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So some questions are, who survives and who dies? And are there clues to how they died? The two children as stowaways. Is that real or fantasy?
I think we play as Lily. Yes, our father was an actor before and got injured at war. Also, he was cruel man and beat us instead of our brother James.
I believe that Lily and James somehow sneak on the ship, where they tried to live and not getting caught (those memories of James and Lily). But something happened and the ship was set on fire and then drowned (why "James" hates ships).
And I think that Lily was the only one who survived that day, not James. I think like this because we can see ghost boy all the time we play and the Director said, we must create a new character. But new character can be created only if last one is destroyed. So... We need to destroy Lily and play James. Director's instructions in acts are always like "destroy female mannequin" which means "destroy Lily in you". And in James' ending there is a phrase like "The boy must leave and the man must stay" -- something like that. I believe it's too about that Lily must take his role since she's an actress like her father.
We are both James and Lily at the same time. We have been in a loop of not making a choice of who we actually are, resolving in a formless figure. Throughout the game we are guided by Director who wants us to end the loop and decide who we are. Having an inner power struggle of which of them is more dominant and in power. One has to prevail and the other cease to exist.
Now who we actually were?
So far thinking we were James and we took Lily in and worked as a vessel for her. Carrying her "flame" (soul). Could write on and on about details and what things in game supports this theory but yeah, interesting!
Also contemplating whether or not Director would be James as well. Or if he is under the Rat Queen herself. Rat Queen wants us to end the loop with whatever choice, director wants us to realize James more.
I mean, we don't know what happened to him. Did he die or no? And the achievement name "You can't handle the truth", when you hear out things about Director... I think it's connected somehow O:
We play as boy(who is the men now). When they was young(Boy and syster) they tryed to play a game like in a movie. The game lead them to the ship. They was out of food and scared. They hide frome the guards and all other stuff but the bad stuff go on and ship burned down. The boy survived it but his syster not. And in the last moment of her life he promissed to *safe* her for forever. And after this he was kinda shoked and his syster person kinda borned inside him.
So he become as one with his syster.
The hole game is a torture of his soul and there is a actually 3 endings.
1) The boy understand who he is and his true nature wins(and systers go away)
2) The syster nature won and the boy go off and he become totaly his syster
3) He failed to make a choise and need to throw the torture agayne.
Kinda meeeh storry for me since i dont wana know how the men become a women.
But this is it
and frome that we know that He/she actually slep for a good roles too
the storry have some rly ditry moments tho
On a literal level, it's the story of two siblings. Lily was born first (pre-WW1); the father returned from the war wounded (blind in one eye) and then the mother died giving birth to James. The father found a job as a cinema projectionist and the children grew up immersed in the world of early cinema, sneaking into the cinema to view movies like The Black Wanderer (which seems to be based on The Black Pirate, the 1926 Douglas Fairbanks movie). The father becomes abusive and Lily decides to take James and run away (it's also possible they killed their father or he killed himself but these scenes may just be their fantasies of escape).
They stow away an ocean liner to America, initially able to hide in unoccupied cabins (the map we see) during the day and venture out at night to find food, but the security chief wises on and locks away the food in the hold, rationing it out to the crew who are accused of being thieves and docked pay for trivial infractions such as breaking a flashlight (which is extremely unpopular and causes unrest amongst the crew). The children begin to starve, and are reduced to fighting with a dog for mouldering meat.
As the situation becomes more desperate, Lily ventures out alone and doesn't come back. James is left on his own and apparently goes mad, talking to himself and rats. At some point the ship strikes an iceberg and sinks (possibly exascerbated by the mutinous crew). The passengers flee the boat; either Lily returns and attempts to escape with James, only to become trapped as the gangway collapses, forcing James to leave her, or she never returns and James only hallucinates that she was with him until the collapse. Either way, she tells him she will always be with him and that he will 'find her'.
James goes on to become a matinee star, appearing in numerous films and stage performances. It appears he attempted to 'bring back' his sister by a form of method acting, 'becoming' his sister (who in turns plays other characters; hence 'layers'). There is some suggestion he crossdressed as her and possibly even appeared in some films as a woman (aided by the fact that the film was silent). However, in this process of calling out into the void for his sister, 'something else' responded, which the mystery items strongly suggest to be the 'Rat Lady' entity from LOF1. The Director is a devotee of this entity and set up the film at her direction, which re-enacts, sometimes metaphorically, key scenes from James's past, relating them to some of his past movies (e.g. the Metropolis scenes, which in-universe was Mechanopolis, a movie James starred in).
This causes James to relapse into madness, wandering the ship until he is able to remember who he is. In the Flame ending, he recovers, with the suggestion that everything he went through was, in fact, the movie being filmed and completed. The James you see throughout the game appears to have been at times a memory and at times an actor who is playing the part of you at a younger age.
The Forever ending turns this on its head by suggesting that it was actually Lily, at least in body, who survived the original ship, and became an actor by playing the character of her brother. At the end, she 'remembers' who she really is, and the Lily personality re-surfaces. In light of this, the scene where Lily apparently murders her brother in order to 'live forever' should potentially be taken as literal and not metaphorical. This ending, to me, feels a bit tacked-on as it doesn't really fit with the escape scene, Lily's monologue during the A Trip to the Moon homage, or the 'you called out to me but something else answered' idea. In this ending, the James you see throughout the game appears to have been at times an actor playing the role of your brother and at times an actual ghost.
