Story? (!!!SPOILERS!!!)

[08TheMadLord80]

I usually love stories that don't really tell you all the details. But I just got the 'Memories' ending, and I don't know what the **** any of what I just did means... It's very convoluted. And yes I read every document, file and dialog that you could read, but it just jumps around so much that I felt completely lost the entire game. Maybe I'm stupid. Maybe I forgot some important detail between the hours of not seeing any story?

If anyone could help me understand I'd greatly appreciate it.

The major thing I got from it was LSTR went through hell to get back to Ariane, possibly several hundred times, as the world rotted a little more every time she did it?

But then I have absolutely no idea what Aldr's deal was, or who FALKE was, or why all the Replika's became meat sacks... Just. What am I missing here!?

And I don't know if knowing german or japanese could have helped me at all. But that kinda got old fast...

[Lucid]

Also doesn't make sense since the Artifact and the ritual at the end with the 6 Replikas in a circle in the ARTIFACT ending is what the logo of the game represents. So it's not just Ariane and her bioresonance manifesting everything.

[Ruin N Gaun]

It's probably half and half. Maybe they did found something that isn't to be found back in Leng. Then that thing somehow found Arianne floating in space and used her bioresonance power. That or maybe Arianne awaken something when floating in space and the thing in Leng is like a transmitter. Similar to I guess the necromorph artifact in dead space.

[Pebbles]

adding more to my current running theory:
- this dream reality theory would also explains why, out of all the Replikas, LSTR/Elster is the only one who "has lost their original neural pattern": Because Arinae never got to know Elster in real life, thus she has no idea how real life Elster actually is like, and has to just imagine and delude herself
- on second thought, Arinae might have never learned the name of Elster's real original. looking at other replikas, they are all named after birds: Falcon, Eagle, Hummingbird, Owl, Magpie. this might be Arinae's real life nicknaming habit, and as she doesn't know Elster's real life, she simply assigned the nickname "Magpie" to Elster
- in addition, we can see how Arinae's jealousy towards Alina works: She wants to be Alina (because they look alike) so much so that Alina and her become one entity in the dream (several notes and poems by dream Alina imply so). So much so that for the first chapter of the game, Elster is looking for Alina, not Arinae.

(also can we just appreciate Elster for a moment? despite being a creation/delusion within a dream, Elster sincerely and deeply loves Arinae, just like how the real Elster loves Alina. she made a promise to end Arinae's suffering, and she went through endless hell to fulfill it. after the fakeout ending and the "flashback" to Penrose - might you, despite being a dream, the Penrose experience is "real" for Elster, Penrose and Alina/Arinae are all she ever knew - she said the line "I made a promise", which is reflected in the Promise ending when Arinae told her "du hast es versprochen"/"You made a promise", and struggled against death itself to fulfill her promise. girl is literally too gay to die and gay enough to kill god aka dream Arinae)

[cree]

Originally posted by 08TheMadLord80:

Originally posted by cree:

Chinese here, i can confidently assure you that the Chinese in this game is not vital for understanding the story. In most cases, they serve as aesthetic style and world building(but they are very cool, and give off a special vibe), since it seems that the fictional country in the game is a union of populace from Asian and European continents. This can be deducted from all the GDR symbols, and Chinese, Korean, Germany and Japanese words appear in the game.

I did enjoy it for the first six - seven hours (The words flashing on the screen Tarantino style) But that was around the time I was starting to feel kind of drained from not knowing what was going on, so the flashing screens started to wear thin on me at that point aha.

As i can recall, words like Elster, Falke, Adler are birds' name in Germany, and the flashing Chinese above their name is the translation to them. Also, the giant Chinese word 誓言 at the fake ending means promise, but in a more serious and literary tone, so it is should be translated as oath or vow.

