Ending interpretation?

[Baby]

I would like to talk with people who ended game already. (It was amazing, btw!)
Did Fran really kill her parents? If she did, she was mentally unstable, I guess? Was she living in asylum before? (I'm talking about the part with small Fran) Is kitty dead (body in coffin)? :( Why he couldn't talk anymore? Did she die in the ending? Are aunt Grace and dr Oswald dead?
And please, don't say things like "you will have to answer it yourself", my curiosity is hungry for answers :(

[timmo4444]

yeah... seems to be after finishing the bottle of pills fran could no longer control when she was in "hyper reality" and when she wasnt. Doctor deern is given a shot of the drug which seems to suggest some of this is happening in the real world and its because of the drug he can see itward.... after the cemetary they get attacked and dragged back to the asylum. And presumably the game ends with fran being shot and killed. And its up to you if you want to believe that her spirit went off with itward or if that was a hallucination as she died. Weird game. I liked it.

[Stigma]

There's obviously no need for spoiler-tags in this thread.

Anyway.

Nobody seems to mention the fact that the cat, Mr. Midnight, is found in the grave. And quite dead. Suddenly he appears alive, meowing and not speaking at the end.. And they all go away to happyland. This leads me to the conclusion that the majority of the game is in Fran's head, who probably dies (or gets lobotomized) at the end. Did she kill her parents? Yes, I think so. That's why she is in a mental institution. And probably why her aunt had something important to tell her.. The pills she keeps popping throughout the game also heavily indicates that she's having major delusions. The crashed bike in the woods also allures to this. Her dollhouse was the thing that really hammered down this point. At the end of the game she can't distinguish between fantasy and reality anymore. It's all mixed up. I see this as a classic case of the Unreliable Narrator, really. However, everything is left up in the air and utterly ambigous at the end, so any interpretation is probably equally valid ;)

Just my 2 cents.

And btw great game, biggest surprise of the year :)

[cataluna]

I think there's a lot to recommend the view that Fran is crazy too. I think one of the big clues is Remor. I think his name is a deliberate misspelling of remorse. I think he's a projection of the overwhelming guilt and remorse Fran feels for killing her parents which explains why he is constantly dragging her back into the house of madness (a feeling so powerful and overwhelming it literally makes her mad or at least madder), has a painful/paralyzing effect on her when he touches her & tries to drive her to suicide. Intense self-loathing does that.

I think there are clues too that the happy vision Fran had of her family at the beginning of the game was not actually what she experienced. Despite describing the scene as heavenly her voice rings with genuine sadness when she explains she loved her cat so much because he was her only friend. I think Mr. Midnight & Aunt Grace were the only ones she felt honestly close to... I think she was lonely and felt unloved. We see "Daddy was not there" and "Mommy did not care" scrawled in blood in pill-o-vision in chapter one. It'd also help explain all the dead babies - aside from the creepy factor I think they mean to reference abandonment issues. So when Itward talks about Mia & Clara needing to stop looking for outside scapegoats for their issues but look inward & realize they had issues because their parents didn't love them, well I think he's really talking about Fran and part of her motivation for lashing out the way she did.

[CCfan]

I just completed the game again, and I found something a bit hidden that I didn't notice earlier. I didn't see anyone here talking about that part so maybe few people noticed it.

Did anyone see the photo at the very end of the game?


When in chapter 5 you reach the room where Dr. Deern is, right before the ending.
If one tries to go back to the hallway and click on the door it will shut closed instantly, while also revealing a very old photo, with an awful lot of people in it!
There are two nurses, one of them is the old nurse we see in the Asylum (Gladys I think she was called) but clearly younger, another nurse is holding the two Twins Mia and Clara that are still toddlers in that picture (and separated). Then there are the other Twins, that is Aunt Grace and Fran's mother, shown as kids. Then there are a younger Dr. Oswald and, next to him, Leon. Or more precisely, Dr. Leon, the same leon of the book with all the images of the five realities.
Oh, and there's also Remor's symbol in that picture! What does it mean I wonder...

Below the picture where all this people are standing together there is a writing that say that they were all part of a study about the Brain and the Pineal Gland.


The shocking revelation here is that Dr. Oswald and Leon, the visionary that travelled through realities like Fran, worked together at some point, and it was about brains and scientific research apparently. And that Leon also knew the Twins, Fran's mother and Aunt Grace.

