Ending Evidence (spoilers)

[BlueRaja]

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!

Some people are saying the ending came out of nowhere, but there was actually a ton of evidence for it throughout the game.

Major evidence:

• In the Medical Bay, it says the species evolved to see light of wavelengths 400-700nm, rather than "300nm like us". Visible light is 400-700nm.
  
  
• In the Upper Lab, the periodic table shows the normal elements in blue, with the label "elements known to Psy Prime inhabitants". Then there are a bunch of made up elements with the label "elements unknown to Psy Prime inhabitants".
  
  
• In the Upper Lab, there's a fluid with pH 4.7, and a note that that's too acidic to consume. 4.7 PH is a perfectly normal alkalinity for human foods.†
  
  
• The food throughout the ship is alien
  
  
• The planet out the windows is Earth, but it looks unfamiliar due to the rotation. Here you can clearly see Italy (thanks to Telu)
  
  
• In Silas's office, there's a note mentioning a "creature which grows a protective keratin-scaled armor on the entire exterior of its body. If threatened, it can emit a noxious chemical from its rear," with a drawing of the creature. This is a Pangolin[en.wikipedia.org], aka. a "scaled anteater" (thanks to mkv)

Minor evidence:

• In Aiden's room, the drawings by his daughter use purple for everyone's skin color.
  
  
• In the Science Ward, it says the species "has an over-utilization of plastics and metals".
  
  
• In the Upper Lab, there's a plant speciman that's dying because "the natural ultra-violet light protection offered from the atmosphere has deteriorated", AKA the hole in the ozone layer.
  
  
• Constant references to the species being at war for its entire history, being intelligent but emotional, highly wasteful, etc.
  
  
• Lots of descriptions of the planet make it sound like ours (especially in the Science Ward). Mostly water, most of the land concentrated in the northern hemisphere (side note: how do aliens know "north" from "south"? XD), partly irradiated due to nuclear weapons, etc.
  
  
• In the Upper Lab, there's a drawing of the species' nervous system, and it's identical to humans. However, I didn't count this as "major" because Silas noted in his room that "their physiology is similar to ours"
  
  
• The robot in the maintenance room has an alien-looking head (thanks Telu)

Objectionable:

• Silas says the languages they use are "inefficient", which is definitely true of our languages. But, they're speaking English in the game!
  
  
• † According to my doctor-wife, the chemical structure shown in the Upper Lab is "beta-d glucopyranose". The developers almost certainly meant to draw normal glucose[www.nutrientsreview.com], an essential part of human diets, but they missed an "H"!

Did I miss anything?

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Shameless plug: See First Person Exploration and Puzzle Games for more games like this

[[BLK] Telu]

It's funny because when we look outside, it seem not to be earth.

But i don't understand why the body found in the storage area is Aiden. Since he wear a white earth suit.

Same for Silas. The objective is validated when we are on the white suit body.

Thanks anyway. I was searching what molecule was the specimen 258. And good point about the drawing of the Aiden daughter.

You miss a clue. Nothing is red on the spaceship. It suggest than alien don't see at 700nm. They see until "orange" or "brown". So there little experimentation of cloak system suggest than it's not working for human eye. (Even on the strategy map, where we would have paint blue & red for coloring factions. They paint cyan & purple. I believe than they don't see the red color). So maybe something emit red lighting and they don't even know about it.

You miss also than they make robot at their own image. And the robot don't have an human head. The skull is not like our skull.

EDIT : If you look at the planet, you see than it's europa inverted. We clearly see sicilia and france.

[BlueRaja]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Telu:

But i don't understand why the body found in the storage area is Aiden. Since he wear a white earth suit.
Same for Silas. The objective is validated when we are on the white suit body.

For Aiden, the the objective doesn't complete when you find the suit, it completes when the audio recording starts playing. In the audio recording, you discover Aiden was ejected into space. So, although the player is meant to think the spacesuit is Aiden, the actual character you're playing as does not.

(Yeah it is a bit of an underhanded deception)

For Silas, the objective completes when you walk into the room, which contains both a human and an alien spacesuit.

Opprinnelig skrevet av Telu:

EDIT : If you look at the planet, you see than it's europa inverted. We clearly see sicilia and france.

Do you have a screenshot? If so, I'll add it to the list.

[[BLK] Telu]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Telu:

EDIT : If you look at the planet, you see than it's europa inverted. We clearly see sicilia and france.

Do you have a screenshot? If so, I'll add it to the list.

Play the game in exploration mode. I've uninstall it. It's on the "Point of view" just nearby the meeting room. You need to look on the bright side of the planet.

