REV2's good ending is amazing.
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The "bad ending" needs to die
- Thread starter LizardKing
- Start date
REV2's good ending is amazing.
kamineko
Does his best thinking in the flying car
nikos
Member
Multiple endings are probably the worst idea in gaming. I got a couple of bad endings in 999 and ended up dropping the game. Felt like I wasted hours.
On the other hand, games like Life is Strange feel different and extremely well done but technically also have multiple outcomes/endings.
On the other hand, games like Life is Strange feel different and extremely well done but technically also have multiple outcomes/endings.
I enjoy multiple endings, especially in horror games like RE and SH, if it's an rpg thst takes like 60 hours and you have to replay the entire game over again though, then yeah that can be a problem.
What I'm glad is gone are games coming to an abrupt end midway through, telling the player to play the game on the highest difficulty setting and basically that they suck, and forcing you to start all over again.
What I'm glad is gone are games coming to an abrupt end midway through, telling the player to play the game on the highest difficulty setting and basically that they suck, and forcing you to start all over again.
LizardKing
Member
Missed that! However I would still be mighty damn confused when
Moira appears in the next game. Or I read someone talking about Moira being alive.
Gentleman Jack
Member
To me Kingdom Hearts straddles this good/bad ending divide. "Didn't break records on the Gummi Ship stages? Too bad, you don't get the super special best ending."
But then KH doesn't really have a bad ending, just a missing bit of nonsensical lore if you didn't 100% the game. To me that exemplifies the 'poorly designed narrative' design problem illustrated elsewhere in the thread.
I'm wracking my brains for the types of bad endings that legit annoyed me and I can come up with two examples off the top of my head: Sonic the Hedgehog and Streets of Rage. If you didn't do the optional stuff your struggle is for nothing. If you didn't beat the game at its highest difficulty you still lose. Those really grind my gears, but thankfully the charm of those games isn't about the rich lore.
UmbraeCruxis
Banned
I actually came here to use Witcher 3's bad ending as an example of a "good" bad ending. Yeah, there are some decisions that feel arbitrary that lead to it, but I thought the "bad" ending was so powerful in itself, that it's hard not to appreciate it. Just watching it on youtube made me tear up a bit. I can definitely understand not wanting to re go through a 100+ hour game again because
you were a "bad" parent towards Ciri
I feel like Life is Strange barely counts since it's literally one choice that determines the ending.
Bad endings are cool. Most of the games that I like are games that are fun to play multiple times and if it's a story based game I want to try to get different endings each time. I like the idea that I can have radically different experiences. In something like Mass Effect it's fun to craft a specific shepard with a specific ideology and stick to that, rather than just going perfect run attempts every time. I actually wish bad endings were longer, and that we got full narrative resolutions to some of them. Getting fully animated "game overs" is cool, but getting to explore how that story would have gone without the hero's victory is really interesting as well. I love the idea that Silent Hill 3 continues from the Good+ ending of SH1, and Shattered Memories continues from the Bad ending. Split timelines that actually end up in parallel sequels are a very interesting potential of videogames narrative.
TheSlySoul
Member
You must have not played Live A Live because that game has some of the best bad endings.
Also Zero Escape series had some good bad endings!
Also Zero Escape series had some good bad endings!
LizardKing
Member
It makes it more enjoyable for me that my good endings are earned.
No I'm with you man. Same shit happened to me in P4 the first time around, and it was a long drawn out experience, all to tell me "yeah, you fucked up".
This is another great example of a bad bad ending (P4).
Id add:
- The bad ending works with the established mechanics of the game to further the theme and/or plot (Zero Escape series, Undertale).
I love bad ends because they appropriately both punish poor decisions you made and reward decision making in a concrete way.
What the OP really wants is probably a much clearer cut way of knowing what a poor decision is and if it locks you into a path.
More_Badass
Member
Live with your ending, especially in choice-driven games. That's why I only play narrative adventures games like The Walking Dead once. The ending I got is the ending I got, because of my choices.
If you don't like it because it's a stupidly written ending, that's one thing. But if the ending is "bad" because of what you did and how you acted through the game and you don't like it, that's on you.
IMO People who play games again and again to get different endings are missing the point of multiple endings. It's not a list to check off, but a way to assign some consequences to your actions.
I can understand frustrations with Bad Endings, but I think they add stuff to games.
