Do you like when games real endings are hidden?

Not only hidden, but you probably need to read a walkthrough to get the true ending? Bloodborne for example requires you to do a series of things you probably wouldn't even think of. Persona 4 also probably requires a walkthrough if you want the good ending.

Do you think it's good when games do that and promotes discovering things on your own and multiple playhroughs?

If your game has a 'real' or 'true' ending then you're doing multiple endings wrong.

the only ending i've ever really cared about was ME3 and that's because it fucked up the universe, which in itself was way more valuable to me than the actual story.

i could apply that logic to most games (exception being TLOU but its ideal format being a game is open to debate), and most of the time i hate to see story aspects like endings/characters/plots get critiqued on the same level as what it's like to actually play. those things are always going to be a take or leave option.

the fact is with most games a person can ignore story aspects completely and come away just as satisfied as someone who pays attention to every incidental detail.

to answer your question i think hidden endings are a bit of a waste of time and effort.

As long as you aren't actively punishing players that get the "default" ending, I don't mind offering a little bonus for people that go the extra mile in their exploration or play through the game multiple times.

I think it depends on the replayability of the game. I like going through games blind first time through, so if an ending is hidden chances are I won't see it on that playthrough, if it's a game that I want to get more out of I will probably try to get the "true" ending, if it seems like a one and done game and I feel like I'm missing out I'll watch the alternate ending online.

Nope. Having multiple endings are fine. Hiding away the "true" ending has always been shitty. Take a look on how you find the true ending in Final Fantasy X-2. It's been over a decade and I'm still salty about it (AND ON TOP OF THAT it's a bunch of bullshit, ugh)

The only circumstance where I enjoy the presence of a "true" ending is when it can follow the original ending, as opposed to forcing you to replay the game. It can lead to an effective twist or sendoff. Red Dead Redemption does something like this, as does MGS: Peace Walker after the completion of ZEKE.

Sure, hidden/alternate endings are fine, just give it closure instead of ending on a cliffhanger or making it apparent that there are still loose threads.

To this day, only the Drakengard series has done bad endings right in that they are all alternate endings, but one doesn't necessarily tie into another; they're all separate events.

You know what I play games for? Fun and entertainment.

You know what's not fun or entertaining? Searching through arcane random bullcrud while backtracking over stuff you've already done.

It's fine to have a little bonus for people who play the game multiple times, or a hidden Easter egg or whatever, but I have never understood the appeal of either A) Searching for dozens of hours to see a 1 minute extra cut scene or B) Following a walkthrough constraining your choices and how to play the game for the same reward.

This idea started in the days when games had very little space to work with and were more expensive than they are now ($50 in 1990=$90 today) so a game had to entertain for dozens of hours without the ability to add much content, and secrets were a (bad) way to do that. It should have been left in that era, along with limited continues and mascots with 'tude. Easter eggs=good clean fun. Having to play the whole game a certain way to see the 'true ending?' That's the Bubsy 3D of game design.

lol no. My answer is definitely no.

In most cases if something is "hidden" then it means the game's devs intended for people not to see it. Otherwise they'd have made it the "normal" ending. There is no way to logically reconcile this unless that the "hidden" thing is meant to be found eventually, but that would just make it the normal ending. So of course I don't like it when the real ending is hidden, as it's a completely idiotic practice.

As long as its quite easy to get there. I see peoples arguments for Persona 4 but it tells you to save literally 15 minutes before that part so you could go back, watch the scenes again, and select different answers. I rather this than say Asura's Wrath selling you the true ending ontop of a thin experience (I'm Asura's biggest fan but that dlc should've either been included or free)

Wrong. I never got the MGS: PW real ending. And I actually put in the effort to play as far as I could. (all missions done except Date with Paz and the photography mission, and all outer ops completed except the really nutty S++ or whatever ones, even after shipping Zeke and 7 of the best tanks on full health, I still get creamed. Twice. What the hell is that!) The game was a complete waste of my time.

Multiple endings are great, having a 'true' ending is fine if done right (though if its hidden in a way that means you'll almost certainly need to use a guide then that's bad). I'd prefer it if all of the endings felt important and stood alone in their own right though, since in my mind I usually treat my first playthrough of games as that games 'canon'.

I think the only games I've played with 'true' endings are Drakengard and the Zero Escape games which did it very well imo.

Hidden endings (I refuse to classify Bloodborne's as the "true ending" because by definition a "true" ending needs to be determined canonically, usually in a sequel) are cool. When done well they reward a player's ingenuity or willingness to explore the game world. I think that's neat.

I like the idea of multiple endings, and I think it's something that really sets video games apart as a story telling medium.