So for me :

- The robot in the maintenance room have an alien skull. Not human.
- If you look the planet, you see europa inverted. Sicilia & France a clearly visible.
- The red color is not present in the game and most color are purple. The color limit is orange at 600 Nm. (With the orange pyramid for example. You can see also in the lab)

- The vibrance of the game is move down by 100Nm. (The gray is not gray as we would see it, the purple is strong, the brown is light, ... everything seem to have weird colors for an human eye)

Edit : I found a screenshot made by someone. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1659252944

[Kaldrak]

There are all kinds of obviously non terrestrial plant life on the station, plus the weird fish in the lounge. Strange symbols all over the books and in engineering...etc. etc.

I guessed almost immediately after I looked out the lounge window that it was Earth and the 'aliens' they were watching were humans, so I was actively looking for this stuff as I played. I was a little thrown off by the different space suits and the human in Mila's office at the end though, I'll admit.

[nachums]

I honestly never guessed and now feel like an idiot. I assumed a lot of the stuff collected was just gotten at some point from the planet

[djgirard03]

Haha Nachums, same here. I had no clue.

[Grimmas]

I didn't figure this out until I saw Mila at very end, so consequently I really liked the "surprise" ending. Good job on that. In hindsight, there were many clues, most of which were mentioned here. But I was more focused on figuring out what happened on board the station.

Also I am OK with audio and text being in English. If you are an alien investigating the alien station of your own civilization then you will obviously know the language and understand everything - so this little artistic license is necessary.

What I thought weird was how quickly you get there and how you interact with the environment. The station "failure" is ongoing when you board, but none of the crew react to your presence and everything is too silent for an "ongoing" incident. Sure, there are a few explosions and a few cheap scares (like Aiden's prank with the chair), but other than that it's eerily silent for a station that is in the middle of being boarded by "aliens." Plus, you literally get more interactions with the "aliens" than with the station crew.

[Liquidus]

Pretty sure you missed a drawing of a skeletal structure of a definitely human arm and shoulder (that was my first "hum-hum" moment after multiple "sure these aliens are a lot like us...", the made-up elements table sealed the deal). Great game indeed... definitely spent 3 enjoyable hours

[mkv]

Opprinnelig skrevet av BlueRaja:

• In Silas's office, there's a note mentioning a "creature which grows a protective keratin-scaled armor on the entire exterior of its body. If threatened, it can emit a noxious chemical from its rear." This is probably meant to be a skunk (fur is made of keratin), but the drawing doesn't really look like one, and fur isn't "scaled armor"...

It's a pangolin[en.wikipedia.org], not a skunk.

[Sperber]

All these clues are certainly amusing in retrospect, but overshadowed by the fact that the aliens apparently also use a Latin alphabet, Arabic numbers, the Earth calendar and time sytem and named chemical elements and bones the same as we did. There is probably more proof to be found that this station is from Earth than clues that it isn't.

Also the fact that they don't have universal health care as a highly advanced civilization cleary pins them down as beings from the USA.

[thelogicalghost]

Wait, people thought the ending came out of nowhere?

Y'all need to read more classic sci-fi. All the thinly veiled social commentary in the various logs made me quickly go, "oh, it's us, isn't it, that's the twist, we're the primitive species constantly at war with each other over stupid reasons" about halfway through the game. It only hit me at the end that if "we" are the aliens then the human space suits were all misdirects, I kind of assumed similar beings would probably come up with similar enough looking spacesuits.

Although maybe it's just me, I've had people get mad at me for "spoiling" mysteries by figuring out whodunnit way before the reveals.

[Gabriel]

Very nice, thanks for posting these remarks.

[Sareth]

another clue, I guess, is that the helmets Aiden has technical drawnings on in his room look like the 'alien' helmets/corpses you find, and not like the generic spacesuits visors you find on the corpses.

[Dajjer]

I'm pretty good at figuring out plots and this game fooled me. Perhaps if it was a movie I might have figured it out because my mind would only be working on the story, but in a game there are other things to worry about, like the simple, where do I go next?????

But as I pondered the game there were a number of hints about what was going and at games end I did a big Homer Doh. Basically this game was the video game version of the Twilight Zone episode called The Invaders.

2 things I will revisit when I do this game in VR.
1) A number of alien plants throughout the ship. Most likely for some kind of air processing.
2) The magazines. I'm going to ponder the topics they purportedly covered.
3) How many dang fire extinguishers can a ship have? And why are so many of them out of their brackets?

[J A F F A]

One clue that gave away not just that these study subjects seemed too much like humans but that "we" might not be is given by what is missing. There is not a single photo of any person in the lockers, or in the personal quarters for that matter, despite there being several landscape photos. All these people yearn for places but not any friends or family?

Also, if you play a lot of these sci-fi game or read sci-fi stories these days, many of them love the "you are not who you think you are" type reveals.