I'll try not to actually give away any plot points but be warned. Obviously if you're reading a guide on how to get different endings you should be prepared for this but just in case.

There are four known endings to the game so far.

Three of these are based on your performance over the course of the game, while the fourth is granted by decoding three images encoded into audio messages that can be heard over certain radio frequencies at certain points of the game, to find three keys needed at the end of the game.

Thankfully, user Kein Zantezuken has data-mined the math needed to trigger the first three, and the community collaborated on finding and decoding the messages, locating the keys, and sharing the locations already for the final fourth ending.

The first three endings are chosen for the player based on milestones they achieve over the course of the game, these are:

• TotalPurePlaytime < 6h: +1 for Circle
  
• TotalPurePlaytime > 12h: +1 for Death
  
• 
  
• Kills > 90: Death+1
  
• Kills > 120: Death+1 (again)
  
• 
  
• DamageTaken > 1900: Death+1
  
• Deaths > 5: Death+1
  
• 
  
• regenTime > 5m: Death+1
  
• regenTime > 5m: Death+1 (repeats twice, might be bug)
  
• 
  
• NearDeathsSurvives > 8: Death+1
  
• 
  
• NPC talks > 25: Leave+1
  
• NPC talks > 35: Leave+1 again
  
• 
  
• HealingTimeFraction calculated as healedTime / healedTimeSegment
  
• HealingTimeFraction > 0.6: Leave +1
  
• HealingTimeFraction > 0.8: Leave +1
  
• 
  
• MemoryTime (spent in memories?) > 5min: Leave+1
  
• doorChecks > 40: Leave+1

And also by default "Circle" starts at a value of 2.

When finished, the game tallies up your total scores for each and does a little comparison logic:

"Death < Leave > Circle" results in the "Leave" ending
"Death = Leave" results in the "Promise" ending
"Leave < Death > Circle" also results in the "Promise" ending
"Leave < Death < Circle" results in the "Memory" ending
"Death < Leave < Circle" also results in the "Memory" ending

In plain English that means
If your Leave score is the highest, you will get the "Leave" ending
If your Death score is the highest, you will get the "Promise" ending
If your Death and Leave are tied, you will get the "Promise" ending
If your Circle is the highest AND your Death and Leave are NOT equal, then you will get the "Memory" ending.

That's a lot of math that may be alien to some so I'll try to provide some examples. It's funny to see the data provided like this because this guide used to contain a bunch of guesses based on the psyche profile and other people's profiles; and I'm happy with how good my inferences were.


To get this ending you'll want to be conservative about killing anything you don't have to, but you also want to balance taking some damage so you can burn up some healing items. As a rule whenever you're hurt try to heal immediately, and heal frequently! Spam interactions on doors you know you can't open(40+ times!). Talk to all the NPC's as much as you can (35+ times). Loiter around on the sequences on the Penrose ship or the Beaches (5m+).


By the numbers, to get this ending you'll want to go FAST. Beating the game in under 6 hours isn't hard. Also ignore all the NPC's. Get off the Penrose and beaches as fast as you can. Like the "Leave" ending above you want to be conservative about killing too many enemies, but it's much more important for you to avoid taking damage as too much taken or too much healing will affect your score; so pick and choose the right enemies you know optimally removing lets you keep those other scores low.


Like I had guessed, a key here is to kill a lot of enemies and get your ass kicked a lot. Kill everything you can, (120+!) while letting things slap you around (1900+ damage!). Time is an opposite factor, you may even consider letting the game run while AFK to ramp your playtime up. Like "Memory" you will also want to avoid talking to any NPC's, and get off the Penrose and beach segments ASAP.
Unlike "Leave" you don't want to use a lot of healing items (called it!), and you'll want to exploit being near-death to rack up 8+ "Death Cheated" events. Finally let enemies or the final boss kill you at least 5 times.

This ending is pretty mysterious and requires you to open the safe right before the final boss.

The three keys you need are:


This can be obtained in the first area, Leng. On the second floor, in the Isolation room (the room with the four cages, red light, to the left of one of the save points) tune your radio to 096.000 and inspect the cage to the bottom right.

*be careful as once you complete this floor and descend you wont be able to return*

For people having trouble picking this one up, here is an example of the image that was decoded to find this one:



Also in Leng. On the eighth floor, passed the dark STCR room you need a flashlight to traverse, is another dark room with two beds with paintings over them. Tune your radio to 065.000 and search the bookshelves between the two beds.


This can be obtained at Rotfront, in the backroom of the Itou store. It is labeled "Backroom" on the map. Tune your radio to 240.000 and search the pile of boxes towards the back of the room, beneath the collection of white books on the shelf.

