Multiple Endings / Shin Megami Tensei

The Shin Megami Tensei series is known for featuring multiple endings.

• Megami Tensei II for the Famicom has two possible endings, depending on some choices the player makes during the game.
• Shin Megami Tensei I has your ending determined by your character alignment when you enter the Basilica. Incidentally, the Law and Chaos endings are both Downer Endings, and the Neutral one is relatively ambiguous. The endings of this game have since set the tone for the series.
  • Law: Support the angels and enter the Basilica with the aid of Haniel. The Law Hero is killed in combat with the Chaos Hero. You kill the Chaos Hero, Lilith, and Asura, and create the Millennium Kingdom under God's rule. Humanity is safe, but its self-determination is lost.
  • Chaos: Support the demons and enter the Basilica with the aid of Echidna. The Chaos Hero takes the Demon Ring for himself and is consumed by its power. You kill the Law Hero and Michael, and create a world of demons. Humans with power are able to do as they please, but humans without power are crushed in a world ruled by strength.
  • Neutral: Oppose both the angels and demons and enter the Basilica with the aid of the Old Man, Taishang Laojun. You kill the Chaos Hero, Lilith, the Law Hero, Asura, and Michael. Humanity retains true self-determination, but the future of the ruined world remains uncertain.
• The endings (Law, Chaos, and Neutral) in Shin Megami Tensei II depend on the Silent Protagonist's alignment and his choices on who to side with.
• Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne has 5 endings selected upon your actions before entering the final dungeon, based on who you've allied with, and in the US version whether or not you completed the bonus dungeon prior to entering. This actually affects more than just the ending, as it also affects the bosses you'll need to fight. There are total of 4 bosses you can fight in the final dungeon, but depending on your actions, you might be able to skip one of them.
  • If you allied with Chiaki, then you'll still have to fight her, due to her "strong rules all" philosophy, as well as Isamu and Hikawa before facing the final boss. This results in a world where "Survival of the Fittest" is law: the powerful rule while the weak perish.
  • If you allied with Isamu, he'll be defeated prior to entering, so you won't have to fight him; however, you'll have to fight Chiaki and Hikawa and then fight the final boss. This results in a world where all are free to live as they see fit, but do so in complete isolation.
  • If you allied with Hikawa, he'll allow you to pass without fighting him, but you'll need to fight Chiaki and Isamu before fighting the final boss. This results in a World of Silence.
  • If you allied with none of them (by either rejecting all of them or trying to ally with more than one of them), then you'll have to fight all three of them. Also, the ending you get depends on how you responded to a certain character's questions earlier. If you responded with fear, then you won't fight the final boss, and you'll get the worst ending where nothing changes, and the Vortex World perpetuates in a state of primordial chaos for all eternity.
  • If you do the above but answer with courage, then you'll also fight the final boss and upon winning get the good Freedom ending, where the world is brought back to the way it was in the beginning.
  • If you completed the Amala Labyrinth and became a full demon, then you'll be forced out of any alliance you may have had and need to fight Chiaki, Isamu, and Hikawa as well as the original final boss. After that, you'll need to fight a new final boss after the original one. In the end, the Vortex World and reality as we know it is destroyed as part of Lucifer's master plan in his war against God.
• In Shin Megami Tensei if..., the type of ending that you get is decided by which character you picked as a partner in the beginning of the game.
• Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey has your typical Law, Neutral, and Chaos endings, depending on the MC's alignment and alignment-changing dialogue choices. The alignment lock happens shortly after starting Sector Horologium, and the devoutly lawful or chaotic do not even get the opportunity to go through the dialogue tree that can nudge them towards a neutral ending. The Redux Updated Re-release adds an alternate ending for each route, and the option to access them depends on whether you've completed the Womb of Grief before you hit the depths of Sector Horologium. Failing to do so, or doing so but declining to help Alex, locks you to the game's original endings.
