[SPOILERS] Decent game, but... what the hell is this story?!

[Cheesepizza2]

Played through all 4 of the room games (not the VR one, at least not yet) and I thought they were pretty decent escape rooms, but the story that these games weave is just the most depressing ♥♥♥♥ I've ever seen. Lets just run through these games real quick

1) The first game just has you solve a ridiculously complicated safe that an old professor left behind. He just wanted to keep his prized achievement safe from prying eyes while still letting you (implied to be a close friend) follow the same path he did. Pretty good escape room material, at least for the first game.

2) This is supposedly after you go through the null contraption crap, now you're stuck in a series of puzzles that you walk through. It's revealed that the professor got trapped in there (as in, got stuck doing puzzles forever) and sacrificed himself to let you out, which you promptly do and run like hell from the null tentacles. This is where the story starts getting messed up because it's implied that anyone who researches into the null is trapped forever, simply because they were smart enough to actually look into it.

3) Now we get a face behind all of the null crap. Big baddie dude ("The Craftsman") throws a hundred puzzles at you so he can lock you up in his box for some reason, except you have the ability to do some really frickin EVIL puzzles (one of them just needs you to stare at a clock for 15 minutes) to escape. This one kinda nullifies the morbidity of the second one, mainly because it's implying that the researchers being trapped is being done by a bad guy that's ABUSING the null for his own nefarious purposes

4) And now we get to this one, where it seems the Craftsman is leading a larger cult or something, and instead of directly trapping people he's just convincing them to trap themselves so he can collect them AFTER they mess things up with the null. This brings back the point made in the second game where, for some reason, you're punished for trying to do smart things. That'd be a decent (if not a little depressing) story if it weren't for what actually happens when this guy gets trapped.

See, he has a wife in the big mansion that he does his research in, one that isn't smart enough to get trapped (maybe not that she's dumb per se, but more that she simply is too passive to actually care about doing work). The notes that they both leave behind note how she starts noticing that his work is getting a little sloppy and, instead of coming up to him and trying to point out that he's probably gonna get ensnared (what would have saved LITERALLY EVERY OTHER CHARACTER IN THE SERIES), she instead
a) sabotages his work and releases the null before
b) ditching him as soon as her actions have consequences, without at least
c) telling him she's leaving, so he falls even FURTHER into the trap instead of following her.

And the kicker is that, somehow, like a prisoner that develops stockholm syndrome, HE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ APOLOGIZES TO HER. For WHAT?! She was the one that ratted him out to the circle, she was the one that released the bad thing that he was keeping locked up, she was the one that left him to rot in the damn house. Of course, someone hired by the bad cult guys (that is, you, the player) takes out his soul and brings it back to the big table to do bad things (at least, that's implied). Hell, with the earlier notes denoting their lineage, it seems like the woman was actually CONNECTED to the very same people that kidnapped her husband!

Maybe I'm reading into this the wrong way, but it seems to me like the entire plot of this game is anti-intellectualism and that men should never let women into the lab. I'd make a joke on how this is sigma male grindset or something, but really this whole series is just too depressing for that.

[Sunday Driver]

I think sometimes when you try to top the previous story and weave it together you can end up going over the top like this and end up with a really complicated ball of knots, story-wise. Perhaps the ambition of the story got out of hand to try to fit completely within the framework of the game.

[Danmer]

So... If I understand correctly (from the game and from this post), we play as an unknown agent who follows in the footsteps of Edward who got close to Null and who eventually got lost in the Circle's dimension, where he died and gave his soul and crystallized Null, which we and take away for the Craftsman? I just thought that maybe we were playing Abigail herself, strange as it may be. But in the final clip, the clothes and hairstyle are still male. On the other hand, in the report presented at the end, it is said that Mrs. Lockwood, unlike her husband, was able to get out of the Circle's influence. Is this just a hint that the next game chapter (if it's made) will have secret cultists stalking Ms. Abigail?

[HYPERED1]

The Craftsman is not the leader of 'The Circle' and isn't confirmed as being associated with them but he does feature in the VR game which is set between 3 and Old Sins.
In Old Sins you play as Collector Hydrus.
AS from 1+2 also worked with The Circle for a time.
There's a lot of little hidden bits of lore in all of the games that build up the world more than just simply solving the puzzles.

[Malagon]

I mean, she did what most women would have probably done in these kinds of situations: overreact, panic, and then sabotage you at every turn.

[Cheesepizza2]

Originally posted by Malagon:

I mean, she did what most women would have probably done in these kinds of situations: overreact, panic, and then sabotage you at every turn.

