[Spoilers] Story and Ending Discussion

[Frankly,]

So the broad picture is made surprisingly clear, but there are a clearly a lot of details that will probably only be clarified by replaying the game and carefully searching for clues and theorizing.

Timeline:

1. At some point prior to 1975 (in 1973 perhaps?), the "Outsider" group (of which the protag, Maciek, Trader, maybe Elephant father, were presumably a part of) sets up bases and hideouts over a broad area for unknown reasons, perhaps to study whatever strange thing is growing under the area that seems to be full of energy. They are very well equipped and, if the Doctor is to be believed, actually watched and attempted to isolate the villagers themselves.

2. In 1975, the Being (aka the woods, aka the disease, etc) starts actively trying to isolate and destroy the Outsiders. Roads are swallowed are devoured. Disease is spread, with some people being physically mutated into the living tools of destruction, while others becoming mentally deranged until they succumb to the voice calling them to go to the Being, where they are kept in a Matrix-like dreamworld (which might explain why most people either have strong mental or strong physical symptomps, but rarely both)

3. At some point the Outsiders try to pull out but a botched evacuation leaves some dead, others mad (Maciek) or stranded (protag, trader)

4. Protag, presumably left behind during the evacuation as well as suffering memory loss, deformed, and mute, is rescued by Doctor who also steals his key. The Trader then brings protag to the safest area in the Woods, the dry meadow, and tries to discourage him from trying to leave claiming that there is no way out (and he is entirely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ correct)

5. Protag recovers his key and follows the calling of the Being as well as his own desperation to get home, but he ends up being tricked by the Being and ventures FURTHER into the woods towards it instead of towards the exit. From that point on one of two things happen:

6a: The player is, once again, tricked by the Being and is manipulated to come to it, and it puts him into the Matrix-like Dreamworld where he lives in the pleasant but peculiar hallucination of having come home to his appartment until the rest of his days.

6b: The player, warned by the Tree and his own intuition to investigate the Radio Tower first, is somehow able to break out of the dream at which point he can choose to willingly surrender himself to the Being's dreamworld or to burn the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ down using Maciek's wonderful flammenwerfer. In the case of the latter, the woods are burned away, killing some of their inhabitants and freeing others (if there are even any left by the time you are done with the game) and ending this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nightmare forever, maybe.

So, what are some important details that need to be filled out?

1. What the hell is the Being, anyway? Perhaps we are not meant to know, and its something like the Strugatski Bros. Zone that is just...there, for whatever reason, an anomaly with an explanation that is beyond the feeble minds of Man.
2. What were the Outsiders doing exactly?
3. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Did the Outsiders come to the Woods to study the Being, as a result of which it lashed out at them, or did they come for reasons other than the Being, and it formed in order to combat them? The Doctor seems to imply that it might be the latter.
4. Why is the Protagonist mute, deformed, and wears clothing that he did not remember putting on?
5. Are there two factions in the Woods? The Tree, being assimilated villagers, as well as the Three (apparently intelligent, non-hostile savages) seem to be acting against The Being, attempting to block off the road to it. Plus there are weird talking growths that give you warnings in the Radio Tower as well, and Banshees that drop off an embryo for you.
6. What the ♥♥♥♥ are up with the fleshy bullet inside the head of the dying soldier connected with the Outsiders? Maybe they are the frankenstein radio controls the Being forms inside people in order to derange them mentally.
7. What is up with people connected to the Outsider faction being found frozen in places? This can be seen in Hideout Remains as well as the Burned House in the Old Woods. Perhaps that is just the way that the Being decided to dispatch them.

Comments and theories and stuffies:

-Doctor's story: arrived in the woods via crashed helicopter sometime after the Being became active. While it is easy to hate him at the beginning, it is clear that the only reason why he dehumanizes the inhabitants of the woods is because it is the only way that he can stomach the fact that he could not save them. The dream sequence he puts you through pretty much sums it up. You can also see the examples of his humanity not only in his attempts curing the villagers but also in him giving Musician the mask or teaching Piotrek about rockets (I think that is implied since a toy rocket is found in the safe in his house.) Very complicated character and ultimately sympathetic IMO.

