The Secret Morality System (Metro Exodus)
The best ending in Metro Exodus is all about morality. All the Metro games secretly score you, and feature optional endings depending on your choices — Metro Exodus does the same, and you’ll never even know it. Make kind decisions, avoid killing innocents, and try to save your crew, and it’s possible to accidentally unlock the best possible ending.
At the very end of the game, the Metro Exodus crew work together to find a hidden radiation cure in a damned city. The green cure actually works, but the main character can actually die if everyone on the team doesn’t work together to give him a blood transfusion. If everyone hates you, they’re a lot less likely to share — and if you survive, you’ll help build a thriving community in an area safe from the terrible radiation covered most of the Earth. Not a bad way to ride out the apocalypse.
The God-Thing (Darkwood)
Finally out on consoles in 2019, the hidden ending in Darkwood is so wild, it absolutely must get on this list — even if the game technically came out much earlier on PC. At the end of Darkwood, your hero finally returns home having escaped the endless forest. Except, things seem strange — and if you ignore the strangeness, you can simply go to bed and rest peacefully forever.
But, if you investigate the odd noise in the apartment building basement, or check the pulsating corners of your home, you’ll uncover a nightmarish reality. You’ll awake on the edge of an unknowable god-being, the naked bodes of living hosts choking the knotted halls of a massive tree. Thanks to a discarded flamethrower from a defeated soldier, you can burn it all down. You’ll die in the process, but you’ll end Darkwood’s horrific visions once and for all.