Ending

[Shylaar]

So... What? We get "I'll explain everything later", and then it ends. No resolution, no closure, nothing outside of a video of human Ida sending a text of the numbers which I never actually understood the purpose of (outside of their repeatedly stated importance).

It highlighted some articles in the yurt as well, but I already read all of those, so I don't think those are the trigger to an extended ending or anything. Anyone care to weigh in?

[Henrey]

I hope someone makes sense of it all because I'm actually fairly dissapointed by this ending. I don't think I understood any of it.

[Spirit 🐺]

I just finished the game and was very "shocked" cause of the sudden ending.
Here are my thoughts so far. The parts I'm not sure about are put in brackets.

In the beginning of the game we end up somehow being put in a place we don't belong. (My theory is we're coming from the past and the dreams we have are our past.) In the future (game present) we find out that we actually don't exist that is nobody knows about our parents and we just "suddently" appear as a child....After a while Ida remembers more and more things and suddently starts talking about a number that will fix everything and the only way it would fix everything is to bring it in the past and tell Mr. Koch. But before she can tell the number she gets turned off. A bit earlier she said to talk to her she needs to be electrified. So "we" shock her to wake her up again to tell us the number that will fix everything. (Somehow we manage to get back into the past...) And according the the end clip we were able to bring the number to the past somehow. As far as I remember it says 2050 as year in the end. We can see that a number is send via phone to this guy Ida mentioned (Mr. Koch? Not sure who that is...) so he will hopefully make everything right and prevent that kind of future to happen. (I just read in the first post that it was human Ida sending that text? I'm not sure about that. I thought it was just someone)

Actually the ending is very sudden in my opinion. The story telling was great until it felt like the creators was forced to come to an end out of a sudden. Actually the ending reminds me pretty much of "Interstellar" where he is able to change the future by sending a "code" to the past.

That are just my thought so far...Would love to hear about other or more detailed thoughts.

[Shylaar]

Originally posted by Spirit:

(I just read in the first post that it was human Ida sending that text? I'm not sure about that. I thought it was just someone)

It's definitely Ida. Maybe not too clear in-game, but it's the actor the robot Ida was based on.

[キモイ]

There are three documents highlighted near the beginning of the end movie: the letter in the trunk, a poster over the workbench/flower converter thingy, and a newspaper hidden under a pillow on one of the beds. Reading those last two gives a vague idea of what he does in the ending, although they still don't explain much. Clicking on every piece of paper in the yurt explains a little more, but still leaves a lot of questions. Maybe those documents that give achievements help, but I never found any of them while playing and have no clue where they are.

It does feel like they built a very big world and then barely started exploring it before declaring The End, though.

[Shylaar]

I read every single scrap of paper in the yurt, but I still barely understand what the ending is. Or more accurately, I get the intent, but I have no understanding of what was actually achieved or how.

I agree with your sentiment though; it felt altogether too short. They set up an interesting and unique setting and hooked me on the story, and then suddenly it's all over just as I was really getting invested.

[キモイ]

But it does explain, at least, how the number gets to the past: anomalies like the ones in the theme park appear to send radio waves to the past. Since Ida has some kind of transmitter, that part generally makes sense. Also, he might not have needed to ask Ida about the number, he might have just read the article. That would explain why he's so certain everything can be fixed: Koch specifically said knowing the number would fix everything.

[Shylaar]

Well, that does make sense when you put together the pieces. I think what bothers me more is the total lack of information given regarding what event the number is actually related to. It's hard to care much about being able to "fix everything" when we have little idea of what exactly we'll be fixing, or how things will change as a result.
And I suppose what I consider most important is that the ending offers almost no closure whatsoever; it's very abrupt.

(Do we really need spoiler tags in a thread about the ending?)

[キモイ]

Spirit used tags, so I stuck with it (I was replying to him at first).

Like I said, I'm hoping the documents collected for the "The Babylonian", "Semianimal", and "Qualified Employee" achievements reveal wtf is up with the number, if I ever find them. Also, where the hell is a horse?

[Xaito]

Let me chime in with a few theories:

In the end video it's not Ida who sends the number, it's you the player. You look at Ida, remember her android form, look down at your smartphone and send the number to Koch.