-Trader: most likely a member of the Outsider faction. After being stranded in the woods with the protagonist after the evacuation, he started mutating. He is one with his hazmat suit and, if I had to guess, one with the Woods now: he probably could not live outside of them if he wanted to, which is part of the reason why he wants the protagonist to stay with him. Had Key 21 with him all along, as did all the other members of the Outsiders (presumably, anyway) but chose to hide it from the player as he knew that there is no exit out of the woods, hence the "LIAR" written on his helmet after his death. Despite this, he was obviously trying to protect the player, and he was 230% right about the fact that there is, in fact, no exit.

-Wolfman's story: maybe possibly a dog named Burek originally owned by the father and the two daughters living at where the Burned Houses are now in the Dry Meadow. After eating the shroom he may have mutated into a furry. Regardless of how he came to be, though, the Hunter (who was meant to marry the Pretty Lady) tried to kill him for his bestial appearance, resulting in the Wolfman becoming very bitter at the human inhabitants of the woods. As a result the Wolfman decided to take everything away from the Hunter, which is why he wears his clothes after shooting him through the heart and covets his bride (and he gets angry if you kill her, implying that perhaps he didn't just want to eat...let that sink in).

-The game nails the atmosphere of cosmic horror, as the protag is ultimately a tiny, insignificant, ignorant thing in the design of a superhuman intelligent that manipulates them as well as the player. Unless the player has some luck, a set of brass balls, and a flamethrower, of course.

-If I had to guess, the religious symbolism and defacement by applying mud, sticks, and horns over faces and eyes seems to be an extension of the madmen's desire to find bliss in ignorance of the Being's dreamworld. Maybe the devs are trying to make a statement about religion and authoritarianism given that Poland had and arguably still has problems with both? idk

-The true horror of the game is, of course, Polish communism. Having to wait in the breadline for a washing machine must have been rough for the Protag.


---

So, thoughts, theories, comments questions?

Also, has anyone recovered the first few pages of the protag's journal (they were apparently ripped out by Doctor)?

[Nagaretsu]

Originally posted by Crit-Man:

The game is full of religious, Cthulu, and Matrix influences, so trying to work out what 'The Being'(terrible name by the way) is, is pretty much fruitless. The dev's seem to leave most of the world's beginning and ending down to the player's very own imagination as to what happened and what happens.
Everything in terms of the story is practically based within the 'dream' that we play in throughout the game until the end, so we never actually know what the 'true story' in the real world is, how it came to be, or even why.
It's not until the end of the game, that we truly see what the world is - a horrific network of people being sapped of life by 'The Being'(again, such a terrible name...). We don't know if it's an interpretation of 'God', an alien, or the Earth's life force itself... we'll simply don't know anything unless they decide to make a direct sequel, or even a prequel.

We only start dreaming(not including hallucinations) during the epilogue,probably because during the path to the heart of the woods we are taken out by The Being. Before that moment there are too many hints of an outside world and different characters to be a dream.

[zverozvero]

Just found corpse overgrown with roots in Hunters house. It has silver ring on it too. Guess hunter is still there... Wonder if i'll kill Wolf and Lady now would that make 3 of those - 2 real and 1 'cheap fake' that Wolf has? What would that mean?

[Fatalyst]

Originally posted by Crit-Man:

Originally posted by jardelholub99:

Anyone noticed, in the Huntman's house in the Old Woods, there is a Trophy missing the head. Is that Wolfman's head??? The colour seems to be the same. Is the wolf really a wolf? In the child drawings we see that the dog ate a mushroom, in the madman scribes #1 we read that the dude gave a mushroom to the sow. I am sure there some relation between these informations Õ--Õ

The Wolfman is a dog that ate the mushrooms, and got shot by the owner once they found out the dog was getting sick. Hence the bullet hole in the Wolfman's chest. The Wolfman is an entity that combines all of those events, and more. You find a wedding ring on him if you kill him, which obviously proves that the man who shot the dog was married at some point. As you go through the game, the Wolfman becomes more animalistic, and when you get to his hideout, you find that the wild animal has obviously taken over, as he's got stuffed trophies of humans, instead of other stuffed animals. You can relate this to how the doctor eventually goes mental.

Couldn't it also be that the Wolfman is actually the hunter himself? The trophy missing the wolf head could indeed be a wolf's head. He may have gone insane after ingesting shrooms and wore the wolf head as he began to "turn".

