Instead of (or in addition to) the big ending cutscene you get to see a collection of largely independent, shorter cutscenes or text snippets describing the consequences of various decisions you made throughout the game.
Can be seen as a subtype of Multiple Endings, as every possible cutscene combination is technically a distinct ending, although the amount of such variations is far beyond anything that traditional ending cutscenes can contain.
Often overlaps with "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue. Compare Algorithmic Story Branching, Alignment-Based Endings, Secret Expanded Epilogue and Faction-Specific Endings.
As an Ending Trope, spoilers are to be expected.
Examples:
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Action Adventure
- During the Normal ending of Cave Story, there's a montage of various places on the island just before it crashes, e.g. Curly Brace's body is shown if you failed to save her. Both the Normal and the Best ending feature a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue over the end credits, with slight changes between them, such as Professor Booster appearing if you saved him, and Puu Black taking Balrog's place if the latter leaves with you.
- The end credits of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask include segments for each of the collectible masks. If you didn't get a mask, you'll see an image of that mask in place of that part of the ending.
Adventure Game
- Heavy Rain ending is a sequence of short scenes showing the lives of the four main characters and their associates after the Shaun Mars' case—for those who survived it, that is.
- The ending of The Lion's Song is, effectively, a stitched-together slideshow of pictures and text relating what happened to the protagonists of episodes 1-3 and the three men Bert talked to on the train based on the choices players made throughout the game.
- In the Monty Python's The Meaning of Life video game adaptation, a series of interludes between scenes ask "moral dilemma" questions with Multiple Choice answers. At the end of the game, a woman comes on to tell you your personal, individual Meaning of Life based on your answers.
First-Person Shooter
- In S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, you have slides based on what side missions you completed and how you completed them, as well as slides for the main story.
- Some of the eight possible endings of Call of Duty: Black Ops II are merely different vignettes stitched together during the ending credits. Saving Alex Mason really only affects the Woods & Section reunion, for instance.
Platformer
- The ending of Epic Mickey gets filled in with shots of bosses and important characters behaving friendly and politely if Mickey helped them when he encountered them earlier (with the exception of the Mad Doctor). All of these shots are accompanied with narration from the sorceror Yen Sid that can be interchanged freely but still form a cohesive sentence about people's decisions and how they affect other people.
Puzzle
- The ending in Panel de Pon (and Dolled-Up Installment Tetris Attack) skips over dialogue assigned to any character who didn't make it this far.
RPG — Action
- Elden Ring has two endings who have changes depending on the player's actions throughout the game: The Age of Stars ending has Ranni refer to the player character in a much more endearing way in the ending cutscene if you speak to her in an easily missable dialogue, but otherwise remains identical. The Lord of Frenzied Flame Ending changes depending on if you obtained the power of the Frenzied Flame before or after Melina's Heroic Sacrifice. If before, Melina won't be sacrificed and an additional cutscene will play at the ending, with her grabbing Torrent's broken ring, opening her closed eye, and promising to hunt you down. If done after Melina sacrifices herself, then that cutscene won't play.
- The first Marvel Ultimate Alliance had multiple segments in the epilogue for each of the moral choices the player could make during the adventure (protecting a computer that held information about the Legacy Virus, sacrificing Jean Grey or Nightcrawler, getting King Namor's medicine, freeing Senator Kelly in Murderworld, finding Valkyrie's sword, finding Volla's ring, destroying Galactus' planetary Drills, rescuing Princess Lilandra, finding the Ultimate Nullifier and freeing Odin from Dr. Doom's machine).
- Phantasy Star Nova has an epilogue sequence where Lutina details what happened to each of the Delta Valiant's crew members after returning to Oracle, appended with a final word from Lutina. Completing an NPC's sidequest unlocks their segment in the epilogue, and completing them all (only possible in Endgame+) changes Lutina's final speech and adds a congratulatory endcard illustration.
RPG — Eastern
- Epic Battle Fantasy 5: Every character has a relationship value with another character, and the ending will feature an extra scene for each maxed pair.
