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[Datwheezy]

If playing an rpg or other game that puts a large emphasis on player choice in regards to narrative (ex: The Witcher) should the player be able to make choices that lead the player/main character to not fulfilling the main quest, but not given a game over screen either? Basically achieving a different, non successful ending.

For me it would depend in the length if the game. A 3 hour game I would find it interesting, but if I spent 80 hours playing an rpg only to not fullfill the main quest, I'd feel like I wasted my time.

 

[RoboPlato]

Some of the Heavy Rain endings were like this.

 

[Kintaro]

If playing an rpg or other game that puts a large emphasis on player choice in regards to narrative (ex: The Witcher) should the player be able to make choices that lead the player/main character to not fulfilling the main quest, but not given a game over screen either? Basically achieving a different, non successful ending.

For me it would depend in the length if the game. A 3 hour game I would find it interesting, but if I spent 80 hours playing an rpg only to not fullfill the main quest, I'd feel like I wasted my time.

Yes. Yes, they should. It was their choice. Sometimes choices don't pan out. Too bad, so sad.

Tired of this half assed, bullshit "choices" in games.

 

[POWERSPHERE]

Yes. Yes, they should. It was their choice. Sometimes choices don't pan out. Too bad, so sad.

Tired of this half assed, bullshit "choices" in games.

Yknow life fucks you for bad decisions, you should check it out.

 

[disappeared]

I had a long write-up written, years ago, about exactly this. Short answer is yes.

 

[fabricated backlash]

If playing an rpg or other game that puts a large emphasis on player choice in regards to narrative (ex: The Witcher) should the player be able to make choices that lead the player/main character to not fulfilling the main quest, but not given a game over screen either? Basically achieving a different, non successful ending.

For me it would depend in the length if the game. A 3 hour game I would find it interesting, but if I spent 80 hours playing an rpg only to not fullfill the main quest, I'd feel like I wasted my time.

Well Shattered Memories has a similar approach to that, allthough you allways "complete" the story, your behaviour and choices really effect how you experience the ending.

I would love for more games to have more than just one ideal story arch. It would expand the scope and range of a games narrative way beyond the movie like linear shit that we're getting right now.
I guess it would also multiply the efforts needed to make games though.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Interesting for the small minority who would not just get bored or frustrated and look up the optimal choices in a FAQ.

 

[Ithil]

Some of the Heavy Rain endings were like this.

Pretty much exactly what OP was talking about. You can fail trying, of course, but there's parts where you do have a choice, and one choice leads to some of the bad endings. You pretty much have to deliberately try to get the worst ending.

 

[Hylian7]

This game does that exactly.

 

[Datwheezy]

I agree that Heavy Rain did it well, but I'd like to see it taken further towards being based on the gameplay choices players make, not just going left or right on a flow chart.

Although I also don't want to see it become: you didn't grab item x or y in this section, you get a bad ending.

Say you are playing a stealth game where you are trying to rescue someone and you get spotted. That may take attention off your current area, but makes it harder once you get to the captives since they guards have moved there. Maybe then the guards are also more likely to kill the captives based off your actions. But the killing of them doesn't mean game over, just that they are dead now.

 

[davepoobond]

i agree with the sentiment if it is a short game then i am "okay" with getting a bad ending if those were my choices.

but if its anywhere like a 5 to 100 hour game and i get a bad ending, im not playing 100 hours again to see the "good ending"

 

[Incendiary]

If the decisions you make don't impact the story, why are you making the decisions at all? But short answer is yes, I don't mind getting bad endings. I do agree that the longer the game is, the less likely I'll be willing to replay it to get a better ending.

HOWEVER.

I also don't like bullshit choices at the very end of the game, where one line of dialogue before/after the final boss determines what ending you get regardless of what you've done in the 30 hours you've played up to that point. The ending you get should be an organic result of everything you've done to get to that point, not because of one single answer.

