Endings (spoilers, obviously)

[jash415]

I'll put the whole thing in spoiler text, just in case.

So from what I gather by their achievement descriptions, the best ending is "Clear" because Kristina manages to accept everything and move on. And the worst ending is "Denial" because she can't accept what happened and is still haunted by it.

But for me, that's the opposite of how I saw it. I thought Denial was the best ending (and story) while Clear was the worst.

For starters, a playthrough that gets the Denial ending tells one self-contained story. You know who the bad guys are and what their motives are. If, as I did initially, you're just starting the game and play to a Clear/End ending, that's not the case. You're seemingly just abducted by a group of random psychopaths who drug women in bars and kill them without any point or purpose behind it. It's only by playing through and seeing the alternate story on the Denial path that you gain some context about the abductors (at least two of them anyway) and what their motives are.

That's not to say that a random encounter with a psycho is unrealistic or anything. But it's different with a group of people. One guy drugs you in a bar and kidnaps you, you don't necessarily need to explain everything. He's crazy. But a group of people (including a woman) working together to kidnap and kill women is unusual to the point that some kind of explanation for what's behind it is appreciated. And you get that in Denial without having to play the other story path.

Although in the Denial "kidnapped and killed for organs" path, Charlotte is drugged and isn't screaming the whole time like she's being tortured. In the Clear "drugged in a bar" path, she is. So is the motive even actually supposed to be the same between the two stories? I don't know. But if not, that would mean the Clear ending isn't fully explained even if you do play the other story path.

Anyway, speaking of Charlotte screaming, that leads to another reason I thought Denial was the better ending. In Denial, you're able to save her and escape. In Clear, you abandon her while she's screaming in pain and/or terror, including literally screaming your name, and then you're supposed to accept that she wanted you to leave her. Maybe it's just me, but I think if someone was screaming my name while they were being harmed, it would mean they wanted me to help. Not leave them to be killed and then convince myself that abandoning them is what they actually wanted.

I just found it kind of odd that the intent for the endings seemed to be backwards from how I perceived them. Did anyone else look at it this way, or is it just me?

[Fluffy Bunny]

All the clues and connections you make (like Alexander being a surgeon) are all moot in the end since it's basically similar to the whole "it was a dream" ending bad tv shows do to undo bad decisions. I don't hate it, it's just that the rest of the game sort of builds up to the denial ending.

[cat]

In the denial ending, the point is that Kristina is blocking out the truth, and pretending to herself she actually saved Charlotte when she didn't. So the two outcomes are really 1) Charlotte dies, Kristina lies to herself and pretends she saved her, because she can't accept the truth OR 2) Charlotte dies, but Kristina accepts the truth that she abandoned Charlotte and owns up to the reality of what really happened.

The reason you don't hear Charlotte scream in the denial ending is because Kristina wants to pretend it didn't happen, and deludes herself into remembering a nice, sanitized version of what actually happened. Hearing the screaming, is facing the truth

Although it may **appear** you've saved Charlotte in one of the endings, it's actually a figment of Kristina's imagination. That's why the ending is called "Denial"... it's a denial of the real truth. Thought this was patently obvious... with the ending being called "Denial". "Saving Charlotte" part of the "good ending" is a figment of Kristina's imagination, it's a delusion her mind cooked up because she was too fragile to cope. I would suggest you google what "denial" means in psych and it would make sense. It means lying to yourself to make yourself feel better.

[Gingergal]

I got the background story re the kidnappers in the end although not the first time I got the end.
I got sarah and the video explaining things re why and the clinic scene
I got surgical kit and photo and explanation from the surgeon

[Biotic Geth Prime]

Seriously, are the forums really that hard to figure out?

This should be common sense:

-Spoilers being hidden should be used in instances that a topic does not involve a subject that is a spoiler in itself of heavily tied to spoilers.

-If you place a spoiler warning in a topic description, there is no need to use it in the messages. Fair warning has already been more than sufficiently been given. Anyone daring to open a topic about the endings and that has spoiler warning in the title does not mind with spoilers.

This isn't rocket science. All that you're doing is making the experience harder to read.

[Biotic Geth Prime]

Now, commenting about the endings:

In typical fashion for FMV interactive narratives, the only way to get the full scope is to try out all permutations, watch every scene, explore every path. There is never a complete ending, since in order to open some doors you have to close other options.

Why did her friend scream her name? Because she was desperate. And her friend was the only person possibly within a reasonable earshot. Deep down, it is possible that, on a rational level, she knew that it would be better for her friend to save herself and possibly survive in order to alert the authorities. But she was desperate at that moment, in deep pain. Her only hope, even if irrational, was to shout the name of the only person nearby. Who can fault her?

As for the protagonist, she had little to no chance to overpower all of the captors. And this is assuming that we saw all of them. There could potentially be more people helping with that illicit operation. She was still groggy by whatever drug they game her. And the criminals were probably well armed. The best course of action was obviously to run away from the place.

Exposing herself and attempting a surprise attack would more than likely lead to both women being murdered.

At least one was able to survive and denounce what has taken place. Even though she was left emotionally scarred by survivors guilt.

[Aussie_Lapwing]

When you wake up on the psychiatrists lounge and he says 'we will now go back into the dark recesses of your mind, 3,2,1', the plot goes back to when Kristina and Charlotte went off and had a drink at the end of Emily's wedding. From here, they were cruelly abducted by a group of strangers at the bar. They took Charlotte upstairs, where they presumably murdered +/- assaulted her behind the closed doors. Charlotte screamed out to Kristina, but Kristina had no choice to escape.

Kristina has been mentally traumatised from this event and has been seeing a psychiatrist who is helping her work through what happened, to accept the truth and be at peace with her actions. Until it is revealed that she has been on a psychiatrist lounge the whole time, the whole plot up until this point has been Kristina making up a story in her mind as to what happened. This is because she has been in denial. Depending on the choices you make, which affects her character attributes such as guilt, denial and acceptance, it is either a ghost story or one where she thinks she has found out the abductors are the surgeon, the headmaster, the vet and Jack.

But, when she wakes up on the psychiatrist lounge and he puts her back under, it is revealed that she was simply randomly abducted at the bar by the group of strangers. We don't know why they did it, what exactly they did to Charlotte, and if they were ever caught. It is these unknowns that lead Kristina to speculate and make up stories such as they were capturing and killing girls for live organ transplants. The worst bit for Kristina is that she is guilty that she abandoned Charlotte in her escape and didn't go up to the stairs to save Charlotte. So the more detailed Kristina's story is up to this point, including saving Charlotte, the worse the outcome is, because she is deluding herself that all these things happened which didn't. Kristina had no choice but to leave Charlotte and must come to the acceptance of this.

So Charlotte is actually dead. Because the real plot goes back to the night of Emily's wedding, Emily isn't actually dead.

So the point of the game really is exploring what it is like to have trauma.

As Emily says - having a trauma can make you deny reality and see your deeper feelings turn into monsters.

Chilling game.

[Biotic Geth Prime]

Indeed. Among so many terrible games on steam, finding this gem was really a most fortunate event.

If you are into this sort of story, about recollections, denial, hallucinations, I suggest the 2 Alice games (one is a remake owned by EA), Batman Arkham Knight (its story is surprisingly good), the fmv game Erica and the indie game Sagebrush.

[Dr.X]

The truth its f*cking truth. Better that then see a ghost and going mad