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All Saros endings are listed here, including any secret endings that the game might have hidden, so you can be sure to get the full experience! Not only that, but if you've finished the game yourself, we also explain every ending and what it means for the story of Saros as a whole, with explanations for some of the game's most significant questions. If you want to know more, we'll explain everything in our full Saros endings guide below.
Warning: From now on the following guide contains major spoilers for the entirety of Saros! Read on at your own peril.
All endings in Saros
There are two endings to Saros' story, as laid out below:
- Main Ending (aka, the bad ending)
- Secret Ending (aka, the good ending)
You have to go through the main ending first no matter what, as completing Saros and getting the bad result then unlocks the steps needed to unlock the good ending.
How to get the Main Ending in Saros
To get the Main Ending, aka the bad ending, in Saros is pretty simple:
- Progress the game to the point where you unlock the Yellow Shore biome, accessed via the Passage.
- Enter the Yellow Shore and progress through until you defeat the Consort boss.
- This will allow you to go even further, beginning a boss fight with the King.
- Defeat the King and choose to attack them afterwards by walking up to them and pressing R1.
- After beating the King to death, pass through the gap in the Yellow around the arena.
This will then trigger a final cutscene, and afterwards you'll be returned to the Passage.
How to get the Secret Ending in Saros
To get the Secret Ending – also called the Good Ending – in Saros, you need to do the following:
- Complete the main ending as shown above, then be returned to the Passage.
- Go to the Echelon 3 camp in Shattered Descent and speak to Kayla, who's hiding behind a door in the main habitat dome.
- Go to the Blighted Marsh and progress until you find a huge red tree. On reaching it, a cutscene will play.
- Go to the end of the Cathedral Biome and visit Nitya's Lab, uncovered just before entering the final boss arena by ringing the bell.
- Watch the Holocache recording in the Lab.
- Go back to the Passage and speak to Kayla in a new cutscene.
- Enter the Banyan Tree to see a new flashback sequence.
- Go back to the Yellow Shore and battle the King again.
- After victory this time, you'll be given a choice as to whether to strike the fallen king or not. Choose to spare him and let him live.
- With the King still alive, progress through the gap in the Yellow Barrier to see a new cutscene and ending to the game.
Main Ending explained
What happens: In the main and first ending, Arjun fights his way to the Yellow Shore in pursuit of Nitya, and ultimately ends up battling the King, the distorted monster at the end of the Yellow. Arjun kills the King and, lured by Nitya's voice, passes through the barrier beyond.
Here Arjun ends up back at the room at the Rue Parée, the brothel that was a significant part of his past back on Earth. Looking for Nitya, instead all he finds is his reflection in the window, which grins nastily and drags him through the glass into a void beyond.
Arjun awakes with Nitya beside him, who convinces him to take the throne. In that moment, he transforms into a copy of the King in a nasty bit of body horror, before sitting on the throne and grasping Nitya's wrist in a possessive way. Our perspective draws back, showing that this whole tableau is held inside some sort of strand of gold energy, and that there are many strands around it.
What does it mean? This ending is ultimately Arjun being corrupted by the Yellow Shore, giving into his desires and becoming the next Yellow King. The Nitya besides him isn't even the real one, but an illusion created by the Yellow to coax and lure him to this point. The other strands suggest that Arjun is just the next in a chain of Kings, each one murdering the previous King in turn.
Secret Ending explained
What happens: In the Epilogue Ending and steps leading up to it, Arjun speaks with Kayla again, as well as the spirit of Kiira, who was one of the members of Echelon 1 alongside Nitya. Kiira reveals that she and Nitya fell in love during their time on Carcosa, forcing Arjun to confront the fact that Nitya did actually move on after she left him, something he had been convinced was impossible.
Returning to the Passage, Arjun then confronts the truth about his past on Earth in another flashback. It's revealed that Sebastian Torres was a former Enforcer and friend of Arjun's that he nonetheless murdered when it seemed as though Torres was going to tell Nitya that Arjun had cheated on her, as well as other unspecified immoral acts. This suggests that the Torres that Arjun has been speaking to on Carcosa is a creation of the Yellow, or just a symptom of his strained sanity (perhaps both).
