Wild speculation time! (Big fat spoilers)

[GRRRR]

Havent really read much lore threads so heres a bunch of my speculations ill just toss out into the wild. Here we go!

ACHTUNG BIG SPOILERINOS LAST WARNING

Certain is a malfunctioning Penrose 512 crashed on the alien Planet with dead Elster and barely alive Arianna (White hair girl)

Either Ariannas Pod opened due to malfunction and she stumbled onto the surface (second suit missing might suggest that) and into the Gate or it made a connection due to her bioresonance while shes still in her pod.

The Gate created Ariannas versions of Penrose (likely the pristine one and the ♥♥♥♥ one) and Rotfront and brought a copy of the dead Elster back.
Im not seeing her connection to Sierpinski, she was never there.

New Elster awakens on a copy of Penrose (the real one as seen at the end is a decaying ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥) and goes into the gate which creates her happy memory version of the Penrose and Sierpinski with everyone in it. Elster having been to Sierpinski before Penrose and being the source for the gate recreation is the simplest explanation, Adler mentions a Elster Unit maybe being there or not.

Elster also creates Isa, her Gestalt original Erikas sister, and imbibes her with her promise obsession (misdirected towards Erika tho if i remember correctly from her first note). She runs around all over the place but isnt really connected to anything.

Adler mentions "taken apart and put together by someone who doesnt know how it works"

The gate recreating Sierpinski from someone other than Elster gets abit thin. Elster creates (well the gate does but ya know what i mean) Isa who in turn creates Alina who worked there and she brings Sierpinski with her (and then possibly dies in the mines/beach)? Arianna knew Alina on Rotfront and read her mind and it comes from that? Elster as the source is just simpler.

The Sierpinski recreation and the copied personnel inside may be in a little bubble, actually trucking along as if normal for abit, altho probably under the belief of having supply issues (theres mentions of reinforcements not coming in). If it ever was a real physical place is unclear. Elster and Falke leave and enter it but theres no tangible connection to the surface. Doesnt matter in the end.

At some point Falke leaves this Sierpinski, possibly trying to get help, and enters the gate (Imagery of Elster/Falke overlapping at the gate). She contracts "the sickness" from Arianna (link to her nightmares or degrading mental state) who was also there or connected to the gate and theres also some sort of merge with Elster. As the endboss, she mentions becoming whole and the promise. Also again, imagery of Elster/Falke at the gate.

Falke returns to Sierpinski which spreads Ariannas bad stuff and ♥♥♥♥ goes south. Opposed to Rotfront people are aware of a decline.

This might loop with the whole thing resetting depending on Elster dieing or reaching Arianna at the end without killing her, with only Adler being aware, maybe due to touching Elster on her "deathbed". He talks to Isa about having been there and tries to stop Elster saying "this world" (the recreations?) cant take much more.

Altho why wouldnt he want the whole thing to fail and end - maybe this isnt an option, it just degrades slightly further into nightmare, forever with each loop? The Not-Silent-Hill otherworld might already be that, some other location now turned meat world totally.

Rotfront seems more slice of life with no mention of a decline, it seems like it just stopped. Theres Gestalt death scorch marks but thats it, some seem to just have died eating at the diner. This may be due to Arianna not really knowing or caring about anyone there altho she has insights due to her bioresonance.

One note mentions Elster templates stemming from a single decommissioned unit on a penrose. there might not be much more to it but it stands out.
Maybe it hints at copy-of-a-copy causing persona problems. Maybe its some funny internal dream logic, after all elster came from the dead elster on the crashed penrose.

On second thought this almost is like fanfiction but hey hope it was fun to read :p

[ShnitzelKiller]

But Isa is real. She is one of the Itou twins, whose existence is confirmed in Ariane's accounts of visiting their bookstore and seeing banned books on sale. I don't know why she melts though, maybe she was a recreation, "dreamed" into existence, since Ariane did know her personally.
Arianne only knew of Alina because of an old photo she saw in the photo shop.

[GRRRR]

Shes as "real" as the Elster we play, never questioned that

To be clear a real actual Isa existed previously just like every other person in the game. However in my opinion everything we see and interact with when the game happens is a fabrication (i believe even physical copies, not just pure "dreams") of the alien artifact, the "gate" using Ariannas and Elsters memories as blueprints of sort for everything.

I assume the school flashback is a resurfacing gestalt memory, albeit abit warped, not an actual location.

The radio station and train might be a weird mix since you get and keep stuff from them.

Playable Elster itself was "created" by Arianna first and then goes into the gate and serves as a source for more stuff the gate creates, especially Sierpinski.

Falke went into the gate aswell, maybe she caused meatworld. Her room seems kinda central to it.

I prolly was abit vague, sorry :)

The only really real persons and objects (not manufactured by the gate that is) are the dead elster, the wrecked Penrose, Arianna in the pod (if she didnt actually manage to put on the first suit and go outside), the planet they crashed on and the gate itself.

Where the gate recreates Sierpinski and the other stuff, if its actually physically underground or another dimension or whatever is kinda vague but doesnt really matter i think.

Originally posted by GRRRR:

Elster also creates Isa, her Gestalt original Erikas sister, and imbibes her with her promise obsession (misdirected towards Erika tho if i remember correctly from her first note). She runs around all over the place but isnt really connected to anything.

Altho i assume Erika Itou was the template for Elster, and the "new" Elster (who herself was dreamed up by Arianna like you put it) "created" Isa.

[Muscarine]

I don't think the gate, or even the crash, should be taken literally

[GRRRR]

So Arianna is hallucinating it all wasting away in her pod while the Penrose floats in space?

