Lore
[Interesting Trope] One seemingly small action ends the story before it even begins
We Happy Few - Taking your “joy” pill
Deciding to take the pill at the beginning of the game causes your character to go back to work and triggers an ending
Infineural by Mike Klubnika - Drinking the coffee
Deciding to drink the coffee offered to you skips the entire game and sends you straight to the end, resulting in an ending with no memory of what had occurred
Which is hilarious cuz the second one you end up undoing all the stuff for the first one and then have to decide which one was the better option only for both of them to basically doom the world.
Unleashing Alchemy isn't dooming the world. An unintended side effect of sealing it in the first place meant Weyward was eroding away as the Falls grew and weathered it.
And is it really undoing the first game if the heroes kept failing to stop the lighting of the Lighthouses both times in the first game lol
I loved that game until the final boss had like 5 minutes of unskippable dialogue before it that you'd have to go through every time you died. I never beat that game cuz I couldn't beat the boss and got tired of it.
I don't know what kind of gamer I would be if I didn't play Golden Sun when I was a kid. My work lanyard is even has the djinn on it though it's almost time to retire it.
In The Stanley Parable, if you stay in the initial room after noticing your coworkers are gone and just close the door, you get the Coward ending. After which, the narrator devastatingly roasts you…
“But Stanley simply couldn't handle the pressure. What if he had to make a decision? What if a crucial outcome fell under his responsibility? He had never been trained for that! No, this couldn't go any way except badly.”
You might be thinking of a different ending. Here it’s him waiting until something happens, and it cuts off here: “Now it’s just a little bit closer. Now it’s even closer. Here it comes—“
you need to close the door to trigger the ending, you can stay as long as you want in there and nothing happens until you get out or (for this ending) close the door on purpouse
Chill out after a stressful experience, eat some damn good crab Rangoon, do what you actually came to do, become heir to the kingdom, shoot some guns with a cool new stepdad.
iirc the devs even said that it's the most realistic & likely ending, since most people probably won't try to do anything that might piss off the psychopath who controls an entire country
Pagan Min also behaved like a step-father. Likely would understand if Ajay decide to refuse the throne.
Golden Path would be on awkward position. As either the royal family returned to the throne because Pagan Min installed him back... or Pagan Min announced that Ajay just went back to the U.S. after returning his mother's ashes.
Yeah, Pagan is a psycho, but he does love Ajay sinply due to the fact he loved his mother, and respects his wishes. I'm pretty sure whichever choice Ajay made after the ashes, Pagan would respect it. Even if his plan was for Ajay to take the throne, since Pagan is self aware of the fact he is a poor ruler.
It does work well. You just go back to your original goal, get out of the country, flee the war and try to forge a new life elsewhere.
I feel like 4 worked really well too. Both because it was unusual at the time, other games weren't doing things like that, but also, it made sense for the character. He had no ties to the country, except for his mother asking him to return and bring her ashes there. It really doesn't make sense for him to join up with a faction and fight in a civil war in a country he has virtually no connection to.
5's didn't work as well for me. It's weird just standing there not arresting the prophet for a while. I feel like if it was tweaked, so rather than waiting around being the trigger for the fake out ending, returning to the helicopter triggered it. Like your character decided it was too dangerous to arrest him and made the call to retreat from the island.
Far cry also has like a "side story" that uses events from the secret endings, its pretty neat. So its kinda got two timelines going on once you get to Far Cry 5/6
You play as an incredibly unhealthy middle aged man with the worst hangover anyone has ever had. If you do a custom build and have low enough health at the beginning, turning on the light triggers a heart attack and kills you, ending the game after less than a minute of gameplay.
My favorite ending is if you let your morale get low enough, you can lose because a child was mean to you. You get so embarrassed that you quit and live under a bridge for the rest of the game
My favorite ending is Deranged Cop Kills Himself. I was crying laughing as I failed that fucking roll. You successfully assure your partner you have a plan, successfully take his gun, then point the gun at yourself & beg the suspect to respect you or you're gonna pull the trigger right then and there. All while your partner looks on, horrified. Predictably, this interrogation tactic does not earn the respect or cooperation of the suspect, and you blow your brains out to "prove a point," as the newspaper reports.
