Story Discussion (Ending Spoilers)

[jyakimow]

Just finished my first play-through. Did not run into any of the issues people are talking about, incidentally. Had one bug where a forcefield didn't reset on respawn, reloading from checkpoint took care of that. Otherwise, smooth-sailing.

Wondering if there's any thoughts on the story. When I saw the trailer/opening, I was reminded somewhat of Warhammer and its concept of the Chaos Wastes - a wasteland where reality is broken and ruled by hateful gods. Inner Chains looked like 'a day in the life of the average mook in the Chaos Wastes' - wandering around hideous mutated landscapes, dodging crazy cultists and awful monsters...

I didn't gather all of the Letters, so those murals were a little hazy, but what I did get translated was all pseudo-religious babble that just seemed creepy and nonsensical. There was mention of an 'ark' - possibly the colossal tower seen throughout?

The opening suggested a much larger world with all manner of different cults and strange societies - I was especially weirded out with the scuba-diving-suited/gas-mask pilgrims staggering en mass into the beached ship. The narrator spoke of Hydra, seemingly a collection of hostile god-like entities that might have actually been created by mortals somehow - I wonder if the final boss was one of them, and its demise shattered the 'ark'-tower?

Anyone translated any more of the murals and have a bit more insight?

[Mostly Harmless]

I got the impression that "Hydra" was a euphemism for organized religion. The translated murals seem pretty consistent with this, as most of them are just "religious babble". I did get a few plot points from them, though.

Your character is possibly a priest of an alternative religion to the one the cultists worship; one of the murals talks about imprisoning the priests of "alien shrines" inside a special tomb, which matches up with you starting the game by waking up busting out of a coffin inside a crypt.

The murals talk about a class divide between the Ruling Caste (the dudes in masks) and the Slaves. The Slaves seem to follow the Ruling Caste for the promise of eternal resurrection, but the Ruling Caste actually reward them with "quick and painless termination on the Ark of the Covenant".

The cult worships a Madonna-like figure known as the Lady (the final boss). She's a prophet-like figure, not the actual god, who seems to be a monotheistic figure akin to the Christian God. Anyway, the cult forbids and puinishes female magic other than the Lady since she does not tolerate competitors to her power. This seems to tie in to the scenes in the opening movie of a woman being burned as a witch, and the later scene of a woman seemingly using some kind of magic to sucide-bomb a cult gathering.

However, the ending narration added by the latest patch says the Lady was an imposter and a tyrant and not really the Madonna-like figure from the cult's murals (it's hard to tell if they're saying the murals are a complete lie or if there was a real Madonna whose identity the Lady assumed). The tower blowing up at the end seems to signal an end to her "instruments of torture" of the Slaves.

[that's what she said]

Just trowing in my two cents: Tower IS the Ark of Covenant and 'the only salvation', whatever the hell this thing is. Before they were using the beached ship-like structure, now it's 'tower' that looks like rocket (the one that crashed the moon, probably in failed attempt to leave the dying earth millenia ago, which actually led to earth being destroyed completely)
Intro movie shows evolution of Inner Chains world, how humanity evolves, but keep their 'inner chains'. I'm fairly sure it isn't exactly shows 'religion', but 'religion-like' beliefs that were used to control people. And it kept repeating itself - power-hungry 'leaders' lead their people to 'salvation' which is nothing but death. Hell, they even force incest to keep slaves segregated (no matter what 'mutations and variants' will be in results). It comes that far that they are using slaves infants as 'healing for the body and soul by dashing them at the rocks', which is shown in intro video too - they use infants for their crap and woman explodes then in rebellion. Also shows that they have remnants of technology from long lost era, but now it's considered magic. Yeah, Warhammer-like.
I think it's an allegory for society itself - we evolve, but keep those 'chains' that are destroying us, ties that bind us.

And then the world burns and some dark crap grows and infects the planet (which is clearly artificial in nature since it's very structured and fills the gaps in ancient ruins, or more like 'restructure' organics and non-organics, some sort of nano-machines probably). And ages after, in this post-apocalyptic world, you are reborn as a simple slave (otherwise masked ones would have you killed on sight as it's said in murals), the new prophet and the new lord. Humanity is in ruins and thrown back to tribal era.

[Stressedorchid]

I want Inner Chains 2 with triple A improvment