Plot Analysis and Symbols: Layers of Fear

[Desbreko]

Hey everyone, I run a small YouTube channel practically no one watches, but i'm making a video about this very game analysing its plot, symbols, and themes, hopefully shedding some light on the deeper meaning of it all. It will, however, only be my opinion and my theory. Feel free to add to the discussion to help further my theories and opinions though and give your feedback! Also, im quite an ♥♥♥ hole in my youtube videos mostly for comedic affect but you should know that before viewing anything I post.



EDIT: My video is up! If you'd like to check it out you can do so over at http://youtu.be/3s0Ds6dv_90





Everything I've Gathered so Far:

As soon as the game starts several things become immediately understood, and even more things are implied right off the bat. The second the game starts, if you look to your right you see a painting by Augustus Leopold Egg entitled "Past and Present: No. 1 - Misfortune." The painting depicts a man sitting at a table looking down on a woman, presumably his wife , as she lies face down on the floor with their two children looking on them from the left. I belive this picture symbolises the narrators abuse emotionally (and perhaps physically at one point) towards his wife, although the painting itself holds another meaning entirely about adultery between the two's marriage, it's a fitting image for what the narrator has done and seen. This conflict is immediately implied, and almost furthered by the fact that the house is entirely empty. Now there are no definitive clues that the opening scene takes place in reality, but it is implied as everything is cohesive and linear, and nothing changes initially. The only hint i could find is the blood underneath the door next to the narrator's bedroom(perhaps the bathroom the wife died in). Notes can be found all around the house setting the scene for the story to begin being told. Of all the notes found initially, the following things are established:

The narrator has a gimp leg, found to be a prosthetic on his right leg. The narrator is a man, perhaps in his late twenties, in the 20th century. The narrator has a wife who is a famous pianist, and the two are expecting/have a baby, and a dog. The narrator has anger issues, as stated by the letter from the pest control company, stating he sent innapropriate letters about the man's mother, and the note found in the top right drawer next to the bathroom in which he apologizes for his temper and talks about his daughter to his wife. The first letter goes on to suggest that there are no rats living in the narrators home, stating that what we see of rats not only in this opening sequence but for the rest of the game are not real(more on the rats later). Bottles are strewn throughout the household, as well as in notes the narrator has for supplies lists, implying immediately that our narrator has an alcohol problem. There was a fire at a department store as stated in a note on the second floor in the narrator's room. This note is charred and burned, and resting upon a broken vanity mirror, implying that this is where the wife recieved her nasty burns not yet mentioned in the game, the mirror is also broken to further this. A note in his office states that he is "going through some rough times," after we see his grotesque rendition of "Red Riding Hood," which I believe symbolises the narrators arc into madness, and him killing both his wife and daughter, this though, is less implied than other things and could just be coincidence. A report card is found in the basement, implying that the narrator's daughter reached between the ages of 8 and 12, furthered by her doodles found throughout the house. Upon further inspection of the report card, the only explicit number we get is on the bottom right, which has a 7 on it. After comparing this report card to other report cards from the early 1900s, i've found that the 7 is marked next to "grade," which if not explicitly states, than implies that the daughter reached the age of either 12 or 13.