Arjun tells Sebastian he's sorry and that he regrets what he did, before eventually returning to the Yellow Shore to confront the King again. However, this time after beating the King, Arjun pushes past him without landing the fatal blow and choosing not to take the crown, proving that he's not going to give in to his poisonous desire this time. Having made it to the shore, it seems as though the Yellow is going to try and transform Arjun anyway, until he rips away his sun pendant and throws it down in the water.
At this moment, the transformation stops and Arjun is finally left standing with Nitya on the beach. He apologises to her for what he did, and she comments on the possibility of tomorrow and what it will bring, as well as asking what sort of person he'll be. Arjun stands on the beach as she walks away from him, and as she does so, we see blue and red lights flashing on his face, as if from a police car off-screen.
What does it mean? In this ending, Arjun comes to understand the corrupting nature of his desire and that the best thing he can do is to stop chasing Nitya, thus breaking the cycle of Carcosa in the process. The two revelations of the epilogue are firstly that she found love after him in Kiira, and secondly that Arjun is a literal murderer who killed his friend Sebastian to conceal his infidelity, making a mockery of the idea that he's a good partner to anybody at all. Ultimately, Nitya does not need him, and he does not deserve her.
When he throws down the sun pendant, the symbol of their relationship, it's a way of effectively letting her go, realising that what he wants isn't enough – it's more important what she wants. Without that toxic need to possess Nitya in his soul, the Yellow has nothing to latch onto and can't transform him into the new King, preventing the transformation.
Nitya's comments on the beach are pretty straightforward – it's best for them both to move on and look to tomorrow. Arjun's possessive nature, and the belief that he is entitled to her no matter what he does, is what he needs to get past. If he wants redemption, he also has to finally confront his actions back on Earth: specifically, Sebastian's murder.
What are the Yellow Shore and Yellow King?
The Yellow Shore, sometimes just called "The Yellow", is a cosmic entity that seeks to lure people towards it by exaggerating and corrupting their innermost desires, coercing them to chase those desires all the way to it. On reaching the Shore themselves, they then become the next Yellow King after killing the previous one. This process is referred to as "The Path to the Yellow Shore".
A text log we find in-game suggests that the Yellow Shore's true nature is that it is some sort of eldritch god of Desire and Want. It's also suggested that, because of the elastic nature of time in and around Carcosa, the various Kings all exist simultaneously and forever, even despite subsequent ones deposing them.
It's stated that Nitya built The Constant to seal off the Yellow as much as possible, effectively trying to end the constant cycle of Yellow Kings and block the Path.
The first King we know of was Arnold Delroy, the Commander of Echelon 1, but audio logs show that his comrade Micah Wilde either successfully replaced him, or was at least planning to, so it's possible the King that Arjun battles is either Delroy or Wilde – though in a sense it doesn't matter which one, as the end point of the Path is the same.
All that being said, there's also some implication that Arjun repeatedly dying and coming back to life in the Passage (not to mention the warped chronology of Carcosa) means that he might be many of these Kings, effectively murdering himself in a repeating cycle.
Who is Sebastian Torres?
On Earth, Sebastian Torres was another Enforcer and friend of Arjun's who planned to reveal the fact that Arjun had been cheating on Nitya, as well as other unspecified "lines crossed". Arjun murdered Sebastian to prevent the truth from coming out, but the mental strain of what he'd done exacerbated his already excessive drinking and violent behaviour.
On Carcosa, Sebastian appears as a figure tending the giant tree in the Passage, and it's eventually revealed that this Sebastian is a figment of Arjun's mind (hinted by the fact that Sebastian is the only character in the game who doesn't get a Database entry). It's not clear if this ghost is the influence of the Yellow, or if Arjun's guilt is just projecting a delusion to torment/reassure him, but either way the root of the problem is the same: Arjun's unresolved guilt over killing Torres.
One small note of interest is that Arjun is seen on Earth in a flashback drinking "Torres" brand beer. It's left unclear whether Arjun's fractured mind is jumbling elements together, giving the Sebastian on Carcosa a different surname he associates with the darker moments of his past, or if Arjun drinks that specific brand of beer as a way of remembering Torres and torturing himself with the reminder.
