Pathfinder: Kingmaker – The Long Road to the Secret Ending

Those of you who know your Pathfinder: Kingmaker are probably aware that the game has some well-hidden secret ending. But if you’re a normal person and upon learning about this ending, you thought to yourself that it was cool that it existed, but no way you were going through the trouble of figuring out how to get there, you might not realize just how stupidly convoluted that whole process is.

If that’s the case, you should check out this PC Gamer article that provides a reasonably concise, but still pretty lengthy, breakdown for how to uncover Kingmaker’s ultimate secret. Here’s a quick excerpt to get you started:

“We knew from the very beginning that we wanted to have a ‘secret’, hard to achieve ending to the game,” says lead narrative designer Alexander Komzolov, “and that it must be tied to Nyrissa’s romance. Our goal was to place hints about it throughout the game, and drop a mega-hint near the finale. We planned that gamers would play the Kingmaker ‘normally’, attain a regular romance and a regular ending while being constantly ‘lured’ by the prospect of a ‘secret romance ending’, to inspire thoughts like ‘is it in the game, or is the game messing with me?'”

When you meet Nyrissa she’s an ally, pretending to be a simple nature spirit called the Guardian of the Bloom. Over the course of Kingmaker you learn she’s behind the troubles blighting your land, sending armies of fey monsters and manipulating other villains into attacking.

But—via one particular sidequest where you win a debate organized by a demigod and then risk squandering your reward by demanding as your prize that the demigod tells you about your true love—you learn this fairytale figure can be redeemed. And, yes, romanced.