Could someone please explain the ending?

[Riddy]

I'm so lost...was there some message about consumerism I missed? It just seems the lady destroyed the planet with her fireplace toys and wen to another planet.

[DariusOne]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8nwRCW-tJU&feature=g-u

That should help. I´ll add tho that there is also stuff Little inferno does wrong. Mainly(in comparison to spec ops since the criticism is very similar) Litlle inferno was released on a wrong platform at the wrong pricepoint. Whereas Spec ops critizises shooters on xbox, ps3 and PC and still is a half-decent shooter in its own right on xbox, ps3 and PC at the same price point; Little inferno critizises free to play/1$ mobile phone games, but it is on steam for 15$. I guess it is a half-decent iPhone game in it´s own right, but the platform and price are completely wrong for what it does.

[Kabra]

I also felt criticised for wasting my time playing the game. Because the girl who sends you letters appears to be like 5 years old in the beginning of the game when she talks about love.

Then some minutes later into the game you already feel how she is growing up. Which feels weird since you only played for an hours or something.

In the end you have that picture of her and she's a young lady... also she said that she nearly gave up hope to get those sunglasses cause it took so long (which was like one minute for the player).

And now you have those dialogs at the end of the game about wasting time by burning stuff.
... which is what all of us players did for the last hour or something...

[Tet]

Think bigger. Out ot the chest.

[Riddy]

Excellent video, thanks for sharing!

[elix]

Edit: I didn't watch the linked video above before typing this response. I say about *half* the things that the video covers, but I think I'll leave this post here anyways. Just don't bother telling me that I'm being redundant, please.


I don't think I need a spoiler warning since this topic is "explain the ending".

Little Inferno has an underlying message of anti-consumerism. In Little Inferno, you buy tons and tons of toys. And you just burn them. They don't have meaning, they're just things to burn to unlock coins and combos. Your neighbour starts reaching out to you, trying to tell you that there is more than this. You just keep burning things.

Finally, you burn your house down, and Future Corporation has no feelings and isn't even sorry (they say they are, but they use generic customer service words that have no feeling or meaning behind them) about it. Your apathy has been broken by the very dramatic burning of your house, and you have had to actually walk out into the world. (One of the dialogue options with the postman is something like "I just discovered I exist" because until the game pulls you away from the fireplace, there's literally no thought about who "you" are.)

You (the guy sitting in front of the fireplace) just sat in front of your Little Inferno fireplace, burning toys to keep warm, as days and weeks and years went by. You never even turned your head to look at the postman as he delivered you your toys and things to throw into the fire. You just picked them up and threw them in the fire like a good little consumer, giving Future Corporation your money.

Finally, you got up (because your house burned down) and stepped back from the fireplace, only to see that there is a bigger world out there, a world beyond Future Corporation's products. Miss Nancy has regrets that she let go of all her dreams because she was too busy wrapped up in the day-to-day business of running a corporation. She forgot how to live. She stopped progressing forward in life, just like everyone else in town. Just like you.

The message is to shake yourself out of this. The message is to move forward. To live.

[TillsterRulz]

Originally posted by elix ¦ вlϊтz:

Edit: I didn't watch the linked video above before typing this response. I say about *half* the things that the video covers, but I think I'll leave this post here anyways. Just don't bother telling me that I'm being redundant, please.


I don't think I need a spoiler warning since this topic is "explain the ending".

Little Inferno has an underlying message of anti-consumerism. In Little Inferno, you buy tons and tons of toys. And you just burn them. They don't have meaning, they're just things to burn to unlock coins and combos. Your neighbour starts reaching out to you, trying to tell you that there is more than this. You just keep burning things.

Finally, you burn your house down, and Future Corporation has no feelings and isn't even sorry (they say they are, but they use generic customer service words that have no feeling or meaning behind them) about it. Your apathy has been broken by the very dramatic burning of your house, and you have had to actually walk out into the world. (One of the dialogue options with the postman is something like "I just discovered I exist" because until the game pulls you away from the fireplace, there's literally no thought about who "you" are.)

