Outlast Has One of the Most Shocking Endings in Horror Gaming

 

Credit to Outlast At Last! | trivialpunk

Outlast has one of the best endings I have seen in a horror game. I remember the first time I had played this game. It was an experience I will never forget. Struggling to survive inside of an asylum, as I play a journalist trying to collect evidence through a camcorder was a genius idea by the game developers. The thought of being completely helpless, not being able to fight, only to run, really worked for the what the game was going for. 

We follow the story of a man named Miles, who is determined to figure out why an asylum was shut down out of nowhere. He breaks into the building, only to discover that everyone in the asylum is insane, due to extreme experimentation the patients had undergone. Some of the patients now have monstrous like forms, as they hunt down Miles, who is like prey to them. 

Miles goes through so much in this game, and he suffers on another level. He goes through psychological torture, and even gets his fingers sliced off by a crazed lunatic. He is able to escape from all of this, only to end up in the secret underground lab located beneath the asylum. Miles is told by the main scientist that everything must end, and Miles must destroy the one thing that is left alive within the lab. 

The Walrider, is an entity that must have a human host to thrive and survive. The Walrider is a collector of all of the insane patients' minds, and it must be contained by a human host to keep it sustained. Miles goes into the lab to finish off the creature, only to be tortured by the monster itself, and he is successful in winning the battle, despite his brutal injuries. 

Miles slowly walks away from the carnage, but he is suddenly surprised by a swarm of soldiers that surround him. The main scientist tells Miles that he must die, to keep everything he had discovered a secret. Miles is shot to death, but we get a twist ending that left me staring at the screen, trying to process what the hell just happened. 

The scientist freaks out when the screen goes black, and we hear him say that the Walrider has found a new host. 

We get another glimpse of the ending for the DLC known as Whistleblower, where we see what exactly happened to Miles. He saves another character from the asylum, revealing that he is now the new host for the Walrider. This ending left me both pissed off and sad. Miles suffered through so much, only to end up stuck in the asylum, possibly forever. 

It's one of the best endings to a horror game of all time, and I will never forget the shock I felt when Miles died, only to realize that he was indeed going to survive, by becoming a monster that he had tried to kill. 

How I wish we continued to get great horror masterpieces like this in gaming!