That's very likely it, because there's no way that they can pull off 21 actual completely different endings.
Well, we're going to
That number is just marketing-speak to seem impressive for new players... but in reality it will be just as you said: there might be about 3 or 4 different and completely unique endings for sure, but the rest of that number are probably only slight variations of those core endings.
Nope, I make it a note to only factually state exactly what we have in our games; no "marketing speak" from me, ever, i'd rather undersell the game than oversell it
so let me clarify all this then with a biiig wall of text post;
Throughout the game, there's
hundreds and hundreds of events and cutscenes where
your choices raise or lower one of 8 values;
Sexuality, Justice, Optimism, Pessimism, Violence, Pacifism, Hatred, and Kindness.
Your actions outside of cutscenes can shift these too; for instance, here's an example of just one interaction and how differently things could play out.
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There's a NPC called Teshy in the Electric Level; if you read his Databank about his life story, you'll trigger the flag for that, and so your conversation with him will be different, and you'll have the option to take pity on him for what he's been through (a pretty harsh life), rather than just a normal conversation.
If you do this, your Kindness trait will go up by 2.
However, if you choose to instead just ignore what he's been through, and you see him for still committing a lot of atrocities in his life (which he did), your Justice score will go up by 2.
Now, if you walk away, that'll be the end of it.
But, if you decide to kill him BEFORE you talk to him, your Violence score will go up by 1.
However, if you decide to talk to him normally, and THEN kill him, your Violence score will go up by 3 and your Justice score will go DOWN by 1, for killing a defenseless old man who had no reason to attack you.
And the biggest one; if you talked to him, pitied him, and acted like you forgave him for his crimes... and THEN you killed him, with his back turned to you, Violence would shoot up by 10, Justice would plummet by 10, Hatred would rise by 10, and Kindness would plummet by 10.
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There are lots and lots of complex interactions like that throughout the game; here's a picture of just the NPC-only based events (not counting outside of cutscene events, or Talia/Faye/Vie interactions, or environmental cutscenes/actions);
The way to read this diagram is that the number represents a cutscene or databank number, and then the letter represents if it's a databank or a cutscene, and the names in () represent the levels it's connected to.
So any of the numbers in a single grouping mean that doing something with any of them affects all of the others listed in that group.
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That's another way we do things in the game; your actions in one event ripple forwards through the rest of the levels in multiple ways.
For example;
Talk to a guy in the first level, decide not to help him out with his request.
Now, in the second level, his brother has heard from him that you're a jerk, and so they won't tell you where one of the Fragments is in the level.
If you kill him, then a guy in the third level might be happy you killed the annoying bastard.
But, if you spare him and just go on your way, you might run into the boss of those guys from the fire and ice levels, and he might thank you for being kind enough to spare them as they've both recently lost their friend in battle, and they're pretty uptight about it, so he'll allow you safe passage through an area as thanks.
And so on.
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Now, you're probably wondering how all of this stuff ties into the endings!
Throughout the game, your
highest current value out of the 8 values will shift major cutscenes as a way to let you know what ending you're heading towards.
For example, when you beat the Ice Boss, in the after fight cutscene, you might get lines like;
"I see the
hatred in your eyes... I was wrong to think there was hope for your people."
"Never before have any of your people showed me such
kindness since I've arrived here."
"I should have frozen you in time; your
violence knows no bounds, human."
etc.
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Then, in the True Final Boss battle, your maximum value will do something very special and unique for that battle; I won't say what, but we really wanted to make it a significant payoff for the player thematically.
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Finally, to the
endings themselves;
Your highest current value at the end of the game (on the True Final Boss route) will result in
one of seven core endings.
The core endings are then
further adjusted by the Sexuality value.
So if you have negative sexuality, or neutral, or positive, that will result in one of three variants for that core ending, resulting in 21 endings.
However, these shifted endings will again be very, very different. Every one of them gets their own CG (most are not sexual though, warning in advance) and their own theme song.
The differences will be to the point that they will really truly be 21 completely different endings; I'm a really big stickler for choices in games paying off, and it would be insane to put this much work into hundreds of cutscenes and choices and databanks just to have it pay off with only slightly different endings.
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Finally, there's also;
- 3 bad endings (if you weren't on the true final boss route)
- another 30 or so "secret endings/events" (these won't end the game in the true way a true ending would, but they're "what if" endings, basically); every one of them *also* get their own theme song, some of which I've linked below here for fun;
- a speedrunning ending, for speedrun mode, if you get within an hour of our fastest time as the devs
Here's some of those Secret Ending tracks (remember, these aren't tracks for the true endings, those get their own music too; in total, the game will have over 3 hours of music at launch, as we're already at nearly 3 hours as-is)
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After that there's various minor scenes with little epilogues based on varying outcomes that can play out depending on other minor decisions you took during the game... but those variations are relegated to a single screenshot with a bit of dialogue, usually with one or two small sentences and that's about it. These are not new unique endings unto themselves because the main conflict of the game's plot is ultimately resolved only by choosing one of the core 5 endings mentioned above.
I won't lie to you; the endings are epilogues of what happens to the characters after the fact, it's not like you're going to fight a completely different true final boss based on your choices.
But they aren't just one or two small sentences; They will cover the next 50-ish years of what happens to the characters and the world as a whole due to your actions.
But there's a good reason why not even AAA games do it: it's a hell of a lot of work to pull it off as you have to not only account for a crazy amount of different player choices
This is what I specialize in
If you play the Electric Level Public Demo, we've basically got a good chunk of cutscenes that expect/plan for anything the player can do;
- The player's movements are tracked, so the boss comments on those movements and critiques you based on how much or how little you've been dodging projectiles, for instance
- During the boss game over scene, if you idle on one animation, or instantly exit, or rapidly go through, or a number of other "not expected options", the boss will comment on your actions and react accordingly
- If you try to use antigravity to get to portions of the map you can't normally get to, the game will react to this if you've softlocked yourself and tell you to email me with a screencap for a special reward
- If you deliberately ignore Vie's commands in multiple parts of the demo, you'll get special cutscenes for this, too
And in the full game, expect lots of secret events/actions based on all sorts of actions, far more than just those few.
Basically, no matter how you play the game or how out of the box you try to do something, we want to have a secret event for it.
And if you manage to come up with something we haven't planned for, then we'll give you special credits and add in something special for it, more than likely.
but the devs also have to decently telegraph to players in a good way that their choices are leading them towards all of those specific endings, otherwise you just frustrate people when they get an ending that they didn't even see coming.
Whenever you do a choice in a cutscene, you visibly see a notification come up saying "Justice +" or "Violence -" in green or red text; as also noted above, you'll have a number of scenes happen that are core cutscenes that will vaguely state your current maximum value status.
After you've made it through one full run of the game too, 10 more save slots will open as well as an optional toggle that will tell you what given cutscene or action choice will shift what value in what way, if you want to shoot for the other endings.
All endings will also be replayable in the gallery, along with every sex animation in the game (the latter of which will be unlockable through achievements, so you never have to lose either.)
Hope that explains it and such well enough; let me know if you have any other questions
