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[Kesstryl]

I played a lot of PC RPGs back in the 90s, some of which had multiplple endings (Elder Scrolls Daggerfall), and I kind of miss that.  It was nice being able to play through something and have your choices matter in the outcome.  I do have a first person RPG game idea which will have three alternate endings based on character choices and battle outcomes, but I'm a few years away from developing it.  I just wanted to chime in with the fact that I personally love multiple endings.  Don't get me wrong, I like linear stories too, but multiple endings with multiple choices feels more like an RPG and less like a theme park ride.

[SchriefFighter]

Well, when done right and tied to the gameplay in the right way, multiple endings aren't just fun, they're necessary. Chrono Trigger is the obvious one for this, but other RPGs have had "completion" endings where we see different endings depending on what players did.

I know many visual novels that did multiple endings depending on key choices that were made. Which also works for the Mass Effect series.

So yeah, multiple endings can work, they just have to be treated with respect.

[VRex7]

I'm a fan of games with multiple endings. Layers of Fear is a good example - I played through that game 4 times to get all 3 endings and I did. Each different playthrough I made different decisions so while some of it was the same, it always felt fresh.

[zizulot]

Well for me its two ways here. If game is fun to play and have nice replayability than as much as you can have, if game is fun but you got bored in midway of it, than its useless to have multiple endings.

[ViktorTheBoar]

How do you feel about different endings in movies? Clue had three different endings spread around the cinemas!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clue_(film)

Video version had all three endings, shown in sequence with something like "maybe this didn't happen, but this did"

[RK]

There are different situation for games having multiple endings.  For instance, a game that may have multiple characters, leading it to have multiple story lines for each of the character.  That results a game having multiple endings, which in fact just means having multiple linear stories within a common time frame.  Although it can easily evolve to be the story line between each characters affecting the others', resulting each of them will be having more than one ending.

Another situation for game to have multiple ending that I can think of is, even a single story line sometimes would have multiple endings.  Secret boss and hidden scenario = secret ending, are very commonly seen.  I personally think all these multiple endings approaches would give a game another depth and made some of them so unforgettable (e.g Chrono Trigger ).

[TinkerTyler]

I get that having multiple endings can feel like its invalidating the one "true" ending.  I see that alot at the end of Stephen King novels where he says "yeah, if I had my way, it'd be this ending". 

I'm a fan of one ending generally, except for in the Walking Dead games.  I like knowing that the ending is generally the same, but my choices had an effect on people in the game.

[wowods]

It's fun to playing a game that has multiple endings, because sometimes it motivate you to play it again, and again, and again until you get all possible endings. As long as the games is not feel too repetitive or boring during you second playthrough, multiple endings are great.
That's why sometimes story-driven games hard to utilize this feature, because it's hard to make those kind of games feel less repetitive at second playthrough (except if it has very engaging story or nice story branching). And in my opinion, open-world game will benefit so much with multiple endings just because these kind of games is feel less repetitive for your second or third playthrough.