The composer for Obsidian’s fantasy action RPG Avowed has teased details of an ultra-rare ending that most players will probably never see. Avowed has received decent reviews – perhaps not as great as other Obsidian games, but it’s certainly garnered some praise. One of its most popular aspects has been the depth and complexity of its story choices – something Obsidian has always excelled at. Screen Rant reviewer Kyle Gratton called these difficult decisions “often Avowed’s best trait.” These decisions affect not only the moment-to-moment gameplay and the development of the story, but also the ending you get.

As the game’s composer, Venus Theory, revealed in a recent interview with Screen Rant, there are five endings to Avowed, and one of them is “exceptionally rare.” Venus Theory goes on to explain that this rare ending probably “is not the canon ending because it is kind of a fun one.” He openly wonders whether any players will even find it, but hopes they will: “I’m very curious if anyone’s going to get it, because, musically, it’s also one of the fun ones that was really interesting to design. It was really challenging, but it worked pretty well.”

Everything We Know About The Secret Ending

Rare, But Not Necessarily Hard

Venus Theory is understandably cryptic about the nature of the ending, describes the process of getting to it in no uncertain terms. He says it’s not necessarily difficult to achieve, but requires the player to make a certain, possibly counter-intuitive set of decisions throughout the game. “There are a lot of very specific choices you would have to make to get close to it, and then, effectively, there’s one speech check that you either pass or fail that determines if you get it.”

In fact, he says, it’s rather similar to a different ending that many more players are likely to achieve; it’s just a last-minute speech check that triggers the rarer variant of this ending. “If you play through again, you’re probably thinking you’re getting the other ending that you may have already gotten before, but you failed that speech check, and now you get sort of the hidden ending.” In fact, he says, it’s probably not even going to become the rarest ending; there’s an even more secret one that he expects few players will ever see.

Secret Cutscenes Make Games More Fun

The Hunt Is On

Custom Image by: Katarina Cimbaljevic

Of course, there’s still a lot we don’t know. Discovering all these secret endings will inevitably take weeks of player experimentation. In fact, we don’t even know the full details of all Avowed‘s endings just yet. I suspect we’ll see lots of players savescumming until they fail endgame dialogue checks.

So the hunt is on, and even though I suspect the mystery will be solved in a matter of days, it’s an exciting time to be playing Avowed. Anyone could be the first player to discover the new secret ending – even you, even me – and I can’t wait until they do. I still remember the thrill of everyone gradually discovering Nier: Automata‘s 26 different endings when it first came out. I’m curious to see whether Venus Theory’s…well, theory about which ending is going to be the rarest pans out – I’d love to see Obsidian release a sort of player-choice statistical breakdown like Larian did for Baldur’s Gate 3.

But that’s the real fun of secret endings: they give players something to look for. Even after you’ve played through the game fifteen times, and memorized the position of every single piece of treasure, a secret ending still gives you a new piece of content to look forward to in a game you thought you knew inside and out. It’ll likely be some time until players figure out how to get Avowed‘s secret ending, but I look forward to the day the full details come out.