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From what I can understand from the combination of what the queen is pantomiming and from the murals you can access with your sword, the race of people that the player character comes from left their home planet for some unknown reason. Either it was dying, running out of power, there was some kind of calamity, etc, I'm not 100% sure. They left their home or planet and had a colony ship travel to a new planet. It appears they crash landed there and started taking over and colonizing the planet, turning it into a giant machine, incorporating nature and technology. However, it appears there was already a native species there.
The native species either felt like or knew they were being invaded and saw the reconstruction of the planet into a machine as either heresy or destruction of the natural order. The native species fought back and created the corruption to attack the machine people, destroying a vast majority of their colonizing opperation and halting any further progress.
During that time machine sentinels were sent out to find individuals with the ability to combat the corruption. This has failed many times before, as is evidenced by the fact that there are all of those ancient, rusted husks around with sword fragments.
There was even a case before where a selected champion joined with the native forces to serve their queen rather than fight to eliminate her. So the two endings are kind of a grey area. On the one hand you have the supposed "good" ending, where you fight the corruption and release the remaining colonists to finish converting the planet, and everything looks green and happy.
Then there is the "bad" ending, where you decide to join forces with the "dark" queen and your robot companion goes looking for another champion to combat the corruption. Personally I have a hard time deciding between the two endings as to which one is the actual "good" ending.
On the one hand you have a native species who is fighting back against unnatural invaders trying to defend their home and be at peace with nature, whearas on the other hand you have a technologically advanced species fleeing their home, either because of natural causes or destruction of their own creation, to find a new home. Either to learn from their mistakes and become closer to what they feel like symbiosis with nature should be, or just to recreate the world to what they knew from their original home.
I think both endings have a lot of merit and reasons to go with either one and I found the entire game to be really awesome for the price and considering I had never heard of it before stumbling across it on one of the let's play channels I frequent. For an Indie game I have never heard of before I felt like the entire thing was fantastic.
I never looked at Hob's race as the invaders. =O
You opened my eyes! I never saw my char as the invader but as a saviour. Wow your post is great!!
I TOTALLY missed all the lore rooms on my first play through. That being said, I went with the queen but I felt tricked. She was the only enemy to have an expressive human-esq face. As opposed to the more monstrous enemies and mutants caused by the purple goo she was people! She also saves Hob when she didn’t have to, then seems to explain and reason her existence and then again, without necessity she sues for peace. I was taken off guard and took an outstretched hand of friendship. But I immediately regretted my decision when I saw the result.
Granted, the 'blight' with the Queen seemingly awakened and now in control looks more solid, crystalline, and less wild and monstrous but still... I felt tricked by her soft looks and kind actions.
It looks to me like she either crash landed there and shattered, or the incoming Hob colony ship shattered her, hints all of the dragon flies hanging around her at the end and you finding them on those pink-purple crystals that look like they came from her. Either way in the end it seems like she too is terraforming the planet mutating the creatures, creating crystal structures, and making it livable for her and others like her. The Hobs likewise are terraformers, mechanizing the planet for their own use… I gotta say now that I have seen both, I still think I would choose the Pro-Hob ending, they preserve nature and steward it, making sure habitats and species remain intact, if also seperated, while taking what they need, and I see no issue with that.
They weren't colonizing or terraforming, they packed up their people into tombs, transferred their habitats and wildlife underground and booked it to the next star system over with what little energy they had left when their sun went dark.
Also this might explain why one murals is called awakening and not transformation, they are starting up the machines after the long ride in space. Also why all the Hobs are asleep and not just massacred and/or changed by the purple blight.
Which begs the question. Is the Queen a stowaway? Did she come from a dwarf planet orbiting this system or something? She seems to pantimime some kind of impact and breakage in her explination so either she collided with planet Hob or Planet Hob collided with her.
Food for thought.
Should this go in another thread? like one more focused on the murals?
PS: I think the Queen is called Whalla (Or Walla) In the mural room Catastorphie you hear "Walla!" in a deeper more sinister voice when the blight shows up on the mural. And then when the Queen saves you she gestures at herself and says "Walla."
What really sticks out to me is:
I'm really not certain the purple stuff is straight-up "evil" here. It seems like they're just trying to survive, like the Exodus race did, and their leader helps you and even saves your life.
Yeah, that is the big reason why I went with the queen in the first place. This is a very non-malicious act and one that seems to be borne out of genuine reason and good will.
The seemingly reactive nature of the purple ooze tentacles and the wild nature of the hostile beasts kind of lent itself to idea of worker bees or warrior bees without a queen. Like the path had to be open and someone had to gather the dragonflies (they seem very significant)
The enemies with shield and spears, I thought maybe those were infected animals, the tall ones being like the big giraffe creatures, the smaller ones obviously the smaller creatures. Maybe they are the beasts that got touched by the same spores that got "One eye" from the comic and you from the intro, but the beasts were too primitive to make a decent "Worker Bee" so they became cave man like warriors instead.