What happened to Nitya?
Much of Nitya's experience on Carcosa remains elusive, but we can determine some specifics. She went to Carcosa with the first Echelon 1 team to get a fresh start away from Arjun, and there fell in love with Kiira. However, the team were corrupted by the Yellow Shore, leading to Delroy becoming the new Yellow King and the others becoming mutated monsters (or in Kiira's case, basically just a spirit).
From what we understand, Delroy tried to make Nitya into a Priestess, but she resisted and rebelled, having finally understood the horror of the Yellow Shore. She went into hiding and created two devices: the Preserver, a machine which was supposed to bring her back to life if she was killed in her mission, and the Constant, an AI computer that would also act as a barrier to cut off direct access to the Yellow Shore, stopping anybody from becoming the next King.
Somehow, Nitya eventually ended up at the Blue Precipice (more on that below), free from the power of the Yellow Shore or the King. There she remains until we finally encounter her at the conclusion of the Secret Ending.
What do the Blue and Red Lights mean?
The blue and red lights visible on Arjun's face in the final shot of the epilogue ending are an interesting visual, obviously reminiscent of police lights and calling back to Arjun's crimes on Earth. There are several possible interpretations that I can see, though they all largely follow the same theme: Arjun taking responsibility for the killing of Sebastian Torres. Here are all the possible meanings that I can think of:
- Arjun is now fully aware of his own crimes. He may never make it back to Earth, but he recognises his own guilt and understands the full horror of what he did. The lights aren't real, just a symbol for him recognising what accountability means.
- Arjun goes back to Earth to hand himself in. The police lights are more prophetic than symbolic: at some point Arjun will manage to escape Carcosa, and will turn himself in for what he did.
- The Yellow is giving Arjun what he now wants. If the Yellow is there to provide people with corrupted versions of what they want, Arjun's desire for punishment, penance, and accountability may mean an illusion of being arrested and held accountable. That seems unlikely though, as the beach is supposed to be free of the Yellow's influence.
- Nothing on Carcosa was real. A world of broken time run by yellow eldritch space gods? What a silly idea: the whole game has clearly been a metaphor, or a drunken dream Arjun had after Nitya left him! Even if it was a purely symbolic process, it still takes Arjun to the point of realising that he needs to acknowledge and pay for his crimes.
What's significant is that in one audio log from Arjun himself, he makes reference to the idea that "blue and red" and the "song" that accompanies it is all he deserves, most likely police lights and sirens. This feeds into the notion that Arjun is riddled with guilt for his actions on Earth, but is trying to suppress it, allowing his ego and desire for Nitya to overrule that guilt.
What is the Blue Precipice?
The Blue Precipice is probably the most mysterious and enigmatic part of Saros lore, something that is alluded to occasionally but never spelt out in great detail. It could be either another god, a visited physical place, a state of mind, or something else altogether. Either way, those at the Blue Precipice seem to find themselves immune to the Yellow's influence.
The Blue Precipice seems to be most associated with those who have freed themselves of desire and think selflessly. Text logs state that Kayla had awareness of the Blue Precipice, though even she didn't know how, and at the last time we see her in the game, planning to do what she can to stop others from reaching the Yellow, her eyes are glowing blue.
Kiira's spirit also states at one point to Arjun that the Yellow Shore could not reach Nitya as "she walked the edge of the Precipice." It's possible that the Blue Precipice is the calm beach that she and Arjun speak on at the end of the game, but again – this is largely theory and hard to prove decisively.
Was it all a dream?
Who can say? Yes, there are elements that seem strange or unreal, but any story about science fiction technology and eldritch gods playing with people's sanity was always going to be weird. There's no real way of knowing just how much of Saros is meant to be taken literally by the end (especially with that final shot of the flashing lights), but real or not, it still brings Arjun to the same realisation about himself and what he's done. I'd say that everything prior to Nitya leaving is probably guaranteed, but as for the rest of it – that's down to the individual.
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