You (the guy sitting in front of the fireplace) just sat in front of your Little Inferno fireplace, burning toys to keep warm, as days and weeks and years went by. You never even turned your head to look at the postman as he delivered you your toys and things to throw into the fire. You just picked them up and threw them in the fire like a good little consumer, giving Future Corporation your money.

Finally, you got up (because your house burned down) and stepped back from the fireplace, only to see that there is a bigger world out there, a world beyond Future Corporation's products. Miss Nancy has regrets that she let go of all her dreams because she was too busy wrapped up in the day-to-day business of running a corporation. She forgot how to live. She stopped progressing forward in life, just like everyone else in town. Just like you.

The message is to shake yourself out of this. The message is to move forward. To live.

Ah, that explains quite a lot.

[Twelvefield]

The tower is the tallest part of the island. Apart from being an obvious and inescapable destination for the end-game, it's the only place on the map that physically can reach to the next plane of existence.

You climb the communication tower because you need to escape from the trap of your own life. When you jump, you actualize the process of transformation which can go one of two ways: you can become earth-bound at the bottom, or you can soar. You don't realize it immediately, but Esther is there to guide you: she wants to be with you if only for the moment of the tranformation. Esther is the other bird, and you become a bird as well. You reuinite, only to be swallowed by the inevitable eternal void.

But - at least you face the void together. Much better than being trapped and alone wandering and in pain on the island.

At least... what? What's that you say? Wrong game? What do you mean Wrong Game?! Why, I oughta...

Oh.

Yeah.

Wrong game. I get it now.

Well, it still all works. Just replace "communication tower" with "toy factory tower". Same thing, folks. Little Inferno = Dear Esther, more or less.

[Nerevars Goat Univeron]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

The tower is the tallest part of the island. Apart from being an obvious and inescapable destination for the end-game, it's the only place on the map that physically can reach to the next plane of existence.

You climb the communication tower because you need to escape from the trap of your own life. When you jump, you actualize the process of transformation which can go one of two ways: you can become earth-bound at the bottom, or you can soar. You don't realize it immediately, but Esther is there to guide you: she wants to be with you if only for the moment of the tranformation. Esther is the other bird, and you become a bird as well. You reuinite, only to be swallowed by the inevitable eternal void.

But - at least you face the void together. Much better than being trapped and alone wandering and in pain on the island.

At least... what? What's that you say? Wrong game? What do you mean Wrong Game?! Why, I oughta...

Oh.

Yeah.

Wrong game. I get it now.

Well, it still all works. Just replace "communication tower" with "toy factory tower". Same thing, folks. Little Inferno = Dear Esther, more or less.

Cant we all just say "Magic" and have everything figure itself out?

[Benmarch]

I think the whole game is a metaphore picturing us in front of our computer (fireplace), playing games, watching videos, talking through chat and cells(all the toys we burn represent the stuff we might do/watch/talk about/play), and with those toys we burn time, our time,(the game reminds you quite often that you lose track of time or what's happening around you because you're soo focused on burning) while there is a whole world out there waiting for us to explore, to follow our dream and let go of this monotonuous and time consuming life style for once.
This is how I interpret this whole game.

[OllyTrolly]

It does seem like a very anti-consumerist message. And I think with the fireplace, as somebody said earlier in the discussion, it could be seen as a criticism of playing empty, repetitive games as part of that consumerism. I thought a really interesting touch was the ending where the weather man asks if you are ready to go, and you have to say yes 2 or 3 times. It's as if the game is saying, are you sure you want to finish? The fact the credits roll as soon as you 'leave' makes it fairly blatant that you had to choose to finish the game and forget that burning things in the fireplace meant anything at all.

