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Currently I'm being REALLY hard on myself for having been so stupid. I feel like I've ruined my life for not compensating better, that I've only been an embarrassment and an irritant to everyone I tried to clumsily approach earlier, and I apparently have no redeeming qualities for anyone to forgive me after decades of loneliness. I'm apparently a horrible monster and I spend the days punishing myself. At my worst, I don't think I should be alive. What's the point? I've wasted it.
The game, is EXACTLY about these feelings.
(Don't worry, I'm seeing people)
---------- The ending Explained ------------
The game really does a good job at explaining itself and not be vague, but for those who haven't figured it out yet:
The Casino isn't real. None of it is. It's all a head trip. Memories and an illusion both. There was a Casino called "The Sexy Brutale" decades ago, but it burned down some 40 years ago, killing all its guests. Not only did it burn down, but the fire was set by the Casino's owner: the "marquis" Lucas Bondes in an insurance scheme. Rather than this being murder however, Lucas never intended things to turn out the way they did. He wanted the guests to be safely evacuated, but a mistake he made on the timing mechanisms of the incendiary bombs, means they went off early, with everyone inside.
Lucas Bondes was ironically the only survivor after he leapt out the window of the clocktower, in what is at least a 3-4 foot story fall. He was hospitalized, then imprisoned for his crimes and likely only set free recently,. This is where the game begins.
Lucas is riddled with guilt. The Sexy Brutale we're seeing in the game, is the embodiment of that guilt. The memory of him killing everyone that day, is extremely painful to him and he forces himself to relive it every day to punish himself.
You, the protagonist, is Lucas Bondes, or at least one of the facets of his psyche.
In the mire of the head trip, Lucas has separated into three different personalities.
- Lafcardio Boon. (The Protagonist)
- Golden Mask.
- The Red King.
- Lafcardio Boon used to be a friend of Lucas. A priest that he admired. Religion and priests, are usually associated with saving souls, redemption and forgiveness. Lucas Boon masquarading as Lafcardio during the game, embodies that part of Lucas' psyche that is finally able to forgive himself. Lucas thinking he is Lafcardio instead of himself - an identity he is troubled by - gives him the strength to confront his own horrors as an outsider to himself. Him running around to prevent the murder of his friends, goes a way to showing that the real Lucas wouldn't be so bad as he himself thinks he is. The real Lafcardio was somewhat of a gambling scoundrel himself, after all, before turning into a paragon of good sense.
If Lucas is Lafcardio during the game, then the question where the real Lafcardio is, is still somewhat of a mystery. The oldest member of the cast, it's likely that Lafcardio has already died at the time of the fire. There isn't an invite for the man. Still an incredibly important friend of Lucas' and instrumental to some of the Casino's inspirations, Lucas simply likes to Imagine Lafcardio having been there. The cast members interacting with Lucas as if he were Boon, is part of Lucas' imagination.
Golden Skull also mentions that "Lafcardio died with Sixpence faithfully every day in the chapel, until now". It could be that Lafcardio WAS there, but that his compassion and forgiveness for Lucas was great enough that the two entities melded into one. Perhaps the two were always similar enough, or that there was alway a part of Lucas who was willing to forgive himself, disguised as Lafcardio. This was a disguise not even Golden Mask could see through.
If Lafcardio was real, died there and allowed himself to merge with Lucas, then he is the only character to forgive Lucas for what he did. If Lafcardio and Eleanor managed to break free of the loop, then why didn't the other characters?
- Golden Mask is Lucas' self hatred personified. It's a vicious cycle. The man hates himself, wants himself to suffer. Any attempts at forgiveness are balked at as cowardice, self-pity and taking it easy on someone who really hasn't repented enough. The bar however is always raised by Golden Skull. It will never be enough.
There really IS a great deal of power in that act. It at least feels like you're in control of the past, rather than face an uncertain future. It regiments the day and you feel like you're doing something worthwhile: Punishing a monster and making the world feel right again. It's insular, protected, safe and hard for the outside world to breach or take away from you. It's also horribly self-destructive, but oddly enough the pain feels good since we hate the thing we're destroying and everyone else should too.