Also, you picked a bad one to complain about, because Revelations 2 ending is EXTREMELY easy to change and see. All you have to do is replay that one part of that chapter and make one choice in the chapter and then after you beat the level quit out back to chapter select and go right to the end of the game. It's really, really easy to switch and not a big deal. It's not like you have to replay the whole game.
You can actually change a LOT of Revelations 2 like that. Just hit up a chapter, on ANY difficulty, make a different decision, and it will change routes and stuff for you.
Gentleman Jack
Member
Shadow deserved better and I don't feel bad for going back to the floating island and waiting for him rather than leaping to Setzer's airship at the first opportunity. Playing through World of Ruin is literally FF6's ending, not that cutscene after Kefka goes down.
Also, it was fun to turn the world into reptites in Chrono Trigger at least once.
Valjean Lafitte
Banned
Maybe try reading a few of the posts that came before yours.
Edit:
Username checks out.
kamineko
Does his best thinking in the flying car
Shadow deserved better and I don't feel bad for going back to the floating island and waiting for him rather than leaping to Setzer's airship at the first opportunity. Playing through World of Ruin is literally FF6's ending, not that cutscene after Kefka goes down.
Also, it was fun to turn the world into reptites in Chrono Trigger at least once.
Yeah, I had to go back for Shadow, too. It's not his fault I let that countdown clock freak me out.
CertifiedFP
Member
I'm personally not a fan of games in a series that have numerous different endings.
I don't like not knowing which is the "right" ending. Especially in the sequel when the game might assume that a different sequence of events happened to the ones you directly witnessed on-screen.
Balder's Gate II was particularly annoying when you'd meet numerous party members from the first game who you watched get brutally slaughtered just wandering around.
I don't like not knowing which is the "right" ending. Especially in the sequel when the game might assume that a different sequence of events happened to the ones you directly witnessed on-screen.
Balder's Gate II was particularly annoying when you'd meet numerous party members from the first game who you watched get brutally slaughtered just wandering around.
TheSlySoul
Member
You know what is a bigger crime? Incomplete endings!
I hate the idea of locking an ending to some barrier (difficulty is the worst one).
...
Just had to do it.
I hate the idea of locking an ending to some barrier (difficulty is the worst one).
...
Just had to do it.
Nice Boat.
OP would probably hate the Atelier series then. I like the concept of multiple endings, but I'd like for them to be obtainable in one play through. When I realized I couldn't get the best ending in Atelier Meruru I stopped playing. Plus it wasn't as good as the first two.
I'm all for multiple endings, but only if it's easy to retrace my steps to get a better one. Make me work for the true ending, but let me know where and how I can at least start to direct my efforts.
I think vanilla P4 does it pretty poorly. The first decision is fine enough, but a few dialogue choices are so similar that it might be hard for some people to choose the right one, because more than one might seem valid. As for the true ending requirement, it's terrible. In vanilla,
999 was fun, but (ending spoilers)
I think vanilla P4 does it pretty poorly. The first decision is fine enough, but a few dialogue choices are so similar that it might be hard for some people to choose the right one, because more than one might seem valid. As for the true ending requirement, it's terrible. In vanilla,
you jump straight from December to the day you're supposed to move in March.
You tell everyone goodbye, and then you're presented with a simple prompt asking if you'll go home to get ready to move. Only after refusing and going to the mall, which prompts you twice to head back, does everyone else start pouring on about how they're uncomfortable leaving things as they are. They had three months to talk about this, yet they think investigative brinkmanship is a good idea. When you're giving your farewells, not once do any of them give a sign that they're uncomfortable or that they have something on their mind. Nanako gives you a letter that tells you that there's more to the mystery before you even leave the house. Yet, despite it being in your pocket the entire time, you only think to read it after going through three refusals. Why would you have that resistance if you still wanted to investigate?
I've heard people talk about how the Izanagi/Izanami lesson and the gas station attendant only appearing during rainy days are foreshadowing. The problem is that they don't foreshadow that the unanswered mysteries aren't just lingering plot holes. This is the game that goes through the exact same "You're not me" spiel multiple times and that has Naoto a genius think that getting kidnapped without anything to capture footage of the act is a good idea. There are enough leaps of logic and stupidity to make you wonder if it's just the writers losing the thread or the budget. All that in a 50+ hour RPG, so if you started a new game+ or erased your data, it'd be hard to go back.