Now, this doesn't change the fact that the ending is fundamentally ambigous (Fran might have still hallucinated everything just as everything might have been real), but dependingly on how you interpret stuff it might indicates that Dr. Leon returned from his travel through realities and then started a proper scientific research on it (he talked about chemistry at some point in his book, maybe he had a scientific background?), he also met Dr. Oswald that most likely was much younger than him (in 1906 Leon was about 90 years old, the game is happening in the '40s and Oswald is still alive if very old, while Leon is probably dead by now), together they started to research on brains searching for the way to communicate between different realities. When Leon retired or died at some point in time Oswald merely continues his research.

Whether Leon took part in the experiment with Mia and Clara is impossible to say, maybe he was already dead at that point and it was Oswald who had taken over with his cruel methods, or maybe even Leon wasn't such a nice person after all... Anyway, early experiments failed, Oswald then planned to use the surviving older Twins (Grace and Mother) to, I don't really know how, make a child "more suited" for Oswald's experiments, someone with an inherently better connection to the five realities I think, and that child was Fran of course, born from Grace's twin sister (Lucia I think she was called). This means that Grace and Lucia continued to collaborate with Oswald even as adults.

But then Lucia decided to not let her daugher be used in Oswald's experiments (obviously because it implied allowing Oswald to kill Fran) and so Oswald and Grace had to eliminate her and her husband to take Fran and force her to take the modified Duotine that amplified her vision of different realities (by stimulating the brain, "opening a door between conscious and unconscious" said Dr. Deern). To kill Fran's family Oswald might have actually "worked with" Remor (assuming then that he actually exists, a manifestation of Fran's guilt but also real in his own right, like Itwald is Fran's imaginary friend that Fran can see because she imagined him and she could have imagined him because he already existed) who like many other things in the Fifth Reality thrives on pain and misery. The connection between Oswald and Remor is very unclear, but we know that at least Oswald knew about Remor's existance and that Remor helped Oswald by making Fran killing her parents (whether Remor wanted to help Oswald or not however is another thing entirely).

There are still some unclear things, like why the hell Mr. Midnight is considered a traitor by Grace (Initally it was symbolic of finding scapegoats to not blame ourselves, but then it continued maybe implying something else), and arguably many things can't be really trusted in the game so several parts of my analysis may be actually lies or illusions (There isn't even an agreement over whether Fran really killed her parents or not!), but I feel that I understand the plot much more now.
Some things are intentionally left ambigous, and the game clearly intends you to craft a personal theory about what really happened, but I think that to those who carefully searches through the game the story can actually become more clear.



And, on an unrelated rant, I have to say that this game is literally filled with foreshadowing! I remember that the first time I searched through the Twins' house I was wondering "Wait, is this symbolic? is the game talking about Split Personality now? Does Fran have split personality?" "Grace and my mother are pretty similar to each others, maybe they too are twins? Maybe I shouldn't trust mother and Grace too much?" "Or maybe this isn't symbolic and the Twins are just real and their own thing?" and in the end it turned out that: Fran did in fact have split personality, I shouldn't have trusted Grace, and even my mother, too much, and the Twins were also real and their own thing all along!

[evenfl0w2]

CCfan, that is a great find and it really adds weight to the view that a lot of what Fran experienced was real.

[hauntology]

I've been curious about a couple of threads that still seem loose:
1. Why does Palontra have black feathers for a moment before transforming back into himself? (and who exactly is he fighting?)
2. Why does Remor care about the five stones (even characters in the game seem baffled by that)?
3. Who are the twins with lobotomies in the bottom floor of the hospital? (they disappear and are replaced by the word 'Itward' when using pills).

And a theory that I haven't heard up here yet:
- Could Fran possibly be a twin herself, with the doctors separating her from her sister at birth? This might explain Fran's visions, not only of 'herself' killing her parents, but the dead Frans she keeps stumbling across and the account in the newspaper. Though there is no hard evidence to back this up.

[fruit tart]

** I THINK I FIGURED OUT WHICH MENTAL DISORDER FRAN HAS.. **
Just read the last bit of the spoilers to see my thought on that.

While I played this game I took so many notes. I read every book possible and I wrote pages of information putting things together. I have a huge theory for everything that happens in the game but I won't write that all here, I will just post the basic. I tried so hard to solve the symbolism of what is actually going on and I believe.. don't take me as saying this as a fact, but this is what I THINK..

So, at the ending Fran is pictured killing her parents.. while points were given that it was the demon that did it, I do believe it was Fran. ONLY because her aunt Grace was babysitting her before the weekend before her parents died.

Just hear me out.

