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[getoutofmyship]

This game is amazing. The atmosphere, the gameplay, horror, difficulty, etc. everything is what it is supposed to be. Story is so detailed and interesting, it was an immersive experience.

I finished the game and found almost all of the diaries, and have read a lot of them during gameplay. However, I couldn't fully grasp the real story. Let's see what I got:

-Margaret's father died from a horrible illness, possessed by an evil thing and i guess that thing passed to Margaret.(Not by genes, but through a physical thing while Margaret's father was dying)

-Henry hates Margaret, he sees the evil inside her and tries to protect William from her.

-Margaret thinks Henry's blood is not royal, so she fears her son, William's blood will be of bad quality too.

-William starts to hate his mother even in his childhood. When Margaret dies, her ghosts gathers around the house and disturbs William. She forces her son to do sometthings (kill those girls maybe)

-William thinks his mother is the moon. Without conscience, he kills (should we say "sacrifices"?) a lot of people to do some sort of an evil magic, he says "Mom forces me to do it". He even kills the person he loves most. Ok, I don't get the relation here. Does he refer to Moon or Margaret here? Why does he speak of Moon as his mother? Who is the bad guy in this story? One option: Margaret is so evil that William gets insane because of her. The other option is: The evil thing inside Margaret passed to William by genes and he became evil too. But the thing is, Margaret is pictured as evil, while William is pictured as insane, who kills people without willing, without conscience, for the moon. But, where does this moon thing come out? It sounds somewhat irrelevant to the story.

-What happened to Sarah? What was her role in the story.

I tried to read the diaries again, but William's excerpts are not listed with respect to their dates (by mistake i suppose) so it would be very difficult to read them randomly.


I would appreciate any contribution to these.

[cuss]

Great game.
I’m only on my second playthrough but here goes.
I don’t think Margaret was evil. Just driven and bitter. She married Henry because her family’s fortune was gone so she married into money. She saw Henry as small, weak and a dreamer. She became obsessed with restoring her family name.
Henry died from syphilis. Untreated syphilis damages the brain and can cause madness.
Margaret’s father died a horrible death (syphilis?) that appeared to parallel Henry’s own.
Margaret had high hopes for William. He was smart and sensitive but lacking. She also saw something dark in him.
William loved his father and mother but her severity drove him to fear her and ultimately hate. William had an interest in the occult.
William killed Margaret but her unhappiness or sheer bloody-mindeness left her to haunt the house and her son. William thinks that through his occult studies he can cleanse the house of her presence. His notes indicate he’s in contact with various archaeological dig sites and becomes obsessed with the moon and sacrifice.
He kills girls who look like his mother (oedipus complex?).
William is a psychopath and quite mad.
Sarah was Williams nanny (i think).
Why did William kill Selena? His actions are probably tied to his warped understanding of love (warped by abuse, unhappiness and hatred). Or maybe it was that ‘kill the thing you love’ thing.
Or maybe it was just self destructive behavior. William 'did' have problems after all.
Hope this helps.

[Ninefootsix]

This is my third or fourth time through, and while I love the graphics, sound design, and noir asthetic, I'm not crazy about the plot (or at least what I can discern of it). The game itself shines because of it's "less is more" approach; i.e. light and shadow, and the sparing use of sound and music that make it so incredibly atmospheric. The plot, however, feels like three or four different stories crammed into one. Each time I start the game I'm determined to read all the diaries, all the notes, etc, but about 2/3 of the way through I get bored with them because they don't seem to go anywhere. A pared down story that you uncover a piece at a time would have been more satisfying. Still one of my favorites, though.

[getoutofmyship]

First of all, it's amazing to see my post got answers after 3 and 6 years. I didn't even know I wrote this post, so I had to read it all over again. Thank you for playing the game and spending your valuable time to share your ideas.

For me, it was not until towards the end of the game that I got "I WAS THE KILLER ALL ALONG" idea. Maybe because (a) I'm not a native English speaker, (b) I was too immersed in gameplay and atmosphere, (c) I was not very knowledgable about mystery kind of game/movie plots at the time or (d) I was simply too young and too naive. Anyways, I'm glad that I didn't get the idea at the beginning.

Btw, I don't think this game got the reputation it deserves, not at all. I hope more people can play through this beautiful atmosphere.

[Durk1138]

From what I understand, when William was a kid, his mother Margareth used to lock him up in a room. You're locked up in thar room too during the game. There is a window in that room, and the only thing William could see from the outside was the moon at night. He felt that the moon looked after him with its light. That was the beginning of William's relationship and obsession about the moon. And his hate for his mother became stronger.