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You did it, you beatScorn.The game is decidedly brief but loaded with tricky puzzles, crazy, gory visuals, and some pretty dark choices for you as the player to make. As you play through the game, you encounter creatures that don’t seem to deserve a cruel fate, whether given by you or the world but suffer one anyway, with you in direct control in some cases. But as you complete the Scorn, you’re seemingly confronted with an inescapable fate leaving you with one particular question: is there a more positive ending, and how many endings are there?
How Many Endings Are in Scorn?
There is only 1 ending in Scorn, although there are different paths you can take to achieve different results in the game. The most notable example is in the first Act where you’re presented with the option of using the Saw or the Scoop on your egg friend, but neither has any bearing on the actual ending, just your experience of the game world. This makes playthroughs more focused on progressing through the game, but might limit replay value for some unless they ponder over the abstract meaning of the ending for Scorn.
Naturally, if you’re reading this article, you should be prepared for spoilers. This is your only warning.
What Does the Ending of Scorn Mean?
The ending of Scorn is a tragic one for the player character, as your body at this point is so irreparably wounded by both the parasite and the surgical robot that attempted to connect your brain to the network of the great hall. You got outside, inching toward what seemed like a path to ascension or transcendence, with the statues seemingly being broken down to flesh and bone by the air, only to be ambushed by the parasite. It bonds to you irreversibly this time, merging you with the earth, trapped with matching looks of agony in your eyes, a tormented mound of flesh just outside the schism seemingly connecting this realm and the next.
The truth is, this ending could mean different things to different people. Ebb Software’s intent for the game’s themes was to convey Heideggerian philosophy, and Scorn, as well as its ending, certainly hold to that all throughout; the world is seeming as composed of flesh as you, the player. You begin the game trapped by the world, escape, become trapped again, and again connected to the world. Just before the end, you narrowly escape the world trying to tie your very mind to it along with others you can see in the great hall, connected to the brain hivemind above, but are severely weakened. When you ultimately die, your body is seemingly fused to the ground, making you even more firmly part of it than before.
There are also instances where this suggests the dark implications of parenthood, with the parasite being a grim metaphor for your child, and legacy, what you and your offspring leave behind for the world. In trying to escape or become something greater, the reality could bind you to the earth. No matter how weakened you were by the parasite, you were in greater danger without it, and it seemed as frightened by the world as you are. Whether or not you chose it, you’re altogether weaker for denying it as a part of you, and the world will remember the two of you as together, not separately.
Finally, it’s important to remember that this is all speculation. The game is named Scorn, meaning the feeling or belief that someone or something is worthless or deserving of contempt. The player character does several things worthy of scorn, including killing the docile mother beast, and potentially the innocent egg friend, while looking upon the parasite with a similar feeling when trying to remove it. Ultimately, you as the player, and even the monuments whose perspectives seemingly converge on the protagonist and parasite look at both the same way, and so the fact that they are bound together after their actions, is fitting.
Scornreleased on October 14, 2022, for PC and Xbox Series X|S. It is also a Day One Xbox Game Pass exclusive.
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