The "good" ending is really trite. You get the girl, who is basically just a trophy lady since she was never featured that heavily in the storyline. You win the war and the soldiers now have hope for the future. Yadda yadda yadda.
The "bad" ending though, is awesomely bleak. Your mothership is in flames, the girl died, and your character is full of guilt for his failings and remains dumbfounded and unsettled by the whole pointless stupidity of war. It says so much more than the "good" ending about the meaning of war, and what it means to be the victor or the loser. It seems like this is the ending that the writers really wanted you to see. Both scenes show your character running, but in the good ending he is a tiny sprite character, whereas in the bad ending you get this great anime close-up of him running. It just feels like the bad ending was given more care and consideration than the good ending. All of this is why Cybernator is my top pick for a game that had a better "bad ending."
The ultimate bad ending in Shadowrun Dragonfall is pretty amazing. By killing off all dragons, magic saturation of the Earth goes unchecked, leading to the sudden appearance of hideous mutations that cannot exist in any traditional sense but seem more like random creatures fused together, like a gorilla with the mouth of a lamprey. Major cities suddenly vanish into magical explosions, weather patterns turn bizarre and make no sense, the elven kingdoms close their borders and seal themselves off from the world. Within a year, monstrous Lovecraftian beasts the size of skyscrapers walk the earth, cities are rubble and ruins, and what little of civilization is left hides in fear and silence in subterranean darkness. Within a decade or two, humanity goes extinct.
I liked the "bad" ending for the Witcher 3 Hearts of Stone expansion more than the "good" ending. Suffice to say, you have to choose between siding with one of two pricks, and most people consider the prick with magic powers to be the way bigger prick, so they consider siding with him to be the bad option. But I disagree.
To be a little more specific, the story of the expansion follows a man named Olgierd von Everec. He makes a deal with a mysterious man (being with phenomenal cosmic power?) named Gaunter O'Dimm to make him immortal. Olgierd then goes on for decades acting like a right dick about it, stealing raping and murdering for fun. Gaunter eventually wants to collect Olgierd's soul as part of their deal but needs the player character to help him with some tasks first and then trick Olgierd into going to a specific place. At the end Gaunter starts to take Olgierds soul and the player can choose to let him do it, or intervene and defeat Gaunter which free's Olgierd's soul and gives him his mortality back. Most people seem to argue that siding with Olgierd is the good option, because depending on your perspective you could say it's Gaunter O'Dimm's fault that he became a big prick, and ultimately Gaunter was planning on taking his soul from the beginning anyway so you could argue that Gaunter is something like a con-artist dealing in people's lives and not any better than Olgierd. But in my opinion Olgierd just hurt far too many people and showed no signs of regretting what he did or planning on changing the way he acted if he got his mortality back, and I couldn't let a wanton murderer go free.
I feel old when talking to anyone my age yet too inexperienced to effectively talk to anyone older. Life is grand that way.
At the end of Comix Zone you not only have to beat the villain in your own comic book, but you have to rescue the intelligence agent who's been guiding and supplying you -- a character within the comic -- from drowning. If you beat Mortus and rescue Alissa, you pull her out of the comic, out into the real world with you, and adorable romance ensues.
In the bad ending, though, Sketch Turner exits his comic book victorious but destroyed by his failure to save Alissa from death. The ending cinematic features a brooding, tortured Sketch deciding whether or not he's going to take the plunge into the comic and go through the whole terrible ordeal over again, all the way from the beginning, to try to work out a better end for Alissa.
First of all, it's so meta, since you the player are deciding whether or not YOU want to go back and relive the terrible adventure once more for the chance at a better conclusion. But I also like the implication that the story of Comix Zone is fixed and immortal; that it's always there, beckoning Sketch Turner, just like any real piece of literature does for any reader in the real world.
There's also the point that to rewrite history, Sketch would have to give life again to a terrible villain -- at the risk of losing entirely and letting Mortus loose on the world. Is it worth making that gamble after you've already won, just to rescue your partner and friend? What if your do-over is infinitely worse than the failure you're already experienced?
It's so heavy, and they really make you feel it with the cinematic!
BogusMeatFactory wrote:If I could powder my copies of shenmue and snort them I would
Got the bad ending the first time I played Bioshock, and liked it way more than the good ending. So twisted. Also, how bizarre is that last boss fight?
