Faction-Specific Endings

A subtrope of Multiple Endings where each ending shows one of the factions in the game triumph over others, either because the Player Character chooses to ally with them (popular in Role Playing Games) or because the player controls them from the start (popular in strategy games). In the former case, there can also be a Lone Wolf Ending, where the player refuses to take sides and just beats up everyone.

Rule of thumb to tell if an instance of Multiple Endings falls under this subtrope is to check whether they are mainly referred to as "Faction A's ending", "Faction B's ending", etc.

May involve an Alliance Meter and a Last-Second Ending Choice. Compare Alignment-Based Endings and Modular Epilogue.

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Examples:

Adventure Game

• Fahrenheit has the Orange Clan ending, the Purple Clan ending, and the Invisibles ending (which feels a lot like a Lone Wolf one). Notably, the first two endings are cleared not by allying yourself with the respective faction but by losing to their representative in the Final Battle.
• Henry Stickmin Series: Infiltrating the Airship has Henry get recruited by the government to take down a criminal organization called the Toppat Clan in exchange for being pardoned of all his crimes. Two endings have Henry fulfilling his deal with the government (one by directly capturing the Toppat Clan's leader, the other by sneaking into the airship and obtaining crucial information on them), one ending has him betray the government to become the Toppat Clan's new leader, and a fourth ending has him ditch both factions in favor of stealing a large ruby for himself. In the Updated Re Release, whether you ally yourself with the government, the Toppats or neither determines what kind of endings you can seek for Fleeing the Complex, and from there what endings are open in Completing The Mission to the point of wild variations on what the 'mission' even is.

Flight Sim

• Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere has three faction endings (UPEO, General Resource, and Neucom) plus two Ouroboros endings, which are both a mix of faction ending and Lone Wolf ending.

Hack-and-Slash

• Dynasty Warriors 7 had this for every kingdom... with the added twist that each is canon. Every faction's ending simply ended at a high point in their personal history.
  • Dynasty Warriors 8 keeps this system, but adds in optional objectives in certain battles that unlock a second, hypothetical latter half of the story mode in which certain key figures did not die and prevent a historic loss for their faction which gives them to momentum to "win". 8XL ups this by giving Ensemble Dark Horse Lu Bu his own mini faction.

MMORPGs

• Kingdom of Loathing's Level 12 quest lets you fight in a war for the frat boys, the hippies, or both at once. If you kill the frat boy army, you can fight their leader, and then blow up their frat house, which will make the house a different zone until you ascend. If you kill the hippie army, you can do the same thing to their hippie camp. There's even a secret solution to the quest, where you can fight both armies until they get down to one frat boy and hippie each, then use a flare gun in the following battle to summon the pirates, who will kill both armies and bases at once and unlock a better medal than fighting either army individually.
• Happens twice in RuneScape.
  • The first quest, Hazeel Cult, has you either side with the Hazeel cult to revive their leader, or side with the "heroic" Ceril Carnillean to...get his stolen armour back. Siding with the cult has you revive their leader, while siding with Ceril has you kill the cult's recruiter and fire Ceril's butler, essentially leaving the cult untouched.
  • The second quest, Temple of Ikov, has you choose who gets Armadyl's staff. You can choose the Guardians of Armadyl, who order you to kill Lucien, the quest giver due to him desiring the staff. Or you can kill the Guardians and give Lucien the staff and receive some foreshadowing. Ultimately, Lucien gets the staff either way, as killing him doesn't stick due to being a Mahjarrat.

Party Games

• Crash Bash: Characters are split into two teams. One team represents good, and the other represents evil. The ending you get in adventure mode is dependent on which team your character is on. If playing two-player adventure with the characters being on opposites sides, both players fight each other at the end to determine the ending that is given.