  • Law: You side with Zelenin and Mastema and use the Cosmic Eggs to create a world of Law. The demons and anyone not chosen for salvation by God are wiped out and humanity loses its free will, capable only of worshiping God.
  • Chaos: You side with Jimenez and Mem Aleph to use the Cosmic Eggs to create a world of Chaos. Civilization is wiped out, and humanity and demons revert to a primal state where only the rule of strength matters.
  • Neutral: You remain dedicated to the mission and use the Red Sprite to destroy the Schwarzwelt. Humanity remains as is, with it being left unclear whether they have truly learned their lesson.
  • Law+: You and Zelenin turn against Mastema and God and create a new world of Law where humanity has lost its desire for conflict. Anyone can be saved in the new world of peace, although it is left ambiguous whether humanity could survive another ordeal without the will to fight.
  • Chaos+: You and Jimenez turn against Mem Aleph and create a new world of Chaos where everyone has the potential and freedom to decide how they want to live.
  • Neutral+: You and Arthur remain in the Schwarzwelt for all eternity, battling demons to protect humankind from their influence.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV has the typical Law, Neutral, and Chaos endings decided based on a series of choices that were presented to you throughout the course of the game, in addition to a fourth ending unlocked by making a certain choice near the end of the game.
  • Nothing/White: You drive the Yamato Perpetual Reactor berserk and turn the entire universe to nothing in order to free it from the eternal struggle between Law and Chaos.
  • Law: You and Merkabah kill Lucifer, then use the Yamato Perpetual Reactor to destroy yourselves and Tokyo. A kingdom devoted to the worship of God is formed in Mikado, while you are hailed as a saint.
  • Chaos: You and Lucifer kill Merkabah, then lead a demonic invasion of Mikado. As the strongest of the humans, you are crowned the new ruler of humanity.
  • Neutral: You kill Merkabah and Lucifer, then destroy the barrier between Tokyo and Mikado. The physical location of Mikado is destroyed, while its people integrate into Tokyo.
• Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse deviates from the usual trend. Its Law and Chaos endings are Nonstandard Game Overs. Its full endings are differing sides of Neutral, termed Bonds and Massacre. Unlike IV, the hidden "karma" meter doesn't determine which ending you get; the decision is based on one or two critical dialogue choices, however if your dialogue choices throughout the game overall don't match up with the route you decide to pick, you may lose all of your demons or all of your items.
  • Law: You betray humanity to Merkabah and use the Yamato Perpetual Reactor to destroy Tokyo. A kingdom of God is formed in Mikado, though Flynn remains at large and threatens the peace of the world.
  • Chaos: You betray humanity to Lucifer and help him conquer Tokyo, Mikado, and the world. You are crowned the new king of the world, though Flynn remains at large and threatens the new order.
  • Bonds: You side with Danu and your friends inside the Cosmic Egg. You kill YHVH, finally bringing true freedom to humanity, and Tokyo and Mikado coexist in peace.
  • Massacre: You side with Dagda and kill your friends and then YHVH. You become the creator god and ruler of a new universe where humanity is free of all outside influence.
• Shin Megami Tensei V:
  • Restore God's Order: You side with Abdiel and Dazai to continue the mission of the original God of Law, and restore the old order. Humanity will live in peace and prosperity, but without true free will.
  • Rebuild the World: You side with Tsukuyomi and Atsuta, giving back the Knowledge and divinity of the elder gods and resurrecting all humans and all pantheons. Humanity has the freedom to determine whose beliefs they should follow, although the new world is wracked with strife.
  • Destroy the Throne: You side with Nuwa and Yakumo to destroy the Empyrean Throne. The world is not recreated and humanity's war with demons continues, the potential remains for what's left of humanity to bring everything back under their own control and no god will ever be able to attain the power of the Creator again.
  • Hidden ending: A variant of Destroy the Throne that restores the original world - without any gods or demons at all, leaving the Nahobino as the sole remaining Top God, forever barred from interacting with his new reality.
