Theory Time! (Major Spoilers Ahead, don't read until you've played)

[Purplepaw]

It seems like the Care Corp. either holds a lot of influence or essentially rules the world- I'm assuming this because there are lots of those tall, gas-masked people around there, and those are the people who seem to be the 'law enforcers' judging by the way that they arrest others. There are also almost certainly some extremely unfair laws, as the innocent group of people singing around a campfire were broken up by the enforcers. Clearly fair trials and the like are not even considered in the post-apocalyptic world, since one of the enforcers has their dog run down and kill another human. Forests are being cut down and burned at an alarming rate, and it seems like the government (or care corp., or whoever the enforcers work for) is intentionally trying to wipe out all other species. Perhaps this is due to the lack of oxygen in this destroyed world. Bears, squirrels, wolves, and (I think) cats are all extinct already, judging by the board that can be viewed in the very beginning of the game, and foxes are believed to be extinct. Humans have no reservations about killing what they must know are either the last foxes on Earth or very close to the last remaining ones, which makes me think it's intentional.

The scavenger looks to be an outlaw of some kind, or just a poor person, hoping to earn money for his last remaining family (Molly) by selling your fox cub. He brings Molly with him to search for the furrier and try to sell the fox cub to him, but she gets sick and ends up dying. It's also worth noting that humans have begun not to care even about each other, seeing as the people cutting down the forest refuse to even attempt to help Molly despite her father begging them; this also makes me think the lack of oxygen (probably self-inflicted by all the fricken trees they're cutting down) is the motivation behind humans trying to wipe out other species and even turning a blind eye when their own kind are dying. After Molly's death, he frees your fox cub and then commits suicide gets killed by the furrier, who (I'm guessing) was angry that the scavenger let the fox cub and its family go free and didn't have any reservations about killing, since it would just mean less people to share oxygen with.

It looks like they get their electricity from nuclear powerplants; speaking of, one of them explodes in the ending sequence, which seems to be the real end of the world. After a flood, the power plant explodes and apparently causes the water to evaporate extremely quickly, causing the desert-like area shown at the end of the game. It's unclear why there's a perfectly in-tact forest separated from the desert by a fence, but I'm assuming that has more to do with symbolism than realism; the humans are trapped in a destroyed world of their own creation, whilst the innocent creatures are able to access a serene forest that the humans locked themselves out of, with the fence representing their previous actions.

A lot of this I only realized when I started writing, and that symbolism is just incredible, whether intentional or not. I absolutely love this game! Already played it 3 times haha, once per day.

[Rhy]

Good points, however the last one doesnt add up too much. A power plant can't just evaporate the ocean, even if exploded. The game plays near a river which likely caused the flooding. At the end youre in a dried out ocean/lake which the many ship wrecks indicate. The fence might just be where the shore/nuclear facility zone starts, so theres still plants.
It doesnt make sense that the mother still lives after drowning.
wood chopped -> no living space for animals -> ground stops being able to soak up water -> rains a lot -> flooding.
lakes dry up -> no water for human or animal, they have to migrate to other places. Those places get poisoned by humans too.
The entire ending sequence is just symbolism.

Just touching renewable energy is not enough (windmills, solar panels). Deforestation, greed, and the big corps are poison to the eco system which kills us in return.
The ending isnt the end of the world per say. It just indicates the fox mother's efforts are in vain as the cubs are unlikely to survive in the radiated hostile environment, soon to go extinct.

[Purplepaw]

Oh, I never noticed the shipwrecks! The ending sequence kind of threw me for a loop, so yeah, I just assumed it was symbolism (though it's unclear to me how the mother fox lived, too). Your theory that it was symbolic of the mother foxes efforts being in vain is way too sad for me though :'D although it might be correct, i'm not sure

[Foxador]

There's also no power plant that explodes at the end. It has to be symbolism and making one last final statement, otherwise the ending sequence makes no sense. As you go from a flooding and possibly drowning in a river to all of a sudden in a dried out desert with no indication as to how you got there or why your cubs are just sitting there waiting next to you. Obviously the whole ending is to just make a dramatic point, hence the whole killing off the main character at the very last second before a fade to black

[Rhy]

Originally posted by Foxador:

There's also no power plant that explodes at the end. It has to be symbolism and making one last final statement, otherwise the ending sequence makes no sense. As you go from a flooding and possibly drowning in a river to all of a sudden in a dried out desert with no indication as to how you got there or why your cubs are just sitting there waiting next to you. Obviously the whole ending is to just make a dramatic point, hence the whole killing off the main character at the very last second before a fade to black

Thats debatable. The nuclear reactors seen at the end emit either steam or a glow caused by ionisation. It doesnt look a lot like steam clouds really, however more like a beam caused by high amounts of radiation caused by a blown up reactor.

