Ending Questions [MAJOR SPOILERS]

[KOKOStern]

We know that the sabotage attempt was a failure, and then we go ahead and do it ourselves to blow the entire place up. Question is - what actually happened there? The last thing we are told is that the attempt failed and they were crazily ramping up production, and that's it. What happened next? How did the entire facility get abandoned?

Is this left completely up to the player? Maybe the forest spirits killed everyone or maybe someone else used the Thanatos weapon and everyone just died? It feels as though the story was just stopped in the middle and I'm wondering if I'm missing anything.

[ODDity]

You remember that boss fight in the place with all the skeletons.. I think they ended up down there, after being killed by the "spirits" of the valley?

The Daemons would have got sick of people stealing their orbs (which birth them far as I understood it)

[KOKOStern]

Yeah but are we just to assume that thing just killed everyone? There were only blood spots and human bones in that room but the rest of the valley was totally unharmed and no traces of people everywhere. Did people just go into that room to die? Doesn't make much sense.

[ODDity]

mm.. Well I'm reaching a bit here, perhaps I need to play through again, but I would assume that when things started to go bad they would retreat inside the base? I dont recall any specific audio logs with that sort of information though so..

The people did leave behind all those crates and signs and stuff so like you say, for sure they were out there, probably harvesting the Orbs

[KOKOStern]

It's just kinda weird. The game climaxes on the sabotage attempt that went wrong which leads to you doing what you do, but it never really tells us what happened there. I mean that's what you want to discover - what happened to the entire operation there, where did everyone go, and you don't get any answer for that.

[ODDity]

Yeah I hear ya. ;)

I plan to go through again.. I got in to the big pyramid thing for 20 medallions or what was it, but in there another door that needs even more!

So maybe there's more to find, or is it left to the imagination.

[Shooble]

Wendigos feed on people. They consume the flesh of people. So whenever a wendigo kills someone, they drag that someone back to the feeding grounds. Notice there's no dead bodies anywhere else? Yeah. They're dragged to the feeding ground and then fed upon.

The way I see it; Fisher found out about the sabotage. He had Virginia and Edward arrested, and they were taken to Camp Henday for questioning. Fisher increased production after they were arrested. Since the production caused the valley to be destroyed far faster than usual, the wendigos burst out of where ever they came from and started killing everyone in an attempt to protect the valley.

So they were all killed by the wendigos, and then dragged off to the feeding ground. No skeletons or dead remnants anywhere in the game other than the feeding grounds.

As far as what the government did after that, I have no idea. It's weird that they sent military to the valley, but when everyone was killed they didn't try to contact anyone in the valley and just forgot about them? No team sent to investigate? That's very odd. It's possibly a plothole in the story.

Or the government just covered it all up and pretended it didn't happen. They're good at doing that.

[KOKOStern]

Dragging every single person they kill off to the feeding grounds sounds a bit far fetched and blood only appearing close by is rather odd but I guess that could be the explanation.

Like you've mentioned there's a bit of a plot hole there but I guess I'll take it.

[Relevant Combiner]

@JD I remember is was revealed early on the mountain facility that no one outside was told about what was going on to cut off any contact to the US to prevent espionage. Only a few people actually know exactly what was going on there and all of them were at the facility. They also only had reserves planned for air drop through the end of whatever year they reference. They also say in regards to the air drops that the pilots dont know why they are dropping them at all either. No one outside knew one bit.

@KOKOStern When you enter the grounds your character says "so this is where they feed" which didn't make sense to me at first but otherwise reinforces the point others have made. Also, there are some blood stains littered thoughout the game but not nearly enough. Tbh we don't know all the ways the wendigos attack their victims. After the first attack a lot of people could have just started running (especially since no one had their suits due to Fisher taking them) at which point the wendigos would probably just grab them without much effort.

[Alcator]

The ramp up of production occured as Oppenheimer made successful atom bomb test --> i.e. close to the end of the WW2. Therefore, the Pendulum bombs were not really needed in the war, so the government wasn't looking that closely for their "missing" researchers. Furthermore, the "radio silence" mode they were in meant there was no outwards communication, and the food drops were only scheduled for (roughly) until the end of 1945.

Others make good points about where did all the bodies go.

Considering the 1980s-1990s computer seen in the introduction, it's been 40+ years since the accident, enough time to erase/overgrow any trace of skeletons/blood in the outdoor areas.

[Drengor]

There were definitely several blood stains/drag marks in the brig area that made it obvious something was dragging corpses off.

The Wendigos weren't positively explained, but if you read much of virginia's notes, it made distinct links to Wendigo lore and greed/famine, etc. Stating that according to lore, even humans could become wendigos. And that they got bigger as they fed, potentially becoming giants. (Someone the size of a daemon would probably consider the wendigo's 'giant')

Personally, their resemblence to large, evil daemons convinced me they started as daemons... I just wasn't sure if they were a direct result of the 'experiments' on daemon/globes, or a result of the massive life draining (like the flies turning hostile/aggressive).

It could even be the one extra large 'boss' wendigo was the one created first that killed everyone at the base, and the rest were created later from the ongoing draining from the Astra facility...

