Ending Discussion *SPOILERS*

[Kardelen]

A game like this needs a discussion thread, so here it goes.

I read multiple theories online but what I believe happened is that Martha never existed. Giulia could not deal with the trauma her mother caused (beating her with a cane and feeding her the family dog) and created a second personality who cannot talk and hear to deal with it. During the confrontation scene that ends with the shooting, her mother insuniates that 'Martha' supposed to be a temporary thing that Giulia should have left in her childhood.

I believe that she was really pregnant (miscarried) and the guilt of it caused her to snap. She was by the lake in her underwear, not because she tried to save Martha fron drowning but because she wanted to show her belly to her mother. In the first puppet interpretation we see that all the options lead Martha to get undress to show her belly but she was shown in her clothes when she drowned. Another hint that they are the same person.

Some theories suggested that the events of the game did not happen and Giulia was in the asylum all throughout the game but I beg to differ. I believe that she was pregnant and killed her mother. She was hospitalized after the killing and possibly during the bombings like she remembered. But I am not sure if the events with her father really happened. I am also not sure what happened to Nanny and Lapo.

I believe The White Lady was also a retelling of her story. She even looks like Giulia.

I love to hear other theories and hints that I missed!

[Steve]

Hey Kardelen,
I think you are right to have a discussion thread, but could you hide them?

Like this

Just in case someone accidentally pops in here.

[Kardelen]

Originally posted by Steve:

Hey Kardelen,
I think you are right to have a discussion thread, but could you hide them?

Like this

Just in case someone accidentally pops in here.

Done!

[Klappspaten]

I for one have to congratulate the game and its makers. Usually, I can make pretty satisfying deductions to know what's what. In this case, nope. No such luck.
Literally no freaking idea what's real and what's not. I'm honestly not sure if I like that.

I believe you're on the right track because that's what I gravitate towards, too, but what do I know.

[Wired Matthew]

Oooh gonna be watching this with interest!
Love a good discussion / theorycrafting thread!

[Klappspaten]

And here the devs come to laugh at the misery of our ignorance. lmao

Btw, devs. You did good. Great game imo

[Wired Matthew]

Honestly we aren't that cruel!

There's a lot of interpretation as to who Martha was, how she died and indeed the progression of time / events related to Giulias story - this was by design form Luca in particular.

The actual 'story' if you will is the emotional reaction to losing someone or something important to you and how people can react and give it context within their own worlds - this might be a person, an expression of self, a loved one or hell even a treasured possession.

The actual Giulia / Martha story? That's all up to how you want to perceive it!

[LamNot]

The only thing bothering me is that the photo of Martha with 2 headed baby on her chest .
Photo don't lie, do they?

For now, I have no idea what's real and what's not.

[unreal_rik]

Originally posted by LamNot:

The only thing bothering me is that the photo of Martha with 2 headed baby on her chest .
Photo don't lie, do they?

For now, I have no idea what's real and what's not.

But who has seen that photo except Giulia? I think the whole game we play is how Giulia remembers events happening before her incarceration into the mental asylum. There's some truth and some facts which is depicted as how she wants to remember it. The two headed baby never existed (imo).

I also want to share a few things about the story.

The only person who saw Giulia for what she was Lapo. This is evident in Lapo's letter. He knew about her split personality and still loved her.

There were many traumatic incidents that happened to her. In her childhood she was abused by her mother, in her youth she lost Lapo and miscarried her child. I also think the whole scene with the German soldiers brutally assaulting her actually did happen, that explains her stitched up lips in the epilogue cutscene.

[LamNot]

Originally posted by unreal_rik:

Originally posted by LamNot:

The only thing bothering me is that the photo of Martha with 2 headed baby on her chest .
Photo don't lie, do they?

For now, I have no idea what's real and what's not.

But who has seen that photo except Giulia? I think the whole game we play is how Giulia remembers events happening before her incarceration into the mental asylum. There's some truth and some facts which is depicted as how she wants to remember it. The two headed baby never existed (imo).

I also want to share a few things about the story.

The only person who saw Giulia for what she was Lapo. This is evident in Lapo's letter. He knew about her split personality and still loved her.

There were many traumatic incidents that happened to her. In her childhood she was abused by her mother, in her youth she lost Lapo and miscarried her child. I also think the whole scene with the German soldiers brutally assaulting her actually did happen, that explains her stitched up lips in the epilogue cutscene.

