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."

[nggalai]

Thanks for your insights, Desbreko! It makes a lot of narrative sense. And also thanks, Not-pipe-smoking-dude. Interesting angle about the drowing bit, didn’t think much about it before. But there might be someting important, hidden in plain sight, right there. Water as both surface and reality border is another one of the common horror themes, similar to the house-as-depiction-of-the-mind thing which seems to frame LoF. You’ll find it anywhere from Friday 13th to Ringu to even SAW. And loads of earlier computer games, from F.E.A.R. right back to Alan Wake, to Undying, and Silent Hill (2).

So it’s highly likely the devs used it to suggest a link to the unconscious, inside the unconscious, thereby being sorta Inception-ish. And thus also putting all into question: what is real, what isn’t? And how reliable are the protagonist’s memories to begin with? Last safe holds a spinning top, similar to Inception’s protagonist’s (pretend) totem.

Good one!

*

Today, I stumbled over a slip of paper in the game, listing diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia. For reasons outlined above, this was rather unsettling for me. Anyways, this is either a strong hint by the devs the protagonist is schizophrenic, or his wife might be. At any rate, the devs were aware of possible schizo interpretations. Which makes a possible plot analysis both more difficult, and more interesting.

First, schizophrenia isn’t something that happens due to outside influences, traumata, PTSD, or the like. It’s there, full stop. About 1% of the general populace are part of this crowd, you’ll find a higher occurence of this trait in people who work in, or with, the arts.

Problems you might have with this trait aren’t schizophrenia per se, but that it’s possible effects might be dormant without your knowledge, and you might be triggered by various things to enter Psycho-Land (as I like to call it). Psychotic bouts, that is. There’s both ICD and DSM codes for this happening in conjunction with substance abuse; most notable for LoF probably is ICD F10.5xx (alcohol-induced psychotic disorder). This can happen without a schizophrenic mind-set or genetic predisposition, but considering the game’s devs included a diagnostic list reminiscent of the ICD (the slip of paper I mentioned above) makes me pretty sure we, as players, are considered to accept we / the protagonist is schizophrenic.

This also means he might be, like, the most “unreliable narrator” possible. Unreliable narrators are a staple of horror narratives, but to potentially make the narrator schizo, too, is like making his unreliable narration extra-unreliable. Which makes a plot analysis supremely difficult, as it’s unclear what is really there, and what is happening in a psychotic state.

But. And this is the “interesting” I mentioned above:

We Schizos don’t go all fantasy. We receive sensory and mental inputs, and process it differently from “normal” types. We even have a name for said “normal types”, we call them Neurotypicals. Anyways, if the protagonist truly IS schizo, he won’t imagine the surroundings, e.g. the mansion. He‘ll re-interpret stimuli in a psychotic way, and might “overload” after a while, sometimes spectacularly so, but the basics of reality would still be valid:

Mansion: yup.
Lost family / wife / child / professional existence: yup.
Piano / violin / mementos / deer heads: yup.

This would also mean that the prologue bits would be, factually, “real” and “true”. There is a mansion, the pest exterminator letter is real, the old-fashioned kitchen is real, the piano is real (and it’s cover falling down due to the dude hammering on the keys), the notes are real, the medals are real, the running water in the bathroom is real. And so on.

But: after a while, imagination might build up, ideas turn into fact, fears into realities. All on the canvas of the real, so to say, but layered on top of it.

Oh.

[Desbreko]

You make some very good points here. I do understand that being a schizophrenic doesn't mean crazy hallucinations and the like portreyed through the game, if anything it's an overexaggaration, but can be interpreted moreso as a dream or a reoccuring nightmare which is implied by the multiple playthroughs needed to understand the game as a whole. After so many hours played and going through the story so many times it really feels this way, and i'm very in touch with my dreams as well (entirely unrelated sort of) but when experiencing a reoccuring dream or even nightmare things become very familiar and you look deeper at what's really going on beneath the surface rather than what you see at the very top.

