Thoughts on the endings?

[Celti]

Just finished the game and loved it! I wish it was longer. What are your thoughts on the endings?

[Naberius]

I liked the idea that it was all a Psych test. it makes more sense than some sort of detective software. BUT I would have liked to have a narrative that actually unites all cases.
In the last one we have both Maestro and Silver Spoon as call backs, plus "ghost" standing in as raven, but I think that it would have been nicer to be able to link all narratives and understand why the player character is going through those tests.

It just felt like it missed one last mission that helps you understand what was going on.

Over all though, I really enjoyed it.

[LightlySalted]

Can you elaborate on the ending? I get that the MC is doing a test, but I didn't catch why, or the doctor interviewing him.

[David]

All the narratives have callbacks in the last scenario. Spoon, Maestro, Mr. Director, Klep. Then you have "Emily" as well.

My shaky take on the endings:
Detective: You passed the TAT test by not assigning your personality to the test?
- does this mean you're a brainwashed sleeper like Nellie talks about?
- When George is questioning Maestro, Maestro falters at "I am Maestro" and ends up saying his number instead.
Amnesia: You fail every test because you lost your sense of self?
- you lose your mind?
Auditory Hallucination: The cycle repeats?
- you have to take the test again
Delusion: Recreates the events of no.68's escape exactly as it was told in scenario 5
- you escape?

Given that no.68's escape is mentioned in scenario 5 makes it all hazy what happens in which order though. It's possible the escape is the story element you add yourself, because you're thinking about escaping the mental hospital?

[BSent]

I think the whole thing is that it's a treatment therapy. They explain that people insert themselves into the scenario, but then have trouble differentiating the fictional scenario from reality. The final choice is do you recognize the scenario is fictional and take the medicine, or do you not recognize it's fictional and integrate into the scenario by attacking with the ash tray.

[zyzz]

If you listen to the full test being done on Maestro I think it's clear that the detective cases aren't real. Maestro doesn't remember what happened to his own painting until after thinking it through for some time, and having played through the level yourself, the whole story is very convoluted. There's a scene in the game where the tester asks you if you think there's an awful lot of coincidences in your stories, then quickly catches herself and says "Good job", instead. The Maestro in the psych ward isn't a painter, and neither of the in-game stories about him are real. His story about the art gallery mirrors your story about the art gallery because he was a figment of your imagination the whole time. Part of you knows, subconsciously, that the test you're taking isn't to become some kind of psychic detective.

If you were becoming some kind of psychic detective, Maestro's interrogation should have played out differently. For one thing, it shouldn't have taken place in a mental hospital. In the detective ending, you emerge out into a building that isn't set up like a mental hospital at all (no rec room, only one bed). If this scene is real, and they're not testing you in a mental hospital, then why are they testing him in one? The layout of the building actually makes no sense for any type of real building I can think of, and there are a dozen "interviews" being conducted in completely random places like on couches and standing next to bookcases. Why would you be the only one to get a real interview room? Why are there cop cars outside but no holding cells (not a jail/prison/police station)? Why is there a room that's completely inaccessible from the outside (check the room with only basement stairs and notice there's no other way to get to a basement). The answer is that the map you see in the detective ending is completely hallucinated.

Another bit of foreshadowing is what Oscar says about Mr Director. They don't correct his delusions because it wouldn't help. Instead they roleplay along with his delusions to keep him calm. This is why your tester catches herself to say "good job" and then congratulates you for "passing" if you continue to insist that you're a detective.

Also, if the psychic detective stuff were real, Nellie's investigations about the TAT should reveal that, but that's not what she says. She says it's a type of psych test that causes people to go mad and become hypnotized sleeper agents. That might be your subconscious warning you that they're intentionally causing you to go mad in order to induce the sleeper agent program, or that might be your subconscious realizing that it may be losing its grip on the "detective" delusion and starting to set up a backup plan to prevent you from realizing that you're not special, and you really have just gone mad.

