Ending - Spoilers

[Grizzly]

I found the ending dissatisfying. What's up with the Kraken looking creature? Is that supposed to be a hint for Dredge 2? Is that supposed to be what sunk the ship the girl was on? Did I miss a plot relevant story mission somewhere? I never got around to the stone tablet missions. Other than that, the game was enjoyable.

[Nightarix]

best guess i'm assuming it's meant to be an "old god" like Cthulu, who is supposed to be sleeping in every universe and erases the world if he wakes up, so effectively the collector is Sacrificing their entire world, just to get their dead wife back. (which is probably a bad deal cause it's probably just a poorly made copy.)

[Grizzly]

Originally posted by Nightarix:

best guess i'm assuming it's meant to be an "old god" like Cthulu, who is supposed to be sleeping in every universe and erases the world if he wakes up, so effectively the collector is Sacrificing their entire world, just to get their dead wife back. (which is probably a bad deal cause it's probably just a poorly made copy.)

Seems logical. Man, there are so many derivative myths. If it was as you said, a little better lore ground work should have been done when they decided to pick a specific one, especially for those of us who don't follow that particular myth.

[Kane]

Ok from what I understood from the story the fisherman and wife whos notes you pick up around the game in the bottles (and the one who dredged up the book and coffin) allude to a darker truth as you uncover them, this truth you can piece together if you talk to the npcs and actually listen to them for example the collector never had a single boat go over to hist island for 20 years at first when i found this information out I thought that he may be similar to the robed figures you find scattered around but I realised they still needed to eat and when you hand him the final relic and he boards your boat for the final sequence of the game it cemented what he was, He is a reflection of our character in madness.

Now the reason I came to this conclusion is every NPC you let board your boat takes up space yet the collector does not and if you notice in every interaction with him your aren't actually seeing him you are seeing your characters reflection. As for the "bad" ending you sacrificed the world for a single moment of clarity with the wife you lost before the game began as you were the fisherman who got the book and brought the fog onto the sea thus creating a cycle of madness.

Honestly this is probably written horribly but I hope this at least helps you understand the story and "ending" a bit better.

[Moodyman90]

A lot of plot is hidden in the message bottles you can pick up and in vague hints given by NPCs. I got the bad ending going full throttle into it and came out confused too. Then I got the good ending and then things made sense.

Yeah I glanced at the notes but for one reason or another didn't apply them to the fisherman. I also brushed off the Lighthouse Keepers and the Old Mayor's statements implying they know who he was. And thus I got the bad end thinking the Collector was his own man with his own goal and I was dumb enough to help unleash what looks to be an Elder God in a man's attempt to bring back his wife.

Good ending is just "Oh, this person is actually ME" and maybe using a tome of forbidden knowledge seemingly connected to the evil fog that plagues the area in the very least is a bad idea.

[Ittrix]

TL;DR:
You are the collector. Your wife died at sea during an incident where you opened a strange casket and found a book full of strange magic. The casket seems to be the source of the fog, though what the source of all the other jank is is hard to say. You spent some time desperately trying to find some way to bring your wife back, and eventually became a recluse in your manor. Your mind had split from the trauma- with the collector remembering everything, and you only recalling being a fisherman. You can see the collector only in mirrors- since he's you after all- as he encourages you to perform an old god ritual to revive your wife... which also has a lot of bad side effects, like awakening the eldritch god in question.

It sounds like you did miss the alternate ending

In the ending you meet the old mayor again who tells you to ask the lighthouse keeper about the book. She tells you to 'take back control' and 'throw it back'. You can go to the collector and forcibly take the book from him, assaulting him... except when the dust settles, you find that you've only punched a mirror and shattered it, and you've had the book all along. From here you go out into the sea and get rid of the book, letting go of your wife. A leviathan fish comes along and eats you whole, putting you to rest with her while keeping the secrets of the book safe, or punishing you for not finishing your end of a deal to bring her and something else back.

[kane]

Yeah i felt the leviathan was putting you to rest and keeping the secrets of the book safe because when you meet the man on the boat with the package for the dock worker he brings up a massive monster is after him then you her the leviathan.
The leviathan killed your wife after you opened the casket.
It follows you around the map you can hear and see it from time to time and it stops you leaving the map.

Maybe its a guardian from the time of the old civ trying to stop the Elder God getting out.

[Ittrix]

What I'm not clear on is when exactly the casket, the book, the leviathan, and when the wife died come into play and connect.

The wife writes about the incident with the coffin, which is where I presume he got the book, in a time stamped manner, so I assssume she's alive? But then... when did the leviathan come for her? Hubby rarely takes her on trips, and definitely wouldn't take her if she's ill. Did she die of some fog related illness, entirely separate from the leviathan? And the leviathan showed up and crashed your boat later while you were doing voodoo? Was the book in the casket, or was it a gift from your dead mum on blackstone isle? Is that when the 'old fisherman' (you) the newer mayor complains about stopped showing up and the old mayor went inside?

Dunno. All I've got are vague guesses.

[13PumpkinHead]

Originally posted by Ittrix:

What I'm not clear on is when exactly the casket, the book, the leviathan, and when the wife died come into play and connect.

The wife writes about the incident with the coffin, which is where I presume he got the book, in a time stamped manner, so I assssume she's alive? But then... when did the leviathan come for her? Hubby rarely takes her on trips, and definitely wouldn't take her if she's ill. Did she die of some fog related illness, entirely separate from the leviathan? And the leviathan showed up and crashed your boat later while you were doing voodoo? Was the book in the casket, or was it a gift from your dead mum on blackstone isle? Is that when the 'old fisherman' (you) the newer mayor complains about stopped showing up and the old mayor went inside?

Dunno. All I've got are vague guesses.

Spoiler galore, obviously: If you collect the messages in the bottles, you can sort of guess the timeline. If I remember it correctly, the story started with the collector/fisherman proposing to the wife, they got married, then he continued on doing his dredging. Wife got bored and asked to come onboard. One day, they pulled in a chest/coffin and he opened it, and unfortunately that was the cursed chest with the red fog and magic book. I think he released all the weird things we see in the game by opening the chest. Then I think a leviathan attacked the boat. I believe the wife went into the sea with the boat and possibly the rest of the crew. If you find the old mayor and talk to him, he would tell you that he was one of the few that survived the incident. And when he reached the shore, he begged the collector/fisherman to throw the book away. Evidently the book didn't get thrown away. The old mayor then became mad because of whatever horrible thing they all saw on that day. So, the wife was killed on that incident.

If you talk to the older NPCs, namely the trinket guy and lighthouse keeper, both of them seem to recognise you. That's because you are the collector/fisherman who used to live in Great Marrow. The magic of the book has probably changed his physical appearance somehow. My other guess is that the researcher on the island is actually the sister of the collector's wife. The clue is that she said she kept finding letters from the dead sister talking about things *after* her death. I think some of the messages we found in the bottles are also messages sent after the wife's death; the one talking about her being cold and that now the collector has found her, he should throw her back into the sea. So, by the time we play the game, some time has passed and Great Marrow has a new mayor that doesn't recognise us at all and doesn't know anything about our story (or if he does, he isn't telling us).

[sisyphus]

Originally posted by 13PumpkinHead:

My other guess is that the researcher on the island is actually the sister of the collector's wife. The clue is that she said she kept finding letters from the dead sister talking about things *after* her death. I think some of the messages we found in the bottles are also messages sent after the wife's death; the one talking about her being cold and that now the collector has found her, he should throw her back into the sea.

Ohhh, great point on the Researcher! I remember her saying that but didn't put it together. That would make a lot of sense.