- The Red King. Lucas as he really is, hanging in the tank of the basement, while "Lafcardio" and Golden Mask fight over his psyche. While golden mask is composed and satisfied, and Lafcardio scrambles to solve puzzles, the Red King is the embodiment of self-loathing. The self-torturing serves no purpose if the victim doesn't emotionally suffer. The desire to inflict that suffering, is what makes the cycle so powerful. There's pleasure in the pain of self-destruction, until there's nothing left to burn. It's redemption through destruction.
--------- The Sexy --------------------------
So if people were burned to death in a Casino, which was in enough debt to warrant an insurance scheme, then why do we see things the way they are?
Why are people being murdered in elaborate ways?
Why is the casino as affluent as it looks?
To be fair, Aurum already said that the place wasn't as crowded as it used to be, but honestly, some of the extravagance seen in the game, simply doesn't make sense. Frankly, it's impossible, even by the game's own frequent admission. Some of the wines in the cellar shouldn't be available, some of the books in the library impossible to obtain, and many of the paintings are in National Museums, rather than the hands of one private collector. Golden Mask himself admits some of the splendor is imagined, like the Phoenix statue, spider and moloch egg. No insurer would be mad enough to foot the bill.
The reason here is Melancholy. Golden mask reveals: "He has tried to keep the show running.". And he keeps the show running, to make the victim suffer.
Endless reruns of something as demure as a failing casino burning to the ground, with the guests burning alive somewhere in the unknowable distance, just doesn't have the same impact to the mind.
And so, Golden Mask dresses it up to increase Lucas' suffering.
- The Casino was the best one in the world, with unparalleled beauty. It could have turned around. Burning it down was a crime onto itself. Forgetting about it is too.
- Lucas didn't just accidentally burn his friends. Golden Mask acts like he betrayed them in some intimate way. During the game's events, they are carefully fleshed out characters, who are knowable and likable. They were all in the primes of their lives, some of them were already suspicious of him and he stabbed them in the back. He preyed on their weaknesses and trust, lured them into his casino for years with vice: The staff, dressed as playing cards, literally kill them and the drinks have venom in them.
Hell, he might as well have pulled the trigger himself and in Golden Skull's interpretation of events, he does. All the staff are Lucas and all of them are conniving little scheming bumblers who exposition their plot like the petty villains they are.
Down in the basement, Golden Skull makes a careful character study of each of them, using Lucas' intimate knowledge of them to make the betrayal seem all the greater.
Some of the murders are particularly fleshed out. Seven Clubs, when disposing of Tequila, is incredibly mean to her, calling her a jealous tart. It's clear in the story that Eleanor won out for Lucas' affection over Tequila. In Golden Mask's interpretation, Tequila is still a jealous, broken woman for it and Lucas finishes the poor, helpless woman off.
In reality a great many things might have been less glamorous than they were. When the protagonist stumbles upon the plates in the kitchen, he describes them as the only homely thing in the mansion, which goes to show some of his more humble tastes.
Most of the cast could have been addicts. Aurum was just a minor metalworker instead of a world famous blacksmith. Tequila Belle just a washed singer who lost her voice to slamming stiff drinks. She and Lucas could have been in a terrible fight, rather than the cordial parting proposed by files. Willow is just your odd friend who claims to be a psychic, but who obviously doesn't have any powers. Clay Rockridge just the bouncer to any old dive. Eleanor could have been a very plain woman, instead of the beauty she is. Sixpence could've been a bit rubbish, perhaps explaining why Lucas had difficulties setting up the bombs.
All 11 of them could have been homeless bums entertaining themselves with shell games in the allyway until Lucas set fire to their carboard box with a match.
However, this is Gold Skull's point. Everything is dressed up to be so much better than it was, just to make the pain of loss sting sharper.
We will never know The Sexy Brutale or the cast for whom they really were in life.
--------- The masks -----------
So why is everyone wearing a mask and why do they chase the Protagonist away?
Because of shame. The masks are Golden Skull's way of controlling Lucas' memories of his friends. The mask, dresses them up more beautiful than they really were.
Being confronted by this idealized version of the past, rather than human beings that could have forgiven him, causes a great deal of painful shame to Lucas.
I myself get pangs of shame too when I walk into old friends and rather not face them.