Trader: most likely a member of the Outsider faction. After being stranded in the woods with the protagonist after the evacuation, he started mutating. He is one with his hazmat suit and, if I had to guess, one with the Woods now: he probably could not live outside of them if he wanted to, which is part of the reason why he wants the protagonist to stay with him. Had Key 21 with him all along, as did all the other members of the Outsiders (presumably, anyway) but chose to hide it from the player as he knew that there is no exit out of the woods, hence the "LIAR" written on his helmet after his death. Despite this, he was obviously trying to protect the player, and he was 230% right about the fact that there is, in fact, no exit.

Was the person found dead in the hideout confirmed to be the trader? I recognised the mask, but I thought it was another member of the Outsiders.

Also, about the white bullet, I think there was a dream or location where there were multiple bodies in a tunnel which also had white bullets I think? I'm not sure. I had this thought that they were either being mind-controlled in some way or marked for something.

About The Three, are they an entity aligned with or against the Being? They do not appear on the morning after you burn the talking tree. Also, is the talking tree just the result of the amalgamation of the Dark Wood's victims or is it a representation of the Being itself?

About the radio tower, the journal written by the man in the Cottage near the Junkyard mentions receiving weird noises which he presumes comes from the radio tower. When you approach the gate at the radio tower, a savage is seen trying to get in, and below him lies a large pile of corpses (possibly past savages who previously attempted to get in). There could be a correlation between these two little details.

[PanBananekxd]

Originally posted by Fatayst:

About The Three, are they an entity aligned with or against the Being? They do not appear on the morning after you burn the talking tree. Also, is the talking tree just the result of the amalgamation of the Dark Wood's victims or is it a representation of the Being itself?

If you don't burn the Talking tree and go throw radio tower tunnel and go where the talking Tree is you will find Three standing there staring at it, so that means that they rly like that tree I guess...

[Mr Ratburn]

Originally posted by zverozvero:

If you burn forest Piotreks fate will be started with 'Piotrek didnt live till the fires came' (if i remember right) before giveing same text about star flight. Think it just describes him sating his illusions before crashlanding. Still little guy made such 'rocket' fly... rivals power of Waaagh! .

I saw a youtube video where the ending text about Piotrek said that he hid inside the rocket which saved him from the flames, and he came out alive from the burning of the forest

[h0tp0ck3t]

Originally posted by PanBananekxd:

If you don't burn the Talking tree and go throw radio tower tunnel and go where the talking Tree is you will find Three standing there staring at it, so that means that they rly like that tree I guess...

There is a photo in the village of three young men. If you show it to the cripple he tells you how they stole from the village and were thrown out.(I stupidly didn't see the connection to the three at the time) If you go through the radio tower and also burn the entity the epilog says the three burn to death embracing the talking tree. So maybe they really just wanted to return to their families who now made up the tree?

[PanBananekxd]

Good thinking there but Three died and someone or something made them come back to life (their graves are in radio tower location) and now they want to say sorry to everyone they loved by protecting them

[zverozvero]

Originally posted by Mr Ratburn:

I saw a youtube video where the ending text about Piotrek said that he hid inside the rocket which saved him from the flames, and he came out alive from the burning of the forest

That is supposedly if you dont finish his ship. That makes helping with rocket one more on 'good job' list with Musician, Snail and Elephant included... I'll go try to give wheels to cripple now. He seems like more or less 'positive' character so if logic stands, fixed cart will make him die terribly in a way most disturbing :)

[Frankly,]

Originally posted by Void Dweller:

All the shroom hallucinations were warnings:

1) The shrooms show you, how the Being will guide you with shiny stones to a place, where hundreds of people sleep and feed it, it also shows you a bed and hints that light might not be what it appears to be.

2) The dream about the apartment was a clear warning: "forget your old life, you are this mutated thing in a cape and a hat now, you have a job to do"

3) The dream about the church, as I see it, was more about getting you to go there and see for yourself what has the forest done to all those people who hid there, so you'll hopefully keep in mind, that you can't trust the forest, it's not your or any human's friend no matter what. You don't get to go to the shelter in your dream as a "don't take my word for it, just go check it out". Besides were the shrooms protecting you from chompers and ground gore as you were sleepwalking? What if the chomper kills you on permadeath? I think this one wasn't a half-awake sleepwalking, someone else put the locked box in your coat, someone, who's also on the shrooms' side.

4) Then there is the dream about the grave, which hints at the ending choice. Do you listen to the friendly guy who tells you to lie down and sleep while there seems to be nothing wrong with it? Or do you face a vicious chomper for refusing?

