Scorn ending, explained | Clarifying the story of Scorn

Ebb Software’s Scorn is a difficult story to decipher, as the single-player game has no cutscenes, explicit dialog, or any prologue to explain the strange, alien world. Taking inspiration from the likes of David Cronenberg and H.R. Giger, Scorn brings a unique form of body horror into the survival FPS genre through its bio-mechanical atmospheres.

Players take on the role of two unnamed, odd humanoid figures, switching protagonists relatively early on. A surface-level reading of the plot does not tell us much of the story, as both characters travel through the corroding, barren world and traverse the same confusing structure.

Scorn is a deeply interpretive game, with no concrete answer as to what any of our characters’ actions mean, however, this is one reading of the game’s plot and strange ending. Warning, as spoilers for Scorn are ahead.

Scorn plot and ending, explained

Scorn is brimming with symbolic meaning and metaphors, allowing players to draw their own conclusions regarding the horrific imagery they encounter. One particular idea Scorn seems to be concerned with is the cycle of life and death, observed through a twisted version of pregnancy and birth.

Both of our character’s introductions take place in a sort of incubation area, wherein the player removes an appendage undoubtedly similar to an umbilical cord from their bodies. Further, nearly all of Scorn’s puzzles revolve around connecting egg-shaped objects to other egg-shaped objects, potentially a metaphor for conception.

Scorn does not view reproduction or birth as positive and seemingly perceives the process as scornful. The remnants of the player’s previous character, through the image of a strange lizard-like creature, latch onto the new playable character. As our character is drained of its life and slowly molded into its weapon, the player kills infant-like enemies which slowly distorts the mother figure, which could be interpreted as a miscarriage.

The game’s final moments sees the character operated on by a mechanical, surgeon like figure. The character’s consciousness appears to become one with the mother-figure, who attempts to carry the character.

Both appear to die during the ‘operation,’ though fighting to survive and ultimately becoming the fleshly amalgamation we see at the end.

Through this lens, Scorn can be viewed as a tragic take on birth with the main character’s journey representing a miscarriage that claims the lives of both mother and child. This is only of many possible interpretations of Scorn, with many more circulating too.