7 Ambiguous Video Game Endings You're Getting Totally Wrong
Got more questions than answers? Think again.
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00:00 The video game industry may be littered with cliche stories about gun-toting heroes saving the world from flesh-eating zombies and alien invasions,
00:07 but there are some truly deep, meaningful tales told in this medium too, and it's often easy to not fully get them at first.
00:16 I mean, there's no shame in it, I'm as bad for it as anyone, but with this in mind,
00:21 I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com, and these are 7 Ambiguous Video Game Endings You're Totally Getting Wrong.
00:28 7. Alan Wake At the very end of Alan Wake, we see Alan sacrifice himself in order to save his wife Alice,
00:36 who's been trapped by the villainous Dark Presence. He dives into Cauldron Lake where said ancient evil presence has been lurking,
00:44 and Alice emerges safely while Alan starts typing in an underwater cabin, saying that the lake is actually an ocean.
00:53 Those are the game's cryptic final lines, and a lot of people kinda come out with this title scratching their heads.
00:59 I did for about 10 years.
01:02 So, what does all of this mean? Well, the answer to this ending can actually be found in the game's DLC,
01:09 but many never played this extra content, and as such were left perplexed by the game's ending.
01:16 In the downloadable episodes, we learn that Alan did actually defeat the Dark Presence,
01:21 but his own mind had been fragmented in the process, leaving him trapped in a creation of his own imagination.
01:28 The two DLC episodes show Alan fighting back against a dark version of himself, a nutter called Mr. Scratch,
01:36 in order to try and return to reality. At the end of the second and final episode,
01:41 Alan starts writing a new book, this time called Return, signifying his return back to the real world,
01:48 where he will finally be reunited with Alice and his friends.
01:52 So yeah, it's a little happier than we initially thought.
01:55 Number 6 - Inside
01:57 Inside's ending shows the boy, who the player has been controlling throughout the game,
02:01 integrated into a giant blob-like creature, which then breaks out of a shadowy facility,
02:07 killing some of its captors along the way, and finally escaping to freedom,
02:12 away from the dystopian city the rest of the game takes place in.
02:16 While many assume that this is true freedom for the creature, finally getting a taste of the outside world,
02:21 the final shot on the beach can actually be glimpsed in the lab as you smash through it,
02:27 implying that this "freedom" is actually just another cage,
02:32 a scenario that the scientists had already planned for. It's just another testing ground.
02:38 More so than this though, this is actually only the first ending,
02:42 as there's a secret finale that adds even more context to this story.
02:46 In this hidden scene, we see the boy unplug some kind of mind control device,
02:51 and as he does so, he becomes uncontrollable by the player, symbolising his escape from your control.
02:58 This by the way is something that will pop up in a later entry as well,
03:01 so many video game writers are obsessed with the idea of control, and I love it.
03:06 Anyway, the theme of this entire game is control.
03:10 We think we're playing as a boy with free will in a world where everyone else is brainwashed,
03:15 but in reality, the blob was in control of the kid all along,
03:19 and by extension, the blob was also controlling us.
03:22 The game provides no real motive for the player, who simply runs along to see what happens,
03:27 doing exactly what the blob and the game developers want.
03:31 Number 5 - The Last of Us
03:33 I know, I simply cannot believe either that I am once again dipping my head into the waters of Last of Us discourse,
03:39 but hey, sometimes you just need to stare into the abyss.
03:42 While the original game avoided most of the controversy aimed at its successor,
03:47 it still had a few points of contention, especially in regards to Joel's final actions.
03:53 Now for the five of you who don't know, The Last of Us follows the exploits of grizzled survivor Joel,
03:58 and the teenage Ellie in a world where the majority of the population
04:02 have been transformed into zombie-like creatures.
04:05 Ellie, though, is immune to this virus, and so Joel ushers her across the country
04:10 to deliver her to the Fireflies, a faction who claim to be able to make a cure.
04:15 In the end, Joel is told that in order for the vaccine to be made, the surgery will kill Ellie.
