8 Best Video Game Endings You Can't Get On A First Playthrough

Time to put in the work.

Nier replicant ending e
Platinum Games

As the credits begin to roll and a symphonic score swells into existence, it's hard not to feel a little emotional at the end of a video game.

With the final boss defeated, the land once more at peace, and our journey finally over, we can finally rest easy knowing that our countless hours of hard work have paid off.

However, what's this? The game isn't over?

What do you mean there are still more endings to see and that they're significantly more upbeat than the ones we witnessed? Ah well, time to strap on the armour once more and get to questing!

It's actually pretty common for video games to hide 100% completion endings, alternate closing scenarios and even story chapters as DLC, but those that make it onto this list make you work so damn hard, there was no way you were going to see the best ending in a single playthrough.

8. Save The Entire Crew - Mass Effect 2

Nier replicant ending e
BioWare

Is there anything more pulse racing, outside of betting on Octopus Knife Fights, than the moment that you commit to traveling through the relays into the Collector and Reaper HQ in Mass Effect 2?

The game warns you again and again throughout your long run that this is going to be a moment that will change everything, and that the tagline of being a suicide mission is not going to be taken lightly.

Bioware delivered fully in this area as well, annihilating crew members if the player hadn't maxed out their loyalty or completed certain quests, and it was very possible for everyone including yourself to be reduced to mere atoms.

Therefore it was pretty likely that players opted to go the safer route of taking their time to max out bonds and explore the galaxy, yet this too was a devious trap by the devs! If the player takes too long then other members of the crew who had been captured would already have gone through the painful conversion process into thralls for The Reapers.

Move too quickly, you die. Move too slowly. you die. Even if you made it through to landing you could make the wrong squad choices and see friends meet their untimely end! It's like The Dark Room was hosting this mission in that every single choice ended in death!

You'd have to have been a speedrunner completionist combo to get the 100% survival ending with this!

Contributor
Contributor

Jules Gill hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.