How to get the Red ending

lone-survivor

I have tried outstandingly hard, for hours now, to get the Red or "bad" ending. In this ending (spoilers obviously) you shoot the man in blue, and you find a bullet wound on yourself as well. You allegedly get this by having poor mental health, however after two separate attempts to completely and utterly destroy my mental health, I still get the blue ending. Not just the blue pill (apparently both start the same) but no gunshot wound on You, no trophy, no red mark on the main menu.

I have even started the whole game over and only shot enemies (earning the Antagonist trophy). I have completely ignored the need for sleep and food, only eating and saving to avoid game overs. I killed the majority of monsters in the game. I gave Hank enough pills to tranquilize an elephant, and told him to kill himself. I am still getting the blue ending. My character hates himself when he looks in the mirror (alternately he laughs maniacally or sees the world burning).

How on earth do I get the red ending if this isn't enough? On the psych report I have an "X" for mental health and an "A-" for blue ending path, insultingly enough. I have no idea if I need to get that A- lower or higher for the Red ending. If relevant I'm playing on PS3/vita, the "directors' cut" edition with the extra yellow/white endings.

Best Answer

It seems the easiest way to get this is in fact to torture Hank (the guy in the gun shop) with the flashlight (torch). After about 40 "ticks" of this I managed to get the red ending (though my mental health was already quite low as noted).

The most efficient way to torture Hank is to stand to his left in the gap where there is no X prompt. Then repeatedly press "flashlight" and "talk" (X and [] on playstation), every time you switch on the flash light you'll torture Hank and cause your mental health to suffer. By mashing "talk" this way you'll be able to torture him once every couple seconds. If you're out of batteries, remember you can take a green pill and sleep to get more. I only needed a single battery (and didn't run out) while torturing hank 40 times.

Note that despite the "requirements" lists on the wiki, only low mental health is required; those are just all ways to lower mental health. It seems like it's nearly impossible to get mental health low enough without grinding some bad mental health, so I recommend torturing poor Hank to get the ending.

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