-Spoilers- Story summary of The Swapper

[...]

I just completed the game twice on the PS4 edition. Here's how I think everything panned out, chronologically, and from the player's perspective.

I'm not sure how right I am, but this is what makes sense to me.

Yowiu are ejected into the planet, Chori-V, and soon discover a device called "The Swapper", which allows you to create clones of yourself and the ability to transfer your "soul" between each of the clones.

You soon find a teleporter, and you're able to send yourself back into the space station you were ejected from; Theseus. You enter what appears to be a large station, but it seems to be desolated by some mysterious force or entity, which you soon come to learn are what appears to be "intelligent rocks" called "The Watchers" harvested from Chori-V. It appears that this has wiped out the crew of The Theseus, with some sort of sickness or mental disintegration, apart from one other mysterious person on the ship who appears to be searching for something.

You follow this person, uncertain of their motives. They spoke in a way where they constantly questioned and contradicted themselves often, as if they were speaking every thought that sprung into their mind. Regardless of this, you continued to follow them and their instructions.

Eventually, you come to find out that the person you are following is not a singular person, and that they appear to be of three consciences. Two scientists, (Dr.Chalmers and Dr.Dennett) have managed to preserve themselves for "centuries", while the rest of the Theseus crew perished, in order so that the research they had gathered could remain intact.

Since the space station had become derelict for so long, a scavenger had eventually found the station, and incidentally stumbled upon the room where these scientists had preserved themselves. As the pair of scientists fear that the scavenger may have unshielded what appeared as the safest part of the station, they persuaded the scavenger to use The Swapper on the brains, in an effort to exchange bodies so that they could "fix" whatever issue that the scavenger may have caused. Unfortunately, this does not go according to plan, as the device seems to have merged all their conciences into the body of the scavenger.

At the same time, it is revealed that the you might also be a swapper-created clone of the scavenger herself, possibly before she had used the device on the scientists.

It now becomes clear why the other person with a swapper device seems to speak the way they do - they are multiple consciences forced to coexist within one body, and being unable to do so, eventually leading them to use their swapper device on the "Head Watcher"; something they believe to be the "leader" or "controller" of The Watchers. After the use of the device, their consciences appear to leave their current body, as it falls limp after the device is used. Their collective fate is unknown, as to whether they survived or whether they simply ceased to be.

After this, you are then left on your own, with nothing to do but attempt to land the station on Chori-V. During the landing process, the systems seem to fail (which could be attributed to the third solar panel not detatching completely from the station). Somehow, you still seem to survive the landing. On your way out, it appears that three watchers are eerily reciprocating quotes from the three consciences; this strongly suggests that the consciences have become part of "The Chain" of the watchers, which seems to be a telepathy network that the watchers are using to communicate, and that they are now watchers themselves.

Finally, the rescue vessel (That the scavenger had called for earlier) has arrived amidst the rubble of Theseus; as a possible clone of the scavenger who had requested rescue, the crew member appears to be ready to rescue you, only interrupted by "readings" which seem to indicate that you are heavily contaminated. The rescue member reassures you by offering to decontaminate you, but it appears that such facilities are not available and that they cannot travel on such a risk with you onboard.

You are then faced with a final decision of two choices: To merge with the rescue personnel, and be able to travel, or to choose inaction and remain on the planet.

If you choose to merge with the rescue personnel, you will walk back to the ship, your clone also moving as with the rest of the game, thus tossing your former body off the cliff. The crew in the ship will point out that "she jumped", for an unknown reason; but also that the returning member doesn't seem like themself, and that they appear to also be contaminated. In this ending, it appears that this might be how the watchers are able to keep adding to "the chain".This is evident by the previous conciences, who seem to have become watchers themselves, and your will to survive is part of the parasitic process that perpetuates a cycle which contributes to the chain.

Conversely, should you chose to remain on the planet, you will plunge to your death after jumping into a long pit. It is uncertain whether you become a watcher yourself, or if simply being on the planet of Choris-V was enough to contaminate the rescue personnel with the same sickness that had wiped out the crew of Theseus, but what is know is that you no longer have a body. Some of the text that appeared, for example "But the identity shall remain intact "(as far as I can remember) might suggest that the sould rests peacefully, accepting death rather than becoming a watcher for eternity.

It's a lot longer than I thought, but I just needed to make sure I knew how everything went. I know not all of you will read this, and now I'm really sleepy, but if the story goes how I think it went, then it did far better at being a crazy ancient-aliens story than prometheus did. Well, a lot of things ware better than prometheus...

Either way, I enjoyed this short-but-sweet game.