 

[TheBanditKing]

For some games yes, but I personally like scripted stories better. Much like a movie or a book I appreciate the story a writer is trying to tell and find it more exciting to not know where things are going or be able to change them, it would have taken many of the surprises out of games like Chrono Cross and FF7. Because honestly would would kill a character they just spent 30+ hours leveling up? Without moments like that story telling is just too predictable. Sure in a perfect world a games story would not suffer because of what ending you get but a writer only has so much time and when thinking out every possible scenario I feel the creative vision suffers at the expense of it being player decision driven.

 

[Shadow of the BEAST]

I hate multiple endings.

Just give me one well written one.

 

[Shanadeus]

.

 

[sixghost]

Yes. Yes, they should. It was their choice. Sometimes choices don't pan out. Too bad, so sad.

Tired of this half assed, bullshit "choices" in games.

I would love to play a game like this. If I knew making the wrong choice would end the game and lock my save file or something, that would be fantastic.

Uplink sort of did this, but not because of some sort of moral choice. It was just that if you got backtraced because you messed up, or because you got too greedy, the police would raid your house and arrest you. Your save file was basically wiped if this happened. Keep in mind that you couldn't manually save in that game, so you couldn't just revert to a save from before the hack if you got caught, you had to start an entirely new game.

That game was great.

 

[Coxy]

Atelier/Ar Tonelico are way ahead of you

 

[Lijik]

Its not an RPG but Wario Land 2 did something like this where you can unlock a secondary quest by letting Wario sleep in during the first stage.

 

[muu]

If it makes for a better experience.

I don't like multiple endings that are there for the sake of having multiple endings. If each one can have its own charm, by all means yes. If it'll make other elements suffer, anyone incorporating them is doing nothing more than showing weakness as game developers.

 

[Emitan]

Don't think I've played Morrowind for more than five hours EVER without seeing a message saying I've doomed everyone but doing something stupid/awesome. Much better than Oblivion's NPCs never dying.

 

[GSR]

This game does that exactly.

One qualm I had with this game was that sometimes there wasn't any real cause-and-effect between your choices and what happens. Like, the one that comes to mind is

Spoiler

the ID cards

in door 6 I think it is. If you picked the right doors beforehand,

Spoiler

Junpei has Ace do the cards and learns about his prosopagnosia that way, and then they find Clover's body and shit goes down. Otherwise Junpei just does them himself, and later on gets knifed, and the Clover thing never happens.

Still, it was good to have a game with the very real tension that if you made the wrong choice everyone could wind up dead.

It has been a while since I've played it though, so maybe I'm forgetting some plot detail to account for all this.

 

[Sinatar]

The Wing Commander series did this to awesome effect.

 

[Zafir]

I don't mind bad endings I guess, permitting it's not "What the hell?" when it comes and also you don't have to spend 10+ hours replaying the entire game.

Honestly. I prefer multiple endings which are just different outcomes based on your actions and choices throughout the game. I absolutely hate the bad, good and true ending system that a lot of japanese games encorporate. The good endings are usually a cut version of the true ending, and the bad ending is usually just a very short sad scene. Which means you want to get the true ending unless you plan on replaying it(I tend not to because they're 30hours odd), however the true ending usually has very obscure requirements which you have to fufil to get it. Ultimately forcing you to use a guide in most cases.

One qualm I had with this game was that sometimes there wasn't any real cause-and-effect between your choices and what happens. Like, the one that comes to mind is

Spoiler

the ID cards

in door 6 I think it is. If you picked the right doors beforehand,

Spoiler

Junpei has Ace do the cards and learns about his prosopagnosia that way, and then they find Clover's body and shit goes down. Otherwise Junpei just does them himself, and later on gets knifed, and the Clover thing never happens.

Still, it was good to have a game with the very real tension that if you made the wrong choice everyone could wind up dead.

It has been a while since I've played it though, so maybe I'm forgetting some plot detail to account for all this.

