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My understanding was that's basically it. If there's more significant story content I haven't seen, maybe I have more work to do?
And actually, that reminds me... There's a scene in the release trailer for the game where Cif in her true form reaches a hand out to some woman laying on the floor. Is that actually in the game? I don't recall encountering it. Maybe it's one of the endings I missed?
I saw your thread but from a quick glance it looked like there was some Zero Ranger discussion in there which I don't want to spoil for myself yet.
Anyway, again, my understanding was that "If" was just some bonus content and that the NPCs do very little other than add some flavor to the credits screen. Is that not correct? And does that include hard mode? If so, does that mean finishing the game with Gray with no items? Because if you got the items on normal mode, going through hard mode would be pretty unenjoyable.
What makes this whole thing so hard, is primarily the fact that you can't and SHOULDN'T kill any of the met/interacted-with NPC, you can't push/collide with any of them (it'll penalize you on JUSTICE system's "points" and will make NPCs dislike you, to the point of refusing to interact with you any at all, which will then make them disappear, failing your task), you can't shove them in pits/holes or crush them with statues/eggs, and you (most obviously and certainly) shouldn't allow monsters to get to them. Making one wrong move/decision even once, thus, will fail your entire run, straight up, completely. You will be forced to start all over from the very beginning, meaning you have to be absolutely flawless, completely perfect, totally meticulous, with how you move about and interact with things/tiles/objects/NPCs.
And it becomes even harder to accomplish/do "correct" when you find out that some of the NPCs have specific "requirements" and "prerequisites" for their dialogues/scenes, which will trigger only if you do certain tasks/perform certain moves, skip particular number of turns, move some tile/space away, have certain equipment/items in the inventory by the time you interact with the NPC at hand, etc., which is quite obtuse and not apparent/easily figured out at all. You have to be extremely stubborn in your perseverance and very observant, to find "proper" solutions to those, as it'll take quite a lot of "runs" (from scratch, obviously) before you'll be able to fully do each of them "properly", the way the crazy devs "intended" you to.
Dis wants to be reunited the Lilith comet (for reasons that only make sense if you've played ZeroRanger). The Lilith comet never reached earth, only a fragment did, the impact of which leads to events that kill everyone on earth. Dis wants to repair the Lilith fragment in order to be one with her again. But the problem is, creating life and consciousness is hard. She first creates Add (based on one of the scientists who awakened her), an incarnation of the comet fragment, a being who's fundamentally incomplete. She is a mother figure who will experiment until she can reach her goals. To aid her, she creates other "higher beings", also based on researchers in the lab : the demons you meet throughout the game. Thinking of Add and Dis's goal in this way (creating humans until they found one to make them whole again) could help make sense of the Void's function. It seems to be a place to gather the souls that were created there once they have matured, and to judge them in order to find if they are an adequate replica. This theory could make sense thematically : one of the main theme of the game is personal fulfilment and "becoming whole", be it through personal growth, but also through inter-personal connections. To top it off, Add sounds like "Adam", Lily/Lilith like.. well... "Lilith". Contrary to Eve (created by Adam with his rib), Lilith is co-created WITH Adam, made from the same clay ; shortly after that creation, Lilith is banished away, making Adam incomplete.
Eus's sin, the Demon War, and the creation of Lilith.
My theory is that each demon is created in order to satiate a profound need. This theory is linked to a line of dialogue from one of the failed experiments, musing about the creation of Bee : "MAYBE [she was created because] ADD DID NOT WANT TO FEEL HUNGER ANYMORE". She is an incarnation of Add's hunger, created to satiate it. In this theory, Add was created more or less complete, with human flaws, sins and the works. She didn't like that, so she creates the 7 deadly sin demons in order to purify herself.What supports that theory ? Well, first of all, her memory problems. If we consider that each demon lacks one specific organ, I think that her lost organ is a part of her brain linked with memories.Why her memory, when we know she lacks reproductive organs ? Wouldn't that have made more sense ? Well. When we look at statues of the demon lords, their missing organ (stomach for Bee, heart for Lev, eye for Tan) is symbolised by a missing geometrical shape. Similarly, Add's void memories take the form of a black square, and her full memories are hidden in a black sphere. Thematically, her loosing her memories could be seen as her "sin" ; she wishes to forget her faults, what links her to humanity. What's more, on the B256 floor, at the bottom of the void is a white statue with her head cracked open, from which leaves what could be new-born souls. The statue looks a bit like the scientist Add is based on ; it could be the original form she cast behind before leaving ? That could work : when she left, she made it so the Void could run without her + if new beings are born from faults she wishes to forget, then those beings emanating from her head/mind makes sense.SO, with that out of the way, what about Eus and the demon war ? Well, at first, Add creates some demons. The more she creates, the more these demons are "human like" (a failed experiment quote related to the creation of Cif : "FINALLY / AFTER HONING THEIR SKILLS FOR SO LONG / ADD GOT CLOSER THAN EVER BEFORE / THEY GAVE BIRTH TO A FRAGILE BEING / LACKING IN STRENGTH / IMPERFECT IN MANY WAYS / JUST LIKE ADD HAD HOPED / AN ARTIFICIAL MANUSYA"). The sign is clear : the new creations will be weaker and more nuanced ; the age of demons is about to end.Some demons are NOT HAPPY about that shift, most notably Lev. Lev used to love Add, especially when she took care of her. (quote from a failed experiment : "LEV WAS SO GRATEFUL / IF ONLY ADD HAD STOPPED THERE / OVER TIME / EVEN THE MOST SINCERE GRATITUDE / WILL GROW BITTER / SILENT RESENTMENT / A HEARTLESS BEING"). What didn't Add stop doing ? In my theory : she didn't stop producing new beings, she was never satisfied with the life she gave birth to, seeing her "kids" as failed experiments. So in turn, Lev decides to put an end to those new creations that are taking that attention away from her.Her plan centers around Eus. Eus's sin is Lust, born from an insatiable need to procreate that she can never fulfil (my theory : it's insatiable because she doesn't have any reproductive organs) ; she may have been jealous of Add's ability to give birth, to create life ; I believe that that jealousy would lead to her breaking Add's reproductive organs, in order to put an end to the creation of humanity. This would be Eus's sin, and the start of the demon war.My reasoning behind that theory is the Giant Ovary face you can find in the void. They are broken (meaning they can't reproduce, but that they should have been able to in the past, before they were broken, and that something happened to change that), they are not a geometrical shape (so they probably aren't a discarded organ in the same way as the other demon's), and their lines of dialogue echo the faults of characters you meet throughout the game (which could mean that these characters were born from the sins of their mother, Add, through this womb).Thus the war happened, opposing the demons who wanted to strive for evolution, and those who wanted to keep the status quo. The War was won by Add, though she could no longer produce new humans. Thus, the humans who were created before Eus's intervention would be free to reproduce on their own, on earth. This theory could work as a thematic echo to the Bible : the war opposing heaven and hell (as described in Milton's Paradise Lost, but also in the story of Adam and Eve) are linked with jealousy related to God's attention, and to the fortune of humanity. Through the Original Sin (also linked to a snake), humanity went from a state of control to a state of free will, where they are free to evolve/procreate/and determine their own fate. The parallel is obvious.
