Tried so hard, got so far, but in the end...
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00:00The webcam is here now.
00:02Alright there, you little demons, Jules here for WhatCulture.com, back again with another
00:07episode of the awesomely named and awfully hosted Choose Your Own Adventure, the weekly
00:12medieval themed format where I, the Crown Jules, from WhatCulture.com, take a list chosen
00:16by you.
00:17Yes, you, the person who, yes, I'll admit it, I've changed the studio around a bit
00:21and decided that I'd paint my ceilings, there's dust sheets on the walls.
00:25I realise this doesn't look good at the moment, I am aware of that, but I can offer
00:30you exposed beams, ooh, how very hipster-y of me.
00:34And look, if that's not good enough for you, look, the lighting's back, ish.
00:40That's the best that we're gonna have right now, yes, you.
00:42I'll fix it in the next week's World Out.
00:44I wanna stand up, you know, I'm still suffering from the hernia, I wanna do all my stuff standing
00:47up going forward, so I've moved everything around, but that'll be for another week,
00:51while I figure out everything else.
00:53Yes, you, get to decide what list I dole out to you each and every week, and this week
00:57we have none other to thank than DavidLQ3JR for their suggestion of video game endings
01:05that cost you absolutely everything, that you had to work so hard, do heinous things,
01:11or just spend all of your life grinding just to get that golden ending.
01:16And this is the thing, we all love happy endings.
01:21But when it comes to video games, sometimes these good, good, good boy endings can unfortunately
01:26result in bad, bad times for the player.
01:28And last time I checked, that's you.
01:30So let's have a chat about them today, as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and
01:35these are 8 video game endings that cost you everything, everything.
01:41And you know the drill by now, put your suggestions for next week's episode down in the comments
01:44section below, but with that in mind, let's get on with this list, shall we?
01:47Number 8, Mafia 3.
01:49Mafia 3's ending offers players three distinct paths for protagonist Lincoln Clay, leave
01:54his life of crime behind, rule the city of New Bordeaux alongside his underboss, or double
01:59cross the other underbosses and take everything for yourself.
02:02Now let me just weigh up those options again, leave the life of crime, which is the entire
02:06reason you played this game, work for somebody else, or become the biggest badass in town.
02:11Hmm, I wonder which one I'm going to pick?
02:13Well unfortunately, if you do want to become the biggest badass in town, it's gonna cost
02:18Because going full dirty and killing your lieutenant after taking the city's crown
02:21offers up only the momentary victories for Lincoln, as upon leaving and getting into
02:26his car, he'll be suddenly blown to ribbons by a car bomb.
02:29It's subsequently revealed that the bomb was planted by his friend, Father James, who
02:33desperately attempted to talk Lincoln out of staying and ruling.
02:37James states that he made the agonising decision to kill Lincoln after realising that he was
02:41no different than the game's primary villain, mob boss Sal Mulcano, and so doesn't actually
02:47regret doing it.
02:48Like I get it, crime, it doesn't pay, we all know that adage by now, but at the same
02:52time could it have paid a little bit of dividends for a slight length longer than just getting
02:58to your car?
02:597. Oddworld – Abe's Odyssey
03:02So by default, in Abe's Odyssey, you'll only have a measly three grenades on normal
03:07difficulty to see you through the entire game.
03:10But did you know that there is a way of getting infinite grenades, which last time I checked
03:14makes things infinitely more explosively fun, but the problem is that it's going
03:18to cost you… well, maybe not entirely you, but every person or medokkin that you come
03:26across.
03:27Yeah, you're gonna need to be a real bastard for this one.
03:30Because the practice of getting these infinite grenades requires some serious douchebaggery
03:34on your part.
03:35You'll need to go through the entire game without lifting a finger to help rescue any
03:38of your fellow imprisoned medokkins.
03:40Worse still, you need to make sure all the medokkins are dead before you reach the end
03:44of the game.
03:45And by doing all of this, you'll trigger the super bad, terrible ending where the main
03:49villain of the game actually comes on and says, hey, calm down chief, that's a lot
03:54of dead workers that you've now just provided me with, you're a bit of a sick twisted
03:58creep and I kind of admire that in a way, so here, as a reward for killing every other
04:05person that you come across, here's infinite grenades.
04:08To kill them more.
04:09In a subsequent playthrough.
04:10And I thought they were good at business.
04:15So yeah, infinite grenades, awesome, but murdering all your fellow prisoner slaves to get them?
04:18Ooh, that's a heavy burden for the soul.
04:206.
04:21Heavy Rain
04:22So if you want to platinum the video game Heavy Rain, you're going to indeed go through
04:26some heavy, heavy times, because this game wants you to get your hands dirty, my friend.