And it did occur to me when you're talking to the old lady at the top of Tomorrow Corporation (which notably peddles the empty message that 'the future is...tomorrow' - a pretty big jibe at consumerism), it's snowing more and more every day, all the while people are burning things in their fireplace. Seemed like the snow was just ash from all the things you've burnt. I think this is a metaphor for the self-fulfilling prophecy that capitalism is; the more you spend, the more our economy is accelerated, the more you spend, the more consumerism becomes important, and all the while we live out of our means. Our economies literally live off future valuation - stocks, loans, inflation, interest - and a promise that innovation happens in the future to curb societal problems like overpopulation, fossil fuel depletion, global warming, etc. I wonder if that's overthinking it, but still I feel like that's what they were saying.

Haven't watched the video btw, I'll watch it now to see what it says. More interesting to come to my own conclusions first.

[Breadfish]

I just finished this game about half a hour or so a go, almost 5 hours in.
My thoughts are:
First of all, this game most definetely has symbolism and I think that it tries to say that we are too much disconnected from the outside world that we are just missing out on things. Thinking about it now, maybe Sugar Plums is somwhat a metaphore for cyber friends? You don't see her, you just communicate with her.
Another thought of mine is that the game is trying to show how destructive we can be (the entire city is hazed by the smoke, and who is it to blame? Us for burning things? Or is it the lady, Miss Nanny is it?, that sells such a product?).
I don't know really, but what I do know, is that this is one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, which makes this one of my favorite games EVER.

[StormXTS]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

The tower is the tallest part of the island. Apart from being an obvious and inescapable destination for the end-game, it's the only place on the map that physically can reach to the next plane of existence.

You climb the communication tower because you need to escape from the trap of your own life. When you jump, you actualize the process of transformation which can go one of two ways: you can become earth-bound at the bottom, or you can soar. You don't realize it immediately, but Esther is there to guide you: she wants to be with you if only for the moment of the tranformation. Esther is the other bird, and you become a bird as well. You reuinite, only to be swallowed by the inevitable eternal void.

But - at least you face the void together. Much better than being trapped and alone wandering and in pain on the island.

At least... what? What's that you say? Wrong game? What do you mean Wrong Game?! Why, I oughta...

Oh.

Yeah.

Wrong game. I get it now.

Well, it still all works. Just replace "communication tower" with "toy factory tower". Same thing, folks. Little Inferno = Dear Esther, more or less.

......Bump, but anyways....
THANKS FOR SPOILING A GAME I WAS PLAYING....

[[TaG] Sir Panda]

guess its meant to warn of the consuming society

[LethalP]

Originally posted by Smashmallow:

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

The tower is the tallest part of the island. Apart from being an obvious and inescapable destination for the end-game, it's the only place on the map that physically can reach to the next plane of existence.

You climb the communication tower because you need to escape from the trap of your own life. When you jump, you actualize the process of transformation which can go one of two ways: you can become earth-bound at the bottom, or you can soar. You don't realize it immediately, but Esther is there to guide you: she wants to be with you if only for the moment of the tranformation. Esther is the other bird, and you become a bird as well. You reuinite, only to be swallowed by the inevitable eternal void.

But - at least you face the void together. Much better than being trapped and alone wandering and in pain on the island.

At least... what? What's that you say? Wrong game? What do you mean Wrong Game?! Why, I oughta...

Oh.

Yeah.

Wrong game. I get it now.

Well, it still all works. Just replace "communication tower" with "toy factory tower". Same thing, folks. Little Inferno = Dear Esther, more or less.

......Bump, but anyways....
THANKS FOR SPOILING A GAME I WAS PLAYING....

You do realize this entire page is about discussing the end, right?

[OllyTrolly]

Originally posted by ImmaBoss:

Originally posted by Smashmallow:

......Bump, but anyways....
THANKS FOR SPOILING A GAME I WAS PLAYING....

You do realize this entire page is about discussing the end, right?

It's because Twelvefield basically spells out his interpretation of Dear Esther.