True Endings

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#1

I’ve come to discover that most (all?) bishoujo games have multiple endings. Some like Critical Point and Three Sister’s Story have quite a few bad endings, some ok endings, but they both have a true ending. But what about the other games like Hourglass of Summer, Yume Miru Kusuri and Season of the Sakura which give you multiple women to choose from - each with their own unique endings? I realize that in these cases the reality is that the player decides what is their own canon by the desicions they stick with. And while this is acceptable to a point, I’m left wondering just what endings the creators choose as their own…

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in one of those production houses! :wink:

#2

There are some games that have one true ending, even if there are several girls you can choose from that have their own set of endings. Sometimes it’s clear, sometimes you really can’t tell without looking it up online somewhere. It can be quite debatable if there’s no official word on it. It’s probably more satisfying to just choose your favorite girl as the true ending. :stuck_out_tongue:

This thread reminds me of the pain of playing Little Busters. I need to get every girls’ ending (and Rin’s two bad endings – sorry, Rin-sama :cry: ) before I can get the true end. It’s quite annoying. :expressionless:

#3

I’ve always supposed that true endings, not only are something the writer or devs create because they like a certain girl, but also for when the title in question ever makes it to anime/manga format… not to mention a sequel of some sort.

For me, I’m not so keen on most “default girls” for games (eroge or not). In Sakura Taisen I prefered Marie over Sakura… then Erica over all of them in ST3. Lara is my fave in Rune Factory… but psychopathic Mist is the official girl.

However sometimes you get an eroge like MinDeaD BlooD, that has multiple endings that could be canon, but they don’t reveal which. That can be kinda annoying on its own. :stuck_out_tongue:

So I suppose true endings are a required evil… it’s just we’re upset the “canon girl” isn’t the one we personally want.

I’m sure Sakura fans go ga-ga when they see Ohgami and Sakura as an official couple in ST5. Me? I cry for Erica. :frowning:

#4

Well, true endings can be good, take Gore Screaming Show for example. Another exception, I guess, would be G Senjou no Maou, but I can’t say that for sure yet since I’ve only played what the fanlation group has translated so far.

#5

I’m pretty sure it’s Saki =P

Seeing as, you know, it seems to be the best-written ending (unlike a few that I felt were butchered; Yuuka’s comes to mind. Shame because I thought Yuuka was great)

Anyway, I support true endings, BUT - I prefer the games to be structured to either encourage or force one to play the rest of the game before going after the true ending. The true ending is what you should END on - and it should be the best route in the game. Essentially, I think you should always finish an eroge when it is at its best. Seeing the best end, then having to clear a bunch of others that are fairly uninteresting in comparison leaves you with a rather less rosy view of the game on the whole.

Hoshizora no Memoria ticked me off a little bit here! Yume’s route was plainly the canon route in Hoshizora no Memoria - it was just so much better than the other routes, which were already good by themselves. But they messed it up by having Mea’s route being unlocked AFTER finishing that canon route. Mea’s route sucked in comparison - if it was a proper true route by itself, and even better than the other route, I would have been fine with the game forcing me to do it last like it does. But it isn’t - it’s basically a fairly dull ‘if’ branch on Yume’s route. The game should have been the other way round - force the player to clear Mea’s route first, then Yume’s route.

#6

This sort of feels like the argument whether you should eat your favorite food first or last during a meal. :stuck_out_tongue: In the end, it all comes down to preference.

#7

Not always - in the case of a number of eroges, including Hoshizora no Memoria, true endings exist essentially to tie all of the routes together and create a high-quality conclusion.

Imagine Ever17 if you had to play Coco’s route first! =P
YES, it’s the best, and yes, you may want to get the best straight away, but the damage you’ll do to your experience of the game as a whole would be irreversible.

Now, Ever17 is an extreme case, and only a small fraction of VNs are like that, but it still applies. Playing Mea’s route after Yume’s in Hoshizora no Memoria dulled the experience overall by finishing on a lower note than it should have. I don’t think this is a matter of preference - it doesn’t matter at all which heroine you like better, because the other route was much longer, much more complete and had a proper conclusion! I believe this was an error in design, not the preference of the game designer differing from my own.

#8

For most games, true endings don’t really make sense within the story. A story based in reality should not be able to draw details from multiple storylines. They simply never could happen. Ever 17 will probably remain one of the very few exceptions where combining the previous arcs into the true ending made sense. In the vast majority of games, you’re not reliving your life several times, so a true ending that involves all the previous endings makes very little sense. Not to mention if a game has weak paths before the true end, you may be discouraged and never finish the game to see the true ending.

Again, except for a few exceptions, I think it really boils down to preference. For you, the last ending has the longest lasting impression on you. For me, the first ending does. There’s really no objective point to argue there. I think which side one falls on will largely determine whether they like forced final true endings or not.

Even though I have Hoshizora no Memoria, I still haven’t played it, so I can’t really see where your argument is coming from. I could bump it up on my list, but I think it’d be way too late for this debate either way. :stuck_out_tongue:

#9

In a thread from last year about the unwritten “rules” of eroge (which I think was one of the first threads I ever posted in), there was a post that told how to distinguish the true ending:

#10

Well, there’s nothing wrong with multiple endings in my opinion, as long as there’s a good Skip mode :smiley:

When it comes to true endings, I don’t really care about which one is supposed to be the true ending in the author’s intentions. The “true ending” will always be the one that involves the heroine I liked the most (unless they manage to horribly screw up that particular ending, I guess that may happen). I usually play first the route of my favourite heroine, then play the others in no particular order.

