The Trial - song structure and all outcomes

A guide to all unique outcomes for Athena's song The Trial.

Song structure

The Trial's structure is different from other songs.
It is based on the choices you made throughout the game, specifically: who you sided with, romanced, saved, what choices you made in some songs and what is Grace's first trait.

According to the save files:
The character you've romanced/sided with, and who sings in this song two times is a 'primary defender'.
The two characters that you choose to sing after the primary defender are 'secondary defenders'.


Lets split the song into 5 parts and explore them:

1. The 1st choice 🠒 a primary defender sings 🠒 the 2nd choice 🠒
   
2. The 3rd choice (each color's based on the ending of one of the three previous songs) 🠒
   
3. The primary defender sings second time + one of the three traits' arrangements 🠒
   
4. A pair of secondary defenders sings 🠒
   
5. The 6th choice 🠒 the 7th choice

Chart

PART 1 - Primary defender's first song

• The 1st choice doesn't depend on anything, has 3 unique.

The romance determines who the primary defender is. If no one's romanced then it's Apollo or Persephone, depending on who you sided with (followed or stayed) in Old Wounds song.

• Persephone has 3 songs technically, but only 2 of them are unique, the other one has slightly different visuals.
  These songs are based on The Throne ending:
  
  • "I fought for that throne, and then didn't take it" - visuals: the throne is intact - Grace/Orpheus took the throne
    
  • "I fought for that throne, and then didn't take it" - visuals: the throne is broken - Grace broke the throne
    
  • "A great shiny throne, but still in the darkness" - visuals: the throne is intact - Persephone took the throne / Persephone broke the throne (the last one looks like a bug)
• Apollo has 1 song.
  
• Freddie has 1 song (if saved in It's Time song).
  
• Pan has 1 song.

• The 2nd choice has 3 unique responses per primary defender (12 total).

PART 2 - The 3rd choice

The 3rd choice depends on the endings of three previous songs (Phantom Pains, Challenging a Queen and The Ritual). Each of the songs corresponds to a different color and has 3 variations:

GREEN choice is based on The Ritual song:

• GREEN ending 🠒 Lost In a Moment
  
• RED ending 🠒 Everybody
  
• BLUE ending 🠒 The Only Way To Go

RED choice is based on Challenging a Queen song:

• GREEN ending 🠒 A Thousand Times Before
  
• RED ending 🠒 How It Ends
  
• BLUE ending 🠒 Who I Am

BLUE choice is based on Phantom Pains song:

• GREEN ending 🠒 Never The Same
  
• RED ending 🠒 The Next Thing
  
• BLUE ending 🠒 Cause And Effect

The endings

The Ritual's and Phantom Pains' endings are based only on the last choice, e.g. XXXR.

Challenging a Queen, on the other hand, is much trickier, since most of it's endings is a combination of the 1st + 4th + 5th choices.
And the important part - some of these endings lead to an absence of the RED option in the 3rd choice of The Trial!

Tested Challenging a Queen endings:

GREEN:

• XXX[G/R]G [Charming trait] (My Queen)
  
• XXXBG [Charming trait special] (Your Queen)
  
• XXX[B/G]B (The Tide)

RED:

• XXXRR (What word? Muse?)

BLUE:

• XXX[G/R]G [Clever/Kickass trait] (Show's Over / Lullaby of a Muse)

NO RED option:

• BXXRB (Headline Show)
  
• BXXBR (Butterfly)
  
• RXXGR (Read The Room, Little Girl)
  
• The rest of the endings (credit to @HtotheTML for testing)

It appears that all composite (dependent on the 1st choice) endings result in an absence of the RED option.
So, it seems impossible to get the BLUE ending for a Charming trait.

Check out this guide for all possible endings if you want to try it yourself. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3024190228

PART 3 - Primary defender's second song

The primary defender sings second time. There are 6 unique songs:

• Persephone - romance
  
• Persephone - no romance
  
• Apollo - romance
  
• Apollo - no romance
  
• Freddie - romance
  
• Pan - romance

The arrangement for this part and part 4 is based on Grace's first trait:

• Charming - harp
  
• Kickass - bass guitar
  
• Clever - clarinet

PART 4 - Secondary defenders

For the next two choices there are 3-4 characters (9 total) to choose from (33 unique pairs).
The primary defenders' singing makes it 132 unique pairs, and the 1st trait - 396!

These options have RED 🠒 GREEN 🠒 BLUE order and move clockwise after the first choice (meaning that the 4th character is going to occupy a BLUE option):

1. Aphrodite
   
2. Medusa
   
3. Eros (instead of Aphrodite)
   
4. Hecate/Asterion
   
5. Apollo
   
6. Pan
   
7. Persephone (instead of Apollo)
   
8. Hermes

How to get a specific character

Aphrodite and Eros depend on the ending of The Ritual song:

• RED 🠒 Aphrodite
  
• GREEN/BLUE 🠒 Eros

NOTE: since the 3rd choice of The Trial also depends on The Ritual, it's impossible to have combinations:

• Everybody + Eros
  
• Lost In a Moment / The Only Way To Go + Aphrodite

Hecate and Asterion depend on the ending of Cast a Spell song:

• BLUE 🠒 Hecate
  
• GREEN/RED 🠒 Asterion

Medusa depends on the BLUE ending [Clever trait only] of Look Into Me song and if you tell Athena on her (do not if you want her present).

Pan depends on the last confrontation - [Tell him everything] if you want him present.

All of the endings in the mentioned songs depend only on the last choice.


How to get a character as a first choice:

• Aphrodite/Eros - one of them always available
  
• Medusa - if saved with a Clever trait option in Look Into Me and you didn't tell Athena
  
• Hecate/Asterion - one of them always available
  
• Apollo - only if you sided with him, romanced another character and Medusa isn't saved
  
• Pan - only if no Apollo option and Medusa isn't saved
  
• Persephone - only if you sided with her, romanced another character, Medusa isn't saved and no Pan option (don't tell him everything at the last confrontation)
  
• Hermes - only if Medusa isn't saved, no Pan option and Persephone/Apollo/nobody is romanced

How to get a character as a second choice:

• Aphrodite/Eros - one of them always available
  
• Medusa - if saved with a Clever trait option in Look Into Me and you didn't tell Athena
  
• Hecate/Asterion - one of them always available
  
• Apollo - only if you sided with him and romanced another character
  
• Pan - only if no Apollo option or Medusa isn't saved
  
• Persephone - only if you sided with her, romanced another character AND
  Medusa isn't saved or no Pan option (don't tell him everything at the last confrontation)
  
• Hermes - if Medusa isn't saved and no Pan option; if Medusa isn't saved or no Pan option AND Persephone/Apollo/nobody is romanced

PART 5 - The endings

The 6th and 7th choices don't depend on anything, as far as I can tell.
There are only 3 endings.

Mix it up!

There are several cool ways to mix this song, but there's only so much you can do in one play-through...

In terms of tone consistency, it seems, the intended way is to stick to the color as usual. Because in that case the 3rd option is going to have associated color/trait's instrument, e.g:

These have Kickass bass guitar:

• RR[R-G]XXRR (A Thousand Times Before)
  
• RR[R-R]XXRR (How It Ends)
  
• RR[R-B]XXRR (Who I Am)

These don't have Kickass bass guitar:

• RR[G-R]XXRR (Everybody)
  
• RR[B-R]XXRR (The Next Thing)

Video showcasing all unique outcomes

I made a video containing all of these unique outcomes (not 33 pairs though :D).
Timestamps are in the description. Enjoy!