------------ Bomb Timing and Sixpence ------------------
Sixpence is pretty much the least imaginative kill at just before four o' clock, but I think this is part where past reality and Golden Skull's illusions meet.
Sixpence was at the verge of discovering "the truth". The truth being the incendiary bombs around the Casino, or the flaw in their timing. In the game, he seems to realize what Lucas has done at the last moment, just before his death. Also note that the first bomb in reality, went off at just before four o'clock. Lucas leaps from the clock tower, shortly after that.
Sixpence's death is deliberately messy, because his death was in reality. The man probably suspected the insurance scheme, looked around for where the clockworks went that he prepared for Lucas, only to stumble upon one of the bombs that promptly blew up in his face.
That, or Sixpence was in on the plot. Golden Mask's instructions are to "blow his brains out", which seems a bit bitter and ordinary, even for him. In the end, the minion just shoots him in the chest. Some part of Lucas might be blaming Sixpence in some way, making him the least elaborate kill.
I suspect that all the kills around the imaginary mansion, are timed to when the guests died to the flames in reality.
I think that the golden hue of dawn is a bit early on 4pm on an apparently British Summer, with flowers in full bloom. The golden hue of dawn, is fire.
It also seems odd that the Marquis would be arranging any magician/escapist show to invite his guests too, like he does in the game at 7, on the same day he plans to burn down the mansion.
The ACTUAL show at 7 in reality, was always intended to be the bombs triggering, with the Marquis and his guests called safely outside. The bombs went off 3 hours too early.
--------- Basement Rooms --------------
Operating theatre:
Lucas actually never wanted to live after the fire.
This is shown in the operating theater below the mansion, where a strange contraption is working on one of the masked minions. Golden Skull reveals there was only one survivor that day, and that survivor is the masked minion being operated on. However, it is also established that Lucas is the only survivor. This means that the masked minion being operated on, IS Lucas, as it is later also revealed that ALL minions are lucas.
The operating theatre, was the time Lucas spend recovering after he survived his 3 story fall.
Three important details:
- Flipping all the switches to solve the puzzle, is rather difficult. This could be interpreted as how difficult it was to fix Lucas' broken body.
- No effort is made to make the room comfortable. It's unlikely that Lucas wanted comfort, or that any comfort was afforded to him by the police, or the hospital as the suspected killer of 9 people.
- Air is being forced into the mask of the minion, forcing him to breathe, whether he wants to or not. Lucas didn't want to recover. The mask could stand for the regiment of prison life later endured, how he is being made into someone he's not (the murder wasn't premeditated), or that anything following afterwards was just him locking his real self up behind a visage.
Prison:
There's also the pirson cell, with the tiny sappling. This obviously represents Lucas' stay in Prison, after the hospital. The tree represents Lucas' fortitude for living, although not his hope or willpower. A tree isn't a human being, but just something that lives for the sake of it. The veins and cables running through the area are also alive, but somehow horrible and unnatural. Notice how the Tree is growing OUTSIDE his prison cell, with the water beyond reach. Someone outside of his cell, helped him grow this fortitude, helped him grow just strong enough to survive outside.
Pinball machine:
There's a card in this room, which will flutter off the machine the moment Lucas causes the pinball to "tilt". Scenes inside the machine already portray some of the murders seen in the mansion.
Mental trouble... a tilted mind.
Stack of cards room:
Could be interpreted as Lucas hoping/gambling for a brighter future, over the abyss below. The bridge, slowly formed by gathering cards in the mansion, could be interpreted as seeing a gambler's chances, opportunities, realistic or not.
The gramaphone player room and the graveyard room, are more obvious facscimiles. Distorted memories, grief. Both puzzles involve attempts at setting things the way they're supposed to be.
Note that Eleanor is the only one in the game who also died, but cannot be saved. I suspect that this is because there really was a little house away from the mansion, and she was safe there. Eleanor's death truly wasn't Lucas' fault.
Eleanor is described as an incredibly caring, brave and compassionate person and I feel the reason why she can't be saved, is because her death was her own choice. She ran into the burning Mansion to save her friends.
Eleanor also doubles as the "bloody girl", who looks nothing like Eleanor. Her skin is missing and her hair is black. The likely reason for that, is because burn victims are also missing their skin, bleeding profusely and have their hairs charred.