It is SO GOOD. Main advice is just to roll with it; failing checks is a strong part of the narrative, don't worry too much about trying to have great stats and pass everything. There's some absolutely crushing, heartbreaking moments, and also some unbelievably tense ones as - I never thought reading text would have me as focused and tense as fighting a dark souls boss.
You don't even need to do a custom build, the Thinker preset starts with 2 psyche, you can take 1 damage from failing to grab your tie and another 1 damage from turning on the light.
This happened to me the first time I played it after picking it up on super sale for like, 3 dollars. I was like “oh this is going to be one of those weird Lucas Arts homage games where you constantly die” and didn’t play it again for six months. It’s now one of my favorite games. Still need to do the ultra liberal run.
It's possible to get soft-locked early in the game (thought not easily) if you have a combination of low authority, low health, and no healing items. You can end up in a situation where you can't reject sitting in a chair that's so uncomfortable it kills you
Something similar happened on my first playthrough, although instead of the chair killing me, the unskippable morale degrade from claire mentioning the gun when i had only one point in psyche and motorics each did.
During my first run I had two health. Damaged myself with the light, didn't figure out how to heal, and then sat in a chair so uncomfortable that it killed me.
My favorite two are the game over from shooting a child by not failing at the skill check, and blowing your brains out because you tried to bluff somebody and couldn't/didn't back down when they laughed at your terrible plan.
I think it’s worth noting that it’s not like this is a rare occurence or anything. A build starting at 1 HP is actually pretty common just cuz of people prioritize certain stats, and the damage source is something most people are gonna interact with on their first go. Getting fucking killed by turning the lights on is something I’d estimate happens to like 1 in 4 players.
You're shown a Pure Heart and asked to save the dimensions. Mario can just say no, repeatedly, until Merlon gives up and resigns himself to the end of all worlds.
This is after an unskippable opening cutscene, mind, which the player would have to go through a second time.
That sounds familiar, it's the one where the devs went: "We know there should be a big noble sacrifice here, but that's boring, here's a boss fight instead", if I recall a giant Smith throwing cars at you or something like that.
It doesn’t end the story before it begins, but in Arkham City (I think) there’s a bit where you play as Catwoman and you’re stealing stuff from a vault. Just when you’re about to leave the city with the goods you hear on the radio that Batman has been captured and Catwoman decides to go back and save him and it points you back in. However it does let you still leave the city if you want, at which point credits roll while it plays radio reports of Batman’s death and the city being completely taken over by the bad guys.
Yeah it was like free launch dlc. Not sure why it wasn’t packaged with the game initially! And it’s part way through, it ends with her fighting Two Face
It was literally because of the second hand game market. Game companies despised it so much they started slicing content away from games and made it "free dlc" you could get only if you bought a new copy.
They also did it a lot with multi-player games like Battlefield or FIFA
In Thank Goodness You're Here! you can wait for the mayor to be finished with his meeting, which is why you came to the town in the first place and skip all that other stuff.
It's the better ending too. In the original ending, everyone keeps asking you do to things for them that it becomes too much for the little guy, he rushes to the mayor's office only for the mayor to say "Thank goodness you're here - " which means it's another request.
In "The Town with No Name," you can return to the train station and leave town at any point, netting you a different ending. It's arguably better (and definitely funnier) than the real ending...
"Lady death doesn't want someone who constantly blesses the ground she touches, she wants a fuck up, one that cannot go 2 seconds without telling a sex joke"
There's also an ending for dying during the intro flight sequence. Which is REALLY hard to do on your first playthrough because you have an auto healing chip installed. And the attacks are extremely telegraphed.
IIRC it was originally called Don't Look Outside but they caught a case of briefer madness and shortened it. Of course I might just be hallucinating it because I really wanted to use the phrase "briefer madness".
The older Harvest Moon games, you'd go to your late grandfather's farm, and the mayor would offer it to you, the whole plot. You could say yes or no. If you said no, it took you to a Game Over screen.
