Explaining the story and ending of Scorn

[Emblem Parade]

Below is my interpretation of the narrative of this game. My main source is the masterful environmental storytelling I experienced while playing it, but I've also read the useful notes in the digital art booklet, and also considered the more direct inspirations from the art of Zdzisław Beksińsk and H. R. Giger.

For what it's worth, in my review I ended up not recommending this game. It is a frustrating playthrough. However, I was blown away by its artistic totality. Few games are so doggedly devoted to a concept, and even fewer push it to its sublime limits. Hopefully my words will add to your understanding and appreciation.

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Scorn is a human story. Or human-like. Perhaps it's us in our far future, or of beings like us. Let it be a warning or a sign post for where we're heading.

Biotechnology has advanced so far as to allow for a singularity[en.wikipedia.org]: all consciousness of the species combined into one, all individuality erased. And yet entropy cannot be stopped. For the consciousness to survive new consciousness must be reproduced and added to the whole. This is automated through vast biomachines, called Assemblies, that breed, process, and maintain themselves. As individuality no longer has value, neither does individual life. Only the bare minimum is done to maintain the process with no consideration for the welfare of a "person". Mouths are no longer needed and are bred out. For us, this might be horror incarnate. For the singularity, it is existence.

There remains a curious vestige. The lingering humanity of the singularity is, apparently, religious, poetic, and aesthetic. The Assembly is not merely functional: it is built as a temple and a museum. The process is not just utilitarian but ceremonial, an ongoing ritual of devotion to human sexuality, marveling in such unnecessary aspects as the non-reproductive pleasure of oral sex and the torture of childbirth. Again, this is a human story that is not about deleting humanity but about evolving it. Whatever this is, as horrific as it is, it's still recognizably human.

But then, an event. A malignant, alien parasite hive invades the Assembly and begins to feed on the biomass. The singularity attempts to fight back with its warrior biomachines, but it seems that the war has reached a stalemate. The singularity has stopped most of its production, trying to starve the parasite. For its part, the parasite has learned how to keep some of the process functioning well enough to barely feed itself. Most of the structure has gone dormant and over time decay has set in. As this stalemate continues both entities will eventually die.

And yet the war has a side effect. Life forms born and ejected from the Genesis Wall end up left out in the Field, unharvested. Most die on impact but a few survive and instinctively want to join with the singularity, moving towards it. We play two of them. The first doesn't get very far before being taken over by the parasite. The second gets partially taken over by the first. They seem to help each other, individual human and individual parasite, as they approach the Citadel. They pass through history, remnants of internal wars waged before the singularity was achieved. (Note that most of this history, the Labyrinth and Tower locations, ended up being cut from the final game.) Finally, the human manages to separate himself from the parasite at the cost of a mortal injury.

His first final action as an individual is to destroy the parasite queen, perhaps accidentally on his way to the Citadel. Does this mean the parasite threat is over? Or will a new queen be bred from the remaining forms? Finally, he stands before the singularity. He follows the techno-ritual and ascends. But the individual parasite was waiting and merges with him. They are now a distinct entity, neither of the singularity nor the parasite, waiting at the threshold.

What to make of this ending? Obviously the singularity and the parasite are comparable entities. Both are collective minds, both disregard the individual. But while the singularity builds things, including unnecessary aesthetic things, the parasite only corrupts or remixes what already exists. Is it an artist or an anti-artist? Both entities represent possible endings for evolution: you either become a horrifically static singularity or a bottomless, hungry pit. Order and chaos look uncomfortably similar in the end.

And yet that final image of the merged entity at the threshold defies both collective tail ends. It did not join with the singularity. But, also, the parasite queen is dead and it may no longer belong to the parasite hive mind. This is something new. Can it survive? It doesn't look like it can feed or defend itself. Can it reproduce? Perhaps, but not sexually, because it is unique and alone. It really doesn't look like the beginning of something, but rather an ending. And yet, still, new.

This is not an optimistic ending. Instead, it's a defiant one. And, indeed, I identify this as the theme of the entire game: defiance. In face of inevitable pain and death you, the player, keep going. Defiant until the very end.