All the guests were burned alive though, so why does Bloody Girl look the way she does?
The answer is that Eleanor is the only death that Lucas witnessed. After he fell into the flowerbeds and broke his body, he saw Eleanor rush into the flames and then come out a "bloody girl".
Despite this, there are still things "odd" about the little house in the back of the gardens. In one description, the gardens are described as stretching as far as the eye can see. Yet, only two short garden sections later, the path ends at the little house.
Before solving the basement puzzles, the house can't be accessed and peeping through the keyhole has you witness the only truly timeless scene: A mother and a crib. While the Mansion goes through its day in great detail, with many lives and actions overlapping, the house is just that: Timeless, with a pregnant mother and her crib. The gardens are also described as soothing, with Eleanor having had their hand in them, while the rest of the casino is frequently described as unnerving and grandiose.
I struggle to theorize whether this is part of Golden Skulls machinations, or the one area where he is powerless.
It could be just another painful reminder, locked behind closed doors by Golden Skull. Later, he viciously replaces the scene with a graveyard.
Perhaps this section belongs only to bloody girl and she replaces it with a graveyard to force Lucas to let it go.
Or it could really be just the one pure, truthful memory that Lucas has left to himself. It's the proof of what he's worth: This woman's love.
Either way, it helps a great deal that what is possibly his most painful victim, Eleanor, also appears to be the most forgiving and in the end, accepts him for who he truly is, alongside his flaws, to set him free.
JEEZ, ISN'T THE REDEEMING POWER OF LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS WONDERFUL FOLKS! Though the game aptly reminds me that things aren't as beautiful as we think they might be, which makes me pause at this scene specifically. (I really appreciate your game devs!)
------------ A third ending -----------
Upon using the "key of old habits", there is a special room somewhere with a giant demon, shackled to a card dealer's table. Finding all 52 cards, unlocks a special ending where the demon will deal and send you to yet another illusion:
The mansion never burned down, everything is perfect, everyone is happy and the Protagonist remains Boon while Lucas is dancing with Eleanor.
It's rather obvious, but this ending sees Lucas turning to his "old habit" gambling addiction to drown out both himself, Golden Skull's machinations and all the pain. Cleverly, it's an illusion within an illusion, with the manacled demon of addiction having enough insidious power over Lucas, regardless of how he split apart his psyche, to fog everything up.
Tequilla studios? Thank you! Not only for a marvelous game, but for the ability to explore the human mind, or even my own mind. I feel it helps.
Also, can I give you a hug? Because I want to give you a hug. :[
Thanks Revolving.
I've tried to spread the word of this game as much as I could.
... I know that making games is primarily about sales, meeting your targets and making enough money to move onto the next project...
But I also know you guys probably entered into the industry in the first place, to be creative.
Rest assured you've created an expression that means something deeper to the right people and reflects on the human condition and our understanding of our world.
Whatever else sales target this game will reach in the coming weeks, you've managed to make a beautiful creative statement that can never be undone as a piece of art.
Thanks again for your hard work!
Some of the ingame text makes clear that sixpence WAS in on the bomb plot. He knew about it and intentionally helped, because eleanor is his neice and he wants to help her. Lucas convinced him burning down the mansion, and starting a new, simpler life with eleanor and his son, would be the best thing for her. A simple life is all she ever wanted.
Also RE: The third ending with the card demon
I like to think of that as lucas finally deciding to die, giving up on life, and on punishing himself.
The scene in the ballroom with everyone alive and well, is his last memory. A perfect moment frozen in his mind at the time of death. And breaking the window to the garden is symbolic of going to join Eleanor, at that moment the real Lucas Bonde - probably in an asylum, has a heart attack and passes away
Then the secret that Sixpence uncovered, is how Lucas set up the bomb all wrong.
That was beautiful. Thanks for that interpretation! It hadn't occured to me yet.
The Sexy Brutale wouldn't have gone into decline right away. It would have, at one point, been magnificent. Remember that Gold Skull is doing this to torment The King in Red with the memory of things he destroyed. There might be some embellishments: the Phoenix Elevator, Grinmaw, the Spider... but by and large the ememory would lose some of its impact if the Sexy Brutale was too different from the way it really was, so I think it's safe to assume that it's a mostly faithful reproduction.
