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{{trope}}
{{Video Game Examples Need Sorting}}
Some games have bad endings, good endings, and one, shining, wonderful
See also: [[
May overlap with [[Easy Mode Mockery]], [[
Has nothing to do with [[Golden Moment]], even though a [[Golden Moment]] comes at the ending of a story.
And, of course, ...
{{examples|Examples:}}▼
* Most [[Nippon Ichi]] games, most notably the ''[[Disgaea]]'' games. The endings vary from [[Downer Ending|depressing]], to [[Kill
** Due to the series' strong meta elements, defeating the [[Bonus Boss]] of most games effectively makes the ''player characters'' into ''the new [[Bonus Boss]]'' rather than the protagonists and the story has a good time playing with the fact.
** To get the bad endings, you usually have to go [[Up to Eleven]] to get anywhere in bad behavior (despite [[Fridge Logic|being a demon]]). Disgaea 2, for the worst ending, needs you to get ally kills and ''waste over 100 gameplay hours combined with story to get the amount of Felonies; '''99'''.'' Pay in mind that you need to: 1) Get a felony; 2) Go to the high-risked [[Marathon Level|Item World]], and 3) Go to the ''random'' level, which are often 1-30 and get to the door, then either escape using a rare item or go to the 10th floor.
* ''[[
** Numerous sources discussing the game even ''called'' the "Things don't go boom" endings "Golden Endings".
** [[Guide Dang It|And good luck doing everything right to get one of those two endings.]] Oh, and there wasn't a strategy guide, so you had to figure it out on your own.
* ''[[Prince of Persia]]: Warrior Within'' features two
** Particularly infuriating because many of the life upgrades are really well hidden, sometimes in places you have to backtrack to [[Guide Dang It|without any indication whatsoever]] that anything would be there, and quite a few of them can be [[Lost Forever]]. Made worse by the fact that failing to collect them also means a less effective weapon and a smaller life bar in the final stretch.
** [[Unwinnable By Mistake|Bypassed entirely]] on the Gamecube, which gave out life upgrades as you progressed through the game. This caused a major glitch which could make the game unwinnable: the glitch goes unnoticed until the very end of the game, when the doors in the [[Big Bad|Dahaka's]] room never open.
* ''[[STALKER]]'' has 7 endings. 5 are bad, and are based around the "Wishmaker", the alien device that lures people who get inside the nuclear reactor, like a [[Jackass Genie|genie twisting wishes]]. The other 2 are based upon rejecting the Wishmaker and going deeper, finding the true plot endings. The 6th is a true ending but not a good ending (it's a neutral [[Status Quo (band)]] option), whilst only the 7th resolves the plot and saves everyone.
** The 7th ending is the canon one, according to the sequel ''The Call of Pripryat''.
* ''[[Princess Maker]]'' has many possible endings, but since the goal is for the girl to become a princess, most of them technically represent failure.
** Despite the name, in ''[[Princess Maker 2]]'', the objective is to {{spoiler|see just how powerful humans can become}}. The Hero endings are just as good as the Queen Regnant ending for [[Scoring Points]], though ''arguably'' less cool.
* ''[[The
* The ''[[Castlevania]]'' series has had this several times. In five games (''[[Castlevania II:
* ''[[Breath of Fire]]'', of course. The second installment has a best, fair, and bad ending too.
* ''[[Star Trek: Bridge Commander]]'' has three endings: good (you save the day!), bad (you save the day but are destroyed in the process), and horrible (a sun goes supernova, destroying you, an inhabited world, and several Federation ships, including the ''Enterprise''. Oops.)
* ''[[Valkyrie Profile]]'' combines this with [[Guide Dang It]], as the steps to get the best ending are mostly nonsensical and/or counterintuitive.
** ''Covenant Of The Plume'', though, has a a much more straightforward way of determining it, basing the ending on how often you use the Plume. Given that the Plume effectively murders your close friends and allies when you use it, take a wild guess what you have to do to get the good ending.
*** Except the best ending pits you against a ridiculously powerful boss, and the allies you kill will rise to fight you again in the bad ending. Without using it moderately to gain some powers in the first playthroughs, it can be pretty difficult.
* ''[[Kana: Little Sister]]'' Has SIX endings, only one of them has Kana live, and it's [[Bittersweet Ending|bittersweet]]!
