Question Weekend Question: Do you replay games if you don't get the 'best' ending?

PCG Jody

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Dec 9, 2019
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I ask the PCG staff a regular Weekend Question and post the answers on the site. If you'd like to throw in an answer here, I'll squeeze the best into the finished article!

This week's question is: Do you replay games if you don't get the 'best' ending?

Sometimes you have to replay a game to get the 'true' ending, like in the Nier or Zero Escape series. But sometimes games have multiple endings you can easily miss because of a decision you made 20 hours back, or if you don't earn enough magic war points, or if you earn too many magic chaos points. Do you go back for a do-over, or is your first playthrough an unalterable canon even if you missed out on the golden secret best ending?
 
Yep. I know I don't have to but it feels like the game is judging me, even if the thing that causes the ending I don't want is practically arbitrary in how it was assigned.

For example, the original Bioshock has a "good", "mixed" and "bad" ending. You get the good ending by rescuing all of the Little Sisters, and you get the bad ending by harvesting all of them. Any mix of doing both will result in the mixed ending, which is basically the bad ending again, but with different talking going on over it. Point is, if you want the good ending you have to save every little sister.

Mechanically, the rewards are basically the same. You get less ADAM (skill currency) for saving the Little Sisters but they make up for it by leaving you goodie baskets once in a while so functionally the decision to do one or the other ONLY affects the ending in the long run. At the time of my first play though, this wasn't obvious, and I harvested the second little sister I found to test the reward.

This of course locked me into the bad ending (or near enough in my mind) so that when I beat the game and looked up the other endings and realized I didn't get the good one I had to play the whole damn thing again. Thankfully, it's a game that plays well the second time around, and you better believe I was ready to club that sneaky f!@#$%^ doctor right in the face this time.

(You know the one I'm talking about!)

View: https://imgur.com/PMo76S0
 
Sometimes I will, yeah. I haven't done so yet, but I'm definitely going to replay Metro: Exodus because I got the "bad" ending. No problem with replaying, especially since the Enhanced Edition came out and I have a 3080 to run it. Although it's a whole different tangent, the karma system in Exodus is honestly pretty stupid and I don't think it should affect the ending at all frankly, but that is a separate discussion.
 
Normally I play games that have no ending except... Journey. it only lasts 90 minutes but I played it endlessly for months, not because there is a best ending but because everyone was different. Its all to do with the way it matched you to other people, and how they reacted. The game itself was always mostly the same but the play wasn't. I met people in that game I cannot understand outside of the game. Many from Japan, they were the most fun games.

I hope it still has people playing it on PC. Its not the same alone.
 
save right before making 1 or 2 decisions that will take me in 2 different directions
I used to do that when I was playing Civ 4 a lot back in the day. Save at some crucial decision-making point, and then load again to test the alternative(s). This would apply to any games which are 'new' on each playthru, eg with random opponents, procedurally generated maps, random events etc.
 
Sometimes, but it depends on the game. It's one of the reasons why I keep a ton of savepoints in games, especially at what seem to be crucial decisions. But if the different ending is only slight, and the reason for it is largely due to something I did several dozen hours ago, then I'll probably live with my decisions. If it's a Bioware or similar game where the choices were largely in the final act, I'll almost definitely go back to see what happens if I made another choice, regardless of whether I'd already gotten the "best" ending or not.
 
May 19, 2021
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Tidak .saya lebih senang mengakhiri sebuah permaianan ketika rasa bosan itu datang, sehingga tidak tahu akan kelanjutan dari game itu.

No. I prefer to end a game when boredom comes, so I don't know the continuation of the game.
 
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Sarafan

Community Contributor
I have a tendency to replay games even if I get the best ending. ;) But yes, it happens. Usually I satisfy myself by reverting the game only to the point where there was a crucial decision which impacted the ending. The most notable example is The Witcher 3. During my first playthrough I got the worst case scenario and I just couldn't continue playing the DLCs with it in mind. I decided to replay a big part of the game just to get the best finish.

