Most of the story is easy to reconstruct

[Ark-kun]

There are some questions that are intentionally not fully answered by the author (the nature of the "beast", the exact reason the sacrifice was rejected, the reason it was accepted later, the reason for the physical fall, the exact meaning of the ending).

Other than those, the story seems pretty straightforward.

There is just one boy that we see in many different stages of his life.

Reconstructing the story is pretty easy: You can divide the boys life in two big - before the fall and after. The after-fall part covers many different periods of boys life (as well as the city life).

Reconstructing the "before fall" part is easy - you can just stich in your head all the sequences involving the boy with the bowl - the boy seeing the beast, collecting the fruits and climbing the tower. (Metaphorically, during this period, the boy walks over the lives of other people (who turn out to be himself) without even noticing that.)

Later parts are harder to reconstruct, because they're shattered and mixed throughout the game is semi-random order. But you can use visual cues: age of the boy (child, young boy, adult, old man), state of boy's injures (healthy, on wheelchair, on crutches, with cane, without cane?), state of the city (healthy, depressing, destroyed by war, being rebuilt, rebuilt (re-play the "going up the tower" part in the beginning of the final chapter)). There is even a "map" of his life in the "blue" chapter.

Later stages of boy's life:

Buy fell from the tower and heavily injured himself (legs, hand, head). His leg has never fully recovered. Up until the end he is always thinking about his past and the "beast".

The boy is "shackled" to the wheelchair for a while. He sits under the tree and watches the city; he takes interest in astronomy.

The city starts going down (broken windows, abandonment, etc).

The war begins. The city is being destroyed by bombs. The boy is still in the city, reading the book during the bombings under the lantern light while the sirens are wailing. He has to use crutches to walk.

The boy flees the destroyed city on crutches. After some time he recovers a bit and can walk with the help of the cane. During his exile he went on pilgrimage and tried many religions. He has many religions books and he tried all those religions in search of enlightenment/peace/solace: "blue" (mountains/water/blue dragon with many fly-like wings), yellow (desert/bell/another toothy dragon or snake or crocodile), green (garden/candles/horse with fish tail[s]) and probably more. He was doing useless work during those years. None of the religions helped him find peace. He still was consumed by the thoughts about his life and the creature. He has crossed those religions on the map - look carefully. There is a scene where the young man tosses away the table with all his religious attributes (rosary, water ladle, bell, candle).
The man returns to the destroyed city as it was starting getting rebuilt. For a while he has turned to drinking.

The city is rebuilt. The man became old. He still thinks about his encounter with the creature and the rejected sacrifice that broke him. For the second time he climbs the tower that broke his life. He rethinks his past, his sacrifices and hardships and this time his offering is accepted.

That's it.

Of course the story and the world are much more detailed. Replay the game looking carefully at all the backgrounds and items.
There are many small sub-themes. For example, there is the theme of guiding light, following the light, following the directions given by others (remember those statues with yellow light telling you to go to the left. Well, this is not always a good idea: There is the book where some deity is also pointing to the left and the guy following that direction falls off the cliff. He followed their light and directions just like a moth flies to the candle (or a the star like in the finale).

[Siricuticu]

Awesome!

[Maxzelik]

Thanks for the recap!

I was wondering if the old man, in the end, becomes the beast.
I thought that because he becomes one with light, and then that light was inside the eye of the beast.
If that is true, then this is a cycle.
The child sees the beast, he gives the offering, grows old, and becomes the beast, which the child sees

[Seth]

Originally posted by Maxzelik:

I was wondering if the old man, in the end, becomes the beast.
I thought that because he becomes one with light, and then that light was inside the eye of the beast.
If that is true, then this is a cycle.
The child sees the beast, he gives the offering, grows old, and becomes the beast, which the child sees

I agree with this!

Which had me looking for a way out of the cycle, but I suppose by now we know there is none..

[Oddness]

Playing the demo after also made me realize that the first sacrifice failed because the boy did not deserve it. He gets the fruits given to him with him only wandering around a little and in the demo he even gets carried by 2 masked adults to one fruit.

[Nightsmaiden]

I think you missed something significant in the book where the boy learns about the offering of fruit- I noticed it particularly because it is a change from the demo. In the book, it is a boy and an old man who hold up the bowl, and I think both are required. Also, I think the creature he sees is likely some kind of minor deity, so I am going to go with that term (creature) rather than "beast".