** Though admittedly, being a [[Downer Ending]] doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad ending. This trope is, however, played straight with the "Snow" and "Memories" endings, which are essentially shortened versions of "Live Now".
* Inverted in ''[[
** ''[[
* ''[[Myst|Riven]]'' has at least seven different bad endings. Most notably, one of them punishes [[Sequence Breaking]] by having the character get shot and then ''fall into primal chaos as the world ends around them''. Not for the faint of heart.
** In fact, all the Myst games are like this. ''Myst'' has four different endings, following the 3 Bad 1 Golden formula. ''Myst III: Exile'' has four endings where you die, one really stupid mistake ending, one [[What the Hell, Player?]] ending, and one
* Most ''[[Choose Your Own Adventure]]'' books have a best ending. In some of the really annoying books, only one of the endings is good.
** And the Golden Ending in ''Inside UFO 54-40'' can't actually be reached from any option in the book. When the [[Fridge Brilliance
* The ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' series has had always had good and neutral endings since the beginning, usually boiling down to whether or not Eggman successfully got away with the [[Mineral MacGuffin
** The (arguable spinoff) game ''[[Shadow the Hedgehog]]'' has many endings ranging from good to bad to so-so depending on what objective you took (help the good guys defend the aliens, help the aliens wipe out the good guys, or just plow on and ignore all of them). The only way to get the true ending is to replay the game repeatedly and get all ten of the endings. Once that's done, the [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon|Last Story]] will become available, and the [[True Final Boss]] will reveal himself.
*** {{spoiler|It's Black Doom's [[One
* The first [[Pikmin]] game has multiple
* The [[RPG Maker]] game ''Alter AILA'' appears to have three paths through the game. None of these paths, however, leads to any resolution for the [[Crapsack World]] you're in; in every case, the war continues with a new resistance and a new tyrant. However, if you complete all three paths via [[New Game
* Completing ''[[King's Quest VI]]'' ends at the same place (Alex marrying Cassima), but varies wildly depending on whether you took the long path or the short path. The golden ending requires the long path, which means solving more puzzles, and ends with Alex discovering {{spoiler|Alhazred stole the treasures of the other islands and set them up for civil war by having the blame each other, restoring Cassima's parents to life, being able to rescue the genie, and getting your ring out of hock}}. In that ending, the wedding hall is crammed. {{spoiler|The rulers of the other islands show up, the genie having repaired the ferry. The genie is also able to bring the Daventry royal family there. Cassima's rescued parents are delighted, but decide to abdicate in favor of Alexander and Cassima. Jollo starts dancing for joy and does tricks for everyone after the ceremony is over.}}
* ''[[Persona 4]]'' features 3 endings, with a variant on the "worst" ending (one version of it doesn't actually seem that bad). You first have a choice of thinking you've solved the mystery when you haven't, and this end might actually fool people [[Guide Dang It|who didn't look up a guide]], [[Fridge Logic|or realize something was wrong]]. You then get an ending where you beat up some monster that supposedly [[Humanity
* In the ''[[Suikoden]]'' series, you ''have'' to find all [[
** ''[[Suikoden II]]'' makes the player race against the clock to secure ''one'' character's happy ending, has you complete a series of [[Cooking Duel|face-offs]] to help another, and [[Guide Dang It|backflip through metaphorical hoops]] to earn the ''right'' to see the game's true ending. On top of that, said ending saddles you with several final choices that greatly affect how things play out.
** ''[[Suikoden V]]'' has a [[Guide Dang It|hidden]] [[Relationship Values|Relationship Value]] that can lock you out of the best ending ''during the first few hours of the game''. {{spoiler|So be good to your little sister, folks.}}
* A rather minor case, but collecting all 29 audio files in the Mombasa Streets level of [[Halo|Halo 3: ODST]] changes a short section of the Data Hive level; namely, you can access the 30th and final audio file of the game. If you get all 30 audio files, you will actually end up knowing more about what's going on than the ''intelligence officer'' who gave you your mission! However, the ''actual'' ending doesn't change at all if you collect no files, or all 30. It does help the ending make more sense, however.
* ''[[
** It can be said that ''Mass Effect 2'' is also has a Golden '''Bad''' Ending. It's ''extremely'' difficult to kill Shepard off, to the point where you actually need to ''actively'' try to get it.
