A Complete Story Breakdown of SIGNALIS

foreign is a game of questions what is the value of human life how far are you willing to go for the ones you love how can we differentiate between reality and fantasy and what is the worth of a replica a copy of a copy these questions of course are not new stories told throughout the ages have grappled with themes of creation reality and the nature of humanity which resonate with us because they tap into some of our most universal wonders like many I began playing sickness the day it released back in October and was enthralled by it almost immediately I began working on this video my own attempt to understand its Mysteries uncover its secrets and learn from myself the truth of this thing that is so dark and yet so beautiful but signalus is Cosmic horror and just as in the classic works of Robert Chambers and H.P Lovecraft its deepest Mysteries are intentionally left ambiguous implied to be beyond our comprehension it's not that they don't have answers but that the very pursuit of those answers is enough to drive you mad and this is exactly what you'll experience with signalus the deeper you dig into the lore and the more discoveries you make the more agonizing it becomes that the pieces don't all fit together because even the most contradictory details feel so careful and deliberate there are other complicating factors as well the events of the whole game hinge on a phenomenon called bioresonance which is barely understood by the characters in The Game and is subsequently barely explained to the player dream logic is ubiquitous and some degree of unreliable narration is also at play another Hallmark of Chambers and Lovecraft which means we can't take anything we see or hear at face value so with all that established we find ourselves facing a pretty significant question should we try to understand for me at least the answer is absolutely there may not be a singular truth or definitive interpretation but that doesn't mean the search for answers is futile signalus is a Masterwork of Illusion allegory and art brimming with many secrets that can in fact be explained and in pursuit of these smaller Mysteries we draw ever closer to understanding the greater whole of particular note as a resource in this endeavor are the many works of literature used throughout the game including the King in Yellow anthology by Robert Chambers an inhabitant of carcosa by Ambrose Pierce and the festival by H.P Lovecraft it's absolutely worth it to read through these diverse stories as they provided much of the inspiration for signalus and contain a great deal of information that sheds light on its dense Mysteries I'll refer to these works periodically in order to highlight some of the most important connections they have with signalus but I won't be covering them in depth for two reasons first this video is quite long enough already and second these Works do not Define the game in and of themselves they were not merely copied but transformed and have become something new in the context of elster and ariane's story as an example of what I mean by this let's take a quick look at the concept of carcosa signalus makes clear reference to carcosa in its visual iconography and directly quotes passages relating to it from the King and yellow which itself appropriated the term from an inhabitant of carcosa which was borrowed from Gustav nadu's poem Carcassonne which is originally inspired by the medieval French city of carcasson but what does it mean nadu's poem refers to the place as an actual City whose meaning is metaphorical as a stand-in for an individual's deepest desires or Heaven by some interpretations but this meaning has evolved each time it has been used to the point that it has become quite hard to pin down in any general sense the reason I bring all this up is to point out the fact that all explicit mentions of carcosa are deliberately omitted from signalus there are no easy answers here and to find Our Truth we must take a leap into the great Abyss that is signalus lore and that's exactly what I tried to do here my goal in making this video is twofold first and foremost it is to present a thorough researched explanation of the game from beginning to end showing and explaining exactly what is happening along elster's journey and pointing out its many connections to other pre-existing works and second it is to offer my own comprehensive interpretation of what it all means to be clear my intent is not to convince you that this is the only or best interpretation of signalus but simply to present it as an option that ties together many of the narrative threads I'll be discussing my Approach assumes there are literal and symbolic elements at play but I think purely symbolic interpretations are very interesting and valid as well part of what makes signalus so compelling is that the emotional core of the story retains its potency regardless of interpretation needless to say this video will contain full spoilers for the entire game from this point on so if you haven't yet played it yourself I would highly recommend pausing the video here and doing that before you continue watching signalus is well worth your time and the less you know going into the experience the better with that out of the way this is how the rest of the video will work first I'll cover all background information preceding and leading up to the main Narrative of the game including an overview of the solar system the Revolution and ariane's life up to the Penrose Mission next I'll dig deeper into the origin of the titular signal what it is the serpinski connection and the important role of replica Commander Falk I'll then discuss the nature of ariane's dream its fundamental purpose the significance of the king and yellow and The Meta layering of the overall narrative following this I'll transition to a more granular approach and break down elster's Journey chronologically chapter by chapter explaining each sequence in context of the larger whole as such do note that I will be skipping over some details the first time they appear so that I can address them properly in a later section as well as jumping around the game a bit to tie together scenes and Concepts that appear at different points of the story finally I'll discuss the game's four endings and bring my analysis to a close foreign [Music] is set in our own solar system but as stated by the developers it does not take place in our future but in a different reality with its own timeline in this alternate future six worlds were inhabited by humans and the correlations to our system's planets are evident when we consider the star map in serpinsky the dream diary and Tarot cards from rotfront and the posters found