First off, WARNING! There will be spoilers of the game’s backstory. If you don’t wish to be spoiled, simply click away from this blog post. This is for people that have managed to deal with the ‘walking simulator’ and have completed the game.
Continuing to read further than this, you have been warned.
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Anyway, I just had to make a blog post about the story of this game. It is..beautiful. And the ending is, well, unnerving to say the least.
You got Kate (Katherine) Collins, and her love interest (I’m going to assume who was her boyfriend or husband) Stephen Appleton. The two are scientists who work in an observatory. One night, they see a strange pattern of lights in the sky (who turns into be some unknown entity that seems to be alive).
After this, Stephen and a old friend of his are talking. But unknown to Kate, Stephen is cheating on her and even has a baby with this friend. Of course, word finally got to Kate, who sees herself being socially awkward (wanting to spend more time in the observatory), locks herself up there and attempts to communicate with this being.
And by ‘communicate’, this being feels “kill everything in the most painful way possible” is the way to say “hello humans”. First it started with birds suddenly dying and falling out of the sky, and cows dying where they stood. Then it moves to humans.
Imagine one day having a sudden headache, and hours later you’re bleeding from your nose..quite badly. And then, you die. That has to be one of the worst ways to die; something that a doctor can’t cure, and it’s just so painful. Not only that, but people are starting to mysteriously disappear into thin air (even the corpses of the dead).
Stephen sees this and orders the government to quarantine the village and block all ways in and out in order to isolate it. The government, trying not to cause mass-panic, tells people that it’s just a case of the Flu. They also cut phone lines and tell everyone to constantly listen to the radio for updates.
But due to Kate, this being is managing to circumvent the quarantine and starts to spread. Stephen is forced to make a decision he wishes he didn’t have to, which is to purge the infected. This decision is highly debated by a few of his colleagues (for good reason), but eventually realize there’s no other option; for this ‘flu’ needs to be stopped before it gets any worse. The public is kept in the dark during this process.
Sadly, this too doesn’t stop it (unknown to Stephen). It is assumed at this time that the entity has spread across the globe, wiping out the human race. He hides in a bunker, waiting for the bombs to fall. He’s then confronted by the entity, and then threatens to burn himself with a lighter (after soaking himself in gasoline) in order to keep it from taking him. Then suddenly, he sees a glimpse of…Kate. Kate IS the entity! But he drops the lighter in shock and ignites the gasoline, killing himself.
So we find out Kate is “the only one left”. Clearly, she managed to communicate with the light being that killing the human race, not cool bro. It retorts in..something that made me think for the longest time (enough to make this post).
It feels “by killing the human race, no one will be alone. I did everyone a favor. Now they will live eternally in light. They were going to die anyway, and I helped speed that along.”
…..Wow. I just..don’t know what to say about that ending. Err, actually, I do have something. I would refuse this ‘gift’. Because this ‘gift’ is too painful to endure.
Dying, is scary. It’s the unknown, and most humans are naturally scared of the unknown (with some embracing it in order to understand it).
Being told “do you want to see your lost loved ones again? I can give it to you. But you’ll suffer pain you’ve never felt in your life and die a horrible death. How does that sound?”
The natural response would be “Ohh HELL NAW!!” Wouldn’t it? It would be mine. Then again, you may not even have a choice. We cannot choose when we die. It just happens.
But now I have to go over things that did, and didn’t make sense.
First off.. Kate. Wow. Not only did she not really want to be a part of anyone, but then gets cheated on by her husband. No wonder she allowed this. She wanted the world to burn due to being pissed off.
Yet it also raises a question. …Who the fuck do we play as? Kate? Yet since she is the entity, then who are we, and why can’t we run? I was hoping to find the answer somewhere in the game, but it never showed up.
Lastly, if Kate “hates the world”, why is she showing the player these images of the recent past? Is the player stuck in purgatory? Are we the one that refused the ‘gift’, yet forgot what happened and now we’re reliving history? That could explain why we can’t run. Maybe we’re in some kind of zombie-like state.
After what has happened with this election… I still dunno. I don’t like the thought of my brain exploding due to a tumor that has grown faster than any tumor out there.
And that’s why I felt I absolutely had to make a blog post about this. Thanks for reading!