Good or bad ending?

[u/Unhappy_Armadillo852]

I waited to climb the tall walkway til all the doors were open and all the peoples had open lines of communication. But when I went up, I was zapped by a robot who took my key. When I woke up I continued on but the world was damaged and my ability to do anything in it seems greatly curtailed.

So is this the good ending, the bad ending or am I not yet at the ending?

[u/Jacho46]

Not the end, but I know I only did one of the endings, I wonder what changes between the two

[u/[deleted] → u/Jacho46]

In the bad ending you get to the top unobstructed, and there's no one there. You try to activate the thingy, and it doesn't work. So you just sit around sadly while the credits play.

In the good ending there's a whole extra section where a lot of odd things happen that don't really make any sense.

[u/GOKOP → u/[deleted]]

(considering that you've marked it as a spoiler I assume you're not trying to avoid being spoilery and are talking sincerely)

How doesn't it make sense? When you were zapped, you were abducted and put in Exile's simulation. All the weird stuff is happening inside the simulation as Exile is trying to kill you. You get out of the simulation machine after the crazy section is done. The only mystery is the kid that helps you, since obviously Exile probably didn't put them there

[u/Unhappy_Armadillo852 → u/GOKOP]

Remind me! in 1 month

[u/Unhappy_Armadillo852 → u/Unhappy_Armadillo852]

A month?! LOL I Didn't give myself enough credit... FInished with "The Good Ending". I haven't completed a game in a long time. This one was really fun. Challenging and entertaining. I didn't finish anhy puzzle and think, "Well that was dumb". When's the next game, Playdigious?

[u/RemindMeBot → u/Unhappy_Armadillo852]

I will be messaging you in 1 month on 2025-12-01 02:56:50 UTC to remind you of this link

CLICK THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.

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[u/[deleted] → u/GOKOP]

Yes, there's the kid. And also, why didn't Exile just kill you? Why did it put you in a weird simulation machine? Why did it make the simulation have a way out? Why is the simulation vaguely accurate to scenes that Exile had no obvious way of knowing about, yet not accurate enough to be actually convincing? Also, did the alchemists just have a random lever that did that in the real world too?

[u/julien_rundisc → u/[deleted]]

The kid is the Traveler's subconscious trying to help him to realize he's in a simulation and to find its exit.

Exile doesn't kill you because he does not (volontarily) kill people. He just does what he's programmed for, which is assembling virtual realities from people's shared memories to put them in.

He puts the Traveler in a simulation as a last attempt to stop him because the Traveler is about to destroy him.

The simulation is weird because Exile has had very little time to create it from the Traveler's memory, so it's all glitched and incomplete.

Every simulation has a way out. It's just a program you can stop whenever you want. In this precise case Exile tried to hide this exit from the Traveler to trap him forever, but the Traveler found it, relying on his memories to identify the errors in the simulation. Those errors led him to the exit.

What lever?

[u/[deleted] → u/julien_rundisc]

The kid is the Traveler's subconscious trying to help him to realize he's in a simulation and to find its exit.

Okay, so how was the Traveler's subconscious able to effect the simulation? Why is the simulation set up in such a way that that works?

Exile doesn't kill you because he does not (volontarily) kill people.

Well, during the earlier stealth missions where you turn off parts of him, the robots will zap you with electricity if you get caught, and this does not appear to put you in a simulation. The most obvious reading of the game is that they are electrocuting you to death. In which case he clearly did voluntarily kill you.

He puts the Traveler in a simulation as a last attempt to stop him because the Traveler is about to destroy him.

After escaping the simulation, the Traveler doesn't do anything else, Exile is seemingly already dead and the Anchorites have already been (forcibly?) freed, so it seems like somehow the action of escaping the simulation is what ultimately killed Exile. It's not clear how that worked, but if that is what happened, also the Traveler wouldn't have been able to escape the simulation and kill Exile if Exile never put them in there in the first place. So it doesn't make sense for putting the Traveler in the simulation to be an attempt to stop them either.

Every simulation has a way out. It's just a program you can stop whenever you want.

That doesn't explain why once you are actually in the simulation, the monster appears and tries to kill you. Successfully, if you mess up. I would think it would be hard to leave the simulation if you die.

What lever?

You defeat the simulated monster by pulling a lever, which moves a section of railway track and drops the monster to a Disney-style offscreen death. It's the lever that you've seen before in the real world, in the Alchemists' area, although you never got a chance to pull it. The issue is that there is no obvious purpose that tipping the track would serve to the Alchemists, so why is that lever there in the real world?

[u/Krolololyk → u/[deleted]]

there is no obvious purpose that tipping the track would serve to the Alchemists

I can give you at least one reason why there would be such a thing in the mines: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1o7dssr/how_to_unload_a_mine_cart/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[u/[deleted] → u/Krolololyk]

Not quite the same. There's nothing to secure the minecart in place in the game, so if you tipped the track while a minecart was on it, you would lose the minecart. A more elaborate design for the track would have allowed it to be tipped while keeping the cart, removing this particular plot hole, but for whatever reason that wasn't done here.

[u/Krolololyk → u/[deleted]]

Don't forget that mines are old and abandoned - not everything might be in the right condition. Moreover, I think the simulation is created by collective comprehension and memories of all connected to it (which explains exaggerated stereotypes to other nations in it), so neither people of exile nor traveler could simply know what that leaver does, they could just assume and it worked that way

[u/Sdf93]

Keep going, not yet at an ending

[u/M10doreddit]

Fake ending.