*be careful as once you complete this section flesh seals this whole area off and you wont be able to come back*

Once you have all the keys BE SURE TO HAVE THEM IN YOUR INVENTORY before you finish the final eclipse puzzle in Rotfort, where you spin the phases of the moon on the way to open the big hole so you can crawl through. When you crawl through, turn towards your right and look down to see the safe you need to unlock with them. Again you NEED THEM IN YOUR INVENTORY before you crawl through the hole or else you will be stuck in there and need to reload a prior save point. There is no returning to this room when you pickup the book and advance to the next.

This is just a bonus section of my interpretation of the plot. You can totally skip this if you're just trying to find out how to get the different endings. I'm only including these here because every discussion about getting the endings comes with a free discussion of what it all means



Much of the game's plot takes place in the mind of Ariane as she's trapped in the cryochamber of the Penrose that has crashed on some alien world at the far corner of the universe, thousands and thousands of cycles past its expiration date. We see this crashed wreck on the planet's surface in cutscenes multiple times throughout the course of the game, but we know it can't be present on any of the colonized worlds the actual gameplay takes place on. Ariane is a bioresonant, this is discussed multiple times in notes. All the Replikant units are made using this poorly understood bioresonant technology, that is implied to have alien origins. The glimpses of the alien world the Penrose has crashed on shows alien architecture on it, and the game begins with us having a vision of Elster descending down some alien steps into the core of the planet the Penrose has crashed on.

Radio frequencies and an underlying harmony of the universe are recurring themes in the game, and it's my interpretation that, despite having crashed on some alien world in some corner of the universe, because of the presence of this same alien matter on the planet the Penrose crashes on with Ariane in the pod she is able to reach out with her bioresonant abilities while still in stasis and tap into the collective unconscious of all the Replikant units made using the same stuff all the way back in the system the game proper takes place in. This is also supported by numerous notes found throughout the game describing Replikant's radio sensitivities and susceptibility/reliance on bioresonance. We also find notes from Ariane describing her long agonizing suffering in cryo stasis as being a hellish place between life and death, a restless nightmare. Thus, Ariane in her desire to be free from the eternal prison she's trapped in, taps into the bioresonant network that spans the universe and drives Falke and the other Replikants mad. Elster is awakened/dredged up somehow and charged with navigating this entire nightmare to put an end to Ariane's suffering, but suffers from confusion as she also grapples with her own memories of the Gestalt she is based on.

Alina Seo is the Gestalt that Elster's Replikant personality is based on, and also the photo of the girl Ariane saw that made her think about joining the military in the first place. The story is a cycle of the two of these individuals looking for eachother but never being able to find one another. Alina is presumably long dead, the war long over, by the time Ariane is joining the military and being partnered up with a Replikant that is based on the very girl she was hoping to meet. It's possible she has some inkling of that truth via her bioresonance powers and would explain why she is so eager to share stuff from Alina's era and the war with her, but it's important to note that the envelope on the Penrose that gives hints as to Elster's origins is still sealed when we find it, so Ariane may not know that she's found the person she was looking for this entire time. Elster has been so turned around by being awoken by Ariane that at one point you're even carrying around a photo of your past Gestalt-self and trying to find Alina.

Regardless, Ariane's suffering manifests in her projecting her thoughts and Elster across the universe back to Leng, along with enough alien transmissions and trauma to cause a complete meltdown in the system among all the Gestalts and Replikants in a kind of psychic armageddon. The trip through Leng and Rotfront is simultaneously a physical and metaphysical journey deeper into the psyche of Ariane until you're finally about to confront her again (at least in most endings) and bring some resolution to her suffering. The game jumps back and forth between being in a metaphysical space within Ariane's mind, stranded on the alien world (a lot of cutscenes, look for the red lake, snow, and alien ruins) and being in physical space back in the solar system as everything comes crumbling down from the psychic emergence (all the fleshy hellscapes).

Isolde/Isa Itou and Erika Itou are a sticking point I cannot quite place. I can't figure out Isa's relevance and how she gets wrapped up in this and appears on both Leng and Rotfront. As a Gestalt she shouldn't be present or able to travel between these locations in the way that Elster, Adler, and Falke exist simultaneously in these locations. I need to re-digest all the information the game presents on both Itou sisters again. The presence of the King in Yellow in their families bookstore is a link, as is Erika Itou's presence in Alina Seo's unit(??IIRC), but I believe that would make Isa Itou lost in time and space as there's a significant gap in time (at least over 14 years?) between when Elister was created from Alina and departed with Ariane into space. Perhaps it's the reality of her impossible situation catching up to her on Rotfort that causes her to disintegrate.