The fact that it is implied that the narrator is a schizophrenic adds a lot to the premise of him being an unreliable narrator and indeed does make it that much harder to differentiate reality from fantasy. While it's seen to be the narrator filling out the slip for his wife, he ticks nearly every box there is on the paper but the bit about passion. This is why i prefer to look deeper into the symbolism of the game and the way the environment hints at almost the opposite of what the narrators recall suggests, leading me to believe that we're being told subconsciously what really happened.

The very end scene symbolizes a sort of baptism for the narrator, as once this is over he settles what's left at the checker board, but it's at this point that the narrator truly realizes what he's done, and he dips his head into the bath tub three times. After the final time, much like the scene with the mirror where the room gets reversed and we see a destroyed room in the reflection, the ceiling becomes a deteriorated version of the bathroom, implying the narrator has at the very least attempted to cleanse himself of the evil he's done.

[Midnight77]

I think that at the end of the game the 6 parts that were used are your own. The artist goes through enduring pain and self torture both physically and mentally through this journey to finally come through the other end. Ultimately he has achieved his masterpiece by truly becoming "immortal" because he has included his own body parts in the painting and came through the other end for himself by completing the portrait and coming to terms with his past and accepting them.

[micherre]

My interpretation of the plot is similar in many ways to some of those stated (read: I'm going to repeat a few things) but with a bit more emphasis on the wife.

Seeing as medals are found in more than one place in the house but a majority of them are in the drawer of his office, a place of significance, I'd like to suggest that he was in fact in the military.

The prosthetic has two possible explanations: it is either tied to the war or it is something from his childhood. The former is suggested by the finger episode where he explains it's 'much easier than sawing a leg,' something he may have had to do on the battle field at the time for a gunshot or shrapnel wound. The latter only has one tie which is the report card you find in the basement showing high marks in creative subjects and stating he is exempt from gym. I'm inclined toward the former.

He is alcoholic and shows clear signs of anger issues which can both possibly stem from PTSD. It could alternatively come from Schizophrenia (a checklist for it is found in the house, but judging by the answer to whether the person has trouble sleeping - i believe they wrote 'not sure' - this could possibly suggest it is the artist concerned about his wife as it is made clear she was aware of his trouble sleeping)

He is selfish and sees his wife as an object to be possessed because she is beautiful but in the wake of his artistic success, their unexpected pregnancy, and general nuptial bliss she interprets that romantically rather than psychotically. Because of the shopping center fire the wife becomes disfigured.

One thing that I have not seen discussed at all is her depression. It is alluded to and stated outright that either during or directly after her pregnancy, she begins suffering heavily from depression. I believe this did not stem from her husband, though he did exasperate it, based off of a note where she writes that playing 'used to help' but it not longer does suggesting this to be a long standing problem.

I think her self hatred and depression redirected at her husband when he cheats on her after the fire, depicted by the wife's angry spirit flinging a sketch, containing a provocative soundbite, against the wall. Less definitive proof is the perfume bottle which could perhaps point to self-deprecation rather than her speaking to someone else, but the first point stands.

This hatred gets more evident as her journal pages begin to speak more and more disturbingly of the painter, reaching a point where she describes her hope that the rats are real so they may eat his insides (or something to that end.) In conjunction, the soundbite in the molewoman room suggests that near the end she was intentionally goading him out of deep resentment. These two points coupled with another note she wrote writing about how worthless his painting is makes me consider that she may have actually written those extremely discouraging notes on the paintings critiquing them that partially contributed to his deterioration. If this is the case, there is a note from him writing that she denied ever leaving the notes on his paintings even though it's in her handwriting that makes it plausible that the Schizophrenia checklist was in fact for her.

The daughter was clearly displaying signs of deep mental disorder judging by her scribblings throughout the house.

If the painter was the one with schizophrenia then perhaps the wife's accusations of it being all his fault before taking her life was prompted by seeing the "evil" of the disorder in him manifest in the only child she knew she would ever be able to bear.

Concerning the speculations about the noise complaints: at both the beginning and end of the storyline we see the actual size of the house without his mental distortions. If you think about it its really a two bathroom, two bedroom, kitchen, art room and study with an unfinished attic and basement. Thats a pretty average suburban home that could easily sit on a quarter acre and have very directly adjacent neighbors.

