Tequila Works’ RiME for PS4, PC and Xbox One is a spiritual adventure game through concepts of mysticism, loss, acceptance and ascension. For gamers who managed to complete the game but are still a bit confused about the game’s story and ending, this article might help you piece some of the things together.

The game starts with the boy in tattered clothes and a red cape. He’s washed ashore after brief flashbacks of a violent storm set the stage for his adventure ahead.

After landing on the idyllic island, the boy begins to wander around and discovers mystic totems and relics scattered about the island. Upon activating the relics the boy discovers a spirit fox who emerges from one of them and begins to guide him through the challenges ahead.

Things start simple. The boy climbs and navigates his way around the gorgeous island, facing off against very little in the way of obstacles. He begins to find that there’s more to the island than he originally thought. Orbs work as energy to open up pathways, and golden keys gain him access to hidden and locked away passages.

The fox continues to lead the boy deeper into the island toward a giant ivory tower.

Slowly the boy begins to have flashbacks of how he reached the island, with a violent storm on a dark night rushing over his memory. A man in a red cloak points him in a direction that he doesn’t understand, but he follows nonetheless.

Deeper into the island does the fox lead the boy.

Harder does the challenges become.

Nevertheless, the boy feels as if he’s completing some purpose, and the fox is intent to make sure that the boy is never led astray. However, their journey becomes difficult when a winged monster with a skull on its head begins to terrorize the boy and the fox.

The fox helps the boy activate a series of wind contraptions to call down lightning, which darkens the sky and damage the bird monster.

The darkened skies provides the boy with a safe passage through the island. However, new terrors await him… specters who have been unable to find rest.

The specters haunt the boy and attempt to grapple the spirit from his body. He fights through them and continues to follow the fox.

He’s able to reactivate ancient mechs that are used as keys to reach the doorways leading to the spire at the center of the island.

The boy continues to see flashbacks, this time of the man in the red cloak falling overboard a boat during a dark and stormy night. The boy attempts to grab the man but the cloak tears as the man falls into the water.

The boy awakens to find himself and the golden mechs having reached the spire at the center of the island.

One by one the mechs sacrifice themselves to give their energy and bodies to open the doors leading toward the center of the tower.

The boy laments the loss of the two-legged mechs that he helped restore as they made their way through the specters toward the center of the island.

Eventually the boy is left with nothing… save for the spirit fox.

The fox begins to give what power it has left to activate relics around a larger statue that sits at the center. The boy is able to activate the giant relic at the top of the tower amidst the ruins, but this drains the last remaining essence of the fox’s power, causing it to fade away in the arms of the boy.

Left alone and destitute, the boy screams out from the agony of his loneliness.

His despair causes the energy from the final relic to turn him to stone. An image that the boy encountered many times throughout his journeys through the island. A fate for those who gave up, failing to muster the courage to complete the pilgrimage.

However, the boy doesn’t completely let himself wallow in eternity as a salt statue. He breaks free, but he’s only a shell of his former self. He has one final task… to open the tower once and for all and have the light shine through from the sky up above.

The boy manages to break the chains and free the light. In the process he transforms, glowing gold from having completed his task.

The boy’s reward is a passageway through the light, and a vision for the truth.

The vision reveals to the boy that during the storm on the boat that night, it wasn’t the man who fell overboard but it was him. The boy was wearing a red raincoat at the time and the sleeves ripped when his father attempted to pull him back aboard. The boy was lost to the sea.

Back at the tower, eventually the young boy accepts his fate and leaps into the center of the spire to finally ascend.

In the final moments of the game the boy’s father is seen at home where he languishes over the loss of his son.

Upon returning to his lost child’s room he sees a spirit of his son on the boy and they embrace one last time before the boy disappears. A fragment of the red cape the boy wear is left in the grasp of his father’s hand… but it doesn’t last for long as a swift wind blows and the father finally accepts the fate of his child and lest go of the cloth as the credits begin to roll.

TL;DR: The boy died after falling overboard while on a boating trip with his father during a dark and stormy night. The island that the boy washed up on was a spiritual journey, a way for him to prove his worthiness to let go of the past, accept his fate, and ascend. He had to overcome fear, sorrow and despair before earning a right to say goodbye to his father who was still alive in the corporeal world. The boy makes the journey with the aid of a spirit fox, who represented a guide through the challenges and tricky situations the boy had to overcome to reach his destination. Upon ascending the spire and making the journey beyond, he met with his father one last time in the real world by appearing to his father as a specter very briefly. This gave his father closure, since his dad didn’t know if his son was still alive or not. But seeing him as a spirit let him know that he had passed on.