[spoilers] So what's the story here?

[Malidictus]

I know games like these deliberately obfuscate their story because "Limbo" so trying to talk about that aspect of the game is a lost cause... Especially given the low traffic of this forum. But eh, might as well give it a shot. Why not? :) Here's what I feel we know so far.

The world of Far: Lone Sail mirrored our own until fairly recently in our history, whereupon some kind of disaster threw humanity into post-apocalyptic survival. I can't quite place the time period, though. We have large container ships with distinct bulbous bows tracable to the post-1980s, but there's a complete lack of not just any kind of computing equipment but any kind of electronic displays, either. Somewhere in the 20th century, at the very least.

I believe the disaster which hit the world was some kind of epidemic of destructive extreme weather. It caused the oceans to receed but not fully dry up while hitting land with devastating storms. This is seen in several places throughout the game, from a tornado to a dust storm to that vehicle-destroying hail storm. There's also a painted mural on the interior for the Landcruiser, showing the world beset by hail and tornados with the Landcruiser itself walking away from it.

The disaster appears to have taken place a significant a long time in the past of the game's current time-frame - long enough for people to migrate deeper and deeper into the receeding oceans, building not just settlements but large industrial and mining complexes. I would guess at least 50-60 years, if not more. This is evident from road marker pointing to "Old Coastline" several kilometers "offshore" from it, as well as the farming community which was designed to provide "A Fresh Start"

I believe a man by the name of Jan Henriksen - an inventor - was somehow instrumental in this postapocalyse industrialisation of society. His name can be found on a plackard on the Landcruiser, along with large oil paintings of his successes in developing ever larger walking land vehicles. My guess is whatever disaster ended up hitting humanity made long-distance transportation - especially goods shipping - either impossible or incredibly costly. It likely made fuel a scarce commodity. It seems like Henriksen managed to get around the fuel issue by developing an engine which could burn literally anything for fuel, as well as adapting seafaring ship deisngs to large land vehicles.

Whatever progress Henriksen managed to help foster, however, appears to have failed, as evidenced from the "We build our future!" billboard near the abandoned factory. Given the rate at which the Landcruiser goes through energy, my guess is he never managed to perfect its design and make it practical. The multiple abandoned settlements having failed to rebuild, my guess is that humanity was eventually entirely driven off the land and onto the sea.

We know that the dead parent whose grave "Standard Indie Game Child" stands over at the start is Jan Henriksen. I don't know why he ended up living so far in-land with his child. It's safe to assume that he worked on either restoring or rebuilding his first land vehicle prototype - the Okomotive. The plan, it seems, had always been to use the vehicle in order to brave the dangers of the dried-up seabed in order to reach the new shoreline. My guess is humanity retreated into the sea, Water World style, and Jan Henriksen planned to join them. The game ends with what I feel is pretty clearly a ship's horn signalling a large seafaring vessel coming to pick up the protagonist. I infer that this was the goal all along, though I'm not sure why that had to wait for Henriksen's death.

The majority of the story took place long before the game even started. By the time we go on our road trip, everyone's already long gone. We get to progress from the old world near the shoreline with docks and loading cranes, past humanity's attempt to rebuild, progressing into larger and more grandiose facilities until we reach the peak of their civilisation with the Landcruiser. After that is a beach littered in abandoned vehicles, presumably where the populace fled to in search for a new life on the sea.

Well, that's my reading of the game, anyway.

[ПЯТКОВ]

Good read..
I kind of felt everyone lives in, or near the sea, allready and has for a longtime (as we all need water), and all these vehicles were made for people to go back inland to collect things they need,

There are huge valleys and cliffs that cannot be crossed, therefore the large walker vehicle transport the crosses that valley, and lift building to be able to continue, these building and transports would have had many vehicles pass through everyday collecting resourses, it seems far was one of the last left in this area, even forgoten as the path to return back was blocked, equipment not maintained and hardly in working order, I also think they built and left signals later on for some of the last people left in these areas, were they out there researching something, did the storms stop them from travaling earlier, quite possible that there is only one small window for them to sail, maybe down to a number of weeks that is only suitable to travel, the rest of the time just an open storming waste land.