Add's departure.
Why did Add leave ? The combined weight of her loss (not being able to give life), and her mistake (which led to a civil war) must have led her to re-consider her position. Plus, if her goal is to seek Lilith (thematically "the first woman") in order to become whole, forgetting her humanity as she's been doing probably isn't the best idea. Thus, she left the Void while it was still unstable, left her memories and demonic powers behind (instead of forgetting her humanity to be a God, she'll forget her inhumanity to become human), and strived to find Lilith in the human world. Two options here : either she roams the earth for tens of thousands of years (a possibility : she doesn't seem to age + her whole thing is memory loss, so she could just be unaware she's immortal through periodic forgetting), OR, she left the demons aeons ago, but since time works differently in the void, she's only just arrived on earth during the "middle ages" (a possibility, since this vibes with Grey's "Jesus" theme : Dis is the holy spirit, Add is the Mother, Grey is the daughter ; she ends up scarifying herself in every ending ; she enters the Void, a place of sin and temptation, while walking through a desert, similar to Jesus being tempted by the Devil in the desert). Her departure ends in success, as Grey finds Lilith, incarnated as Lily, a princess of a Kingdom.But a new problem arises : in a tragic twist of fate, since Grey is all about forgetting, she can't remember that she's been looking for her, and so she doesn't understand that her quest is "complete".
Why did Grey choose to save Lillie and not Lily ?
In Grey's true ending (which I consider to be the more canon ending, but things still work with Lillie's ending - especially if you believe that Grey disappears in Lillie's run because she's decided to go back to the Void), Grey regains her memory, becomes Add again and reunites with Lily. All is good.
Now, by contrast, if we consider her non-voided normal ending, we can think of it as a "bad" ending. Grey goes in the desert, is tempted, and falls prey to her temptation. Her sins ? She wants to forget, and she lusts to create life and be whole again. On the one hand, Lily is someone she's betrayed and who deeply suffered because of her actions (so Grey might want, deep down, to forget that whole mess), and on the other, the baby is a blank canvas full of possibilities (Grey can forget about her past, start anew, and who knows, the baby might fill the void she feels deep down inside). This would be a thematic echo of Add's own faults : instead of caring for her creation, she only viewed them as stepping stones to be discarded. She leaved Lily behind in the same way she's left Lev behind in the past.The irony, of course, being that Lily IS the Lilith she'd been looking for (she can activate Dis, she can fuse with Add to become a whole and gain awesome powers, her scene waking up at the beach after the war makes her look like the first Woman in a new world, "Lilith" , plus, well, when she awakens in the true ending, a title card calls her Lilith, so yeah she IS Lilith...).This irony works thematically, too : the reason why Add isn't whole isn't because an external part of her is missing, it's because she can't accept her mistakes and her faults (she created demons to get rid of her sins, she tends to erase part of her memory...). I think that, had she stoped looking for Lilith and instead cared for her initial demons, she would have been fulfilled.The reason why finding/accepting Lily works out for her in the true ending isn't "just" because Lily is special, it's because of what that acceptance means for Grey's development. Grey has accepted her past and her identity as Add, she's accepted her faults and has decided to work through them. Even though she can't save Lev (who's consumed by anger and wants to kill everyone), her whole final battle is destroying the Lilith Asteroid in the past : a metaphorical victory against her cycle of longing.Because, after all, Lily isn't the ACTUAL Lilith, she's an artificial re-creation. That in two ways : 1) Initially, Grey loves the Queen first and foremost, and her love for Lily was a love by proxy - she teaches her to dance like the queen, to act like a queen, and, in the same way she probably had to let go of her romantic feelings for the queen when she got married, she's willing to betray Lily and marry her off to someone nefarious... 2) Add only seeks her artificial Lilith as a proxy for the real Lilith, which disappeared off in space (or got destroyed ?).So, given those facts, her destroying the asteroid is a big step for her. She accepts Lily for who she is, not a proxy for someone else, but AS Lily. Being whole again, she doesn't need the asteroid.