Well i just finished the game and tried out 3 possible endings (save a sister, save yourself, and become a brother). And personally i think the endings are kinda dull.

but anyway, i think i have a grasp on what the story actually is. many reviews describe the Void as purgatory, and i think that is actually what it is.

you notice from a couple of 'flashbacks' that your in a city, and the second time you see the flash back you hear the glitered women your following say "how can i be free of this", and at the end of both flash backs you jump off a roof.

i get the following messages from this:

- You commited suicide.
- You were horrible to your wife (maybe ).

either way your been sent to purgatory where the following can happen:

- Free a sister to rise to replace your lost soul in the body you left behind (cos you died), after which you are reborn or go to heaven.

- Free yourself in the sence that your are saved in the human world (maybe someone called an ambulace and you've been fighting to get back.... kinda like from "Life on Mars").

- Stay in the void and become a brother (basically by staying for 35 cycles) and the idea there is that your stuck in purgatory forever.

- Lastly the obvious one is that you die (lose all your colour) and go to hell (the nightmare).

You can look at the characters in a religious sense as well, sisters are angels, brothers are demons, both come to meet you in purgatory to judge you (sisters want you to free them so you can go to heaven), but brothers want everything to stay the way it is (bit of a contradiction there).

The third entity is colour, colour speaks to you in the second half of the game, colour wants you to return to life, because colour is what kept you alive before you died, and now you can died, it is running out.

The brothers keep saying the sleeper (you) is dying, and thats because you are (this part is actually given away towards the end lol), so i guess in a sence, the brothers DO want you to die.


However the last part of the story i cant figure out. Mogof...sumthing (the boss of the brothers) tells you at the end that maybe you are right to grow colour and 'give' after all, therefore going against everything he beleived in.


I honestly beleive that there are a lot of hidden messages tucked away in this game, and even through the story is a little tacky (as stated by several reviews) and the endings are dull, there is a diffinate message that the devs were getting accross.

anyone have any thoughts?

Flosculus

My take on the story is a bit more convoluted and yet simplistic.

You are the soul of the void that split apart from it when it when to sleep, The Void will die no matter what you do, but now that you are returned you fail to see you are the void yourself.

Mongolfier in the end acknowledges you are the void hence he see it as ok to harvest and give. You where the one brought colour to the void, that is yourself, you created the sisters to populate the void and they represent your desires, your inner thoughts. The brothers simple want to maintain the status quo since they found about you before you left.

When you see the surface, those are visions impaired by godsend, that spirit that appears on the surface.

EDIT: This was my analysis of the russian version: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=5256

First of all, I agree that the endings could have been presented better — there's little shock or catharsis (arguably) in how the game ends at the moment. Thing is, they wouldn't change significanlty in meaning, just in form - thing is that the games beginning IS the game ending. It goes on and on. Through a limit of Voids. Of course, that's how I understand the game concept and I think I even might be wrong.

You have a very interesting interpretation of the story too.

But the thing is - a lot of stuff is said in plain text right in the game and is true!

The vertical chain of Voids is a string of the states of a human soul — and you can either do something outstanding, a breakthrough and change yourself for the best, become better; you can give up to the circumstances and adapt, tell yourself, that what you have is enough and there's no need to "grow" further (the Brother's ending, a bad one, obviously); or you can become even worse, give up on everything.

It's hard to say, what version can be extracted from the game now — there have been so many changes to the story line, and so much stuff was written at the last moment, that it's hard to remember what's intended and what's not.

Also, cheers about "Life on mars". Great series.

2Halfgild Wynac: By the way, what's your opinion on this? What did the Void become about? Since you too remember what it was SUPPOSED to be about.

(First of all, I played the Polish Tension version a while back, so I'm not sure about the English terminology, how it fits with the rewritten story, or if any details as I recall them are accurate.)

About the endings: I think that the main problem is that we're told throughout the game what kind of worlds would the Sisters create once they're freed, but once they are, it all seems similar, except tinted with different colours. I think I may have expected the vision more faithful to their own description. (With perhaps, at the very end, bam! a shot of the freed Sister in, perhaps, casual apparel, strolling down the street (with the player beside them if they went outside too) - that's probably too straightforward and happy-ending-like, sappy, stereotypical , for a game like this). (I think I'm also not very fond of the ending because my PC was barely enough to satisfy the minimal requirements, and I was running on minimal graphic settings, and even though the loading times were loooong, everything was running smoothly, except the endings which were just a slideshow I suspect the fancy colours may have been too much, because intro was similar but played OK.)


Well, the superficial meaning of the story to me seemed to be about some kind of afterlife, in which there exists the possibility to break through back if one's crafty enough. I, too, got the suicide vibe from the game, though I can't right now remember any direct arguments for or against this, so maybe I just imagined it. I don't particularly like the heaven/hell/purgatory analogy (perhaps because I'm not religious), and it only fits the vertical tree of Voids in a limited way. (Because it goes like, from top to bottom ??? - ??? - the realm where the Godsend came from - the Surface - the Void - the Nightmare where the Brothers came from - ??? - ??? That means there are more states of existence - and it makes me wonder if realms of basic animal consciousness are included in the tree, or what higher forms of life exist above us.)

It seemed also possible to me that the player's character got stuck in a different sphere of consciousness (perhaps catatonic in the real world as a result of some trauma?) and, again, struggling to break free.