• The original Persona has four endings: a good and a bad ending for both the SEBEC route and the Snow Queen Quest.
  • Snow Queen Quest bad ending: You get 7 or fewer Mirror Shards. The Demon Mirror fails to free Saeko, and the Night Queen freezes the world solid.
  • Snow Queen Quest good ending: You get 8 or more Mirror Shards. The Demon Mirror frees Saeko, you defeat the Night Queen, and Masao recruits you to fight SEBEC.
  • SEBEC bad ending: You say the wrong things to Mai in the Lost Forest. After defeating Kandori in Deva Yuga, the other heroes escape, but Mai forcibly drags Maki into her ideal world forever.
  • SEBEC good ending: You say the right things to Mai in the Lost Forest. The heroes are able to convince Maki to keep on living and destroy Pandora, the physical manifestation of her own nihilism.
• Persona 3 forces the player to make a difficult choice: it turns out your friend Ryoji is the unwilling harbinger of the Big Bad, Nyx, who he claims is totally unstoppable. Ryoji offers to let you kill him, saying that if you do this before midnight on New Year's Eve, your memories of the impending apocalypse will be erased and you can live out what little time you have left free from the painful burden of knowing the end of humanity is coming. If you choose to kill him, your characters get to live three months as ordinary high school students without a care in the world. The final shot is of you happily and unknowingly singing karaoke with friends, a split second before Nyx wipes out all life on Earth. Choose not to kill him, and the game continues on into January, leading up to an eventual confrontation between your party and Nyx. The bad ending may also count as a Nonstandard Game Over, since this choice does NOT happen at the end of the game. If you choose not to kill Ryoji, the game will continue for a while longer.
• Persona 4's multiple endings were designed, clearly, by a true sadist, and operate like peeling the layers off of an onion: First you get the standard-type moral choice you get in most multiple endings. Get revenge by murdering the murderer, or hand him over to the police, knowing he won't be convicted. The best choice is to stall for time, because he's not actually the murderer. The third bad ending can be avoided only if you can guess the true murderer in three tries, with very little evidence. The second-best ending then tries its damndest to convince you that it's actually the best ending possible. Only a series of totally counterintuitive actions will lead you to the true puppetmaster, the true final battle, and the real best ending. The remake adds another ending that is one huge What the Hell, Player?: You become the murderer's accomplice and destroy incriminating evidence. It also adds an extra epilogue if you achieve the true ending and complete a certain bonus dungeon.
• Persona 5 has two Non-Standard Game Overs, one of which has multiple variations depending on when you get it, one genuine bad ending, and the true ending.
  • Nonstandard Game Over 1: You fail to complete a Palace within the deadline. All variations of this ending except Shido's result in the Protagonist violating his probation and being arrested; in the present day, Sae gives him some time to metabolize the drugs given to him by the police, at which point a mysterious man (Goro Akechi) blows his brains out and makes his death look like a suicide.
    • Kamoshida Variant: You, Ryuji, and Mishima are expelled, leaving Ann to be the next target of Kamoshida's lust.
    • Madarame Variant: Yusuke remains trapped in an abusive relationship with a serial plagarist.
    • Kaneshiro Variant: Makoto is discovered in an "illegal services shop", full of drugs and deliriously rambling your name.
    • Futaba Variant: Someone tips the police off that you're the leader of the Phantom Thieves and Sojiro is arrested along with you as an accomplice.
    • Okumura Variant: Haru is forced into an arranged marriage with a smug jackass.
    • Sae Variant: Someone tips the police off that you're the leader of the Phantom Thieves.
    • Shido Variant: Akechi discovers your faked death and arrests you, declaring the game to be over.
  • Nonstandard Game Over 2: After the interrogation, you sell out your friends; you forget to convince Sae to draw Akechi into the Metaverse, allowing Akechi to murder you as above. In an interesting twist on the trope, the correct path plays out near-identically to this, except that the Joker that Akechi kills is a fake.