I agree with you. The baby was just like telling us there are 2 heads in 1 body.

[Wolfie]

Just finished it and loved it.

One immediate question - does anyone know why her parents allowed two beds in the villa if they knew Martha was a delusion?

The only explanation I have is that they did not allow two beds and Giulia imagined the twin beds, like a lot of other stuff she imagined.

My own personal interpretation is that the villa happened but we were reliving a memory of it (hence false things like two beds). But before being put in the asylum she did indeed live at the villa. She was pregnant (likely from Lapo) and the miscarriage caused her to snap/relapse and imagine Martha again and reinvent the past to avoid the trauma of the miscarriage.

Does anyone know what she was talking about at the end when she went to the church? Something about betrayinhg Lapo and the deaths of people?

I also liked the fact that we got to choose whether X died or not at the end sat down. It seemed to me it was a way for the player to express their own interpretation of the story. Whether Lapo was real, whether her parents were murdered etc. Seemed to be totally up to us, which is great.

I had 82% flash up at the end, I assume this is just because I did not finish all side quests?

[Klappspaten]

I don't wanna mislead the thread the OP started but I thought about the game a bit. Especially after what Matthew wrote. So I'll go a bit "meta" on the game, since I feel the need to leave my ramblings somewhere and apologize in advance for a wall of text lol

I kind of stopped asking myself what's real and what isn't because I think this game offers more interesting questions.
One question I asked myself after is why do I like this game so much, especially in retrospect.
And there are basically 3 main reasons for it, besides really good graphics, good italian voice performances and all that "technical" jazz:

1. It treats me like an adult, not an idiot.
And I'm not speaking gore here. I mean it doesn't sugarcoat, it doesn't serve answers on a silver platter, it doesn't go all kid cartoon "what is the moral lesson of today" on me.
It's all about: So here's a story. Now go reflect on it.
Even games that are officially meant for adult audiences are generally dumb. Take CoD for example. It's about shooty-shooty bang-bang, racking up kills with 360 no scoping etc. That is fun, even I like it. But it isn't smart.
Martha Is Dead doesn't do that. It's probably even more about introspection than the story itself (or not, depending on what is really happening in your opinion). Most "walking simulators" do that almost by design and I like it. Which doesn't mean I'm trying to sell the game short because it is "just" a walking simulator. It's richer than that but it shares that same quality.
I'm not a child anymore. Games are welcome to "challenge" me.


2. If it is a metaphor - It works!
I love movies, games, books that do exactly that.

Take Godzilla.
There you have a giant, Tokyo destroying metaphor for the atomic bomb. Or just a huge monster throwing a fit.
Take Pan's Labyrinth. (One of my favorite movies)
There you have a girl socializing with a mythological creature during Franco's reign. Or a girl that just went nuts and loses herself in fantasies. Who knows.

And speaking of Pan's Labyrinth, so, here in Martha Is Dead are twins. One may be bad/guilty. One is mute, the other speaks. One is dead, the other alive etc. Hell, one of them might not even exist.
So themes like identity, good vs. evil, nature vs. nurture, freedom vs. control all come into play here.
So, guess who may be just as conflicted as Martha/Giulia?

Italy in 1944.

I won't go into history lessons here but Giulia's story reflects Italy's story at that time in many ways. Victim or perpetrator - or something in between? You decide.
Did you finish Lapo's mission and helped the Toskani resistance or not?


3. The game nails its theme in all the little details.
You can dismiss pumping up the wheel of the bike as meaningless busywork, sure. The game's teaching you that you can ride a bike now. But maybe it also means something in context of it all? What use is a broken chariot after all?
Taking pictures and developing them might be tedious to you (I loved it, actually), especially if you have to run back and forth for it. But what are you doing? Everytime you snap a shot you try to capture reality as proof of some thing or a moment. If there is a ghost on the picture does that mean it's real?
Why did that raven kill the little birdy? And why is it important to Giulia to give it in Martha's care? Why is Giulia's door closed? Why are the faces of others rarely ever shown?
So many questions...


Alll in all I had quite a ride with this game. So, to not bore anyone further with my sermons, I'll leave with one of the most interesting questions one could ask, other than what is real? Without adding any context:

Would you judge her?