That said, in practice, I'm not exactly swimming in video game playing time. Unless your game is something really, really special, it's going to get one play through only and if I happen to see the "bad" ending because I don't take the time to explore every nook and cranny, well, too bad for me.

The Legendary Halo:CE ending still brings a smile to my face.

I'm OK with a game having a little something for those willing to work for it. For everyone else (like me) there is YouTube.

No. They should have other ending secret but not the real ending

yeah, although i prefer it when all the endings could be valid. like SH2, that game was amazing with its endings.

No. Because I'm only going to beat a game once (...assuming I beat it at all...), and it's gonna suck if I put in all that effort only to get a sucky ending. :(

I like when games hide the quirky fan service endings, that's fine, like the Silent Hill series.
But if the devs have an ending that is the most satisfying/true/canon ending and it's not something you can get right away, that's dumb.

If a game has a satisfying conclusion originally, then I don't mind. If you have to replay the whole game, I do mind. Luckily with Bloodborne, I made sure to read ahead.

With Asura's Wrath, I liked the original ending and felt good about it. But if you do a few other things, you get a slight teaser hinting at something more to come. I was intrigued and learned that DLC was coming soon. Then the DLC containing the "true" ending showed up and it was some of the best content in the game. It blew me away.

But in Halo 3, it felt like a satisfying conclusion originally. But then that short legendary teaser took away any satisfaction I had because I needed to see what was next. No DLC on the horizon so I knew I'd have to wait years. Maybe time-til-answers is also a big factor.

So basically, if the true ending sticks with you and adds something worthwhile, sure. If I had replayed all of Bloodborne to see its true ending? Holy crap, that would've been silly.

It really does depend. Some games have true endings that can have the prerequisites met at anytime in the game. That's alright.

As neat as I think they are, I can see how true endings that have prerequisites that are permanently missable can be incredibly annoying.

Games that sell themselves as having multiple ending suffer a lot from one ending climbing out as being the "true" ending, either by virtue of a lot of detail being put into it or how badass it is. Case in point, SMT3 Nocturne (yes, if possible, I will include an SMT reference somewhere in my response). There is a massive sidequest in the game that, if completed by a certain point, will unlock the way to an awesome ending that also overrrides any alignment you may have at that point. Heavy Rain has this issue has well, with one ending being so ridiculously happy and joyful for everyone that you can't help but think of it as the 'true' ending.

Funny how Bioshock 1 got retconned via the Infinite DLC to have a true ending. It gets a bit weird for continuity when sequels to games with multiple endings retroactively decide one to be the true ending.

Bioshock 2 was super neat in that it kept the possible 'canon' ending of 1 incredibly vague. If I recall correctly, in 2 the endings of 1 are both spread as rumours by the splicers of just what had become of Jack when he left. And then Infinite decides to make 2 non-canon. Go figure.

The concept itself? Not so much, but boy are they usually damn satisfying seeing how things REALLY go down.

Real endings kind of suck, especially if they're easily missable and require (or potentially require) another playthrough to see thm.

I guess I'll be like the one person in the entire thread who says I don't really mind them at all. I just finished The Talos Principle and that game has three different endings.

Meh, sometimes they can be fun to get. More often than not though, they're a fucking pain in the ass. For example, as much as I love Compile Heart, Idea Factory, and any related developers, their true endings are so fucking absurd to obtain that they're arguably not even worth it.

Nope. I'm not into multiple endings or even multiple story paths for that matter. I don't want any of that sort of thing.

I don't mind them, but I hate it if they're super vague (or insanely specific) to get.

That said, Persona 4 Golden has the best True Ending ever, but at that point I essentially knew how to get the regular true ending (and the Golden addition was real obvious on how to get it).

I'm fine with it, but they don't need to be hidden really, just give some variety based on things that occur in the game and I'll like it a bit more than if that wasn't the case.

No that sucks. If you don't unlock the "true" ending it just feels like you're being arbitrarily punished, when you should feel rewarded for beating the game. It can really ruin the ending, and a bad ending can sour the entire experience.

Multiple endings can be interesting, but they rarely are.

It's bullshit.

You can have a "real" ending that everyone can easily access (e.g. Red Dead Redemption, which was fucking cool), but having people need to fulfill a specific criteria that is fairly ridiculous or 'hidden' sucks. I don't mind when games have clear choices that lead to different endings ("good"/"bad" ending), but fuck those hidden ones.

I'm not against the concept, but if the stuff you need to do is really arcane and "obviously would never find it without a guide" level stuff, then nope.

I am, however, a big fan of super obvious bad or joke endings.

Like a lot things, the concept itself isn't good or bad, it's mainly dependent on the execution.

Most times though, this is irritating in today's world. In the era of massive backlogs, I don't have the patience or desire to go the extra hundred miles to unllock a two minute cutscene I could see on youtube.