04:31The interactive drama allows players to dictate the fates of its four central characters,
04:35including the origami killer himself.
04:37And while you're obviously encouraged to try and keep the non-murderous characters
04:41alive, if you want that sweet, sweet platinum, you're going to have to willingly hand a
04:45W to the game's antagonist.
04:47The perfect crime trophy can only be popped by letting the origami killer, eventually
04:51revealed to be PI Scott Shelby, get away with it.
04:54Jaws?
04:55Spoilers?
04:56Si, if this game's been out for like, what, a decade now?
05:00Well, I haven't got to that part yet.
05:02Frankly, I've been too busy with this really important part right here.
05:05Jason!
05:06Jason!
05:07Jason!
05:08Jason!
05:09Jason!
05:10This involves cleaning up any evidence throughout the game that might tie Scott to his various
05:14crime scenes, while also working hard to ensure that most, if not all of the game's other
05:18central characters end up dead.
05:20You'll then get to witness the ending where Scott gets off...
05:23Scott free.
05:24Haha.
05:25Eugh.
05:26Eugh.
05:27Which is also the emotion, this eugh, that you'll be feeling at the end of the game,
05:29because as he walks off into the sunset, you're just like, eugh, I'm not the good
05:34guy here.
05:35I am, if anything, the bad guy, but at least I have a platinum trophy for it, was it worth
05:39it?
05:40No!
05:41No!
05:425.
05:43Medieval 2
05:44Now, in most video games, if you go out of your way to hoover up every single collectible,
05:47every golden coin, and help every shloomboo from the shloomblah prisons, does that exist?
05:54I don't even know by now, it probably does in a platforming game, then you are usually
05:57going to be rewarded with the best ending, right?
06:00Because you've gone out of your way to do all of the stuff, the shloomblahs, you've
06:04helped them, or killed them, I can't remember which game it, whatever, you want the best
06:08ending, right?
06:09Nah.
06:10Not in Medieval 2.
06:11Nah.
06:12Nah.
06:13Nah.
06:14Nah.
06:15Nah.
06:16Because in a grand act of trolling on the part of its developers, Medieval 2 goes the
06:17total opposite way, by ensuring that those who collect all 20 chalices will be rewarded
06:20with a grand bummer of a cliffhanger ending.
06:23Indeed, reach the end of the game with all chalices in tow, and you'll unlock an ending
06:27where Sir Dan and his mummified love interest hitch a ride on a time machine, taking them
06:31back to Zarok's Lair from the end of the first game.
06:33At this moment, the pair are then attacked by a monstrous version of villain Pale Thorn,
06:38and we abruptly cut to black.
06:39Now given that a third Medieval game was never produced, we're left to assume that Dan
06:43and his love interest were killed by Pale Thorn, and that is quite a bummer of a true
06:47ending that you had to go well out of your way to see.
06:50And considering that the normal ending of this game just sees them living on forever
06:54in peace in the afterlife, this seems like an especial kick in the nuts.
06:58Thanks!
06:594.
07:00Nier
07:01Now the video game Nier takes the concept of sacrificing everything for an ending, and
07:07pushes it to the extreme.
07:09Thank you, Yoko Taro, once again you have given a TED talk on how to be a very weird
07:15and enigmatic creator.
07:17You oddball, you.
07:18I say that like he's here.
07:19Come on, mate.
07:20Cup of tea afterwards?
07:21Yes.
07:22Now, in order to achieve the game's fourth ending, ending D, you'll need to straight
07:26up lose your save data.
07:28This ending sees the player sacrifice themselves to save Kane, resulting in their very existence
07:32being forgotten by every other character, and this is literalised by forcing the player
07:36to delete their own save game, leaving the title as though it's never been played.
07:41Oh, and also, as a nice little touch that a lot of people seem to forget about this,
07:44if you tried to start a new playthrough and used the same name as you did for your previous
07:48character, the game will say, no, sorry, can't do that.
07:51So you've literally lost all record of this character ever existing, and are barred from
07:55doing it again.
07:56To hammer home the gravity of the situation, the game even asks you if you're really,
08:00really sure about doing this.
08:02It makes for a uniquely affecting and impactful ending, though the recent near-replicant remaster
08:06adds in an extra fifth ending where the erased save file could actually be restored.
08:10All the same, for those that played the original game, this made for quite the agonising dilemma,
08:15And yes, I mean, Yoko Taro did try to replicate this, ha ha ha, little joke there, replicate,
08:19replicant, bleh, bleh, trying to do this again in near-automata, potato, potata, but unfortunately
08:27we'd already seen it before, so it didn't hit with quite the same impact here, so, uh,
08:30yeah, Yoko Taro getting a bit stale, getting a bit stale with his amazing, once-in-a-lifetime,
08:35uh, design stuff, cool, sick.