- In the Suikoden games, after the ending cutscene you get a short text statement like this
for each character you recruited: the text can change depending on who else you recruited and sometimes actions you took within the game.
- Star Ocean games are will often show different ending scenes per party member depending on their relationships with other characters.
- Fire Emblem:
- Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, if certain character pairs max out their Relationship Values via Supports, the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue describes their shared (often romantic) relationship instead of giving them individual endings. Many of these are mutually exclusive, since each character can only get the full A Support with one other character. For example, Eliwood gets one of four endings depending on which (if any) of his love interests he gets an A Support with. The previous installment, Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, has the same system, but the only alternate, paired endings are ones with Roy.
- The fourth game was even more in-depth about this. The epilogue is made up of a series of scenes, one for each major kingdom, each showing who ends up suceeding it and who helps with the restoration. This depends on who married who in both generations of the game (and, in some cases, whether certain NPCs are alive or not), meaning there's a massive number of possible variations.
- Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses also have different epilogues for characters depending on who they married (if they married), and in the case of the latter two, which branch the Avatar chooses in the beginning. In Fates's case it was basically cut and paste sentences, which could lead to some...contradictory endings. note
- The ending of Radiant Historia contains several scenes that must be unlocked by completing optional storylines. The Golden Ending requires that you complete all the major ones. Ironically, the most important of all doesn't seem especially significant until you complete it; the fate of the world hinges on what appears at first to be a simple Fetch Quest.
- Each major side character in Phantasy Star Nova has a personal sidequest that you can embark on at any time during the main story. Completing them adds their epilogue to Lutina's narration during the game's ending. If you complete them all (only doable in Endgame+), Lutina's closing speech changes to the Golden Ending and a different end card is shown at the finale.
RPG — Western
- This trope seems to be part of the Black Isle/Troika/Obsidian's Signature Style:
- The endings of Fallout and Fallout 2 are a series of short epilogues detailing the future of the different settlements the player visited, with multiple endings highlighting the player's actions and their moral implications.
- Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura also has this kind of ending, displaying how the player's actions influenced the fate of certain states and factions of the game world.
- Troika's adaptation of Temple of Elemental Evil has these as well.
- Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords features an optional pre-ending segmented epilogue in the form of the skippable dialogue with the Final Boss, who shares her prophetic visions with you before dying.
- At the end of Neverwinter Nights 2, the player is shown what happens to various locations and people who were influenced by the PC's decisions. For the ending itself, though, there are only two options.
- Fallout: New Vegas takes this near to ridiculousness. The ending has a "where are they now" segment for each recruitable character (each one has their own sidequest which upgrades them in some way when it's complete), a segment that reflects your Karma Meter and which faction you sided with in the battle for Hoover Dam, and at least one for every town in the game (the Strip alone has five or six), plus a few other minor sidequests. A completionist character could easily see his epilogue hit the 15 minute mark. The DLCs all have a similar, self contained, ending for each of them.
- Pillars of Eternity, naturally, includes a modular epilogue, too, detailing the later lives of your companions and the fates of the major settlements you've visited throughout the game.
- Tyranny as well. Aside from the factions and companions, it presents what appears to be a sequel hook as well.
- Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark had one of these explaining where each of your companions and many people you met ended up. Not really a surprise given the amount of cross-pollination between BioWare and Obsidian.
- Divinity: Original Sin II: The narrated epilogue describes the overall fate of the world, determined by your choices after the final battle, followed by the future of the various nations, in-game regions, and specific NPCs, based on who the Player Character and their companions are and the way they resolved certain quests.
- Dragon Age
- Dragon Age: Origins includes a text-only segmented epilogue in addition to the normal ending cutscenes (the number of options is truly vast). The Expansion Pack Awakening followed suit, albeit not as energetically, without "normal" cutscenes and just the epilogue.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition follows suit, although its epilogue narration only outlines the most major choices in the game (the fates of the Orlesian Empire, the Grey Wardens, the Chantry, mages and Templars, and the Inquisition itself). Trespasser, the final story-based DLC, has a more involved one that includes the fates of all your companions, which vary depending on approval, which choices you made, and whether you chose to keep or disband the Inquisition.
