Games which employ the Interpretive Choice method of alternate endings are slightly unusual, in that they only offer one ending—or even none at all.
Planescape: Torment, possibly the only single-ending Interpretive Choice game that exists, is a role-playing game set in a fantastical world of magic, swords, sorcery, and so on. The player controls an immortal man who wakes up in a morgue with no memory, and sets him on a quest across several dimensions to discover his identity. The player eventually learns that this character, who remains nameless throughout, has had dozens of previous incarnations. Some were good men and some were not, but what matters is what sort of man the player allows the current incarnation to be. The degree of freedom in Planescape is unusual and allows the player to make hundreds of small moral decisions, which are always presented as minor Burdensome Choices rather than Arbitrary ones. In this way, the player’s character determines the nameless one’s character, which is where the interpretive aspect of the only ending comes into play.
For during the course of the game, the player discovers that the nameless one’s immortality came about as a bargain the nameless one made in order to escape the karma of his actions in his first life. When the nameless one is again made mortal at the game’s end, he perishes immediately and gets whisked off to the equivalent of Hell in the game world’s cosmology. What this entails is conscription in the service of the netherworld’s army in a great and never-ending war against the divine forces, on another dimension. But one recurring question through the game is the amount of difference one man can make, and the issue is explicitly brought up at one point during a discussion on the great war. As a lecturer on the topic believes,
"Ye can’t make any pikin’ difference in the War! It’s too soddin’ big. […] As a pebble, yer goal is ta be not noticed an’ sink ta th’ bottom with th’rest o’ the dregs…" (Torment)
In that context, the final image of the game—the nameless one picking up a weapon and striding alone toward a chaotic battlefield—can be read differently depending on the player’s, and hence the character’s, choices during the game. It’s left open as an option that if the character died as a good man, he may well be about to turn on the demonic army he’s meant to be assisting. Likewise, if the player’s, and hence the character’s, choices were self-centered or amoral, there’s no reason not to believe he’s ready to serve out his eternal sentence with gusto. (If valid, this approach would coincidentally echo the theme of pressing on in the face of futility also exemplified in Final Fantasy X’s story.)
Interpretive Choice games with no ending are more common, though no harder to classify. Open-ended games which rely on the shaping of particular elements in a game world (or, in some cases, the world itself) such as The Sims or Black and White would fall into this category. As in Planescape, it’s the player’s decisions which shape the character of his or her onscreen representation. The difference is that in these sorts of games, shaping the character is the sole focus. The character begins as a blank slate, and the player may instill whatever behavior he or she feels is correct by positive or negative reinforcement. Hence, the feel of the game is more akin to raising a child than completing a quest.
Both The Sims and Black and White feature goals of sorts, but the player may continue to play and tinker with your onscreen representation’s life once those goals are completed. The fun, and occasional frustration, is all in molding the avatar to one’s will. Though they share a few similarities with the Behavioral Choice discussed below, and often feature cutting-edge AI, the non-narrative nature of a no-ending Interpretive Choice game ultimately leaves it as little more than an interesting but meaningless toy, and excludes it from our discussion.