Games That Few People Have Seen All Of The Endings For
Completing a game can leave you with mixed feelings. You may feel some satisfaction at reaching the story's conclusion. But you may also feel sad — sad that your time in that game's world has drawn to a close. Those sad feelings are undoubtedly what inspired multiple endings in games. New endings grant new opportunities to go back and experience things all over again, but in a slightly different way.
Some games get them right. And then some games go way overboard, to the point where few players actually go through the work of seeing every ending. It's those latter games we'll be talking about here.
Unless they're necessary to get the point across, you won't find story spoilers here. Just a summary of how the game approaches its shifting story, how many endings there are, and why most gamers have no interest in pursuing them all.
These are games that very few people have seen all the endings for.
NieR: Automata has an alphabet's worth of endings
NieR: Automata was a surprise-but-welcome delight in 2017, and not just for those who enjoy action-RPGs. There's a whole lot of gameplay time packed into the experience, so even if you wrap up the campaign of main character 2B, there's still plenty to do, from second and third campaign playthroughs to side quests.
In fact — there may be too much to do.
There's a good chance that those who've played NieR: Automata haven't come anywhere close to completing the game entirely. Heck, there's a good chance players haven't even seen all the endings. There are 26 of them in NieR: Automata — one for every letter of the alphabet. Some are rather easy to achieve, like ending K. But others, like ending Y, require that you reach a special boss fight while also having every weapon fully upgraded.
NieR is certainly a good time. But if you want to see every single ending, time is something you might not have enough of.
Friday the 13th, three times over
Jason, like most horror movie villains, makes his living by killing. But a big part of his act is surprise — sneaking up on an unsuspecting camper, for instance, and burying a machete into their skull before they can make too much noise.
But gamers aren't horror movie fodder. They're read in on the script. So how, then, in the Friday the 13th game, could Jason stand toe to toe with someone who knows he's coming?
Answer: the game's difficulty is cranked to 11.
The game hands you control of six camp counselors. If you lose a counselor, they're gone forever. Run out of counselors, and the game's over. And you're certain to lose many on your quest to beat the game. You'll need resources to ward off the enemies who aren't Jason, and those resources appear randomly. Which means death isn't so much a possibility as an inevitability.
And then there's Jason, who can show up in a cabin unexpectedly to throw a wrench in all of your plans.
Should you make it through a playthrough of Friday the 13th successfully, you'll be disheartened to learn that you haven't actually won. Jason still lives. And he'll actually live if you complete the game for a second time, too. You'll only get the true ending of the game if you beat it three times, and because the game is so frustratingly difficult, that's not something many people get to see.
Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma has way more than zero endings
Telltale's The Walking Dead certainly put the new generation of adventure games on the map, and did so with a bit of grit and gruesomeness. But there's a knock on the game, and the series at large, that no one could ever accuse Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma of following. In The Walking Dead, you're given the illusion of choice. But the game ultimately winds up in the same place. You can affect key situations, but the story wraps up the same way.
In Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma, your decisions matter right to the end. And that end can take 33 different forms.
Who lives? Who dies? Zero Time Dilemma puts you into a sort of Walking Dead-meets-Saw situation where you're forced to make decisions and solve puzzles with your life — and the lives of others — on the line. As you progress into the game, the story path branches more and more, which means you'll need multiple playthroughs to hit all the different variations. And on top of that, you'll need to know how exactly those variations are activated.
If you want to hit all the endings, you'll likely need a guide. Or a lot of time on your hands. Or both. Which is why few choose to go all the way.
The many paths of The Stanley Parable
There isn't another game quite like The Stanley Parable. You'll realize this as soon as you jump in and hear the narrator's voice. He's there to tell you all about Stanley and his mundane life, and to guide you through a piece of it. And you're to follow. You will take control of Stanley, and you will do what you're told.
But what if you don't? What if you travel off of the narrator's preferred path? Well, that's where this extremely short game becomes a longer, more complicated one.
You see, every action you take could potentially change the outcome of The Stanley Parable, which has 19 different endings in all. And finding them is a bit tricky. Some will require a bit of compliance on your part, adhering to the narrator's instructions. Some will ask that you do your own thing, much to the narrator's frustration. And some will be a combination of the two — and boy, is the narrator fun to listen to in those.
There's a monotony factor here — the feeling that you're doing what amounts to the same thing over and over again (a perfect example of theme as game design). Which is why some are turned off by the prospect of getting all the endings.
A flock of Hatoful Boyfriend endings
Remember when we said there isn't a game quite like The Stanley Parable? That goes double for Hatoful Boyfriend. This game can be described in four off-the-wall words — words that you never, ever thought you'd see next to one another: dating sim with birds.
Even weirder: you play as a human.