Time is a theme of the game, with the creature turning the days once you have passed through certain areas and the time of day changing in certain parts due to your own actions or just in general. Cycles are also a theme, with the various gear mechanics cued to the passage of time in repetitious religious acts serving to mark the passage of the boy/man's life, which I feel also supports the idea that it isn't just the physical fruit that you offer, it is the experiences of your life. I just learned from the cards for the game that those are the Wheel of the Sun, Moon, and Seasons, so days, months, and years. I think in the normal course of things, he would have been expected to gather those fruit at the age that is relevant to each location, rather than ahead of time, and offer them near the end of his life.

I think that people who follow similar religious practices would object to your calling the various acts (placing candles, ringing bells at arches, and climbing while pouring water on one's head in an obviously freezing place- ouch) useless. The point of them is usually understood as being partly taken from their lack of major practical benefit, with the purpose being entirely spiritual or as acts of penitence hoping to redeem oneself of sin. If they were of significant practical use, it would be seen as cheapening their spiritual benefit. as anything you would do in the course of normal life is insufficiently distant from the noise of normal life to be sufficiently spiritual. From what I have seen, anyway. I don't follow any such religion, so I am basing this on various lectures and writings by practitioners about the value of such acts.

It is possible that the boy is hoping that by doing the various acts (which could be parts of one long pilgrimage, if this is a pantheistic religion like Hinduism) he will be forgiven for whatever sin he committed that caused his offering to be rejected, and it is the lack of response that causes him to overturn the table. Note that he was staring out the window before turning to the table, perhaps looking for another sign of the creature before he finally gives up trying.

As far as the sacrifice, I think it succeeded, it just took a really long time because it was originally meant to be done by two people and this time the same person had to be both the boy and the old man. As the original illustration showed two people holding the bowl at the same time, perhaps in the original ritual, this would be done with two people each time, with the young person in one ritual being the old person in the next one.

Note also that when the boy falls, there are ornate rings and black fire along with his fall, and when the sacrifice is finally accepted, there are the same pattern of rings and fire, but this time they are being pulled in and are golden, which implies something of a two-step process. It is true that this could be rejection and redemption, but it could also simply be that the fruit was "unripe" due to the lack of someone's life experiences, so the ritual only half completed, with the boy being given empty "vessels" to collect whatever the relevant kind of energy for this sort of thing is, but also knocked out of the tower due to the backfire of the incomplete ritual.

So, while I feel OP's interpretation of what is shown directly is spot-on, I think the interpretation of the implied bits is a little bit off. Keep in mind that it was a young boy reading from a single book interpreting the ritual, not an adult who has spent a long time studying such things. It would be easy to miss that the older person in the ritual is required, not optional, and from there the rest of the ritual failure follows fairly easily.

Alternately, maybe this is always supposed to be done by a single person over the course of their life, and the original culture had their temples at ground level, so the "don't do this really high up" part didn't seem worth mentioning in the book along with the ritual for this one very specific creature.

Either way, it is a boy performing a ritual he is obviously not super familiar with (as evidenced by the looking-up at the beginning of the game), and he gets at least one part wrong (probably would have been fine if he hadn't been so high up when he offered the fruit even if everything else happened the same), but eventually it ends well and he is accepted by the creature he makes the offering to.

My impression of the properly completed ritual if it requires two people: The fruits of the elder's life are accepted, and the elder is sacrificed to fuel the next ritual (remember the eye was how we got the green apple) and/or taken with the deity in some positive way. Some essence of the fruit is passed on to the younger person, most likely some of the elder's wisdom from having lived so long. With this interpretation, the reason the fire and rings were black is because the fruit was empty, so there was nothing to pass down.

My impression of the properly completed ritual if it requires one person's whole life: The ritual is meant to involve sacrifice, and the withdrawal of the deity in the first meeting is actually the sign that your first offering was "accepted". You are then burned clean of all spiritual support, and have to live your life that way, filling the gap with your own essence. When you are old and have lived without the gods for so long, you may offer the experiences you have had, and be given some sort of suitable afterlife/nirvana reward for going through all that.

I think the first one is more likely, as it is more in line with similar traditions I know of, but the second fits some mythic journeys I know of.