I feel that one major question one has to answer to have a chence to understand the ending is the question your grandpa hints at: Who am I?
So who is the character? My theory is that we're somehow related to the guy (forgot the name) who briefly met Ida with a circle of friends - and I think the end video might show the exact moment of the meeting, albeit I don't know if it's a alternate reality meeting where we know Ida and sent the numbers in contrary to the original meeting the android Ida remembers.
As to why I think we're that guy is because when we zap Ida, she feels "anxious" just as when she met the guy in the past.
As to how this worked out, that's a mystery I still have to solve - I suspect the accident at the dome where that mystery guy was present at iirc might have done some magical things.

Also not entirely clear to me is "what am I" - granpa's messages show that somehow we grow/mature unnaturally, and that both our and Ongots bodies are strange. If you remember Ongots hole in his stomach with some weird device in it - the t-shirt on your clothes line has also a window in the chest/stomach area, just like the harness you put on Ongots.

Also there was talk of telepathy and the general theme of the game is transfer of the whole consciousness/personality... this might be a key to something, not sure what. Maybe somehow we're able to transfer our memories to the past, triggering our past self to send the numbers and remember Ida. Judging from the "parents" letters the mystery guy (our past self?) had some kind of feeling towards Ida (Babylonian effect or something?) which the "parents" apparently thought was just normal love?

I'll try playing the game in Russian next - maybe something somewhere makes more sense than the translated version.

[castorquinn]

Yeah, I think Xaito is basically right.

In the past Ida met Mark, they locked eyes and in that moment she felt an unusual, anxious sensation. That sensation was the Babylonian Effect - telepathy being used to communicate someone's memories between bodies, akin to the mirror transfer. Various documents in the yurt describe this.

We know that the anomoly seems to send microwave signals through time. Another article explains that.

And we know that Koch, if he has that specific number, that sequence, can use that to prevent the plague from starting.

What Enebish realises right at the end is that he is Mark (I'll explain how we know that in a sec) and so he uses telepathy to communicate to Ida the code, so that she can communicate it back to him in the past. They're able to do this because they're inside the anomoly.

Let's talk about Mark. He refers to the 'Ida incident', and that it motivated him to investigate this Babylonian effect. We know they've only met once, and that Mark felt something happened when they met. What happened was that Ida communicated telepathically with him. So that channel of communication existed; all Enebish needed to do was put the code into that channel and it'd make it back to Mark in the past.

All that I'm prepared to lock in absolutely. Here's where I start to speculate a little, but I think this speculation is justified. We know that if a mirror talks to themselves it causes something terrible to happen. We know that the kid in the clinic talked to himself in the transfer booth and it caused him to explode. We know that at the very end of the video that your man describes to you the very last thing that happens before the explosion is that Mark talks to or comes in contact with the unnamed local child. So let's say that child is Mark. That would explain that sequence of events.

That local child - Chagatai - is replaced by Enebish. Enebish is not a natural child. He grows unnaturally fast, but note that he grew very fast for five years, basically just until he was old enough to replace Chagatai. He takes on the appearance of Chagatai. His tshirt shows he is partially modified, like the eagle (awesome work spotting that Xaito, that was the key observation that pulled all this together for me). He's immune to the black desperation miasma, which is referenced a few times but also proven by the fact that the player can walk into those fields with minimal effect. Also we know that this world has cloning technology - this is stated a couple of times, and is the ultimate exit strategy for the mirrors once the plague is gone.

I'm prepared to speculate that either Chagatai, or Enebish, or both are mirror clones of Mark. The reason Enebish has lost his memory is so that his mind is clear to be able to send the message back to his older self, maybe. We know he's having dreams that are memories of the world Mark lived in before the plague, long before Enebish was born. The eagle knows what's going on, either because he's got a computer mind, or there's some mirroring going on there too. He's the one who brings the baby, who finds Ida's neurochip, who shows Enebish where to place Ida's body at the end. Right at the end Enebish seems to suddenly know exactly what's going on. Why? Have his true memories been triggered somehow?