Although the game seems to contradict this by stating that the player is the Void, with Sisters being the various possibilities that a human soul/mind can achieve, ways that one can go, projected by the player's character, the interpretation I enjoy the most that they may have been separate beings. Choosing one of them and feeding her would mean that you can achieve fulfilment through love - you give all you have (colour) to another. (Also, if the Void is the creation of the player, how come it feels like it existed before - the history of the two Sisters which got executed, which caused Echo's rebellion...) Even though the Sisters may sometimes be deceitful or manipulative, that doesn't mean you have stop loving them... - I don't think the Sisters were meant to be "good" (some, like the Nameless may be very selfless, but others, like Ire, might not) and the Brothers "evil" (rather... lost? not knowing the truth and trying to find it in the world, sticking with what they know because they fear the unknown).

The gathering of colour and painting with it to me symbolizes beauty (inner/outer?) and creation, the freedom of expression. Through creating beauty (I use this term rather loosely - it may be something more direct, like art, but also our dreams, our work, our everyday life - it all can be beautiful in some humanistic way), witnessing it, sharing it, spreading it you can achieve glorious things. You have to realize your inner potential, and go along with what you feel, even though it might be against the wishes or rules of, for example, the society, or simply even if it means overcoming the difficulties of reality (both of which could be represented by the Brothers). Going along with everybody else's wishes instead of your own, not pursuing your dreams, means a personal defeat.

The Void's imminent collapse I think means that everything changes - nothing stays constant for too long, and after some time the current state of things will become something else, whether for better or worse.


Storywise, I think the most complex is the relation between the player, the Godsend on the surface and perhaps Ole - I don't think I remember the details well enough to present a good explanation, but I'm sure too look into it more closely next time.

Also I have to agree with The LxR - some things said in the game are very straightforward instead of a convoluted metaphor. Like, for example, the symbol of the heart - you can have many hearts, because you can be passionate about many things; sometimes you have to fight for them, sometimes you have to search for them, sometimes they are given freely to you. You have to fill the hearts constantly lest the passion should die out. And, if all your hearts get empty - if you care for nothing, if you didn't work enough to sustain your interest in anything - you die/fail.

Very well put

well what about the flash backs? and im pretty sure they ARE flashbacks, kinda like the flashbacks from max payne or any other games were you have dreams about the past.

im almost certain that your cause of death is "suicide", you fall off the roof and down into that closed off section of a building. and you notice at the beginning of the game (intro poem) it ends with the camera looking up to the sky from under the roof.

someone PLEASE tell me i got that part right!! your cause of death MUST be suicide!

flosculus

Well, I believe they aren't flashbacks but vision by godsend.

We are told by several parties that we ARE The Void and I believe our cause of death is loneliness and stagnation which cause the soul to separate from the body.

[brainfuck]The key to our mystery lie with the Nameless Sister, Ole and Ima[/brainfuck]

It's up for interpretation... well, now it is. However, you are right - In the original Russian version, it was specifically stated that your character had committed suicide.

I was pretty sure that the game was more about "death" in a metaphorical sense, than about physical death. Note also, that the death (in any sense) at the outset is only a plot device to quickly explain "what happened" (you know, people generally have some rough ideas of "afterlife"), and it is of little significance by itself. Probably, no one knows how it happened.
You may want to watch an interview from our bonus disk (subtitles are in one of the sticky topics above).

Since when did the russian version said that?? O_O

This is why I don't do much on Wikipedia - the need to cite sources I know this was specifically stated somewhere - in interviews, in promo material and possibly even in the original text before it was translated. Dammit, I know I'm right! But for now you'll just have to:

1) Believe I'm right
or
2) Believe I'm sadly deluded

I'll go with door number 2

In the interview (the one we subtitled) Nikolai says that death is the most popular version of how our hero came to this place. At the moment, that is (the interview was shot in January or February 2007). The more recent explanation is that he somehow fell in to this place from the "world above", and now is desperately trying to climb back to the more real mode of existence. Or, in case with the English release, that you "lost your soul" here, and try to get it back to our world, which is another version of the very same story.

I, too, think they are more like visions rather than flashbacks. After all, the Godsend ended up on the Surface at the same time the player ended up in the Void. Maybe we only dream about the Surface, or maybe we really travel there for the duration of the visions, it doesn't really matter.

The important thing about the Surface is that the Void contains certain elements from it (trees, sculptures), but it may be a bit of a "Which Dreamed it?" matter like in "Through the Looking-Glass" - does the Void imitate the Surface? Does the Surface imitate the Void? Do some elements of reality exist in all the various states of existence? Also, the Surface may not necessarily be like the real (our) world, it may only be analogous, or just a symbolic representation.

The Polish version was I believe a direct translation of the original Russian one, but as I said, I don't remember anything direct about suicide, maybe something from the Nameless Sister telling that you've hurt yourself, but my memory of details is a bit blurry.

Anyway, the story is pretty flexible, and I think whatever sense you make of it is fine; if you like it the way you interpret it, then it may very well be true (for you, at least - but that should be enough, right?). And yes, I guess it might not be the most satisfying answer for some, but if we wanted to get all the answers directly from the artists, then there wouldn't be much point to creating and experiencing art...
The Nameless and Ole sure, but Ima... only if we agree that her version of the Void's cosmology was factual and accurate. I dislike Ima and I think that she might have been a bit melodramatic or delusional. Though I suppose some important answers and hints might be found in various places, maybe in the dark twisted apartment Yani lives in, or maybe in Uta's magical moon (which, again, makes a Surface appearance)....

Eh, I so need to play The Void again...

Yani can fit in the brainfuck as to her relation to Nameless, as said by the Nameless herself.

Ima was more of a misdirection, but the first time you talk to her, all that talk about dragons and circles and cycles, makes us wonder...