Complete Devastation: Knights in the Nightmare Ending Analysis

Zolgonark: an evil zombie dragon from Hell. Credit: Square Faction

I finally finished Knights in the Nightmare, and boy, the ending's a doozy. (SPOILERS, obviously.)

The whole game had been building up to Wilmgard's (the Wisp's) final confrontation with Lord Zolgonark, the King of the Underworld, who had been summoned to Earth (or whatever the realm between Asgard and the Underworld is called). The battle's pretty epic, with three heads to defeat and a demonic soul that continues to live on after the body's destruction. Just before the player reduces Zolgonark to skin and bones, however, they can use a key item on him, and he will say:

"Order is nothing but an empty world. You know this."

Keep those words in mind.

Next, Wilmgard must fight Melad Margus, the angel Melissa's form upon absorbing Zolgonark's corpse. If Wilmgard loses, the narrator declares that Margus will devastate the universe, rending it asunder with the forces of chaos. There is something hopeful about this outcome, however, for after destruction comes rebirth.

The ending the player receives upon Wilmgard's victory is much bleaker.

When Wilmgard defeats Melad Margus, has he saved the universe from destruction
or stamped out its only hope for renewal? Credit: Lacrima Castle Message Boards

Zolgonark's monsters have killed EVERYONE in the world. Seriously. There are no more knights, no more commoners, no more Tiamats, and no more Westkin. Wilmgard's soul and the angel Maria are left to wander aimlessly in the desolated land for eternity, just as Zolgonark predicted. This isn't even an Adam and Eve scenario, as Wilmgard doesn't have a body with which to repopulate the world, and Maria's a different kind of being altogether.

There is hope in the fact that Asgard (read: Heaven) still exists, but little affection can be had for its angel inhabitants, considering their lack of compassion for the suffering Tiamats and Westkin, as well as their indifference to the whole Zolgonark affair.

The finale is the culmination of all the uncertainty the player has felt the whole game; uncertainty about what's happened, why it happened, who the Wisp is, what the Wisp is doing, and most of all, if it should be doing what it is doing. Wilmgard cut down anything and anyone who stood in his way, and now he is left with nothing - a powerful conclusion to an excellent story.