Finishing a game is always a great achievement for any gamer. It is the culmination of hours grinding for experience, overcoming difficult boss battles, leveling up characters, weapons, armor, and abilities, and seeing how the protagonists wrap up their respective narratives. But some games have such rich lore, characters, twists, and turns in the story when it comes to the players’ choices that they branch out into multiple endings.
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Which games have the most endings? From swashbuckling and dynamic action RPGs to classic, story-driven JRPGs and everything in between, there is a plethora of titles that offer gamers multiple endings depending on what they do.
Updated November 12, 2024, by Hamza Haq: One of the main reasons why RPG is the most popular genre in all of gaming is because of the promise of true player choice. An idealized RPG is a game that not only respects the choices of the players but shows their impact by showing different outcomes for different actions. It’s a shame that most RPGs fail to live up to that promise and only offer a flimsy illusion of choice, at best. Fortunately, more developers are catching on to the appreciation gamers have for these types of titles, giving rise to games that not only change the moment-to-moment gameplay depending on what the player decides but give players different endings to their games entirely dependent on their choices. Some games even go a step further and offer not one, not two, but dozens, sometimes hundreds of different endings, all entirely dependent on the choices made during a playthrough. The list has been updated with two additional titles that have the most endings in all of gaming.
12 Catherine: Full Body
13 Endings
Catherine: Full Body is a remake of the original Catherine game that was released last 2011. The game centers around Vincent, a systems engineer who is barely scraping by financially. He is whirled into a surreal scenario wherein he apparently has two girlfriends: Catherine (with a C) and Katherine (with a K).
Gameplay-wise, Catherine: Full Body refines the first game’s puzzle-platforming mechanics and also adds new content in the form of a new love interest in Rin. On top of that, the game has thirteen different endings that depend on Vincent’s choices throughout the story.
11 Heavy Rain
17 Endings
Heavy Rain is a tense action-adventure title that sees players uncover the mystery of the Origami Killer through the eyes of four protagonists. The game has a total of seventeen endings, all of which are determined by what the player makes each of the protagonists do during key moments in their playthrough.
Given the atrocities that the Origami Killer has done and the fact that they are still at large, it is up to the players to determine who the killer is and to put an end to the killings.
10 Chrono Trigger
18 Endings
Considered to be one of the best JRPGs ever, Chrono Trigger delivers a gripping story that encompasses various timelines. On the ending side of things, the game offers players nineteen endings, with only one of them being a bad one.
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The first good ending, Beyond Time, has five sub-endings that can be acquired separately by either attacking a specific part of the final boss or resurrecting a character before the final fight. Other endings require completing specific side quests and depicting conclusions to the other characters’ story arcs. It is important to note that the majority of these endings can only be seen once players have unlocked the Beyond Time ending.
9 Papers, Please
21 Endings
Papers, Please
- Released
- August 8, 2013
- Developer(s)
- 3909 LLC
For players who want to experience a game that tugs at their puzzle-solving skills and emotions, Papers, Please is just the title. As an immigration officer, players are tasked to process the papers of people who pass through the border of the fictional dystopian country of Arstotzka.
Players will encounter a number of immigrants who want to cross, and it is up to the gamer to decide what happens to them. This thought-provoking game challenges players either to be steadfast with their duties or make exceptions based on an immigrant’s documents and story.
8 The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe
25 Endings
The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is the pseudo-sequel to the first Stanley Parable game that sees the titular Stanley noticing a new door within the office that has the words “NEW CONTENT” plastered all over it. Similar to the first game, players have to navigate the various hallways and rooms within the office space and either follow the narrator’s recounting of what Stanley is supposed to be doing or buck that trend and see what else could happen.
This fourth-wall-breaking title has a total of twenty-five different endings. For players who want to experience a totally unique and surreal title, they should try this game and see how many endings they can unlock.
7 NieR: Automata
26 Endings
As far as deep lore is concerned, few studios can claim to have a connected narrative that spans over countless years across their titles like that of the NieR games. NieR: Automata’s story is set thousands of years in the future, where a war between human-made androids and machines from another planet is taking place.
