Ending Explained

[Capt_Obvious]

First and foremost Great Game! And if you don't want things to be spoiled, then don't read any further.

I'm a bit confused by the ending / meaning of the game and looking for some explanation walkthrough of what's really going on.

It seems as though this "alien race" shot or basically brought down the craft out of orbit, because.... they needed a new race to "test on????" You go around the planet finding out clues about the primitave race before, that they were basically left to die, and they failed, and then when you get down to the planet much much later.... you start to uncover the superior race's technology and explanations of things including a star map much later on. Near the beginning of the story, you learn that the once primitave race had a planet that was failing, and the "Sky One's" basically picked em all up and dropped them off on the planet you now crash landed / were shot out of the sky and fell on. And throughout the story you uncover basically an escalading theme that makes you feel you can't trust this "superior" race, and there's an underlying tone that the primitave race became slaves / test subjects for the "Sky Ones."

So then, near the end, you actually start to interact with these things a little bit (being that the Sky One's show up), and "lead" you towards areas of interest they want you to uncover. Some of the story seems to alude to a sub-story of how we're all decedents of this race, or maybe the primitave race, it's unclear. And the stories left on the shore which tell of the demise of earth (especially later in the game sections of paper found) seem to really complicate the whole mess. At one point I thought, well maybe this Gleis planet is really a future earth.... but the skeleton's of the primitave race seem to rule that out.

I digress...

You FINALLY, get led to see this star map, which apparently has a habitable planet. Then, you make your way back to the communication tower, put in all the parts, finally make contact with the other humans for a short while, and then the superior Alien race (the Sky Ones) come and find you and block the rest of your transmission saying "Thank you, you've been most helpful.... sleep now" then you wake up on board their UFO and they say "Don't be afraid, your friends will all be taken care of" or safe, or something to that effect, and then you see the UFO leaving the planet, assumingly just with you on board.... who knows.

So here's a bunch of questions to ponder:

Why did they say you've been most helpful? What exactly did you help them with? Finidng the parts to the communication tower and establishing connection? Solving riddles? Eating their crappy green donuts? They're clearly a superior race, so I fail to understand what exactly the game is trying to establish as "we helped them...."

What's the point of the alien race? To help? To Enslave humanity? To use humans as lab rats?

I saw a bunch of diagrams of the big ball / orb things that have clouds of smoke pop out of them and kill everything with a heat signature. What the heck are these things? Lost souls of dead aliens? I'm confused.....

Are these aliens good or bad? Why the heck are they on this desolate planet to begin with?

[Capt_Obvious]

Oh and that big gun / weather appartus near the end of the game? What's that all about? I got near it to check it out for 2 seconds, before like 8 torandos came out of nowhere!! Is that thing to control the weather? Or to shoot down spaceships?

[A JANITOR]

remember the sword in the device on second island that shoots green thing into the sky?
perhaps thats the bullets from that canon:)
maybe it is an anti aircraft/spaceship gun
the ending was really cool fits the story well and it made sence:)

[Dendeze]

You helpt them to get the rest of earths people to come to this planet so they can experiment on them..


Just my guess

[Maenethal]

The ending is worse than the original ending to 28 Days Later. Seriously, I'm angry >:( <--- See? Humanity is now a slave species. The Sky Ones will experiment on us like they did hundreds of species before, then kill us all once they have no use for us.

Also, for those who idn't pay attention to the writing on the wall, the Sky Ones needed recessive genes from a certain type of DNA to decode a signal from a machine built by The Ancients. Most of the Sky One's technology came rom using recessive genes to decode the signals.

Thoughts aside, maybe The Ancients are the Annunaki?

[Capt_Obvious]

Originally posted by Sanctus:

Also, for those who idn't pay attention to the writing on the wall, the Sky Ones needed recessive genes from a certain type of DNA to decode a signal from a machine built by The Ancients. Most of the Sky One's technology came rom using recessive genes to decode the signals.

Thoughts aside, maybe The Ancients are the Annunaki?

Not really sure who the "Annunaki" are, but maybe that's because I didn't play "The Ball." I caught some of the writings on the wall that alluded to the fact that they needed to test all these different species, but it really didn't make sense to me why, or what they were ultimately trying to accomplish. Maybe it's because i didn't uncover every single piece of paper or writing. Not sure.

The Ball you uncover, whether it's an "unlimited power source" or a weapon, or whatever.... still makes absolutely no sense to me. I uncovered maby pictures showing what appeared to be "souls???" going into the ball? Or maybe they were coming out of the ball? I don't really get what the purpose of the ball / orb / whatever you want to call it, other than a means to house some unknown entity that looks like a black cloud that chases heat, and spits out spikes to kill you. Not sure what it is, where it came from, why it hunts people, or what it's purpose is other than a design to scare the bejesus out of you, just like the darn tornados. Seriously, I think i'll have nightmares about random "Atmospheric Anomolies" popping out of nowhere for awhile.

