Roleplaying Games are no stranger to having the player making important choices, and a lot of times some of these choices can lead to a divergence in how the game’s story plays out. These story branches can converge back into a centralized ending, or the outcomes can allow formultiple endings for the story.
When it is time for the final cutscene to play, some games take this to the extreme by having outcomes that turn the game’s heroic protagonist into an outright villain — more commonly known as getting the game’s “evil ending.”
There are a total of 7 endings one can achieve inPersona 4: Golden, with varying degrees of how good/evil they are. Getting the True ending is the hardest of all of them, which includes unraveling the most intricate elements of the story, culminating in atrue final boss fight.
InPersona 4: Golden, one of the choices players can make is to pull a 180 in betraying their allies to side with the Inaba Killer — with the killer even calling the player character his new partner. The player character agrees to keep Adachi’s involvement from the other protagonists and strikes an unbreakable bond of loyalty with Adachi.
There are many different factions throughoutFallout New Vegasthat players can meet. However, none of them are more fearsome than the Legion. Legate Lanius assuming control of the Legion leads to one of the darkest endings in any Fallout game. For those who want toget the best ending in New Vegas, it is best to see this faction as the enemy.
With control of the Hoover Dam, Lanius will speak of continuing the Legion’s conquest westward, slaughtering and enslaving those it comes across. The ending cutscene speaks of his savage occupation of the strip, extermination of both those who oppose the Legion and those who served no use, and the enslavement of the remaining population.
Just likeFallout New Vegas, this game will have players interacting with many different factions, one of which will be the Halcyon Holdings Board, more commonly known as the Board. The Board has decided to put the “Lifetime Employment Program” into effect. This program will see the majority of the colonists being frozen in status. Only those that are deemed “deserving” will not be affected.
Siding with the Board means helping the Board put this program into effect. The entire cutscene paints a very bleak existence and instills a sense of hopelessness about the colonists being put into status. The player character isrewarded handsomely for their wicked ways.
Fablegave players one of the most engaging fantasy adventures of its time. The player character can be judged by their actions, how they look, and even what spells lie within their arsenal. After the final battle,a choice stands before them. They can destroy the Sword of Aeons once and for all, or they can use it to murder their own sister for ultimate power.
Choosing the latter results in the entirety of the game’s world of Albion falling under their dark rule. No other character in the game’s lore is as powerful as the player character, meaning that there is no force able to stop or oppose them.
Mass Effecthas a very impressive legacy, but it all started with the first game. Throughout the game, players will be assessed if their actions are that of a Paragon or that of a Renegade, andthis morality systemwould become a staple for the franchise.
When it comes time to rebuild and create a new council, Ambassador Udina demands to start an all-human council using Shepard’s actions as the driving reason to establish and enforce a dominating authority to govern the galaxy.
Arguably one of thebest games developed by Bioware, players will be able to make choices that lean towards the Light Side or the Dark Side of the Force as they make their way through the game’s story. However, the story will still follow a set path of amassing a group of allies, becoming a Jedi, and fighting against the Sith — only to reveal a dark secret about the player character’s origin.
This is until a pivotal moment when the player character can walk down the path of the Dark Side, setting in motion the game’s evil ending — which involves killing some of your allies. This story path ends with them taking their place as the Lord of the Sith.
Baldur’s Gate 3gives players an incredible amount of freedom to carve their own experience throughout the game, and this allows them to experience an ending that feels tailor-made to the character they have been playing for the entirety of the game. There is not just one “evil ending”, there are endings across a very wide spectrum of varying moral perspectives.
Players can betray their allies, side with the Emperor, turn into a mindflayer, and that is just to name a small handful of the options. However, one ending result could be considered more evil than any of the others — bybecoming the Absolute.
