At the very beginning of Biomutant, you’re presented with a choice between Light and Dark. Basically, you’re deciding whether to side with the angel on one shoulder or the devil on the other. You can always change your mind, of course, as your Light/Dark balance is based on how many points you’ve invested into each side.
So, if you have 18 Light and 2 Dark, you’ll have a Light Aura. But if you then invest 30 points into Dark, you’ll be at 18 Light and 32 Dark, which will give you Dark Aura. These point numbers don’t ever decline, so you can only ever earn more of one to offset the total of the other.
And for reference, Maximum Dark doesn’t actually mean that you’ve maxed out your Dark points; it means your ratio of Dark to Light is weighed heavily toward Dark. It seems like the difference needs to be around 26 or 27 — so 1 Light and 28 Dark should get you Maximum Dark, or 100 Light and 127 Dark.
So what’s the difference between the two?
Unfortunately, the differences are far less than Biomutant leads you to believe in its opening sequences. However, some things will change. I’ve compiled a list of every change I noticed between my Maximum Light and Maximum Dark playthroughs.
Note that this will be crammed with spoilers, so proceed cautiously if you haven’t completed the game yet.
The Light vs. Dark dialogue
If you perform Dark actions, your Dark side will be happy, while if you perform Light actions, your Light side will be happy. As you progress in one direction or the other, the dialogue between the two sides will reflect that change.
The Tree of Life
If you choose the Myriad Tribe and focus on Light, the leaves of the Tree of Life will change as you beat each Worldeater. When all four are defeated, the tree will become bright white.
If you choose Jagni and a Dark playthrough, something else will happen, but I’ll get to that in a later section.
The Aura above the Tree of Life
If you complete a quest line called Aurora (which has you activate four monoliths across the Yerpfields), an aura will appear over the Tree of Life. This Aura will match your own. So if you have a Maximum Light Aura, it will look like the image above. If you go Maximum Dark, it will instead look like this:
As far as I can tell, this is cosmetic and doesn’t actually serve a gameplay purpose — but it’s possible I just haven’t found that purpose yet.
The fate of the Worldeaters
If you’re playing a Maximum Light run and you select the Myriad Tribe, each Worldeater will vanish from the map once defeated (and the Tree of Life will change colors, as I mentioned earlier). However, if you choose the Jagni Tribe, you’ll learn that they actually want the Worldeaters to survive and kill the Tree of Life to bring about a second apocalypse.
It seems like you’d want to avoid fighting the Worldeaters in this case, but you actually can’t complete the game without beating all four. However, once you defeat one in the Jagni storyline, the Worldeater only gets stronger (or stronker), and it will move closer to the Tree of Life. You can actually see them up on the roots as you’re roaming the world.
It’s a neat trick, though I think it would have been much better if there were an alternate version of each boss fight where your goal was to protect each Worldeater rather than fight it. That would have been much more satisfying, and it would have been more in line with the narrative.
The characters you can recruit for the Ark
There are several characters who can be recruited for the Ark, and a handful will only accept your invitation if you have the correct Aura. I’ve already made a complete list of those characters and their preferred Auras, so I won’t go over that again here. But if you want to check out that list, here’s the link.
The ending
Obviously, the big change is going to be the ending. I’ll just share both so you can compare them for yourself. However, it’s hard to say whether these endings are based on your Aura or on your tribe selection. I chose Myriad in my Light playthrough and Jagni in my Dark playthrough. People claim that if you have a Dark aura and beat the game as a part of the Myriad Tribe that you’ll still see the Light ending.
Anyway…
Here’s the Light ending.
And here’s the Dark one.
Note that the boss fight is virtually the same whether your Aura is Light or Dark. You can also choose to spare Lupa-Lupin or kill him in either version — that choice is still up to you.
