SPOILER! Story Wrap-Up

[Stu]

please dont rate the game in this thread, there are enough other threads where you can do that.

So, i just finished the game, took me about 5 hours.
My english is quite good, but it is not my native language, and i had some difficulties with the old/poetic english used in the game during playing. also it is very late where i am, so excuse my poor english writing skills in the moment :P
therefore id like to compare what i understood with what you guys understood. so here we go with my story:

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from what i understood our protagonist (oswald mandus) is a pretty sick person. he inherited a huge house with secret chambers and hallways from his dad, which he is mainly using to spy on his wife during her shower and weewee time :P

he also is a ruthless industrial, letting kids from orphanages work in his factory. at some point after a trip to mexico, where he and his sons (their mother died giving birth to the twins) see the pyramids where humans where sacrificed by the south american natives by ripping out their hearts, he realizes that industialization destroys the environment and ripps the society apart into classes. in a fever, he concludes that humankind, especially the upper class, has to be extinguished to stop them from doing so. also, he figures that killing all humans will free them from their sin and their unpleasent lifes.

therefore mandus starts constructing the 'machine for pigs' beneath his factory, which is designed to feed the upper class first (remember the journal page mentioning the parties and such) by slaughtering livestock while its growing, until it is big and mighty enough to be turned into a man slaughtering machine to extinguish them. mandus is the great nephew of either alexander or daniel from 'the dark descent' and with their help (he is getting samples of the dark descent monsters), by ressurecting dead animals, mandus turns pigs into demonic working slaves that stalk the halls of the machine, as well as live there. during his work at the machine he grows more and more insane, eventually sacrificing his two little kids to the machine (to start it maybe, you can see them in the end attached to some wires of the machine).

although he is convinced therewith he actually saves his childrens souls, this act shocks him that much, he suddenly becomes aware of his actions. he starts to sabotage the machine. however, both the grief for his children and the wish to kill mankind are very strong, so that his consciousness ripps apart, leaving his evil as a part of the machine (contained in the container shown in the end), his good side awakes in his bed (when the game starts). by pretending the boys were still alive, the machine itself tricks him into repairing the damage he caused earlier, until it is fully functional and unleashes his pig monsters to the suburbs of london to fulfill it's dream of whiping out humanity. when the protagonist realizes this and that his kids are in fact long dead, he destroys vital parts of the machine until it collapses. shortly before he gives the machine its death blow, it pleads him to spare it, since it only wants to save humankind from the horrors of the 20th century (pretty cool actually ;) ). mandus still kills the machine and himself (how? what the hell happens on this chair? he ripps his own heart out?) and stays in its heart forever, while the new century begins.

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now. this is what i interpreted. i dont really know when the kids died, since the often mentioned that the wife buried two innocent skulls. however, in my understanding the wife died before he started his machine... maybe somebody can help me with that.

criticism about my version is of course highly welcome, im also not sure whether i forgot something or not.

cheers!


**edited after some clues from participants of the discussion

[Fear57]

10/10 would read again, more enjoyable then the actual game.

[adfsg]

Pretty sure the wife died giving birth to the children (twins). It is narrated that she lived to see one born, but died before the other arrived.

[Vantus]

The begining of the game explains that his wife died during Childbirth.
"You lived long enough to see Edwin, but not Enoch" or words to that effect.

During the progression of the story you learn that through some form of alchemy / science, they are reanimating corpses and bonding flesh together. This is describing the pig-men that you see. The game makes constant reference to Pigs but it often uses that word with different meaning. Sometimes it is to describe Humans and other times Swine.

I'm sure that through symbolism, the monsters that you face are a result of protagonist's jaded view of the world. After the death of his wife and his trip to Mexico he began his descent into madness. To him the rest of humankind were like pigs and eventually he made them so by... Well... Turning them into pigs. Those pigs were then used to cull the streets of London and put the humans through the same meat-processing system that the pigs were.

It was his children that brought him around and the guilt that he felt over sacrificing them to complete his trip into madness that ultimately made him change his mind. Near the end, he talks about both himself and "the voice" as being two halfs of one peson hinting to schizophrenia. By merging back with his wicked half and "Forgiving himself", he might be at peace again.