[Smoke]

The ending caught me by surprise, and reminded me a lot of The Road. I presume Mr Inventor Guy was the protagonist's father, specially because you can see a drawing on the front side of the okomotive that seems to suggest that this vehicle was either inhabited or constructed by both of them.
For some reason I thought it'd end with him meeting up his mother on some farmhouse somewhere, but I guess that's now how life goes in this gray world.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by ПЯТКОВ:

I kind of felt everyone lives in, or near the sea, allready and has for a longtime (as we all need water), and all these vehicles were made for people to go back inland to collect things they need,

Judging by all the abandoned vehicles half-buried in the sand and flooded at high tide, I think this was an example of an exodus. Everyone used whatever vehicle they had to go to the dock and catch the last ship out, Dunkirk style. They left everything they couldn't carry on the beach and just left. It's entirely possible that Jan Henriksen was planning to do the same, but lived too far in-land for simple tractorls and sail sleds to make the journey. A bigger, more robust vehicle was needed.

I'm also not convinced that people still live ashore or even on the dried-up seabed. All of the buildings appear completely abandoned and open to the elements, trashed inside and out. What machines still work break almost immediately upon activation and even their shelter town seems entirely abandoned. My impression is that something forced people to migrate. We know they didn't just straight-up die, because there isn't a single corpse to be found anywhere in the game. Granted, maybe there are corpses out-of-sight, but some massive disaster killed millions of people quickly, there would be signs of it. Seems to me more like people were just driven away.

Originally posted by Smoke:

I presume Mr Inventor Guy was the protagonist's father, specially because you can see a drawing on the front side of the okomotive that seems to suggest that this vehicle was either inhabited or constructed by both of them.

Father figure, certainly. I don't know about biological father. Jan Henriksen was clearly human and lived in a human world, as evident from the vrious paintings in the Landcruiser and the generally human-sized architecture. I don't know WHAT our protagonist is. He/she doesn't look human at all, but that might just be creative art style and/or exceptionally blocky clothing. The Okomotive itself seems to have been built for someone short like our protagonist, though I don't know how much of that is gameplay considerations.

Originally posted by ПЯТКОВ:

For some reason I thought it'd end with him meeting up his mother on some farmhouse somewhere, but I guess that's now how life goes in this gray world.

I honestly don't think the ending's as bleak as people make it out to be. If it were just our protagonist sitting by a lit signal fire as the tide rolls in and we cut to credits, I'd also find it very depressing. The fog horn at the end, however, suggests a ship - a proper seafaring ship. Considering the signal fire appears to have been the game's objective, that horn tells me we succeeded.

[Nyota Mwuaji]

I actually think that the ships and whatnot were somewhat responcible for the apocolypse given how much fuel the damn things eat and they seem to run on water, which would explain how a ocean got completely drained. the walkships may have seemed like a viable alternative however given that they seem to burst into flames when out of fuel (but that might have been from age) and that they cant move that far before "oh ♥♥♥♥ gotta refuel" I do think that Jan Henriksen was the father of the main character as if you zoom in on the symbols they say "Henriksen and SONS" as in more then one.

[Kecske]

There is some info in the artbook on Lone's the family situation and the apocalyptic event.
The grave at the start is Lone's father, brother of Jan Henriksson, whose coffin we find in the landcruiser.
As for the apocalypse, they are very vague, but it sounds to me like it all started with the oceans receeding for whatever reason:

Once a thriving place, home to an industrious
maritime people. Struck not by sudden
disaster, but relentless creeping change.
Its inhabitants unable or unwilling to adapt.
Their fate forced by nature. 

[Malidictus]

I'm pretty sure Henriksen and the Landcruisers all happened after the apocalypse. There's evidence of VERY heavy industrialisation far past the old shoreline, including large industrial complexes which were seen as the future. All of the old, weathered, wrecked technology from before the apocalypse looks very modern, 1980s. Nearly all the ships and submarines we run across - presumably the vessels which were there before the oceans receeded - look modern, as I said. Nearly all of the permanant structures built on the dried-up seabed - presumably built after the oceans receeded - look distinctly old. I'm talking 19th-20th century semi-rural designs, plus a nice helping of Zeerust sci-fi.

