Multi-ended games

Are games with multiple endings, one of the things dropping quality of games? There always seems to be immersion breaking glitches, NPC dialog or events that don't match up if you juggle between the choices available. One, well thought out ending would be better I think.

It's the developers fault for being shit at making games and writing.

Why provide replay value when you can sell DLC and sequels?

Could be a variety of things like the developer not having the budget or the developer just being flat out incompetent.

Making multiple story paths has always been a problem. Before, limited cartridge/disk space meant lots of reused assets and pallete swaps. Now, development budgets are a lot bigger, and publishers arguable have more power to rush development. Then there is always the issue of the writers just running out of ideas and you end up with red/green/blue endings.

What is that OP? Fifty separate plots points, areas and related content that you would have to make?

Ow the Edge

Voice acting, increasing production costs and the assumption that many casuals will not complete a game twice just to see a different ending contribute to the decline of this feature. Also, Chrono Trigger did it best.

I really love way of the samurai for doing this, the game has multiple stories that all lead to different endings and lets you betray everyone at any time you want if you wanna go insane.

sadly, my life has only one ending

OP there were many things wrong with Shadow the Edgehog, but the multiple endings were not one of them
It was that you had to get all of the damn things to get the true ending

What are you talking about faggot? Shadow the Hedgehog is perfect and it has multiple endings

Yep, thats a video game.
It isn't multiple endings dropping the quality, it's lazy and incompetent devs that are doing it. A doujin VN made by some kid in middle school can pull it off, why the fuck can't 100+ degree-holding professionals do it? For the same reason they can't do anything, the whole system's fucked.

He knows too much

that was some image i found hastily. Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 are recent games that I had problems with. surely there are more that suffer from shallow implementation of "multi endings"

Witcher 3 is a poor example as Hearts of Stone had multiple endings, and that's the best vidya story to come out in recent decades despite being an expansion

Fallout 4 isn't even worth mentioning as the entire game is a problem the second it tries to be anything but a post-apocalypse minecraft.

The reason you don't see it anymore basically comes down to money.

More paths means more development time.
More paths means its harder to write a sequel and franchise your game.

NOT A GAME

And yet they're still better games than the shit being pumped out by professionals. What a time to be alive.

Witcher 3 was pretty fucked considering the quests you could wait to do and then how rigid NPC felt when eventually started the quest, way past the optimal time. A game like dragons dogma had certain points where quests where no longer available which helped avoid some silly moments.
The HoS was an expansion, like a big side quest. If Witcher 3 did anything right, it was the side quests. Morkvarg , cave of dreams, lambert and dandelion side quests where some of my favorites. I still think its too much for developers to have side quests influence the main story while still keeping it open ended.

Why do you have a shit example for your own question OP?

If/when they go back to Witcher, the game should just be HoS and B&W sized quest lines and areas. They showed that they can make some amazing side content while the main story was simply decent, OK.

Multiple endings are tricky do as well. You either have a bunch of small flags for the endings, like Metro or one or two. Then factor in developer incompetence and voice acting sponging up time and budget. Then throw in publisher requests/ideas that most gamers only play a game once, so should see everything in the first playthrough.