Endings

Pascal's Wager has no branching quest line. The whole campaign is the same for everybody, and the ending is decided by a single question asked after the final boss of The Colossal Grave, chapter 8 of the story (see Chapters#The Colossal Grave (chapter 8)). Two answers exist in the base game, "Drink" and "Refuse", and a third answer, "Put the Seal of Yekub in", appears only if you own the Ichthyosauria DLC and finished its story. Which answers are offered is controlled by hidden quest flags, covered below.

Summary#

The wording of the achievement texts is: Persistent, "Achieve the desired ending through perseverance"; Transcendent, "Doubt breeds true Sanity"; The Answer, "Find the answer you've been seeking at the end of the journey". The Answer is marked as needing difficulty 2 or higher (see below).

The road to the choice#

1. The main quest "Enter the Colossal Grave" (quest 10709) ends when the grave is opened, after the events of the Karst Cave in which Teresa is sacrificed to open it (see Chapters#The Karst Cave (chapter 7)).
2. Inside the grave you fight Alienated Teresa (The First Messenger). The fight has three stages and cutscenes between them (quests 83001 enter, 83003 and 83004 transformations).
3. Defeating her completes quest 83002. From that moment a voice keeps repeating a variation of "drink it if you really want to see Teresa" (dialog 84067 to 84073) and asks you to drink. It also promises that Teresa will be released from her curse if you do.
4. A second prompt appears, and which one you get depends on whether you earned the Fulgurant Melos Bottle:

Choosing Drink completes quest 85018, Refuse completes 85019, and the Seal completes 85025. Each of these is also a one-shot achievement quest (Persistent 10019, Transcendent 10020, The Answer 40007).

How to unlock Refuse: the Melos Bottle chain#

The Refuse option is gated by quest 55065, which is completed when the Man in the Mist (the Gravedigger of Katib) hands you the sixth bottle, the Fulgurant Melos Bottle (trophy 60073). You do not have to keep the bottle in your bag at the end, because the game only checks the quest flag.

• The first bottle, the Pitch-black Melos Bottle (60068), is a gift on the first meeting (quest 55048).
• Every upgrade costs one Condensation Honey (item 10048) plus a growing number of Anthozoan Bones (item 40011), and consumes your current bottle:

• Reaching the Fulgurant bottle therefore costs 5 Condensation Honey and 450 Anthozoan Bones in total (30 + 60 + 90 + 120 + 150).
• Each bottle trophy is a special item that keeps the character permanently in the "Abnormal" state with the risk of Lunatic, and cannot be enhanced or reforged (see Trophy effects, Lunatic state and Trophies). Only one bottle can be worn at a time.
• Each time you fill a bottle the Gravedigger comments on a Strong Obsession you have beaten, using one of seven stock lines. Dialogs 51382 to 51388 hold them, and a quest flag per line (55049 to 55055) makes sure each line is used only once. The full ladder and his other services are in Gravedigger#Melos Bottle ladder.

What each choice leads to#

The game stores almost no text for the ending movies themselves, so only the following is known from the data.

• Drink (ending one). Movie 1005. The achievement says it is the "desired" ending reached by persisting. Afterwards quest 83006 starts the staff roll (movie 1010).
• Refuse (ending two). Movie 1006. Afterwards quest 83007 starts the same staff roll. The achievement title suggests that doubting the voice is the sane choice.
• True ending. Movie 1011 (the only line of dialogue in the data says that this is the answer you were looking for, a final one). It is followed by quest 83014, which also opens the staff roll.

After the credits#

• Endings one and two each play a short extra scene after the staff roll: movie 1007 after ending one, movie 1008 after ending two. The designers label both "egg" scenes (彩蛋, Chinese for easter egg). The true ending is followed by a scene labelled "empty egg" (movie 1012), which has no content.
• Each ending's last quest (83008, 83009 or 83015) runs the "game over" action. The game fades to black and shows a confirmation box thanking you for playing and asking whether you want to start a New Journey.
• Answering yes starts a New Journey with every character unlocked. The prompt lists what is kept: Altar Level, activated talents, story-unrelated items, trophies, collected documents, contract progress with partners and achievements (see New Game Plus#What carries over and what is removed).
• Answering no and confirming sends you back to the stage before the final battle (quest 85024, "go to next stage" with the parameters 7 and 4, which the game describes as the stage before the final fight). You can keep playing in Solas, but the text states you cannot enter the Colossal Grave again. A New Journey can still be started later by talking to Glenn's Owl in the Carriage.

