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Looking at his blue boots in the picture Shay was 8 at that time. Not sure if it says anywhere how old he was when they left.
That still doesn't explain why they pretended to be robots. If they had no time because of Marek they wouldn't be able to appear as robots either.
I also think that Vella felt like more of a Mary Sue. A girl described as reckless, and yet her recklessness always leads to something good. She didn't really go through much character development besides "your bravery is good, keep doing it". Granted, Shay was strangely normal for a person who lived his whole life in a bubble to suddenly reach dry land, but he felt more human and fallible with all the bumbling around.
The concept of whole communities based around "baking", "sandcastles" or "clouds" was too goofy and outlandish for me, while the artificial life on a spaceship concept was much more intriguing. Shay's world was more thought out, while the outside world felt like a loose collection of conflicting ideas (which it essentially was - asking backers to come up with interesting settings without knowing the story proved to be difficult to pull into a cohesive whole.)
Here's what I gathered: due to how they were portrayed in act one, I'm not sure the decision to have the parents be "real" was the original plan. Shay calls his mom "computer" within moments of starting act one, and he doesn't even get any smack for it. The neckless floating heads and different facial features (mostly mom's/Hope's smile) leads me to believe that there was a design change, because the pretending thing doesn't really make sense. Most of the sentient objects on the ship don't really seem to get it, either, just calling Hope the "brains of the operation" over and over again, but seemingly ignoring that she's a human in a control room or whatever. They also lack a room you can go into, and the ship is rather small and linear. Somehow Shay's father is awake all night and working all day, while his mother is in control during the day and "presumably" asleep at night. The other "theory" is that Shay just thought of them as computers, which is kind of weird considering all the happy photos of him as a child, especially the one with his parents.
So, in short: I don't know.
She was the organizer, not the grandmother of Vella's family, but yeah, it's odd that the Thrush, except for her, are all alien looking. It's also odd that she was able to make contact with natives when they have such a hard on for keeping out everything from outside the plague walls due to illnesses or whatever it is they are afraid of. It just doesn't make sense after that whole diatribe from Marek to Vella; they had all these concerns and were just like "oh yeah, that granny was a plant". That addition seemed to be a lazy way to make it a conspiracy when it just raises more questions. This also doesn't explain how she got back to Loruna so easily. You figure everyone was listening to her because she was an established member of the community that was always around, nosing into things like they appeared to make her look.
In short: she was able to hide it because reasons.
According to Alex, Marek was a Cello to him 300 years ago, and this was due to Alex's ship being focused on music rather than knitting. Honestly, Marek should have been some sort of knit creature, so I think it's oversight. The more interesting question is how the ♥♥♥♥ old is Marek, and why was he involved in every mission every 14 years, and why was Project Dandelion structured in such a way that they had to get children to work subversively amongst parents. It's not dished out with Alex's character, but it's assumed he had a regular relationship, or in other words: he didn't see them as computers, especially since they lived for 20 years after they crashed, so having a random thing on the ship talking to him trying to "break him out" or "get him to do stuff" doesn't really make sense either.
In short: it was probably a mistake that they didn't bother to explain.
Yeah, so Project Dandelion is sold as a colonization thing. This is a weird distraction considering there's no reason to put the parents on the ship with the kid, especially with how they built up act 1. Meanwhile, for some reason, the child, a male, is supposed to develop some sort of instinct to collect females. They don't explain this well, considering Shay was rescuing all of the creatures, rather than picking a specific one. In fact, his instincts were always wrong, picking Vella last both times. They don't go into why, for the same reason why they don't explain why they need the females. They go with it being "something unnameable" and Marek scoffs at you when you ask as Vella.
In short: "reasons".
He doesn't, if you listen to what he says.
Marek claims it's to fill out the "family tree", so basically for breeding purposes. However, genetics aren't enough, even though for some reason they find the genes inferior and are afraid of them. On top of this, they justify capturing rather than taking DNA or whatever due to needing the "whole picture", experiences and stuff. Why they would need this for the simple act of breeding is not really explained as I said above.
In short: because the DNA they are afraid of in the first place but need to continue breeding isn't enough, for some reason.
The same way random people know about robots or other technology, like color photography. "Reasons".
He's just a character to progress the plot. Everyone seems to be aware about the tree and he's the only tree that speaks out of all of the claimed trees that Curtis talks about, so it was probably more to drive that dynamic. It's a little weird that there's only one tree, but I guess it could be assumed that Curtis exaggerated how many there were. They basically have to have at least one, otherwise Curtis would just be a random lumberjack that didn't want to go outside and cut down trees.
