Discussion about the ending(s) (SPOILER)

[DOOOODGE]

So, I bought this game and "devoured" it, to the end and I want to discuss with you guys about the final scenario.
For this reason, please don't read any further as this thread is a huge spoiler.


As who reached the end of the game may know, we have to choose between staying and letting Amy go or escaping.

I did not play the previous chapters of the game, so here's what I've understood from this game only: Amy was 11 y.o. when she disappeared, and all the suspects ended on that Mr. Bones, who was accused as her kidnapper. The truth is, Amy was an evil child, who managed to summon an army of dark beings, called "dark fall". She willingly did that and accepted them as her "angels". I don't know what happened to her, if her ghost is the real Amy, or if her soul was devoured and the Amy we see in this game is just the dark fall attempting to "eat" the inspector as well. The inspector is full of guild for not being able to find Amy after all those years, and for having killed Mr. Bones out of anger because he was sure he was the one behind Amy's disappearance.
The ending where we decide to stay shows an inspector that realizes Amy fooled him and got "eaten" by the Dark Fall, while the other one shows an inspector that was in some sort of surgery table, trying to come back to life. What I think happened is that it was all some "grip" the Dark Fall had on the inspector. Should we choose to stay in lieu of Amy, the Dark Fall eats us, should we decide to leave, the doctors are able to save us, and, symbolically, it means the inspector is finally ready to let Amy go and give up on his obsessive research of that child.

However, i think the first ending (the one where we get eaten by the Dark Fall) is not the death of the inspector. If you've been in room 2A, you'll see a shadow of a crying man that answers with moans to every question besides the one regarding Amy, that leads to him attacking the inspector. I think that shadow is ECHO, a.k.a. the inspector himself, who was able to go back after being "eaten" (and imbued) by the Dark Fall's power, and tried to use this power to help his past self exiting the Dark Fall's grip.

[ELiN0R]

I think if you are eaten by the Dark Fall, you are dead. But your soul can't move on, it stays in some kind of limbo where you are confused and tortured until someone sets you free. Just as Andrew for example - he has "disappeared" at the end of the 40's, but still wandering the Hotel.
If you loved the story and want to know more about it, play "Dark Fall - The Journal". It's the first Dark Fall game and the story is conencted to Lost Souls. It's played in the same Hotel. So please do yourself a favor and play/buy it as soon as possible, I don't want to spoil it for you.

[Primal Fear]

I suppose these angels Mr.Bones was talking about are not the Dark Fall, they are these ghost (lost souls) you meet during the game.
You really should play The Journal for more informations about it and more background what happened in the Station Hotel (this part has nothing to do with Amy or the Inspector), you will surely like it.

Also I think that the Dark Fall isn't even active during Lost Souls, you learn about signs of it in The Journal and I don't remember any of them.
About the Inspector I'm sure that he committed suicide at the beginning of the game using the pills and the alcohol in the inventory. So you play all the time as his ghost/his disembodied soul. This guts like thing in the toilets where you talk to Amy's mother (an effigy of the inspectors guilt?) is the one of Inspector, like the other ghost in the Hotel have one too. During the game they try in a hospital to bring the Inspector back to life (the video sequence) and if you decide at the end to go away, they will be successful. If you with Amy, the Inspector finally dies and joins Amy's angels.

[ELiN0R]

Besides fans should definitely read this:
http://web.archive.org/web/20111011010917/http://justadventure.com/articles/The12DaysOfDarkFall/12DaysDarkFall.shtm

[DOOOODGE]

Originally posted by Primal Fear:

I suppose these angels Mr.Bones was talking about are not the Dark Fall, they are these ghost (lost souls) you meet during the game.

I'm not sure about this one, because, in room 3F, when you listen to the tape, Mr. Bones clearly says that Amy's angels "came in a dark light" as of somthing that has been summoned by her when she called out for them.

I suppose the whole "inspector suiciding with an alchool+chlorazyne mix because of guilt" part is true, but it kinda clashes with the fact he interacts with other ghosts trapped in the hotel (ghot of people whose past was in the hotel, how can they inhabit an hallucination?)... And it doesn't explain the identity of room 2A's inhabitant.

[Mrs Pink]

I think the inspector was trapped in some sort of purgatory in which he fought his conscience and met the other lost souls, eventually freeing them.

[sharondornhoff]

If you've seen the episode of "Sapphire and Steel" that inspired a LOT of Boakes' work, another explanation for what's happening to the Inspector practically screams out at you.

In "Assignment 2", the dark force that haunts the abandoned train station feeds off the bitter regrets and resentments of dead humans. If the Inspector murdered Mr. Bones in the territory of the Dark Fall entity, then it may have singled him out as a potential food source, sensing the burden of regret and self-hatred that he carries for messing up the search for Amy. When the Inspector overdoses on alcohol and pills - maybe intentionally, maybe out of a subconscious death wish - and is on the brink of death in a nearby emergency room, the Dark Fall invades his unconscious mind to put him through hell, the better to amp up his regrets in preparation for leeching off him after he dies. Only by putting that burden of regret aside can the Inspector pull through, hence his need to say he *won't* stay behind in Amy's place. The hints that Amy was actually an evil little creep are the Inspector's own survival-instincts fighting back, trying to persuade him that she's not worth giving up on himself over. Echo's taunts are his death wish, urging him to wallow in his guilt and self-loathing on the hungry Dark Fall's behalf.

Note that the other ghosts whose histories we learn - Verney, Fly, the Sly Fox - all died with a comparable burden of regret, failure, and self-loathing to what the Inspector is laboring under as he struggles to deal with the Station's horrors. Even Mr. Bones was most likely very bitter about his murder and persecution, and may have regretted that *he* hadn't been able to help Amy or that he'd fostered her interest in the occult. Likewise, if the letter at the station's ticket office is any indication, the Station Manager whose ghost appears near the start was an embittered, sour old fellow at the time Dowerton was shut down. It's hard to say for sure if the "ghost Amy" that the Inspector meets is the actual Amy, haunting his dying dreams on the Dark Fall's orders, or a construct that it created in her image to taunt him, but either way she certainly seems to be provoking him to greater and greater levels of regret and despair. Which is exactly what the DF entity wants.

[Smiler O'Rocker]

Any thoughts on the ghost Amy not looking like the missing poster Amy?