I loved the way the authors decided the route order of Fate/stay night, though. I guess that works fine, too, if the decision makes sense.

#11

It’s a tossup between Yuka, Saki, and Vampire Road. Yuka seems to be the poster girl, Saki lets them start from a clean slate, and Vampire Road allows all the main girls to return. Personally I think it should be Vampire Road… although Shizuru needs to hire a fashion designer. :stuck_out_tongue:

#12

I always thought true endings were kinda silly.

It’s sort of the equivalent of the programmers. “Let’s make a ren’ai ! Alright, lets have a story, and a harem of girls for the various endings we hvae planned for the game. BUT… since we like this girl so much, we’ll let her have the privilege of having the TRUE ending.”

Alright, but what about all the other choices the players may like ? It sort of defeats the purpose of having multiple endings in the first place.

But, hey: that’s my opinion.

#13

I think that’s got a lot of validity … However, there are several reasons why true ends exist.

  1. Sometimes the story ends up being built in a way that lends itself naturally towards having a true end. For example, a game where you can end up with the princess … or you can marry her maid, or your childhood friend – the most sensible ‘true end’ is the princess.

  2. If you ever want to make a sequel to a game, you can’t leave it open which ending was obtained. You have to pick one, and (see above) some endings are more appropriate to use as a base to build more story on top of.

And then, the cynical reason …

  1. The game makers try to pick who is going to be the most popular, and focus on her in the marketing and the merchandise and so forth. Everybody hates TIngle (to use a non-ero example), at least in America. So If you were going to make a multimillion dollar investment in LoZ merchandise, you probably want to know that. Designating a true end lets the creators try to plan this out.
#14

Look at Brave Soul as an example, out of all the girls in the game, only Claire and Alicia have what I would call Canon endings. Claire’s is what I would call the “Fantasy” true ending, and Alicia has the “Reality” true ending.

You could tell that Alicia was the Devs Favorite. (Although I think Claire was Mogudan’s Favorite, since Claire is basically Rei Ayanami (From Neon Genesis Evangelion) with long hair)

#15

“Best” endings can happen on their own, though… if you have a sufficiently complex situation there may necessarily be only one outcome where the highest number of loose ends is tied up and the most people are happy. But should writers try to avoid that, so as not to devalue the other endings?

In a game like, say, YMK - would it have been satisfying to have a special best ending unlocked after reaching the other endings, something that would allow you to help all three girls in need? Or would that seem like trivialising their problems? Of course, in that particular case, it would also have been a place to stick an Aya path… But then that might make it seem like she was the “true” heroine, even if that wasn’t the intent. I suppose you could make the Super Happy Ending obviously a parody…

#16

I was actually a little disappointed that there was no best ending for YMK that tied up all loose ends. But I am sure that was entirely intentional to show players that you “can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Although Aeka’s path was definately the most dire of the 3 heroines, if you pick another girl her story resolves itself in the middle of their game. Nekoko’s path was the longest; which leads me to believe that since the extra effort was put into her story that hers might be the unofficial canon ending. You never really hear about Mizuki in the other girl’s paths. :?

#17

I have to agree except with the bolded part. For anime, they can, and often, rewrite the scenerios so that the actions that take place in the game do not take place in the anime. While it’s unusual to have an anime like Popotan which rewrites everything from the eroge title, often elements from the entire series are combined in ways that would make it impossible to end with a particular one. This could also been seen as the same level of canon as filler episodes/arcs are in anime.

For sequals, it depends upon how the sequals end. There are multiple ways to handle this, including have various scenarios change what the default ending girl was depending upon how the game is played. This is usually easier when the protagonist is different. For when they are the same, just setting up a scenerio where its sometime in the future and they got dumped or whatever and only give generic information that can pertain to all of the girls. Of course a really advanced one would take the savegame from the last game and adapt it to the new one (if you don’t one, it’ll keep it generic or randomize it). That’s defiantly almost never worth the budget though.

Of course should I ever decided to create a Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei title, every ending except the one you fail will have you die.

#18

Actually, having completed YMK many times, I believe the evidence points to Mizuki being the “true” heroine of the game. This is why I believe this:
[list][]Mizuki is the character at the center of the packaging. Generally, I’ve noticed that with packages that show multiple characters, the middle one is the “true” heroine.[/]
[]In a way, Mizuki covers all the issues in the game. She is despondent like Aeka, though for much different reasons and with much different reactions. Also, she has issues with drugs during her path like Nekoko, though to a much lesser degree.[/]
[]Near the end of the game (after Mizuki disappears and you become student council president), you deal with all the issues in the game, which could be seen as helping the other girls in the game, albeit in an indirect manner (and unfortunately too late to truly help Aeka).[/][/list]

#19

Misaki is the only girl on the cover of Snow Sakura, but Saki has the true end (based on her being the girl in the past). I guess it doesn’t fit your description of the cover showing multiple characters, but if there’s only one girl, you’d expect her to be the true one. So the covers can be misleading.

#20

If YMK had a true ending, it seems Nekoko would have to fit it since her path directly deals with the sub-title. It also deals far better with the auditory hallucination than the other two girls.

But, it is more likely that all three endings have equal weight in that it is the individual who chooses the most significant and “complete” ending to them. Although an Aya path would have been a nice “bonus”. Why, o why is it not in the game… :x