Everything stated above is established in the opening minutes of the game with some poking around, and immediately we are given the situation that our character is in, context, and setting. I also believe that the rats symbolise the narrator, and the house his mind. The rats scurring around are a metophor for the narrator in the labrynth that is his mind, comparing him to a rat in a maze. After the prologue, upon entering the "magnum opus" room, "GET IT RIGHT THIS TIME" is written above the door way. I belive that the moment you leave the magnum opus room the narrators perception of reality is distorted, and what we're seeing is his stream of consciousness after beginning his painting. It isn't implied or directly stated initially that anybody has died, although it is partially implied that the wife went through something drastic, more specifically a terrible burn in a department store, although several different fires are mentioned throughout the game. The phone is also in the narrator's office, telling us that this is where he was when he recieved the phonecall about his wife. The first thing we see after exiting the room is a dark hallway with book shelves. One notable book that is on the floor is a book about oscar wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray," which appears to have been a large inspiration for the game itself. This book can also be found in the narrator's study, and inspected as well. The first room we can enter has an open window where the words "JUST OUT OF REACH," can be seen, and rain appears to have leaked in through the window. There's also a painting of a man in black stabbing another man in a sandy plain, with a giant rat looking creature behind the two. Above the man being stabbed is a gallow, and I belive this implies that the narrator (the one in black, also depicted in his daughter's drawings) could've stumbled upon his wife about to kill herself, and instead did it himself maybe? "GOING IN CIRCLES," in the next hallway only furthers my point that he is metaphorically a rat trapped in a maze. The quote "THE PAST HOLDS BACK, LOOK CLOSER," to me implies further that the main character is an unreliable narrator, as many things are stated and changed part of the way through the game, and this states that what he's remembering may not be true. A secret passageway shows a note in which the narrator questions his sanity, and right after we find small models of the house, furthering even more my "rat in a maze" theory. The doll impaled on the deers antlers implies the death of the narrator's daughter as well. We hear a flashback of the wife after picking up a brush in which she's talking to herself about not having the courage to face herself after her incident. In the kitchen the same knife found later in the game in a flashback implying the wife committed suicide is thrown at us, implying that the narrator is to blame. It's then explicitly stated that the narrator used someone's flesh for a canvas, and he describes the proccess of skinning them.
Now we know the narrator is an unreliable one because several things are stated either through notes or through flashbacks, and other things are implied through certain symbols or strongly suggested throught the environment, For example, there are notes expressing the narrators disdain towards rats, and how they're walking arsonists, and that they live in his canvases and the only way to get rid of them is to burn them, and later we find a note that implies that he told someone else that his wife burned his works, and I think he genuinely believes it. From what i can gather there are several personalities the narrator has, one being the painter, another being the husband and father, and another that we'll call "the rat." This is the one we see in the rat illustrations and would explain why theres a section specifically for these pictures. This is the personality we hear in angry flashbacks, and about in notes expressing the narrators anger.


What I have really, is this: The game takes place in the early 1900s, you take on the roll of a once-famous painter with a family consisting of a wife, daughter, and dog. While there are several fires mentioned throughout the story, i believe the department store is the fire the wife received her burn from, and the fire with the canvases was a separate one. It's also implied that the dog was burned, and while it isn't clear whether it was the same fire as the canvas fire, it can be assumed that it was rather than three separate fires. We're left with a schizophrenic alcoholic, possibly drug abusive artist left to take care of his daughter as his wife has been mortally injured. He loved his wife so dearly for her beauty and once it was gone all he could see was a monster that needed fixing, much like his painting that he's obsessed with. It is suggested that the narrator's wife killed herself in the bathroom, but i believe that the narrator suppressed that memory, and walked in after taking on another one of his personalities, believing she killed herself, and lying to himself. His goal was to fix her. To make her beautiful once again, and what better way for a sick, twisted man to do so, other than to take her piece by piece and paint her into a beautiful painting. Their daughter was taken from his custody not long after, and a letter specifies that the narrator was dealing with a court case that had to deal with his custody of their daughter. Ultimately, he lost, and attempted to kidnap her and bring her back to him, but was apprehended in his attempt. After all of this he is left with nothing, and walks home telling himself "I know how you must feel. Lost, alone, hopeless. You probably deserve it. But there is still one way to bring it all back. FINISH IT." And so that appears to be the simplest way to put it. The most compact way to describe the story. Either our narrator is undergoing a horrible nightmare again and again each time we play the game, or from beginning to end this is his stream of consciousness and his subconscious haunting him with his guilt and everything he's done, transforming his mind into a maze with him being the rat. Except he's not searching for cheese, he's searching for himself.
"I will make this right honey. I promise. I will make you right."
"You promised."

[Desbreko]

There was tons more in depth stuff in this post but I could only post so much so I had to cut some.

[76561198214548177]

whoa! That's a sexy wall of text :) I'd love to watch the whole analysis!

[nggalai]

Hi Desbreko,

good start! Please share the link to your channel once you’re done with your analysis. Sounds right up my alley. :)

I’ve only been through the game three times, so please take the following with copious amounts of salt. It’s just top-off-my-head stuff after reading your posting.