Most offerings of a similar type, in which the success of the ritual means the old person is taken with the being receiving the offering, are some form of afterlife or spiritual nirvana type of thing, with the person either being reincarnated well, moving up the levels of spiritual existence, etc., usually with some benefit to the younger participant as well, most commonly some sort of blessing from the involved deity. There isn't really enough information here to be sure about the specifics there from what I can see, but maybe down the line someone will recognize things i didn't and be able to tell us.

[james.franklin1920]

To Nightsmaiden:

This is a very good interpretation, and the first time I see someone else entertain the idea that the "rejection" was really the boy's election. I have posted my own interpretation in the other topic about this game's story and I highly recommend you read it along with this. I will comment yours and try to answer some of your questions. Your second interpretation, with the ritual requiring only one person, is the correct one, so I will only address things pertaining to that.

In all traditions, there is (at least initially) an exoteric and an esoteric part. The exoteric part is the means by which "normal life" is made sacred, by heightening the recursive analogies between ontological "events" and the events of daily life, such as birth, marriage, death, waking up, making love, sleeping, eating, studying, working etc. This is what is largely known as "religion" and is always collective.

The esoteric part is the means by which beings are made to know themselves, beyond their human person, and to reach things utterly beyond daily life, whether the latter is sacred or profane, thus making this part essentially individual.

Thus, the esoteric part is the essential part, and the exoteric apparatus is only a relative extension of esoteric mysteries, and it's true purpose is to provide a crutch, or a matrix of crutches, to facilitate the entry of beings into the esoteric path, by spreading its influence as much as possible. However, because of its relativity, it always tends to degenerate, and must be amputated repeatedly until nothing is left.

In the game, we see that the boy is largely alone in his interests: he is always seen alone, and when he is among other youths he is completely absorbed by his book, ignoring the camera. However, he still manages to find a ton of relevant paraphernalia, which means that whatever he's pursuing was definitely "big" at some point in history. This shows that the exoteric and collective, "religious" part of this culture is all gone except for misunderstood "cultural" fragments, which means that only the esoteric part is still active, although completely veiled by profane life. This means that the boy's sighting of the Gorogoa was no chance event: he was chosen right from the start, before his quest even began.

You said that the Gorogoa was some kind of minor deity. Not only is It really the true deity, but major deities are mere aspects of the true deity. The Gorogoa is thus essentially formless, but takes many shapes to show Itself. Those shapes are the various dragons, serpents, and perhaps also the three-tailed horse we see idols of. This implies that, like Hinduism branching into Vaishnavism, Shaivism, etc., the in-game civilization also had various branches, sub-religions of sorts, leading to the same goal of self-knowledge.

You said that the boy was burned clean of spiritual support. In reality, he was burned clean of everything BUT spiritual support, which is so subtle that he remained unaware of it until the very end. Remember that the boy is chosen: he is under the grace of Gorogoa. The player's actions in creating all those mind-bending, spacetime-transcending paths is, in-game, the Gorogoa's action of guiding the boy on his path. We're playing the part of God. Just as the Gorogoa led the boy to the symbolic fruits using psychic power, he led the grown boy to the true fruits using spiritual influence, which the boy had been unconsciously opened to by his miraculous journey and subsequent "rejection", which really was a sanctification.

As the boy could never forget what he had seen and experienced, he kept trying to reach it again, but he always failed. Whenever he realized that he had hit a wall, his soul became dark with despair, as seen in the final scenes. Why do you think he kept moving on anyway? It was because of the Gorogoa's spiritual support. Just as the boy was led to impossible physical obstacles which he then overcame thanks to divine miracles, the boy was also led to impossible psychic obstacles, which he then overcame thanks to divine support.

The five "true fruit" scenes we see are the moments when the Gorogoa opened up a new path in the boy's soul, giving him unexplainable hope to go on. Each of these openings was a virtual true fruit. In this virtual state, they sustained the boy's hope, but they only actualized and became fully known after the elderly boy's final contemplation. Just as the Gorogoa had led the boy to the five virtual true fruits by purging him of five obstacles, which were always there to begin with, he also led the boy to the final goal. Remember, the player's actions are the Gorogoa's actions. The five burnt fruit were the five obstacles, the broken bowl was the final innermost obstacle: the illusion of separation from God.

