Luis Antonio's new interactive thriller, 12 Minutes has an intriguing, high-concept plot that has players repeat the same 12 minutes of time and uncovering a sinister mystery. The majority of the game is straightforward, and finding clues feels intuitive and logical. However, the ending of this game hits players with a lot of information very fast and casts doubt on all the events up to that point. 12 Minutes is not just a time-traveling mystery, but a psychological thriller that intentionally misleads the audience.
There are multiple 'endings' to 12 Minutes, and most of them raise more questions than they answer. This is intentional on the part of Antonio, as the game takes clear influence from filmmakers like Stanley Kubrik and Alfred Hitchcock who are well known for depicting unstable psyches onscreen. The ending is designed to spark discussion and have various interpretations, but to help guide an interpretation, here are the facts about the endings. It goes without saying but please note that this article contains spoilers regarding 12 Minutes' plot.
The Pocket Watch, the Killer, and the Nanny
Not long into the game, it is revealed that the wife's father has been killed, and the cop is seeking revenge. The main goal of the game then is to repeat the loop, using clues and environmental factors (such as the light switch electrocuting anyone that turns it on for a second time) to uncover the mystery. The clues feel like pieces of a jigsaw fitting together until the big twist at the end and suddenly nothing makes sense. 12 Minutes then transforms into a dark and shocking story designed to make the player feel uncomfortable.
It turns out 12 Minutes' protagonist is the killer all along, but that truth is largely overshadowed by the fact that it's been established the wife's half-brother, the product of an affair between her father and her nanny, is the killer. This means that the protagonists have been unknowingly been committing incest and will soon produce a child of that incest. It is a dark twist, but it also poses a big question: how did the husband forget that his wife is his sister? Especially considering the clue that leads to this is the discovery that the nanny's name is Dahlia, as is the husband's mother's.
Things get complicated from here on out due to the multiple paths the player can take. A flashback will occur, involving a confrontation between the father and the protagonist in which the father reveals he is father to both the husband and the wife and instructs the husband to leave now and avoid any further pain for anyone involved. What causes the most confusion here is that the father is voiced by Willem Dafoe, as is the cop. It's tempting to write this off as the game just wanting to get the most bang for their buck with a big-name actor like Dafoe, but the implications of this fact are far more complex.
The Different Possible Endings
There are essentially five different endings to 12 Minutes, all resulting in an achievement unlocking but not all causing the credits to roll. The details between endings may seem minute, with the big choices being to stay with your wife and not tell her, to reveal the truth, or to agree to leave and never see her again. If the player chooses to stay with the wife or tell her the truth, then the time loop continues to repeat. However, to make sense of the different endings a key piece of information is required, which is the answer to who exactly is Dafoe voicing?
Like in the plot twist for Metal Gear Solid V, voice actors are always an important clue. In 12 Minutes, Dafoe's cop and the father are in fact one and the same. In the two endings that cause the credits to roll, the husband once again has a flashback to a discussion with the father, but this time the father is bald and the setting is different. That's because this scene isn't a flashback, it's the present. If the husband agrees to leave his wife now and never tell her the truth, he ends up alone in the same apartment. The pocket watch is still there though, which means he can return to the conversation with the father. The only true ending without a return to the apartment is the ending where players click on the book their wife was reading that's on the bookcase in the discussion scene. This prompts a quote the wife cites earlier, which alludes to finding zen through mindfulness (aka living in the present moment).
This ending also includes what seems to be Dafoe's father character hypnotizing the protagonist. This scene, one of the few outside the apartment, is the only definitive end. The husband has resigned to the truth and agrees to leave his wife, and the father either hypnotizes the husband to forget and the time loops have been part of the hypnosis, or the husband has suffered a psychological break due to trauma.
Did Any of it Actually Happen?
It is safe to assume the loops are not actually time travel, but a projection from the protagonist's mind due to either hypnosis or psychological break; there's no definitive answer to those possibilities, as this is where audience interpretation is key. Regardless though, this end is foreshadowing throughout the game, such as the painting of the red book in a bookcase that is in the hallway, and the pocket watch itself, which turns out to be a clock on the wall during the final discussion with the father. The events of the game have been told by an unreliable narrator, and as such never truly happened.
This interpretation rests on the assumption that the final discussion scene with the father is taking place in a reality where this is their first time to meet, later in life after the protagonist has unknowingly married and impregnated his sister, and that the father's death was a construction of the hallucination. There are a plethora of other tiny details that might inform a different interpretation, but again this is intentional. The purpose of 12 Minutes withholding all these factors throughout the majority of the game is to create a shocking and impactful end that is dark and challenging.
12 Minutes is available now on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.