Paintings, general: many of the paintings in this game feature themes of family and children – most of them rather dark-ish to cruel. (Goya’s Saturn Devouring his Children comes to mind.) It’s also pretty clear these are not meant to be the protagonist’s paintings – the repetition and only occasional, slight alternations from the classic originals imply it’s what he furnishes his mind with during his psychotic episode (if that’s what this game is about). So, perhaps, more than the (apparent?) suicide of his wife, the estrangement and subsequent loss of his kid, of his family, seems to be the main topics of this game.

Rats: my first impression, entering the very first room, was “Oh, Lovecraft. The Rats in the Walls.” In said short-story, the protagonist moves to his family’s old estate, where he gets driven (?) mad by the sound of (imagined?) rats scurrying in the walls. At any rate, in the end, and in madness, he kills and eats one of his friends and is sent off to the asylum. Where he still hears the rats in the walls, the rats he claims killed his friend, not him, not him, it was the rats, the rats in the walls … (You get the general idea).

After three runs, I’m not so sure whether my initial impression holds up to scrutiny. But the body horror thing including dismemberment (as well as the family angle) in this game suits the bill. And also, there’s Lovecraft’s other stories such as “Pickman’s Model” (about a painter!), which makes me believe the devs at least were aware of THIS story, if only on a subliminal level. Also, Lovecraft’s stories play somewhen around the 1920s, which seems curiously suiting for some of the game’s artwork (kitchen stoves, some light fixtures, dress reflected in the mirror etc.), but not all of it. Some things like other light fixtures look like out of the 50s or 60s. This got more and more important, for me, as I played on, and will make my fourth run much more, err, brainy than the first three.

Report card: my impression was that it was THE PROTAGONIST’S reporting card, not his daughter’s. Great at art, doesn’t need to attend sports classes. Which might imply he was either a sickly child, or that he had lost his leg already at childhood. Also, 7th grade is too old for how the protagonist envisions his child in this psychotic (?) episode that is “Layers of Fear”. The doodles are more Kindergarten or 1st, 2nd grade than 7th grade.

I think I’ll draft up some additional thoughts. But this posting looks promising, looking forward to your full analysis!

Best from Switzerland,
-Sascha

[nggalai]

Now for some rambling. I’m home, sick, hence my brains are rather addled and I might ramble too much, but perhaps you’ll find something of use for your own analysis. And be it only as a kickstarter, or as a “that’s definitely NOT a line to follow.”

Three things first, to put stuff into perspective:

1) As said, the flu got me. So I’m probably not too coherent. Shucks.

2) I’ve been treated for schizophrenia, hence I tend to probably read too much into this game because a) it hits home in some rather uncomfortable places, which I enjoy a lot, hence I’m becoming a big fan of “Layers of Fear”, and b) well, you’ve played the game. It’s not a textbook, but you might understand that “us guys and gals” sometimes have rather … unorthodox ways of thinking. Which might make some of the following hard to understand, because it might make little sense (which I wouldn’t realise while writing it down).

3) English isn’t my first language, so beware weirdo turns of phrasing. Especially considering 1).


Anyways, two things that struck me during my first three play-throughs:

1) Who or what is the person writing and receiving the notes with “Sir” in it? You know, “If you wanted your workplace undisturbed, you should have locked the door” and “I told you not to enter even if unlocked!!!” and so on. There’s a subservient tone to the replies, and the tones of a “master” in the threats. And, also, the “Sir”. Usually used in a master-servant relationship, or in old-fashioned family structures (where the son needed to address his father as “Sir”).

2) What does the note of the neighbours complaining about all that noise mean?

Let’s tackle 2) first. There’s this note early on in the game, with somebody complaining about the recipient quarreling with his wife all the time. IIRC it’s signed with “Your sleep-deprived neighbours” or something on those lines. This doesn’t make any sense in the context of “famous painter + upcoming pianist superstar wife + stately mansion”. There wouldn’t be any neighbours around who can’t sleep because the couple nextdoors have a fight. Mansion! Grounds! Neighbours miles off!