I hated it that you couldn't really predict what was going to happen through your choices.

Spoiler

My first ending was getting killed by Clover. It wasn't shocking, because after Snakes death she'd been very mentally unstable. However, the weapon could have been in any 3 of the doors, and so how was I meant to know it was going to be in door 1, and that she'd use it to start hacking peoples hands off. I figured it was going to be safer being with Clover, because atleast then Junpei could have prevented whatever she would do. Instead, he just lets her pick up the axe and carry it with her, until finally she kills him! I did actually look at the guide after getting that ending, and apparently the true ending requires you to go through door 1. However, because I hadn't got the stupid true ending requirements, I couldn't prevent it!

 

[Deadstar]

Demon's/Dark Souls does this. I think it's a cool idea.

 

[kodt]

How about a perma-death game? If you die, save is deleted.

I remember STALKER had a bunch of bad endings based on your actions. Pretty much if you failed to explore/complete a certain part of the game you would get a bad ending. The ending depended on game stats.

 

[lastendconductor]

Of course. Dead ends are awesome.
Games where you get the same ending anyways are stupid, basically you could've watched a movie... don't put interactive shit if it doesn't do anything, it's an insult to our intelligence.

 

[SiegfriedFM]

Way of the Samurai does this.

 

[kodt]

Another thing I don't like is how one choice determines whether or not you get the good or bad ending.

In KOTOR it doesn't matter how light side or dark side you are, it all comes down to one conversation near the end of the game that determines your ending.

In Bioshock, just killing one little sister gives you the bad ending. In my play-through I killed the first one, but saved all the rest. The lady kept praising me for how good I was and giving me gifts. I was good for 95% of the game and then apparently I am evil at the end... so stupid.

Most games with good/bad endings are like this. One choice determines the ending.

 

[Tain]

don't put interactive shit if it doesn't do anything, it's an insult to our intelligence.

very much the truth

 

[Zafir]

In Bioshock, just killing one little sister gives you the bad ending. In my play-through I killed the first one, but saved all the rest. The lady kept praising me for how good I was and giving me gifts. I was good for 95% of the game and then apparently I am evil at the end... so stupid.

The ending is very slightly different if you don't kill them all. However, I agree. The same thing happened to me. I saved all of them but one, because I just wanted to see what happened if you killed one. Which course meant I got the evil ending.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

Absolutely. The first ending I ever got for STALKER made me depressed for a week.

 

[squidyj]

If playing an rpg or other game that puts a large emphasis on player choice in regards to narrative (ex: The Witcher) should the player be able to make choices that lead the player/main character to not fulfilling the main quest, but not given a game over screen either? Basically achieving a different, non successful ending.

For me it would depend in the length if the game. A 3 hour game I would find it interesting, but if I spent 80 hours playing an rpg only to not fullfill the main quest, I'd feel like I wasted my time.

Well I think the thing is there's a difference between a 'bad' ending and an unsatisfying ending. Ideally a player should never be able to achieve a truly unsatisfying ending. If a player is given the opportunity to 'fail' a main quest-line then that's part of the design of the game and the choices and actions taken (or not taken) by the player need to be incorporated organically in creating an ending that makes for a valid narrative path.

 

[NEOPARADIGM]

More games should operate on the Choose Your Own Adventure model, where say, hypothetically, a certain series of choices would end the game rather quickly - maybe after 6 hours; another series of choices would end the game after 8 hours, and maybe on a "perfect" playthrough, the game lasts 15 hours, or whatever.

Just shooting from the hip but you get the idea. Yeah. Do want.

 

[Alchemy]

Yes. Yes, they should. It was their choice. Sometimes choices don't pan out. Too bad, so sad.

Tired of this half assed, bullshit "choices" in games.

Choices should be interesting, but punishing? I'm not sure many people play games to be punished for their choices.

