The List - Spoiler Discussion

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Here you can discuss end game spoilers for The List. If you have any questions, or simply wish to talk about the game and what it can all mean, here is the place to do it.

Spoilers Below!

[Psyringe]

Thanks for making this thread. :)

I just finished the game and really liked the twist at the end. That said, I wanted to comment on two things that had me stumped for a while, and I'm curious how other people think about them.

1. I think it would have been nice to have several trails leading to the "revelation" clip where Grady reads the names from the list. Currently, the only way I can see to get to this clip legitimately, is to realize that the history about Abraham Lincoln (as referenced by Grady when he talks about visits to a museum) deviates from ours, then ask themselves "But why was Lincoln not assassinated in this game's history?", and then enter the name of Lincoln's assassin in the search box. That's pretty clever, but it's also quite a jump for a player to make. I'd risk a guess that most players will get this info out of a walkthrough or by looking into the game files (which are not encrypted) instead.

2. In another thread, the question was raised why neither Grady nor the cops recognize the names on the List. That struck me as odd as well, until I realized: In the world of The List, these people were killed by Alice agents before they could influence the world in the way they did in _our_ history. In the world of The List, nobody knows these names because they never rose to fame.

[ACAB_shore]

I agree with the first point, Psyringe. The mention of a female president to me was not odd as this is quite a normal thing to do in fiction. It's like the show 24 being our world but also having other agencies, countries, presidents etc. I wouldn't think 24 is an alternative world if you see what I mean. But the Lincoln thing is a clear pointer. You're right, if there was some other hint to get to the list names, that would be good. To be entirely honest, I don't think the list needs to be so super secret. If I had stumbled upon the list randomly I would be mega curious what's going on here. In fact, once I saw clip 112, I thought that maybe only Grady doesn't recognize the names but the police do and they are immediately grilling him because why on earth wouldn't he know the other names, right? So the list itself doesn't need to be sort of the final piece, even though for many, many players it might very well be the final clip or among the final clips. Having a way to stumble upon this odd list would really make the player go "Wait, hold on, what the hell is going on here?" Even taking out all the stuff about another timeline, this is still a great mysterious clip that players will obsess over until they see most of the rest of the clips and make the connection about time travel and another world history.

And so are we saying that these Alice agents are taking out evil people? Grady is certainly not a nice person, so I guess we see evil in the making, is that it? I wish we would see more about his future and why Janus decides to remove him. But leaving this to the imagination works too, I think.

So basically, the Alice agents have been pretty bad at their job in this case, yes? The first one didn't manage to kill Grady and another one didn't manage to delete the whole database? Is this right? I like the idea of somewhat incompetent time travel agents, ha!

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Originally posted by Psyringe:

Thanks for making this thread. :)

I just finished the game and really liked the twist at the end. That said, I wanted to comment on two things that irked me a bit, and I'm curious how other people think about them.

1. I think it would have been nice to have several trails leading to the "revelation" clip where Grady reads the names from the list. Currently, the only way I can see to get to this clip legitimately, is to realize that the history about Abraham Lincoln (as referenced by Grady when he talks about visits to a museum) deviates from ours, then ask themselves "But why was Lincoln not assassinated in this game's history?", and then enter the name of Lincoln's assassin in the search box. That's pretty clever, but it's also quite a jump for a player to make. I'd risk a guess that most players will get this info out of a walkthrough or by looking into the game files (which are not encrypted) instead.

2. In another thread, the question was raised why neither Grady nor the cops recognize the names. That struck me as odd as well, until I realized: In the world of The List, these people were killed by Alice agents before they could influence the world in the way they did in _our_ history. In the world of The List, nobody knows these names because they never rose to fame.

Your assumption in part 2 is correct. The hope is for players to realize this and to essentially realize the character they are playing as is an Alice Agent and thus why *they* know who these people are, but not anyone in the story.

I will say, it was a large concern of mine about the ending if players will naturally be able to find it. I feel pretty silly now being worried people would figure it out too fast lol. I noticed in another thread you are not American which was also a concern as I knew not everyone would know many of historical discrepancies as most of them involve United States history. I would suspect a fair amount of American's may not even notice these historical mistakes themselves.

The hope was players would notice the historical "mistakes" and also pair it with Grady's personality and what he is currently doing as a profession and what may happen in the future. The hope was then players would realize "time" is a factor with all the mistakes in history, put together Grady isn't the best of people, and then realize the other names must be infamous figures. I personally was thinking most players would search "Adolf Hitler" but JWB was put there as well as I felt the Abe Lincoln reveal when it clicks may be what people search for as well.

