamphuntr said:
Maybe you should read what is written on the screen :) During the QTE scene it you show a prompt to switch character. It's there for a reason. Maybe you are also a bit impatient? Just replay the chapter the correct way to update your save file.
Click to expand...
I'm sorry, but no. The ending trigger in Rev2 is terrible. Patience and decisions have nothing to do with it. A QTE mashing prompt suddenly comes up and an entire second later the switch characters prompt comes up. You're suppose to ignore the QTE? BRILLIANT!

Also, the hint of using Moira for that scene is pretty much gone in co-op. The whole thing was hot garbage, and with how the bad ending is a single lackluster cutscene while the good ending is an entire sequence it's safe to say they did this at the last minute to appease classic RE fans who liked multiple endings, but absolutely no effort was put into it. But not surprising considering the entire game is a low budget Last of Us clone.
 
S

sn00zer

Member
Im fine with bad endings as long as it makes sense given whats happened thus far in the game. 10/10 though it just comes out and blind sides you and youre wondering what the hell is even going on.
 
G

ghibli99

Member
Wasn't there a PS1 game (maybe it was a Mega Man title) where the % you saw of the ending was determined by how much of the game you completed? So if you only collected 60%, you only saw 60% of the ending? Maybe I dreamed this. LOL It sounds familiar though... but yeah, that'd be my definition of a bad (stupid) ending... or way to handle endings, rather.

Also, when my friend showed me what you had to do to get the best ending in FF10-2, I couldn't believe it. It's like that joke in Toy Story 2 about not being able to beat the boss without purchasing the strategy guide.
 
S

Syril

Member
ghibli99 said:
Wasn't there a PS1 game (maybe it was a Mega Man title) where the % you saw of the ending was determined by how much of the game you completed? So if you only collected 60%, you only saw 60% of the ending? Maybe I dreamed this. LOL It sounds familiar though... but yeah, that'd be my definition of a bad (stupid) ending... or way to handle endings, rather.

Also, when my friend showed me what you had to do to get the best ending in FF10-2, I couldn't believe it. It's like that joke in Toy Story 2 about not being able to beat the boss without purchasing the strategy guide.
Click to expand...

You might be thinking of Mischief Makers on the N64 where you collected a crystal in each stage that determined how much of the ending played.
 
R

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
jonjonaug said:
The game informs you that there's multiple endings from the save menu, and getting either the
safe
or
coffin
endings plays a video that explicitly tells you what to do next. It is entirely possible, in fact it's rather easy, to reach the true end without a guide just by paying attention.
Click to expand...
The
coffin
ending is impossible to find if you don't realize you have to
listen to June's story about ice-9, and then talk to Seven about it
. I failed to reach it because I was trying every different conversation option, and I never made all the right combinations until I looked at a guide. I did find out about
the clover bookmark and which doors to go through
on my own (and realized that must have been important and probably the correct path for a different ending), but I didn't meet the other requirements during that playthrough (and never imagined they were such).
 
dickroach

dickroach

Member
BRB, getting in my Epoch and telling Squaresoft to fix Chrono Trigger.

I don't mind a game that encourages multiple playthroughs (if the game is good)
 
N

NinjaCoachZ

Member
Alcotholic said:
999 would be very strange if it didn't have anybad endings...
Click to expand...

999 is a great example of how to do multiple endings since the game is all about choice. If each choice led to the same ending, the player would be discouraged from fully exploring everything in the game. So a repeated playthrough gives you new game, introduces some new mysteries, builds the world, allows you to spend more time with the charming characters and getting to know them better, and offers new perspectives on the various events that occur. It's a slow burn but very worth it.

I wouldn't even call most of them bad endings. The game is specifically designed so that you get them first and then replay until you can unlock the true one. The only one that's truly a bad (as in bad/frustrating) ending is the coffin one, since
it is the exact same as the true ending, except it cuts out randomly
.
 
N

NESpowerhouse

Perhaps he's wondering why someone would shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane.
The Bad Ending in the first Silent Hill was a little stupid.
 
M

Modest Mauser

Member
What would be the point of giving players a choice if it could never go badly?

People complain when games end and reveal your choices didn't matter, but if a game actually has real consequences for your decisions OP wants to be upset about it?
 
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