Erica Game Story & Endings Explained | Screen Rant
It is common for psychological thrillers to leave viewers with questions as to the objective reality of the events depicted, as the troubled mind of the protagonist often clouds the truth. The interactive film Erica is no exception to this, as multiple playthroughs can lead to vastly different endings, some of which appear to conflict with the others, and none of which offer entirely clear answers. Unlike a traditional format film, the ability to take branching paths does offer players more insight into the strange occurrences at Delphi House and the possibly prophetic lineage of Erica Mason. Players will still need to decide for themselves which elements of the story they wish to interpret literally, and which might be the effects of trauma or hallucination.
[Warning: Spoilers for Erica's ending below]
Every playthrough of Erica is a roughly movie-length experience from start to finish. The game begins with a young Erica spending time with her father, Peter Mason, who has her light a strange, smoky lantern, and then presents her with photographs of her late mother, Alodie Carter. He explains that he was a doctor at a facility where Alodie was a nurse, when they met, and that “she spoke of the future” while he spoke of the past. Peter compares Alodie to “a priestess.” He says that Erica carries a butterfly-shaped birthmark like her mother, and may have similar gifts of prophecy. Peter tests her precognizant abilities by having her pick the correct photograph from three placed face-down, a player-controlled interaction, shortly before the strange moment of father-daughter bonding takes a darker turn.
Early in the branching thriller game, Erica witnesses her father’s chest brutally cut into ritualistic symbols, followed by a strange female figure whose face she cannot clearly recollect holding a gun. The game then transitions into the present day, with Erica, as an adult, habitually sketching half-remembered images from her traumatic youth. After uncovering severed human body parts on her doorstep, Erica meets police Sgt. Duncan Blake, who tells her that the case of her father’s unsolved murder needs to be re-opened, as he believes the killer has resurfaced, and is targeting colleagues of the late Dr. Peter Mason. In a move that advances the tension but pushes the bounds of credibility somewhat, Duncan instructs Erica that she will be temporarily staying at Delphi House, the sanitarium her father and mother worked at, so he can protect her along with the other staff members who might be at risk.
After arriving at Delphi House, Erica meets Lucien Flowers, the man who co-founded the sanitarium with her father, as well as several patients in residence there. Depending on player choice, they may have an opportunity to befriend the rebellious Tobi Neumann. Staff members warn Erica that Tobi is a “manipulative” patient, but if they elect to trust her, Tobi relates her theories about a conspiracy at Delphi House, and her belief that the campus contains numerous secret passageways. A visit to a memorial for Erica’s late mother Alodie shows it surrounded by oleanders, which Lucien says were her favorites.
Many of Erica's players likely connected the name of the facility, Delphi House, with the ancient Greek tradition of the Oracle of Delphi, a title for The Pythia, high priestess of the Temple of Apollo, reputed to reveal the future. They might also have noted the connection between oleanders and Delphi, as some experts theorize the fumes of burnt oleander leaves led to the oracular visions of the Pythia, as the toxin could cause symptoms similar to epilepsy, often linked in ancient lore with prophetic visions. Later story revelations confirm this connection, as Erica meets Mia Greene, a former patient at Delphi House who claims to have been a close friend of her mother Alodie.
Mia describes the true purpose of the sanitarium as a recreation of the Oracle of Delphi. She reveals that the staff members, including Erica’s father Peter and Lucien Flowers, used an oleander-based drug to trigger a hallucinatory state in female patients, as well as Erica’s mother, to obtain prophecies of the future which they could use for wealth and power. Mia also claims that Erica’s mother is still alive, held in captivity somewhere on the grounds of Delphi House. Mia makes no secret that she is the one responsible for the murders of the sanitarium staff members, and she encourages Erica to join her in her crusade to expose those responsible for abusing women for profit and making them pay.
