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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 has 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,
00:25because 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, this is
00:31WhatCulture.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 must sacrifice themselves to return
00:42clean drinking water to the wasteland, would have been much more effective had the game not
00:46provided you with a super mutant companion who could easily do it for you and not die from
00:51radiation. In the base game, Fawkes' fatalistic philosophy is what keeps him from going into that
00:56room for you, but due to fan outcry, Bethesda created a DLC to address this. Now granted,
01:01the Fawkes dilemma wasn't the only reason that fans hated the original ending, the true reason
01:06was that it, well, ended the game. So whatever side quests you had left or areas left unexplored,
01:10well tough luck buddy. So Bethesda made Broken Steel to tie up both these controversies at once,
01:15filling a plot hole while also, and more importantly, letting the players continue
01:20exploring the world. In Broken Steel, you survive the process and wake up two weeks later in the
01:24care of the Brotherhood of Steel, who are renewing their fight to cleanse the capital wasteland of
01:29super mutants and the Enclave. You decide to help them because, really, what's the alternative?
01:33Fight against the guys with a giant nuke-throwing robot? No thank you. Broken Steel not only
01:39addressed fan complaints about the ending to Fallout 3, but it also gave them an entire
01:43expansion built off of that, and the new ending here, well, it's significantly more satisfying
01:48as a result. 9. Death of the Outsider, Dishonored 2
01:53One of the most enigmatic figures in the Dishonored series has been the Outsider. It's
01:57always been up in the air as to what, precisely, he is. His motivations are clear enough, though.
02:02He seeks entertainment. That's why he bestowed Corvo and Emily with the powers they used
02:07throughout the two games. The Otano family is interesting to him, and so he nudges them along
02:11because, well, it's just fun. Frankly, though, it was only a matter of time before one of his
02:15playthings decided to fight back. Enter Billy Lurk. Billy Lurk, formerly the companion of
02:21Emily and Corvo during Dishonored 2, takes the centre stage in Dishonored Death of the Outsider.
02:26As the name implies, the whole story is about Billy being fed up with this eldritch weirdo
02:30screwing with people for his own amusement, and conspires to take him down. While Dishonored 2's
02:35ending is just fine on its own, this makes for an excellent epilogue, with harder stealth sections,
02:40cool powers, and at last, some real answers on what exactly the Outsider is. While the last bit
02:46wasn't ever really a problem with the previous games, seeing the biggest question of the franchise
02:50finally get answered 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. Awakened
03:24sees Isaac and Carver 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
03:57the guys making it still knew in their hearts what this series was all about.
04:017. Remind Kingdom Hearts 3
04:04Kingdom Hearts 3 was always going to be controversial. Make a fanbase wait that
04:08long for 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
04:22then ends 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. It's not recommended that you jump into
04:33Remind after finishing the game, as it is a full Back to the Future 2 style reframing of the entire
04:39third act. Here Sora manages to go back in time and use this opportunity to save Kairi from being
04:44killed in the first place. Doing so involves having to work his way through the background
04:48of the 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. 6. Part 4, Azura's Wrath
05:08Other 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
05:45sell very well, there is yet to be, and likely won't be, a remaster of the game with all the
05:49content included. So whenever Sony decides to finally shut down the PS3 servers, and the PS3
05:54PS Store along with it, well, I hope you like watching super old Let's Play videos because
05:58that will be the only way that you are going to see Azura's Wrath's true ending.
06:035. The Answer, Persona 3 Every piece of spinoff or supplementary
06:08material that heavily features the cast of Persona 3 has one thing in common. Every single one of
06:13them is, in their own way, still coping with the death of Persona 3's protagonist, Makoto Yuki.
06:19Even in the material where the former members of S.E.E.S are older and doing their best to move on,
06:25his death remains a very sore subject. And for the starkest demonstration of this,
06:29Atlus made an entire expansion to the original game known as Persona 3,
06:33The Answer. And The Answer takes place a mere two months after the end of Persona 3. The story
06:37revolves around the remaining members of S.E.E.S getting dragged into more supernatural shenanigans,
06:43with a strange force underneath their dorm keeping the world locked on March 31st. The
06:48robot Aegis must keep her found family from tearing itself apart, as the thing under the
06:52dorm forces each of them to confront their past and dangles a dangerously tempting offer in front
06:57of them. The Answer is the apex of Persona 3's dedication to portraying its cast of teenagers as
07:02deeply broken people, leading to a twist that is still debated by the fandom to this day,
07:07while later material shows them doing their best to heal, The Answer bookends Persona 3's story by
07:12saying the equally important message that sometimes grief just breaks you. That's okay.