You tell everyone goodbye, and then you're presented with a simple prompt asking if you'll go home to get ready to move. Only after refusing and going to the mall, which prompts you twice to head back, does everyone else start pouring on about how they're uncomfortable leaving things as they are. They had three months to talk about this, yet they think investigative brinkmanship is a good idea. When you're giving your farewells, not once do any of them give a sign that they're uncomfortable or that they have something on their mind. Nanako gives you a letter that tells you that there's more to the mystery before you even leave the house. Yet, despite it being in your pocket the entire time, you only think to read it after going through three refusals. Why would you have that resistance if you still wanted to investigate?
I've heard people talk about how the Izanagi/Izanami lesson and the gas station attendant only appearing during rainy days are foreshadowing. The problem is that they don't foreshadow that the unanswered mysteries aren't just lingering plot holes. This is the game that goes through the exact same "You're not me" spiel multiple times and that has Naoto a genius think that getting kidnapped without anything to capture footage of the act is a good idea. There are enough leaps of logic and stupidity to make you wonder if it's just the writers losing the thread or the budget. All that in a 50+ hour RPG, so if you started a new game+ or erased your data, it'd be hard to go back.
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.
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.
decoyplatypus
Member
I would rather get rid of the "best" ending--the one that, because it requires the player to jump through hoops (sometimes with the help of a guide) and tends to resolve some extra plot thread or add some extra satisfying touch, marks the other endings as worse rather than just different.
When the ways for getting a particular ending is some seriously cryptic bullshit and you have to replay the entire game for it, I'm just gonna Youtube it these days. I actually got the "hardest" to get Dark Souls 3 ending on my first game, but I Youtubed all the rest. They all suck anyway.
Undertale was a recent exception. I think it just depends on the game.
Undertale was a recent exception. I think it just depends on the game.
Might wanna spoiler tag that.
JayhawkerStL
Banned
So basically, the OP wants a participation trophy. Ugh...
Hibiki Kurosawa
Member
Sometimes the bad ending is the good ending, if you know what I mean.
Dr_Boris_Goltz
Banned
You shouldn't be punished for going through an entire game but somehow playing "wrong".
I like how Halo does it: every difficulty gets the same ending, but legendary gets a little bonus.
Maybe expand on that by making the bonus more significant, but don't take away from the player who was dedicated enough to actually finish your game. Achievement data shows that these players are pretty rare.
Edit: I will say that bad endings can be well written and interesting, and therefor not punishing.
I like how Halo does it: every difficulty gets the same ending, but legendary gets a little bonus.
Maybe expand on that by making the bonus more significant, but don't take away from the player who was dedicated enough to actually finish your game. Achievement data shows that these players are pretty rare.
Edit: I will say that bad endings can be well written and interesting, and therefor not punishing.
I hate multiple endings altogether.
Main reason is because one ending is always better than the other. Perfect example is GTAIV. So I agree with OP.
If you have a good and a bad ending, pick whichever one is more satisfying from a narrative standpoint and ditch the other one.
Doesn't matter if there are very specific things you have to do to get the ending or if it's as simple as a a binary choice at the end of the game. Just do away with them.
Main reason is because one ending is always better than the other. Perfect example is GTAIV. So I agree with OP.
If you have a good and a bad ending, pick whichever one is more satisfying from a narrative standpoint and ditch the other one.
Doesn't matter if there are very specific things you have to do to get the ending or if it's as simple as a a binary choice at the end of the game. Just do away with them.
Eh, its
decent. Payoff is def not worth it though unless we're counting normal end as canon(we aren't).
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.
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.
Dr_Boris_Goltz
Banned
I just thought of an example of bad endings gone horrendously wrong:
Fallout 3's lame slideshow somehow glitched and gave me the incorrect ending. I played like a goddamn saint and the game chastised me in the end for a decision I NEVER made. This was the cherry on top of an already horrible game and was easily one of the most frustrating experiences I had with a video game story.
Fallout 3's lame slideshow somehow glitched and gave me the incorrect ending. I played like a goddamn saint and the game chastised me in the end for a decision I NEVER made. This was the cherry on top of an already horrible game and was easily one of the most frustrating experiences I had with a video game story.
That sounds like a bug more than anything about the concept of multiple endings