writing endings that are not lame

For some reason, many game writers tend to create good and bad endings.

If the player does the morally right thing, or what the writer wants, they get the good endings.

If they do something else, they get the bad ones.

I’m not talking about early endings, I actually like them if they are well written.

I’m referring to endings where the player succeeds in their objective, where everything ends well.

Slay the Princess laughs at this, and if you do everything the narrator tells you, you get the “Happy Ending”.

I really liked that they did that, especially since the most interesting thing in the game is navigating between trusting and mistrusting the narrator.

Why not use the opportunity of different endings to give more and better information about a complex plot?

Why not let the player make decisions and have the ending be the projection of those decisions?

Let each decision have a consequence, whether it’s good or bad, but not be morally judged beforehand?

One way to approach this is with rhizomatic foreshadowing, but you don’t have to be so meticulous.

It’s enough to have endings designed to not be so binary.

Players are already expecting things that go beyond basic morality of good and bad, success or failure. Let them eat cake!