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Just so you know, you CAN learn a lesson and exit the cave. I did it with my monk when i didnt want to see him get a bad ending and was curious. Here's what you do: At the end you just have to give your object of desire back to the gift shop dude before you exit with it, he asks are you sure a couple times.. then takes it back, you exit and get a new ending part of your "lifes" slideshow in which you get redemption, right before you get to cimb out of the cave and out of this hatch, and walla your free.
But that confirms my theory then. :) On the good endings, you actually see your team standing outside the Cave when it's over. On the bad endings, you see no one outside. So unless you act selflessly, you never actually leave the Cave.
Moral lesson of this game: "Don't be a jerkface"
Lol! Double Fine is VERY intellegent, in my eyes, for making this ending. Haven't played the game yet, am excited to, and knowing the ending(s) def doesn't spoil the fun of ACTUALLY playing it for me. I love that they made it this way- so if people ♥♥♥♥♥ about the ending sucking, it's because they were serious d-bags while they were playing. Lol! Very thoughtful....
This game seems pretty sweet! Can't wait to play it!
I tried it. The Cave's ending narration says something along the lines of some of the heroes learning that what they desire the most is also what they fear the most, while others succumbed to ambition, greed or vanity. Those who chose the good ending are seen standing at the entrance, those who did not are nowhere to be seen.
SPOILER WARNING
I'd be more comfortable with video games lecturing about morality if they actually gave the player the choice to not be a serious d-bag. I breezed through the game due to the simplicity of the puzzles, so maybe I missed hidden complexity, but between the limited items and interactable background elements I can't see an option to NOT be a d-bag to reach the end of the game. For example, can you escape the Twins' House without the use of rat poison?
Spec Ops: The Line did this to me too: presented me with a moral choice the characters were arguing about, so I decided not to do it, then realised you had to do it because it was the only way the game would let you advance any further. Then it proceeded to lecture me and lay on heavy guilt for the rest of the game for making that choice. Uh, sorry game, I didn't want to do that. You designed it so there was no choice, so I don't appreciate being lectured about morality by designers too lazy to design a branching story that doesn't break when I decide to take the harder, human path.
Still, I thought about it last night after finishing and suspect the Cave is less a lecture and more a meta-commentary on the nature of adventure games themselves: the player has a clear goal, usually walks around grabbing everything that's not nailed down, and will screw anyone over to achieve their aims. It's sort of the flip-side of microwaving hamsters in 'Maniac Mansion' or stealing boats in 'The Secret Of Monkey Island'.
PS: I wonder what was the person who wished to get jewelled skull. It's the ONLY case where that person's skeleton is nowhere to be found -- it's just a skull plus some treasure piles. Although I assume the owner could be just buried under that treasure.
Spec Ops: The Line did have a moral choices. A few events, like the white phosphorus, are unavoidable... but some of the other immoral actions? Like say, firing into a crowd of civilians? That was all your fault. You might THINK you have no choice, but you actually had another way out.
Isn't it the Pirate? You know, when you find the dead pirate, robot, and clown? The big treasure chest where the crystal skull is looks like a pirate's chest.
SPEC OPS SPOILERS
No, that was an assumption the game would give me a unwinnable / game over / reload state if I didn't take the darker option, as it did with the undefeatable waves of soldiers at the White Phosphorus, or the 'inexplicable You're Dead' screen I got for not wiping out the obvious cluster of civilians at the end of that scene.
The game tipped its hand instantly: you're searching for John Konrad and his missing men. OK, it's going to be 'Heart Of Darkness'. Insanity of war etc. By the time I'm letting people burn alive or shooting on civiilians, I just assumed I'm role playing the character the story is forcing me to be.
As for the Cave, is there a moral choice beyond the final scene?
Yeah, I ended up with all three of my characters making the return. Seemed like the obvious thing. Is there actually a bad end for each, or just no end?
BTW, it's "voila", not "walla." Walla-Walla is a prison, voila is French.
Yes, there is. Spoilers below
If you choose to not give the trinkets back, none of the characters make it out of the cave with the cave lamenting that they didn't learn their lesson. Plus, on your next playthrough, any characters that suffered the bad ending will be discovered as skeletons guarding their own objects of desire in the beginning where the gift shop guy asks you to get trinkets so the cave can open (unless you take that the same character on your next run). If you choose to give some back, only the people who gave back their trinkets will make it out, with the Cave telling us that some people learned their lesson.
The cave represents what you will become if you decide to go after the thing you desire most. In each case, the person gets what they desire most, but at a great cost to those around them (Except the Twins, where the great cost to those around them is what they were after in the first place). Even worse, with the possible exception of the Knight, since it was accidental, you are directly responsible for the deaths you cause. It's as if to say "You can get what you want the most, if you don't mind being a total monster", although a few of these aren't too effective lessons: For the Twins, they essentially get no repercussions for their crimes at all, and the Scientist doesn't even get what she desires most in her area, so it's not as clear a lesson as, say, the Knight or the Adventurer.
As for the other sections of the cave that you actually play through (Not the missing characters' areas that you essentially skip), I believe those are there as other examples of what happens if you get what you desire most. The miner got his gold, the hunter got the hunt of a lifetime, and the hermit got all the time in the world to spend with his dog. None of these people are the kind of people you want to be.
As the cave says "Getting what you desire most isn't hard. But it will change you. And that's what's hard."
Anyway, a further clue as to what's happening can be found in the cave paintings. In the majority of the ones I've seen, we watch as each hero begins a descent towards darkness (Minus the Twins, who basically start out evil). In their final cave painting, we see a critical choice where they can accept the thing they desire most, with the two endings each being the scene directly after. In my impression of the story, the cave paintings are what's real, and the journey through the cave is a metaphor for the journey they are taking right at that moment. In the end, after considering what sort of person they'd have to be to do that, they have a final choice at the end: Take what they desire most, or refuse it, before leaving the cave and returning to reality. Whichever choice they make at the end there is the same choice they make in real life.
Anyway, I kinda got off track there, but the reason you're forced to be a ♥♥♥♥ in order to proceed is because, with the path the characters are on right at that moment, being a ♥♥♥♥ is the only way to get what they were aiming for. It's basically telling you "To proceed along this path you've set yourself on, you need to be a monster."
My interpretation is the Cave is either a purgatory of sorts, or Hell. Note the burning landscape near the end of the playthrough. The Cave comments on each character's sins before they happens, which makes me think the events have already happened, and their choices are what damned them to hell. This is why they can't die - they're already dead.
Doing penance for your sins by reliving them in the Cave, and eventually letting go of what selfish motivations you to them = ascension.