08:383.
08:39Hatred
08:40Okay, so I'm sitting in front of a script that's been written for me here by Jack
08:43Pooley, who wants to talk about hatred and how at the end of the game you need to kill
08:47literally everything, everyone around you in order to end the game, because the point
08:51of this game, if there is even a point, is that your character is so angry at life he
08:56just wants to take down everyone with him, ooh, but you know what, I'm sick of talking
09:00about this game, I don't like talking about it at all, it is a game, that I've said many
09:04many times, that is for water-cooler masturbators who think that long trenchcoats are the epitome
09:09of edgy coolness, I do not want to talk about it anymore, but yeah, if you do want to see
09:12the end of that game, just go on YouTube, don't give the developer any money.
09:16Sick.
09:17Bye.
09:182.
09:19Undertale
09:20By the way, I should state for the record here, Jack helps me write these scripts for
09:23these, and then I basically just butcher all of them.
09:25Every single time he decides, writes reams and reams of stuff, I look at them and go
09:28like, I'm gonna ad-lib half of this, but he loves that.
09:322.
09:33Undertale
09:34Now the brilliantly bonkers Undertale has three main endings, depending largely on how
09:37players deal with the enemies they encounter throughout the game.
09:40The pacifist ending is achieved by, shockingly enough, refusing to kill any of the game's
09:44enemies, while the neutral ending is unlocked by killing some, but not all of them.
09:48And then there's the genocide ending, which is also true to its name, and can only be
09:52unlocked by killing every single enemy in the game.
09:54This will require players to not only kill every enemy they fight, but also hang around
09:58and trigger random encounters until all areas have been fully wiped out.
10:02This will lead to an ending in which players battle Sans, arguably the best and most challenging
10:06boss in the entire game, before Chara shows up and straight up erases the entire world.
10:11And better yet, if you do want to play again, you'll need to go back to that very point
10:14and give your soul to them in order to restore the world, because you broke things that bloody
10:19badly.
10:20Yeah, you took everything.
10:21You destroyed everything.
10:22Good job!
10:23But also bad.
10:24Bad.
10:25Naughty.
10:261.
10:27Superfire Pro Wrestling Special
10:28Okay, my friends, let's wrap things up by talking about a super deep cut from 1994,
10:33and if you know anything about me and my work over on the Future Game Show YouTube
10:37channel, you'll know that I love myself a deep cut.
10:39In fact, I have a series based entirely around that, because I'm tired of talking about
10:43the same lists over and over again.
10:45I want new games, or 10 of the old obscure games.
10:48Don't break your brain on this point, Jule.
10:50Anyway, we're travelling back to 1994 to talk about an often forgotten wrestling game,
10:54and how it's got such a bleak ending.
10:56Now as with most wrestling games, the end goal of the story mode is to win the world
11:00championship, which in this case involves defeating champion Dick Slender, a hilariously
11:05blatant Ric Flair rip off.
11:07But because the game's story was written by Suda51, you know, the madman who later
11:11made Killer7, No More Heroes, and Lollipop Chainsaw, of course this was going to have
11:15an unhinged twist.
11:16Before the fight, Slender kills the trainer of your protagonist, and even if you achieve
11:20revenge by defeating Slender in the ring, the game ends with you realising that your
11:24victory is empty, as he has nobody to share it with.
11:27Because his trainer is dead, and his romantic love interest has just basically said, no
11:31thanks, I'm not about this life, and so in the game's grim final scene, you go home
11:48and shoot yourself dead.
11:50That's the reward, for completing the story mode in this game.
11:57Okay then, what?
11:58What?
11:59But you never see that in a 2K game, I'll tell you that much.
12:01And there we go my friends, those were 8 video game endings that cost you everything.
12:05I hope that you enjoyed that, and let me know what you thought about it down in the comments
12:08section below, and put your suggestions for next week's episode down there as well.
12:12I promise that next week, or the week after, everything should look a little bit different,
12:15a little bit better.
12:16I'll be standing up, I'll be more mobile, I'll be more, with my hands, I'll be doing
12:19all sorts of shapes you won't even be ready for, that was just a taste, 1%, so get excited
12:25about that.
12:26As always, I've been Jules, hope that you are treating yourself well my friend, and
12:29just remember, above all else, you are a massive ledge, you deserve love, you deserve happiness,
12:33you deserve success, like all of us human beings do on this world, okay?
12:38So do not forget, you're a massive ledge, now go out there and smash your life goals
12:41because I believe in you.
12:43As always I've been Jules, you have been awesome my friends, and I'll speak to you soon, bye!