That was the basis for my initial assertion that the world of Far: Lone Sails was a copy of our own up until an apocalypse happened, and then it went into Steampunk, instead. I don't think Jan Henriksen's inventions could have caused the apocalypse, therefore, as I'm convinced they happened after it. I'm also not sure why you assert that the Landcruiser runs on water. I'm pretty sure the blue liquid isn't supposed to be water. The game is stylised, but not to that point. There IS water n the game in a number of places, and it's usually dark, colourless and reflective. My suspicion is what's in the vehicle is a deliberately contrasting cyan science goo.

As to Henriksen and sons, tha't entirely possible. Again, it would depend on whether our protagonist is human at all, which isn't very evident. I'm honestly not entirely sure why that connection was even necessary. It's a nice tie-in and explains why we're in the possession of such a complex, durable and extensible vehicle, of course - the original inventor is the one who created it. I'm just not sure that it holds much narrative weight, in the sense that I'm not sure it really matters either way. It's there to add a visual arc to the journey, starting from Henriksen's grave and his first least ambitious invention then driving to the height of his accomplishment and his greatest invention. It doesn't seem to affect events, however.

Granted, this game doesn't really HAVE a story to speak of. It has a starting point and and ending point, with everything in-between being there to set the mood.

*edit*

Originally posted by Kecske:

There is some info in the artbook on Lone's the family situation and the apocalyptic event.
The grave at the start is Lone's father, brother of Jan Henriksson, whose coffin we find in the landcruiser.
As for the apocalypse, they are very vague, but it sounds to me like it all started with the oceans receeding for whatever reason:

Once a thriving place, home to an industrious
maritime people. Struck not by sudden
disaster, but relentless creeping change.
Its inhabitants unable or unwilling to adapt.
Their fate forced by nature. 

Thank you. That settles a lot of our argument, and it sort of fits with what I suspected. Based on how far civilisation has moved off-shore onto the dried-up seabed and the kind of serious infrastructure they've build, it seems like this happened over a very long period of time. It seemed to me like the people were driven away, rather than killed outright, and my suspicion is they moved out to seaborne vesseles like what we hear right before the game fades to credits at the end.

As with Mad Max, though, the game seems infuriatingly vague as to what could have caused the disaster. "It just happened."

[Tomat228]