That, and it could have been changed at some point in Act 2 to give the characters more NPCs to talk to, and as an homage to Tim's mom (Hope) and dad.
However, I don't feel like this adds up at all narratively or logically. His tone during Act I when referring to them as computers, the fact that Mom is fooled by the simple Shay-dummy, his shock at discovering his Dad was real. I really wasn't a fan of this plot turn.
I feel like they might have originally been planned to be computers, but it was rewritten in Act II to fit with story changes.
Also, it would have made the ending a lot more interesting if they were computers.
Good question! I'm also wondering why her disappearance was never mentioned towards the end of the game.
Perpetual bread hat I guess?
He mentions it's to blend in with Shay's yarn friends, and Alex's Marek wore a Cello costume, so it can be assumed that he dresses to blend in with the ship's theme. But yeah, it doesn't make much sense. I'm thinking it was meant to be extremely obvious foreshadowing.
I was pretty disappointed that he turned out to be just a standard bad guy.
This plot element makes very little sense. It would have made more sense and been more poignant if the ship was programmed to display the maidens as it did with Marek, but the parents were the ones to raise and direct the boys to perform the "rescues".
The whole space lie was to keep the families from "going native" as previous families on the mission had. Also it was used as a way to trick families into volunteering for the mission in the first place. "Our planet is dying, noble sacrifice, etc, etc.".
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this premise. They prime the boys to pick the girls around the time of puberty, and the Thrush leader mentions the boys "lusts" as the driving force behind them being able to pick strong choices. I assume it's alluding towards the idea that there's some inborn instinct in picking a mate with strong genes/traits.
This premise would be shakey to begin with, it makes zero sense with the whole "rescuing creatures" setup.
There doesn't seem to be any actual reason, beyond the use of a classic trope. I personally would have enjoyed more of a spin on this.
Also, it's not for breeding as they explain they "process" them, which renders them to their base elements. As Vella said "It sounds like you want to put me in a blender." and it's confirmed that the process kills them in the discussion with the head Thrush.
Actually, in Part 1, Shay is able to sneak out to talk with Marek when his father goes to sleep. His father presumably only stays up to tell him some bedtime lectures, and then sleeps himself. So, if they were originaly supposed to be a computer, then why are both of them shown to be sleeping? That is a very human thing to do, and unnecessary for a computer, which could easily be awake 24/7.
Mom and Dad could be two parts of the same AI program. The face/personality change reflecting the change in what the AI is tasked with doing. Also, Mom has a sun motif and Dad has a moon motif reflecting the time when they're active. The word "sleeping" doesn't have to be used to refer to human sleeping; home computers often use the term "sleep" and "awake" to refer to the computer being in standby mode or being woken from it.
Mora addressed this, but none of the AI on the ship, from the hexipals to the yarn friends, were typical. It still definitely feels like he was supposed to be an AI, as we found with Vella's arc in the ship that your head is inside of a command sphere when you're telecasting into the "bulbs" around the ship. It makes little sense for the father to walk into the command room and pass out in that command sphere.
The father is never seen commanding the ship, though. He only speaks through a single sphere, and in all likelihood is broadcasting from somewhere else especially since if he was coming from the bridge, then he would look like the "Sun" rather than the "moon".
It still doesn't explain why he'd fall asleep in a command sphere broadcasting his slumber, nightly, I might add, into his child's room. For all intents and purposes, he's not presented to us as a person until act 2. "Mom" and "Dad" are "computers" to Shay until the knife switch moment that begins act 2. Whether or not this is intentional is impossible for either of us to prove.
The parents sleeping *in* their command spheres is another argument that the "real parents"-plotpoint was added late into the story.
What confuses me the most, is that the reveal of them being real has no influence on the plot at all. You don't even have a dialog with shay about the topic. He is just like "Oh you are real? Cool I guess" and nothing else comes out of it.
The story could have literally been the same without this twist, minus all the plot holes it creates. If the dad really needed to be mobile to fix Alex' ship, he could have a robot body or whatever he presumably used in Act 1 to work on Shays ship, when the user is still expected to beieve he is a computer.
Just as an aside, the Mom's body looks pretty artificial compared to the other characters'. Just look at her waist. Pretty sure it's just stylization, but it jumped out to me while playing.