[mabd]

Cool, thanks! I just finished it and was a bit confused, mainly becuase it's been a long time since I last played, so most of the story isn't fresh in my mind. Amazing game, though some of the puzzles were a tad too hard for me :P

[T00FAST]

This about covers it.

You can also remember some fairly "human" sayings, like (paraphrazing) "He was always using fear" and a whole bunch of others, especially to the end. They stand out from the overall philosophic style of the watcher's sayings.

You should also wonder the ship, re-reading stones you already passsed, as text there appers to change.

[T00FAST]

Hey, here's a hole in your story:
How happen that you have a consciousness and are a clone of the scavenger, while other clones don't ?

[...]

Originally posted by Striding Giant:

Hey, here's a hole in your story:
How happen that you have a consciousness and are a clone of the scavenger, while other clones don't ?

It's not my story, and I don't think the game has any way of explaining it.

[Speaker To Meat]

The game doesn't has an explanation for your own conscience. And suggests it's somehow not a "full" or "normal" conscience by the fact your character never has any dialoge, and pointedly never answers to any radio communications it receives.

My pet theory is that this conscience is an emergent and growing element sprung from the body around the moment you're separated from the original scavenger.

Also, your character can directly feel the thought of watchers while walking next to them, something that it seems "normal" humans are not so apt to do I infer from the fact that in the research logs it shows they had to do several research processes to find the intelligence present in the watchers, and their communication process.

By the way McMakie I dissagree about swapping with the rescue ship crew member being the main method or a normal way new subentities to the chain. (Also, the duality between watcher individuals being functional, and the watcher chain acting as a larger meta individual is interesting, you can throw in more speculation even considering the hub stone is a carved stone with a figure, wondering if the hub stone is a made artifact, and maybe the original source of the individual watchers that form the chain).

Theres a few indicators of this:

*) In the individual watchers toughts you see, you paint a picture in where being on their own dimension the stones lack some concepts like time progression of a sorts (this is not always maintained in the story telling, as in one hand, the watchers struggle to understand time and our dimension as we perceive it, but on the other the disconnection from the chain seems to be a puntual event on a chain of time for them).

*) Other toughts mention that they perceive the soulds/minds of the humans on the ship, and theyre alien minds to them, the watchers show a concerted, logn effort on trying to grasp reality as it is for humans to understand these minds. This means they have no prior knowledge of life forms of our type.

*) At the ending, if you chose to stay on planet, and by the dialog during your jump down the chasm, you see other concepts of our existence like death are alien to the watchers. And the merged conscience facets of Chalmers, Dennet and/or the scavenger (which you see are present inside the chain on the planet just before encountering the rescue ship) make an effort to explain to the rest of the facets in the chain what death is. Again another indicator that the chain has never before encountered beings of our type.

What I didn't see as very clear was wether you are absorbed into the chain with the rest of the consciences, or if you're left to die.

[le_tito]

Fascinating game and story! Thanks for writing about it.

There's a scent about space crazyness that it's needed and makes it not certain and fully explained. I think the attraction of this story is measured in questions more than answers.

The Theseus myth wonders about identity, and I think its explored from several perspectives during the game.

But the umbrella proyect that includes Theseus is called "Sisyphus" witch is another myth of a man punished by the Gods to push a rounded big rock up a hill that allways would fall down, and he will have to start again and again fo all eternity, even after going blind and old.

Why would you call a scientific proyect that?

I think the protagonist is a clone that was left to die and developed somehow a conciousness that could be a watcher going into the body. In the game, not only thoughts but conciousness can travel through space. Then this watcher is experimenting what is like to be human, as well as trying to survive, and to understand itself.

Then again, the other 3-minded human gives you orders, and talks to you as if he knew you from before.

The fact that the main watcher is a human head is puzzling, and it makes me think about a neverending loop, like Sisyphus punishment. Maybe there was a humanity that exhausted all natural resources of a planet and discovered how to transfer their counciousnes into inmortal rocks. Thousands of years later, they forgot they were human, what was sight, movement, space... It was so long ago that when humans come, they are alien to them.

Present humans have just discovered the swapper and rocks that can hold conciousness, in a world depleting itself from resources. All 7 stations have failed to provide an answer to that.

And what about the silk worms? What's their role in the game/planet? What do they eat?

Questions!

I'd love to know what the writers had in mind, but it has been open ended in a good way, for me. Spectacullar experience in a game that looked simple and short.

[Tofu]

Having read this and the tropes of the game on TV Tropes I started thinking about continuity of memory vs. true continuity of consciousness. So here's a thought: Perhaps the swapper device transfers the consciousness and not the memory. Thus, you (the player), don't know the story of the game, in parallel with the character/clone not having memory of the previous events. You both (player and character) get to know the story simultaneously.