Interesting points of view. I'l paste mine.
(Hope it is understandable)
The beginning can be considered the creation of the company "Henriksson and sons" in the town on the old coast. Probably the reason was the invention of a water engine. One of the brothers was the father of the main heroine Lone, so it is written in the artbook, so the
name of the game has a double meaning. The success of the new technology led to the success of the company and the consumption of water, which caused the imbalance in the environment (I'm not sure what exactly happens to the water in engine, let's say, disappears into nowhere, it's still sci-fantasy). At this time, the mustachioed brother already has time to have a family and a child. Lone at an early age manages to see the sea and its disappearance, which we see from the children's drawings on the rocks. This, by the way, suggests that not more than 15 years have passed since the beginning of all this. So the water recedes, there may already be unusual natural disasters, and the wealthy company invests in resettlement and the creation of a new settlement "Blue Isles". Emblems, buildings and motor modules produced by H&s can be seen throughout the journey. This indicates the importance it had for the life of society. By the fact that we saw the destroyed houses and the tornado itself, you can guess that they are not uncommon and began a long time ago. And probably after the first serious incident, a new resettlement began. Now an industrial "swamptown" was built, in which people were temporarily to be accommodated, until the first oppidumotiv(symbolic pedigree: oppid from the Greek means "city", oppidum from the Roman means "fortress") was built, which would be safe to take all people to a safe place (from of what we saw in the game, we can conclude that the ecological catastrophe, although huge, but not the world). From the blueprint in the workshop in Blue Isles, you can understand that it was developed already then. But as we saw, the first Land Cruiser fell off his feet somewhere in the swamps. In artbook it is specified that this was his first voyage. After the tragedy, H&s didn't left idea of ​​the "walking Ark". Now people have moved to cold settlement(?) and there began the construction of second oppidumotive, which mustn't break down. And now it was built and, as we saw, was outside the construction site. But why was not it used? There may be several and even simultaneous reasons. For example: a volcanic activity was discovered on the planned path, and people could no longer risk so many lives; Died Jan H. and the remaining confidence in oppidumotive disappeared. In any case, after the old plan was abolished, the
remaining people had to try to climb over the mountains in small groups on small vehicles so that at least someone could make it. Nothing is known about the nature of the world beyond the ocean. And now about the Henriksson family. In our house on the old cost you can find portraits of brothers, supposedly, grandparents, and Lone herself (not the one in the attic). At the very beginning of the game, Lone faces a portrait of her father. I believe that there is one interesting tradition in the culture of these people: unlike us, they put on the graves and memorials not flowers, but pinwheels. And their number clearly corresponds to the number of people they are intended for. When I first thought about it, I noticed how many of them are set at the hills with the ruined houses in Blue Isles and even more in front of the fallen oppidumotive hull, and I felt oppressed. Reducing the total population can also be indicated by the fact that the second ship is clearly less than the first (already 6, not 8 legs), and that is intended for a smaller number of people. An interesting situation at the memorial of Jan H.. There are 4 pinwheels. My suggestion: 3 pinwheels on the left symbolize the brother's family (brother, daughter, wife(?)) which left in the house on the old shore (even in the picture gallery there is only one picture of them together and they are next to okomotive, which, as we know, was left on the old coast) and are considered dead, and the one on the right is Jan deceased far from his family. By the way, the Steam card with the image of this memorial is called "Hubris." I think this is a hint at what Jan H. was thinking about when he wanted to become the creator of the "ark", even after the tragedy took many lives. Perhaps this arrogance was manifested even earlier, it can be imagined that at his desire of profit he uncontrolledly distributed water engines, and instead of solving the problem he only moved people to other places where water was, so the mustached brother left him. And Lone, after the death of both parents, had nothing to do but try luck, after going to seek salvation on the old okomotive. Also I keep in mind that Lone could be adopted child and 2 other people could be parents of rothers.

[ПЯТКОВ]

thanks, Tomat228, this game has gotten deep.
I will start a new game, taking more notice of these thing, purchased the art book too.

[Malidictus]

OK, I have to ask - how much of this is coming from established sources like this mythical art book, and how much of it is your conjecture? I'm trying to argue here, just get an idea of your sources because your narrative doesn't really make it clear which parts you're quoting and which you're putting together yourself. The gender of the protagonist, for instance - where was this established? Or the "water engine?" Where was it established that it runs on water and somehow destroys it? Because neither the Okomotive nor the Landcruiser run on water. They run on crates and seemingly conventional oil. My vehicle has run out of fuel parked in water on at least one occasion.

*edit*
OK, I ended up grabbing the art book itself. A lot more detail has been given on the protagonist there, including the gender, name and even a hood-less headshot concept. Kind of wish some of that were in the game. That and info on the TWO Henriksen brothers exists there, but that seems to be about it.

[Tomat228]

May be converter converts only part of "fuel" into water to run steam engine. Who knows. It was my hypothesis of full lore based on info from game and artbook. I hadn't thought about it lightly, but it definitely isn't fully true.

[Malidictus]

Gotcha. Thanks for the explanation :)

I have my doubts about the engine using up water and "disappearing" it, personally, as it would have to transform it into something. I know this is essentially science fantasy, but it still to contradict the laws of thermodynamics a bit too much. For one, we never load up water in the Okomotive. I guess you could argue that the barrels are water, but I'm pretty sure the rooten wood crates aren't, and I can still feed in stuffed toys, mailboxes, magazines and propane tanks to fuel the engine.

