Most games contain a story that contains a beginning, a middle and an end. This is standard in games but can limit the replayability of a game if a player is to always experience the same outcome. However, some games have been made to contain multiple endings or even secret endings that require the player to accomplish certain tasks to get the desired ending. This incentivizes the player to revisit previously explored locations to find a unique item or postpone an encounter to reach a similar situation with a different context. In some cases, even the player's character gains different sets of abilities or personality traits depending on the ending the player pursues.
Demonstrative Examples[]
Demon's Crest[]
In Demon's Crest, the player has the choice of completing the game and get one of three different endings. To get each ending, the player faces different enemies, bosses and even gets different upgrades for their character Firebrand. The game even rewards players that complete the hardest ending with a secret password that gives a hidden ending.
Chrono Trigger[]
Chrono Trigger was one of the first console role-playing games to have a New Game+ mode, which would allow the player to access many endings that they never could get during their first playthrough. The endings were tied into the story as well, as all of them depended on when you defeated the final boss. Beating the final boss at the very beginning of the game with just the main character would trigger a Developer's Room ending, while beating the final boss when the player had not finished events with lizardmen in the past would trigger an ending where lizardmen had taken over the future. On their first playthrough, the player would be too weak to trigger most of these endings, but since New Game+ mode carried over player level and items, it gave a lot of replayability to a genre that typically has very little.
Twisted Metal
Every character in Twisted Metal had a different ending which forces the player to play as each different character if they want to see all the different ending to the game. Depending on which character was chosen, the game would change slightly to accommodate the story for that character. This made playing the game more than once more interesting.
Stories The Path of Destinies
Stories The Path of Destinies is a fantastic ARPG game. In the game, there are nearly thirty different kinds of different game endings. The game ending depends on your decisions on different game levels. In the game, whenever you find a new ending, you will light on a card in the Game Ending Gallery Table. You can come here to check every game ending you have played. It records the road you have ever gone. The game endings you have opened can also decide the ways you can go in this game.
Fez
Fez was a fantastic puzzle game with some extremely difficult puzzles. The player had to traverse several different worlds in search of items called bits. The player could complete the game by simply collecting half of the bits hidden throughout the game. However if the player wanted to see the alternate ending they had to collect every bit which was no easy feat. In fact in order to actually find every bit you had to reach the end of the game and play the game once again but this time you had an additional ability which allowed you to solve all the game's puzzles. This was a great way to encourage the player again as it added another mechanic the player could now utilize and rewarded their additional playthrough with an alternate ending if they collected all the bits.