BTW.... what was up with the "amphibious creature" cries I kept hearing? I ran around but never discovered any water life. Of course, I couldn't really go underwater for all that long either despite having found numerous underwater masks.

[Imperatrix]

I generally didn't like the ending of the game. It left so many things unanswered and it had that feeling of "well the times I died were the good endings I guess..."

Wasn't really wanting a super happy ending, but something more along the lines of your character sacrificing herself/himself (whoever you played as), by giving the colony the information so it could continue on while you were stuck alone to die on the Gliese eating the infinite green goop and infinite champagne until you finally died. Was hoping the aliens would appear and/or something to happen that would bring all the pieces together and give us that 'ah-ha' moment.

During the gaming your PDA keeps reminding you that you have to push on in order to save humanity because it's doomed without you. Then you complete the game and well... they're doomed anyway, only MORE doomed then before if that's a thing.

If you ever heard the joke of how Indiana Jones had absolutely no effect on the film he was in, you basic have the same effect here. Slightly different of coarse, but it boils down to the same principle. It just feels like you spent however many hours playing the game to accomplish literally nothing.

The ending to me just felt... empty.

[Phantom Mercenary]

I actually enjoyed the ending, though it did leave me wanting for more...which is a good sign I suppose.

The gist the I got was this (based on finding about 75% of the the writings and journal entries:

The "Sky Ones", a technologically superior race that suffered some planetary/enviromental catastrophe after they united into a one world government. They learned to split the atom and devoted all of their sciences toward space travel and a mass exodus of their species from the planet.

While in deep space they discovered...some sort of structure?...built by the Ancient Ones. This part gets a bit vague (and Cthulu-esqe). They (Sky Ones) communicate with the Ancient Ones' device and get a datadump of indescipherable data. The key they find to unlocking this data comes from key sequences in their DNA that allows the Sky Ones to decode some of the data. Which leads to the discovery of unlocking a vast power source by tapping into DNA that is not as corrupt. I interperted this as some form of lifeforce energy that requries the DNA to be "pure"...something the Sky Ones do not possess in their own DNA. Further, pure DNA samples would allow the Sky Ones to decode more of the Ancient Ones' datadump.

The Sky One's discover that most of the sapient life they have discovered in the Universe has key part of the Ancient Ones Code locked inside their DNA to varying degrees of corruption. (like 8 or 10 races, i think) The Human Race (Species D9) has a moderate level of corruption. The Sky Ones initiated contact with D9 but had one of their Power Balls stolen from them...and later returned. The gist I got from this was that Humans were just too much of a pain in the ass to uplift with the degree of corruption their DNA possessed, so the Sky Ones turned their attention to a lesser species that was still pre-neolithic, in the early stages of an enviromental apocolypse and possessed the least amount of DNA corruption, and started to Uplift them.

This species (which I'll call the Varna after their rebel leader), was moved off-world to Gelise (sp?) where the Varna's elites were used to start a religious movement with the Sky Ones as living Gods. The Sky Ones then used this combination of technological uplifting and a religious movement to instagate population control while they scanned their DNA for more clues to unlocking the Ancient One's code as well as harvesting the souls of the Varna youth to energize their Power Orb Generators. All of this was done while distacting them with fancy tech like a giant planatery defense gun.

I'm a little foggy on this part: One of the leaders of the Varna (Kur?) finds out what exactly the Sky Ones are doing down in the caves and denounces the Sky Ones. The actual Varna individual leads a revolt against the Sky Ones and they kill most the Varna religious leaders, publicly murder a Sky One, and steal one of their power orbs.

Since its implied that the Ancient One tech for the power orbs is powered by the souls of Varna children (or a sub-wavelength hidden in their genome...whatever, they're stealing souls) we are dealing with technology closer to sorcery than science. My point is that I think the Smoke Monster is all of the negative energy created as a by-product from harvesting souls and gets loose when you rip the power core out of the orb. This is what the Varna did when they cut open the orb they stole and it killed most of the population.

As for the rebels, they and their families were rounded up by the Sky Ones and executed by their pet monster the Talal (sp?) or shoved off a cliff. The revolt caused the Sky Ones to abandon Gilise. I assumed that the Talal was a genetically enginnered monster that Sky Ones created from their own DNA, based off of the fact that both are replitian in nature.

The remaining Varna decided to go after the Sky Ones on their home turf (Hollow Lands/Volcano) but the journey through the Ice Caverns finshed off what was left of their race.

