The Forgotten City: How To Beat The Final Boss With Words

The final battle in The Forgotten City is a war of words. We won’t get into the spoiler-y details — just trust us, if you want to get the true ‘canon’ ending, you’ll need to defeat the boss with well-chosen words. All the bosses in The Forgotten City can be talked down, making you feel exceedingly clever when you successfully pry through their vocal defenses and defeat them in a well-reasoned debate. You can’t just throw out epic put-downs, you’ve got to convince these guys instead of egging them on. And that means appealing to your nature.

And the final opponent absolutely cannot be defeated with nasty words. The only way to beat him is to let him do all the talking, and then bouncing his words back at him. You need to make the villain that’s been behind the entire time loop see the error in his ways. And that isn’t easy. You seriously need to make the exact, specific choices — one wrong selection, and the big bad will become a real final boss. This game isn’t about fighting, so if you want to earn the real canon ending and save the city, this is how to do it.

More The Forgotten City guides:

How To Get The Golden Bow | How To Unlock The Great Temple & Find All 4 Plaques | How To Elect Galerius For Magistrate

Final Boss | What Dialogue To Pick To End The Game Peacefully

The final boss, the god that enforces the Gold Rule in The Forgotten City, can be talked down like all the other bosses in the game. You don’t need to kill him, you just need to choose the right words.

To talk down a god, you can’t appeal to your values as a person of the present day and you can’t just tell him he’s wrong. You need to use his words to slowly convince him — let him discover the mistakes on his own through discussion. That’s the only way to force him to see the truth. It can take multiple retries, so if you’re struggling to figure out the exact words you must speak to beat him, you’ll find all the exact choices required below.

Start by asking all questions in Dialogue Option #1 and Dialogue Option #2.
- What’s your story?
- What is this place?

First Phase: During this opening phase, you need to make certain selections to unlock conversation options in the second phase. You can choose more / different options here and you won’t fail. Just make sure to go through all the choices listed below before moving on.

Are you responsible for the Golden Rule?
What do you consider a sin?
That principle is not as easy to apply as it sounds.
I’ve seen some terrible things here that you didn’t consider a sin. How could you let them happen?
Experiments on the Golden Statues.

She wouldn’t want to be experimented on if she was gilded.
This seems like an extremely literal interpretation of the rule.
If our language is full of ambiguity, doesn’t that make the rule inherently subjective and unreliable?
No, of course not. Never mind.
It’s no wonder people say the gods are cruel. This just shows how unreliable and subjective your moral code is. You’re no better at judging right from wrong than any human.

No, but that’s my point. Nobody’s grasp of right and wrong is so perfect they can be trusted with all this power. You’ve become a tyrant.
And if you did, you’d be proving my point.
Let’s talk about something else.
That’s all the questions I had.

Second Phase: During this phase of the conversation, selecting a wrong choice will cause the god to attack.