There are actually a few discrepancies I'm surprised no one has noticed yet. One is pretty hard and I don't want to reveal it yet to see if anyone finds it knowing what they know now, but one is right at the start on Grady's death certificate and Grady also talks about it later and I was terrified people would figure out (or at least get a huge hint) right at the start, but so far no one has mentioned it.

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Originally posted by ACAB_shore:

I agree with the first point, Psyringe. The mention of a female president to me was not odd as this is quite a normal thing to do in fiction. It's like the show 24 being our world but also having other agencies, countries, presidents etc. I wouldn't think 24 is an alternative world if you see what I mean. But the Lincoln thing is a clear pointer. You're right, if there was some other hint to get to the list names, that would be good. To be entirely honest, I don't think the list needs to be so super secret. If I had stumbled upon the list randomly I would be mega curious what's going on here. In fact, once I saw clip 112, I thought that maybe only Grady doesn't recognize the names but the police do and they are immediately grilling him because why on earth wouldn't he know the other names, right? So the list itself doesn't need to be sort of the final piece, even though for many, many players it might very well be the final clip or among the final clips. Having a way to stumble upon this odd list would really make the player go "Wait, hold on, what the hell is going on here?" Even taking out all the stuff about another timeline, this is still a great mysterious clip that players will obsess over until they see most of the rest of the clips and make the connection about time travel and another world history.

And so are we saying that these Alice agents are taking out evil people? Grady is certainly not a nice person, so I guess we see evil in the making, is that it? I wish we would see more about his future and why Janus decides to remove him. But leaving this to the imagination works too, I think.

So basically, the Alice agents have been pretty bad at their job in this case, yes? The first one didn't manage to kill Grady and another one didn't manage to delete the whole database? Is this right? I like the idea of somewhat incompetent time travel agents, ha!

I can agree with that. A lot to unpack and I am a bit tempted to at some point to maybe do a free behind the scenes update to the game to talk about design and original story ideas. I know this is an overall simple game, but there was a lot of thought behind it, and "should the list clip be hidden or not" was something that I did have to sit on for a while, and in the end I do think it was better to keep it hidden. How the story unfolds to reach this point is up to players to decide and judge though.

I felt it was best we don't know exactly what Grady is going/suppose to have done. It adds to the mystery and also does leave some sympathy for him as you may realize Grady probably could've had his life turned around in the past and not gone down this road.

(and yes I thought the same thing about Janus. Their Agents screw up a lot it seems. Should really hire some professionals or something.)

[Psyringe]

Originally posted by ACAB_shore:

And so are we saying that these Alice agents are taking out evil people? Grady is certainly not a nice person, so I guess we see evil in the making, is that it? I wish we would see more about his future and why Janus decides to remove him. But leaving this to the imagination works too, I think.

Yes, my understanding (which is of course subjective, but I at least don't see anything in the game that would contradict it) is that Grady would have become a dictator (or in other ways an "evil" force in US politics) if not stopped. He explicitly says that he has the ambition to "lead", and some of his rhetorics are very close to people who want to topple an existing political system ("there's a cancer that needs to be rooted out", "Our country needs focus and clear leadership", "We will make everything better", "Rules don't apply to leaders", etc.). He also readily ditches the things he allegedly fights for when they get between him and his plans, which is certainly a useful attitude for a would-be dictator. So yes, I think the game shows us the evil in the making.

Originally posted by ACAB_shore:

So basically, the Alice agents have been pretty bad at their job in this case, yes? The first one didn't manage to kill Grady and another one didn't manage to delete the whole database? Is this right? I like the idea of somewhat incompetent time travel agents, ha!

Yep. The person who sends you on your mission says (in the last of the flashbacks) that Alice agents often incur memory loss on their first mission. That might explain the less-than-stellar performance. I guess you're not on your A-game right after travelling through time. ;)

[ACAB_shore]

You're talking about Absaroka? I had to Google this one and I think you have to be quite the history buff to remember the proposed state. You're right, though, anyone familiar with how states are abbreviated in the US should realize AB is not a state. Again, as a non-American myself I didn't think too much about it because I don't know all the states by heart. Anyone who does should certainly be confused at the least, though that is a good thing I think and if anyone picks up on this straight away, they will be quite motivated to figure out what this means. It doesn't give anything away as such and even if anyone picks up on the idea that this is a different timeline with a different history, that still doesn't give you the full picture or lead you directly to the Alice agents and time travellers killing bad historical figures. So I would say no worries on this front, ha!

