8 Video Games Where The Best Ending Is Impossible
6. Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
A grim exploration of corporate greed and ecological decimation in pursuit of profit (capitalism sucks, mobilise your union) wrapped up in a quirky and blackly comic puzzle platformer, Abe's Oddysee provided players with two potential endings. Depending on how many of the 99 Mudokons the player rescues from enslavement by meat-processing giant RuptureFarms, Abe is either rewarded for his heroic actions or brutally punished for his selfishness.
This all sounds simple in theory: liberate workers, ruin CEOs, live free. However, the game's incredibly high difficulty makes this no simple task, resulting in many Mudokons accidentally being led down bottomless pits or into the paths of patrolling Sligs. To add to this, many of the Mudokons are contained in secret areas which are extremely easy to miss.
The real kicker? It isn't until halfway through the game that the player learns that they even need to save Abe's coworkers. By this point it's likely that the player will have missed many of the potential Mudokons, making reaching that 50 rescue goal even more challenging.
Save for an offhand comment in the game's manual mentioning that saving enough Mudokons "turns you into a god", it's likely that at the end of their first playthrough most players were treated to the site of our working class hero being dropped into a meat grinder.