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by the_af 13 days ago
Haha, I had to decode what you meant.

I think C is absolutely necessary and the game cannot work with it, because this is critical:

> Dropping C entirely would lose the confirmation of 'Seeing both sides'

The game doesn't really work in full ambiguity and uncertainty. Enough people didn't understand it even with C (as you can see if you go read the subreddit about the game).

If it's any consolation, I'm actually deeply worried about this: C is not the salvation we may think. C is not forever, and in fact, it's quite brittle! There's also no, ahem, mechanical way to reverse C back into its... "source". So the source is gone forever; once we have C, C is all there is, for as long as C can last without any failure or decay, which might not be much longer.

1 comments

> Enough people didn't understand it even with C

Yeah that's a good point, and perhaps explains why C was added in the first place.

I was going to say that B also shows the literal protagonist not really understanding it either, however now I think about it that reading doesn't track because as a player you've only been able to see one point of view at each branch along the way, so the other experiences are still happening in the background, just not observed by you.

> C is not the salvation we may think

I agree, and in fact the way C is presented in that moment (and maybe described throughout, it's been a while since I played through the game) also implies a 'nice' closure, or a victory that, like you say, doesn't really exist, on top of taking player's minds away from B.

I guess B is the more obvious existential horror, C is one you have to question a bit before it starts to feel wrong.