But the basement is different. There are no murders in the basement, nothing Gold Skull wants anyone to see. Nobody is supposed to get to the basement. The kitchen is there as an extension of the dumbwaiter, the bar passage as an extension of the theatre escape route, and the breaker room to serve the theatre murder, but everything else in the basement is suspect. The mansion upstairs used to be real. Most of the basement is a complete fabrication, pieced together from other places and memories.
Well, Lucas is older... and he's trying to become more like Lafcardio, and forgive himself. Who knows, maybe he actually does become a priest in honor of Lafcardio's memory. I'd like to think he does, anyway.
I agree with this interpretation. The mansion's grandeur is embellished to some degree, and Lucas is a story-teller - so he knows that the best stories have a foundation in reality. And he mentions that he wants to preserve everybody and everything of this day in his mind. His nostalgia could have made him remember the mansion to an obsessive degree, so that those memories wouldn't change outside of the alterations he made to torment himself even more. He didn't want to lose his friends, the memories of the best time of his life, because it means it's really over. The Bloody Girl reminds him several times it's his choice to let go of them.
It's less clear how Lucas' memories of his friends changed over the last decades in his guilt. Especially because I think the 'stories' surrounding their murders rather reflect Lucas than them, although they use the guests' basic personalities. Willow killing herself? He admits he doesn't know if she would really have done it. But her illusionary self seems to be hearing voices and wants to be with these persons. (I can't fit Tequila or Reginald into my hypothesis yet.)
Clay is the guest noted with an addictive personality, although Trinity seems to like gambling too much, as well. It’s notable that he gets killed by abusing that flaw while distracting him from finding Trinity, whose rescue he is pivotal for. Trinity’s flaw – her curiosity and being denied something – lands her trapped in the spider’s den. And around the time the giant spider gets a drop on her, Sixpence’s robotic card dealer starts giving cryptic warnings to Clay about her safety.
Where it gets really interesting is the next double murder – Grayson and Redd. They are set as parallels to Trinity and Clay. Redd, like his brother Clay, is physically very strong and you need to help him to save both of the pair. Grayson lands himself trapped in the Faraday Cage because he wants to inspect the Moloch Egg. He’s immobilized and unable to save himself, similar to Trinity’s predicament, and the cage’s electricity is what indirectly kills him and electrocutes Redd – while the spider is the cause of death for both Trinity and Clay in some measure. Redd’s devotion to rescue Grayson, as well as those parallels, create a strong sense that Redd is in love with him, furthering the parallels to the first pair / couple.
Remarkable, Lucas ponders to switch the scenario around – having Grayson die first, to escalate Redd’s despair.
And the last double murder happens in the Heaven and Hell Staircase. Thanos and Aurum are burned to death, although or maybe because Lucas has such a visceral reaction to fire. This happens on the path down into the basement, where the truth is hidden. He says, ‘I like to believe that if Aurum could have chosen his death, it would have been this one’. But how should he know that? It’s part of his spiel to build himself up as the villain, true, but...
I think Lucas projects his issues even further on his friends, unconsciously. He says the mansion was a gamble that didn’t pay off. What did he try to cut his ties with the casino? Burn it down with explosives, which can be called a gamble as well – one that horribly backfired. He wanted something smaller with Eleanor, but due to his own addictive personality he held onto the mansion for too long. He couldn’t save her (Trinity, Grayson), because he let the business distract him until it was too late (Clay); because he didn’t watch out (Redd). He's still begging his past self to rescue her (the card dealer). He wants to see his friends again and yearns to die to be reunited with them (Willow), but doesn’t allow himself to. He feels he needs to be punished in his own hell and he doesn’t want to face the truth and let go (Thanos, Aurum).
If you visit the garden later in the day you see "Something fell from the Clocktower, you can't tell what it is among the flowers"
I really enjoyed this game, in a way I didn't expect to, even with all the great reviews. It felt like an immersive theater experience, the way Punchdrunk productions are put together. I can see myself loading my save and just spending some time following the characters around, I'm sure there are dialog bits I missed even in the course of 100%ing it.