throughout the game bouillon is the capital of the empire of usan and is described as having a floating Imperial Palace and a sun-like eye both of which correspond to Venus while the planet's surface is utterly inhospitable due to the Heat and crushing air pressure its atmosphere 30 miles up is surprisingly temperate the air pressure and temperature are comparable to Earths and the rich CO2 gas found there could be filtered to provide oxygen conveniently there are still plenty of atmosphere left above this point to provide shielding from solar radiation and seen through this absorbent barrier the sun would likely appear as a large luminant eye constructing floating cities at the this height makes far more sense than trying to terraform the planet's surface and this appears to be the approach the Empire took next we move to Veneta aptly named The Cradle of humanity since it is in fact Earth the large oceans and blue skies attest to this although the planet's climate was so devastated by the ongoing War for control that these bodies of water Rose to cover much of its land mass we can see that the moon itself was destroyed as well meaning that the ocean would no longer be affected by its tidal forces is the system's second Imperial world and corresponds to Mars the planet is described as having a red desert strong sandstorms and appears to be the site of Major mining operations as well all of which match up to the World As We Know It furthermore we learned that farming is an industry here which makes sense considering Martian soil has all the essential minerals to support plant life rotfront is a revolution-controlled moon of the planet Jupiter with a deep ocean under its icy crust and a prominent red storm in the sky the inclusion of a Subterranean ocean appears to leave us with three possible candidates Ganymede Callisto and Europa but the first two can be ruled out since their oceans are buried hundreds of miles beneath Solid Rock while europa's ocean is only 10 to 15 miles beneath a thin icy crust this more closely fits the description from the dream diary which says below the ice of rotfront so I think it's safe to conclude we're talking about Europa here the large red storm referred to as an eye by many of rotfront's inhabitants is simply Jupiter's Great Red Spot as evidenced by the way it is referred to as a high pressure region in the atmosphere of rotfront's planet and is clearly shown on the official rot-front poster hi Matt is the capital of the nation of yusan the Revolution and based on its yellow color and the fact that rings are visible from the world it clearly corresponds to Saturn's moon Titan in fact Titan is considered one of the most Earth-like worlds in our solar system due to its large size and dense atmosphere that features a hydrological cycle similar to ours and as such would have been particularly suitable for terraforming finally we have Lang for which surprisingly little information is given considering how much time we spend there fortunately there are some good clues that indicate this is the dwarf planet Pluto first the star map shows Lang by itself meaning it cannot be a moon of either Uranus or Neptune and its standout feature is the serpinsky mind that delves deep into the world's surface while little is known about Pluto's composition some theories suggest the interior of the planet is rich in deposits of gold Platinum nickel and other valuable minerals that would make mining a lucrative operation there it's also worth acknowledging that Pluto is named after the god of the underworld which fits with serpinsky's identity as a veritable hell as a whole the solar system appears to be Loosely inspired by lovecraft's dreamlands which is essentially a mirror image alternate version of our universe that can be accessed through sleep or rather through dreams interestingly the system's three actual planets bouillon Veneta and katesh are all named after mythical locations on Earth that for varying reasons sunk into an ocean or other large body of water bugyan was a mysterious island in Slavic mythology with the ability to appear and disappear with the tide kitesh was a Russian city that sank into Lake svitloyar to protect its inhabitants from a Mongol invasion and Vanetta was a city that was sunk by the gods into the Baltic Sea as punishment for its numerous sins of excess and blasphemy the use of these names implies that the base reality of cignalis is related to but fundamentally detached from our own Additionally the dwarf planet laying is named after a cold but otherwise ambiguous location in the dreamlands where multiple realities converge the names of the other two moons don't fit this theme but are interesting nonetheless hi Matt is the German word for home or Homeland both with regard to physical location and culture and this makes sense considering it is the capital of usan rotfront translates literally to Red Front which could be a reference to its planet's iconic Red Storm and is also the name of a small Russian village that was occupied by the Soviet Union in the 1920s just as rot front the Moon lives under the tight grip of usan while it may not be strictly necessary to know this information in order to appreciate the events of signalis I find it quite interesting all the same and useful for understanding the greater context in which these events take place but with that out of the way let's get to the actual story of signalus it all began with Mankind's Ascension from Veneta to the rest of the solar system a feat attributed to the empress we are told she lifted the Empire of yusan to the stars with her special gift of bioresonance a power that led to the creation of replicas and made possible the terraforming of other worlds and while bioresonance is never fully explained we do get a useful description within the book song of the Gods found in the attu's bookstore on rotfront it states the following there exists a connection between all of us that few are fully aware of a song we all dance to but few can hear this deep vibration of the cosmos cannot just be heard and felt we all resonate in harmony with it shaping it deforming it around us though select few who can consciously perceive it often fear it too oppressive is the sound of the Stars too invasive the noise of the unaware around them polluting the song with their fickle emotions but every once in a while some are born that cannot only hear and play this music of the world but who can conduct it gifted individuals capable of manipulating the essence of the world around them this concept is very similar to the Tau within Taoist philosophy which can be described as the cyclical flow of the universe that manifests through each individual's experience of life