07:174. Blood and Wine – The Witcher 3 CD Projekt Red as a whole owes its success to
07:23The Witcher and Big G as a character, so when they decided to close the book on their version
07:28of Geralt once and for all in The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt, they went above and beyond to make sure it
07:33was as great a send-off as they could have done. While the base ending is great at doing this in
07:38its own right, the true ending to The Witcher lies in the final DLC for the game, Blood and Wine.
07:43Blood and Wine sees Geralt being sought out by a wealthy royal to handle a large beast that has
07:47been roaming the land and slaughtering anyone it finds. Big G agrees to help, unaware of the
07:52political muck that he's about to go wading into. While not the best of expansions in terms of
07:56story – and that's still Hearts of Stone by a mile – what sets Blood and Wine apart is, well,
08:01the fact that this is the last CD Projekt Red Witcher story. There's a sense of finality to
08:06everything going on in Blood and Wine, and it's no wonder that this expansion is typically the
08:10last thing Witcher fans do in the game. From Geralt getting his own estate in which he can
08:14finally set down some roots, to an ending scene that, without spoiling, is a brilliant send-off
08:18to the viewer from Big G. Blood and Wine is about as perfect a bookend to Geralt's story
08:22as we could have ever gotten. 3. Trespasser – Dragon Age Inquisition
08:28It 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
08:46final DLC, Trespasser. Inquisition's ending was pretty good on its own, with the two DLCs that
08:52followed adding in new areas and expansions to the lore. But Trespasser is the ending to
08:57Inquisition's story. Trespasser picks up two years after the events of the game,
09:01with the Inquisition called in by the largest governments in the area to discuss whether or
09:06not the Inquisition is necessary anymore. It turns out that having a religious militia that
09:10answers to no governing body, with heavily fortified strongholds in every country,
09:14and a spy network with its fingers in every ruler's pies, kind of makes those rulers a
09:19wee bit nervous. Every problem with the idea of the Inquisition is brought out and explored to
09:24the fullest, while 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
09:49New 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. They won't make sense at first, but they all belong to a mysterious traveler
10:08named Ulysses, and in the final DLC, Lonesome Road, Ulysses calls Courier 6 out to an irradiated
10:14stretch of land called The Divide to settle an old beef between them. While the title of
10:19what 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. It actually goes into the backstory
10:29of Courier 6, giving a glimpse, even if it is a short one, of who they were before they were
10:33shot in the head, and it's fascinating. Ulysses, by the way, is one of the greatest villains in the
10:38Fallout franchise, a gravel-voiced philosopher, sympathetic but ultimately dangerous. Although
10:44only one of them is actually speaking, you feel their rivalry in every scene they share. Lonesome
10:49Road, from a design and narrative perspective, is the final word from Obsidian on the Fallout
10:54franchise, 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
11:10come to terms with his guilt and tries to move forward. But anyone who hates themselves to the
11:15extent that Kratos does knows that there's never really an end of it. Kratos needed to have his
11:20past laid out so that he can truly come to grips with it. Enter God of War, Valhalla.
11:25This free DLC for Ragnarok picks up a bit after the event of the main story,
11:29with Kratos and Mimir answering a summons to the Norse realm of Valhalla,
11:34which only those who have died in battle can typically enter. Valhalla has been brilliantly
11:38reimagined into a constantly shifting gauntlet, meant to wear away the worldly regrets of those
11:43who enter so that they may pass into Valhalla unburdened, and Tyr has decided to use this
11:48system to help his friend work through his traumas. Kratos was already the greatest performance of
11:53Christopher Judge's career, but his performance in Valhalla is his magnum opus. A man who
11:58desperately wants to do good and be better, but just needs to forgive himself enough to take the
12:03right steps, is a glorious story. Valhalla isn't just the best ending for God of War Ragnarok,
12:08it is the perfect final note for the character of Kratos.