[InfinityCabbage]

well said

[Mail]

can u explain the thing that the protaganists penis went into during the ending? what did that have to do with anything

[Emblem Parade]

@Mail The singularity is all about continuous sexual reproduction. If you look around that final temple you'll see depictions of a lot of sexual acts (oral seems popular), child birth, and disfiguration/evolution. None of this is necessary for the machine to work, but obviously the singularity held these acts as sacred. That hose-penis-machine must be the moment before ascension in which the protagonist's sperm gets added to the Assembly's bank, intended for impregnating females. Eventually the process ends at the Genesis Wall where new individuals are born and ejected into the Field. Likely only a small percentage are intended to ascend to the singularity. The rest will be used as worker slaves, warriors, and pure biomass fuel.

[DuX1112]

I applaud your take, it's quite thought out!

I love the idea of defiance too. But who was more defiant, out protagonist, or the parasite? Or... Which of them are we, really, and who was more defiant? (See (2) below).

What do you think about these two theories of mine by the way?

(1)

I think that the entire plot is that this civilization somehow lost the ability to reproduce, hence all the sexual imagery and "Cult of reproduction." This is why their world is barren and hostile, by this point in time, probably, everyone has died, and they're something like 4000 years in the future where a last stand cult of scientists remained at work trying to restore, reincarnate, resurrect life.

In their quest for restoring their reproductive abilities, they started experimenting in a variety of ways, mostly mechanical and scientific. The problem seems to be the implantation of a soul. Most experiments seemed to produce drone-like creatures or manikins that die shortly after being "born." (Hence the huge amounts of smaller but dead bodies). Additionally, the small angry babies that you implant in the robot thing are also another failed experiment (they were basically evil homunculi). The huge "mother" creature is also one more experiment, perhaps they thought if they built a huge mother beast that it will cause offspring or produce eggs on its own... Or with the aid of machinery inside it (ugh).

They also attempted to harness the ability of parasites for the purposes of reproduction, which is what caused the entire catastrophe. Hypothetically, they DID find a process to implant a soul inside a body, which, I think, the ritual at the end was supposed to achieve. You get butchered and carried towards a portal of light of some sort, BUT, the parasite attacks at the last moment and prevents you from being "born again."

Also, as to WHY the facility is so LARGE...

Here's the thing.

It's AI made. Like AI art. The creators gave it some initial parameters, they went extinct, and from then on the entire facility was guided by an AI algorithm that kept experimenting and testing different methods of life creation, and it 3D printed whatever it felt necessary. Convoluted catacomb-like hive-structures deep underground? Sure why not. The AI doesn't care about the aesthetics or the navigation of ordinary human minds, it's going to build whatever it needs building.

Add to this that this machinery is also partially biological and organic, so the ancient AI is of course instructing matter, or its cells, to build wood-like materials over here, metallic structures over there, and organic tissues over here etc. It's basically computing, coming up with a test plan, then it 3D builds the entire thing on both cellular and mechanical levels, and then it runs its experiments.

9000 bodies that died 5 seconds after birth?

No problem.

Introduce a new variable.

Try again.

Bodies clogging the output channel?

Add acid organic decomposition sprinklers to clear the debris.

Try again.

The egg hypothesis from Act 1 produces deformed snail-like humanoids?

They're not viable, scrape and dispose of by the scooping mechanism.

Etc.

Basically the entire project is now led by an AI, and the enemies we encounter are its immune system cells to to speak, like white blood cells roaming around trying to clear potential foreign bodies (you).

Clearly by the way it was clogged in many areas, lots of problems. The immune system was undergoing inflammation or the AI was getting bugged etc. If it worked tirelessly for millennia, it makes sense that it would be causing dead ends and bottlenecks.

(2)

And at the end you actually WON because you saved yourself by jumping on the second Scorn Guy?

Because as another thread said, the main menu screen shows the parasite's face actually. The same face that gets removed by the machine later. And you START as this creature, which then becomes a parasite, and then in Act 3 it jumps on the player, and then they merge, and they get separated again in Act 5... Right before the end where the parasite - YOU, the FIRST PLAYER - jumps back on you, the second player? Right before the ritual?