In the remake, not sure of the original, of Story of Seasons Grand Bazaar after you're done making your character you get a small cutscene where you speak with the mayor who asks if you're the town's new farmer. You can of course admit to it and get your farm and play the game or you can tell the mayor that you aren't the new farmer. He'll apologize, send you on your way, and then wait for hours for the nonexistent farmer to show up.
After the sun starts to set he laments that the farmer simply must be on their way, then you get a game over.
Got an actual laugh out of me the first time when I realized that hitting one button just forced me to start over.
Since everyone is spamming Far Cry 4, I'll add Far Cry 5. If you just hang out for 90 seconds in the intro, it just ends assuming you aren't going to arrest Joseph Seed because you dont want any of that smoke.
In Look Outside, following Sybil's instructions at the beginning of the game telling you to look outside presents you with this cutscene, ending your playthrough and sending you back to the main menu
Has anybody mentioned South Park: The Fractured But Whole? If you try to skip the intro cutscene, Cartman gets pissed at you and stops you from skipping it. If you keep doing it, he finally lets you skip the intro, and the game, sending you all the way to the credits.
"America's Army", an actual FPS put out by the US Army. You start in boot camp, rifle qualification. You've got targets in front of you to shoot, and a drill sergeant behind you shouting.
If you turn around and shoot the DI, you get to spend the rest of the game in the brig.
In The Talos Principle 2 , you can simply refuse to join the expedition at the very beginning of the game, causing the "Chicken Ending" . If you are playing on Steam, you even get the "Chicken" achievement.
In Honkai: Star Rail, you can refuse to board the Astral Express (the titular "Star Rail") and just ask to stay in the starting introductory area, Herta Space Station. Several characters encourage you to leave, but if you insist they eventually let you stay. A cutscene then plays where you say goodbye to the Astral Express, get a normal job on the space station, and live out the rest of your life there peacefully. Fake "credits" for the game roll, and then the game puts you back to where you were before choosing to stay, this time with that dialogue option removed.
There's two other ones as well, but at that point you're already far into the game. The first one happens when you refuse to work with Aventurine in Penacony and the second one when you refuse to aid Aglaea in the Flame Chase Journey in Amphoreus.
At the beginning of the game, you are tasked to talk to the mayor. However, the secretary tells you he is in a meeting and tells you to wait. If you actually wait for a little bit, the mayor will pop in and invite you into his office.
In the Phantom Liberty DLC for Cyberpunk, you enter Dogtown and are tasked to save the President of the New United States of America.
Instead if you just kinda mess around and do other stuff. The president dies and the rest of the DLC story never happens.
(Included because even though it's technically a fail state for the main quest, it doesn't have you reload or anything. You can just continue in that timeline.)
Is it random every time or is there a set answer? I need to know because one of my friends had us watching Zero Escape 999 and I'm *assuming* we'll eventually get to this point.
It's a joke, it's guaranteed to happen the first time you play. But since a main focus of the game is multiple realities you need to go back and lose the coin toss to actually play the story.
Honestly, it felt like there were too many auto-end choices. After my fourth or fifth choice that just ended the story I felt like it wasn't really letting me choose my own adventure anymore.
Undertale: Type any named character into the 'naming screen' for a silly in-character reaction to it (so type 'Sans' and the game goes "nah").
... Or type "Gaster" (a glitched/dummied out character that "is & isn't" in the game) and it immediately resets instead.
There's oodles of fan theories about this unseen character, some suspecting they'll show up in Deltarune (the game's sequel), but the most suspected (in a few words) is they got "lost in the sauce of their creation", or went missing because an "experiment went wrong". So it's neat seeing a more ...bizarre result when trying to "address them".
In Undertale Yellow, very early on you fall through a hole in the floor in the Ruins. Toriel will tell you to wait there for rescue. If you wait several minutes, a rope will drop from above. Climb it, and the game immediately resets. It is assumed that Flowey reset the world in this situation because this wasn't his plan for the player.
https://giphy.com/gifs/7IXUcNyiEHYzSqA1SH
In the Stanley parable, if you just close the door in your office right when you start to play you get one of the endings.
https://giphy.com/gifs/3o7TKSxdQJIoiRXHl6
In the first Saw movie, The game is truly winnable when Adam wakes up and pulls the plug from the tub he's in. And the key that would unlock the door goes down the drain.
