My Penrose Theory of what it is and its purpose (GIGA MEGA SPOILER)

[HoboForEternity]

i guess the core concept of the game is the egg story but with a sci fi twist.

the egg story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6♥♥♥_fRYaI&feature=emb_title
it is also partly inspired by Isaac Asimov's famous "The last Question"
https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

in my view, the penrose is some kind of a God maker the "egg" / the Multivac. it was sent from the future, built by people using the Nest's nanotechnology or something based of it but probably alot more advanced from another timeline. its purpose is to create a god for some reason. from here it is pure speculation, but here is what i got at least:

say there is timeline A. in this timeline the penrose didn't exist. humanity live as normal, similar to our timeline. no penrose, no sudden advancement, everything happens naturally. in the far far future something happened that put the whole human race in danger, or the whole solar system or even the whole universe in its battle against entropy. the penrose was created as the final desperate act of humanity and other sapient species they met or created. it was sent to south africa in the 1970's with sole purpose of changing the future. the penrose itself is part a database, a supercomputer, a technology treasure trove. all this is to attract people and advance humanity. again, this is probably an act of desperation that the timeline A people would risk something so big that basically gamble by changing the timeline. maybe it needed a person, or at least a sapient being to serve as it core. all the technology inside is to attract people and DARIS's protocol is basically choosing a person to be the penrose trinity figurehead. out of the many scientists, political figures, military figures, none of them gets chosen. instead, it was a journalist, an ex soldier turned pilot and an agnate. why them? why not smarter people? stronger or more influential people to be ascended? there is some kind of some unifying bond between mark, don and pooch. those are severe trauma or loss.

pooch is special because she's an agnate, and i guess the penrose decided that it needed an artifical sapient being be a part of the trinity, and that made sense why the penrose "shared" its trove of highly advanced technology so agnate could be invented and born as their own race. now Mark lost his fiance, and don was an ex soldier out due to PTSD and both of them had troubled life. POOCH was basically a sapient lab rat that experienced great mental turmoil that even humans cannot undergo. maybe these traumas are important for the ascendancy. one that fateful day, the 3 met and DARIS suddenly had the perfect candidate. 3 is significant number in christianity and alot of other religion and mysticism, the trinity, and penrose is a triangle. 3 is what DARIS needed and the 3 all met that day and during the prologue, DARIS scanned every single one of them and digitize them. now i think it don't have to be exactly Mark, Don and Pooch. it be anyone that fit the criteria. i think our heroes are simply the first 3 that fit the criteria. hell, Mark, Don and Pooch might not the only one trio. there might be countless trio that is undergoing the same adventure as us that DARIS "recruited" over the centuries.

now the objective isn't really to create a benevolent God. it is simply even if we get the generous ending, the simulation continue. it require minds that understand the intricate ripple and effect of a decision, basically creating something as close to omniscience as possible, by subjecting them to practically infinite lives and simulation. to create a god that can create a perfect world, as perfect as it can be without some unforeseen errors or flaws. if the project succeed, they will merge all the memories of the trio into one and gave them access to the full arsenal of penrose's technology that can easily reshape planet and its inhabitant in a whim (the biome seed device is the prime example of what the technologies are capable of and maybe that's primitive compared to the real capability of penrose)

now this is where it gets trippy. very trippy. i almost made my head hurt thinking about it.

what. is. real? almost the whole game is a simulation. we know that the prologue is real. the story DARIS told about the real mark, don and pooch is real. everything is a big question mark. the whole 98% of probably isn't accurate to the actual reality. the least extreme is all the factions, and world in the real world are almost the same as the game (the agnates uprising happen, all the factions exist) but some details, especially the heroes stories and the player's decision are tweaked according on how the simulation went.


the most extreme is the actual world looks nothing like in the game. its base in reality that it is one of the potential future that the world can go after the Penrose appeared. what we played is 000000.1% of the potential timeline that could have happened.

i could go deeper into this. Old Doli said the penrose exist in all point in time between the beginning to the end. say the beginning is when the Penrose appeared in timeline B. the end is the probably the death of life as we know, the that final moment when penrose was created. with penrose, they delayed the "end" indefinitely. each time the penrose failed, it send itself back to the the beginning. to do it all over again, with slight variation. hell the simulation might be done on each timeline, but each time the 'God' failed, the penrose travels back, update its data, and begins anew. the penrose is an impossible triangle. infinite regression, fractal timeline. i think it is possible the shape of penrose itself represent the basically infinite time it have to do its job before the universe or whatever the stake is saved.

if the scale was universal (and imo, considering of miracles the penrose are capable to do something really final like the heat death of universe might be the only thing that such technology cannot defeat), then there might be billions and billions of penrose, each habiting different planets with different sapient beings and they are always sent to the point where that targeted species start to tinker with advanced technology (aka the 1970's for us) so there are unfathomable numbers of simulation ran and unfathomable numbers of timeline created until hopefully at least 1 can escape from death of all thing.


in the end, i might be overthinking it and i spent too much time thinking and typing this lol, but it was fun. great game and definitely one of the best "open interpretation" story i have ever experienced and how fun it is to speculate.

