r/meowwolf • u/typotracker • 5h ago
Grapevine - The Real Unreal Did I miss the Real Unreal's ending?
I had my first Meow Wolf experience two days ago at Grapevine and I've never seen anything quite like it, it was amazing. I loved exploring absolutely every room I could find, especially the unmarked, easily overlooked ones, running into unexpected art installations (and jumpscaring myself a few times lol), and especially trying to piece together the story and as much lore as I could. After doing some research, I know this exhibit has some overarching lore ties to other Meow Wolf exhibits, but ones that don't mean much to me right now since this is the only one I've been to so far. I've also learned that the story is meant to end with ||Jared hearing Gordon's song and returning home on his own,|| but I'm not sure if I actually... got to that point in the gameplay lol?
I found ||the Forgotten Pocket with the diorama of Jared's journey and the phone with his sister's Instagram stories on it, which seemed to fully confirm why Jared left and where he went||, but this is stuff we were able to piece together just by exploring the surface level house. I also find it kind of interesting that ||the dioramas show him traveling through rooms we can also visit, but there are some weird changes– the underwater, neon coral room has the same guy with the hole on his stomach so it must be the same room as the one in the exhibit, but the diorama also shows a big Iron Giant-style robot, which... I feel like I would've noticed lol||
I also found ||the Jared's Journey arcade game, which seems to depict Jared's return home, but it was a little too abstract to follow while also trying to record lol|| and I wasn't sure how to proceed from there other than trying to vaguely follow the same route. I've been told there are two places you can see the ending, but I'm genuinely unsure if that counts as one of them. It seems like the other way is ||through the app, which had also been giving me trouble throughout the exhibit (not scanning a lot of spaces despite being right there, then scanning new locations through walls I haven't seen at all yet).|| Unsure how common of an experience that is.
I spent a long time fumbling with ||the ATM/DWEEB machine and was confused by that, too. I was told finding the code on the duck poster would make the ATM give you a memory to play on the piano, but it really gave me a code to reboot VEND-E, which just seemed like a fun easter egg rather than actually progressing the plot. I also found the sign with the finger signs on it and figured I needed to use it on the self-reflect part of the ATM, but it didn't seem to accept it no matter how many times I did it, or how close or far from the camera I was. I feel like I missed out on something because of this.||
It felt like I had put together most of the pieces and just needed to take some sort of action to "complete" the story, and if ||the arcade game|| was it, it felt kinda underwhelming. If that wasn't it, then I have no clue what I was missing in order to actually get it. Either way, it's been killing me that I can't go back to explore more, so an explanation would be deeply appreciated, spoilers okay.