Exactly my line of thought

[Ap2000]

I'm surprised anybody would follow the story.
It's so uninteresting, I didn't even read anything from this game.
And I sure as hell don't remember anything from the previous ones, because that was just as forgettable.

Originally posted by Cheesepizza2:

Originally posted by Malagon:

I mean, she did what most women would have probably done in these kinds of situations: overreact, panic, and then sabotage you at every turn.

Exactly my line of thought

Yikes.

[BitchaDeGap]

Haha, I remember some but not the complete story in detail.

Me though, I just see it as different characters enters The room throught different events, in different timelines. The craftman is just doing what he's supposed to be doing, crafting aaaall the puzzles in the games once you're stuck in the spheres of rooms! But yeah, maybe I can agree a little that the cult thing was a little out of hand.

[boinger747]

I understood the story line as Abigail trying to save her husband from an obsession leading to his insanity from the null element. He clearly states he is lost in their own house and watching himself slowly lose his mind.

[Lar Dass]

Watch absolutelypuzzled videos on the series, he explains things pretty well in a small video

[Flufficek]

What do you mean she is not smart enough? From what I understood:

Edward got contacted my the Circle and got Null. He was told to study it. He wouldn't let Abigail near the Null, because he understood the Circle is dangerous. Which means he was getting corrupted and she wasn't. And she noticed they were dangerous as well.
So she could see the effect the Null had on her husband. he was changing before her eyes.

She spied on him using the Dollhouse so she knew what he was doing. He found out and said she betrayed him. Threw a fit (broke vase).

She decided to take matters into her own hands, stole the Null and hid it in the Dollhouse. Then ran away.

He tried to look for her and the Null, but couldn't find them, until he got clearer mind. But that was too late, he couldn't escape the house. He understood what happened, was glad she excaped and died.

We (Collector from the Circle) go into the house to get the Null+Edwards soul+Abigails soul. But we only get Null + Edwards soul, because Abigail was too smart and ran away before it was too late. Hence the "she got away" message. She was supposed to die with him.

[joliet_jane]

Hell, the posts in the thread... great to be reminded yet again that gamers hate women.

[sashimi taco]

Originally posted by joliet_jane:

Hell, the posts in the thread... great to be reminded yet again that gamers hate women.

I feel like the games are about exploiting hubris and greed for exploration. But it could also be about how a woman didn't get tricked, no wait how a woman was too dumb to be tricked.

In seriousness, I am pretty sure she tried to tell him this. In one of the man's entries he says she is trying to tell him to stop and warning him to stop, and he calls her stupid. She also watches all his research from the attic and managed to trick the null into taking the dollhouse instead of the whole place.

Unless there are multiple endings I feel as if the wife was the one who came out ahead, in the head.

[snake_angel_18]

Originally posted by sashimi taco:

Originally posted by joliet_jane:

Hell, the posts in the thread... great to be reminded yet again that gamers hate women.

I feel like the games are about exploiting hubris and greed for exploration. But it could also be about how a woman didn't get tricked, no wait how a woman was too dumb to be tricked.

In seriousness, I am pretty sure she tried to tell him this. In one of the man's entries he says she is trying to tell him to stop and warning him to stop, and he calls her stupid. She also watches all his research from the attic and managed to trick the null into taking the dollhouse instead of the whole place.

Unless there are multiple endings I feel as if the wife was the one who came out ahead, in the head.

There is only one ending. Edward dies and the collector from the circle takes the null combined with Edward's soul. There is a note at the end from the collector saying that the wife disappeared and the circle can't find her.

So in this case the wife did come out ahead. She escaped with her soul intact.

[A Potato]

I think you all got something wrong when you say that they got both Edward's soul and the Null. The only thing the Circle dude (the player) appears to collect is the Null itself (also no documents from what I can see, so definitely no research on it). Add on to this that in the first game (or maybe the second one?) it's mentioned that the Null is tied to the soul, and that someone (I think it was A.S.) sacrificed his soul for the Null. The wiki also mentions that "The soul is the root of the Null." (https://theroom.fandom.com/wiki/The_Null). There's also the fact that in The Room 3 The Craftsman seems to use people's souls as fuel for the Null.

From this, I think what's actually going on is that the Null is directly obtained from souls. I don't think that the player is retrieving both the Null and Edward's soul, I think the Null they get *is* Edward's soul. As in Edward's soul transformed into the Null sample we collect.

[HYPERED1]

Originally posted by A Potato:

I think the Null they get *is* Edward's soul. As in Edward's soul transformed into the Null sample we collect.

This is actually corroborated somewhat by the VR game though not explicitly.