Yes, you, a human girl attending a school for birds, are the object of avian affection. And this is somehow totally fine and not weird at all in the game's world, where you're asked to navigate typical high school drama while considering your various winged romance options. Throughout your journey, you'll meet pigeons of all shapes, sizes, and personality types. And depending on the decisions you make throughout Hatoful Boyfriend, you could end up with any one of the game's 16 endings.
Unfortunately, the weird nature of the game has kept it pretty low profile. And while getting every single ending doesn't have to be time-intensive — How Long to Beat estimates a total completion at 9 hours — most are content to get their laughs out of Hatoful Boyfriend and move along.
Decide wheter to see all of The Witcher 2's endings
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings may not have been quite as beloved as CD Projekt Red's later installment, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but the game certainly has its fair share of fans. And those fans will likely tell you that they enjoy the way choice plays a big role in the game. Decisions have consequences, and depending on the path your Geralt takes in the game, you'll see those consequences either benefit you or come back to haunt you.
But it's a safe bet that most Witcher 2 players haven't seen every scenario play out. There are 16 total endings for the game, and they're all tied to plot-shifting decisions.
Do you kill a character or spare them? Rescue one captive or the other? The path branches based on an early choice you make, and from there, you have the potential to run into a number of different ending sequences that take your other decisions into account. It'll require a few playthroughs to hit them all, and considering the fact that The Witcher 2 has a 20+ hour campaign, most aren't willing to put in the time.
Your effect on the Mass Effect trilogy
To call the Mass Effect trilogy ambitious is an understatement. Your particular Commander Shepard is molded by your every move. You can be a do-gooder or a jerk. You can choose who to recruit or leave behind. And you make the call on who lives and dies.
And those choices carry over through three games.
But you'll be surprised to learn that those decisions don't play a huge role in the endings you get throughout the series. You could play through the entire trilogy multiple times, wind up with different crews in the final game, yet still be able to 100% Mass Effect 3, for instance. The smaller choices aren't a big deal. It's the big ones that require you to play over and over.
Take Mass Effect 3. Is your ship weak? You'll get a different ending. Is your ship mega strong? You'll get a different ending. And interspersed are other choices you make toward the end of the game that determine the fate of Earth, your squadmates, and you. You'll need a whole lot of time to get the correct variables in place, and the desire to go through and make different choices every time.
Most just put their one playthrough in and call it a day. And we can't blame them.
Resident Evil created more endings for the remaster
The original Resident Evil had a few alternate endings when it released in 1996. But Capcom stepped up its game for the game's 2002 remaster on the GameCube, adding a few more scenarios to freshen things up for Nintendo's platform and giving old players a reason to come back.
All in all, Resident Evil Remastered has 12 total endings. But chances are, most residents haven't seen them all.
Why's that? The endings are largely dependent on different characters either living or dying throughout your time in the campaign. And because you can control two characters in Resident Evil, you have endings tied to each character playthrough. Jill has several endings she can obtain, as does Chris. And those endings can be either good or bad for the character depending on the decisions made during the game.
You'll likely need to keep a list in front of you to make sure you're checking off the right boxes on your journey through Resident Evil. For those who simply want to get the completion and get to the next game, multiple runs can't seem all that appealing.
Chrono Trigger requires a whole lot of your time
Chrono Trigger is a legendary role-playing game — one that often ends up on lists for the best games of all time. It left a mark when it released in 1995, and you'll be hard-pressed to find an RPG that doesn't borrow something from it. Like a lot of today's RPGs, the choices you make throughout the game can alter the way you experience the story. And like some of those same RPGs, Chrono Trigger's ending can change based on what you've done in the game.
But wow, are there a lot of endings in Chrono Trigger — 18 in total.
How badly do you want to see every ending? That's the question you'll be asking yourself as you start New Game+ and enter your second full playthrough of the campaign. One full completion is your prerequisite to seeing all the different endings. But even then, you'll have to make sure you perform the correct in-game actions for each one, and you'll have to engage in some creative saving to avoid doing a whole new playthrough every time.
It's a lot more work than it's worth — especially when you can just watch the endings on YouTube.
Undertale
Undertale is a newer RPG that takes after older classics like EarthBound, and like the other games on this list, it doesn't have just one ending. The style of play you choose to engage in during your time with Undertale can change the ending significantly, and smaller choices made throughout can slightly alter it in other ways, as well.
You have the opportunity to experience over ten different endings in Undertale. But you're almost certainly going to need multiple playthroughs to get them.
The biggest changes come from the sort of "morality" system inside Undertale. Believe it or not, you don't have to kill anything in the game. And should you choose a path of peace, you'll get what's called a "Pacifist" ending. On the flip side, though, you can choose to kill — and kill often. Should you run through the game slaying your enemies left and right, your game will conclude in a much different way — the "Genocide" ending.
Obtaining those two endings alone will require that you play Undertale twice. When you consider the fact that there are other triggers — such as who you kill — that can change the end of the game, the time required starts to add up significantly. Which is why many have passed on a full, 100% completion.