04:22 So he takes matters into his own hands, killing all of the Fireflies,
04:27 and whisking Ellie away while she was knocked out.
04:30 The sticking point of this for some fans, though, is the idea of the vaccine itself.
04:35 Namely, that the Fireflies wouldn't have been able to create one,
04:38 and that Ellie's sacrifice would have been in vain anyway, so Joel did the right thing.
04:42 The argument goes that the surgery was reckless, so hey,
04:45 Joel didn't doom the world by saving his new daughter.
04:49 And while these things can admittedly never be 100%,
04:53 it is implied that the Fireflies had a 99.9% chance of crafting a cure thanks to Ellie.
05:01 Not only does this thematically make the ending hit harder,
05:04 as it makes Joel a far more interesting, compelling, and flawed character,
05:08 but it also emphasises the sheer scale of what he's willing to give up for Ellie.
05:13 The choice just has more weight when he doesn't doubt for a second that a cure would be possible.
05:20 The fact that the writers are said to have explained that the Fireflies would have definitely made a cure too,
05:25 pretty much puts this one to bed.
05:27 Number 4 - Returnal
05:29 Returnal, admittedly, is a difficult game to pass.
05:32 On the surface, it's about Selene, an astronaut who has crash-landed on an alien planet
05:37 and finds herself stuck in a time loop,
05:39 each death at the hands of the planet's beasties, bringing her back to the moment of the crash.
05:45 Throughout the game, you have to traverse this alien planet, plunge into its depths,
05:49 and attempt to free yourself from this curse.
05:52 It's not that simple a story, however, as there are hints along the way
05:57 that everything might just be in Selene's head. Maybe.
06:01 She's haunted by a faceless astronaut while on the planet,
06:04 has flashbacks or dreams about previous moments in her life,
06:08 and finds her own car at the bottom of the planet's oceanic depths.
06:13 All of this weirdness essentially hides the fact that Returnal
06:17 is telling a much more personal and less literal story than first appears.
06:22 Really, everything on this planet is a metaphor for the character's grief.
06:26 After suffering through a car accident that took the life of her son and maybe even herself,
06:31 Selene is stuck reliving this moment over and over, unable to come to terms with her loss.
06:38 Everything she sees on the alien planet reflects her cycle of blame,
06:42 no matter how much time passes, a manifested hell of her own psyche.
06:47 Everything in her real life has a parallel on this alien world.
06:51 Hell, even Selene's mother, who she had a complicated relationship with,
06:55 also shows up in the finale of the game in the form of a monstrous but kinda tragic creature.
07:02 I am admittedly just scratching the surface here, so if you want to dive deeper,
07:05 I would heartily recommend Jacob Geller's video essay on this game,
07:10 which helped inform this entry.
07:12 Seriously, this shooter has depths that I just didn't pick up on at all the first time through.
07:18 Number 3 - Shadow of the Colossus
07:20 Shadow of the Colossus ends when our hero Wanda is suddenly weak and weary,
07:25 with cloudy eyes and horns sprouting from his head.
07:29 He turns into a shadowy beast and fights off some hunters who manage to seal him away
07:33 with a magical spell before escaping.
07:36 Mono, the girl who has been asleep for the entire game that he was trying to save,
07:40 then wakes up and picks up a horned baby.
07:43 Now, while almost everyone will be in the comments saying that this story is obvious,
07:47 for a lot of casual players, there is a lot to miss here.
07:51 First up, the things that we all know.
07:53 Essentially, in destroying the colossi throughout the game,
07:56 you are actually liberating an ancient evil who appeared to be a helpful guiding presence
08:01 earlier on in this adventure.
08:03 He manifests as the shadowy creature at the end and is sealed away once again.
08:09 The horned baby, of course, is Wanda.
08:12 Some part of him survived as a baby,
08:14 but you have to have played Ico to truly understand everything about this ending.
08:19 That's because in that title, children are also born with horns.
08:24 So it turns out that they were actually the descendants of Wanda from this game.
