You’d be forgiven for not realising that Dredge has more than one ending. The indie fishing sim stuck its puckered tentacles onto me last weekend and wouldn’t let go. Within ten hours I’d finished the game, completing nearly every achievement as I did so, before I heard rumblings of a secret ending doing the rounds on social media. Was this a Mew-under-the-truck situation, or was there a kernel of truth at the centre of this writhing monstrosity of a rumour?
If it wasn’t already obvious from the headline and the first paragraph of this feature, there are big spoilers for Dredge coming up. Like, really big. Please play this game before reading on. It doesn’t take that long and I really enjoyed it, not half thanks to the suspenseful narrative being dangled in front of you on one of your own rods. So load it up, finish things off – it’ll be worth it, I promise. Done? Lovely.
Dredge is a game of vibes and hints. The darkness hints at what lurks just outside your peripheral vision. The monsters aren’t horrifying designs, they’re hidden. Much like the Xenomorph on the Nostromo, what you can’t see is far more terrifying than what you can. You regularly stumble upon the devastating aftermath of the monsters – the acid blood that’s melted through the ocean, if you will – and try to piece together what happened to this peaceful fishing village and the surrounding seas.
The same goes for the narrative. You navigate the world at the behest of a mysterious old man who lives near Greater Marrow, as he sends you to each new area in pursuit of another strange artefact. The Collector, as he is known, will tell you select secrets about the world and these items, but generally keeps up his aura of mystique in lieu of overburdening you with information. But, unless you happened upon one particular island in the middle of the ocean, his identity and what happened to this stretch of ocean remain unknown.
The first ending isn’t disappointing. Well, it wasn’t for me. Dumping the artefacts in the ocean sees a woman drawn up from the sea. Her face then fills the sky in an ominous manner and then – credits. There’s no explanation, no hints at what will happen next, until you see Greater Marrow burning as developers’ names scroll past. You’ve unleashed a devastating force and likely killed everyone you’ve ever met. But there are so many questions. You can re-read those letters you’ve picked up to glean new hints, or simply dwell on the horror you’ve just witnessed. But there’s no explanation.
There’s no explanation until you find the secret ending, that is. I’m sure some people stumbled upon this ending first, but I thought I’d explored every island in the game and had still somehow missed the old Mayor stranded in an unexplored corner of the map. He’s equal parts fearful and cryptic, and points you towards the lighthouse keeper who has eyed you with suspicion since you arrived in Greater Marrow.
I won’t go into all the details, but this sets into motion an alternative ending, which goes a lot further to explain the spooky happenings in the game. You find out the Collector’s identity, some of the reasons for what’s happening in the region, and go some way to figuring out your place in this puzzle. It’s revelatory without straight-up explaining everything to you, with a twist that throws your entire experience on its head. Maybe clever players will have worked it out already, but it shook my little fishing world, feeling as earned as it did revolutionary. But some players will have turned the game off already, not knowing there was another ending.
Developer Black Salt Games trusts its players to accept the ‘bad’ ending as the results of their actions – but it also trusts that its story is good enough to force players back onto the ocean in order to learn more. Maybe there was a message in a bottle you missed, a key item that unlocked the truth, or indeed a stranded mayor on a desert island to set the record straight. Like the monstrosities lurking in the shadows, you’ve got to work to understand Dredge, to look deeply to uncover its secrets, and it’s incredibly rewarding when you do so. Just when you think you’re done with Dredge, it reels you back in, and I’ve never been happier to get hooked on a game all over again.