This reads more like the note one might leave to a noisy couple in an apartment building / block. Which leaves three possibilities:

1) The protagonist and his family never lived in a mansion. This thing purely is his “mind palace”, so to say. Delusion (of grandeur) in part, and a frame (ha!) for the stream of consciousness you, Desbreko, mentioned in your initial posting. He’s holed up in an apartment somewhere, probably in the 50s to 70s or something, and … just painting. And getting a bit psychically flamboyant about dealing with the estranged wife and social-worker-removed kid after a while.

2) The protagonist and his family actually do, or did, live there. With a manservant (“Sir”) and all the trappings of a successful artiste life which went down the drain after his wife’s fire accident. Ensue PTSD-esque psychosis, aka “Layers of Fear”.

In conjunction with the weird mixture of anachronistic styles employed in this game, from newspaper typography to lamp shades, from candles to electric light bulbs, from handwriting patterns to language pragmatics, I personally opt for

3) What if the voice we hear ISN’T the protagonist, but his father’s? After all, the game starts with “I know how YOU must feel. YOU probably deserve it. FINISH IT.” and so on. Why the hells would the protagonist address himself in the second voice? He never does again during the game.

Case for No.3:

So … the neighbours would have been either his father’s neighbours before he finally made it big in the art world (as outlined in the newspaper clippings). He might have met his future wife on the job – “You’ve been in my house for so long, but we’ve never spoken” is mostly attributed to the wife going bonkers and talking to her painting, in the fandom, but what if it was what the protagonist’s mother told her son about how she met her not-yet-famous-and-rather-poor-painter-husband? “My daughter would be delighted to play for your birthday” or something similar, said another note.

Or – they could have been the neighbours of the son who rebelled about his father, his family, left to make his own mark in the art world, just to return to his family’s (rather, his mother’s family’s) estate after an “incident” or public disgrace (“Baby face painting!”) – similar to what I outlined in the Lovecraft “The Rats in the Walls” reference in my posting above. His father and mother would have been dead for years, the mansion ready to trigger more or less psychotic associations (the game’s Prolog). The rest is us, the protagonist-dude, probably sitting in our father’s old workshop, stumbling over mementos pertaining both to his own “Artist quest” and our own rebellious “Quest”, while hallucinating more and more wildly due to overload.

So, basically, we as the players, the protagonists, would have to deal with both garbage our father left us with, and our own psychological issues.

Garbage? Well, we know we are limbing throughout the game. Sometimes stronger, sometimes less so. We know we, the protagonist, wear a leg prosthetics. What if all that body horror stuff was his FATHER doing it? And the bone (Chapter 3 or 4 I think) was from his son – the protagonist, US, as players? (The off-screen voice about the finger went something like this: “I chopped [the finger] off. Easier than sawing off a leg.”)

That memento when the voice is getting angry about the badly drawn horse – is the voice chiding the game’s daughter figure (as implied with the pink paint), or is the protagonist remembering how his father used to chide him? To become a real artist? “What do we do when we fail? We start over!”? The “Sir” notes / dialogue then wouldn’t be with a servant, but between a drunk father and his teenage kid going all “Well you should have then”.

There’s both a plethora of bottles, but also quite handsome hip flasks which went out of style almost a century ago. There’s our knowledge that the wife (or the mother?) was a piano player, but we find a violin in the closet which formerly held the booze earlier on in the game.

Is the loop ending, so to say, a son, grown up with an alcoholic father, trying to become the artist his father never accepted him to be (“WHY PINK???”)? In short – daddy issues? And unfortunately, daddy issues that hit a Schizophrenic?

*

Sorry for the rambling. But hey, perhaps you or somebody else can work with it. At any rate, it hasn’t been since Tale of Tale’s “The Path” that I’ve thought so much about a video game. It’s either very very well done, which I hope, or it’s bland enough you can project craploads of associations on it. Which would be kind of sad, but still worth it, in the end.

Cheers from Switzerland,
-Sascha

[nggalai]

Addendum to numbers 2) and 3) above:

Everything girly and in pink and yellow and puppets everywhere – but then a wooden toy soldier right out of the early 20s? The “Voice” apparently stepped on, too? I’m all for de-gendering kids and whatnot, but well, not in the timeframe as outlined in the game. Chances are, the toy soldier was a boy’s toy, not the one of the “Princess”.

