Lesson not learned (Ending Spoilers)

[ChiPsiUp]

So, let's talk about the ending.

The Cave's ending narration tells us that the characters didn't learn the lesson they were supposed to learn. What is that lesson?

When you start a new game of The Cave, the first three trinkets you have to collect change depending on the last characters you played the game with. If you've never played before, it's three pretty pointless objects. But if you have played before, the three trinkets are the three hearts desires that belong to the last team you sent into the cave. So if you had the Knight go in last time, the next play through you'll find Excalibur as one of the three trinkets.

The final gift shop stage also had you see the three people you met in the Cave again. The Miner, the Hunter, and the Hermit. You had to take their trinkets in order to claim your own, and then leave the cave. The thing is that the three of them didn't seem to be able to see you at all, and make no reaction when you take their stuff. Combined this with the fact that the trinkets you leave the cave with always end up back in the cave in your next play through...

No one actually makes it out of the Cave. The characters only THINK they do, but instead they're just wasting away into skeletons with their desired trinkets until the next group comes along and then steals their trinkets away. Then the cycle starts again.

Added to the fact that the characters can't "die" in the Cave suggests that they're all actually dead. And they're trapped in this afterlife/purgatory where they keep screwing other people over in order to fulfill their selfish desires. It seems to me like the lesson is that they only think those things will make them happy, when what they should've done to escape the Cave is to let go of their earthly desires, and not screw over other people.

Thoughts?

[Urthdigger]

Actually, I believe the cave is referring to things before they happen for the same reason why he refers to everything in the past tense: He's telling a story to the viewer.

[redSkwrl]

"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
But they do. The way I see it the cave represents what's happening inside the characters, how they want it to play out so that they can get what they desire the most. At the end they then have the option to let go of the desire. What actually happens in the outside world is what we see in the cave paintings and that can vary but doesn't have to.

The way it plays out for the twins in the cave is that their parents die and they get away, none of the cave paintings has that ending. The parents tell them to eat their soup, they're not send away to wash their hands having the parents start without them. In the good ending the twins then yell at their parents to not eat the soup in the bad one they all eat it and the whole family dies.

The scientist also gets what she desires most in the bad ending, she becomes rich while nukes go off in the background behind her.

[Urthdigger]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von doomdragon:

"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
But they do. The way I see it the cave represents what's happening inside the characters, how they want it to play out so that they can get what they desire the most. At the end they then have the option to let go of the desire. What actually happens in the outside world is what we see in the cave paintings and that can vary but doesn't have to.

The way it plays out for the twins in the cave is that their parents die and they get away, none of the cave paintings has that ending. The parents tell them to eat their soup, they're not send away to wash their hands having the parents start without them. In the good ending the twins then yell at their parents to not eat the soup in the bad one they all eat it and the whole family dies.

The scientist also gets what she desires most in the bad ending, she becomes rich while nukes go off in the background behind her.

I had meant that in their area in the cave, they didn't get a repercussion or their reward. Which interferes with my theory of the cave showing them what sort of terrible consequences there are to getting what they desire most. While it's true that, like the rest of the cast, they get what they desire while promptly having consequences out in the real world, they don't have the consequences for pursuing their desires spelled out as clearly as the rest of them inside the cave itself.