[deBickler]

@zyzz I think you're really on point if we consider the "test" to have only one true meaning (the mental hospital treatment), thus making the detective stuff just an illusion.
But my take on this would be that there are two true alternative endings not connected to each other. In the end the game is not asking your character, but you, the player, if you still can differentiate between the stories and your initial detective mission. When I played it, I was totally convinced that I am patient 68 because it just fitted so nicely and made so much sense to me. So I chose it immediatly, I kind of forgot that she called me detective the whole time, I didn't think of that as my name. By choosing the patient option, I failed the test, because I lost "myself" in the recordings and I thought they were "real" and resembled reality when in fact, they were just tests.
They say multiple times that the "audial detective test" is harsh and not everyone passes it. I now think the mental asylum part in the test is mostly there to confuse you, by fitting too nicely to your own situation so you just have to link it to your own situation, thus testing the detective trainees as hard as possible whether or not they can isolate their reality from the cases. The fact that we're debating about the ending(s) here quite nicely shows how the game succeeded in showing exactly that, the test confuses you and makes it hard to tell reality from fiction.
So I would suggest that both endings are true simultaneously, depending on how you perceived the test. The fact that it let's you choose is brilliant and made at least me think about my first intuitive decision and what it says about how I perceive games in a way.

[Ranana]

Just to add on to other comments, I think Jennifer (doctor locked in toilet in mental hospital) is the person testing the player.

It's mentioned in that mission that No.68 smashes the ashtray before escaping through the window. Maybe that's supposed to represent the player having that idea rather than it actually having happened already, since we're potentially just making our own story from the picture.

Other patients such as Klep could be Chip (phone thief from police station mission), but I'm not sure if other patients represent other characters we've seen too. I think one more mission could have really carried the ending of the game through, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

[Veteran of the Great Emu War]

I did have one thing that bothered me about the ending. Episode 5 seems to suggest the Delusion ending is the sort of "canon" ending. (Not the problem I have). The problem I have with that is... if 68 jumped out the window to escape after whacking Jennifer with the ash tray, why is all the glass on the inside? Visually its there, and Oscar mentions it, but wouldn't that suggest something came from outside-in rather than inside-out? Again, really my only problem with that ending.

[Blu_Phire]

I wasn't sure what to make of the ending. I chose to escape. I suspect the designers were purposefully leaving it a little vague, but that it was definitely in the hospital. I think the idea is that "No. 68" is the correct answer & then perhaps medication & escape are both legitimate options... but then going back & taking the medication instead leads to a voice telling me to "wake up" (and also gains the achievement of Auditory Hallucination). I think I made the right choice the first time. The "detective" ending was odd & didn't gain any achievement. I thought it would make more sense for that to gain the "Delusion" achievement, but that was gained from the escape ending.

[Blu_Phire]

Follow up thought: Nellie wasn't counted as one of the "real patients". Is that because our character believed her story? But then what Dr George was saying in the scene contradicts Nellie, so why would our character imagine both versions? I am left feeling confused.

[OHMYGODWHATAREYOUDOINGSTOP]

Originally posted by deBickler:

...But my take on this would be that there are two true alternative endings not connected to each other....

This is my conclusion as well. The player being another patient worked so well as a narrative. Being presented with other patients' invented stories, this matched so well with Maestro's session (and I was always suspicious of why the detective was locked in an interrogation room for the test) that it seemed natural this was our own session, and I had to acknowledge I was a patient to avoid descending into delusion. I personally, the player, fell victim to the TAT, inserting myself into a fabricated narrative. There's no evidence I was actually a patient, I made that up and committed to it.

An interpretation would be choosing detective simply meant I had accepted the new identity they programmed me with, but the facility they show afterward hardly looks like a mental hospital.
Also, the consequence of choosing another's identity plays into the detective ending as well, as you'd be like all the other failed candidates you see.

[Kamamura]

My interpretation is that the whole project is an experimental technology used to somehow explore/dig out information from other people's minds. Somehow, people's brains are scanned/uploaded into some kind of database, and then the test subjects are encouraged to explore this record via the combination of the new technology and drugs - information about the plans and movements of important criminal bosses, about lost and valuable pieces of art, etc. The whole procedure is probably quite detrimental to the patients' minds that are erased and rewritten again and again in the end.

So the correct answer is IMO that you are patient 68 (another unknown test subject), and then refuse the medication that would clean your mind are reset you to square one - you are given the opportunity to escape the system and thus "win" the game.

[x_equals_speed]

Originally posted by Blu_Phire:

Follow up thought: Nellie wasn't counted as one of the "real patients". Is that because our character believed her story? But then what Dr George was saying in the scene contradicts Nellie, so why would our character imagine both versions? I am left feeling confused.