Role-Playing Games

• Brigandine features an ending for each of the nations which can unite the continent of Forsena.
• In the original Deus Ex you have to choose between joining the Illuminati, merging with the Helios AI, or following Tracer Tong's advice and destroying global communications.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution ends with Jensen having to make a choice between supporting David Sarif and thus the pro-transhumanism movement, Hugh Darrow and his anti-transhumanist compatriots, Taggard and The Illuminati, or not to support anyone and give humanity a free reign over its fate.
• Dragon Age:
  • While the endings of Dragon Age: Origins are not faction-specific, the resolutions of the story quests leading up to them frequently are: in the Circle Tower, you can side either with the mages or with the Templars (with a caveat that only the Templar ending is available if Irving dies); in the Brecilian Forest, you must side either with the Dalish or with the werewolves (or with the Lady of the Forest, saving everyone); and, in Orzammar, you must support either Prince Bhelen or Lord Harrowmont's bid for the throne, as well as choose between Paragon Caridin and Paragon Branka's support at the Anvil of the Void. These choices mainly determine the composition of your supporting army during the Final Battle.
  • Dragon Age II has the Templar ending and the Mage ending. The absence of a neutral path is very much a plot point.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition lets you choose between the Circle of Magi and the Templar Order again, although this seems to really be the last time around, since whichever faction you don't support is enslaved by the Big Bad and presumably ceases to exist entirely (in its erstwhile form and function, at least) by the end of the game.
• The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall has seven endings: one for each of the four rival kingdoms of the region (Sentinel, Wayrest, Orsinium, Daggerfall), one for the Tamriel Empire (represented by the Blades), and two for supernatural forces (the King of Worms and the Underking). In an interesting twist, Daggerfall's endings are all canonical. Simultaneously. Despite many being mutually exclusive.
• Fallout: New Vegas has several endings depending on which faction you side with, as well as your morality and certain other choices (including individual "where are they now" segments for each recruitable character) as well as a "Wildcard" ending where the player hijacks Benny's plan to take over the region which leaves all the factions sent packing.
• Similarly the case in Fallout 4. The four factions this time are the Brotherhood of Steel, the Institute, the Railroad and the Commonwealth Minutemen. If you can't make up your mind (trust us, you will struggle), you can Take a Third Option and pull a We Can Rule Together in some cases.
• Each game in the Geneforge series has an ending for each of the factions that it's possible for the player to join. The first two games also have a Lone Wolf/Omnicidal Neutral ending. The rest of the series, not so much.
• Growlanser Wayfarer of Time has two primary ending routes, one where you stay with the Marquelay/Ordinale Alliance, one if you abandon them and return to Dulkheim.
• Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 features endings for each country, Planeptune, Lastation, Lowee, and Leanbox. These are in addition to the Normal Ending, True Ending, and Conquest Ending.
• Knights of the Old Republic: Although the endings are commonly referred to as Light Side and Dark Side, they're more accurately staying loyal to the Jedi and Republic vs. taking over the Sith Empire as the reborn Dark Lord. The Karma Meter doesn't really enter into it, although the Last-Second Ending Choice provides a fairly big shift.
• Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne: You can either side with your Social Darwinist girlfriend Chiaki, your best friend / not so-Plucky Comic Relief Isamu, Hikawa, the man who tried killing you, or Yuko, who's the only one who wants to save the world.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has four faction endings (Camarilla, the Anarchs, LaCroix, and Kuei-Jin) plus the Lone Wolf ending. Although you only have to choose your final alliance in the endgame, several choices across the entire game limit your options.
• The Witcher has the Order of the Flaming Rose ending, the Scoia'tael ending, and the neutral/lone wolf ending.