You could derive warnings from these dreams but it is also an equally plausible hypothesis for these dreams to be an extension of the Being's mind control. So I agree with you that they serve as warnings functionally, but I disagree that they were meant as such (or at least that there is evidence pointing to that conclusion)

3) didn't have to take place at night necessarily. The chomper may not have really killed you but rather, that may have been the madman chasing you away. The biggest bit of evidence pointing towards the dream actually taking place in one way or another is the fact that reality changes in accordance to your choice in the dream, in contrast to other dreams which, while you do retain an item from them, serve more to provocate the player/protagonist into contemplating their situation.

Originally posted by Void Dweller:

I missed the quest about shrooms as I probably missed plenty other quests too, please explain. And still, you don't find patches of shrooms that were harvested by someone else, while people starving is a common thing in Darkwood while there are plenty of shrooms around. No one seems to care about them.

In the Swamp there is a Mushroom Glade where a bunch of villagers hang out. Mushroom Granny tells the protag that the villagers, sneak into the Mushroom Glade to eat her mushrooms on the account of starvation. The villagers that surround the mushroom patches in the Glade appear to be extremely lethargic and slur their words as if they have great difficulty speaking. This seems to imply that eating mushrooms for most people is far from ideal, either due to the hallucinogenic effects or to the fact that they are not as adapted to the mushrooms as the protagonist is. This is reinforced by the fact that they lead to negative mutations, as is true for the main character. The villagers in Chapter 1 had a surplus of pig meat, thus they had no reason to eat mushrooms.

I think a common hypothesis is that the protagonist is one of the few characters who benefits from consuming hallucionegics such as mushrooms explicitely because he adapted to doing so.

Originally posted by Void Dweller:

As for Wolfman, for someone who doesn't give a ♥♥♥♥ he seems to go to great lengths to set up quite an elaborate ambush for you for not doing what he wanted (also finds a way to the swamps, drags some stuff there, steals your things and waits for you to show up, for days, if needed), yet all along it would be way less trouble to do that by himself. Also let's not forget that those characters didn't pop into existence yesterday, they go way-way back. If he wanted the Pretty Lady that badly all that time, what kept him from attacking the village and taking her weeks, months and even years ago before the protag showed up to do that for him? I don't buy that "he's lazy and doesn't care" thing, he doesn't really have anything better to do and he seems quite happy when you do it for him, especially mentioning that the pig's squeal was a great annoyance to him if you kill it. Also if you fix the wires, but don't kill the pig, he's very insistent that you go there and finish the job, almost as if... it's way more important to him than something he can't be bothered to do himself... And where was the hunter mentioned, or that the Pretty Lady was his bride, or that he and Wolfman had a history? For all I know Wolfman might be the hunter himself - he started to change, the Pretty Lady rejected him, someone shot him in his home, he didn't die and moved out of his home to a better suitable places.

Never said he was lazy just bitter and resentful, which explains his immorality.

This is an example of a compromise of story for the sake gameplay. I agree that Wolfman had no reason to rely on the protagonist to do his bidding and the fact that he then goes through the trouble of relocating to the Swamp and setting up the ambush. But, hey, the developers wanted to add more choices & concequences to the game and involve the player more into the affairs of the villagers.

Pretty Lady has a real wedding ring and so does the hunter's corpse. Wolfman has a fake wedding ring (if you kill him). Hunter has a blurry picture of what looks to be a wolf and an empty trophy display in his cabin, which seems to imply that Hunter had a vendetta with Wolfman. Wolfman wants Pretty Lady and seems to imitate Hunter by displaying human trophies. This is the foundation on which I built my hypothesis.

Originally posted by Void Dweller:

My game is in Russian, so even if I upload that note about forest growing, it won't tell you much, unless you can read Russian. I don't remember, where I picked it up, might be in the helicopter. It was definitely somewhere in the swamps.

Ку товарищ, я тоже могу говорить и читать по русски.

Originally posted by Void Dweller:

As for Piotrek, having delusions that a heap of scrap metal and trash is a rocket is one thing, getting it to comply to his delusions and actually fly like a rocket is something no other character in Darkwood was capable of. Not even the Being can make inanimate objects do things that they aren't capable of doing.