Since it was revealed that at the end aunt Grace and the doctor wanted to experiment on Fran... it seems that while Grace was babysitting Fran, Grace put something in Fran's food or drink (there's a scene where Grace and Fran are eating dinner? If I remember correctly) and so it's possible that they choose to add that scene for that hint. She was possibly drugged with a high dose of Duotine?

** Anyway, that caused Fran's mental state to degrade and POSSIBLY have caused a split personality disorder ...

or SCHIZOPHRENIA [SchizoFRANia?]....

I was so angry with the ending of this game, but I was happy that Fran was finally 'free' from pain.
Home is where the heart is, and I believe she finally found home with Palotras, Itward, and Mr.Midnight. Whether you want to believe it's real or just her imagining it while in a vegitative state the Dr put her in or.. death.

I had to end on a good note..

I have a love/hate relationship with this game. I love it so much and that's why I was so emotional and mad at the ending (but I wouldn't change it.)

[fruit tart]

ALSO... I want to try to answer a few questions I've seen.. I could be completely wrong but these are my interpretations.. please let me know how it sounds? :D

** Mr. Midnight was considered a 'Traitor' because of when Fran was in the forest, Mr. Midnight stood his ground BUT THEN FLED which let the woman (possibly Grace) and man who found Fran, take her.

**The twins at the bottom of the Asylum with the word ITWARD wrote in their cell could be a ghostly reference to Mia and Clara OR they could just be more of Oswald's experiments..

**Palotras became emotional while talking to Fran because of a 'link broken between that reality and the shadow one'? or something in that sense.. I'm guessing Palotras eats the shadow people that enter into that reality so he can keep all the Itherstans (I hope I spelled that correctly) safe.. and he spits them into the pink pool to cleanse them and that would explain all of the Light beings roaming around.
AND SO.. If Palotras is fighting those shadow monsters.. maybe he accidentally swallows a few and it causes him to change into a shadow version? .. but thankfully the pink water heals all..

**The game goes in two seperate directions on purpose to allow the player to enterpret it however he/she wants.. It provided hints that the imaginary world was real.. and that it was all in Fran's head.. I believe you can believe whatever you want. :D Both explanations are fun, and both sides of the story have enough evidence to provide a backstory.

^Which is one reason why I believe this game was amazingly well developed. They wanted the player to have a choice. Which also plays into the being forced to believe aspect in the game.. the developers probably didn't want to sound like 'Phyciatrists telling patients that their worlds arn't real'...

**Mr.Midnight is most likely dead the whole time or either he's the 'GATE KEEPER' (THE KING CALLS HIM THAT!) ...there are stories in religions of a gate keeper that controls the passages that connect each reality.. if Mr.Midnight is a gate keeper it would explain why Fran could easily go from one reality to the next, and it could explain why there are constantly many different versions of him.. one for each reality?
Or the reason he can talk is because he's in Fran's head the whole time...

If you guys want me to take a crack at anymore questions let me know? I hope these don't sound too out there.. let me know how i did?

[Prince Morrigan]

Ok so in a nut shell, Fran killed her parents, seeing a chance the crazy doctor and the aunt formulated a Scheme to use Fran for experimenting on drugs, then Fran ran away, was lost in the forest both in her mind and reality. Winding up back home, was kidnapped after she with the help of the ex doctor dug up her parents. When she was brought back to her home she was again lost in her own mind as she was exploring her house which more then likely was turned into a small time clinic or at least made up for the purposes of illicit medical practice, hence why her mind twisted it around into another world. While yes I feel Fran did kill her parents, I think it was based on the drugs her aunt might have given her that pushed her over the edge. But sadly she did end up dying, since she ascended with her friends into the clouds. Please some one debunk my idea cause its really sad.

[CCfan]

Publicado originalmente por Electriciti:

-SNIP-

I think it's a good analysis, although maybe things went a bit differently (I'm not using Spoilers anymore because, well, it's a discussion about the ending, it's obvious from the title that there's going to be spoilers). In my opinion:

First Grace secrectly gave Fran the red Duotine (because Grace was working for Dr. Oswald, who wanted to experiment on a brain treated with the new medicine, but Fran's mother, Lucia, decided that Fran would not be subjected to the good doctor's experiments at all) while she was babysitting her. This led Fran to experience her first contact with things from other Realities, however Remor was probably waiting just for this moment to take control of her and then kill her parents. Remor could strike because of Grace giving Fran the red Duotine.
Just a random thought I had while reading your theory.