  • Bad Ending: You cut a deal with Yaldabaoth, leaving him to his own devices in exchange for being allowed to continue being the Phantom Thieves. The Thieves succumb to the desire to abuse their powers, turning Tokyo into their own private police state.
  • Good Ending: You tell Yaldabaoth to go jump in a lake, tear your way through his lair, and blow his brains out with the combined desire for freedom of all of humanity. Afterwards, the protagonist turns himself in to testify against Shido, spends a month and a half in jail, and finally gets acquitted of his original assault charge. After a month of ordinary life, the protagonist and his friends set out to return to his hometown.
  • The Updated Re-release adds two new endings unlocked if the player completes the Consultant, Faith and Justice Arcana before the Niijima's Palace deadline and unlocks the third-term events, though Word of God says neither is a True Ending, but reflect different ways of justice. The Return Ending plays if the player rejects Maruki's deal and chooses to restore the world. It plays out similarly to the ending cutscene of vanilla, but includes a shot of Akechi (or at least someone resembling him) walking in the background just as Joker leaves the city, which is followed by Joker seeing his own Phantom Thief self in his reflection. There is also the Stay Ending that's just as much of a Bittersweet Ending: Joker accepts Maruki's deal and the Phantom Thieves get to live happily in the dream world, where all of their greatest desires are fulfilled (including the resurrection of Makoto, Futaba, and Haru's parents); however, Mementos is now permanently fused with Tokyo (and potentially the rest of the world), and Sumire/Kasumi will never be free from the lie she lives in.
• Devil Survivor has five main endings, most of which hinge on what the player decides how to handle the threat of demons, and who to align with. With varying results. Note that it is easier to categorize some of the endings by the standard Law/Chaos alignment of SMT rather than Good/Bad. To elaborate:
  • Chaos: You become demon overlord by teaming up with Naoya/Cain and/or Kaido, and proceed to fight God, while humanity huddles in a corner avoiding all conflict. Humanity is free but is constantly under threat of annihilation.
  • Law: You become the world's messiah by joining Amane, and have the Demons serve God, and kill anyone who opposes your system. Humanity is preserved but all freedom is taken away.
  • Neutral (Song of Hope): You send ALL demons back to where they came from with Haru's song, giving up the power of Bel but freeing humanity from supernatural threats forever. This is the most difficult ending to acquire and survive, through.
  • Neutral (Silent Revolution): You manage to control all of the demons with the Server with Atsuro's hacking, causing a new technological revolution that turns Japan into a superpower.
  • Bad (And the one you can get by default): You run away by listening to Yuzu's (poor) advice, and by doing so get the whole world killed. "What you found outside was no different from what you ran away from. And the only angels that could have stopped this were killed by your own hands."
  • Nonstandard Game Over: You escape on day 6, and angels descend and remove free will.
  • The Overclocked remake adds an extra day to three of these endings, allowing for a more detailed ending which, against SMT tradition, are pretty much positive.
    • Chaos/Good: You refuse to kill any humans as you drive out the angels, sending them back to heaven after defeating Metatron. You then head to the demon world alone to raise an army against God.
    • Chaos/Evil: You cut down everyone who stands in your way and drive the angels out. Before raising your army against God, you use your demons to subjugate humanity to become the ruler of two worlds. In the process, you lose all your friends except for Naoya, Kaido, and a corrupted and broken Atsuro.
    • Law: You start enforcing the will of God, and in the process can prove to God that even people He (or his angels) declares irredeemable can actually be redeemed. You then stop Japan's creator god from destroying Japan by showing him Cain has changed slightly, and in the process you set Naoya/Cain on the path to potential redemption (though he'll never truly forgive God since He manipulated him into killing Abel).
