10 Things You Didn't Expect To Happen When You 100% A Video Game

2. A Joke Ending With A Canonical Payoff - Drakengard

Drakengard Ending E
Square Enix

Drakengard is A Lot. And its secret final ending is A Lot, A Lot. I apologise in advance if all of this sounds Greek to you but I think you’ll appreciate it anyway.

To get Ending E you need to complete all 12 chapters and collect all 65 weapons which is an incredible grind. After spending the action RPG soaring about on a dragon, things wrap up with the big bad called the Watchers appearing and it turns out they’re giant babies. Weird. Then you learn they’re being controlled by The Mother who opens a portal to modern day Tokyo where you and your dragon fight her off by essentially versing her in a rhythm game. You defeat her because you’re awesome and have already 100%-ed this thing, then the Japanese air force rocks up, shoots your dragon down and you die impaled on Tokyo Tower.

Then Manah’s high pitched cutesy voice says “Thank you for playing” and you’re all done.

What’s really cool about this is that this is the canon ending which sets up the entire story and game world of Nier and there are files in Nier Automata that explain what happened after the jets took down your dragon. It’s pretty impressive for an ending you’d only hit organically by having an awful lot of patience.

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Contributor
Contributor

Jess has been a journalist and content creator in the games industry for over 15 years and has been WhatCulture's resident Australian import and sorry cop since 2020, upping the quotient of swearing and apologising in WhatCulture Gaming's annual blooper videos considerably. She previously worked at GameSpot for 10 years, most notably hosting GameSpot News in addition to E3 live shows, and PAX panels. She regularly livestreams a variety of games on her 'jessmcdonell' YouTube and Twitch channels and hosts the 'Do It On The Day' podcast. She has won awards for her news and feature work in gaming as well as an accolade for her comedic writing (likely an admin error). She can be found on X at @jessmcdonell and Instagram at @jessicamcdonell sharing her current videogame fixations, industry insights, and videos of her cat, Karma.