[cree]

Originally posted by Pebbles:

adding more to my current running theory:
- this dream reality theory would also explains why, out of all the Replikas, LSTR/Elster is the only one who "has lost their original neural pattern": Because Arinae never got to know Elster in real life, thus she has no idea how real life Elster actually is like, and has to just imagine and delude herself
- on second thought, Arinae might have never learned the name of Elster's real original. looking at other replikas, they are all named after birds: Falcon, Eagle, Hummingbird, Owl, Magpie. this might be Arinae's real life nicknaming habit, and as she doesn't know Elster's real life, she simply assigned the nickname "Magpie" to Elster
- in addition, we can see how Arinae's jealousy towards Alina works: She wants to be Alina (because they look alike) so much so that Alina and her become one entity in the dream (several notes and poems by dream Alina imply so). So much so that for the first chapter of the game, Elster is looking for Alina, not Arinae.

(also can we just appreciate Elster for a moment? despite being a creation/delusion within a dream, Elster sincerely and deeply loves Arinae, just like how the real Elster loves Alina. she made a promise to end Arinae's suffering, and she went through endless hell to fulfill it. after the fakeout ending and the "flashback" to Penrose - might you, despite being a dream, the Penrose experience is "real" for Elster, Penrose and Alina/Arinae are all she ever knew - she said the line "I made a promise", which is reflected in the Promise ending when Arinae told her "du hast es versprochen"/"You made a promise", and struggled against death itself to fulfill her promise. girl is literally too gay to die and gay enough to kill god aka dream Arinae)

You theory sounds far-fetched at first, but it makes more sense the more you think about it, just like all the other theories, and that's a good sign for an open-ended story: free to be interpreted not just in two ways, but much more.

[lentinant]

Originally posted by solitaire:

How do you see Isa fitting in to the story?

If you connect the dots, you can realize that both Isa and Erika are dead even before Ariane goes for Penrose program. The entire Rotfront section is based on Ariane's memory of her residental district. And in book shop, you can actually see shrine for the twins (there are their photos with black strip, which usually represents dead person).

[lentinant]

Regarding the story itself, it kinda looks for me that events that are shown, aside of the some flashbacks, are not real, and are, basically, just hallucinations instigated on Elster by Ariane's bioresonance (which she can't properly control due to her slowly dying in cryo), and majority of things shown are formed by memories and emotions of Ariane, combined with her wish to die. There are just too many discrepancies.

However, I can't claim this is complete truth, since this doesn't mesh together with the fact that Ariane somehow knows about the entire S-23 factory layout.

[Arbie]

Originally posted by Pebbles:

a
- on second thought, Arinae might have never learned the name of Elster's real original. looking at other replikas, they are all named after birds: Falcon, Eagle, Hummingbird, Owl, Magpie. this might be Arinae's real life nicknaming habit, and as she doesn't know Elster's real life, she simply assigned the nickname "Magpie" to Elster

???

Elster means magpie in German. Thematically it is because she takes the parts of other replikas, but the bird naming system seems concrete especially with the higher ranked replikas named Adler and Falke.

[kirisol]

Originally posted by Meiteron:

Signalis is the kind of story that reveals very little on a surface viewing, but with enough cross-referencing of notes and lore and environmental details and things can start meshing. There's enough room for interpretation that I don't think there's any one true explanation for what happens. I have spent more time thinking about the story in Signalis than I spent playing the game (the mark of a good story, imo) and I've more or less assembled a take that makes the most sense to me. Spoilers for the entire game, obviously:

Start with the history of Ariane as described by the game. She grows up with her mother in an isolated radio station, eventually moves to a larger city on Rotfront, and has great difficulty assimilating (see the first-person section where a girl with white hair is being abused by other schoolchildren). She applies for the Penrose program to get away from her bleak home life. She is also, as recorded by the spy in Rotfront, a powerful bioresonant. She probably shouldn't have been put on the Penrose, but her medical records are mysteriously deleted from the doctor's logs when you view them. Perhaps said spy did a little sabotage before leaving town?

So, off to space she goes. She grows close with her partnered Elster unit. When you were playing through Rotfront you would have found the complete photo of Alina Seo, and the person in the other half of the photo looks a lot like Elster, but human - the implication being that she is the Gestalt whose mental pattern was used for the Elster series. There's another note that Alina Seo looks very similar to Ariane - perhaps why Elster grew closet's her while on the Penrose.

