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Here are questions I'm having a hard time answering:
1. Who is the baker boy? He wears a red ribbon around his neck, that looks like Iris' head ribbon from their photo. Is he just a random guy? Is he Leo?
2. I know Leo isn't supposed to be in the system there, but at the end, underground, the baker boy finds a picture of his old self playing at the beach with his grandchildren. Leo had grandchildren and there was sand in his garden that seems to point to small children liking to play in sand. I know all children like that... but I find it hard to believe the image of the old man at the beach is just random.
3. I watched endings of youtube playthroughs to find out if there are multiple endings. While it doesn't seem to be the case, in one of them, there was a scene I didn't get. It was right before the ending, when Iris enters the water in the underground. She then sees her memories and when she see herself holding the image of her and Leo - the image is different. It shows an old man, alone. What does it mean?? Is Iris actually his granddaughter?
4. The music cabin. What's its purpose? The grasshopper playing harp clues to music having a part in creating the eternal life in the Phoenix Springs project. In the music cabin, there's a music device. Also a harp that looks exactly like the one from Leo's house (same carpet, too). Does it point to Leo being a part of the team that created Phoenix Springs?
5. The radio. It's located outside Phoenix Springs. Why? In the later memory cycle, we see it was demolished by the carpenter. It might show it was a danger to the project. In the final scene, we see it again, next to the fisherman, he's listening for distress calls. There are also antennas there. Are they transmitting to other radios?
6. Where does the final scene takes place? Who created it? I think it's a contained place that was created within the simulation. A short retreat from the endless cycles. The symbology there is strong, and sad. The boy (Leo?) talks about his granddaughter (Iris?) crying. About tears being just water. They are surrounded by an ocean. She's been shedding tears for countless memory cycles. Each time, the moment of lucidity she gains at the end, helped her mind to slowly create this retreat for the both of them, to reunite for a short while, before the memory loop is restarted again.
what's crazy is the answer would be RIGHT IN THE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ START MENU!!!
Is Iris already in the water when the game begins? If so that meansthat remembering Leo starts the whole cycle of her remembering the story from the start!!
What i can't work out is when the loop begins and when it ends
Also I never thoght the baker was Leo that's crazy that you could be right lol but I noticed that some objects appear over and over again like the radio and the instrument
Confirmations:
1. Remember how the game starts - Iris is sitting in the train, not in her living room. The train is the imagery she gets when the loop restarts.
2. When you find a new address, the game immediately shifts there. This isn't for the sake of time saving. It's literally Iris switching to viewing a different memory.
3. The main menu, of course.
4. The ritual scene. When Iris sees it, the disturbing imagery causes her memory to jump to a later cycle. As the memory jumps, we see her in the water, before we ever reached there in the playthrough, because she's already in the water, viewing a memory.
5. When you enter the water in the underground, Iris says - "how many times have we been doing this? years? decades? Millenia?" She realizes it's not her first time.
6. The game's steam logo - loops within her mind.
I don't think the Phoenix Springs project is meant to put people in such loops. But Iris did a fatal mistake of interfacing with her own memories. So, she created a situation in which she can enter her own memories, while viewing them, thus creating an endless process. She keeps remembering finding the machine, entering it, then she begins interfacing with her memories from the latest iteration.
I think that over time, her memories became distorted. I think she was a young woman trying to find a way to save her dying grandfather. A long time ago, she went to Phoenix Springs, entered the machine, and created the endless process of never-ending virtual worlds. Through countless iterations, she's now a sister trying to find her young brother.
I don't know if that theory is right. I both love this game and hate it for being so vague.
so loop 1 is when she got in the water and remembers the whole thing
inside of that is loop 2 when she is gets on the train and keeps arriving at Phoenix Springs
inside of that (?) is loop 3 when she keeps remembering her brother? I see what you mean by her memories becoming distorted because I checked a walk through and there was another object that reappears later it's the boxes from the apartment, i think it's the same ones that are on the island. So maybe she's remembering real things and putting them in the wrong memories.
btw I just got to that part again and the gardner says SHE planted every blade of grass in the oasis. She doesn't mention Leo in that part.
Sorry I misremembered the part about the plants, I deleted it from that post, thanks. It's hard to decide whether Leo had a part with creating Phoenix Springs. On one hand, there's the harp, carpet, and music technology. On the other hand, he had a career about dealing with ethics, so would probably oppose such a use of technology.
I think Iris initially went to Phoenix Springs because she learned it's a place which can help dying people stay alive. But I can't think of a reason for why she entered the water on her first visit. Maybe just curiosity. From that moment it's hard to say how each loop looked. Your guesses are as good as mine.