If the player reveals their meeting with Mia to the police, they are told that official records show Mia has been dead for many years. As with many other story elements, it is left unclear whether Mia Greene is truly alive or dead, as Sgt. Blake says he will have the body exhumed and examined, but the game’s story never provides the results of this examination. As in classic psychological thrillers like Jacob's Ladder, there are suggestions of a real conspiracy at work, but also indications that the protagonist may be hallucinating much of what is shown onscreen.
Mia may be a construct existing only in Erica’s mind, an imagined co-conspirator leading her to a “truth” she already suspects about Delphi House, or an actual survivor of a sinister, abusive cabal who is now seeking revenge against those responsible. Certain choices might allow the player to see Blake’s case notes, which show Erica is a suspect in the murders. This produces the major unanswered question in the story of Erica: Is she herself a killer, whose mental state makes her an unreliable narrator, or were her father and Lucien complicit in the bizarre ritualistic abuse of women in an attempt to divine the future?
Eventually the story shifts to Mia Greene’s attack on Delphi House, with Erica in tow, as she searches for where the staff is holding Alodie, before Erica is left alone, holding Lucien Flowers at gunpoint. This is the most clearly impactful choice in the story, although other choices leading up to that point can determine the survival of other characters, and the available endings in Erica, as well. Given the variety of endings, the truth remains subjective.
On one extreme, Erica might choose to trust Lucien and lower the gun, and it might produce the “happy family” ending, where Erica comes to view Lucien as a surrogate father and live peacefully alongside him. This ending notes that there are “secrets” left unspoken, but whether those secrets are a conspiracy that Lucien successfully hid, or those of Erica’s short-term mental breakdown and possible murders, is left undefined. Different prior choices could cause Lucien to sedate Erica, followed by a scene of her as a long-term patient of Delphi House, kept in a drug-induced haze. Possibly the bleakest and most unsatisfying ending, it notes she is “either a patient or a prisoner.”
Choosing to slay Lucien opens the door for more climactic routes, as exploring the depths of Delphi House shows a ritual chamber containing a butterfly mask and another lantern which emits the fumes of the oleander. A player might choose to burn Delphi House to the ground at this point, escaping with whichever other patients survived the story, or they could inhale the fumes themselves. Doing so produces a seemingly supernatural vision of Erica’s mother as a glowing figure, the “butterfly priestess,” prompting Erica to take up the mask of the butterfly and join the oracles. Erica can accept the title, joining the ranks of prophets, or the player can reject the mask, and still opt to burn down Delphi House, perhaps having given her mother peace. Unlike branching story games from Telltale, Dontnod, and Quantic Dream, with no chapter replay options Erica requires the player to restart from the beginning to see each of these endings.
There are no absolute answers to be found with Erica, as the game presents evidence that it is a story about a bizarre occult conspiracy, as well as equally valid suggestions that Erica herself is unhinged from reality, and committing murders herself, with Mia Greene as an imagined ally. The suggestion of some conspiracy at work is a bit stronger than the notion that it was “all in her head,” as even allowing for the possibility of hallucination, there are enough seemingly factual elements that are hard to reconcile as coincidence.
Suspect events include the early scene of her father bizarrely prompting her to attempt a divination of sorts, the repeated imagery of oleanders and an oleander-based drug used on the patients, the strange chambers within Delphi House that contain religious iconography, and the conspicuous pattern of patients manifesting identical bloody noses.
Taken as a whole, the evidence moves Delphi House beyond plausibility as a legitimate mental healthcare facility with some unconventional techniques and aesthetics. While these all could be imagined, if the player is to call the entirety of the game’s events into question, it renders much of the storytelling moot. Erica's endings allow the player to succumb to the conspiracy, if one exists, or burn it to the ground, leaving the truth buried in the ashes. Like the many theories surrounding Netflix's Bandersnatch, whatever truth a player wishes to decide on is as much their choice as the branching narrative paths that lead to the ending in Erica, which is likely entirely by design.