Kinda dull, thats like the "it was all a dream" trope. Id prefer the gate and crash being real. But its entirely possible of course :O

[Negra Jesus El Savior Christ!]

Gonna copy > paste this from another thread.

I think one of two things is going on. Details may vary slightly but:

The first, and frankly easiest, has more-or-less been stated. The entire game is just the deranged dream(s) of Elster's heavily damaged brain. Specifically she's in the pod and trying to "wake up" one final time to fulfill her promise. The gate / arch is symbolic for her pod going through the revival process, and the various dead LSTR units seen beyond the arch but outside of the ship are analogous for each cycle she's attempted to 'wake up' but ultimately failed. In this case Falk would be representative of the damage she's sustained from radiation as well as her own fear about waking up and doing what she agreed to do but does not want to do. Defeating her is overcoming that fear and accepting her own death (as well as that of her love), so on and so forth. The various environments - Rotfront, the facility, and all of that is a combination of her imaginations, stories Ariane has shared / told her, Ariane's bio resonant projections from her own stasis, and the theme of fleshy decay and corruption is the reality of Elster's decaying body creeping in at the edges.

The dead iteration of her in the ship would be representative of her 'old self' which went back into her own cryo / stasis pod heavily damaged because she was afraid of fulfilling her promise, with the player now being the "whole" her who has embraced her fear and is willing to do what needs to be done. This would paint any cosmic influence as misinterpretation of Ariane passively (or actively) reaching into Elster via resonance while they're both in stasis, or just symbology for death and responsibility. Take your pick.

The various endings would just be what Elster does once she's 'whole' and has awoken. Does she reach the threshold and then succumb to her fear, intend to carry out her promise but has slept for too long and become too weak, or manage to make good on her word? The secret ending is the opposite; where Ariane saves Ester by allowing her to die in cryo, freeing her from her promise and allowing her to die without that emotional pain.

This idea feels incredibly clean, straight forward, and well supported by the imagery / symbolism / information we have. Plus just kind of... ties everything together very neatly. Feeds into a dream about dreaming, has neat and clean spaces for Esther and Ariane within the horrible dream universe (dreamer 'turning over' but not waking up, red eye / cosmic horror influencing the world respectively), and does a good job of framing the struggles. Even the body-horror elements fit cleanly as an explanation for Esther's perception of her own degrading physical form. But it's also (fairly) low-stakes. I'm just not a fan of it because anything which boils down to 'it was all a dream' feels kinda eh to me.

The concept I like better doesn't fit as cleanly and, while I feel it's also well supported by most of the information we're directly given, makes several leaps and assumptions. Feels more weighty and satisfying, but has more holes and more prone to interpretation.

[GRRRR]

Interesting, but yeah i agree leans aswell into the dream trope. Altho that could just be all thats to it after all. Ive never seen Elster as the central point, it all seems to originate and revolve around Arianna. Subjective of course. :p

Abit of interpretation is fine i think, cohesion is important but not all minutiae need to be explained.

Think the last story i cared that much about was Killer7 XD

[Muscarine]

Originally posted by GRRRR:

So Arianna is hallucinating it all wasting away in her pod while the Penrose floats in space?

Kinda dull, thats like the "it was all a dream" trope. Id prefer the gate and crash being real. But its entirely possible of course :O

There's another character who spends her time bedridden, Falke, and the more you think about it the harder it becomes to dissociate Falke and Elster, the game likes to confuse you by mixing up characters a lot

And then there's Bioresonance and the Kolibris, essentially telling you everyone is basically getting fused together

I don't think it's also quite as simple as "it was all a dream", but i do think it's somewhere along the "visions of the mind / higher plane of consciousness" lines

It's all very The End of Evangelion to me, and i'm also getting I Am A Hero vibes, Ghost in the Shell, Avalon, Solaris....

And i mean what's to say this isn't just a 10h long rhetorical parabola centered around a white haired bullied bookworm who feels misunderstood, in the real world
The real world as in our world, not this post soviet authoritarian dystopia which could very well just be a construction from the mind of a repressed Ariadne

And by the way there's a simple thing i haven't seen mentioned yet, Ariadne in Greek mythology is the woman who gave the famous string to Theseus (wink wink Ship wink wink) so he could find his way out of Minos' Labyrinth after slaying the Minotaur

Ariadne's Thread is also a logic process to solve a given problem, often metaphysical, by exhausting all possible options to get as close to the "truth" as you can
A well known literal application would be, if you're stuck in a Labyrinth, always turn in the same direction, you'll reach the exit eventually

edit - Interestingly enough, an Elster is a magpie, Falke is a falcon, Kolibri is humming bird, Mynah i know is Mainate in french, Storch ~= Stork, lots of birds names, when wings are also a means to escape the Labyrinth

[GRRRR]

That always seemed like a little joke to me since magpies are rumored to steal everything shiny that isnt nailed down - like a player character. Another pretty literal interpretation i guess :p

[Muscarine]

Originally posted by GRRRR:

That always seemed like a little joke to me since magpies steal everything shiny that isnt nailed down - like a player character. Another pretty literal interpretation i guess :p

I'm sure there's some of that because it immediately evokes that relation, but i also think there's more to it what with the fact that basically every Replikant is named after a bird

[Negra Jesus El Savior Christ!]

Originally posted by GRRRR:

Interesting, but yeah i agree leans aswell into the dream trope. Altho that could just be all thats to it after all. Ive never seen Elster as the central point, it all seems to originate and revolve around Arianna. Subjective of course. :p

It revolves around Arianne in the same way that Dead Space revolves around Nicole. She's the main character's motivating factor, and highly important with her own character, but she's not the center of the story or the protagonist.