Fast forward to the "present" Polus 3 is about to make planetfall on Gilise when they are shot out of the sky. I don't know if this was intentional or not. Some of the human journals found seem to imply that fate is pushing them toward "something" happening, but the records of the Sky Ones seem to imply that the humans arrival was a coincidence. If the you read the log entries from the Space Gun, it seemed the Sky Ones had a standard policy of blasting everything out of the sky that came into range. Species D9 was identifed as a target and fired upon.

The crash left one survivor that the Sky Ones watched and studied for "re-evaluation of prior genetic viability". Remember, Species D9 was considered moderatly corrupt genetically.

My interpertation was that once Octavius Sken reactivated the power orb for the Tower, the Sky Ones pushed him to fulfil his mission by gaining a power source and repairing the tower. The radio signal was then used to trace down the location of the Polus Fleet...which at this point is in open rebellion amonst themselves due to low resources.

Sken is captured and The Sky Ones are enroute in the UFO at the end to "uplift" the doomed human fleet (same as they did for the Varna) and resume their genetic research into Ancient One tech..so that ultimatly they can commune with whatever the hell it is they found out in deep space.

History repeats itself. The Human Race is ♥♥♥♥♥♥. The End. I thought it was great.
(at least that was my interpertation of the storyline...a lot of it was vague)

[The Horror]

I agree with Phantom Mercenary there. At least that's what I gleaned from the storyline. The balls are their energy source/mode of contacting the ancient ones. Why - after all this time - are they storing the balls there still? Do they themselves not have a homeplanet or can they not replicate as a species? The one thing I missed, I guess, was the creature locked in bindings in the windmill. Was that a sky one or Talal? If it was a sky one, why was it left there? I thought perhaps it was a sky one who actually helped the varsa steal the ball or something, and that the story line would play out that way - give the plot an open loophole... As I didn't want el mundo de humanitay to perish. :c

[Phantom Mercenary]

I read that the Sky Ones also had to leave their homeworld due to some sort of enviromental calamity. I think this is what drove them offworld to encounter the Ancient Ones. But I agree with you Horror on the Talal, it was a bit of a plothole:

The Talal was used by the Sky Ones for some sort of punishment or execution process on the Varna, and the writings in Highpoint say that it guards the mill. However, when you find it, its chained up inside the mill. It wants to kill you when it sees you; you release it when you are standing just 15 feet away and it runs off and dies of hypothermia in the Ice Caves.

While I'm glad it didn't maul my face off, that was a strange reaction with no explanation.

[A JANITOR]

didnt the skyones retreat underground?
the ice froze over and they couldn't get out
when we turned the heaters on all sorts of alien sightings started happening?
at the end the alien says you have been most helpful=did we rescue the aliens from extinction
they also said that we would be safe with them:)
either way i really enjoyed the story and the ending was really cool:)

[Iron Man]

I thought the ending was kind of sad. As others have said youre constantly reminded that youre essential to mankinds survival. And all of that gets wiped away as the Sky Ones capture you and lure your fellow spaceship travellers to their fate.

Near the last part where the Sky Ones actively help you ( take it.. TAKE IT! ) - i got the impression they wanted to help you/mankind, give the coordinates of that habitable planet you found in that star map, to the people waiting on you.

When you finally DO make contact the music, the mood, the reaction of the woman receiving your communications - its absolutely wonderful. And i interpreted that all as '' the Sky Ones have helped mankind, you saved our species, you get (or not) to return to your people and go to that new habitable planet, while the Sky Ones and their goals will be a mystery and left up to the imagination of the player or perhaps to find out and/or conclude in a new game/DLC '' .

That, to me, wouldve been a more positive ending.

[ouch]

Thanks for the explanation. I am waiting for a sequel now, with protagonist plotting a revolt / prison break from the Sky Ones :)

[arianrod]

To be honest, what I saw, playing the game as the episodes were released, was a bunch od story ideas mixed together, without an actual concept of where it would go.
There are so many hints at possible backgrounds, half a dozen of references to mankinds myths, plot twists in the story of the Gliese race and their relationship to the "Sky Ones", vaguely interpretable "paintings", records of the "Sky Ones" chiseled into stone tablets (or did the Gliese race actually recognize the other races?)

Questions that are left unanswered:
How was the cruzifixion of a dead team member or the hanged skeletons supposed to encourage us to follow them and trust their guidance?
What purpose served those traps on the way they wanted us to go?
Why would they test our "pathfinding" and survival abilities if all they wanted was our DNA?
When would the path be completed that would make the "sunken one" appear?
How would the "Sky Ones" not be able to locate the sender of the occasional transmissions without our help?
How would they not be able to synthesize our voice and fake our transmission?
How would they not be able to get the Polus fleet where it is?
Why would they opt for a planet torn and kneaded by gravitation of an overly heavy star and a close and very big moon?
Why do they use ancient cathode ray tubes and "magic staves"?