[The Brotherhood]

Pinned this for now as a reward for a great interpretation of the story. Thanks HoboForEternity.

[HoboForEternity]

lmao that's cool. thanks. fun game, fun time writing and speculating.

[HoboForEternity]

game broke my mind. i just thought of a possibility of a timeline where Shongololo is a candidate for the simulation main character and he steamroll everything with his 100 tons metal body of pure mayhem and i started laughing IRL like a crazy person imagining the cutscene for it.

[동규]

Maybe the reason why Daris chose Mark,Don,Pooch is because they indirectly affected by Penrose in a brutal way. To test them if they can be something more.

[HoboForEternity]

that make sense too, except for pooch since she is directly affected by penrose (her entire existence are from penrose tech)

[동규]

With this theory the way how Old doli talks were understandable, and the reason why it shoots down the aircraft. thx

[American Dove Mitten]

It can’t be from a distant future because Mark instantly recognizes human technology, unlike the outer shell, implying something new was build around an older tech.

The fact that hologram recognizes nano tech makes me think that they used that technology before.

Wasn’t nest created to help human kind? What about a human link to control it.

(The whole story kinda reminded me of that StarTrek plot where the human satellite became an alien structure)

[felixmind]

Translated from Russian

What about simulacrum? Is this an assessment of the current simulation? But why was it given to Mark? I went through the game with the White simulacrum - this is a generous passage. Now I'm half way to the passage of the Red Simulacrum. But White and Red (aka White and Black) are too simple options for the development of events (Good and Evil). Perhaps DARIS is looking for an intermediate option - one who cannot be good with everyone, but cannot be bad with everyone. Has anyone completed the game on Yellow or Blue simulacrum (Gray version)? Or maybe (referring to the main topic) DARIS wants to see all four variants of the simulation? That is, you need to go through the game four times in four different endings so that he can calculate the right decision?

[felixmind]

Translated from Russian

In addition, the starting state of the simulacrum and the reaction of the Old DOLI are completely dependent on Mark's behavior in the prologue. Old DOLI knows that you are bad and he doesn’t like it (Red simulacrum), but believes that you will fulfill the “prophecy” anyway, anyway. Maybe I misunderstood. All other characters do not initially react in any way until you start snarling at them.

[HoboForEternity]

Originally posted by American Beetle:

It can’t be from a distant future because Mark instantly recognizes human technology, unlike the outer shell, implying something new was build around an older tech.

The fact that hologram recognizes nano tech makes me think that they used that technology before.

Wasn’t nest created to help human kind? What about a human link to control it.

(The whole story kinda reminded me of that StarTrek plot where the human satellite became an alien structure)

i think it's combination of techs from different epochs, but the penrose itself is unquestionably ultra highly advanced, even if it contains more primitive technology.

Originally posted by felixmind:

Translated from Russian

What about simulacrum? Is this an assessment of the current simulation? But why was it given to Mark? I went through the game with the White simulacrum - this is a generous passage. Now I'm half way to the passage of the Red Simulacrum. But White and Red (aka White and Black) are too simple options for the development of events (Good and Evil). Perhaps DARIS is looking for an intermediate option - one who cannot be good with everyone, but cannot be bad with everyone. Has anyone completed the game on Yellow or Blue simulacrum (Gray version)? Or maybe (referring to the main topic) DARIS wants to see all four variants of the simulation? That is, you need to go through the game four times in four different endings so that he can calculate the right decision?

yeah simulacrum is a bit weird because outside of mark asking "what the hell it is" he other anyone aside from us the player never really interact with it. maybe it's simply a recorder of the simulation data that will eventually be stored. daris isn't seeking for someone "balanced" in the morality scale. he is seeking for someone who can understand their choices and how it affect live.

i am 99% sure of it. in the end daris said something like this: " this task cannot be done by mind that perceive time linearly" thus subjecting the subjects in countless possibilities is important.

[бабушкин страпон]

on my opinion after all ur games(Stasys 2), this game have most strong story. maybe its couse in Soviet Russia future(kosmos) was main thing for people, and this story is more global then Stasys.
ps Mark Morgan did atmospheric music so cool

[The Brotherhood]

Thanks! Yeah the story was really deep but I think it may have been a bit complex for everyone to grasp.