There are games however where I don't care which ending I get. I just try to maximize fun by playing them how I want to. For example, I didn't care which ending I'll get in Metro: Last Light. I just focused on having fun. The ending was of course bad, but the requirements for getting the good one would strip the game from a lot of fun. Not to mention that it's a lot harder to get it.
 

Sarafan

Community Contributor
Sometimes I will, yeah. I haven't done so yet, but I'm definitely going to replay Metro: Exodus because I got the "bad" ending. No problem with replaying, especially since the Enhanced Edition came out and I have a 3080 to run it. Although it's a whole different tangent, the karma system in Exodus is honestly pretty stupid and I don't think it should affect the ending at all frankly, but that is a separate discussion.

Actually, from what I know, the karma system doesn't affect the ending in Metro: Exodus. The ending depends on how many people from your team are alive when you reach the finish. :)
 
Actually, from what I know, the karma system doesn't affect the ending in Metro: Exodus. The ending depends on how many people from your team are alive when you reach the finish. :)
Interesting. I've never actually looked into it; I assumed it was a karma-related thing. Nonetheless, and maybe it is my fault, but I felt choice wasn't really communicated well (it is actually completely unclear that there is more than one outcome for your squadmates). Although this sort of gets into the weeds about choice and how it should or shouldn't be structured and that is a more complicated discussion.
 

Sarafan

Community Contributor
Interesting. I've never actually looked into it; I assumed it was a karma-related thing. Nonetheless, and maybe it is my fault, but I felt choice wasn't really communicated well (it is actually completely unclear that there is more than one outcome for your squadmates). Although this sort of gets into the weeds about choice and how it should or shouldn't be structured and that is a more complicated discussion.

There are some advantages of the hidden system. It's a lot more surprising when you get to the end of the game not knowing what choices exactly triggered the given ending. This can be fun. It prevents from making the appropriate choices just to get the desired ending. I was surprised when I realized that there's more than one ending in Metro Exodus. It surprised me even further when I realized what are the conditions of getting the particular ending. It was a quite refreshing experience.
 
Jun 6, 2021
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YES.

In fact, I am currently replaying Witcher 3, which is a huge game, right after game completion.

Main reason is because I romanced some girls in the first play-through which is fun, but felt somehow not staying true to the canon.

Other reason is usually just to enjoy various endings provided by the game to appreciate the creator's efforts.

Luckily, most games now make available New Game Plus feature for replay value.
 
Jun 6, 2021
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I ask the PCG staff a regular Weekend Question and post the answers on the site. If you'd like to throw in an answer here, I'll squeeze the best into the finished article!

This week's question is: Do you replay games if you don't get the 'best' ending?

Sometimes you have to replay a game to get the 'true' ending, like in the Nier or Zero Escape series. But sometimes games have multiple endings you can easily miss because of a decision you made 20 hours back, or if you don't earn enough magic war points, or if you earn too many magic chaos points. Do you go back for a do-over, or is your first playthrough an unalterable canon even if you missed out on the golden secret best ending?
Sure, especially to see the different endings. Wing Commander had the best multiple endings. KOTOR and KOTOR 2 had really different endings.
 
Remembers he had an N64... remembers he finished F Zero & wave Race a lot of times, and also Star Fox (Lylat Wars) enough times to only be name on the top 10 list, but I am sure I beat it more than that, as it had multiple different endings and routes.

But above applies if question is just PC games. I never finished an Arcade machine as really, most of them didn't have ends. Maybe I finished the story of 1941 but the game just returns to start again. Same with Gyrus. I never saw screen 256 on Pacman apart from in Videos
 
Jul 29, 2021
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I haven't played many games that do this, but no. I lucked out with Mass Effect 2 - I got a perfect, paragon ending and everyone lived. I earned that too, I didn't look up any guides and avoided spoilers.

On the other hand, I lost one of the people I really tried to save during my Heavy Rain playthrough. I dealt with it, never played it again. My single playthrough of Detroit: Become Human was horrible - haha, my god I screwed everything up. But I lived with it. That was the story I drove. No regrets.
 
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