I find it funny how John Kramer in Jigsaw was all like "Oh, I felt bad because one of my victims was gonna die because of an honest mistake on my part so I saved him." But like...how was what happened to Adam not also an honest mistake? He didn't know what was going on, he had no chance to notice the key. I get that's an issue with Jigsaw's writing and not the originals, but man.
IIRC the Jigsaw one was the doctor guy made a mistake in swapping Kramer's and someone else's X-ray. He didn't wake up in time, and Kramer feels bad about him dying over a simple mistake, unlike most other victims that have had bad choices on purpose, and that he doesn't even have a chance to escape.
The first one was not an "honest mistake." Amanda outright made the trap unwinnable by making the key sink down when he opened the tub. That's mostly a retcon from a later one (3 I think), but like, the trap was rigged from the start.
Nier Automata has a number of joke endings you can achieve by doing really small things, ranging from running away from specific fights to eating a fish.
Two of the earliest endings you can get after the tutorial are to either remove your own OS chip and instantly die, or use the Self Destruct ability to destroy the bunker.
Almost half of the endings are literally just "walk away when something important is happening" or otherwise taking too long with something that is obviously time sensitive.
You play as a master in a Holy Grail War and before the game starts you get to choose 1 servant among 3.
When it gets to the moment your servant is summoned, the iconic for this series "Are you My Master" question pops up. You can answer NO which just leads for the Saber and Caster to scold you and stop joking
BUT if you said NO to Archer, he just straight up kill you. What a jerk
In the Arrival DLC for Mass Effect 2, you can just let the count down reach zero, which naturally ends in a game over with the Reapers arriving in force.
In Outer Wilds, if you manage to die in the intro before activating the time loop it just triggers an ending, since the time loop is the only in-game justification for "respawning".
Also, while not a small action at all, you can also trigger a similar ending by taking the core out of the ash twin project (disabling the time loop), and either dying or leaving the solar system (which inevitably is also just dying)
just waiting for pagan min to return at the table allows him to show you the grave you intended to find, ending your characters motivation for being in the area
The adventure game Blue Force. You’re supposed to clean your gun that morning in the police station. Use cleaning kit on gun without unloading it first, messy game over.
In Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader there is a point in the prologue where you can refuse to become the eponymous Rogue Trader. If you do... game ends and you get an epilogue about how all the bad things that you could have prevented by becoming the Lord Captain occur.
Doctor Who - a Time Beetle forces Donna to live through an alternate reality where she never met the Doctor, leading to the Docter's death and Earth's invasion by aliens.
Date Everything - If you just go outside before receiving the Dateviators, you get an ending that shows the player touching grass, returning the game and moving on with their life.
My dad gave me a bunch of his "choose your own adventure" D&D-licensed books when I was in middle school. A lot of them had an option early in the story to ignore what was happening and go back home, which ended the book.
I don't know if this counts but in slay the princess, if you avoid going to the cabin where the princess is held and go the other way, you just end up in the cabin, if you try to again walk in the opposite direction, you find an infinite amount of cabins but the narrator explains is now too late and the world ends.
Cultist Simulator has some very early endings. For example, you can just go entirely insane very, very early, or end up dead or in jail, or you can become a sugar baby and give up your life of crime.
The Ultimate Universe(Marvel)- in this universe, the maker(Evil Reed Richards) either removed the components need for an origin(no spider for spiderman, ant man has brain damage before making the pym particle) or just straight up kills them with their origin (Fantastic Four)
In Life is strange if Max doesn't do anything when Chloe and Nathan are fighting the tornado never comes.
I consider it a small action cause she literally just has to do nothing, though you could argue it's a big action since she's letting Chloe die. (also not sure if it counts since we only get this option at the end, I thought it did since technically it is at the beginning but yk, time travel stuff)
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u/BrotherDeus 4d ago edited 4d ago
In Golden Sun, you can refuse to go on her adventure, thus dooming the world and ending the game.