What if you're actually preventing something evil from happening? After all they massacred Player 2 in that creepy ritual. Why even go along with that? Are you the life force, represented in the parasite all the time? Or perhaps a symbiont?

ALSO notice how you lose power and vitality and energy once you remove the "parasite" from your back. Shouldn't a host RECOVER vitality upon removing a parasite? Why did our character feel almost dead after it?

And consider that by the end we were almost incapable of solving puzzles and completing the ritual BECAUSE of the parasite STOPPING us. Turning our hands into uncouthy wood? Notice that the "parasite" (YOU) always became more aggressive as you (the second character) MADE PROGRESS in your mysterious quest? Why would that be? Why would the "parasite" stab you in your stomach and grow ever more constricting the more you "progressed" in this facility and this "ritual"?

Just WHAT were you actually trying to accomplish?

And just WHY did the "parasite" STOP you right at the end?

Was the parasite the REAL YOU, THE ORIGINAL YOU, all along?

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Any discussion appreciated!

[Emblem Parade]

@DuX1112 Thanks very much, your interpretations are also interesting. I agree that the singularity lost some of its ability to reproduce, but I'm pretty sure it's because of the parasite. Without it, the machine would just keep going. Why wouldn't it? Even with our own puny technology today we could probably devise a horrific machine that keeps itself going, as long as it maintains its size and limits its harvesting of natural resources. Equilibrium is rational and easy.

And yes, I agree that the first protagonist is very important. Actually, he (or she? unclear) was already a parasite-hybrid. So, to be technically accurate, the final entity is 3/4th humanish, 1/4th parasite.

I don't think the parasite is "evil" while the singularity is "good". Both are post-moral creatures who care only about survival and reproduction, not individual welfare. But somehow both our protagonists -- and possibly the first more than the second -- care about their own personal survival. That is sacrilegious to the singularity and anathema to the parasite. It's a defiant stance against both collective entities.

The word "scorn" means contempt. Both the singularity and the parasite despise their individual life forms. And our protagonists, in return, despise the horrific fate that was chosen for them. The last act was not merely defiant, it was defiantly about their own freedom and individuality, to stay at the threshold as themselves and not join into a collective consciousness of any sort, even at the cost of lonely immobility and stasis. Better to be free than to be a cog in a machine.

[Solmangrundy]

i assumed this was some cancer analogy.

seeing as how you start off with no cancer. get cancered up by a cancer monster. continuously develop cancer all over your body. cut it out. and then die because the cancer came back and end up as a tumorous blob.

cancer was all over the walls. cancer was spilling out into the land scape outside the buildings. the monsters were cancer. this game gave me cancer.

[Emblem Parade]

Originally posted by Solmangrundy:

i assumed this was some cancer analogy.

Your interpretation is valid. For what it's worth, the Scorn art book calls it a "parasite" 26 times. There are only two mentions there of the word "cancerous", once to describe certain growths in the Tower (an area that was cut from the game), and the other as an analogy for the parasite.

[Joar-boy]

I don't think it's a "malignant alien parasite" I think it's the "singularity" as you refer to it that is the parasite. The advanced stage of the civilization depicted in Scorn is like a tumor on it's former biotechnological self.

[DuX1112]

Originally posted by Joar-boy:

I don't think it's a "malignant alien parasite" I think it's the "singularity" as you refer to it that is the parasite. The advanced stage of the civilization depicted in Scorn is like a tumor on it's former biotechnological self.

What if the parasite isn't... a parasite as such but normal biological life that almost got wiped out by this civilization with their biotechnology? And the last remnants of biological life adapted and evolved and it can only prey on these "Womb Wall" humanoids for food, energy and sustenance?

Looking at it from that angle, the parasite succumbing you in the end is a win for nature, biology, evolution. The biotech human civilization ran itself in the ground, contaminated the planet to an almost total degree, and reduced itself to a room of neural neural network human consciousness in Polis. But life... Life finds a way.

Basically, the Scorn civilization got defeated.

[Emblem Parade]

Originally posted by Joar-boy:

I don't think it's a "malignant alien parasite" I think it's the "singularity" as you refer to it that is the parasite. The advanced stage of the civilization depicted in Scorn is like a tumor on it's former biotechnological self.