The Formless ending results when James/Lily fails to decide who they are and remains stuck in the loop (as per the last note on the mirror). The Rat Lady, for unclear purposes (the mystery items suggest the entities may not have any reason other than their own amusement) is looping you through time, Groundhog Day-fashion, until you resolve your inner conflict.
The Formless One was originally a figurine created by James, which he started creating without really knowing what it was going to be. In the Flame framework, the Formless One is the elusive role, the character he can't get to grips with - in other words, failure as an actor. In the Forever ending, it may represent her guilt (though again this doesn't exactly sync up with the Director's comments).
You can also take the entire Lily/James scenario as a fictional story being created by the Director, in which you are being immersed in method acting style. The ending you get determines who you 'played', and your character is an actor who may have no connection to the children.
That's interesting, I feel like you answer all my questions I had after completing LOF2 :D
Thanks! One thing I forgot to mention - in the Flame/Forever endings, you see the posters (which feature both Lily and James in the game proper) change so they now feature only James for the Flame ending or Lily for the Forever ending.
The chest behind them, however, which opens just as the scene ends, is underneath the one poster which still features the other sibling (Shizo for James's ending, King Lear for Lily's), which implies that the other personality may still be haunting them.
I agree with everything here, except Lily's ending seems a bit off to me. I believe that you choose to be Lily in the end from being James. I think inevitably, James lived and Lily died. But, James promised to find and save Lily, the only way he knew how was by acting, which he learned from Lily when they played different scenes. Since he was alone, he always had Lily and her voice and her words inside of him, so he can become a vessel for her.
In Act V, Lily says a lot of hateful things to us as James (inner hateful speech to himself really). And she says things along the lines of "you had no right to dream those dreams." "They weren't your dreams to have". "You aren't even brave enough to be yourself", and more. So James, alone, wanted to be brave. He only knew of Lily as someone who's brave, so he became her. He became Lily and because he is now Lily, he had to follow her dreams of becoming an actress. He is able to play these layered roles, because he is that talented, which Lily saw in him, but he never grew the courage because of his father.
So the endings are if you follow the Director's direction to "show you who you really are" (as he says by the dark globe room); or if you refuse.his direction and continue being Lily; or if you cant decide and arent ready to choose and get stuck on the cycle of reaching for perfection that the Rat Queen subjects these artists to.
Or hes influenced or connected to him.
The director is deformed and has a cane. Theres a ton of fire motifs and the director talks a lot of how much does a man have to burn, etc. While this has to do with the flaming wreck of the ship, the painter burned the paintings in the first game and got burned himself from the wreck. They never specified him dying.
So the director is crazy and artistic (said the agent), has a limp (has a cane), and is deformed (mask, painting, and agent). All three point to the artist. Plus, this movie "was to be his last masterpiece". He always was striving for a masterpiece, perfection, to immortalize his wife but he failed, and now passes this burden of artistry to James.
This also connects to the mystery items: -Rats drove the artist crazy and the Rat Queen is the personification of that. The Rats also were there driving James crazy when Lily left and never returned: hence why young James is there banging his head against the Rat Queen memorial saying "she lied to me". She lied about being there forever and coming back.
-The second item being the crazed artist devoting his crazy undying love for her and doing her bidding.
- the third being James understanding his role as an artist
-the last being the director explaining the divine powers at the hands of the artists.
-the page for the conch shell talking about these divine powers and how if pursued at all by anyone of talent, it will consume them absolutely and only give them madness. (Clearly written by the artist being the only unique and crazed writing on any papers in the game)
The icing on the cake is the photo set. It tells the story of James/Lily going on board. Their father being a war vet (photographer), losing his eye. The mother dying (lips pic). The shipwreck. And finale:
A man talking to James with the 3rd mysterious item in hand.
It's not much but to add onto that, who's talking on the phonograph clips? Well, someone grew up by where they landed in US. And he is interviewing a boy (James) in the park while he sits alone on a bench. This is exactly what's depicted in the picture. They continue talking until the interviewer notices the "spark" in James and talks about "the eyes of eternity" which I'm almost certain (but dont have proof) is something the artist mentions in the previous game.
This all makes sense time wise as well. While on the ship as James, a room, in the section that specifically was blocked of from anyone other than the director and crew and what not, has a closet full of empty liquor bottles, countless canvases and paint brushes...which sounds familiar, however no craziness in sight. So this points to the artist being on the ship that sank, but he survived and wound up finding and talking to James in the town they both ended up in. (Or he wasnt on the ship and that was just a hint. The artist couldve just been in town).
This implies the photos are chronological, which makes sense since two photos show a young boy and girl growing up when in order.
The whole cycle links to the Rat Queen and what she wants, which I believe is for artists of great talent to earn their own love and accept who they are. The artist, a monster; James, an actor. The Rat Queen also appearing foremost in the very beginning of the game, taking off "James'" (?) head and saying her usual "You almost had it" as she did in LoF1.
(Also, Inheritance I think comes way after either game.)
But hey, that's all just a theory...
Really interesting idea re the director. I toyed with the notion that in the Forever ending, the Director is actually James, and he was disfigured in the fire when the ship exploded. That had a certain elegance (the Director is directing his sister to play a younger version of himself) as James has an existing connection to the Rat Lady, and explains why the Director has the face of the Formless One on his cane. It would also explain how the Director is able to set up quite involved scenarios from Lily's past, as well as her movies (of course, this could also be explained by the Director being the one conducting the interviews with James). However, it doesn't fit clearly with the rest of the themes, such as the Formless One as artistic failure (for Lily?), James's attempt to bring back his sister through his art, etc. Your take seems to work a lot better.