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NieR: Automata has twenty-six different endings, five of which are considered to be the main ones. The rest of them range from hilarious to random, and each ending further adds charm to the characters and the post-apocalyptic world they inhabit.
6 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
36 Endings
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has a whopping thirty-six different endings. Three of them are connected to the main story, and the rest are determined by the choices the player makes for or against numerous characters they interact with throughout their playthrough.
For the main story, players have the option of getting good, bad, and neutral endings depending on how Geralt interacted with and trained Ciri for the game’s biggest conflict. Other side quests have key character endings, such as the Bloody Baron, Radovid the Stern, and Emhry var Emries, all of which depend on what actions the player chose while completing their side missions. Then, of course, there’s Geralt’s ending with whoever he romances. Players can pursue Triss, Yennefer, both, or neither of them.
5 Detroit: Become Human
85 Endings
Detroit: Become Human is a game that takes a deep dive into artificial intelligence and humanity’s reliance on it as AI slowly becomes sentient. Players guide three androids and shape whether their sentience is influenced for better or worse.
Sporting a whopping eighty-five endings that revolve around the players’ choice, picking what Connor, Kara, Markus, and even the supporting characters’ actions will affect what kind of endings players will get at the end of their playthrough. There are tons of scenarios that branch out from choosing something over another action, which means no two players can have the exact endings after beating this game.
4 Star Ocean: The Second Story
86 Endings
The Star Ocean franchise dates back to 1996 and has a strong fanbase that holds the games in high regard. One of the beloved titles is Star Ocean: The Second Story, which follows the story of Claude and Rena, paving the way for two different playthroughs.
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On the side of endings, Star Ocean: The Second Story has eighty-six different endings that are mostly dependent on how the character’s Emotional Level is toward the other characters. Trying to get all the endings would mean having a checklist of which characters have to get together or not and multiple playthroughs.
3 Undertale
93 Endings
- Released
- September 15, 2015
- Developer(s)
- Toby Fox
Undertale is an indie RPG following the story of a human child who falls into the underground, a place where only monsters live and struggles to survive. There are three main endings in Undertale: Pacifist, Neutral, and Genocide. Of the three main types, there are four different types of Pacifist endings where the end result changes depending on the choices the player made during the story, four are different types of Genocide endings, and there are eighty-five (85) different Neutral endings.
Undertale’s story uses time loops as a core mechanic, so much so that clearing the game once and starting again is acknowledged by the NPCs as the player character rewriting time. The different endings mainly differ depending on what happens to the main supporting cast, such as Toriel, Undyne, Alphys, and many others. Obtaining all possible endings is a fairly popular challenge in the Undertale community and a great reason to replay the game multiple times.
2 Until Dawn
256 Endings (+1 in Until Dawn Remake)
Until Dawn is an interactive horror game with a branching storyline and eight main characters. The choices players make throughout the story decide the fates of the main characters at the end. Make the wrong choices or fail to make them at all, and the characters suffer the consequences in the ultimate way: death. The lives of the protagonists are not guaranteed and it is very possible for all of them to die, resulting in the ‘bad’ ending.
Broadly speaking, there are three main ways Until Dawn can end: one where all characters survive, one where all of them die, and one where some survive while others don’t. It’s in the last ending that changes depending on which characters survived and which ones died, resulting in 256 total endings for the game. The Until Dawn Remake adds another secret ending where players can save Josh, a character who was impossible to save before.
1 Baldur’s Gate 3
17000 Endings
Baldur’s Gate 3 is the much-awaited continuation of a critically acclaimed franchise from the Dungeons and Dragons universe. The third game is set one hundred and forty-two years after the second game and right after the events of the Descent Into Avernus storyline in the Dungeons and Dragons 5e module.
Baldur’s Gate 3 gives players tons of scenarios that can branch out into different outcomes. From choosing NPCs or companions to literally or figuratively stab in the back to aligning with different guilds, Baldur’s Gate 3 has seventeen thousand possible endings for new and veteran players to discover.
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