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00:00Now there are few things that an audience will unanimously demand more from a story than a
00:04satisfying ending. They want that perfect wrap-up to everything the story have been building up to
00:09from the start, and a good ending can be all that determines whether your story will actually stick
00:14in the mind of general audiences after they're done with it, or just fade away into nothingness.
00:19Well, these games that we're about to talk about today didn't fade away, they were paid away,
00:24because they had their best ending in the DLC. Yeah, it was a terrible joke, terrible segue,
00:28but we're moving on, we're just going with it. So with this in mind, I'm Jules,
00:31this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 video games whose best ending was in the DLC.
00:3510. Broken Steel Fallout 3
00:38Now the ending of Fallout 3, where the lone wanderer has sacrificed themselves to return
00:42clean drinking water to the wasteland, would have been much more effective had the game not provided
00:47you with a super mutant companion who could easily do it for you and not die from radiation. In the
00:52base game, Fawkes' fatalistic philosophy is what keeps him from going into that room for you, but
00:57due to fan outcry, Bethesda created a DLC to address this. Now granted, the Fawkes dilemma
01:02wasn't the only reason the fans hated the original ending, the true reason was that it, well,
01:06ended the game. So whatever side quests you had left or areas left unexplored, well, tough luck,
01:11buddy. So Bethesda made Broken Steel to tie up both these controversies at once, filling a plot hole
01:16while also, and more importantly, letting the players continue exploring the world. In Broken Steel,
01:22you survive the process and wake up two weeks later in the care of the Brotherhood of Steel,
01:26who are renewing their fight to cleanse the capital wasteland of Super Mutants and the Enclave.
01:31You decide to help them because, really, I mean, what's the alternative? Fight against the guys
01:35with a giant nuke-throwing robot? No, thank you. Broken Steel not only addressed fan complaints
01:40about the ending to Fallout 3, but it also gave them an entire expansion built off of that,
01:45and the new ending here, well, it's significantly more satisfying as a result.
01:499. Death of the Outsider – Dishonored 2
01:53One of the most enigmatic figures in the Dishonored series has been the outsider. Now,
01:57it's always been up in the air as to what precisely he is. His motivations are clear enough,
02:02though. He seeks entertainment. That's why he bestowed Corvo and Emily with the powers that
02:07they used throughout the two games. The Itano family is interesting to him, and so he nudges
02:11them along because, well, it's just fun. Frankly, though, it was only a matter of time before one of his
02:16playthings decided to fight back. Enter Billy Lurk. Billy Lurk, formerly the companion of Emily
02:21and Corvo during Dishonored 2, takes the centre stage in Dishonored Death of the Outsider. As the
02:26name implies, the whole story is about Billy being fed up with this eldritch weirdo screwing with
02:31people for his own amusement and conspires to take him down. While Dishonored 2's ending is just fine
02:36on its own, this makes for an excellent epilogue, with harder stealth sections, cool powers, and at last,
02:42some real answers on what exactly The Outsider is. While the last bit wasn't ever really a problem
02:47with the previous games, seeing the biggest question of the franchise finally get answered,
02:52well, it was pretty satisfying to watch play out.
02:548. Awakened. Dead Space 3
02:57While nowhere close to the horror heights of the previous two games, the ending of Dead Space 3 is
03:02perfectly fine as third entries go, but it does end a little too well, doesn't it? I mean,
03:08this is Dead Space for crying out loud. Where's the nihilism, the despair, the existential horror?
03:14Well, right here, declared the Awakened DLC, which adds an epilogue to the story that reinforces the
03:19main overriding theme of Dead Space, and that's that things can always get worse. Cheers.
03:24Awakened sees Isaac and Kava survive the events of the base game and work together to try to get home,
03:29all the while being plagued with visions from the marker, trying to drive them both even more crazy
03:34than they likely already are. This all culminates in one of the most horrific and frustrating
03:39cliffhangers in gaming history, and with the franchise basically dead despite a brilliant
03:43remake recently, this ending kinda becomes the perfect closing note for the series.
03:48The final image of Dead Space is the most terrifying and nihilistic note that you could
03:52possibly go out on. As corporately commissioned as Dead Space was, Awakened demonstrated that the
03:57guys making it still knew in their hearts what this series was all about.