Me too dude, that was a verybullshit one

It can work in games that require a lot of experimenting as part of their gameplay (see for instance Virtue's Last Reward).

If we're talking about a relatively linear game that has a really well defined central narrative like persona 4 though, then no.

I don't like when you basically need a walkthrough full of spoilers to get to the true ending of a game.

Even if a game has multiple endings, they both need to be the real ending, should not be right or wrong and they should be achieved by the players choices and not by jumping through some invisible hoops

Dark Souls 2 has two endings which are both real endings chosen by the player. If you hide an ending that's not a true ending, that's a bonus or alternative ending you can get by stumbling on it.

Totally depends on the game, in Symphony of the Night it was possible to "complete" the game by killing Evil Richter and then walking off into the night with Maria but...if you had the foresight (or luck) to have some items in your possession whilst facing off against him you got a totally different fight and not only a true ending, but an inverted castle to explore! Makes me sad to see the genious in those games and then look at konami now...

Sure, if it's done well. I think Dark Souls was a great example because either ending is valid, but you might not realise the second ending was even a possibility until repeat playthroughs or unless someone told you about it. Persona 4's I think works perfectly - you're trying to solve a murder case (and to some extent an even greater mystery) so having the endings shift depending on whether or not you actually manage to do that makes perfect sense. It helps that they make it very clear that you should save before the "point of no return", especially as the game is long. When a game is more than a few hours long I think it's a great idea to allow players to jump back and re-do just the final stretch to see the other alternatives.

In general though I totally like the concept of alternative endings, even to the point of 'hidden' endings - as long as there's a way for players to conceivably discover them. Bloodborne's alternate ending is something you could discover naturally without a guide, so that's fine. Same with Far Cry 4's "hidden ending", it's hinted at near the actual end of the game so you could conceivably find it of your own volition. The time when it sucks is if you have to do complex, hidden things that you would likely never stumble into without a guide and they have to be completed before you finish the game normally or you miss your chance altogether.

The loops you had to go through in Persona 4 Golden to get the true, TRUE endig was horseshit. They can sometimes be charming, as is the case with Red Dead Redemption, but most of the times they seem to have very little to no point.

A True ending as in this is what really happened you and you need to see it or nothing makes sense, Only in the case of a game that has lots of replay and a reasonable amount of time to play through. If its a 100 game and the true ending relies on you doing something esoteric at hour 27 then your game design is doing something wrong. If its something you can go back and do, then just fight the last boss again and get the new cutscene. That I don't mind.

If your game has 8 endings or so, it better only take 8-10 hours at the most to play through it again.

I can't remember which one(s) but I do like (for example) that you needed to beat some of the Halo games on the higher difficulty to get a little something extra.
Mass Effect and Dragon Age handle it pretty well where your choices affect the world/ending.
Having to do a bunch of mysterious things that can only be found from a faq sound horrible though.

No, especially if the game is 100 hours. Otherwise I will play it the first time with a guide and ruin it for myself.

That's exactly the good example that I thought of. A bad example would be Braid. I think the hidden stars in that game are ridiculous, and the payoff is arguably even worse.

I like the idea but not in practice. If I know there's a hidden ending I tend to become too cautious and completionist about it. And I don't like to play that way.

No, not at all. I still have liked several games that have done that, but the actual practice itself sucks.

No, no, a hundred times no.

Specially because it is rarely well done. If the ending unlocks a new difficulty and you need to play the game all over again to see the "true" ending, or if you have to play the game a certain way, avoiding things you would only avoid if you had a guide, I will just say "screw it" and watch it on youtube.

The same with different endings. Different endings would need some way to get the different endings without the need to replay the entire game (like Saints Rows), or have an easy way to go back to the place the paths forked (like Heavy Rain), at least make it something obvious or reasonable. If the paths forked because you decided to kill or spare a particular character, fine; if they did because you didn't loot a particular chest, unlike the dozens others you loot before, you are doing it wrong. Also, all endings should be reasonable. Not they all should be the same, but they have to be endings. If 2 out of 3 endings are just a screen saying "you should have done better", you are doing it wrong.

By the way, another trend I wish never comes back is "the game ends earlier if you don't play in the harder difficulty"... fuck those.

Hmmm I don't mind them as such but if I have to jump through hoops to get them then I'm out. Hotline Miami's was a royal pain in the arse yet I still did it despite struggling through that game on the first run due to difficulty.

Now Resident Evil Revelations 2 is the most atrocious example of good and bad endings you may have even missed it...thankfully Scoops got it covered;

http://kotaku.com/resident-evil-revelations-2s-season-finale-is-a-huge-d-1691930682