Sega Genesis (Model 2), Sega CD, Sega 32X, SNES, Nintendo 64, Gamecube, Game Boy Family, Phillips CD-i Model 910, NES, Atari 5200, Virtual Boy, Atari Jaguar, Playstations 3-4
MrEco wrote:I liked the "bad" ending for the Witcher 3 Hearts of Stone expansion more than the "good" ending. Suffice to say, you have to choose between siding with one of two pricks, and most people consider the prick with magic powers to be the way bigger prick, so they consider siding with him to be the bad option. But I disagree.
To be a little more specific, the story of the expansion follows a man named Olgierd von Everec. He makes a deal with a mysterious man (being with phenomenal cosmic power?) named Gaunter O'Dimm to make him immortal. Olgierd then goes on for decades acting like a right dick about it, stealing raping and murdering for fun. Gaunter eventually wants to collect Olgierd's soul as part of their deal but needs the player character to help him with some tasks first and then trick Olgierd into going to a specific place. At the end Gaunter starts to take Olgierds soul and the player can choose to let him do it, or intervene and defeat Gaunter which free's Olgierd's soul and gives him his mortality back. Most people seem to argue that siding with Olgierd is the good option, because depending on your perspective you could say it's Gaunter O'Dimm's fault that he became a big prick, and ultimately Gaunter was planning on taking his soul from the beginning anyway so you could argue that Gaunter is something like a con-artist dealing in people's lives and not any better than Olgierd. But in my opinion Olgierd just hurt far too many people and showed no signs of regretting what he did or planning on changing the way he acted if he got his mortality back, and I couldn't let a wanton murderer go free.
I chose to help the lesser prick because it was the only way, from what I can tell, to get the Viper Silver (or was it steel) Sword. I needed a complete set so that's what I went with.
The main game I accidentally went with the bad ending. I can't say I prefer it but I felt bad about it. Maybe that's a topic for another day: "Endings that made you feel something."
I was going to bring up Prince of Persia(2008) but honestly there isn't a good ending to that game . Although apparently there is some DLC which may offer a good ending but since I played on PC and they never ported it the PC version at least will never have a "good" ending .
Your choices are let your female companion return to being a corpse or bring her back to life again while also releasing an evil god who then devours the fucking planet .
Based on your description, MrEco, I'm with you on that bad ending.
And I completely forgot to list my favorite bad ending of all time: Mass Effect 3.
We're probably all familiar with the controversy over the Mass Effect Trilogy ending. If I'm remembering right, most of the outcry was due to the fact that you were presented with the same three choices no matter how you'd played your game (the only variable was how many of the three were available to you, which was dependent on the quantity of war resources and galactic readiness you'd gained).
But even if you don't agree with the "my choices didn't matter" lament and are satisfied with your own Shepard headcanon, the three options just... don't make a whole lot of sense. One option is very clearly foisted as "the best" when I think it's actually the worst, the most logical option has strings attached to it that are a load of B.S., and it's completely unconvincing that Shepard would accept any of these choices at all based on the way they're delivered and the complete lack of faith we have in the character laying out the options.
ANYWAY. The bad ending.
In the bad ending, you refuse all choices presented. You say that the galaxy will win the war in the long run on its own terms, without resorting to iron-fisted assimilation or destruction or genetic altering of any sentient life... but you accept that this won't be achieved by you. You've run out of time; victory is lost.
Thus, history repeats, with all advanced civilization falling to the reapers through another interminable dark age...
...then you see mountains. Trees. A pastoral planet. Enough time has passed that it has recovered from the ravages of the conflict. A blissful and ignorant peace is achieved.
The camera pans down through the crust, down down down into the planet's layers, and comes to rest on a device. It springs to life on its own and plays a message. It is the digital archive of Liara's records and research on the reaper invasion, which she, the archivist, compiled and preserved -- of her own volition -- as a fallback plan in case Shepard failed. It's a warning to the next cycle of civilizations, containing all the amassed galactic intelligence on the enemy. It was too late for her kind, the message says... but with all this knowledge, this time -- surely this time -- the invasion will be stopped.
And you are left with this bittersweet hope.
Freaking. Beautiful.
BogusMeatFactory wrote:If I could powder my copies of shenmue and snort them I would
. Although apparently there is some DLC which may offer a good ending but since I played on PC and they never ported it the PC version at least will never have a "good" ending 
.