* ''[[
** And although the third-way ending is presented as the most peaceful, only the 'Destroy' ending with an extremely high "Effective Military Strength" leads to {{spoiler|Shepard surviving the Citadel's destruction}}.
*** A very large portion of fans believe there is no
* While the ''[[Dragon Age]]'' series does its best to keep its endings ambiguous, the [[Expansion Pack]] of the original game, ''Awakening'', had a
* The live action game ''Bad Mojo'' has four endings; only one is good, though, and to get it, you have to meet certain conditions near the end of the game.
* ''[[Ever 17]]'': three bad endings, four "good" endings (some of which are still tragic), and one spectacular, all-revealing ending that you can only unlock after clearing the four good endings.
* There are three endings in ''[[
* [[Infocom]]'s ''[[
* Another [[Interactive Fiction]] example: ''Plundered Hearts'', Infocom's first and only attempt at a pirate-themed historical romance with a set female protagonist, has four different endings; one where you as the heroine flee from the final showdown (abandoning everyone else to presumably die), take over Captain Jamison's vessel as "Pirate Queen", and vow revenge on the villains, another where you as the heroine thwart an attempt on Captain Jamison's life by startling the attacker but are mortally wounded in the process, another where you thwart the attacker with a slingshot but the heroine's father dies in the process, and lastly the best possible ending where the bad guys are defeated, the heroine's father reclaims ownership of the island from the now-deceased villain, and the heroine and Captain Jamison sail off together happily.
* Infocom's ''Deadline'' has a number of endings where you arrest a suspect, but fail to get a conviction due to not enough evidence. There's also an ending where you arrest the murderer and get him convicted, but after he's murdered his accomplice. And there's a variant of that where he's only found guilty of the accomplice's death because you didn't have enough evidence to link him with the original murder. The best ending has both the guilty parties behind bars, and an optional summary of the case outlining the murderer's motive for the crime.
* Similiar to ''Deadline'', Infocom's ''Suspect'' also has one clear
* ''[[Telepath RPG]]'': You can choose whether you serve Tastidian or not to rescue your brother in the first part. The second part begins in the shadowling empire, and you have been his servant for 3 years.
* ''[[Titanic: Adventure Out of Time]]'': the best ending (where you get all the vital historical items) results in a world of peace and prosperity, where WWI, the Russian Revolution, and WWII never happened.
** The objects you find prevent Archduke Ferdinand from being assassinated, the names of Russian Revolutionists being handed to the Czar, and for Adolf Hitler continues his career... [[Historical Villain Downgrade|in painting.]]
* In ''[[
* The ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2]]'' expansion ''Mask of the Betrayer'' has four major endings (with minor variations). Although whether it is the "best" ending is debatable, the only ending where you end the curse without sacrificing yourself requires completion of a few minor side-quests that it is quite easy to miss out on by not taking the right companion with you to areas you can beat the game without visiting at all.
** The ending of ''Storm of Zehir'' depends on your interaction with Sa'Sani. You can kill her, which causes yuan-ti throughout the land to execute their plots haphazardly; you can just say farewell to her, in which case you get a mostly-good ending but with sinister hints about her plans; and in the
* The ''[[Half Life]]'' mod ''[[Afraid of Monsters]]'' has three bad endings and one good ending. {{spoiler|The three bad endings can all technically be considered different parts of the same ending, with the main character in one ending being surrounded in a house by the police, being interrogated by an officer in another ending, and having hanged himself in his cell in another ending. The final ending results in him being forgiven for his sins and waking up in the hospital from a drug overdose.}}
* ''[[Sigma Star Saga]]'' has four different endings based on {{spoiler|killing or saving Psyme and whether or not Scarlet has to sacrifice herself}}. All of the endings in which you don't {{spoiler|save both of them}} involve {{spoiler|Recker regretting his actions to various extents -- in order from most to least severe, both girls dead, Psyme dead, and Scarlet dead}}. To make matters worse, {{spoiler|you can't save Scarlet without a virus sample [[New Game
* In ''[[Resident Evil]]'' and its remake, either character path had four
** Interestingly, ''none'' of them is the canon ending. According to canon, Jill, Chris, Rebecca, ''and'' Barry all escape the mansion alive, but it's impossible to achieve that in-game because Rebecca and Barry never show up in Jill and Chris's games, respectively.
