From giant blue women to undead abominations to what I am convinced is anhomage to the city of Yharnham, there’s a lot aboutRemnant 2that raises questions. In typical Souls-like fashion, the lore is as deep as it is impenetrable, so by the end of your first playthrough, you’ll probably be a little bit lost. It certainly took me a while to get my head around what exactly I had been doing the whole time. What seems like a fairly straightforward case of “keep moving forward and kill all the bosses” is but a thin veneer over something much deeper.
It’s a story that spans worlds, timelines, and even realities. Put very simply, a primordial evil known as “The Root” is spreading from dimension to dimension, corrupting everything and everyone it comes into contact with. As you travel between worlds, you will witness various civilizations and peoples in various states of decline trying their best to delay the inevitable. At the behest of an enigmatic alien being, “The Keeper of The Labyrinth”, the protagonist gathers three Index Segments (which is more complicated than it sounds), powerful relics that can be used to defeat the root once and for all. Combining the three segments forms the Index that can open a portal on the original Earth, which has been totally overrun by The Root.
It’s here, at the end, where things get really confusing. The protagonist, The Keeper, and Clementine, a powerful psychic, arrive back on the original Earth to destroy the root at the source, and a hell of a lot happens in a relatively short space of time. I’m going to try and break it all down for you here. Also, I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this, you have finished the game, so obviously, big spoilers ahead.
The Keeper, who has taken on a humanoid form, explains that now that he has the Index, he can breach the Blackened Citadel, setting up a showdown with the source of The Root, the monstrous Annihilation. What follows is the most spectacular (although not quite the hardest) battle in the whole game. Taking the form of an immense dragon, Annihilation pursues you relentlessly with all manner of devastating attacks. He has a sword, he can teleport, and can summon giant lightning balls. He also, like all good final bosses, has multiple stages to overcome. It’s quite an encounter.
Related:Remnant 2 Takes Half-Life’s Title As King Of The Dodgy Platforming Section
The celebrations once you defeat him are short-lived though. As it turns out, Annihilation cannot be defeated. While he prepares to finish you off, gathering his strength, The Keeper proposes one last solution. Not much is stated explicitly, but The Keeper makes it clear that there is only one path remaining. If Annihilation cannot be killed, all that remains is to reset the universe in the hope that Annihilation does not exist in the next cycle. How exactly this can be achieved is unclear.
Clementine understands straight away though, and with almost no hesitation she takes the Index from The Keeper and accepts her fate. Using the Index, Clementine is able to draw the entire universe into herself. All the people and places you have encountered on your travels fade away as Clementine essentially becomes the universe. After that, everything goes black, and it looks like it’s all over. Clementine has made the ultimate sacrifice, and everything has been destroyed in the hope that it might one day be rebuilt. That would be more than enough to take in on its own, but there is also an important post-credits scene if you stick around though.
In it, we see The Keeper approach the Index, which is apparently all that’s left of Clementine. As he turns away, it shatters, spreading through the universe and restoring reality as it goes. It seems as though The Root still exists, but things have been reset to a point before it became too powerful to stop. Finally, we cut to the protagonist waking up in a field somewhere, and then that’s it. Roll credits for the final time, and I distinctly remember watching them go by in a haze of confusion and disbelief.
Before I say anything else, I want to point out how cool it is that Remnant’s ending makes themany worlds setupand the ability tore-roll your gamepart of the narrative, almost canonically. We now know that Remnant 2’s universe is cyclical in nature, which ties neatly into how the game actually plays. It’s also implied that Annihilation is something of an inevitability, which again is reflected by him being one of the very few parts of the game that is fixed in place, appearing on every run-through in the same location.
RELATED:Remnant 2: The Best Weapons In The Game, Ranked
As far as the ending itself goes, there are a couple big questions that need answering. Exactly who or what is The Keeper (and how did he continue to exist after Clementine absorbed the universe?), and where is Clementine? Did she die? Or did she wake up in a field somewhere like the protagonist? All questions that DLC may resolve perhaps, but there is a fairly clear direction for the future. The Root hasn’t been vanquished altogether, and the reset basically represents a second chance for our heroes to stop Annihilation before he appears again.
Questions also remain about Annihilation himself. During the fight there are moments where his skull splits open, and a human figure can be seen inside, apparently controlling the dragon. Could this be a corrupted dreamer, one of The Root’s puppets they used as a gate to invade Earth? If so there is a lot more left to learn about the terrifying Root dragon, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see him return.
We probably won’t know much more until more content is released, but it’s a lot of fun to puzzle over what little we do know right now. Hopefully, this helps clarify exactly what went down during the final moments of the campaign. It’s a lot to take in while it’s happening. I’ll probably play through the game a few more times, so who knows, I might discover something vital before we get to see any DLC. Remnant 2 was made to be played again and again, and that’s what I’m going to do.