The devs made “Chromatic Aberrations” a marketing term. Or rather, picked it up. At any rate, CA in this abundance, coupled with all those electrical sounding audio disturbances – think of the cellar-piano tableau – insinuates early colour TV. They didn’t air even Doctor Who in colour until early of 1970. Why the hells would a deranged protagonist caught in the roaring 20s or somesuch have hallucinations including typical TV distortions (both visual and audible) most commonly associated with the 60s to 80s – if the protagonist wasn’t around at that time?

[Desbreko]

@nggalai For your above comment, I believe the visual distortions are only a way the game tries to portrey to us what he narrator is physically feeling, and perhaps not what he's seeing, much like grand tehft auto porteys the characters being drunk as very wavey, but we all know that's not what it looks like, but what it FEELS like.

Your father son theory is very interesting, and for all we know the narrator could be just cooped up somewhere with none of this being real at all, and for my theory the vividness of his recollection and details of his family could just be chalked up to his schizophrenic hallucinations combined with alcohol, drugs, and lack of sleep. Yet i feel if this is where the devs were leaning there would be more detailed and obvious implications. Like the way the very first painting to the left and right of the game imply that he's abusive towards his wife and that his daughter gets taken away, as we see a painting of an eagle stealing a child to the left.

You also mentioned the fact that he says YOU deserve this, and I know how YOU must feel. These words are also said by his wife on the phone, implying these words were perhaps her last, maybe on a note she left before committing suicide? This would certainly point towards the narrator being innocent, but from where I stand I see that he was evil, judgemental, xenophonic and intollerant and all of these things coupled with is alcoholism and schizophrenia lead him to attempt to "fix" his wife, taking the parts of her body after she was badly burned, and using them to paint a now-beautiful painting whether it be herself, her and their daughter, or himself, each ending symbolising the narrator making up his mind on one thing or another and having a self realization, granted it's not the wife painting in which we see him stuck doing the same painting over and over again, which sort of visualizes the fact that this could not be the first time he's ever done this, it's a sort of purgatory for him and if you want to go that far it's slightly implied at one point that the wife kills the narrator and so this could've happened. Theres just simply not enough evidence for me to lean this way though.

Thank you guys so much for adding onto this discussion and helping me further my view on all of this, this is great! later today i'll most likely do one more playthrough and read through this again. Currently i'm missing one momento and three notes which for all i know, could hold the answer to all of my questions.

[Desbreko]

I'd also like to say that i'm a HUGE Lovecraft fan, and while I can see the whole rats in the wall thing and pickman's model, i throughout playing never picked up on too much of a Lovecraft feel. For that it's missing an all seeing omnotent force that cannot be escaped, as that's when his stories really took their own shape. Edgar Allen Poe could definitely have influenced parts of this game, but i find it has a very original feel.

[nggalai]

Cheers for your replies! This is getting interesting. REALLY looking forward to your YouTube analysis.

One thing that bothers me about my “Son” hypothesis is: there’s hardly any father symbolism in the game (most notable, again, the Saturn painting and the safe behind it), but loads of mother / wife / child stuff. As you said, there should be more clear-cut implications in the game should the theory hold true. Personally, I enjoy when (and if) writers don’t take out the broad brush, and insinuate more than stipulate, but we’re talking a video game here. So taking Occam’s Razor out, I guess it’s more likely I overinterpret the game’s content, rather than the marketing people going all “yeah, let’s hide the intended story and don’t hint at it apart from some easily misunderstood structuralism.”

Perhaps, there’s not really much behind the veil, not too many layers. Be it of fear or of plot. Whatever, I enjoy the fact that you (or I) can read enough into it without too much of an effort. Which, incidentally, would suit the whole Schizo approach pretty well. Jumping to conclusions and seeing patterns where there are none may be the prime reasons so many people are annoyed by Schizos to begin with. ;)

I still wonder about the prologue, though. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Throughout the game, we as players are driven by writing-on-the-wall, letters, visual clues, and whatnot. While the audio and most of the found footage is descriptive of what happened. Either, this is the key (that the narrator goes all YOU in his prologue), or it was lazy writing to get the ball rolling. I HOPE it isn’t the latter. But can I be sure? Nope.