When the five fruit were actualized, the boy realized what they were. The openings the Gorogoa had made weren't made by piercing the obstacles, but by converting them into openings. Thus, if the obstacles had always been a "part" of the boy's soul, the openings were even moreso, because they were the true form of the obstacles. The burning of the fruits was the first actualization of these obstacles as such. They could only open a series of "juda's eye" unto the absolute, enough to reach proof but not to reach knowledge. They bore the stain of separation, and were offered in a bowl which symbolized the separated self, the ordinary ego.

The boy realized that the true fruits were part of his soul all along, and were only five aspects, five relative "modes" of the true "fruit" ("revealed fruit" in steam cards), this is why the ornate rings are pulled together as one. Thus, it was not his life's experience that the boy offered in the end, but the very grace which now consciously impregnated him and which to which he could now identify his self. The true fruit was nothing else than his true self.

Thus, thanks to the Gorogoa's grace, he gathered the five modes of "opening his soul to the absolute" into one, and his broken soul, which had been broken from realizing that it was itself the obstacle to what it sought, became whole again by realizing that it was itself the gate to what it sought, although in a way he couldn't have even conceived before. This mystery which I am describing analytically and discursively, he realized synthetically and beyond all words, which is why his person was absorbed by his self, and his self by God.

Now, with all I said about the Gorogoa's grace, you may be thinking: "so, the boy was only a puppet all along?". Nope: remember how I said that the player's actions were the Gorogoa's actions? This means that pretty much everything else was the boy's. Everytime a thought square came up, that was on the boy. The final thought square, through which the Gorogoa brought about the boy's realization, was also on the boy. Someone else than that boy, even if he had managed to reach this far, would not have had that final thought square. It was the Gorogoa's foreknowledge of this that prompted It to chose this boy in particular: those who weren't chosen didn't miss out on anything they could've reached if they had been chosen. The Gorogoa was to the boy like a gardener to a plant, and no gardener considers plants as mere puppets.

You said that time was a theme of this game. To be more precise, the theme is the relation between time/space and eternity. The Gorogoa is eternal, which means not everlasting proper but timeless. What this means is that, while each given instant of time is in various complex relations with other instants, eternity is in immediate relation with every instant at once. However, the opposite is not true: time can only relate to eternity with eternity's help, not on it's own, hence the necessity of the Gorogoa's grace. To the Gorogoa, everything occured all at once, panoramically. Thus, the offering by a boy and an elder must be understood as Time offering itself, beginning and end, to Eternity.

Eternity is like the center of a wheel and time like the rim, which is where cycles come into play. The reason the boy threw down his table and became despaired for the fourth time is on the calendar: during this time, he had been studying the sacred science of cycles, and, through some unknown numerological calculation, had concluded that the Gorogoa would show Itself again on that day at that spot. When it didn't come to pass, he felt that all his ritual observance of cycles was in vain. The blue fruit which was then "virtualized" in his soul pertained to the way the eternal Gorogoa creates and sustains time, but is not Itself bound by it. The various pilgrimages the boy accomplished were essentially exoteric, and since the matrix they were a part of was gone, they were dead; they were useless to him on their own, but the Gorogoa made it so that they served as an "highlighter" for the fourth obstacle in his soul to be actualized, then overcome.

A side note about Hinduism. You said that it was a pantheistic religion. Now, pantheism as a word has several degrees of meaning, which may be impossible to synthesize, a problem which comes up often with modern concepts. The most widely influent conception of Pantheism is that of Spinoza. It means that Nature as a whole, the totality of space and time, Existence, the relative, etc. is God. God is the One that is justified by nothing, not even Itself, yet remains, beyond all determinations. Pantheism is to attribute this supreme transcendence to the whole of the relative, thus cutting conceptual access to anything actually worthy of such "attributes", and condemning all further thought to meaninglessness. In that sense, Hinduism is certainly not pantheistic. It considers God as the impersonal supreme reality without excluding secondary explicit personal manifestations of Him (avatars), and Nature as the "part" of Him as he manifests Himself implicitly. Nature, while containing all manifestations, is infinitesimal compared to Him as a Whole, and to be sure, words like time, space and existence are all unfit to describe this Whole.

That's it! To anyone, feel free to ask for clarification, I'll answer to the best of my ability, if possible.

[Adeon]

For what it's worth the "Beast" seems to be a giant "Leafy Seadragon"

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Leafy_Seadragon_on_Kangaroo_Island.jpg/1920px-Leafy_Seadragon_on_Kangaroo_Island.jpg