About objects being misplaced. After the ritual (which causes a memory reset and a "new visit" to Phoenix Springs), the tree stump becomes an old tree. The cabin with two small cabin models now has three models. Mason's cabin is blocked, and the kiln is cold. Maybe there are more changes. I think it's meant to show her memory of the place changes a bit each time she "visits" it (meaning, viewing the memory of her actual visit). Each time she enters the water, the memories she views are a bit more far from the original ones. Details are being misremembered, so the world she sees changes a bit each time.
This game is really hard to figure out. When we know she's viewing memories over and over again, it's hard to decide if odd occurrences are caused by distorted memory, or by another reason. Every detail about herself, her identity, motives, people she meet, everything can change with each cycle.
1. Questions about the re-birthed people:
(a) Why are they being re-birthed as children?
(b) Why do they only perform one task?
(c) Why can they be re-birthed as gender-switched people? (Mason is horrified by her look - if you take her to see her reflection in the water - because she used to be a grown-up, if I got that right).
(d) Why was Mason chosen to "go underground"? I thought that place is used to re-birth the stored people (Mason's original body is stored there), so why are re-birthed people also being stored again?
2. The photo Baker sees at the end seems to connect Baker, Mason and Gardner (it seems they were all in it), but I can't explain why they are now these puppets in Phoenix Springs.
Baker - his memory is reawakened using music. After hearing Iris humming it, he says "we used to hum it on a beach". The photo shows a man playing a guitar on a beach. Baker was either the man or one of the children.
Mason - after seeing the photo, Baker asks "why did Mason want me to see this?".
Gardener - when searching for a way to reawaken Baker's memory, if you talk to Gardener, she tells you a story, of once running on a beach.
I'm focusing on the line about how "these people are like planets who don't interact with each other"
I feel like they're all going through the rebirth over and over and breaking apart in different ways and Iris is one of them. but she's the only one who is asking questions because she's a reporter even though the questions are all about Leo
so i think the oasis is like a closed loop (big theme of the game) where they all keep changing into different forms and doing the same stuff and they relive their OWN memories over and over - maybe they're all in the pool at different times??
one thing I'm focusing on is the whole timeframe yet i.e: what about the island at the end? Is that before they go to the oasis or between two loops? Or do Iris and Baker manage to escape at some point?
i'm more and more convinced that everythng you see actually happens but I need to catch some zzzs lol
The theory about them changing forms is interesting. I'll think about that.
The island, man I'm tired of thinking about it... It might be so many things. My brain is completely burned by that point.
Main Theory
My main hypothesis is that Phoenix Springs is a place created for people who have lost their memories or suffer from dementia due to repeated experimentation with "rebirth" technology. But the twist is that Iris is also one of them.
I believe the game is not at all like Mullholand Drive or Lost Highway but the closest film you can compare it with is Shutter Island. Spoilers inside the spoilers:[spoilers]the Scorsese film follows a detective investigating a case inside a lunatic asylum but it is revealed that he has also been incarcerated the whole time[/spoilers].
Exhibit A - The memory
Think about what we know for certain. We know that everyone in the oasis has trouble remembering things. But we also know that Iris has the same problem. This is shown the second time you arrive at the train station when your inventory is erased. Iris doesn't seem to remember that she has been there before. We also know she has trouble remembering the song for the Baker. This was a very frustrating puzzle for me but on my second playthrough I realized that it made sense if the game was trying to "teach" me about her memory problems.
Exhibit B - The triggers
The whole oasis is full of techniques that the people have created to remember things. We know that the musician helps people remember songs from their past and that the gardener helps people remember smells by using the flowers. The music is something they actually do in nursing homes to help people calm down.
https://practicalneurology.com/articles/2017-june/music-and-dementia-an-overview
I also believe that the statues and the painting on the stones are also designed to help people remember things but it has been so long that they have forgotten what they were for. I even believe that the writer is trying to write down their history but she has become confused and starts writing nonsense. Even the screen underground is supposed to help people "see" memories. The man under the tree says he has seen the past with his eyes and I believe that's what he means by that.
I even believe that the ceremony is supposed to help people remember their first rebirth by showing how it used to happen. The old woman is there to repeat the original operation but it has evolved over the ages to become a religious ritual.
