Cinematics are one of the ways the story of Darkest Dungeon is told. There are currently three cinematics in the base game and two more are available through the The Crimson Court DLC.
Intro Cinematic[ | ]
The Intro Cinematic plays when the game is loaded before the main menu. In this, the narrator, also called the Ancestor, writes a letter describing the events preceding the game. Below is a transcription.
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Ruin has come to our family.
You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor.
I lived all my years in that ancient rumor-shadowed manor, fattened by decadence and luxury. And yet, I began to tire of... conventional extravagance. Singular unsettling tales suggested the mansion itself was a gateway to some fabulous and unnameable power.
With relic and ritual, I bent every effort towards the excavation and recovery of those long buried secrets, exhausting what remained of our family fortune on... swarthy workmen and... sturdy shovels. At last, in the salt-soaked crags beneath the lowest foundations, we unearthed that damnable portal of antediluvian evil. Our every step unsettled the ancient earth, but we were in a realm of death and madness! In the end, I alone fled, laughing and wailing, through those blackened arcades of antiquity, until consciousness failed me.
You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial. It is a festering abomination! I beg you, return home, claim your birthright, and deliver our family from the ravenous clutching shadows [hammer cocks, gunshot, loud thud sound]... of the Darkest Dungeon.
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Road Home[ | ]
Road Home plays when a new file is started from the main menu. It pictures the travel to the Darkest Dungeon Estate through the Old Road. Following is a transcription:
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You will arrive along the old road.
It winds with a troubling, serpent-like suggestion through the corrupted countryside, leading only, I fear, to ever more tenebrous places. There is a sickness in the ancient, pitted cobbles of the old road, and on its writhing path, you will face viciousness, violence and perhaps, other damnably transcendent terrors.
So, steel yourself, and remember, there can be no bravery without madness. The old road will take you to hell, but, in that gaping abyss, we will find our redemption.
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Younger Years[ | ]
Younger Years is a DLC-exclusive cutscene . It tells about Ancestor's unique guest, who had stirred quite a lot of trouble. Transcription:
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In those younger years my home was a hive of unbridled hedonism, a roiling apiary where instinct and impulse were indulged in wild abandon.
A bewitching predator slipped in amidst the swarm of tittering sycophants. Though outwardly urbane, I could sense in her a mocking thirst. Driven half-mad by cloying vulgarity I plotted to rid myself of this lurking threat in a grand display of sadistic sport.
But as the moment of murder drew nigh, the gibbous moon revealed her inhuman desires in all their stultifying hideousness…
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This article or section may contain spoilers. You might want to avoid reading further if you don't want to spoil the surprise for yourself!
Forbidden Tannin[ | ]
This cinematic gives the resolution to Ancestor's vampire encounter and sheds some light on his first revelation about the truth of the world.
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Mercifully, the morbid encounter resolved itself in my favor, and I set to work pursuing degeneracy in its most decadent forms. The air pulsed with anticipation as I revealed the unnatural terroir of the house vintage.
But my exultation was cut short as the attending gentry turned upon themselves in an orgy of an indescribable frenzy. A single drop of that forbidden tannin gifted me with a dizzying glimpse of a hibernating horror beneath my feet, and in that moment, I understood the terrible truth of the world.
I stood reborn, molted by newfound knowledge, my head throbbing to the growing whine of winged vermin come to drink the tainted blood… of The Darkest Dungeon.
The End[ | ]
The End cinematic plays once you defeat the Heart of Darkness in the final dungeon. It describes how the defeat of the Heart merely delays the inevitable downfall of the world and the cycle will simply repeat.
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Victory...a hollow and ridiculous notion.
We are born of this thing, made from it. And we will be returned to it, in time.
The great family of man -- a profusion of errant flesh. Multiplying. Swarming. Living. Dying.
Until the stars align in their inexorable formation, and what sleeps is roused once more, to hatch from this fragile shell of earth and rock, and bring our inescapable end...
So seek solace in the manner befitting your lineage, and take up your nugatory vigil.
Haunted forever by that sickening prose, echoing through the infinite blackness of space and time:
"Ruin Has Come To Our Family."