[nggalai]

It’s one of the things I really enjoy about “Layers of Fear”, btw. As a Schizophrenic, you (usually, not always) tend to focus on structure more than form. As a painter, though, form is important. So you’ll quite naturally recognise the structural issues (dilemmas, conflicts, whatever), and put it into a formal frame quickly. Phone numbers turning into Ouji codes are the most easily recognisable leaps: you needed the codes to contact the father (?) of the piano player for hiring her / inviting her. As she is important to you (future wife?), those nine digits turn up in the telephone / office sequence, and ALSO work with the Ouji board. Because their function is the same: communication.

I guess that’s why I wonder so much about those “Sir” messages, as well as that one Neighbour note. I simply don’t see how this could fit into the narrative concisely. We don’t find a servant, nor servants’ quarters or the like. It’s unlikely (from the other notes) that the Wife would have addressed her husband as “Sir“. We also don’t know who those neighbours who could have taken issue with the fighting might be. Or why they could have been bothered. Mansion, etc.. There’s no functional and/or structural equivalent in the game – unless you take the years / era angle into account, and/or wonder about who apart from a manservant or maid would label a message to a “Sir” in the 20th century.

[Desbreko]

I do agree with you stating that the neighbors complaints don't make much sense, as they live in a rather large estate. How could a house be close enough to hear their antics, unless they're shouting from balconies or possibly leaving the windows open, and as we know the narrator is a very loud, and rude character. As for the slave/servant deal, I believe there was a maid in the house who perhaps got fired, and could've lived on the grounds during work instead of inside the house, as they would've been looked down on by the narrator and his family. We can find a note in a drawer after finding the wedding ring that has the narrator threatening to fire whoever keeps getting into his workshop, which leads me to believe that in actuality there was a servant/maid.

As for other aspects of the story, nearly everything we've seen or heard is so ambiguous it could be chalked up to a number of things, and I think that's what makes the story so interesting. There are so many missing facets and clues it keeps us looking for more, looking for a definitive answer to our questions. Many things are outright stated, or suggested in notes, and then the opposite is implied through symbolism which leads me to believe the narrator has convinced himself of the story happening one way, when in reality it happened another, if it even happened at all, mind you. The beginning to end of the game really reminds me of the movie "Dream House," and if you haven't seen it you should. It begins in shape and everything seems normal besides a few things out of place, which could subtly hint towards the narrators unstable mind, and by the end of the game everything is in shambles, and the black matter is everywhere, including the magnum opus room. If the narrator is indeed a washed-up famous painter, it would make sense that him and his family could live in a luxorious estate, lending credit to the whole arc of the story, and yet other things can imply that the house isn't even real at all. For example in a small hidden room we can find tiny models of the hallways and rooms, and for all we know this could be a mad man's visions as he works on the miniature house he is crafting, and the story a side effect of his insanity(not that that's what i'm going with.)

[Desbreko]

But like you said, there could be nearly not as much to this as we're reading into, and all that could be hidden by the ambiguidy. I'm not sure whether that would be a good or bad thing. Personally I would find it more satisfying to be looking so deeply into this and making connections, only to eventually find one piece that makes it all click.

[Desbreko]

So i've just played through the game for my fifth time, and i still found a few new things. I've colelcted every rat note, and every family collectible, and i'm missing only two trivial achievements that don't contribute story-wise.