[LamNot]

Okay I got it.
I won't state any details here, but some would understand this theory.

Martha is NEVER DEAD in Martha Is Dead. We, the players, are Giulia. We are just a doll Martha is playing. All of the QTEs explain this. We had no choice, but obey the orders. Finally, Martha grins at last because now she had been always and will be the victim of all of this. And we are Giulia, who killed her mother. (in reality, Martha killed her mother. Which is explained by the "black-out" when you are holding a gun. this is also telling us Martha was never dead.

Am I on the right path to the truth, devs?

[JinxTheWorld]

Hmm, i think the key detail is during the puppet show. The mother was shown to give birth to only one child. I found that odd. Shouldn't there have been 2 children being depicted? The mother was most likely abusive and caring. The child was called Giulia and after the abusive treatment of the mother, giulia created "Martha". The one who does not speak. The rest is quite hard to discern due to the multiple choices you can select at the end.

Another key detail is the medicine the mother is using. Perhaps to keep her mentally stable.

1. Giulia was shot after finding Lapo dead in the forest. Note where she was shot. In the belly. Meaning a potential miscarriage.

2. The puppet show indicates there was only "one" child, and not two.

3. The puppet show indicates the mother was both abusive and caring. Perhaps a bipolar disorder. The medicine could be to help control it.

4. During the puppet show we are also told that Erich was never around when the mother exclaimed such when punishing Giulia in the kitchen. This is potentially where Giulia potentially "snapped".

5. Where the puppet show ends is where i think Giulia had been sent to the mental hospital initially. After good behavior she was released, and sent home. However she was barely stable. Later during the war she most likely killed the mother when she was to be sent back to the asylum due to showing unstable mental issues once again. Lapo dying and then getting shot causing the miscarriage was the cause of the mental breakdown. This is also where the game gets very murky and also where is starts to get far harder to discern what is real and what is not.

Overall a lot can be interpreted several different ways, as the game is left for an individual to come to their own conclusion. There probably isn't a definitive story as it was designed with a loose interpretation in mind. The ending of the game reinforces that.

Game story was good, the games performance was kinda bad, but overall i enjoyed the experience.

[ori Rx]

My view is that Martha and Giulia are the same person. I think she learned to be Martha with her mother but could be Giulia with her father by using her voice with him.
I plan to re-play and pay more attention using the information of the ending to see if the following is an even half-plausible theory:
Was Martha/Giulia sexually abused, and was it the father? The idea had not come to mind until the end where she narrates that she was a chronic masturbator to the point of injury and or self harm. Typically this is seen in children who suffered abuse and neglect, but I think it's more likely to occur in females if the abuse was sexual in nature. I feel that the masturbation addition came out of nowhere and must have some deeper relevance.
I am offering the father as the perpetrator because of the deformed fetus. The game mentions twins being hereditary and a father-daughter gene would greatly increase the chances and obviously increase potential deformities.
You could also surmise that the mother knew about the child sexual abuse and that could have led to her hatred of the daughter, though I did not get any sense she had animosity because of the father.

I'm just throwing this out there.

[Wolfie]

Originally posted by ori:

My view is that Martha and Giulia are the same person. I think she learned to be Martha with her mother but could be Giulia with her father by using her voice with him.
I plan to re-play and pay more attention using the information of the ending to see if the following is an even half-plausible theory:
Was Martha/Giulia sexually abused, and was it the father? The idea had not come to mind until the end where she narrates that she was a chronic masturbator to the point of injury and or self harm. Typically this is seen in children who suffered abuse and neglect, but I think it's more likely to occur in females if the abuse was sexual in nature. I feel that the masturbation addition came out of nowhere and must have some deeper relevance.
I am offering the father as the perpetrator because of the deformed fetus. The game mentions twins being hereditary and a father-daughter gene would greatly increase the chances and obviously increase potential deformities.
You could also surmise that the mother knew about the child sexual abuse and that could have led to her hatred of the daughter, though I did not get any sense she had animosity because of the father.

I'm just throwing this out there.

Jesus, just when I thought I had considered everything you threw that one out there. The worst thing is that it makes sense. He abused her, but the mother did not necessarily know about it (or repressed it) and instead was jealous of the affection and attention the father gave Guilia instead of her so took her frustrations out on Guilia. No wonder she is a mess!

Ugh.