My guess would be that there have been different ideas about an actual plot in the dev team, but never any consensus. Even between the episodes one could see that "policies" changed. Some episodes were more "hostile" while the next calmed it down a bit again. It seems to me as if the storyteller got lost in details and forgot what the actual story was. The story was sacrificed for the sake of nebulous mysticism and horror atmosphere. That's kinda sad, because it puts a potential innovative game into the pool of horror effect survival games out there of which some excell at it but simply are not what I am looking for.

The game is nice and very atmospheric, but in the end just a walking simulator with hints towards several possible stories, which are more confusing than explaining only to be terminated by a cheap, stereotype ending. Over the course of episode releases I missed the progress. you always expect to uncover something but then you learn, it is just some effect and not contributing to the plot. Even the end is in any possible interpretation just what you expect of an alien shocker since the times of early B-movies.

[76561198027744231]

Crucifixion: You are viewing it from a human perspective. A Crucifixion could also be a sign of respect, or a sign to follow them and so on in the mind of an alien. It could be a burial method for them they also apply to themselves etc.

Traps: They were already there. Were not placed just for you.

DNA: Did not just want your DNA. They wanted you to bring the others over for example.

Sunken One: Two buttons are found on the island.

Transmissions: They could, but it would be harder to get them to follow them and end up exactly where they want them to be, and without having their defenses ready for whatever the Sky Ones have in mind.

Prolus Fleet: They want them on a specific spot. Not just get the fleet. Remember they already were on Earth too before it was destroyed. This is not about attacking humans or such.

Planet: The planet is actually quite ok? Some frequent storms and such aside it is not the worst place to be. They needed an archipelago as it allows them to created small and isolated habitats.

Cathode ray tubes: Art direction. Retrofuturism in order to increase the nostalgia factor for the gamers 30/40+ in age. Nothing to do with the aliens per-se. For the same reason you could go argue "why did Alien have computers in the style of X" etc.

You can't do mystery if you reveal the answers to things too much. It should be left open to interpretation and thought, and the reasoning and logic should require further thought. These beings don't follow human reasoning, and should leave you with a feeling of isolation and lack of understanding. If you can see patterns in what happens around you, but you can't quite tie it all together you will feel controlled by a system, a logic, that goes beyond your comprehension and that is a lot scarier than understanding what your opponent is trying to do. You are a pawn in an intergalactic set of events you do not understand.
Basically this all ties back into GMan in Half Life. Same question, why? What is he? What is his reasoning? How is he using you and to what end?

[arianrod]

I totally understand the way you built up mystery there and it absolutely works out. Tension in my book needs relieve though. Call me oldfashioned (I actually Am of the gamers 40+, and it seems I can't really appreciate the nostalgia factor of retrofuturism), but I believe that a Marathon run is only worth it when you know there is a finish to reach, work without the reward or any kind of achievement is just a waste of energy. All the more as the survival aspects of the game teach us Not to waste energy.

What I was talking about was more that I saw endings of that kind a little too often to not notice the depressing vision behind it. In the recent years such endings evolved from cliffhangers in games that couldn't be continued although sequels were planned (it's a hard business, we all know that), to actual endings with no further story in mind. The excuse (I don't blame you because I think you actually mean it) is usually that the "consumer" should be allowed to fill the blanks with imagination.
That's not a bad thing at all, but an analyzing mind will always want to test the assumptions made against reality. Now if reality is missing, that remains an unsatisfied wish and the "consumer" will never know whether they went totally wrong from the start with their imagination.

The human perspective can't be discussed away. A race of that level should have noticed that the races they experiment on share certain rituals. The Gliese race had graves and even mausoleums. The Sky Ones would certainly be aware of the fact that their culural standards do not apply to every other race and could easily be misunderstood. In fact I am sure they would know very well what crucifixion would look like to a human.

The buttons I missed, actually show that I lost interest in discovering things that don't bring me forward on my way. That's owed to the fact that exploring only had two possible outcomes during the game: I either found the way onward or some distraction that contributed little to what I was here for.

And the thing I was here for, was an illusion all the time.
Actually alien races are always depicted as some kind of "enemy", so I guessed from the start they wouldn't be the ones to save mankind. My hope was that this time it would be not just as easy and maybe they would need my help to help me and my race and things would be different for once.


I stick to my opinion that the game is great, but I would want for more actual story and less horror effects (or effects that are more connected to the story)
I can't see how stalking dolls, lethargic almost-corpses (Draugr?), hanged skeletons and decorative stacks of portable TVs have much to do with what is going on. Those would fit into an actual horror game about ghosts and undead beings very well, but here they seem out of place to me.