    • Less Bad/Neutral: You escape from the lockdown, finding out that your families have been captured by the government, and angels are starting to try and assert control over mankind. Wanting to fix everything, you head back into the lockdown, where you defeat Belberith to potentially stop the influx of demons, and (optionally) help the Devas restore the barrier between the human and demon worlds. You essentially spend the rest of your life helping fix the mess.
    • Bad Neutral: You fail to do the barrier events, which means that demons will continuously flood the earth at the end with no way to close it. (This also happens if Gin is dead during that playthrough.) It's also the only one that doesn't earn any achievements for getting it.
• Devil Survivor 2, following the first game, also offers five endings and one Golden Ending. These are different as they are based upon the Qualities of a Star Sign instead of on alignments. Upon and after fighting the Final Boss, who's been trying to destroy the world:
  • Cardinal (Law): Also known as the Egalitarian ending. You ally with Ronaldo Kuriki and convince Polaris to bring a world of equality, where everybody works for the benefit of everyone.
  • Mutable (Chaos): Also known as the Meritorious ending. You ally with Yamato Hotsuin and convince Polaris to bring a world ruled with meritocracy (a mild case of Social Darwinism), where those with skills and talents prosper and the rest are weeded out.
  • Neutral: Also known as the Restorer ending. You ally with Daichi and convince Polaris to restore the world, bringing you back to the time before the events of the game start, i.e. pressing the Reset Button. It concludes with a message asking whether or not Polaris will just destroy Earth again.
  • Fixed: Also known as the Liberator ending. You ally with Daichi and decide to kill Polaris, freeing humanity from its control and threat but also leaving you with a world already badly ravaged by Polaris (the void isn't undone, leaving only Tokyo and a sea full of undrinkable water). You also removed any supernatural influence and pretty much doom what's left of humanity to slowly starve to death. Even if humanity does somehow manage to survive, the world is not free from abuse from a future Administrator. For some reason, the game treats this as a good thing.
  • Neutral/Chaos: Also known as the Kingmaker ending. You ally with Al Saiduq and decide to kill Polaris and have Al Saiduq replace it as the world's god and create a new world. Humanity is free of influence of a future Administrator.
  • Fixed+: Also known as the Restorer ending with Triumphant. You ally with Daichi and convince Polaris to restore the world, identically to the normal Restorer ending. The difference is that, having recruited every party member and made them all grow and develop, this development shines through in the restored world. The message at the end states that Polaris definitely will not just destroy Earth again.
  • Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker's Triangulum Arc has its own set of four endings.
    • Willing Sacrifice: The party agrees with Miyako's plan to sacrifice themselves and their Administrative Authority, to turn Alcor into a real Administrator. This results in the world being regressed again, but the entire party is now suffering a Fate Worse than Death and Alcor will have to step aside for El-Rai, when he eventually comes to take over the Heavenly Throne next.
    • Forever War: The party decides to defeat Canopus and regress the world, so they can fight every Administrator that comes after it to destroy the world, over and over, until none are left. The invasions also begin to take place earlier and it's implied that, eventually, the entire party will die and the next Administrator can destroy the world, with no resistance.
    • A True Administrator: They plan to place a new Administrator, with their own sword, onto the Heavenly Throne. The protagonist ascends the throne, becoming a no longer human Administrator, with Alcor as his sword by his side and will watch over the world. As he is not part of the Administrative System itself, he does not need to step aside for the next Administrator coming and, as he was originally human, has no grudge to destroy the world. The protagonist remains on the Heavenly Throne, but has removed any memory of him from all of his friends and watches over them. Daichi mentions 'forgetting something important' to Io when they graduate.
    • Record Breaker: It's decided to create a new world entirely, with no Administrative System in place, and using the will of all inhabitants on earth to create this new world. Canopus is defeated, the new world is being built and even Miyako and Alcor, part of the Administrative System, manage to be free of it and get reborn as humans on earth and everyone meets up at the beach.