End of game discussion (MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!!!)

[Merder]

I just wanted to start a thread for those who have already completed the game to see what others thought about the ending. Please wrap your comments with the spoiler tag in case someone inadvertently clicks on the thread.

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First, I liked the game a lot and thought the story was pretty good. I had hoped that the ending would reveal that Aria had found a way to break the loop and save Earth and herself. But the ending we have is sort of depressing. Earth will be destroyed over and over and Aria is doomed to repeat the cycle for all eternity. In a way, the game is a version of Hell. All effort is hopeless since the outcome never changes.

Maybe there's a super secret "happy" ending that nobody has found yet, but I doubt that's the case.

I think that it would be great if we eventually get a DLC, this time with Aria waking up again in her quarters but things are different this time and she has a real chance to save earth and save herself. After waking and discovering the entropy device she repeats the first puzzle or two but then something happens to open up an undiscovered part of the facility with a new set of even more devious puzzles.

[Toon83]

Just finished my second playthrough (NG+) to get all the intel for the Data Research achievement, and it didn't change anything story wise. In the end cutscene with the timelines you see an infinite amount of Entropy centres on the left, and it also seems there are an infinite amount of Entropy centres on the right. When you fly above the burning planet, you see an infinitate amount of burning planets appear on the left, and on the right two intact planets appear. After this you cross over to the closest timeline with an intact planet. Pretty sure it was exactly the same as in my first playthrough.

Since development of TEC was a solo-endeavour by Daniel Stubbington, I don't think the story was worked out to every little last detail. But I sure do hope for some future updates that will expand on the TEC universe.

But story wise I think the Entropy centre technology is flawed (airplanes on earth not rewinding with earth itself, a persons foot turning into a cube, frequent rewinds causing all kinds of sickness or worse). And the emplyees of the centre are flawed (gambling, stealing equipment, not believing co-workers about bots, bringing a cat).
So yeah, a recepy for disaster basically.

[zeo1337]

I think it's important to note that several of the early testing tracks were destroyed near the end of the game, forcing them to do harder puzzles. Since the center is not rewound, it's actually impossible for Aria to complete another loop following this general path.

[ragnarok]

I had hoped for an ending around the lines of: Using the big Entropy Device/Energy caused some kind of feedback-loop, that increases the frequency of cataclysms and causes the final one, so we'd have to undo the Centre itself, releasing the Universe (and Earth) to survive without the Centre's guidance.
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About the actual end, well I'm a little bit confused: While repairing the Entropy device, Earth was actually rewinding, yet we see a destroyed Earth in the "outro". My thought about this was something around the lines of: Aria found a way to rewind earth and even created a reality where Earth is save for now, but being so close to the device, she got her own timeline mangled and she's trapped in a time-loop of her own and get's send back to the start of the game.
How is this different from just herself rewinding? Just rewinding her would end with her at an old position/condition, with the centre deteriorating even further than before, but going by E's re-appearance (E breaks through again intact walls) the whole centre seems to be in the same condition as in every game - so it's not just her rewinding, but something on a grander scale*.



*or the developer not having the time to make X iterations for NG++ :)

[DuckAlmighty]

I hate to resurrect a slightly older thread, but I wanted to offer my own opinions on the story and its ending. For me? I realise there are certain story threads left loose - like the bots becoming sentient etc. but at the same time, the bots might just be a side-effect. Something that naturally happens anyway regardless of the main storyline.

Also, after reading through the terminal entries, for me? I think the main problem is definitely the Entropy Center. Entropy is decay, and unpredictability. Chaos. The whole point of the center is to take chaos and turn it into order. Manipulate the threads of time and space itself. However, when it comes to the universe, the universe is an incredibly chaotic place yet somehow works to its own order. As for us humans? We know so little about the universe, yet we built a center for manipulating probability and avoiding chaos. However... chaos cannot just be erased - it can be ordered but there's still the chance of it breaking loose. Anyone who knows what life can be like is aware you can plan as much as you like but chaos still can wreck those plans. You can't contain it.

In the terminal entries, they did say that they had started rewinding events that were growing more and more intense each time they rewound. This implies a build-up of chaos, avoiding the small disasters led to much bigger disasters. Which... eventually led to a cataclysm that just cannot be avoided at all. We'd tried to contain chaos so much that it just broke free, too much energy built up and that's why the Earth went boom.

Generally? I think the game makes a good point about trying to fix past mistakes as well as the futility of trying to impose too much order on a chaotic world. You can try and make everything positive as much as you like but... eventually, there is going to be a negative. The more you avoid them, the worse they get.

Just my two cents, as it were.

[afielden]

So I just finished the game and was a little puzzled about the ending. Looked around and a lot of people are saying that the moonbase is disintegrating more and more every loop but I don't know if that's true.