[Bell end]

My question is: How come I continued the sabotage? Everything in the valley seemed to be ok in the present?
It was only when I removed the lifeseed from the reactor that it caused the other reactor to overload, so I had to destroy it (using the lifeseed) :S
If that's all I was going to use the lifeseed for, why take it in the first place? Why not just put it back in the reactor?

[markzwaan]

@KOKOstern: I think you've missed some of the notes, probably those in the hidden crates which are hard to find. It is mentioned that while ramping up the production, Fisher was aware of the sabotage attempt but wanted to catch the saboteurs in the act so he removed the lifeseed so they couldn't overload the reactor using a feedback loop. By placing the lifeseed back into the Thanatos canon you can now create this feedback loop and destroy the Astra facility.
Fisher also mentions that he found the Valley by tracking a mysterious energy trail that he thinks was made by the comet that caused the dinosaurs to go extinct about 65 million years ago. In the intro movie you can see clippings that point towards these theories as well, confirming his story. This is not explored any further in any of the other notes but it does suggest that the Amrita energy (and therefore also the Daemon) might be of extraterrestial origin.

@Drengor. The wendigos are in fact the result of some of the other research taking place which you discover when you enter the one of the final research rooms with the blue lights and the daemon trapped in tubes. It is clearly hinted at through several notes (one is hidden behind a black board) that they created the wendigos from these daemon by feeding them different kinds of energy and then couldn't control them when the production was sped up and life energy was sucked up from the Valley itself. This explains the broken tubes, some of the modified Daemon escaped and have possible turned into the Dark Creature you encounter. Since Fisher had ordered all L.E.A.F. suits to be locked away just after the sabotage attempt nobody had a chance of defending themselves against the wendigo attacks. No suits means no God Hand and no Amrita energy. The biggest plot hole is the question why you only find bodys in the cave with the Alpha creature and not anywhere else. Maybe, like JD mentioned people turned into wendigo themselves and they dragged the survivors there. This is certainly hinted at in one of the recordings and some of the notes, but it's impossible to know for sure since you don't find any notes there, I guess people were to busy dying to leave any more notes about what was happening to them. ;)

@ Bell end: At the start of the game it becomes clear that you are an archeologist that has been looking for the life seed for a long time. Finding the life seed is like finding the Holy Grail to the main character so it makes sense that he/she wants to bring it back with him/her. Also once you take the lifeseed it is made clear that the Astra facility will keep sucking the life out of the Valley unless it's immediately stopped. Putting the lifeseed back wouldn't solve this since this is part of an emergency protocol that won't stop unless it's manualy shut down. In order to stop the overload and save the Valley and possibly the earth itself, you have to shut down the Astra facility and the best way to do that is to do what the two saboteurs were planning on doing in the first place and use the lifeseed in the Thanatos cannon. They didn't know that the lifeseed was missing so their attempt failed. With the lifeseed present you can create a feed back loop which will destroy both facilities.

[Alcator]

Originally posted by Bell end:

My question is: How come I continued the sabotage? Everything in the valley seemed to be ok in the present?
It was only when I removed the lifeseed from the reactor that it caused the other reactor to overload, so I had to destroy it (using the lifeseed) :S
If that's all I was going to use the lifeseed for, why take it in the first place? Why not just put it back in the reactor?

After the failed sabotage attempt, Fischer returned the seed back to the SOMA facility. Soma and Astra were working in a neverending cycle - Astra drained life and fed it to Soma, Soma amplified it, returning some of it back to the valley and giving the surplus to the weapons division.

Then, Fischer and everyone were killed (explained in the final "boss battle"), so the facility was left alone, relatively balanced.

By taking the lifeseed from Soma, you inadvertently broke the cycle: the Astra facility was still draining the valley, but Soma was no longer functional and thus you see the decay everywhere in later levels.

You then have to sabotage Astra (by blowing it up), otherwise it would kill the valley.

At the very end, as you float on the wooden board, you see the daemons re-populating the valley, meaning you saved them from extinction AND eternal abuse, although at a terrible cost.

[tuxdelux]

Also, it is made clear that the Astra processing - even when it was working - would have not survived forever, and it eventually would drain the all life from the valley and then possibly the world.

Bell end says "everything in the valley seemed to be ok", but the game seemed to indicate that it was not but would eventually fail, as the Astra collapsed into ruin.

(Some symbolism to modern life here, that's for sure.)

[Warden]

My take on it is this. The Valley is alive. That much is more than obvious. Life demands balance, and the humans definitely unbalanced it. Windigos, as according to the lore, are created by exceptionally greedy people (irl mythos is cannibalism). What Fisher was doing, stealing life from the valley, with no regards to it, for personal reasons, is the pinnacle of greed in this story. My guess is that the Valley defended itself. From the greedy spirits of the humans, the windigos were created. Each person of greed, a new windigo. The balance is a little evener. Windigos feed on human flesh, and if this was cannibalism, as mentioned in lore and ancient mythology, then they would have to be human in origin. Each time they are appeased, an elder forest spirit comes out of them. They can be pacified by them getting what they can not take, only what is freely given. Life. Personal note, if any person was the boss, I bet Fisher. The person who was already draining the life out of his fellow men and women. He was afraid of something (windigo), but what in the valley was more scary than him? This is the overall vibe I got while playing.