As to the nature of the receeding water, I'm a little torn on this. Clearly water is a problem in this world. There's a road sign in the factory settlement which reads "Work for water." It's positioned at an angle which makes it hard to read, but I'm pretty sure it was promising to pay workers at the factory in water. This makes sense in Mad Max where water is just GONE, but that's clearly not the case in Far: Lone Sails. Water exists aplenty - there's a shallow pond at the start near the house, there are entire major lakes to cross on paddling boats, there's an entire giant swamp constituting one of the game's longer drives, there's snow and rain and hail... The sea might have retreated, but water didn't go anywhere

Maybe you can argue it was polluted. There's plenty of water around the factory, but it's all brown, so maybe they were dumping diesel and other chemicals in it. You CAN purify water, but maybe it takes too much power or there wasn't enough capacity - it's entirely possible. It just doesn't seem like people were going through all the water in the world and being forced to keep moving to chase it. It seems to me like the water was receeding due to some kind of major climate change that people were attempting to respond to.

The geography of the game is also... Kind of odd. You start at "the old coastline" and presumably keep driving into what used to be the sea, but the terrain doesn't meaningfully drop during that time. If anything, it rises as the Okomotive has to climb multiple times and use large industrial elevators. Granted, I'm no geologist but I still assume we're driving along the continental shelf heading for continental slope. The area right at the end with the signal flame would be the shelf break, where water depth increases signficiantly. According to Wikipedia, the shelf break almost universally occurs at a depth of ~140 meters below sea level. That's the height of a 40-storey building. If we start at Sea Level, I would assime we'd have to keep descending consistently throughout the game.

[F R A N K L Y N]

Both the mixture of landscapes as well as the odd leveling (so both horizontal and vertical distances) are extremely stylized; I don't think you can make any meaningful assumptions even if they are meant to reflect some specific landscape marks.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by F R A N K L Y N:

Both the mixture of landscapes as well as the odd leveling (so both horizontal and vertical distances) are extremely stylized; I don't think you can make any meaningful assumptions even if they are meant to reflect some specific landscape marks.

Granted. It's just odd to start at sea level, drive into the dried-up seabed... And then end up climbing a snowy mountain, complete with a frozen lake. I mean, maybe I'm moving North the entire time? The climate and terrain confuse me, is what I was saying. Makes it harder to wrap my head around the world.

[F R A N K L Y N]

Especially coming from LIMBO and Inside after just a couple of days, I totally see why this is so jarring to you.
But I guess the devs meant for the player to feel the climate zone switching in order to highlight the crossing of distance even more. And: FAR is an uplifting story; literally. That's why sea levels don't match: Having to climb or dive deep in LIMBO or Inside matches perfectly with discovering stuff in both physical and metaphorical obscureness, even darkness. FAR is more up-beat, yet needs the sea and takes the "logic damage" of non-matching sea levels to highlight the progress and change you go through by making you switch means of transportation (first on earth, then on water). During the interludium and fake "ending", the high point of the game (=the giant okomotive) notice how you aren't even able to see the ground below you.

TL;DR Style with inner substance over logical substance. :)

[Marigold]

I just finished this game and the ending really hit me. It was only a few minutes into the credits I actually teared up, for some reason it was very emotional to me suddenly.

For the entirety of the game I tried to read the game as a literal story about this mannekin trying to get to this promised new land. But when that machine also gives out and you find yourself stripped of all your means, barely able to go on, only to even then crash miserably and finally be unable to go on any further, you are absolutely dependant on outside help and light the pyre. And after the fade to black, you hear the horn of a ship approaching...

With how sense- and aimless the mannekin pushes on, how surreal the machine is to convert anything into fuel and how helpless the player is in the end, I understood it as a metaphor for depression, pushing on against all odds, sometimes finding a light moment in an otherwise harsh environment, the huge ship a perceived be all end all solution to your problems like an idealized person or a goal you thought would solve everything, but that doesnt do it either. In the end, you need to reach out to somebody to help you, to pick you up if you cant soldier on any further.

Im curious about why the mannekin starts out next to a portrait of the inventor though, maybe its a symbol for a fatherfigure, the child chases their father they want to meet but it turns out he isnt a great person? I dont know.

Then again, maybe Im all wrong and it really is just a story about a mannekin wanting to meet the inventor of a super ship that can carry them out of the post-apocalypse Snowpiercer-style.