How the deaths went is really where I get a little all over the place, so i'm stuck in the muck here with you guys.

People have seemed pretty sure that the dog died in a fire. I didn't see any evidence of this, in fact judging by some of the crayon depictions it seemed that the painter killed him directly. Please feel free to correct me if there was something directly linking it!

After the wife dies the daughter is taken away from the painter. In my opinion this happened for one of three reasons: if the dog didn't die in a fire, it may have been that (i feel this is discredited if it was a fire because that could be accidental, when he shaved her head for his paintbrush it may have been that, or lastly he could either have used the body parts from his wife directly from the tub or dug her out from the grave (kudos to previous commenter for this theory, i like it!) and then hid the body in the bricked up pantry with scented car trees hanging all over it in the final scene. Him working straight from the tub is suggested by the finger soundbite where he has to put it in the oven to dry it up.

Any which way, she's taken from him and he goes to retrieve her. I believe she was smothered to death because of both the carousel sequence and the child-sized rat that disintegrates from the daughter's bed in the checkers scene.

I won't outline the rat stuff because I think it was covered really well already and I agreed with all of it. All i'll reiterate from it is that the house is representative of his mental state. I think to most people this immediately suggests his was the one who had schizophrenia, but alternatively perhaps he was only suffering from PTSD and anger issues before the emotional and mental strain his wife put him through and eventually the trauma of her death and managing that guilt. Perhaps his house began to deteriorate in earnest when his wife began to get worse.

Lastly and most meta-ly, there is a divided letter found a little less than halfway into the game that describes a story his friend would like the painter to storyboard for him, one in which a boy goes on a long journey only to discover in the end that it's all a coping mechanism constructed by his mind to deal with a traumatic earlier experience and he is in fact drooling in an institution the whole time.
It is made clear that the police knew shortly after he kidnapped his daughter so with the knowledge that he killed her it is very likely that that letter tells us what happened to the painter after killing her.

That's about all :]

[micherre]

Korda, I considered that as well! My super alternative theory for this is one based on the idea that you can only take seriously what you see on notes or before the house begins to fall apart. In this version, the wife actually left him when he began to lose his mind and despite acting crazier and crazier, the wife has trouble getting custody because he makes so much more money than a disabled mother until he either kills the dog or shaves the daughter's head. In this theory everything else including imagining his wife's suicide is all a coping mechanism. The daughter may or may not die when she is abducted in this one, but all or a majority of the pieces collected for the painting would actually be from his own body.

I haven't spent much time looking for holes in this theory though so it could be totally non-feasible!

[Rufus]

My goodness, you guys wrote so many interesting theories that there's barely anything for me to add to this conversation. ;)

To begin with, for me the whole journey inside the house is in fact a battle in his head while he's sitting in the room and painting. The canvas didn't fulfilled itself in seconds, it was a long process while he was lost in thoughts.

I think doctors suspected that painter can suffer from schizofrenia, but he never really came to any kind of therapy, never was trated properly, because he thought that he's ok (I think one of the notes written by him suggested that the world gone mad, not him - not precisely in these words, but something like that). He could be diagnosed with something completely different or schizo + something else.

In my opinion wife killed herself without his physical help (only his verbal agression and abuse), and daughter is alive but taken from him forever because of him being unable to take care of her (and also for kidnapping her). It's early 1900's, perhaps 1920's, I'm not sure if he could get away with murder, especially with double murder. It collides a little with one of those endings - with the "happy" one, when he's respected painter once again. Or... or maybe it doesn't and he was caught? Last scene in gallery is probably many years later (barriers around painting, nothing more on the same wall).

Las but not least: did you notice that the globe has modern (about 2000's) borders? The rest of things in the house (except the house, obviously built earlier) make me pretty sure that action (memories?) takes place in 1920's because of phonograph, song played on it, photos and clothing, telephone design etc. A little travel in time or just dev's oversight?

[Aspyr-Blair]

We <3 this thread

[Igor]

After replaying this game I have found a locked safe in the checkers room(At the one moment in the part of the room where was situated gramophone opens a pass.The code is in the portrait in the bathroom).After a few minutes of looking for the code I finally have opened it, but it haven't contained a note or a "memory". A spinning top was in it.Well, I can't disagree with a statement that this game is having something in common with Inception. P.S. There is a door that couldn't be unlocked at the beginning of game (there is a blood on the floor near it) and in the end too. Have somebody found a key? What is in it?