It fits to the previous flooding as well, as historically seen at the fukushima powerplant.
The High geiger crackling at the end Is an additional indicator, As powerplants aren't really known for high Rad amount outside the reactors unless damage to crucial parts.
Though of course it could just be another point for dramatic purposes. But as Nuclear energy is largely seen as pretty green in comparison, they had to include the worst case example to make their point, a hazard the wilderness cannot see until their last breaths.

[BlackNyasher]

I think the broken nuclear powerplant is here to explain us why humans did not ocupied this land and will not do in the near future, and why there is still a forest intact - as it happened to Chernobyl humans simply abandoned the radioactive zone, so as it happened irl animals are safe here and will do surprisingly well.
And another symbolism i noticed is that every human who been kind and helping to us died (if not to count the dude who distracted hunter when foxy got stuck in the pyramid-trap right in front of him): means the good people helping animals are not the solution for the extinction problem simply because one day the said people will die and animals will die with them without the ecosystem to which they belong and where they could be able to survive by themself. :V

But i guess they pretty overacted fox drowning. Like there is really zero chances fox could survive this... Had to cut it at the very moment foxy being hit by the barrel so we could believe she been thrown at the bank down the river... and then teleported (maybe thanks to the content being cut before the release) into the desert. Anyway they done it this way, maybe, to make player feel the loss, then to have a false hope and stare at the screen having no idea what to expect next, just to lose her for real.

And some people are hoping for the sequel - no way there will be any continuation of the Endling story. Developers called their game "survival" to fool you believing there will be the victory screen at the end of the game telling you how much of the good boy you are for saving all foxies and their species. But the game is not about it. This is the story of the last fox in the apocalyptic world, which is discussing on the extinction topic: fox died - her story ended, so neither you nor she will ever find out if her babies survived and the species was saved. You supposed to feel bad about foxes, not happy. Want to feel yourself happy - go save the real foxy. Making Endling 2 will ruin nearly the only thing the game does right (since gameplaywise it underperforms so badly that the short length of the game only helps it thanks to the greatest ending possible), and the only way it could be done right in the sequel is to make you to feel bad about foxes even more, if you didn't get it after the first game... We not want it.

[Mr. Wiggles]

Extinction per se has not a negative connotation. People who choose to not have children send their lineage the way of the dodo and no one really thinks it's a tragedy. Dozens or hundreds of species went extinct not too long ago and no one really cares. If mosquitoes carrying the vectors for deadly diseases went extinct we would call it a great victory for humanity.
From the single animal's perspective there is no difference in dying as the member of a thriving species or as the last one of your kind.

Devs are playing with the strong emotions coming from natural albeit tragic and unavoidable events in our lives: loss (shared both by more complex animals and humans) and uncertainty for the future (more specific to humans) to try and pass a message (humans are destroying the environment) only tangentially and not unequivocally (in fact, progress and industrialization greatly improved our life and lifted billions of people from suffering) related to the original themes of loss and uncertainty.

This game is basically the usual, tear jerking "Bambi" traslated to a modern and mainstream framework designed to be up to date and catchy (focus on environment, total extinction).

Ultimately there is nothing behind the devs' rhetoric but trying to find hidden messages or clues might be fun, albeit pointless.

[Hikari.ws]

I don't think it's an oxygen issue. They're using toxic masks, not O2 masks. And if it was O2 then animals wouldn't be able to breath.

For some reason the furrier murdered the scavenger. It was odd the scavenger freeing the cup after all he did, but I guess that humans on the story aren't aware of the harm they're doing. When his daughter dies, he realizes that the mother fox suffers by losing her cups as much as him by losing his daughter. But then, as in many stories, the villain regrets at the end but it's too late and dies.

The flood then desert is a shortcut to tell about the climate change we're facing. We're having more rain which leads to floods and less rain leading to lower humidity.

Scientists are warning that in the future we're gonna have major migration issues, with huge areas becoming impossible or very tough to live and ppl migrating out of there.

The jungle comes to offer hope on the ending. Of course the furrier would be able to pass the fence if he wanted, but the story had to give an ending to him and no animal is able to fight him, so the fence comes as a barrier to get away with him and the surviving animals to be able to go on.

[Hikari.ws]

I hadn't noticed. It seems that a nuclear disaster happened.

So, the fence is there to warn humans to not enter the radiation area, and that'd also be why the forest wasn't destroyed there, because the place has high level of radiation.

So it's not that the furrier is unable to pass the fence, it's that he doesn't want to. So, once they pass the fence, he loses then and gives up.

Now they're free from humans, but they'll eventually die of cancer.