As we learn, Penrose ships will ultimately break down and doom the crew. When symptoms of radiation poisoning become serious, Ariane is put into cryostasis by Elster; Elster dies of the same cause, however, leaving Ariane in stasis. We find the body of that original Elster right at the very end. Ariane is thus trapped, suffering, and alone.

However. She remains a powerful bioresonant, so she uses a feature of bioresonance that is already commonplace in the world - sending a mental pattern to a replika. She is explicitly sending her Elster back to another Replika, who will then try to make it back to her so that she can end Ariane's suffering. That's the "promise". Remember how the game starts with Elster abruptly standing in the bathroom on Leng? How did she get there from the ship? She didn't - not physically. Mentally is another matter.

The issue is, of course, that Ariane probably has no experience with bioresonance on this scale. We know the scale can be large, because a lore note directly references terraforming and gravity manipulation as things bioresonance can do. The leader of the Eusan Nation is a powerful bioresonant credited for letting them settle the solar system in the first place. Doing this stuff wrong probably causes a lot of problems - things artfully described by Adler at one point as "reality being broken down and put back together by someone who doesn't know what they're doing".

That leads to things like a gruesome plague that breaks down biological parts. Or accidentally broadcasting mental patterns too strongly - Falke gets exposed to the signal and loses herself in Elster's memories, and Alina Seo has a journal entry where she notes her hair is turning white and referencing an "Elster" who shouldn't even be on the planet- so maybe Ariane is sending more than she intends. Blowing a hole in spacetime to connect a deep mine on Leng to a planet somewhere in the Oort Cloud that has a stranded ship on it? Sure, why not.

The entire segment in Rotfront is influenced by Ariane's trauma. Between chapters 2 and 3, when you are back on the Penrose, you find a note from Ariane about losing teeth; picking up the Tower card in Rotfront proper you see some loose teeth near some of the mass of flesh. All of Rotfront is Ariane trying to process (or repress) what's happening to her. The mine might be a real place, but Rotfront feels more like walking through memories.

Ariane's entire plan is a desperate long shot and it doesn't work the first time. Ariane then starts a time loop, a day repeats, and another Replika gets Elster's psyche and she starts trying again. And again, and again. Adler notes the day stays the same in his journal. There are hundreds of Elster bodies pushed down the elevator shaft. There are dozens of Elster bodies you walk past on the way to the Penrose after clearing the mine. My personal take is that the Leave and Memories endings are previous, failed loops that almost but didn't quite get it done. Our Elster even appropriates an arm and chest plate from another dead Elster discovered exactly where she rests in the Memories ending. Only the Promise ending actually ends things, when you reach Ariane and she's lucid enough to ask for euthanasia, which Elster grants.

I'm curious if Arianna knew that Penrose's program was a one way ticket? I think that the government was hiding this fact from public and they send messages to pilots only after a certain distance has been covered. This adds even more hopelessness to the situation and the state of the dying girls mind .

[Đeath’ş Aļļ | Horst Fuchs]

After first run i got ending called Promise. I understand start, and part of the ending, but everything between was a big WTF.

Seems like many devs today are obcessed with story timeline scattered like a lego and storytelling throught lazy notes and story and combine this in such way that true meaning can be interpreted in hundred ways. Or just modern players loves such mess?

Interesting world, sadly story is heavily cryptic stuff full of confusing visions and weird changing of areas. Game itself was kinda ok survival horror with weird focus on PS1 nostalgia, even speed of menus and loading were PS1 slow. But ok, not a bad game, just not really worth of multiple runs.

Im not even trying to decypher what was this story about, waste of time ,i had few theories, but all were smashed to atoms when i finished game, which just added few more questions and explained nothing at all.

Just two questions. Since beggining of game it looked like just two persons arrived in your ship, gestalt woman and you or maybe even just you, so, who is that suicided corpse on a floor in one room of ship right before the ending?! And why every replika in game has a female shape?