About split personality... The game makes a lot of referencing to split personality (Fran wondering how there are two sides in the Brain, or even when she thinks that "side effect" means something affecting "both sides of me", and obviously anything about Mia and Clara) although I'm not sure if that is really her illness or more the game forhadowing about Fran's possible involvement in the murder of her parents (as if saying: "don't trust yourself/Fran").

Your other theories are interesting, especially the one about Palontras fighting the Shadows, I always wondered what that scene was about and this explanation makes sense.



Also, about that photo at the end of the game. Recently I replayed through chapter 5 to take a screenshot of it, but it seems that that feature isn't really working. I heard there was a problem with screenshots in the bug threads so maybe it's that.
In any case I decided to write down the full text at the bottom of the picture, it's not much: just the names of who's in the picture (from left to right, according to their position) and what I assume is the name of the research they were conducting.
Here it is:

""CENTER OF BRAIN RESEARCH AND PINEAL GLAND PHENOMENA""
"Christine Fonten, Clara and Mia Buhalmet, Gladys Hannah, Grace and Lucia Dagenhart, Dr. Leon Castillo, Dr. Oswald Harrison"

I wanted to show that picture, aside from the fact that it's the only place in the game where you can actually see Leon in person, more or less, also because there's that strange Pentagram that appeared when Fran supposedly killed her parents, and is possibly connected with Remor. The Pentagram in that picture seems to be inserted into some kind of map of the Asylum, so I wanted to show it to other people to see if anyone has any idea of what that could possibly mean.

[fruit tart]

Publicado originalmente por CCfan:

-snip snip-

Thank you for responding! I enjoy reading your comments. :D
Yeah I figured halfway through that spoilers at this point arn't needed but I did it anyway. haha.

I know there may be a few holes in my theory here and there I haven't organized my notes from the game fully yet but these are my first theories. I also have A LOT more to add but I'm trying to keep my posts from being too long haha. I basically feel like I have a breakdown with detail by detail. So please be patient with me if I seem to ramble on..

I do think you better organized the paren'ts death/medicine theory just now haha. I do believe that Grace was giving Fran the Duotine at the beginning of the game, which like you said caused Remor to appear outside of Fran's window.
+ In the 'Real Life' version, I think that medicine caused Fran to kill her parent's but it wasn't really her. Which plays on the Schizophrenia/Split Personality disorder.
- While in the 'Multi-Realities' version, your organization sounds perfect. Exactly what I was thinking, but wasn't sure how to word it or organize it.

When it comes to the Mental Disorder, my first guess was split personality. It pops up and like you said the game makes a lot of references to it. However, I feel like maybe it's too simple. It plays too much on the twin's being joined together.. but that's another topic..

I felt like schizophrenia would be a better fit, because people with schizophrenia also encounter split-personality problems but with one person in control of the body majority of the time, as if they constantly had 'an imaginary friend' with them at all times. It also helps describe many different problems Fran is encountering, like how she has random moments where she breaks down and cries.
The defnition of schizophrenia is: A brain disorder in which people interpret reality abnormally.
This is just my opinion, I could be thinking too much into it?

Also, thank you! When I first walked to the top of the mountain and seen Palontras zoom past I really did think it was a shadow creature coming from the rip Fran created when she entered that world. (I figured that because of the way the King and Palontras talked when I first arrived.)
But.. when I found out it was Palontras I was worried (the scratches on his face look like the long finger/claws on the shadow people's hands) and when the explanation never came up.. I just assumed it was something along these lines, and the way people brushed it off made it seem like it happens every now and then.. so I came up with that theory. I could be wrong though.


I really need to replay the last chapter again because I didn't find that photo and I am very interested in seeing it. I want to see what Leon looks like and I feel that it would help explain some things.
As for the strange pentagram, it appears all throughout the game.. It's in the asylum at the beginning I think, the twins house, I think it's in Itward's ship, and.. idk I just remember seeing it every now and again. I believe the developers might have just used it as a link to anything evil or bad. Since in some religions it's used to contact demons.. HOWEVER KEEP IN MIND depending on how the star is pointing it could be a pentacle. A pentacle is a wiccan symbol that is meant to keep evil OUT. It traps it or protects a person from having evil enter them. So, I do believe if the star is located on a map in the picture...
is it located ontop of a room possibly? Could it be where they do the experiments in the asylum or either the room where Fran was kept (to keep Remor from coming back to get her?).


Also, does my theory with Mr. Midnight being a gatekeeper sound alright? I really want to explain why he keeps coming and going and why there are a few versions where he is dead/ where he can't talk/ and etc.. and that just seems to fit?