04:007. Remind Kingdom Hearts 3
04:04Kingdom Hearts 3 was always going to be controversial. Make a fanbase wait that long
04:09for a sequel, and yeah, not all of them will be satisfied with how things close out.
04:13Kingdom Hearts 3's base ending is fine, but it's about as cryptic as the rest of the series tends
04:18to be. Sora leaves to try and find a way to save or resurrect his girlfriend Kairi, and the game then
04:23ends showing that he succeeded in bringing back Kairi, but now something has happened to him.
04:27Then came the DLC Remind to answer a few of these questions. Now it's not recommended that you jump
04:33into Remind after finishing the game, as it is a full Back to the Future 2 style reframing of the
04:39entire third act. Here Sora manages to go back in time and use this opportunity to save Kairi from
04:44being killed in the first place. Doing so involves having to work his way through the background of
04:49the final battle in the hopes of making it to the final boss before he can kill her.
04:53Kingdom Hearts 3's climax was already top tier, but the new fights added in by Remind make it even
04:59better, the best of which, of course, is Sora teaming up with Kairi to absolutely annihilate
05:04the final boss.
05:056. Part 4. Azura's Wrath
05:08Now other examples on this list, before and after this one, have been more positive about a game
05:12saving its best ending for DLC. The developers gave their game a proper ending at launch,
05:17and then gave fans a little more later. But the most infamous example of, well, doing the opposite,
05:22is Azura's Wrath. The base version of Azura's Wrath doesn't end so much as it just stops.
05:27Turns out that a game that looks like Azura's Wrath takes a while to complete, and rather than
05:31wait for the game to be finished, Capcom decided to sell the entire second half of the game as DLC.
05:36Now if you want to finish this story that you poured hours into and get the best ending,
05:40you'd have to cough up around 7 bucks at the time. And since for some reason the game didn't sell
05:45very well, there is yet to be, and likely won't be, a remaster of the game with all the content
05:49included. So whenever Sony decides to finally shut down the PS3 servers, and the PS3 PS Store
05:55along with it, well, I hope you like watching super old Let's Play videos, because that will
05:59be the only way that you are going to see Azura's Wrath's true ending.
06:03Number 5. The Answer. Persona 3.
06:05Now every piece of spin-off or supplementary material that heavily features the cast of
06:10Persona 3 has one thing in common. Every single one of them is, in their own way,
06:15still coping with the death of Persona 3's protagonist, Makoto Yuki. Even in the material
06:20where the former members of SEES are older and doing their best to move on, his death remains
06:26a very sore subject. And for the starkest demonstration of this, Atlas made an entire
06:30expansion to the original game known as Persona 3, The Answer. And The Answer takes place a mere two
06:35months after the end of Persona 3. The story revolves around the remaining members of SEES getting
06:41dragged into more supernatural shenanigans, with a strange force underneath their dorm keeping the
06:46world locked on March 31st. The robot Aegis must keep her found family from tearing itself apart,
06:51as the thing under the dorm forces each of them to confront their past and dangles a dangerously
06:56tempting offer in front of them. The Answer is the apex of Persona 3's dedication to portraying
07:01its cast of teenagers as deeply broken people, leading to a twist that is still debated by the fandom
07:06to this day. While later material shows them doing their best to heal, The Answer bookends
07:10Persona 3's story by saying the equally important message that sometimes grief just breaks you,
07:16and that's okay. 4. Blood and Wine
07:19The Witcher 3
07:20Now CD Projekt Red as a whole owes its success to The Witcher and Big G as a character. So when they
07:26decided to close the book on their version of Geralt once and for all in The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt,
07:31they went above and beyond to make sure it was as great a send-off as they could have done.
07:35While the base ending is great at doing this in its own right, the true ending to The Witcher lies
07:40in the final DLC for the game Blood and Wine. Blood and Wine sees Geralt being sought out by a
07:45wealthy royal to handle a large beast that has been roaming the land and slaughtering anyone it
07:49finds. Big G agrees to help, unaware of the political muck that he's about to go wading into.
07:54While not the best of expansions in terms of story, and that's still Hearts of Stone by a Mile,
07:59what sets Blood and Wine apart is, well, the fact that this is the last CD Projekt Red Witcher
08:04story. There's a sense of finality to everything going on in Blood and Wine, and it's no wonder that
08:08this expansion is typically the last thing Witcher fans do in the game. From Geralt getting his own
08:13estate in which he can finally set down some roots, to an ending scene that, without spoiling,
08:17is a brilliant send-off to the viewer from Big G. Blood and Wine is about as perfect a bookend to
08:22Geralt's story as we could have ever gotten.