Doesn't the thing crash after he launches it? You can find its remains in Chapter 2, in the junkyard. Building a moderately large rocket-like craft in a heavily rural setting and successfuly launching it seems to be far fetched but not outside of the realm of possibility. I mean, kids built toy rockets all the time, atleast in the USSR, so the same needs to be done on a larger scale with different types of materials. Then again I am not a rocket scientist so I could very well be wrong.

[zverozvero]

Wolf particulary states that he wish he could lurk closer to starving vilagers trying to cut through trees to savour their despair. I guess he stil keeps his feral wolf (or cast-out dog) fear of bunching human so he's actually scared to go for Pig shed or start ruckus looking for key/fighting Chicken lady even though that house stands on outskirts. Think his trophies were caught in isolated houses like Hunters or Musician parents, or just villagers wandering out, like one throwing flare in the night.

[Juular]

I tried to access that note about the forest growing, but I found out I can't access my journal in the epilogue. At least I checked out the Bliss ending. That was interesting: indeed the Three were mourning the burnt tree, also the Pretty Lady broke free and ran to the woods to hunt for fresh meat while the pig kept the villagers fed for a long time.

[JakeTheSnake]

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/872992670374341961/101EE03596BEF0F1FBC6A767F819658CBE8A6BC7/

Here is the picture regarding the forest as spreading - evolving - growing.
It can only be found if you complete the dream sequence at the radiotower, and reach a huge plain area - coming up from the ground, through a hatch.
This also leads to the jar with a sample (in a house to the right) = some bark with a white substance. The source to the white goo, the being? Maybe?

This forest thing, secluded from the rest of the world, with it's own anomalies etc., really reminds me of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, regarding the Zone - any one of you guys who also know this game series?

EDIT: i hope the link works - just tell me if you want a screenshot of the jar with the sample as well.

EDIT: Also, i do beleive the path through the radiotower, is more significant than the burning down the tree path, since you find so many more clues, adding to the lore - completly unobtainable by going with the path of burning down the trees.

[zverozvero]

Its lot like Wolf/Musician paths. Rifle and Axe against additional dream.

Thinking again about Tree blocking way and comb-like forest structure it seems like Entity wasnt saving food for later but rather for future entities - one in each hex. Entity pulsated like heart, supposedly pumping around white goo. To expand covered areas more pumping nodes would be reasonable.

[Frankly,]

Originally posted by JakeTheSnake:

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/872992670374341961/101EE03596BEF0F1FBC6A767F819658CBE8A6BC7/

Here is the picture regarding the forest as spreading - evolving - growing.
It can only be found if you complete the dream sequence at the radiotower, and reach a huge plain area - coming up from the ground, through a hatch.
This also leads to the jar with a sample (in a house to the right) = some bark with a white substance. The source to the white goo, the being? Maybe?

This forest thing, secluded from the rest of the world, with it's own anomalies etc., really reminds me of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, regarding the Zone - any one of you guys who also know this game series?

EDIT: i hope the link works - just tell me if you want a screenshot of the jar with the sample as well.

EDIT: Also, i do beleive the path through the radiotower, is more significant than the burning down the tree path, since you find so many more clues, adding to the lore - completly unobtainable by going with the path of burning down the trees.

Wow, thanks a lot for that note!

RE: Zone, it seems that Darkwood draws huge inspirations from Stragutski Brothers' Roadside Picnic, which in turn was a novel that inspired the Stalker games and movie.

[Stirling]

I think Wolfman's interactions with the player are fairly justified, actually.
He needs the player to get the key to the Pretty Lady's room because the villagers would probably try to kill him as soon as possible- he's got plenty of dead bodies at his main hideout, so he's probably enemies with the Villagers.
Now, getting into the village to find the key would be hard for him- he doesn't know where exactly the key is.

Even though the villagers don't trust the player, they at least don't attack him on sight. This means the player can go poking around to figure out where the key to the Pretty Lady's room is, something Wolfman couldn't do because he'd be attacked immediately.
Then, when he's got the key, he can just sneak into the village at night to get the Pretty Lady. How he carried her all the way to his base, I don't know (probably with a wheel barrow I guess).

Wolfman is far from immortal, he can be killed pretty easily with the right setup (I killed him on day 1 on my most recent playthrough), so ~10 villagers would me more than a match for him.

When you get to the swamp and he steals your stuff. That's also easily explained - he's trying to humiliate you. He doesn't just want to kill you for betraying him, he wants to put you in your place. Best way to do that is by giving you a good reason to go look for him in a place that he's already filled with traps and enemies beforehand.