With that said, there are also better ways to choose a "bad" ending than the game going "and fuck you".

 

[Datwheezy]

Well I think the thing is there's a difference between a 'bad' ending and an unsatisfying ending. Ideally a player should never be able to achieve a truly unsatisfying ending. If a player is given the opportunity to 'fail' a main quest-line then that's part of the design of the game and the choices and actions taken (or not taken) by the player need to be incorporated organically in creating an ending that makes for a valid narrative path.

Agreed. I guess my question is also asking whether a non mission-accomplishing ending is "satisfying" to players if their decisions are what led to it. For example, although there isn't any choice-based results, I don't think the ending of Red Dead would have been as satisfying to most people without the part right before the credits.

Also how do you guys feel about content being locked out from players because of decisions?

 

[MCD]

Teepo was right.

 

[The Technomancer]

Depending on how you define "bad ending", (broken record time) the original Geneforge did this in a way I enjoyed. You always get off the island, but based on what you've done there are any number of endings that you may not consider "successful"

What the OP really seems to be talking about is multiple endings in general, of which a few are almost always "bad"

 

[Korigama]

One qualm I had with this game was that sometimes there wasn't any real cause-and-effect between your choices and what happens. Like, the one that comes to mind is

Spoiler

the ID cards

in door 6 I think it is. If you picked the right doors beforehand,

Spoiler

Junpei has Ace do the cards and learns about his prosopagnosia that way, and then they find Clover's body and shit goes down. Otherwise Junpei just does them himself, and later on gets knifed, and the Clover thing never happens.

Still, it was good to have a game with the very real tension that if you made the wrong choice everyone could wind up dead.

It has been a while since I've played it though, so maybe I'm forgetting some plot detail to account for all this.

There is a plot detail to account for, actually.

(MAJOR SPOILERS)

Spoiler

Every single ending was a potential outcome of the Morphogenetic Field. Technically, any of them could be considered real as a result, but only one of them of course was the "right" one that would allow the group to escape alive. Basically, the Akane of the past (from nine years ago) was searching the Morphogenetic Field in order to find that solution, using the knowledge gained in each individual path and feeding it to Junpei in the present. This is why the coffin ending is a cliffhanger (no answer to help Junpei along yet), and why you switch perspectives for the final puzzle: you had been playing Akane viewing the future all along, and only switched to Junpei to save her in the past at the very end.

This also ties into Junpei asking the question of "Why do I know these things?"

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

I hate multiple endings.

Just give me one well written one.

I sort of agree.

While I do not disagree with multiple endings, I do disagree with the current trend of Branching Plot. This is why I disliked The Witcher 2 so much, and what I think the Dragon Age series has done very well (although, it's going to take DA3 to really see).

If the game forces me to replay it - and replay it differently - in order for me to see the entire main story, then that is a badly designed game.

 

[epmode]

There is a plot detail to account for, actually.

(MAJOR SPOILERS)

Spoiler

Every single ending was a potential outcome of the Morphogenetic Field.

And this is why this game is ultimately awful nonsense. It was really good until I started unraveling the true ending though!

 

[texasairhead101]

really know how your feeling with the playing a game for an extended period of time and getting a bad ending.

had this happen with persona 4. near the end their are a few places in the game where it can end and the bad ones are hella sad. hell theres a good and true ending.

made a mistake with the one of the first choices and didnt have saves spread out like i do with most rpgs because the whole game I never needed too. ended up having to replay the last 10 hours and did eventually beat it though. (made sure i used a FAQ for the dialogue.

 

[Enkidu]

I sort of agree.

While I do not disagree with multiple endings, I do disagree with the current trend of Branching Plot. This is why I disliked The Witcher 2 so much, and what I think the Dragon Age series has done very well (although, it's going to take DA3 to really see).

If the game forces me to replay it - and replay it differently - in order for me to see the entire main story, then that is a badly designed game.