[Desbreko]

This is fantastic, I love how much you've all added to this, and a few posts have even gotten me to think differently about this all.

Firstly I would like to say that i don't believe the narrator used his own body parts for the painting, as we can see his reflection time and time again and he's never missing any of the parts we see or hear about. The more I think about it, the more the "Grave robbing" scenario makes sense to me. He absolutely could've dug her back up and used her in that sense and hid her behind the brick wall. Now, that last part is what doesn't exactly fit for me. Sure, he may need to hide the body and the air fresheners definitely point to that, but being insane as he is you would think he'd go for more of a "Norman Baits" sort of approach, but then again she is horribly disfigured. The theory in which he's taken by the police after the murders is also VERY plausible and this letter definitely strongly suggests that this is all in the narrators head, lending it some gravity. Also while it isn't hinted at any further, the moment you see the painting of the dog and approach it as it bursts into flames does suggest it was a fire the dog died in, but it's never brought up again.

[nggalai]

Good evening everybody,

Originally posted by micherre:

Concerning the speculations about the noise complaints: at both the beginning and end of the storyline we see the actual size of the house without his mental distortions. If you think about it its really a two bathroom, two bedroom, kitchen, art room and study with an unfinished attic and basement. Thats a pretty average suburban home that could easily sit on a quarter acre and have very directly adjacent neighbors.

That’s actually a very good point. Assuming the prologue shows the protagonist’s “real” home, and only afterwards, the narrator gets proverbially unreliable, let’s look at the layout:

- Number of rooms as outlined by you
- Kitchen without windows, small larder, small broom cabinet on the first floor, locked up broom cabinet on the second floor
- piano in the hallway rather than in a second study or music room or whatever
- No traditional sitting room; couches and whatnot are also in the hallway
- No big-ass heating in the cellar, just the fireplaces (two IIRC) plus the kitchen’s oven, i.e. max. of two chimneys, rather old-ish building. The coal or wood storage would be behind the locked door in the cellar.

This could easily be part of a town-house, or as you said a suburban home. Going town-house, the main windows in the prologue then would point towards the block’s court, the famously locked door on the 2nd floor is either a bricked-up connection door to the flats nextdoors (hence we can’t open it), or just hiding another closet.

Which would imply there is no mansion. So, also, there would be neighbours able to complain about noise.

It’s interesting the protagonist apparently found his dead wife because he really, really needed to go to the loo. This, also, suggests the house they were living in was rather smallish – one bathroom, done. Does this sound like a mansion to you?

Originally posted by micherre:

People have seemed pretty sure that the dog died in a fire. I didn't see any evidence of this, in fact judging by some of the crayon depictions it seemed that the painter killed him directly. Please feel free to correct me if there was something directly linking it!

There’s the pseudo-hallucination where the quaint dog painting turns into a painting of a skelettal, crispy dog (and the puppy more like a piece of charcoal than anything else). It’s the scene with the dog barking. Some seem to believe this to be proof that there was a fire in the house / mansion, which possibly disfigured the wife (rather than the department store fire), but there’s not much to suggest the protagonist (or the wife?) didn’t kill the dog(s) himself by setting them on fire. The “not much”; well, the kid’s drawings feature fire imagery. But then, “unreliable narrator”. We have newspaper clippings about the department store fire, but nothing “hard” considering a fire in the house / mansion / wherever else. Only the drawings and the psychotic set-pieces.

I agree with you that the narrator filled in the schizophrenia list, possibly worrying about his wife. Also, I find it interesting how the wife’s handwriting deteriorates over the course of the game. This might be due to the burns, as hinted at during the “tried to play” note and the audio bit where he forbids her to play (when you find the violin), but handwriting and drawing style changing are some of the red flags psychiatrists look for when trying to diagnose schizophrenia. I think one of the best-known examples is English artist Louis Wain (e.g. his cat drawings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Wain#/media/File:Louis_wain_cats.png ) This would suggest that the wife, as well as the husband, was mentally ill or at least unstable. Did it result in suicide, or a murder the narrator rationalised as suicide during the psychotic bits of the game? There are strong hints, written hints rather than hallucinations, that the wife was depressed, i.e. suicide. Still, the handwriting thing strikes me as odd. Or oddly peculiar.