Strategy Games

• Almost every game in the Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series features endings for each of the playable factions, via separate campaigns that often share early plot points. Each Expansion Pack or sequel that advances the plot Cuts Off The Branches that result in a non-Allied victory, leaving the Allies as the victors. No Canon for the Wicked, indeed.
  • The Allied and Soviet campaigns for Command & Conquer: Red Alert both end with their faction winning the Time Travel-caused alternate timeline version of World War II and setting up the rise of the Brotherhood of Nod in the Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series.
  • In the Alternate Continuity where the Allies won and the Nod never recovered from that setback, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 continues the pattern of both Allies and Soviets having campaigns, but only the Allies getting a canonical victory. The Yuri's Revenge Expansion Pack adds the villainous Yuri faction as a greater evil that doesn't even get a campaign. The winning faction not only beats Yuri but retroactively wins the war from Red Alert 2 due to Time Travel. According to Red Alert 3, the Allies win again.
  • Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has one ending each for the Allies, the USSR, and the Empire of the Rising Sun, which feature that power as the dominant force in the world. The Uprising expansion declared the Allied victory canon, but doesn't have mutually exclusive campaign endings.
• In Civilization: Beyond Earth, each of the Affinities has their own victory condition in addition to the neutral "kill everyone else" and First Contact endings. Purity's "Promised Land" victory opens a portal back to the destitute Earth and begins a Homeworld Evacuation, shipping in as many colonists as possible - this is often followed by with a Declaration of War on all neighboring civilizations, because those colonists need space to set up. Supremacy's "Emancipation" victory opens a portal back to Earth to conquer it, sending military forces to stabilize it and potentially force refugees to undergo Unwilling Roboticization. Harmony's "Transcendence" causes them to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence by merging with the planetary conciousness after building a number of Mind Stems in their cities.
• The expansions to Dawn of War have this in various combinations:
  • In Winter Assault both the Order (Imperial Guard and Eldar) and Disorder (Orks and Chaos) campaigns have a Last-Second Ending Choice at the end of the fourth mission: whichever of your two factions first enters the shield around the war machine MacGuffin gets a final mission and ending. Dark Crusade implies that the Eldar ending is canon, albeit with several elements from the Ork ending.
  • Dark Crusade and Soulstorm have seven and nine different campaigns, respectively: one for each faction. Defeating a faction gets you an After-Action Report and a cinematic once every faction is beaten. It may be possible for a faction to be defeated by another computer-controlled faction, but the end cinematic still assumes you were the one to defeat the six/eight others.
• Dune II has three possible end victory sequences once the Emperor's manipulation and backstabbing are made known to your chosen faction: House Atreides has him removed from power and arrested, House Ordos blackmails him and usurps his power, and House Harkonnen just blows him to smithereens and calls it a day.
• Fire Emblem Fates has three different endings depending on which family the Avatar sides with about a quarter of the way into the game: his/her adoptive family in Nohr, his/her birth family in Hoshido who turn out to be adoptive too, or refusing to choose between the two, which eventually leads to the two families joining forces.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses features three different routes. Each route is represented by a house at a military academy, each one being tied to a faction on the continent of Fódlan, and which route you take is the Big First Choice. While the first act is quite similar for the different routes, things diverge quite drastically at the halfway mark, leading to a completely different story and ending, where the faction represented by the player’s chosen house wins. The Black Eagles route itself features a route split shortly before the halfway mark, one that has the player side with the Church of Seiros, and one where they side with the Adrestian Empire, who declares war on the Church, meaning that there are actually four endings in total — a fact that is foreshadowed by the original Japanese subtitle^note "Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon", referring to the "Verdant Wind" (Alliance), "Crimson Flower" (Empire), "Silver Snow" (Church), and "Azure Moon" (Kingdom) routes/endings, respectively, but concealed by the English one.
• Starting from a remake of the second title, the Langrisser series started using these, often split into four particular types: Army of Light, Imperialist, Demon Tribe, and Independent.