After gathering every note only a few things are made clear but questions still remain. Can you unlock the locked door and locked droor that remain after the purgatory ending? Did the narrator actually kill his wife, and even daughter? It's quite heavily implied that he did, yet it's explicitly stated that she killed herself. So while the narrator is unreliable, the notes explicitely find the wife saying goodbye as she's about to commit suicide, but the fact that the knife is just below the mirror in the bathroom leads me to believe that he himself actually did it. But how could he use her parts to finish his painting if it wasn't kept secret, and everyone knew of her death? He could claim that she went missing, but this would be awfully shady, but i'm nearly certain the coroners would take her body for examination. So what we're left with are parts of his wife's body, used for painting, a missing persons case, and the fact that his daughter was taken from him and he was apprehended as he attempted to kidnap her. Now, next to the note that tells us this is a blood stain, and a small knife. This is only one of several occasions that it is implied that the narrator also killed his daughter. The whole lullaby scene definitely implies this, as well as the giant hands reaching for us, only to in the end be reaching for a dolls head after the poem is over. This, as well as the doll that can be found in the cabinet outside of her room implies that she was indeed killed by the narrator, but when? Perhaps accidentally? With all of this in mind, there's not much left to be said. What we're told directly is not that the narrator is sick in the head, but an angry alcoholic, as well as a workaholic. He has a wife, daughter, and dog, all of which are nowhere to be found nearing the end of our story. Nothing outright states that either the dog or the daughter are alive, but it's heavily implied they both died. The dog in a fire, and the daughter by the narrator by either being shot, or smothered. Three fires seem to be suggested, one of which only being implied, but it's implied that it was in the house, or it WAS the house, but when we light a candle near a vanity mirror, an animated drawing of a burning house can be seen, and in the drawers are a dark figure in front of a house, and in the next there is no house. So we've reached a point where we know this. The wife is badly burned and the narrator only wants to fix her. He is disgusted by her and grows more and more distant. This hurts his wife, and leads her down the same dark path as him, saying in a note "The disease that afflicted his mind has taken hold of me as well." Driven to madness as well as the narrator, albeit not to such an extent, she attempts/commits suicide, with the narrator either walking in just before or just after. In one of these scenarios he does it himself. After being distrought by her death, he sees only one way to "fix" her and it's by taking what's left of her, and making her into a beautiful painting. Their daughter is taken away, but at one point the narrator comes into contact with her again and cuts off her ponytail for a brush, as well as possibly killing her. Afterwards all we are left with is the narrator and his dead wife. We don't know what happens specifically to the daughter, but she also haunts him after everything. This is all followed by the narrators atttempt to finish his "magnum opus" which we find that he's attempted several times, and we begin the game to him entering the house, and giving it one more go, wandering around to find the supplies he needs to finish it. The rest is the narrators spiritual journey through his mind and whether he forgives himself and moves on, stays delusional, or puts an end to it all is all in our hands.

For example, the encounters with the wife all give the narrator a chance to turn his back to her, or come to her aid, and suffer the pain she did for so long but for her. To me this is what defines the ending of the game. The narrators compassion through us to decide his fate. It's all in his mind, and we control him to help him in his self realization, as the mirrors all throughout the game suggest.

[Desbreko]

There is a linear and stated storyline to be followed, as well as a symbolic and implied story line through visuals and objects.

[Igor]

In the game I have noticed for a few times a doll in the bonnet. For the first time the doll has came to the surface of the bath with the note or a painting (as i remember this was a «rat-note").Then she was shown in a small room scrawling something after that I faced her in the bathroom closely to the end of chapter six. I suppose that this doll was shining in the bath when i ve taken the third attempt to dive. After i ve came really close for a few moments i could watch the scene: the bathroom full of water and the painter who seemed drowned. So maybe it is implied that his daughter had accidently drowned herself or that was a father who killed her in he bath by accident. Anyway the person, who has died in the bathroom, as I think, was a daughter. Also I suppose that before his daughter’s death, but after she was returned to father for a some time painter had stolen the body of his buried wife as in the game we see her face that has partly decomposed. Maybe he was cutting his wife s body into a pieces while the girl was sitting in the bath and when the father have came(with the knife, which he used to cut his wife) in to the bathroom his daughter has been already dead. About the neighbors- this letter might be a part of painters life before he has moved in this house as once it was found a letter of his wife where is stated that he started AGAIN to drink, so that may mean that in the past a situation with alcohol was close to the present and it was a reason for the quarrels in the past.P.S. English is not my first language and i hope you will understand what i wanted to say.

[Desbreko]

That's actually a VERY good point, things could have happened before they lived in this house and they easily could've lived somewhere else initially when they got married. It couldn't be too far down the line though, as I imagine a famous painter compared to leonardo could afford a place like the one in the game, and it isn't specified between when they're married (june 9th) and when the grand opening happens that we hear about in the first clipping we can find.