More questions than answers(secret ending spoiler)

[Dame Arstor]

I feel that there's a lot of things still unresolved even after getting all of the memory shards to unlock the secret good ending.

What happened to the baby? You know, the one that the protag waited 1 year to get strong enough to get back from The Hand? It's like after the game started proper(with you appearing back in Samedi's room with the bookcase), the baby is completely forgotten. There's no resolution either.

What are the implications of the memory shards? Why did it let us see the "truth" to no longer be a puppet to Samedi, letting us fight him to reach the surface rather than getting our soul eaten by him in the other ending?

What was the destroyed society underground that decided to build the God-machine(which I'm going to guess is Omega/Alpha/Ignorantia) to help govern them?

The secret good ending left me scratching my head as all it does is leave behind more questions and felt more of a teaser to a sequel than a real ending. I might be missing a couple of key lore pieces in the game (I talked to all of the npcs I could find and explored as much of the optional paths I could to look for lore pieces scattered around) but unless I severely overestimated my ability to piece things together, the story seems unfinished? I'm still not too sure what's actually going on in the game.

[♫RL]

The baby is very clearly dead, as that's generally how sacrifices work. After one year it is just Samedi ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with you. Keep in mind, he does withhold information throughout the entire game. Even when it comes to you regaining memories through the shards, he is completely against you doing that.
The shards are just to signify that you're going against Samedi's wishes rather than going with what he says all the time. The constant monster spawns that he does is also part of that, since having good karma is effectively going against his wishes so now he's against you to. In a sense, he's trying to get you back to his side but it's not working.
The true ending is to confirm what people were saying. There was a war that happened on the surface, it's dog ♥♥♥♥♥♥. There's nothing but monsters and a scorched earth up there. Likely, humanity did something exceedingly stupid to cause this to happen, bringing Reapers like Samedi and the others you see into the picture. Maybe that's what they're trying to tell you in Absolute, I'm not quite sure. But the surface isn't fairing any better than the underground.
Otherwise it's basically a sequel hook. Blondie is going to be fighting on the surface with his new powers, likely Samedi is going to be working with him since it seems they're chill after the fight.

[♫RL]

https://i.imgur.com/eQNM7ie.jpeg
Oh, looks like Samedi drops what's going on on the surface in the lighthouse by accident. Looks like it's a war between the "higher powers".

[Chrisme]

Originally posted by ♪RL:

The true ending is to confirm what people were saying. There was a war that happened on the surface, it's dog ♥♥♥♥♥♥. There's nothing but monsters and a scorched earth up there. Likely, humanity did something exceedingly stupid to cause this to happen, bringing Reapers like Samedi and the others you see into the picture.

It is mentioned in the archive that the Eight who first organized humanity at the Central Station used a book called the Grimoire of SomethingSomething to open the gate to heaven. But they were tricked and opened the gate to hell instead. The surface world is therefore the result of this merging of dimensions (or whatever) as is practically also the underground world with all its demonic elements and strange factions. Similarily, Samedi is just another demon with his own agenda to devour your soul.

As for the baby. It actually shows up in the bad ending again (the spirit coming out of the hand and right into your hands) although I don't have a good interpetation of what exactly happens there other than Samedi getting what he wanted all along...

[Dame Arstor]

Originally posted by Chrisme:

As for the baby. It actually shows up in the bad ending again (the spirit coming out of the hand and right into your hands) although I don't have a good interpetation of what exactly happens there other than Samedi getting what he wanted all along...

I took a look at the bad ending and compared it with the secret good ending route after killing The Punishing Hand, the soul coming out transforms into a baby and started crying and Samedi feasting on your soul but for the secret good ending, the soul just merges with Blondie. This seems to be an oversight as unless you already saw the bad ending(which would take atleast 10h-15h of playthrough to get, another 15h-17h for getting all 9 memory shards), you won't know what happened to the baby(I certainly wouldn't have thought that the soul merging with Blondie *is* the baby) and just have to assume things.

I really wish they implemented a system that doesn't force you into replaying the entire game all over again to get a different ending.

[Chrisme]

Originally posted by Dame Arstor:

I took a look at the bad ending and compared it with the secret good ending route after killing The Punishing Hand, the soul coming out transforms into a baby and started crying and Samedi feasting on your soul

Actually, I think Samedi also wants the baby soul. He's not feasting on the protagonist's soul but rather he's transforming him into some kind of vessel (a tree like lump of flesh with arms as its branches) that pumps the baby soul right into his hand. Apparently he likes eating baby souls just as much as the Eye.
The Eye goes through the trouble of harvesting these souls. Samedi takes a more direct route and steals it from the other demon through force.

In one of the protagonist's memories we can see that he got a demonic element through some kind of wolf demon (Samedi? But he's a mosquito...). In both endings this appears to be responsible for the transformation / mutation. With his memories back and still a shred of humanity in himself Blondie seems to have it under control. Otherwise Samedi uses it against him.

[♫RL]

I never got the bad ending personally so I never noticed that bit, but it fusing with your arm in the good ending (specifically, also the arm that's bit). Although, it makes sense in a way. The shards are meant to represent humanity. There's also those baby eyes you can get which only tells you your karma. In a sense since they say babies are the absolute "purist form", since they technically have no evil in them or something, that's why things go wrong if you don't have any humanity left in the bad ending and Samedi just wins in the end.
Samedi does say there's multiple reapers, one being himself. The other seems to be the boss you fight before you enter Absolute, then there's Grim and we see the bird that's under another reaper.
It's just odd, since even the one that worked under Grim believed you would be the one to save humanity and fought you under that assumption. I guess it's because of that bite on your arm and you... fusing with your baby or some ♥♥♥♥. It's enough to ward off reapers it seems.