* The endings in [[Heavy Rain]] show what happens to each of the game's playable characters. The best ending combination is usually with {{spoiler|Ethan and Madison becoming a couple and moving into a new apartment with Shaun, with Jayden being hailed as a hero for stopping the Origami Killer and later quits triptocaine cold turkey even though he'll go through withdrawal, and with Lauren spitting on Shelby's grave after he was revealed as the Origami Killer}}.
** However, writer and lead designer David Cage has said he personally prefers the ending where [[Everybody Dies]].
* ''[[Vandal Hearts]] 2'': Want the golden ending? Find the [[Infinity
* ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption]]'' has two bad endings {{spoiler|both ending with the death of your love interest}}and one good ending, depending on your actions with the [[Final Boss]]. {{spoiler|If you choose to drink the Tzimisce's blood -- killing him in the process, you turn into a [[Complete Monster]]. If you choose to become his slave, you turn into his [[Unwitting Pawn]]. But if you choose to fight him, you can save the day and take the girl.}}
* ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines]]'' follows down to the precise count of unquestionably bad endings. Siding up with {{spoiler|La Croix or Quei'Jin will get you either killed or left to torpor from lack of blood on the bottom of the ocean.}} In many other endings, things will work out just fine, tho.
** This basically boils down to the player determining which of the {{spoiler|Strauss, Anarch, or Independent endings is the game's Golden Ending. In the Strauss ending, the player is heavily implied to become the new Sheriff of L.A, while the Anarch ending pretty clearly ends with you fighting alongside Nines and the other Anarchs to keep L.A free. And the Independent ending, [[Screw This, I'm Outta Here|well]]...}}
* ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' has several endings where you join up with a faction to help them control the titular New Vegas and Hoover Dam. {{spoiler|However, with a bit of searching, you can get an ending where New Vegas becomes an independent power in the Mojave Wasteland. The game makes it a bit clear that this is the best ending you could hope to achieve.}}
** No matter what you do, the recruitable companions, Arcade Gannon, Lily, and Veronica, will never receive a truly Golden Ending. They will always be varying degrees of Bittersweet. This is due to the game's [[Grey and Grey Morality]].
* [[
* ''[[Ogre Battle]]'', the original, has a ridiculous set of requirements to get the Golden Ending, which incidentally is canon. You need to collect 12 Zodiac stones, which is a [[Guide Dang It]] in itself, have the sword Brunhild, have recruited every character except for two nonessential ones and one which changes the ending to the worst one. And a full Chaos Frame.
* ''[[Aoi Shiro]]'' has five heroines, each with their own set of bad/normal ends and one good end. Reaching the unlock points scattered throughout those routes unlocks the Grand Route, at the end of which (the 56th ending) everyone teams up, solves all their problems, and survives.
* ''[[
* Inverted in ''[[Drakengard]]''; The first ending is the happiest and things rapidly [[It Got Worse|go downhill]] from there. The final ending that requires [[
** Of course, it may be a question of which ending is best for the world, not the heroes, since ending one is the one that leads to the sequel, which shows that not all is well just because you got the golden ending...
** And in the second game, the last ending you'll get is actually positive and upbeat. But you literally have to [[Earn Your Happy Ending|earn]] the ending by beating the highest difficulty in the game, [[Harder Than Hard|Extreme Mode]].
* ''[[Conquests of the Longbow]]'' had four different endings, each for a different level of player success. Having been captured by the Sheriff of Nottingham, the game's hero Robin Hood is tried for outlawry by the newly returned [[Richard the Lion Heart]]. In the worst ending, Robin is convicted and hanged for his crimes. In the two intermediate endings, Robin and his men are pardoned, but he is not allowed to marry Maid Marian, and the wicked Sheriff remains in office. In the best ending, though, the Sheriff of Nottingham is arrested for his treason and replaced by Little John; Robin is ennobled as the Earl of Huntingdon; and Friar Tuck presides over the wedding of Robin and Marian, with King Richard in attendance as a guest.