I'm going to have to play this game a second time to nail down some of these specifics, but I'm pretty confident the intention here is that Enebish is a mirror of Mark.

[castorquinn]

And for the record, I think this game ended *exceptionally* well. It was a strong ending, it wasn't rushed, it was perfectly paced given the frenetic nature of the final player-controlled scene. It is certainly a very unclear ending, but I think the nature of the world that's being described here, anything fully explained would have lessened the impact of the story being told. That final exchange between Ida and Enebish, where she says she's anxious and he says "Good, just look at my eyes, I'll explain everything", really tugged the heart, and the video sequence after that, with 'real' Ida, was a phenomenal finish, especially seeing her eyes like that.

Even if I never figure out all the details, I have not a single complaint about the way Cradle ended. I rate it very highly.

[LoboFH]

If such a gorgeus girl had looked at me I would feel telepathy, anomaly and all kind of fantastic feelings.

...but the end is brutally abrupt, I feel lack of closure, I would like to come back to steppe, fix Ida...and raise cyborg babies close to the rainbow.

[castorquinn]

Hah! Yeah, I can appreciate that this ending is not going to have that narrative completeness some people are going to want on at the conclusion of a story like this. That's perfectly valid. For me it worked, but for anyone who found it too abrupt, I get where you're coming from.

One thing should be very clear though, given the incredible detail that went into the design of this game: this isn't a rushed ending, this is exactly the ending the developers intended. Noone who has the time to add those utterly gorgeous lights to the night sky was rushing development.

[Xaito]

costorquinn, I think you're getting close to solving the mysteries.

A few unsolved questions for me remain:

What exactly is Enebish. Those weird modifications he and the eagle have don't seem to have any explanation in the notes. Maybe I've missed a hint somewhere though.
What is weird to me is that all the notes and the state of the house indicate that Enebish lived a normal, if secluded life until the start of the game apart from the fact that he couldn't get out of the exclusion zone because he'd faint.
It seems he's somehow tied to the dome, in more ways than that he can go inside without fainting like other people do.
What exactly did Enebish do with the device at the beginning - the note on the table is adressed to his flying tram driver and states he can sell all your stuff and dump the "body" into the lake.
Seems Enebish tried to transfer into an m-body so he can leave and the logs of the machine show that the donor body was successfully liquidated. So are we at the start of the game also in an m-body? Or did something different happen?
Interesting is that the logs also show that no operator could be reached to supervise the transfer and the fact that neither Enebish nor Ongots DNA error values could be scanned - neither with the handheld device, not by the transfer machine.
Some form of transfer happened, at least erasing Enebish's memories, maybe replace them with Mark?

Also a different idea came into my mind:
In the end when you zap Ida and she's feeling anxious - I assumed that it's the same anxiety she felt in the past meeting with Mark. But there is also another thing that apparently happens when you feel anxiety or similar emotions - that weird substance gets produced, that makes outsiders produce the virus? And I think the explosion at the garden also happened because the child who spoke to himself produced extreme amounts of it, instantly overloading the vessel collecting it? If I got that right that is.
When Ida wakes up and says she's feeling anxious enebish says something along the lines of "that's good" - did they use the stuff to somehow interact with the anomaly which was formed by the explosion in the first place maybe?


Also I feel that I need to look into what those special children were - I feel their illness and treatment somehow is strongly connected to the whole plot (seeing how they were mentioned many times and most of Ida's returning memories are about them), yet the theories collected so far in this thread kinda ignore them for the most part.

[AbusingBruno]

hello everyone, just finished the game, and rushed here in search for closure

the ending is pretty clear - Enebish is Mark, he gets back in time, sees real Ida, remembers to text 3513 to the professor, and everything is happy again

what is not clear to me of course is the many things the plot throws at you and apparently forgets in the ending - why the children have that strange illness? what about the beauty vs. ugliness theme? and also, who is the eagle? what was inside the first neurochip that the robot had in its head before installing Ida's one? why the ending insists on showing the clock?

as it's been said, the authors created a rich and complex world, and probably we'll need to scourge every inch of it before making sense of it

also I've installed a solar panel on the roof of the yurt, anyone knows what does it do?