[ACAB_shore]

Oh, a behind-the-scenes thing would be fantastic. My main question is why you chose to have clips be so short. I assume it might be far more difficult to make the system work with longer clips and if you have a 2 or 3 minute long clip your acting skills also get tested a lot more and it might mean a lot more re-shoots. Your search system works for short clips quite well, though I do like the search system in Her Story more and if you end up making another game like this with longer clips, you will have to re-think the search engine anyways. But the interface and game play is all there as a very solid framework where you just insert different interrogation videos and split them up. Just like binging true crime series, I wouldn't mind binging on games like this even with almost an identical interface just with new stories, actors, clips. I would love an anthology series on this where a certain department or "person" just goes through different cases on the same computer. They can all be self-contained or they can all be linked together somehow and the larger plot of the series unfolds slowly.

[Psyringe]

Originally posted by DanTrim:

I felt it was best we don't know exactly what Grady is going/suppose to have done. It adds to the mystery and also does leave some sympathy for him as you may realize Grady probably could've had his life turned around in the past and not gone down this road.

I wonder, have you thought about giving players the option of not deleting the database?

It didn't feel like the "right thing to do" to me. I mean, travelling through time and killing people at a stage where they are still innocent - this pre-emptive murder looks like an unnecessarily drastic method of fixing things, which conflicts with my feeling of justice. Janus _seem_ to have the well-being of humanity in mind, but we can't be sure about that and in any case, does that really justify the murder of still-innocents? Clearly Grady did _not_ deserve death for the things he had done so far, despicable as some of them might be.

If given the option, I would rather have uploaded the database somewhere public instead. Because if there's a secret agency messing around with time, then I feel that people need to know about that. Such an agency would need to be checked and overseen by a publicly elected body, or at least people who have to report to such a body.

Of course, you could always say that the player is a trained agent of the Janus corporation whose conditioning would prevent such thoughts. On the other hand, we already know that time travel can mess with the agent's mind, so if you _want_ to give players a choice, it can be made plausible.

[Psyringe]

Originally posted by ACAB_shore:

You're talking about Absaroka? I had to Google this one and I think you have to be quite the history buff to remember the proposed state. You're right, though, anyone familiar with how states are abbreviated in the US should realize AB is not a state. Again, as a non-American myself I didn't think too much about it because I don't know all the states by heart.

Oh, wow. I completely missed that one too. :) Nicely done from both the author as well as you for digging it up! :)

I can say with confidence that I have never heard of Absaroka in the 50+ years of my life. We did go through American history and geography in school (I'm from Europe), and I do know that Absaroka is not a state, but I think it wasn't specifically referenced as a state in the game, was it? I took it as just the name of a region I hadn't heard of before.

On the death certificate, I saw "AB", but read it as "Alabama". Which, as I realize now, was obviously false. But as a non-American who knows the names (but not all abbreviations) of the states, it seemed to make sense. ;)

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Originally posted by Psyringe:

Originally posted by DanTrim:

It didn't feel like the "right thing to do" to me. I mean, travelling through time and killing people at a stage where they are still innocent - that's a very drastic method of pre-emptive murder that conflicts with my feeling of justice. They _seem_ to have the well-being of humanity in mind, but we can't be sure about that and in any case, does that really justify the murder of still-innocents?

If given the option, I would rather have uploaded the database somewhere public instead. Because if there's a secret agency messing around with time, then I feel that people need to know about that. Such an agency would need to be checked and overseen by a publicly elected body, or at least people who have to report to such a body.

No, not really, but I do like that idea you came up with. A "rouge" ending would be interesting even if exposing Janus in 2020 wouldn't make sense to those in 2020 due to time shenanigans.

The reason I did not really think to do this was because like you said, part of the point is the realization that Janus has the power to just stop these people before they go too far. I want players to feel like there isn't really a "good" guy here, as Janus does have the power to "save" Grady rather than kill him. Change is a theme you may have picked up on with Grady feeling he can't change and clearly Janus thinking the same as they chose not to help him change. But players now knowing Grady may think he can, thus may not find it as real justice. (This is also a factor for why you don't find out what Grady does in the future.)

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Originally posted by ACAB_shore:

My main question is why you chose to have clips be so short

Mostly because I couldn't get a rewind system working and I needed clips to be short enough to not be annoying if you had to go back in all honesty lol

[ACAB_shore]

Oh that makes sense then about the short clip size. I hated the way this worked in Telling Lies too and your option to then just go for short clips makes sense.

[Psyringe]

Originally posted by DanTrim:

Originally posted by ACAB_shore:

My main question is why you chose to have clips be so short

Mostly because I couldn't get a rewind system working and I needed clips to be short enough to not be annoying if you had to go back in all honesty lol

Interesting, I hadn't expected that. :)

Hmm. For me, the clips being so short also had a negative effect that you probably didn't intend. My natural modus operandi with such games is to do everything I can before crossing any potential points of no return. Since I did not know whether I would be able to continue searching for clips (and getting the final achievement) after finishing the game, I tried to find all clips before deleting the database.