08:243. Trespasser – Dragon Age Inquisition
08:28Now, it can be hard to know how to properly end one story whilst also setting up the next chapter.
08:33Lean too hard on one side, and the sequel feels unnecessary, too much on the other,
08:37and the original story feels incomplete. This is where cliffhangers tend to come in handy,
08:42and one of the best cliffhangers in gaming history comes in the form of Dragon Age Inquisition's final
08:47DLC, Trespasser. Inquisition's ending was pretty good on its own, with the two DLCs that followed
08:53adding in new areas and expansions to the lore, but Trespasser is the ending to Inquisition's story.
08:58Trespasser picks up two years after the events of the game, with the Inquisition called in by the
09:03largest governments in the area to discuss whether or not the Inquisition is necessary anymore.
09:08It turns out that having a religious militia that answers to no governing body, with heavily
09:12fortified strongholds in every country, and a spy network with its fingers in every ruler's pies,
09:17kind of makes those rulers a wee bit nervous.
09:20Every problem with the idea of the Inquisition is brought out and explored to the fullest,
09:25while at the same time providing jaw-dropping twists on long-established lore,
09:28all of which culminates in a twist that takes everything you knew about a good 60% of the lore
09:33and just throws it out of the window, and yet does so in a way that makes total sense,
09:38which is a pretty impressive feat. Trespasser is the reason that fans are still waiting,
09:43desperately might I add, for Dragon Age 4.
09:452. Lonesome Road – Fallout New Vegas
09:48New Vegas' DLC stands out from the others in the franchise because every single one of them
09:53tells an overarching story. Granted, it's pretty far in the background, but in each of the DLCs,
09:58Old World Blues, Honest Hearts and Dead Money, you can actually stumble across painted symbols
10:03and abandoned camps. Now, they won't make sense at first, but they all belong to a mysterious
10:07traveller named Ulysses, and in the final DLC, Lonesome Road, Ulysses calls Courier 6 out to an
10:14irradiated stretch of land called The Divide to settle an old beef between them. Now, while the
10:19title of What is the Best New Vegas DLC is still a toss-up between Old World Blues and Honest Hearts,
10:24Lonesome Road feels like the proper ending to the story.
10:27It actually goes into the backstory of Courier 6, giving a glimpse, even if it is a short one,
10:32of who they were before they were shot in the head, and it's fascinating. And Ulysses,
10:36by the way, is one of the greatest villains in the Fallout franchise, a gravel-voiced philosopher,
10:41sympathetic but ultimately dangerous. Although only one of them is actually speaking,
10:46you feel their rivalry in every scene they share. Lonesome Road, from a design and narrative
10:51perspective, is the final word from Obsidian on the Fallout franchise, and it is glorious.
10:561. Valhalla, God of War, Ragnarok
11:00Now, Kratos has done a lot of things that most would be right to label unforgivable. God knows
11:05that he's the first in line to do so, but the Norse duology on the PS4 and PS5 helps him to come to
11:11terms with his guilt and tries to move forward. But anyone who hates themselves to the extent that
11:16Kratos does, knows that there's never really an end of it. Kratos needed to have his past laid out,
11:21so that he can truly come to grips with it. Enter God of War, Valhalla. This free DLC for
11:27Ragnarok picks up a bit after the event of the main story, with Kratos and Mimir answering a
11:31summons to the Norse realm of Valhalla, which only those who have died in battle can typically enter.
11:37Valhalla has been brilliantly reimagined into a constantly shifting gauntlet,
11:41meant to wear away the worldly regrets of those who enter so that they may pass into Valhalla
11:46unburdened. And Tyr has decided to use this system to help his friend work through his traumas.
11:51Kratos was already the greatest performance of Christopher Judge's career, but his performance
11:55in Valhalla, it's his magnum opus. A man who desperately wants to do good and be better,
12:00but just needs to forgive himself enough to take the right steps, is a glorious story.
12:06Valhalla isn't just the best ending for God of War Ragnarok,
12:08it is the perfect final note for the character of Kratos.
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