Starting a new game can be a disorienting experience — you’ve got to learn the controls, follow tutorials, and get your bearings before you can even begin to think about finding secrets. These 11 games don’t care. We’re taking a look at games that hide huge secrets right at the start, and some of them are incredibly easy to miss.
These secrets are some of my favorites. This isn’t just a 1-Up Mushroom in Mario — these secrets are significant. We’ve got secret endings, hidden paths, hard-to-find collectibles, and much more. It’s almost impossible to find (most) of these secrets yourself, and some of them have entered the lexicon as common knowledge every gamer should know. If you don’t know about the chainsaw in Doom 2 we’ll teach you below.
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Connecting The Final Dot [The Witness]
The Witness is all about inspiration. And once you’ve learned all the tricks in The Witness, you can solve the biggest line-drawing puzzle of them all. What makes The Witness truly special is that you don’t any unique information. If you were open-minded and curious enough, you could solve this puzzle right away without having to play the rest of the game. If you do play the rest, it does a good job revealing how you can interact with the world — enough that you’ll finally be able to solve the puzzle staring you right in the face in the beginning area.
In The Witness, you solve puzzles by drawing lines. That’s all there is. But the puzzles are wildly varied, becoming more complex and curious as you explore the island. Eventually, you’ll learn that there are hidden puzzles in the environment itself. Just by aligning the angles of the background together in just the right way, you can draw lines on the world itself.
That’s where the final puzzle comes in. The complete the game and reach the credits, you just need to draw the ultimate line puzzle. By lining up a line with the sun, you can solve and unlock the exit door to the island within minutes of the gaming booting up. It’s an awesome feeling discovering this one on your own.
Turn Around For Chainsaw [Doom 2]
Here’s a much simpler to explain secret. In Doom 2, you can turn around and discover the all-mighty chainsaw immediately. It’s literally just sitting there right behind you. Otherwise, it’ll take awhile before you get the chainsaw in the rest of the game. Very handy for high difficulty playthroughs, giving you an instant upgrade to your melee attack power. Why punch when you can eternally stunlock pinky demons with your chainsaw?
Don’t Get Involved [Far Cry 4 & Far Cry 5]
Far Cry 4 and Far Cry 5 each have an alternate ending you can unlock right at the start of the game. These are pretty well-known at this point, but that doesn’t make them any less cool. Both of them give you a choice, and you can choose to not cause any trouble. If you don’t get involved with the story, don’t rattle any cages, then you’ll leave with your life. It’s a pretty funny inversion to the call-to-action in most games. Now you can refuse the call.
In Far Cry 4, you’re invited to dictator Pagan Min’s palace for a meal. When Min is called away to torture one of his enemies, he’ll ask you to please sit still and wait. Most of us aren’t that patient. But, if you actually do sit and wait for 10+ minutes, the boss bad guy returns and you leave the country safely in a secret ending.
Far Cry 5 has a less elaborate mirror. At the start of that game, your sheriff deputy goes to arrest the evil leader of a sadistic cult. When you’re tasked with putting the cuffs on him, you can simply wait and refuse. Walking out and avoiding the bloody confrontation with the cult that ensues.
Discover more secrets found right at the start of our favorite games on the next page.