[Sacred]

,

[Barraka Frite]

Originally posted by BlackNyasher:

I think the broken nuclear powerplant is here to explain us why humans did not ocupied this land and will not do in the near future, and why there is still a forest intact - as it happened to Chernobyl humans simply abandoned the radioactive zone, so as it happened irl animals are safe here and will do surprisingly well.
And another symbolism i noticed is that every human who been kind and helping to us died (if not to count the dude who distracted hunter when foxy got stuck in the pyramid-trap right in front of him): means the good people helping animals are not the solution for the extinction problem simply because one day the said people will die and animals will die with them without the ecosystem to which they belong and where they could be able to survive by themself. :V

But i guess they pretty overacted fox drowning. Like there is really zero chances fox could survive this... Had to cut it at the very moment foxy being hit by the barrel so we could believe she been thrown at the bank down the river... and then teleported (maybe thanks to the content being cut before the release) into the desert. Anyway they done it this way, maybe, to make player feel the loss, then to have a false hope and stare at the screen having no idea what to expect next, just to lose her for real.

And some people are hoping for the sequel - no way there will be any continuation of the Endling story. Developers called their game "survival" to fool you believing there will be the victory screen at the end of the game telling you how much of the good boy you are for saving all foxies and their species. But the game is not about it. This is the story of the last fox in the apocalyptic world, which is discussing on the extinction topic: fox died - her story ended, so neither you nor she will ever find out if her babies survived and the species was saved. You supposed to feel bad about foxes, not happy. Want to feel yourself happy - go save the real foxy. Making Endling 2 will ruin nearly the only thing the game does right (since gameplaywise it underperforms so badly that the short length of the game only helps it thanks to the greatest ending possible), and the only way it could be done right in the sequel is to make you to feel bad about foxes even more, if you didn't get it after the first game... We not want it.

Pretty much my thoughts as well.

Originally posted by Mr. Wiggles:

Extinction per se has not a negative connotation. People who choose to not have children send their lineage the way of the dodo and no one really thinks it's a tragedy. Dozens or hundreds of species went extinct not too long ago and no one really cares. If mosquitoes carrying the vectors for deadly diseases went extinct we would call it a great victory for humanity.
From the single animal's perspective there is no difference in dying as the member of a thriving species or as the last one of your kind.

Devs are playing with the strong emotions coming from natural albeit tragic and unavoidable events in our lives: loss (shared both by more complex animals and humans) and uncertainty for the future (more specific to humans) to try and pass a message (humans are destroying the environment) only tangentially and not unequivocally (in fact, progress and industrialization greatly improved our life and lifted billions of people from suffering) related to the original themes of loss and uncertainty.

This game is basically the usual, tear jerking "Bambi" traslated to a modern and mainstream framework designed to be up to date and catchy (focus on environment, total extinction).

Ultimately there is nothing behind the devs' rhetoric but trying to find hidden messages or clues might be fun, albeit pointless.

Sure, progress and industrialization greatly improved short-term quality of life, but the scale of their negative long-term consequences is still not well-known. Extinction of a few species won't have much consequences, but mass extinction of flora/fauna will most likely have impact on human life, not even talking about diverse aftermaths of pollutions.
Ofc in the game the devs chose to show the events through the scope of a couple of cute animal famillies for emotional purposes, and there is a dissonance between what actually affects the characters in gameplay and what the devs try to show (effect of deforestation, different kind of pollution, corporation's greed, etc..).
The entire outro felt like they wanted to throw all the ideas they couldn't properly incorporate into the game.

[Malagon]

Originally posted by Mr. Wiggles:

Extinction per se has not a negative connotation. People who choose to not have children send their lineage the way of the dodo and no one really thinks it's a tragedy. Dozens or hundreds of species went extinct not too long ago and no one really cares. If mosquitoes carrying the vectors for deadly diseases went extinct we would call it a great victory for humanity.
From the single animal's perspective there is no difference in dying as the member of a thriving species or as the last one of your kind.

Devs are playing with the strong emotions coming from natural albeit tragic and unavoidable events in our lives: loss (shared both by more complex animals and humans) and uncertainty for the future (more specific to humans) to try and pass a message (humans are destroying the environment) only tangentially and not unequivocally (in fact, progress and industrialization greatly improved our life and lifted billions of people from suffering) related to the original themes of loss and uncertainty.

This game is basically the usual, tear jerking "Bambi" traslated to a modern and mainstream framework designed to be up to date and catchy (focus on environment, total extinction).

Ultimately there is nothing behind the devs' rhetoric but trying to find hidden messages or clues might be fun, albeit pointless.

100% agree, I wish I could express the way I felt so eloquently.