What ACTUALLY happens at the end with the heart is still beyond me. Who's is the heart in the machine? How did he appear at a Temple? Why did he have his own heart extracted? If the heart in the machine his his, how can he have his heart taken out again? Surely he doesn't have two hearts. :P

I think it's one of these situations where you just have to accept that "It is deep philosophical plot, K!?" and let them have their moment. Like a trippy experience - only the creator really knows what it's about.

[Stu]

yep, correct, stupid me. i just started watching markipliers lets play after finishing this, and it directly jumped into me^^ wife died giving birth to the kids.

thanks btw to vantus for reminding me of the alchemy stuff. i totally forgot about the part where they talk about that experiment with the strychnine poisened dog and stuff.

i will definatly play the game once more in my language, so that i can read all the pages again.

[hugdealer]

Originally posted by Fear57:

10/10 would read again, more enjoyable then the actual game.

i was kind of thinking the same thing.

honestly i really like the chinese rooms story and writing style, but their excecution within a game kills it for me and the 'bad game' takes over the enjoyability.

i'd read their short stories but dang, they need to change it up for games or maybe just leave..

[adfsg]

One thing that leaves me wondering: towards the end of the story, did Mandus' hand begin to transform? Might be my imagination, but the fingers seemed to lose definition as though he was undergoing a porcine metamorphoses as well.

EDIT: Went back and checked, and I guess it WAS just my mind playing tricks on me after all. Hand remains the same throughout.

[Fear57]

Originally posted by sir_voe:

One thing that leaves me wondering: towards the end of the story, did Mandus' hand begin to transform? Might be my imagination, but the fingers seemed to lose definition as though he was undergoing a porcine metamorphoses as well.

"Aw ♥♥♥♥ it, just release it like that, I mean it has AMNESIA on it so it will sell and it will win goty awards Right? Right? ... guies?"

[Taris]

What i did not get was, who was the guy in the cryo-sleep-thingy/ glass coffin? I think it was the consciousness of the machine. Was it the Professor that was mentioned in the Phonograph Messages?

[jmrankin]

Originally posted by Taris:

What i did not get was, who was the guy in the cryo-sleep-thingy/ glass coffin? I think it was the consciousness of the machine. Was it the Professor that was mentioned in the Phonograph Messages?

I've heard theories circulating that suggest that it might have been Alexander of Brennenburg from the Dark Descent. It seems like a bit of a stretch, but it's possible that he served as Mandus's alter ego. Since Alexander is not exactly confined to space or time, that would explain how "he has seen the future". But again, it could (and probably is) totally wrong.

[Supernautilus]

Welp, I just finished the game and I am pretty confused lol. The explanations in this thread make pretty good sense to me, I'll go with those unless someone tells me different. And yeah the very end was the weirdest part, I had no idea who the guy in the tank was, or why I was strapping myself into that chair.

In any case, the dialogue was very poetic, and enjoyable just for that alone. In fact, the whole game was sort of a fever dream hallucination with a sort of stream of consciousness dialogue set to a video game format. A unique experience, for sure.

[Stu]

bumping this after editing the first post

[Stu]

more additions

[panfoot6]

I was under the impression that the pigmen weren't resurrected animals, but the poor(based on that journal entry about the process of removing the teeth and all that, and the discussion on how humane it was).

[Stu]

i think they are ressurected pigs because of the notes of the experiment with the dog poisoned with strychnine and the one that sais that his great uncle wanted to create slaves using humans, which apperently are so difficult to handle. MAYBE the note you mentioned was a comparative test, since the same note also mentions a beast under the blanket next to him. just my interpretation of course, i would like to hear more opinions.

[Ceegore]

This is the best I've read about the game.....and it actually helps me put the biggest puzzle about it together..(which of course is the story). Furthermore, I think that when he says "you and I" about burying the two tiny skulls..perhaps he is refering to both sides of his own mind. Yet still, I do not understand the pig masks that keep 'magically' appearing everywhere or what they symbolize.