I think the moonbase was disintegrating while the other Entropy employees were on the moon continually reversing the earth in vain. As time was moving forward on the moonbase they were having a harder time keeping it operational and at a certain point the employees decided to reverse the earth 2 years so they could face the end of the world with their families (as stated in an email). So what I think happened is they set the entropy device to reverse the earth 2 years and everyone except Aria (she was too stubborn to leave or didn't have a family cause of the reverses) got on the spaceships to return home. They had to be on earth before it got reversed, either the spaceship got back to earth or exploded, doesn't matter. But the device broke before it could send the earth back 2 years and Aria had to quickly try to fix it. The Entropy device malfunction reversed the moonbase and earth by about a day (however long it takes Aria to get through the 15 levels of puzzles). So that means Earth is still getting sent data every loop but it only has about a day to enact the solution to the cataclysmic event. So maybe each time there is progress to saving the earth but the solution will have to be enacted quickly during a worldwide riot. Maybe during one of the loops Aria fixes the device so it doesn't blast her back a day and she can reverse the earth by 5 years.

Anyways, maybe the game creators didn't really have a solid grasp on what's going on either and just left things to interpretation. Unless they come out with an explanation.

[zeo1337]

Originally posted by afielden:

So I just finished the game and was a little puzzled about the ending. Looked around and a lot of people are saying that the moonbase is disintegrating more and more every loop but I don't know if that's true.

I think the moonbase was disintegrating while the other Entropy employees were on the moon continually reversing the earth in vain. As time was moving forward on the moonbase they were having a harder time keeping it operational and at a certain point the employees decided to reverse the earth 2 years so they could face the end of the world with their families (as stated in an email). So what I think happened is they set the entropy device to reverse the earth 2 years and everyone except Aria (she was too stubborn to leave or didn't have a family cause of the reverses) got on the spaceships to return home. They had to be on earth before it got reversed, either the spaceship got back to earth or exploded, doesn't matter. But the device broke before it could send the earth back 2 years and Aria had to quickly try to fix it. The Entropy device malfunction reversed the moonbase and earth by about a day (however long it takes Aria to get through the 15 levels of puzzles). So that means Earth is still getting sent data every loop but it only has about a day to enact the solution to the cataclysmic event. So maybe each time there is progress to saving the earth but the solution will have to be enacted quickly during a worldwide riot. Maybe during one of the loops Aria fixes the device so it doesn't blast her back a day and she can reverse the earth by 5 years.

Anyways, maybe the game creators didn't really have a solid grasp on what's going on either and just left things to interpretation. Unless they come out with an explanation.

The moon base is not rewound. It used to be, when they had a rewinder on earth, but when that was abandoned, they were only rewinding the earth, and the moon base went into the state of entropy we see, overgrown and falling apart. The base cannot rewind itself.

Rather, the destruction of the moon base is repeatedly prevented because it's caused by the earth's explosion. So as long as the earth is rewound in time, the moon base is not wiped out. Unfortunately, because the moon base is not rewound, the state of entropy keeps increasing and it's becoming harder to charge the rewinder in time, which compounds the likelihood of failure.

What i'm unsure of is how exactly Aria gets rewound, but I'm assuming that's either a side effect of the adventure, or an intentional act by your AI companion.

[Rocket]

Originally posted by zeo1337:

What i'm unsure of is how exactly Aria gets rewound, but I'm assuming that's either a side effect of the adventure, or an intentional act by your AI companion.

Wasn't it something like what had happened with the cat?

[afielden]

Ahh, okay. I looked around some more and you're right, the moonbase is falling apart more and more every loop. The only thing that gets rewound on the moonbase is stuff near the core. So Aria, Astra and the core rewind,

What messed me up is when the game ended I decided to continue the game and everything started again, same beats, Aria wakes up, gets the gun, E smashes through the wall, etc. So I thought "why would the developers let you continue the game after you finished unless it was to say that this is a continuation of the story? And if that's the case why is the stuff that was damaged through the game fixed again?" But I think the continue is just there so you can get the emails you missed and earn an achievement.

But what still bothers me is why does Aria wake up with amnesia a day before the event happens and not 2 or 5 years earlier?

[easobral]

I did not see anyone saying this, so this is my hypotesis. In one of the messages it said they had to ajust the Entropy device so airplanes would also be affected (some people in airplanes were not affected by earth's rewind), something they missed. I wonder if the explosion is related to earth's core reaching its lifetime or something like that. They might have been rewinding only the surface, while the core got old or since they evolved differently, the tension between core and surface reached a point of no return.

[Rocket]

Originally posted by easobral:

I did not see anyone saying this, so this is my hypotesis. In one of the messages it said they had to ajust the Entropy device so airplanes would also be affected (some people in airplanes were not affected by earth's rewind), something they missed. I wonder if the explosion is related to earth's core reaching its lifetime or something like that. They might have been rewinding only the surface, while the core got old or since they evolved differently, the tension between core and surface reached a point of no return.

it's an interesting idea, but as the earth ages, the core will just slow down and leave us with no megnetic shield from solar rays. it's possible i could be the opposite though, if they rewound the core too fast, then it could become more tectonically active, until breaking point?