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Nobody Wants To Dielives true to its name, depicting a futuristic society where to avoid death, the wealthy transfer their consciousness to younger bodies and effectively live forever. This future is stylized like the setting of a 1920 noir thriller, but cars fly, and buildings are impossibly high.
You’ll spend your time in the game making choices while trying to figure out who the murderer really is, but the game ends without clear answers. Well, the answers are there, but they aren’t spelled out for you, so read on to understand what exactly happened in this dystopian New York.
Spoilers Ahead For The End Of The Game!
The Plot
The plot of Nobody Wants To Die follows Detective James as he tries to uncover boththe murder of Edward Greenand the evil machinations ofwhoever is killing New York’s elite.The answer to these mysteries is the same no matter what ending you get, so it is best to cover these things first.
Who Is The Murderer?
Throughout the game, you’ll be contacted by someone known asthe Stranger, a mysterious voicethat seems to know more than he lets on. He seems to be behind several murders, at the very least,the killing of Edward Green, the initial case that James is given at the start of the game.
The game tries to excuse the seemingly magical abilities the Stranger/Murderer has by claiming that they can hack into people’s Ichorite(this is where the consciousness is stored in the game’s universe), but the answer goes beyond that. The reality is thatthere is no Stranger, he is a hallucination James is having due to his desynchronization.
You see, James died during a train wreck, but he was given a new body by the police department. Yet he ishaving trouble syncing with this new body, as seen by the several hallucinations he has during the game;the Stranger is simply another oneof these.
James isn’t the only one affected by this murderous voice, with several other characters hearing it too, although it might be different for each individual.Edward Green heard this voice too, for he has changed bodies over five times already, making him the oldest individual in the world.
Therefore,no one murdered Edward Green, insteadhe took his own life. The recordings found at the scene of the crime show him pleading for his life, but we now know thathe was talking to himself, for he had beensuffering from desynchronization for decadesalready.
What Was Green’s Goal?
The mastermind behind everything was, in fact, Edward Green, but what was he trying to achieve? Well, over his several lifetimes,Green could see that the system could not sustain itselffor much longer, not only because of the riots that were growing among the common people, but also due to the increasing number of desynchronization cases.
This is whyhe planned to kill New York’s elite, removing them from the picture andletting humanity move past this need for cheating death. It isn’t clear if the plan was completely his own or if the voice of the Stranger guided his hand, but he even drank a poison that corrupted his Ichorite, ensuring that his next death would be the last.
The Endings, Explained
The game culminates with a confrontationbetween James and Jane Salma, with the latter inhabiting the body of James’ partner Sara. Your final choice is to either shoot or not shoot Salma, which gives a slight variation to the final scene, although not shooting Salma gives the most extensive endings.
Anguish
If you only get this ending, you might have reached the conclusion that the Stranger is a real person, which in turn gives arather unsatisfying cutscene.You get this ending bydoing everything the Stranger tells you to do, and then telling Sara that you thinkthe Stranger is behind everything.
If you shoot Salma or not, it doesn’t matter since they survive anyway, and you always die from your wounds. The next sceneshows James trying to get to an island, with Rachel (James’ late wife) waiting for him, but several tendrils representing the Ichorite grab James and pull him away.
The game ends with a shot of a data bank,James’ name inscribed inside, clearly waiting for the police department to give the detective a new body. This ending suggests thatpeople’s Ichorite isn’t just datawith information on an individual’s memory and personality, buttheir “soul” or essence, and that they are trapped in the data bank until they die or are given a new body.
This will likely lead to the age of subscription going from 21 to 18, escalating the riots to unprecedented records and forcing the government to take drastic measures. It would start the bleak future that Green was trying to prevent, and humanity will continue to suffer from desynchronization until there is no one left.
End Of Deadly Dreams
You get this ending bynot listening to the Stranger, deducing thatGreen is behind everything, andnot shooting Salmaat the end. If youshoot Salma, you both die, and youget the Anguish ending; the only difference here is thatyou left Sara without a body.
Getting this ending means thatJames has come to terms with the fact that there is no Strangerand that humans aren’t meant to live for this long. This is why he then takes the same poison Green and Rachel took before their demise and jumps off a building, ending it all.
With his Ichorite removed,James can die a true death, which is why he washes up on the shore of the same island as in the Anguish ending. Now, it is a warm sunny day. James is greeted by Rachel, being able to reunite with his beloved and leaving the earthly plane behind.
This ending allows Green’s plans to move forward,preventing the age of subscription from going down. While people are still forced by law to pay the subscription, this blow to the elite of the world might give way for humanity to return to a more natural state, where death is part of everyday life.
