You see, you can hold a ritual to marry members of your flock, so within seconds of recruiting him, I zoomed to the temple to see if we could tie the knot, both out of curiosity and because smooching all the smoochable things in video games is a personal mission of mine. We had a lovely ceremony surrounded by my other 20 odd followers (to whom, in many instances, I was also married).
It’s a poetic irony given that your demonic powers, which let you tear through heretics, indoctrinate members of your cult and subjugate your followers with an iron will, were granted by The One Who Waits in the first place. All the followers and power you amass over the course of the game were supposed to be instrumental in restoring him to glory. But instead, in the game’s normal ending, he ends up betrayed by his own hand — or hoof, rather.
Apart from a trait that prevents him from dying of old age, The One Who Waits is just like any other follower you can recruit in the game’s dungeons by defeating minibosses or indoctrinating lost souls. He ambles about the grounds, worships your effigy and attends sermons just like his brothers and sisters in Lamb. These cult management sim portions make up about half of the game, while the other half sees you fighting through procedurally generated dungeons, cutting down followers of false gods and gathering resources to keep your flock fed, healthy and pious.
Marriage, of course, isn’t the only endgame option. If you’d rather go the nonviolent route, you can forgo fighting The One Who Waits altogether. At the game’s climax, you can opt to just go ahead with the original terms of your Faustian bargain and lay down your life, your blood spilled alongside that of dozens of followers killed in his name. After a prompt asking if you’re sure that you’re cool with being sacrificed, the game ends and the credits roll. Alternatively, if you decide to fight, you can also choose to murder rather than spare him.
But then you’d miss out on such a touching love story! I had a lot of issues with “Cult of the Lamb,” but its dark sense of humor was not among them, and the ability to smooch the very demonic entity you’ve double-crossed is a fitting example of that. First you work for god, then you fight god, then you bend god to your will and marry him — it’s a match made in heaven.