I remember a note where she wrote something on the lines of “I accept I need to care for my husband. He thinks me a monster, so I’ll give him a monster”. On the other hand, finding critical notes pinned to his paintings (and some, the “Black Lady”, set fire to) would so perfectly suit a schizo mindset on HIS part. Paranoid Schizophrenics make up a large part of diagnosed schizos (mainly because that’s the ones who have the highest chance of being found out by family or friends due to their antics), and the paranoids are THE main staple of schizos in both novel and film form.

Again, unreliable narrator problem. We’ll probably never know. Aspyr, I think we need a couple of DLCs. :D

Cheers,
-Sascha

[Desbreko]

The video is up everyone! Watch it here http://youtu.be/3s0Ds6dv_90

[Player-13]

Great thread, perhaps one of the most intelligent threads I have seen on steam. Yet amongst all this erudition there is one prominent painting that has not been mentioned. It is the painting of Zeus in the form of an eagle abducting Ganymede. This painting is most prominent in the central room of the house were you bring back the artifacts you have found and the painting of the artist's wife gradually takes form. Yet it also appears in many other places. I had thought it may have simply been a "copy and paste" for decoration with no particular meaning other than to present a dark mood. Yet as that "painting room" is so important, surely this painting's inclusion cannot simply be chance, neither that it appears in so many other locations. But I cannot think of any reason for this painting being as prominent as it is.

[Igor]

As I understand painting with the body's parts is sort of metaphor .There was already said that the memories of narrator are unreliable, maybe he actually wasn't creating the portrait with fingers and bones.After the"wife ending" we can't find this parts anywhere in the house, neither in the closet, moreover that is not his first attempt to make a masterpiece, he obviously had used more than ten fingers for that .This story remains me "the oval portrait" by Edgar Allan Poe. What if all those chopped things just symbolize that true art is created with a"life".Also both in the game and in the Poe's story the relationships between art and life are presented as a rivalry.In the story it is suggested that the woman s beauty condemns her to death and in the game conflict is builded on losing young painter s wife this beauty.

[nggalai]

’ning everybody,

Haha, @Desbreko, suiting video. Cheers. :D I like how you focus on self-actualisation, and how the analysis weaves sort of around it. IIRC the concept started to become popular around the early to mid 20th century, so it’s not only thematically suiting, but also style-wise, so to say, in the context of the game itself.

(Also, I enjoy cussing on YouTube way too much for my own good, so, yeah. Well done!)

@Buratino, Desbreko touches on the painting you mention in the video, too – albeit I don’t know whether planned, or whether it was a spur of the moment thing. ;) I was wondering about that Rembrandt, too, I must admit. It’s one of the two paintings you see in the very very first room in the game, after all. Desbreko implies it might signify the authorities / the state “abducting” the protagonist’s kid; i.e. the social services stepping in. As that topic turns up later in both newspaper clippings as well as the makeshift brush itself, I guess this would qualify as taking a high-priority slot in the prota’s mind.

This way, you’d have the abusive family situation in one painting, social services stepping in just opposite it. As said, that’s in the very very first room of the prologue, so, obviously a key element. I NOW wonder whether losing the kid, his family, was the main thing that triggered (t)his bout of psychosis and drove the plot itself forward. Which would make the Wife+Child ending the desirable ending for this game, restoring his wife a red herring plot device (hence the loop), the being-a-great-artist ending a self-absorbed fake-out option.

@I do not smoke a pipe, good find with the Poe short! Will have to re-read it, but your summary sounds spot-on, like something the devs might have had in mind.

Cheers,
-Sascha

[Desbreko]

This thread makes me very happy! You are all fantastic people lol

Also, I've mentioned the painting of the child being taken by an eagle a few times. I only mention it momentarily in my video though, it is very foreshadowing.