So if the game has actual meaningful choice and consequence it's a badly designed game, but if it's all meaningless like Dragon Age then it's good?

I love the way The Witcher 2 handled the endings. You have several different ways the game can end, and I guess depending on how you felt about the characters and such, some of those endings are worse than the others. But the game doesn't grade you on it, and there's no "optimal" ending. There's just choices and consequences.

 

[Patryn]

I believe Suikoden 2 does this.

Spoiler

After you run away about halfway through the game, your army comes back to get you. They tell you to come back, and you get what looks like a communist choice, but apparently if you say no enough times, they actually take that for an answer, they leave disgusted with your character and the game goes to sad credits over a shot of a log cabin in the woods.

 

[GhaleonQ]

I think someone can want games to purely reflect the director's desire and still be accepting of choices. I really reject "warning" endings in which you did the opposite of what the game's themes suggest you do and so you're warded off with a bad ending. If there are multiple ways to drive home a game's themes, however, I'd be glad to see narratives open up.

Maybe Luigi finds Peach after 8 castles. He could also not find her or get to her after Mario does but discover that friendship with 7 Toads is just as rewarding. He should NOT skip a castle through a warp pipe and get penalized with a bad ending for not knowing that relationships take work.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

So if the game has actual meaningful choice and consequence it's a badly designed game, but if it's all meaningless like Dragon Age then it's good?

*sigh*
I think you need to read my post again, because I did not say any of that. In fact, I went on to explain in detail what I meant.

I was talking about Branching Plot vs. Branching Story.

 

[NEO0MJ]

I liked the way Radiant Historia handled the bad endings.

Spoiler

Especially considering how easy it is to view them without wasting time. Plus it's pretty funny seeing Stocke go all "fuck" after the bad endings.

 

[GSR]

There is a plot detail to account for, actually.

(MAJOR SPOILERS)

Spoiler

Every single ending was a potential outcome of the Morphogenetic Field. Technically, any of them could be considered real as a result, but only one of them of course was the "right" one that would allow the group to escape alive. Basically, the Akane of the past (from nine years ago) was searching the Morphogenetic Field in order to find that solution, using the knowledge gained in each individual path and feeding it to Junpei in the present. This is why the coffin ending is a cliffhanger (no answer to help Junpei along yet), and why you switch perspectives for the final puzzle: you had been playing Akane viewing the future all along, and only switched to Junpei to save her in the past at the very end.

This also ties into Junpei asking the question of "Why do I know these things?"

I get the whole

Spoiler

the endings are Akane using the field

thing, but that really doesn't answer my qualm.

Spoiler

Akane could influence Junpei, but how does that stop them from finding Clover's body or Ace from being the one to pick up the cards in door 6?

I guess what I'm getting at is that the choices the game did you make didn't really work with the consequences sometimes.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

Also how do you guys feel about content being locked out from players because of decisions?

It's the only way to make the choices meaningful. If there's no risk, then what's the point? I love it in New Vegas when I kill a guy in the middle of nowhere and get a series of failed quest notifications because it means that killing that guy actually had an effect on the world I'm playing in.

Contrast this with the ME3 spoilers; people were upset at which basically amounted to BioWare discarding all of the choices the player made over the course of the first two games, thus rendering them meaningless.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

It's the only way to make the choices meaningful. If there's no risk, then what's the point? I love it in New Vegas when I kill a guy in the middle of nowhere and get a series of failed quest notifications because it means that killing that guy actually had an effect on the world I'm playing in.

If it's just a side quest, it's fine. If it is part of the main quest? Then we have a problem.

 

[Enkidu]

*sigh*
I think you need to read my post again, because I did not say any of that. In fact, I went on to explain in detail what I meant.

I was talking about Branching Plot vs. Branching Story.

I'm guessing you are referring to Act 2, which is the largest example of "choice and consequence" in the game since it actually has a very big effect on the game. If you are referring to something else then I guess I did misunderstand you.