Endings

There are four endings and one false ending. The false one is not a joke: it is what happens when you do the obvious thing.

The false ending

After Nowhere, Elster climbs out through a hole and reaches the red gate, where Adler is waiting. He warns her about what lies beyond — Falke crossed it first, and saw something that made her fall sick. Elster goes on alone, walks past a row of dead Elsters, and reaches the Penrose-512.

Two questions appear on screen, addressed to her:

Who are you?
What are you looking for?

She climbs the hull and tries the door, but her arm comes off and she falls. The light in her eyes goes out. Shortened credits roll, and the menu returns — except the close-up of Elster's eye is now the eye of someone dead, and it no longer follows the cursor. Press Begin and the game restarts exactly where it left off, on the Penrose, still going.

The four endings

After the North Wall puzzle in Rotfront, Elster cannot leave the wall and must enter Ariane's bedroom, where she finds a safe and a copy of The King in Yellow. What she does next decides the ending.

Ending	Trigger	What happens
Artifact hidden	Open the safe, take the potted flower	Lilies are placed at a ritual site in a dark, fleshy landscape. Elster dies there, surrounded by five other dead LSTR units — six in total. Cut back to the wrecked Penrose: overhead hangs a red eye, and inside Elster and Ariane are dancing together in Ariane's quarters.
Leave	Take The King in Yellow, then refuse the cryogenics pod	Elster will not go in. She strips her armour plating, walks out onto the surface of the planet, collapses and dies.
Memory	Take the book, wake Ariane, the “Circle” score leads	Elster opens the pod and wakes Ariane, who does not remember her or the promise. Elster stays beside her until her own wounds finish her. Ariane lives.
Promise	Take the book, wake Ariane, the “Death” score leads	Ariane remembers, and asks to be killed. Elster does it, then dies beside her with the light going out of her eye.

How the game chooses

Three counters run in the background: Leave, Circle (routes to Memory) and Death (routes to Promise). A new game starts with two points in Circle, and ordinary play adds more:

What you do	Effect
Finish in under 6 hours	+1 Circle
Finish between 6 and 12 hours	nothing
Finish over 12 hours	+1 Death
More than 25 NPC talks	+1 Leave
More than 35 NPC talks	+1 more Leave
Healing time over 60% of the segment	+1 Leave
Healing time over 80%	+1 more Leave
Regen time over 5 minutes	+1 Death (again at a second threshold)
More than 1900 damage taken	+1 Death
More than 8 near-death survivals	+1 Death
More than 5 deaths	+1 Death
More than 90 enemies killed	+1 Death
More than 120 enemies killed	+1 more Death
More than 5 minutes in memory scenes	+1 Leave
More than 40 door checks	+1 Leave

The tie-break is the interesting part: if Death equals Leave, the game gives you Promise — otherwise whichever of the three scored highest. Which means the ending you get is a description of how you played: how much you ran, how much you healed, how much you killed, how much you looked.

Artifact: the three keys and the code

The safe in Ariane's bedroom has three padlocks, and the keys must be in the inventory at the moment the North Wall puzzle is solved:

1. Key of Love
2. Key of Eternity
3. Key of Sacrifice

With the padlocks off, the safe still needs a twenty-digit combination. It is broadcast by the numbers station that surfaces several times during the game, read aloud in German — you can hear it in the main menu, in the “magpie-antenna” puzzle in Part 10, and in the cutscene the first time Elster stands in Ariane's room. The digits, in groups of five:

39486 60170 24326 01064

Inside is a potted white lily. Take it, and you get the ending with six Elsters and a dance.