- Dragon Age: Origins includes a text-only segmented epilogue in addition to the normal ending cutscenes (the number of options
- Fallout 3's ending consists of three different consecutive scenes determined, respectively, by whether you sacrificed yourself or chickened out and chose an ally instead, whether you were good, neutral, or evil on the Karma Meter, and whether you infected the Wasteland's water supply. The epilogue DLC Broken Steel is also affected by the player's ending choices: if you sent Lyons into the control room, she will be dead (as opposed to comatose if you or a radiation-proof follower activated it), and if you infected the purifier with the Modified FEV, consuming Aqua Pura will be fatal to the player and the clinics will have many dying patients.
- Mass Effect 3 has the final battle on Earth unfold for better or worse based on your Effective Military Strength, and lets you see your recruited forces in action and speak with many old companions. None of that happens in the last five minutes, hence the Extended Cut DLC adding a true epilogue that reiterates everything shown during the last mission.
- Might and Magic X uses this (in addition to the main ending cutscene). It is comparatively modest (some six slides, and that depends on what classes your characters have, as some but not all of their promotion quests results in slides, and unlike previous games you can only do a promotion quest if you have a character of the corresponding class), but it's more than previous games.
- Wasteland 2's ending consists pretty much entirely of modular text epilogues for various locations, varying based upon player's actions and choices, and various NPC characters, also based upon player choices but also based upon whether they were alive or dead and — for joinable NPC party members who died while in the party — where the character died.
- Wasteland's original ending was just a short cutscene and some ending narration. The 2020 remake, Wasteland: Remastered, adds a modular ending in the style of Fallout or Wasteland 2 detailing the fates of the various communities you encountered, depending on your actions, and tying into Wasteland 2.
- Pyre: After finishing the final rite, you learn the ultimate fate of the Commonwealth, then you are able to read the epilogue for every major character, with almost all of them having multiple outcomes depending on the events of the game.
- Undertale: The base ending's epilogue changes depending on who is alive.
Simulation Games
- At the end of the 18-in-game-year cycle of Growing Up, the epilogue will reveal what happened to your classmates after your high school graduation based on the choices you made in their story paths. Your career will also be determined based on what kind of skills you learned and mastered along with your grade in the SATs. You will also marry one of your classmates if you reached their path's good ending by romancing them, or a generic NPC of either gender you choose or determine at random if you didn't.
- I Was a Teenage Exocolonist typically ends on your 20th birthday, and the epilogue explains how your and your friends' lives turn out in adulthood. The job you get depends on the activity you did the most and your highest associated stat, while your friends' fates are based on your choices in certain paths and whether or not you're dating them. You then generally live to a ripe, old age, and in your Dying Dream, your ancient self offers to take you back in time to start a new life and see how different it would turn out.
- Yes, Your Grace: Each character whose survival is essential to get the Golden Ending has at least two different individual endings, including the one that should be avoided. Aside from Aurealea and the baby in one case, the fates of the characters are independent from each other, resulting in a possible mix and match.
Strategy Games
- The Version 1.01 Patch of Symphony of War elected to remove the "Bad" ending, deeming that the way of getting it and its tone did not mesh well with the rest of the game, and replaced it with adding various Epilogues to the now-default ending based on who the main character's strongest Bonds are with.
Visual Novel
- The epilogue of The Letter goes over each survivor's fate, depending on what Relationship Values they had with the other characters.
- Most Success modes of the Live Powerful Pro Baseball series have upwards of 30 possible epilogue scenes depicting the fates of everyone you interacted enough with. Every major character typically has a good epilogue and a bad one.
- Open Sorcery: There are multiple events that can be taken care of in the final day of the story, and the effectiveness of how they were handled, or if they were handled at all, affects parts of the epilogue, along with BEL/S state health and Emergent Human-ness. Along with if Decker is even alive to deliver it, and Janet would if he's not. For example, Sarah is reported as absent from school if her problem isn't solved, while she's at school having fun if it is.