There is a lot that is left up in the air and lot we have to try to figure out for ourselves, but I certainly agree on the point that the Queen doesn't seem inherently "evil" just a different kind of creature trying to survive.
So, here is my theory: I do believe that actually we have three factions: The androids, the corruption and the mixture of both races. If you notice the last structure we climb, it seems to be a palace, government council or sit of power where the androids rule. You have three of them, apparently trapped, and in a same typical kind of seat, you see the Cocoon of the Queen. So I think the Queen was actually one of you (an android), got corrupted but emerged as something different. The same thing happened to her bodyguard and now you are offered the same deal. When the credits role, while the world is still "corrupted" it has a kinder vibe to me, and whereas everyone implies the android is searching for another chosen blade to purge the corruption forever, I want to believe that what he sees in there is not another warrior but all of the other androids that come out in the other ending. That is why I feel he is rushing to open the door.
Anyway, those are my two cents. Kind of love that a game makes me think over the ending so much. While I see why many chose the purge there are too many inconsistencies with the queen and the "corrupted" bodyguard, mainly why would they help you destroy them. Of course I believe my theory has holes in it too.
I think the key to the mistery might be to decipher the lore caves spread thorughout the world with your sword.
That being said, what is the real story?
But the gist I think is pretty well explained, as many people have converged on similar ideas. The first two lore rooms show the Hobs loading up on their tower, towed by 3 ships (probably also carrying Hobs), leaving their planet and coming to a new one. The third one shows them build up their technology and buildings on the new planet around the tower they brought. The fourth one shows the appearance of the queen. It's unclear if she comes in a spaceship or if she simply takes over the tower the Hobs built. But you can see in the fourth mural the corruption spreads (the left things look like the tentacles / spines surrounding the one-eyed thing at the center of each corrupted area), and the Hobs push their workshops and structures underground to protect them. The fifth mural is the siege, where we once again see the corruption on the left, and what look like cannons (or some sort of technological weapon) on the right, depicting the fight between the corruption and the robots.
One interesting point though, is that although the queen takes over the tower and the seat of one of the three Elder Hobs, she doesn't kill the two incapacitated Elder Hobs, which she can easily do. She also saves the protagonist Hob when he is accidentally poisoned. When she talks to you, you can see both a sense of helplessness in her face at some points, and angry frustration at others. She's also appears to be apologetic and remorseful. What the conversation seems to be is that she's saying "We're sorry for any harm we're inadvertently doing, but we are just trying to coexist. These Elder Hobs want to exterminate us! Please, will you work with us to find a common path forward?" So the queen is very peaceful, despite the fact that her species is poisonous to the Hobs. I think she understands the Hobs' predicament and she's just trying to find some sort of compromise, but the Elders aren't playing ball.
I think the Elders are somewhat rightly afraid, because the queen's species is toxic to them, and not all of the corruption species are sentient enough to contain their toxicity. But the queen just wants her children to live. The trophy for the ending where you side with her is "The Greatest Gift", which is a reference to the story of the same name, and refers to the gift of life - in other words, you have decided to allow them to coexist with you, and that's a good thing. On the other hand, the reference of the other ending, "The Great Purge", is quite negative suggesting that this is the bad ending.
I think the sprites could be native because they are not at all center stage in any of the murals. It would seem if they were the core species as some others suggest, there would be some indication of them on the 'Exodus' mural. I'm not really sure what the deal with them is though. Maybe they've allied with the Hobs, and are powerful enough to provide natural power sources to power the dying robots (see the comic) and for the Titan. They're also highly intelligent, as the Mother knows about the titan cores, and the younger ones understand and help the robots. And they don't seem to hide with the Hobs and robots, but instead teleport around. They behave almost like birds in their native environment, scattering when there's danger, swarming back in when the danger is gone, so they could perhaps be native to the planet.
But on the other hand, if they are natives they don't seem to care that the Hobs have come to their world and massively altered it. Perhaps they can more readily coexist with the Hobs, who incorporate both machines and nature, and not so much with the queen's species. It's also strange that their design is a mix of natural and mechanical / digital, but they don't seem to have any technology of their own, which they would have if they were native. And based on the loading screens they really seem to like those movable power-charged boxes. So maybe they are just another technology built by the Hobs, like their robots, and that's why we don't see them highlighted in the murals. In any case, these guys are the most mysterious of the bunch.
The ogres are definitely native. They don't seem smart enough to build space ships, and they are not part of the queen's faction. If you let them wander close to the purple spines, they will get attacked by the spines, suggesting the two are not the same faction. I don't mean spines trying to attack the player and missing. Try to get one of the geared enemies to move near the spines on its own, and you'll see that they will get attacked. It seems they are low-intelligence native life that has picked up spare parts made by the Hobs and use them as armor.
There seems to be quite a lot of evidence in support of the former. The archives show the corruption popping up after all of the buildings were built, and the palace has the corruption spreading over the elders, who were already seated.
Nice comparison between the sprites and birds. It's really unfortunate that Runic is no more, but maybe a former developer can now give us some insight? Maybe?