This however took quite some effort, partly because the clips are so short - often there are just one or two words that unlock a specific one. And it also didn't feel very rewarding to me because the clips that I found this way didn't really tell me anything interesting (partly, again, because they were so short). The reward didn't seem to justify the effort needed to obtain it.

I think I caused my own problem here because as I found out later, the game provides a very comfortable way of accessing missed clips after finishing it. But I didn't know that while I was playing. ;)

[Velorien]

Personally, I have to say I enjoyed the game a lot more until I saw 112 as my last clip (after having viewed nearly 270 of the rest). In a game like this, foreshadowing is king, and a lot of it was either lost on me as a non-American, or just plain not there. The revelation when you open the e-mails and suddenly have to ask "Wait, who am I?" was beautiful. Magnificently done, even if I did have to spend half the game anxious because I remembered having the password in the demo and was now worried that I'd accidentally skipped or deleted it somehow. In general, the layout of the clips was great too. I love how you could have a dozen clips' worth of information, and it wouldn't make sense until suddenly you got that one clip somewhere in the middle and everything clicked (although I feel like I got reduced to trying to read the cop's mind and randomly guessing keywords too soon).

But from the perspective of having finished the game, I look back and see an unfortunate lack of foreshadowing. As ACAB_shore says, in fiction, the fact that we're in an alternate timeline doesn't mean much in and of itself, and until 112, little about the timeline hints at what Janus is or does. The Lincoln example is all I can think of that suggests that this alternate timeline has anything to do with our timeline's bad things not happening. It's also hard to leap from "Jordan Grady is a bad person who expects to get some political influence" to "Jordan Grady is Hitler-in-waiting and this is motivation enough for someone to kill him". Things that should be clues (like him saying goodbye to his mother and plotting to get Cindy back for no good reason) turn out to have precious little to do with the truth.

I think you can judge a final plot twist's quality by how much new information it has to dump on you in order to work. With 112 and the cutscene it triggered, I suddenly learned that:

- Time travel is possible
- We are in a timeline that diverges in specific and meaningful ways
- The killer was a time traveller whose actions weren't based on anything to do with Grady's past or present
- Grady was going to fulfil his dreams of being a powerful force for change (despite not showing any signs of great intelligence, charisma, wealth, or influence in the game)
- The player character has sci-fi-induced amnesia (which is crucial to the game since otherwise they'd have no reason to look through the database)

By contrast, Her Story only needed a single fact to solve the mystery and suddenly recontextualise everything you thought you knew.

In general, a genre twist of "it was science fiction all along" has a risk of making the game retroactively meaningless if you don't pull it off right, and a solvable murder mystery has a risk of making the game retroactively meaningless if you don't pull it off right, and the combination is an exceedingly dangerous one, especially (if you'll forgive the assumption) for a solo developer who can only get so much feedback prior to release.

I have two other thoughts on the game. First, it's a pity that it's obvious from the beginning that, in the end, you're going to delete the database for some reason. I guess maybe that's foreshadowing, but I think it would have been much better as part of the gut punch of revelation about who you are and what you're doing at the end.

Second, what happened to the pin?

I would like to reiterate that, up until the final twist, I enjoyed the game, and I look forward to the developer's next project.

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Originally posted by Velorien:

Personally, I have to say I enjoyed the game a lot more until I saw 112 as my last clip (after having viewed nearly 270 of the rest). In a game like this, foreshadowing is king, and a lot of it was either lost on me as a non-American, or just plain not there.

I hope you still found the game overall enjoyable! I will agree that I was concerned with non-American players missing some of historical inaccuracies. I'm still worried plenty of Americans are missing them too. And I did figure from the start that the ending is either going to be a make it or break it for whoever plays as it is all pretty subjective.

Although I will say, I purposely made sure you don't know what Grady will/would have done as it is really up to the player to imagine what he will be capable of. You said you can't imagine him reaching levels of Hitler, but that List does also include people have only killed one person as well. So we don't actually know what he will do. We can take a fairly decent stab at what *type* of event may occur because of him, but that is about it. How large it really ends up being is up to how far you think he could go.

I do think from general feedback I may have made it too difficult to uncover the truth. Foreshadowing is a pretty difficult task to do with non-linearity and most of it is reserved for the visions and the email you receive to tip players off that something is wrong. The rest would be discrepancies, and there is a big one involving "bad things not happening" that no one has seemed to mention yet.

I don't know if you saw one of my post above, but I am a bit tempted to actually do a behind the scenes at some point for the game. One clip was cut short where "time going backwards" is addressed by Grady while talking about Alice in Wonderland but at the time I felt it was too on the nose so it was cut.

As for the pin I will leave it a mystery. I do know what happened to it, but it isn't expressively said in the game where it is now.

I hope you don't regret spending time with the game and thank you for playing!