08:29 Mono, meanwhile, lives forever and grows bitter over time,
08:32 going on to become the villainous queen of Ico.
08:36 Number 2 - Dark Souls
08:38 Dark Souls' story is purposefully ambiguous.
08:41 There is a huge mythology there that you can dive into,
08:44 but the most basic summation of it is this.
08:48 You're an undead champion on a journey through a dying world known as the Age of Fire.
08:53 After besting your enemies, you have the option to kindle the first flame,
08:57 prolonging this age and allowing the world to continue in its current form,
09:01 or extinguish it, pushing the world into the Age of Dark.
09:05 Now, on the surface, this choice seems pretty cut and dry, right?
09:09 I mean, fire is good, the world ending and being plunged into darkness is bad.
09:15 Surely it's better to continue civilization as you know it,
09:19 rather than team up with these serpentine little freaks.
09:22 I mean, nobody with this face can be up to any good.
09:26 The thing is, the series increasingly made it clear
09:30 that continuing to light the flame and continue the Age of Fire
09:34 was probably a bad idea.
09:35 By the time you get to the third game, with the Age extended to the point of breaking point,
09:40 reality itself is collapsing and you have no sense of space and time.
09:45 You are in a hellscape that nobody would want to live in.
09:50 The point of these games then is that change isn't a bad thing.
09:54 The unknown might look scary, but you need to know when to call it quits
09:58 and realize that something isn't working, rather than simply continuing with the familiar.
10:04 There are bigger reasons why the Age of Fire blows as well, of course,
10:07 and for a better dive into that than I can give here,
10:10 I would definitely recommend checking out
10:12 James Stephanie Sterling's Dark Souls vid that they did on their Jimquisition channel.
10:16 Number 1 - Metal Gear Solid 2
10:19 There's so much confusion surrounding the ending of Metal Gear Solid 2.
10:22 Initially about Rookie Raiden stopping a terrorist plot,
10:25 the game ends with the revelations that you've been controlled by an AI this whole time,
10:30 and that pretty much everything you were told was a lie.
10:34 Your wife isn't who she said she is,
10:36 the character you're playing as is way darker than you thought,
10:39 and reality as you know it begins to crumble away.
10:42 While most players, including me, initially took the ending at face value,
10:47 it's actually a much more allegorical and metaphorical ending,
10:50 about the player rather than the characters.
10:53 As chronicled in a few great pieces,
10:56 primarily Super Bunnyhop's excellent critical close-up video,
10:59 MGS2 is all about simulations.
11:02 The game itself is structured almost identically to the first Metal Gear Solid,
11:07 with the idea that Raiden himself had already played through that game's events
11:11 in VR as part of his training.
11:14 So you're essentially playing a game about someone else who has played a game
11:19 about a game that you've played before.
11:22 Still with me?
11:24 The whole idea of this is to get the player thinking about what this all means,
11:28 about the artificiality of what they're experiencing,
11:31 and what they should be getting out of it.
11:33 The characters question their own reality at the end,
11:36 and can't grasp it because it isn't real.
11:39 It's all controlled by the player,
11:41 who are themselves being controlled by the developers.
11:45 In the end, in that super weird scene in Manhattan,
11:48 the characters decide to reject the player's control,
11:51 and go to live their own life with their own agency.
11:54 In that sense, MGS2's ending shouldn't be taken totally literally.
11:58 You can do that, and obviously MGS4 follows up on that,
12:01 but first and foremost, it should be considered in these meta terms
12:04 as commentary on peeling back the layers of how games themselves are made.
12:09 So that's our list.
12:10 I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below.
12:12 Have I been talking out my backside,
12:15 or do you also totally click with these interpretations?
12:18 Seriously, I would really like to know.
12:20 And while you're down there in the comments,
12:21 if you could, please give us a like, share, subscribe,
12:24 and head over to WhatCultureGaming for more lists like this on the regular.
12:27 Even if you don't, though, I've been Josh.
12:28 Thank you so much for watching.
12:30 Thank you for putting up with me, and I'll see you soon.