The RPG LISA: The Painful is well-known among indie gamers for its range of choices with often dire consequences. Whether you choose to have Brad sacrifice his arms, his items, or his party members and each ultimatum, your party usually ends up punished in some way.
However, while these moments affect the party’s chances of survival from moment to moment and encourage players to shake up their strategies, they do not affect the ending sequence. There are three epilogues, each of which depends on less obvious choices made throughout the game.
3. Joyful ending
This ending requires players to have Brad’s party use Joy at least once before finishing the game. Unlike other endings, however, this does not have an epilogue and simply ends after Brad’s mutation sequence.
Essentially, this ending is just an achievement to unlock. Brad battles the remnants of the Rando Army, follows Buddy, and has his final conversation with her before begging for a hug and collapsing.
After the credits roll, Brad crawls to her, and gets one word out, “Lisa”. Coupled with the Joyless ending, this reveals that his deepest desire has always been to redeem himself for failing to protect his sister from their abusive father - something that he has ultimately failed to do by going on a murderous rampage to save Buddy.
2. Joyless ending
This ending is accomplished by completing the game without using Joy. It comes with an epilogue that reveals the backstory behind Joy.
An unknown speaker explains that Joy is useless to those who funded its invention - but that it does have a certain benefit. Those who take Joy, regardless of dosage, are doomed to fixate on their deepest desire and then mutate upon either its fulfillment or failure. This means that even though Brad had quit using Joy for Buddy’s sake, he was doomed from the start.
Another unknown speaker dismisses this, as he already knows. He had planned for Joy to spread throughout the land of Olathe to mutate its denizens and then take over what remains of the wastes.
This is revealed to be Dr. Yado, an enigmatic trumpeter who appears at a few points throughout the game. He reveals that he had planned to use his daughter, Nancy, to fulfill his dream. Attentive players might now realize that Nancy is none other than Buddy, the driving force behind the game.
Yado then refers to his partner in crime as “Bernard”, who has his own motives for working with him. Bernard, however, reminds Yado that his name is, in fact, Buzzo - one of the main antagonists of the game.
1. Painful ending
The Painful ending is perhaps the hardest to achieve - especially without Joy. This one continues the story established in an earlier cutscene in which a pre-apocalypse Brad offers to teach martial arts to a boy named Dusty.
During the battle with Rando at the end of the game, it’s revealed that he and Dusty are the same person.He uses some of Brad’s martial arts skills, as shown throughout the game. When his mask breaks, he has a severely scarred face.
Because the Dusty cutscene can be easy to forget, players might miss the connection - but in this epilogue, it’s revealed how Rando got his scars. Brad walks into his dojo, where he finds Dusty with the skin on his face sawed off. Dusty allegesthis was done by “him” - someone who did it “for Lisa”. Brad then walks away silently, and Dusty says, “Dad… I-I… I’m sorry.”
These events are further explained in the sequel LISA: The Joyful, in which it is revealed that one of Brad’s students had a love affair with Lisa before she died. His name was Bernard. One day, she would convince him to steal a buzzsaw to mutilate her face so that her father would stop touching her - hence the name, Buzzo.