EDIT: I forgot to say that your theory about everyone was great and I can't really add to it much but I can help if possible..

Maybe itward is Leon? and the pentacles? are placed by him in the ultrareality to help protect Fran because he feels like it's his fault that Oswald is experimenting on these people now. That's why he tried to help the twins but didn't know how since he's been through so much himself, and it would explain why he's trying to be so nice to Fran. He felt he messed up with the twins and needs to do right?? Idk hah.. but.. it can possibly be backed up by the fact that in the Pill-o-version of Itward driving his ship.. he has a clown mask.. and in the beginning of the game there were a lot of clown pictures in the Aslyum..? (To reference leon/ since there are many pictures of Oswald all over the Asylum but non of Leon)

Also I spelled Schizophrenia as SchizoFRANia in reference to it might be a hint? Since Remor might be a short version of Remorse and Itward is a reference to IT Ward (which is a place in hospitals that is for the really sick patients).

[Free Funny Educational For Kids]

I really don't understand some of these theories though. First, off, I'm pretty sure Fran did not kill her own parents with her free will. Remor specifically said she was easy to manipulate, so it's clear he controlled her in some way.

Second, if Fran clearly doesn't remember being forced to murder her parents, I don't think she should have had grief of it, but maybe Remor's magic had an underlying side effect or something.

[fruit tart]

Publicado originalmente por Marie:

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I don't think anyone thinks Fran killed her parents knowingly. It was hinted that something made her do it. It was probably either Remor manipulating Fran or the 'evil' Fran (Mental disorder).

However, it was left open for your own interpretation. :)

[SilasMortimer]

I don't even think Fran killed her parents. She didn't need to. Her childish mind merely made her feel guilt as part of processing the grief before she's fully mature enough to do so. If we take Remor and all of that as real, then all they had to do was take advantage of that and encourage it. At ten years old, it's not all that difficult to convince a traumatized kid that they're responsible for something terrible when they're not (ask any therapist that has worked with children).

Ultimately, I haven't settled on any particular interpretation because I haven't felt the need to. I'm fine with the story playing out as it did without coming down on the side of real or not real.

That said...

I think if I were to come down on one side or the other, it would probably be on the side of "not real". As in, the entire thing. Well, let's say that the first bit with her talking to Dr. Leon all the way until she takes the medicine and passes out is real, then everything that follows is Fran's dream. There's even a hint to this: remember when she wakes up chained to that bed toward the end, when you get out of the chains and look in the closet, there's a picture. The picture is of Fran and a friend of hers, a little blonde girl in a blue dress that Fran calls Alice. She and Alice, Fran tells us, had a wonderful time coming up with all sorts of fantastic stories together. It's clearly meant to be an allusion to the Alice of "Alice in Wonderland". In that story, every bit of what happens except the very beginning and ending is a dream. It also reminds me a lot of "The Wizard of Oz" (I especially got that feeling when I saw Itward pedaling that bicycle), which, if we go by the movie, also all took place in a dream with analogs of "real life" characters and situations.

This, of course, seems to give the ending a bit of a darker tone (which again reminds me of something, this time "Pan's Labyrinth" - which just made me realize how common this theme is), but it explains a lot of things that otherwise seem inconsistent. Consistency, in fact, no longer poses a problem, as her mind is making it up as she goes along, trying to deal with what she's too young to deal with, making "bad guys" where bad guys are needed and making "heroes" where heroes are needed. Pine cone families, dancing mantises, friendly skeletons and things like this are just what her dream is 'peopled' with.

With the game as it is, that's what I would choose if I had to decide on an interpretation. If there's a DLC, as someone said, I'm nearly certain that will change it, though.

[leyu.]

Fran is a special child because she can enter other parallel worlds, thats why she got much attention from Oswald. In the childhood Fran somehow disturbed evil jerk who lived somewhere in different dimension so it came after her and killed parents. At first pills and pipe from the garden maze, and door in the well were just catalyst that helped her enter dimensions later Fran doesnt need it because she became stronger. In our world - asylum, in parallel world - same building but all things are more insane inside; in our world - cat is dead in coffin, in other - he is alive and talks, in other - he is just alive and no talking and so on. In the end layers start to mix with each other and elements from different worlds gathered in one room such as evil Grace, no talking cat. Then in one world Fran died but she kept living in other world with those creatures she met, also talking cat is alive. It is like in Bioshock Infinite.