The DLC true ending#

• The true ending needs two things: the Ichthyosauria DLC story and flag 95175.
• Flag 95175 is completed by the final conversation of the Ichthyosauria story (dialog 91272). It happens after you agree to combine the Fragments of the Scarlet Meteor into one (dialog 93270, which sets flag 95226 and plays movie 1008 of story 9). The scene is a farewell to the creature's people, wishing them a peaceful sleep in their home.
• Completing 95175 also makes a quest action remove monster 9027 (inferred to be the guardian of the tower) and opens a new set of conversations in the world:
  • In the Dark Mist, a companion talks about being a "Nightwalker", a child born of the Marred (dialogs 99287 to 99297; speaker not named in the data, presumably Jerold, inferred).
  • In the Karst Cave, a speaker (presumably Jerold, inferred) hands over the "final Seal of Yekub" (dialogs 99307 to 99315). He says he never trusted humanity, but Terrence's persistence with Teresa gave him hope, and that if guarding the Seals only prolongs a hopeless world, it is not worth it.
• The extra answer at the grave then appears as "Put the Seal of Yekub in".
• The achievement The Answer requires difficulty 2 or higher (see Hidden mechanics).

Hidden mechanics#

• Refuse is locked behind a side quest. There is no hint in the grave itself that a second option exists. The only requirement is the Fulgurant Melos Bottle from the Man in the Mist, which means farming 450 Anthozoan Bones and 5 Condensation Honey in Katib.
• The check is on a quest flag, not on the item. Quest 55065 is completed when you receive bottle six. The final prompt (dialog 84102) uses it as a "show" condition, so the bottle can be gone from your bag later and the option remains.
• Bottles nine and ten exist in the data (Cyclical and Imperishable, costing 240 and 270 bones) but do not change the ending.
• The DLC option is hidden in the base-game dialog. Dialog 83104 is marked as DLC content and also requires flag 95175, so players without the DLC never see a third option.
• The Answer has a minimum difficulty. Achievements carry a "leastUnlockDiff" field. When an achievement is recorded, the game compares it with the current difficulty and silently drops it if the current difficulty is lower. The Answer has the value 2 while Persistent and Transcendent have 1. The difficulty ids are Casual 1 and Normal 2 (Expert is clamped to Normal), so The Answer cannot be earned on Casual (Achievements#Hidden mechanics).
• Achievements are blocked in some modes. The same function refuses to record achievements in the Obsession Challenge and in Arcade mode (except ids 60000 to 70000).
• "Continue" does not return you to the grave. The prompt says so explicitly, and quest 85024 jumps to a different stage.

Trivia#

• The internal comments on the movie rows call the three scenes "ending one", "ending two" and "true ending", and the two optional scenes after the staff roll "egg one" and "egg two".
• The question in the grave is also phrased with deliberately archaic English ("Drinketh it...") in the English text, matching other speech from the Dark Mist entities.
• The final boss is the corrupted form of Teresa, listed as hero 10006, "The First Messenger".

Sources#

• Ending dialogs: StoryDialog rows 83100, 83102, 83103, 83104, 82100, 82102, 84067 to 84073, 84100, 84102; English text in text/StoryDialog (see gamedata/structdata/exportdata/es_storydialog.lua).
• Ending quests: StoryQuest 83001 to 83015, 85018, 85019, 85020, 85023, 85024, 85025; ActionType meanings from luascript/controller/controllerstorymode.lua lines 94 to 134.
• Game over prompt: controllerstorymode.lua lines 9327 to 9376 (RestartConfirm); GameText UI_GAMEOVER_TEXT, UI_CONFIRM_RESTART_GAME, UI_CONFIRM_CONTINUE_GAME.
• Cutscenes: StoryMovie rows 99 (movie 1005), 100 (1006), 101 (1007), 102 (1008), 104 (staff, 1010), 105 (true ending, 1011), 106 (1012).
• Achievements: Achievement rows with Quest 85018 (id 10019), 85019 (10020), 85025 (40007); controllerstorymode.lua lines 6290 to 6312 (RecordAchievement); luascript/ui/controller/achievementctrl.lua lines 276 to 292.
• Melos Bottle chain: StoryQuest 52601 to 52611, 55048 to 55089; StoryDialog 53329 to 53428, 51313 to 51327, 51382 to 51436; TrophyData ids 56 to 63, 67, 68 (items 60068 to 60075, 60079, 60080).
• DLC flags: StoryDialog 91270 to 91272, 93270, 99287 to 99297, 99307 to 99315; StoryQuest 95175, 95226.
• Boss identity: reports/bosses_and_enemies.md section 15; HeroData.jsonl 10006.
• Difficulty ids and gates: Achievement.jsonl 10019, 10020, 40007 (leastUnlockDiff 1, 1, 2); see Achievements.