* ''[[Tsukihime]]'' has nine endings (and a bunch of [[Nonstandard Game Over
* ''[[Fate/stay
* The ''[[Fatal Frame]]'' series usually have these. The first two games added very evident [[Golden Endings]] in their Xbox release. {{spoiler|And these are the only ones you can truly call [[Happy Endings]].}}
* ''[[
* ''[[Streets of Rage]]'' had two endings. One being the obviously good ending where you defeat Mr. X and save the city, setting up the events for the sequel. The other ending can only be achieved by reaching Mr. X in a 2-player game and have one player accept Mr. X's offer to join him and the other player refusing the offer. This will force both players to fight each other to the death. The winner can then fight Mr. X to overthrow him and become the new crime lord, making this a bad ending. The 3rd game had several endings ranging from "[[Easy Mode Mockery|you suck for playing on Easy mode so no good ending for you]]" to "you stopped the bad guy but not quick enough to save the city." The golden ending here is when you defeat Mr. X within the time limit, preventing the bombs from blowing up the city.
* Another interactive fiction example is ''[[Matches and Matrimony]]'', a PC game which mashes three of [[Jane Austen]]'s novels (''[[Pride and Prejudice]]'', ''[[Sense and Sensibility (
* The ''[[Code Geass]]'' RPG for [[Nintendo DS]] (which covers only the first season) has quite a few branching paths. You can get the standard ending, which is technically kind of bad, you can get a number of terrible [[Nonstandard Game Over|Non Standard Game Overs]] (including {{spoiler|accidentally driving Nunnally to suicide by saying C.C. is her new mother, or turning Shirley into a vegetable by Geassing her to "forget everything"}}), an "I Guess This Is A Happy Ending" ({{spoiler|choose not to go to Euphemia's ceremony, everything goes off without a hitch}}), and the Golden Ending ({{spoiler|Euphemia lives, Suzaku joins you of his own free will, and your forces go on to defeat the evil twins Castor and Pollux, who are out to kill people [[For the Evulz]]}}).
* The elusive S Ending in ''[[Clock Tower (
* ''[[Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
* ''[[The Witcher]] 2'' has numerous possible endings, but the best one is usually agreed to be the you get by saving Saskia, Triss, creating a free Upper Aeidrn, and sparing Letho. Roche's path, on the other hand, has most of the downright depressing endings.
* ''[[The Black Cauldron (
* ''[[The
* Marriage with Marian and all three allies alive in ''[[The Adventures of Robin Hood (
* Most of the endings in ''[[Date Warp]]'' range from downer to bittersweet until you unlock the
* ''[[
* The ''[[Way of the Samurai]]'' series has roughly 7 endings per game (Plus more than double that in variations and the odd end for [[Off the Rails]], such as waiting for the time limit to end, or killing the [[Big Bad]] early), but "ending 1" is always the best, rewarding both the highest "samurai point" total (which awards unlockables) and [[Shaggy Dog Story]] [[Doomed
* ''[[Little Busters!]]'' has the ending of the refrain route which is unlocked when all the other routes have been completed, where {{spoiler|everybody lives in the real world.}}
* In ''[[Wario Land]]'', if one were to get 99,999 coins in total, Wario would {{spoiler|get his own planet!}}
* In "[[The Force Unleashed]]", there is the canon one, where the Rebellion is saved, and another {{spoiler|where you end up as a tool of Palpatine and have become a Sith Stalker}}.
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* The ending of the final route ({{spoiler|Phorni's route}}) is the only unambiguously happy ending in [[Symphonic Rain]] where even the good endings are bittersweet at best.
* ''Any'' Compile Heart game is going to follow this route:
** ''[[Cross Edge]]'' may be the most infuriating of the bunch because [[Guide Dang It|you will need a guide]] just to even know whether you're supposed to kill said character during said battle, view said event at said place, all while having a high random encounter rate. Fail or miss even ''one'' of them and say goodbye to your
** The first ''[[Record of Agarest War]]'' game was infuriating considering that to get the
** The other two ''[[Record of Agarest War]]'' games are a lot easier because it doesn't employ the [[Karma Meter]] anymore and you also have a way to track down as to what percentage your [[Love Interest]] is at. And even then, you could still get your screwed in the third game because every single event is time specific.
** ''[[Hyperdimension Neptunia]]'' may be a bit easier than the previous Compile Heart game examples, but it's still a [[Guide Dang It]] because you wouldn't know how the Share system works the first time you play it. Nor does the game ever mention that if Neptune dies too many times in a battle, the share drops quite a lot. Said shares are needed to recruit the goddesses. Fortunately, it's obvious that you need all the three goddesses to get the
** ''[[Hyperdimension Neptunia
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Visual Novel Tropes]]
[[Category:Video Game Tropes]]
[[Category:Ending Tropes]]
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