Exhibit C - The train station
We know that Iris arrives at the train station at least two times. But where does the train come from and where does it go after the desert? And why does the map at the station not show anywhere that she can recognize? I believe the train station is a fake train station that they put there to catch people who wander away from the oasis.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-10-fake-bus-calms-swedish-dementia.html
Exhibit D - The Greek mythology
We know that Eos and Tithonus play an important part in the story. Like it says in the game, it is a story about immortal life but without asking for "immortal" youth. I believe the theme of Phoenix Springs is that the people have the immortal youth and life but their minds are still degenerating.
https://mythologyplanet.com/the-story-of-eos-and-tithonus-immortality-and-love/
I couldn't find much about the ship with the thirty oars so please let me know if you find something.
Exhibit E - The song titles
I couldn't link the names of the songs to where they play in the game but I found some interesting clues when I researched the names:
Sanctum: this has to be the starting menu song but I also found quite a lot of nursing homes and care homes called Sanctum. https://sanctumcaregroup.com/
Agnosia: "Agnosia is a neurological disorder characterized by an inability to process sensory information. Often there is a loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any significant memory loss." Interesting that there is no memory loss but it would explain why Iris doesn't remember the people of the oasis and why they don't remember her if my theory is correct.
Anamnesis: 1 a recalling to mind : reminiscence or 2" preliminary case history of a medical or psychiatric patient. Another pointer the people are Phoenix Springs are some kind of medical patients.
Unanswered questions:
My main questions are about the first part of the game. If Iris is suffering from dementia can we really trust what she sees that night? Is her brother really an old man or is she remembering things wrong? I like the theory that she should be old too but doesn't remember it that way but I don't think there is enough evidence to say that's what happened. See my final conclusion for why I think that can't be answered.
The old woman: if she is part of the oasis community then why is she aging? Why does she seem to be in charge of everything? We know that people can transform themselves so could she be the surgeon that seems to be so important?
Mason: why did she want to be reborn again? If my theory is right then the rebirth is mostly about keeping them young forever. But she wasn't old at all and still wanted to go underground again. Could it be a habit? Or is there another reason behind it?
Baker: why is he so important in the story and why does he manage to escape with Iris ?
Final conclusion
After replaying the game I felt like it's actually two games stitched together. The first game which we can call Iris's flashback seems completely logical and reasonable. It's the detective story part that makes the most sense. But as soon as you arrive at the oasis everything changes and becomes confused and blurry. This is the second game but here is the twist: I think that the whole first reasonable part of the game cannot be trusted. But the second part is actually what happens. It's just that we are experiencing it through the eyes "Iris" of someone who is so confused that she can't make sense of it.
My few cents:
The ship is a Trireme. It's known for being very difficult to sink. So by calling his book "Sinking the 30 Oars Ship", Leo meant something like "trying to overcome a difficult task" (he refers to solving ethical problems about the "biohacking revolution").
I think we can't trust anything we see in the game... The most definitive proof is Leo's house number. The first time Iris "visits" the house, the number is "341". The "second" (after the ritual), it's "413".
Now, we know that she never actually visits any physical place in the game. She's in the water under Phoenix Springs for the whole time, viewing her memories over and over again. When she sees the ritual, we see her actually in the water, speaking about how they feel, about the room she's in, and saying that witnessing the violence caused her mind to wander - meaning, her memory jumped to a different point. As we see the house number change, we learn that each reiteration of a memory changes it a bit.
(A side note - there are also differences in the 2nd "visit" to Phoenix Springs: the tree in the entrance changes from stump to grown tree, the cabin the carpenter worked on disappears, in another cabin the number of small cabin models changes from 2 to 3. However, I can't say whether these are caused by memory loss or another cause, such as Iris just recalling events from a time that's a bit different. The house number is a constant that can't change over time, so it's the better proof.)
Iris' state is complicated. She views her memories, and has done so for who knows how long. Each reiteration of the same memory causes it to change a bit more. It's hard to say if she's even Leo's sister.
Also a great catch about the boat this is a very nice theory. I think I will play it one more time to connect some ideas between the first part of the game and the second part but I believe there are a lot of clues that are mirrored between the two "storylines".
When Iris gets into the water, she says - "how long have we been doing this? years, decades, millenia?". She can only be stuck for that long if she's immortal herself!
More on Iris being stuck - my biggest question is what's the meaning of the island at the end. Is she out of her situation, or still stuck? I think she's still stuck, because when clicking the "rebirth" button at the end, we hear the sound of water, which we also hear when the game launches, which leads to her image in the menu, being in the water... So I think it clues us that we're in a loop.
I really like your explanation to the ritual, and the song title that goes with it. Couldn't think of an explanation to that myself.
I recommend playing for the third time. Some things the people in the oasis say only made sense to me in that playthrough. But I still can't answer the biggest questions, like what's the true meaning of the ending.