The credits music for the canon ending is an expansion of the "end of mission" theme from the game. I can't believe I never noticed that. - Zephid
The endings are all canon. The timeline branches into alternate realities, as shown in more depth in Drakengard 3.
Each time you beat the game, you unlock new missions that can lead to new endings. These are interspersed throughout the old content. Each ending is worse than the last: a game designed around completionism is intentionally punishing the player for being completionist! - parrellel
Well, that seems to be a definitive trait of Yoko Taro's games. NieR did something similar. Only time will tell what kinda trick Drakengard 3 will pull.
In an interesting way, each ending up until the final one is worse than the first. But the fourth is the happiest ending in the franchise..... But it required a Deus ex Machina and something that could not have happened naturally so that it ended happily. The only happy ending happened so that completionists could stop making shit worse..... well played Yoko… well played.
Why did Inuart's attempted resurrection of Furiae go poorly? The Black Dragon wasn't with him, so he couldn't direct Inuart (into generating Nowe, but Inuart didn't know that). Why wasn't the Dragon there? The player kicked his ass (within a short time limit) in order to unlock this route.
Partially jossed: according to supplementary material, the Seeds of Resurrection/Destruction are designed to transform what is put inside them into a monster/Watcher/Angel that will destroy humanity. The Bone Casket is a giant Seed that the Dragons can control. It's still Inuart's fault that he used the wrong Seed, though.
In Drakengard 2, it has been noted that destroying the Bone Casket, which contains much of the Gods' power, will be a hit for them. This is valid for any pawn of the Gods. Think about it:
1st game, endings A and C: defeating/eating Manah while the apocalypse is going on seems to temporarily stop it. In ending A, this sets up a window of opportunity to establish new seals so that the apocalypse is once more held at bay until the seals are re-broken.
Endings D and E: Manah is killed before the end of the world, when she hasn't got that much of the Gods' power in her. The Gods recover and immediately deploy plan B — the Grotesqueries.
And in ending D, the Grotesqueries get frozen in time, along with whatever power the Gods gave them. That's why the rest of the world is "saved".
2nd game, ending B: the Casket is destroyed alongside Manah. The Gods deploy the Grotesqueries again, but it's implied that there has been enough time for the humans and the dragons to build an army and fight back.
Ending C: Manah absorbs the Casket and the Gods' power, refusing to use it. The Gods are effectively trapped within Manah.
Ending E has Angelus asking upon arriving in Tokyo "Is this the land of the gods?" Cavia, the developers of Drakengard, were based out of Tokyo. Caim and Angeles indeed ended up in the land of their "gods".
Also, the skyscrapers make it similar to the Cathedral City, which appeared in Midgard in a mysterious event, so Angelus is right to speculate this is the source.
After being caught maiming Gismor, why did Nowe decide to run away rather than tell the Knights (or at least Eris) that not only did Gismor poison him, but General Oror as well? It would be his word against Gismor's, which would not go well for Nowe given his standing. He couldn't confide in Eris, either, as she has shown to be so fanatically loyal to the Knights that she threatened to kill him just for criticizing them. With that in mind, Nowe had no other option but to flee.
Hanch's Kelpie is notably the only Knights of the Seal pact-beast in Drakengard 2 to be fought with Legna's assistance (Zhangpo's Ifrit and Urick's Reaper are The Unfought, while Yaha's Gnomes and Gismor's Shadow are fought on foot). There are a few reasons for this. First of all, Kelpie's boss arena is outdoors, with Hanch actually suggesting that the battle be conducted outside rather than within the seal chamber. All of the other pact-beasts (or their substitutes) are fought within the seal chambers, where Legna wouldn't have much room to maneuver. Secondly, Kelpie seems to need a wide-open space to battle in just as much as Legna does, given that its battle strategy involves flying around the arena while launching energy balls, attempting to ram its opponent, diving into the water to evade attacks, and conjuring miniature glaciers to restrict its opponent's mobility; this is probably why Hanch wanted to fight Nowe and Manah on the dam rather than inside the seal chamber. Third, there was actually a good reason for Nowe and Manah to take the fight outside and have Legna do most of the work — taking on a kelpie in close-quarters combat near a large body of water would be completely suicidal. Kelpies' traditional shtick is tricking people into riding or petting them, then suddenly turning their skin adhesive to trap their prey and dragging it underwater to drown. While Hanch's Kelpie seems to be less malicious and predatory than usual for its species (given that it went out of its way to save Hanch from drowning as opposed to eating her), there is no reason to assume that it lacks the traditional kelpie "adhesive skin" ability. It would be trivial for Hanch's Kelpie to disarm Nowe and Manah, seize them, and drown them if they tried to fight it head-on with melee weapons, so having Legna (who, unlike Nowe and Manah, actually has a long-ranged primary attack) take Kelpie on was the only viable option.
With the NieR: Automata alliance raids in Final Fantasy XIV, people were just expecting some fun stuff strictly reserved for that game, but instead they got a canon side-plot to Yoko Taro's overall franchise that explains that the Seeds of Resurrection, or Destruction, aren't just means to create new, destructive life: they're portals, effectively serving as gates through which the Watchers/Grotesqueries can travel. Which means Furiae being placed into the Seed was possibly sent back to their realm, where they ensured she Came Back Wrong. This means that the Watchers have potentially done this to countless worlds, and NieR's (and thus ours by direct association) is one of many on their chain that they could've attacked. All because the God of the Drakengard world hates humanity so damn much that they'd spread that intent to cause mass extinctions to other realms entirely out of spite, solely because they can't control them.