• Phoenix Point: There are three possible endings dependent on which faction - the Disciples of Anu, New Jericho or Synedrion - Phoenix Point aligns with and whose final plan they enact; whichever one Phoenix Point sides with, they rebuild Earth together and begin to prepare humanity for the next war with the Pandoran aliens. There is also a fourth ending where Phoenix Point fails to build an alliance with any faction or declares all of them unworkable, in which case the Benevolent Conspiracy itself takes open and direct charge of the human survivors and rebuilds Earth. There is a fifth Downer Ending in the event of a Game Over which describes how Phoenix Point is defeated and the human resistance consequently falls into disarray, eventually leaving humanity extinct and the Earth lost forever.
• The ending cutscene of Shogun: Total War changes slightly depending on what clan you played as.
• Terra Invicta: Each faction has their own unique ending and future for humankind. Interestingly, it is possible for some factions to achieve their victory conditions after another faction has done so.
  • The Resistance: An assault on the alien base on the edge of the Sol system destroys the wormhole device and severs all contact with the Hydras' homeworld, decapitating the invasion force in one go. With the Resistance's work complete, the faction disbands and Commander Ayoade gracefully returns to her quiet life as a mother of two.
  • Humanity First: Despite heavy casualties, Humanity First successfully delivers a bioweapon into the wormhole and the Hydra and their alien servants are rendered extinct. The final scene shows red human ships spreading across the galaxy, suggesting that humankind has become a xenophobic and militaristic star empire just like the Hydras.
  • The Servants: The Alien Administration assumes control over the Earth's remaining nations, and humankind joins the Hydras' star empire, albeit enjoying a relatively respected position within the alien hierarchy. A public meeting is held, and mind-altering pheromones are spread amongst the crowd. Superior Howell concludes privately that she expects to be one day assassinated even after brainwashing much of the planet, but remains resolute in her belief that humanity will embrace their extraterrestrial brethren.
  • The Protectorate: Orbital strike platforms are installed in Earth's orbit, and a strike wipes out the UN Headquarters in New York (and a sizeable chunk of New York City) which the Protectorate blames on an accidental misfire. The Protectorate enforces an authoritarian Vichy nanny state that leaves humanity confined to Earth (as space expansion might threaten the aliens) and subject to very harsh terms in exchange for some tenuous sovereignty. Discredited within his own organization and worn down by the heavy price he paid, Commissioner Banerjee appoints the Commander as co-ruler of Earth and retires to civilian life in India.
  • The Academy: The Academy are able to steal Humanity First's bioweapon data to develop their own, and manipulate the Hydras' internal politics to ensure a pacifist movement takes hold in their leadership. By threatening the Hydras' with the bioweapon and demonstrating they can sneak it onto their homeworld, the Academy is able to convince the Hydras leadership to come to the peace talk table and hash out a agreement, even possibly leading to an equal partnership between humanity and the aliens in the future.
  • The Initiative: Growing beyond simply wanting to profit from the chaos, the Initiative are able to seize control of both Earth (through secretive government control) and the Hydras (by modifying and releasing mind control pheromones among their population). The malevolent conspiracy entrenches itself and subjects the aliens to an apartheid situation where they are basically slaves.
  • Project Exodus: Project Exodus manages to construct a working arkship and sally it forth out of the Sol system. For Director Khalid Al-Ashgar and those fortunate enough to meet the stringent criteria to book a seat aboard, they take a moment to look back melancholily at Earth for one final time before leaving the homeworld of mankind to its fate, before setting off into the unknown where destiny awaits.
• In War Craft Orcs And Humans, the Orcish Horde and the kingdom of Azeroth both have an ending where they defeat the other one. Same thing in Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and its expansion Beyond the Dark Portal for the Alliance of Lordaeron and the Horde. Going by the second and then the third game, Orcs and Humans canonically ended with the Orc victory and the destruction of the kingdom of Stormwind, while Tides of Darkness concluded with an Alliance victory, spelling the defeat of the Horde and closing of the Dark Portal.

Wide-Open Sandbox

• Escape Velocity Nova: The six main and mutually exclusive storylines — Federation, Rebellion, Auroran, Vell-os, Polaris, Pirate are defined by their association with a specific faction, though the Pirate storyline is both misleadingly named^note it's about working for the Association of Free Traders, who use pirate-associated ships and have underworld ties, but is actually an anti-pirate organisation and has a much, much less conclusive ending than the five others.

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