Many people have compared humanity, even in our current state of evolution, to a cancer on the body of the world. I'm sure most animals living today would agree...

I think, though, that in Scorn the metaphor is fairly clear: the parasite is growing inside the structures created by the singularity, so it is more easily understood as a cancerous tumor inside an existing body. Again, I'll mention that the digital art book clearly calls it a "parasite", which is different from a tumor. A parasite is an independent form of life that needs to feed.

[Cthoolhoo]

Originally posted by Emblem Parade:

@Mail The singularity is all about continuous sexual reproduction. If you look around that final temple you'll see depictions of a lot of sexual acts (oral seems popular), child birth, and disfiguration/evolution. None of this is necessary for the machine to work, but obviously the singularity held these acts as sacred. That hose-penis-machine must be the moment before ascension in which the protagonist's sperm gets added to the Assembly's bank, intended for impregnating females. Eventually the process ends at the Genesis Wall where new individuals are born and ejected into the Field. Likely only a small percentage are intended to ascend to the singularity. The rest will be used as worker slaves, warriors, and pure biomass fuel.

if "is all about continuous sexual reproduction" than why they show unreproductive acts on the statues/carvings (oral)?

[Emblem Parade]

Originally posted by Cthoolhoo:

if "is all about continuous sexual reproduction" than why they show unreproductive acts on the statues/carvings (oral)?

See my original post -- I think the singularity cares about far more than just functionality. It has a strong religious and aesthetic attachment to sex as the act that keeps it going. Sex is sacred to it. That's why it constructed the machine as a temple.

To me it makes everything even more horrifying. This is not just a machine that processes people, it's a machine that finds deep significance, even beauty, in torture and pain. Rather than just dump flesh into a tube and get it over with quickly, it seems to sadistically relish the act.

[Thryhring]

The art book mentions that the civilization uses hallucinogens to reach a higher state of consciousness

My interpretation of the final "ceremony" was that the combination of torturous pain, sexual pleasure and placing the subject into a near-death state is all stimuli provided in the service of flooding the subject's brain with chemicals, opening their mind so that they can ascend to this higher plane of existence -- an act which the whole civilization seems to revolve totally around

Sort of like a really extreme form of autoerotic asphyxiation with a metaphysical climax

[Emblem Parade]

Originally posted by Thryhring:

My interpretation of the final "ceremony" was that the combination of torturous pain, sexual pleasure and placing the subject into a near-death state is all stimuli provided in the service of flooding the subject's brain with chemicals, opening their mind so that they can ascend to this higher plane of existence -- an act which the whole civilization seems to revolve totally around

Yes! But it looks like the vast majority do not get to ascend, instead toil as slaves, warrior drones, or are used for fuel. It doesn't look like hallucinogens are wasted on them. On the contrary, sadism seems to be the point.

By the way, that final ceremony has another aspect: bodily transformation. We see a few statues reminiscent of a Cthulhu-like being and also human forms with their skin and organs spread out to resemble that Cthulhu-like being, a bit like a Viking "blood eagle" torture ritual. So this was not just an evolution of consciousness, but also a physical one. Or perhaps one was a ritual aspect of the other.

Or perhaps it was all aspirational, a desire of the singularity to ascend to a next evolutionary stage beyond the human. But it couldn't go further, exactly because it lost that spark of individual value on a genetic as well as a personal level, that which makes sexual reproduction such a driving force of biological evolution. Instead, a singularity is a static end point, not a place from which you can move forward.

It's a temple of wishes that cannot be fulfilled. A tomb of what could have been but was not.

[DuX1112]

Originally posted by Thryhring:

The art book mentions that the civilization uses hallucinogens to reach a higher state of consciousness

My interpretation of the final "ceremony" was that the combination of torturous pain, sexual pleasure and placing the subject into a near-death state is all stimuli provided in the service of flooding the subject's brain with chemicals, opening their mind so that they can ascend to this higher plane of existence -- an act which the whole civilization seems to revolve totally around

Sort of like a really extreme form of autoerotic asphyxiation with a metaphysical climax

This.