I tagged Nellie as a patient (I figured her for someone with some sort of paranoia rather than a genuine investigative journalist) and it accepted that as a correct answer. Perhaps there's more than one interpretation and the game will accept more than one list of "patients" in the final level.

I think you could draw up the endings as a grid.
There are essentially three possible realities:

1 You're being trained as a psychic detective
2 You're being brainwashed into a puppet
3 You're being treated for a problem

Then the meaning of the ending changes depending on what you do.

A Say you're a detective
B Say you're a patient and take the pill
C Say you're a patient and attack with the ashtray

Which results in a combination of endings with different interpretation

1A You passed your training, good job!
1B The training had the "side effects" mentioned earlier and you are in treatment for them.
1C The training had "side effects" that caused you to attack your trainer and run.

2A You were brainwashed and now think you're a detective but will kill for "them".
2B They tried to brainwash you and you let them.
2C They tried to brainwash you, but you managed to escape.

3A You are deep in delusion and unable to percieve the world you're in.
3B You are recovering from a disorder, but are on the path to recovery.
3C You are recovering from a disorder, but have attacked your therapist and are at large

And probably D, E, F etc. for the various options I've not tried at the end.

I'm not sure the game gives firm answers as to which of the realities we're in. None of the scenario-outcome pairs seems so utterly implausible that it couldn't be what happens.

Personally I like the idea that this was you being treated in the same way that you see the Maestro treated. There's a lot of foreshadowing for that, explanations that the characters you see are reflections of the different parts of your personality, ideas that they suggest, the notion that some want to take over (And another at war with himself) and that the other stories are things you've constructed based on those personality traits. Klep isn't based on Chip, your mind made up Chip from what you think of the parts of your personality that make up Klep.

But I just found that the most narratively satisfying, I don't think I could point to anything and say "That's firm evidence that this is definitely what happened"

[GutTyChaos]

On my way to see it. You are actually number 68, the patient that escape through the window before the case scenario ever happened. Or at lease it was pre-planned by you during the test.

From what I might understand.
The events did not really happened. The test, the cases and scenarios were merely the protagonist, number 68's imagination on how each stories must end with mysteries and absurd coincidental to make result on the test weather they would still remember who they really are or not. Like Maestro, he never was the famous Artist but rather another patient on test. In the whole time they were only been staring at the plain pictures of maps while under influence of TAT and long loop music and not using real forensic technology to solve out any past "cases".
The hospital did not explode. Number 68 managed to retain his sense of reality by the time he is on the final test/case, he eventually remember that each of the characters he heard from the past cases were actually based on almost everyone he already knew in the hospital and use them as references to complete his own imagination on each cases like how Tyler/Cameron were based from Spoon, Maestro as himself, Mc as the undercover officer and the phone thief as Mickey in case 3 and somehow Ray as Dwight with the second nicknames Ghost and Raven.

Eventually, he uses his own fantasy from TAT final test to pre-planned his escape in the canonical ending.
He knocked off Jannifer with the ashtray and process to quickly escape the hospital through window. While Ray, played the same route on the test, came over and check out on Jennifer.

The reason why Jennifer said the this final test is quite difficult and that the others "agents" couldn't solve it due to complications is that this final test determine if the test subjects, the patients. Would still remember who they are after they finished the test or not. The final test indeed is complicated because they purposely make the patients stare at the actual map of the mental hospital they are already and currently in with the list of actual people inside the hospital in which they already known from reality as suspects for the answers. Like Jennifer and Ray.
The outcome of the final test is there in the endings, if they still remember who they really are, it means experiment came out as null, you didn't really pass the test but you and your mind are still intact and given the pills that make you forget so you can be experiment again in future not remembering anything. If the patient believed to be person they told them to be, like "detective". Then the experiment is complete, you've been brainwashed to their uses.
If they can't remember and totally confused to who they are literally, then the experiment failed. You are broken.

[boomermojo]

Originally posted by Blu_Phire:

Follow up thought: Nellie wasn't counted as one of the "real patients". Is that because our character believed her story? But then what Dr George was saying in the scene contradicts Nellie, so why would our character imagine both versions? I am left feeling confused.

Same.