and keeps the universe balanced and ordered of course humans are nothing if not chaotic and disorderly and at some unspecified point during the Empire's rule a revolution sprang from the outer planets probably centered on heimat that fought against the empire and came to be known as the nation of usan by weaponizing bioresonance in the form of replicas they were able to take control over half the system with Vanetta hotly contested it's important to note that this Revolution was a recent and ongoing development and seems to have started within a generation of the events of signalus the great revolutionary and her daughter are referred to as if they are still living and leading the Revolution and we know that serpinsky is actively engaged in Mineral extraction or refinement and Munitions production helping the war effort against the remnants of the Empire while we aren't given much information regarding the broad beliefs or ideals of the usan nation there are a few interesting details to note first is the way humans are referred to as gestalts this term refers to its subjects not as individuals but rather as an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts each citizen matters only as they exist in and contribute to the greater whole of society a perspective similar to that of Communism additionally we can surmise that usan is a matriarchal society based on the fact that its rulers are female along with the vast majority of its replica leadership now while haimat laying and rotfront were all swiftly taken by the revolution Vanetta proved to be far more difficult and a great number of soldiers were deployed there in an attempt to rest the planet from the control of the Empire among these was a small unit of eight native vened soldiers unit 12 of the fifth infantry division to be exact that included Lilith E2 and Elena SEO both of whom play key roles in the story sadly only two members of their unit survived the conflict in elster's flashback Montage we see Lilith clearly identifiable by her hair at a gravesite with six headstones as she leaves a lily on what must be Alina's grave we know Alina was one of the casualties because we later learned the other soldier who survived Rebecca Liang who eventually moved to rotfront sector C this detail informs us how far in the past these events took place approximately 10 years considering Rebecca is apparently 10 years older than Ariane based on their medical records it remains ambiguous what Lilith and Alina's relationship was like whether they were romantically involved or simply close friends though for the sake of parallels I'd say it was probably the former but it honestly doesn't matter the important thing is that they were emotionally close to some degree Lilith would later be chosen as the neural pattern for the elster replica unit she was perfect quiet stoic probably anti-social and with PTSD from the war she was considered to have only basic needs making her quite suitable for the long-term isolation conditions of the Penrose program she also lost an eye a detail that will return to you later the game gives enough direct evidence for Lilith being the elster neural pattern that I think we can safely call it fact and not merely a theory but one additional piece of evidence I want to point out is her name in medieval Jewish tradition Lilith was said to be the first woman and was created alongside Adam in the Garden of Eden before choosing to leave and subsequently being replaced by Eve the parallel is unmistakable Lilith was native to Veneta called The Cradle of Life much like Eden and was the first woman in the line of elster replica units before being replaced by a replica's copy of her neural pattern as an aside it's interesting to consider how the process of replica selection works for gestaltz was Lilith willing or unwilling to be used as a blueprint does the original human even survive the transfer based on the way they are referred to as hosts it seems unlikely but this remains unknown in any case I personally don't think that Lilith was the mother of Issa and Erica and it was more likely a relative such as an aunt or cousin if she was their mother and had been on rotfront then it would be truly odd indeed for this to be completely omitted from the story at this point we get to Ariane we learned that she was born on laying and interesting detail since it shows that there must be other human settlements there besides the serpinski mine shortly afterwards however her mother Iris was relocated to a radio outpost on Rod front station 6 and here she raised her daughter in solitude this was apparently highly unusual as was the fact that Ariane was taught to appreciate art music and free thinking literature Iris also taught her daughter how to operate the long-range radios at the station while Ariane rarely refers to this childhood in her notes and who her mother barely at all it is implied that this was a Happy Time albeit a boring and or claustrophobic one on the one hand Camilla refers to Arianne and Iris as being Inseparable but on the other the prologue Montage briefly shows the radio station and what might be a figure standing on the hill looking out into the distance perhaps feeling there was more to life than this unfortunately there was more but it wasn't better when Arianne was still a teenager her aunt Camilla intervened in her life coordinating with aeon the national Ministry of work and education to have Ariane taken away from her mother and stay with Camilla in the sector C block where she could be given a proper upbringing by a community of Good People overseen by a block Warden and attend the mandelbrot polytechnical high school upon starting life in the city Arianne was immediately an outcast in the words of a teacher she was remarkably Odd as her artistic and individualistic personality was seen as a big problem that needed to be fixed she was mercilessly bullied by the other students and as far as we know her only friends were the E2 sisters Issa and Erica though even this friendship was likely not super close since Ariane always had trouble telling them apart along with attending the polytechnical school Arianne worked at her aunt's photo store and it was here she developed a batch of photos of the fifth vened infantry division unit 12 and was drawn to 1 of Alina CEO this unknown woman looked remarkably similar to herself and Ariane later wrote when I saw the photo of that Soldier I wondered who she was was she happy was her family proud of her did her comrades love her since we looked alike could I have been like her she also sent the photo to her mother who agreed the resemblance was uncanny in all likelihood the photos were provided by Rebecca who wanted to remember her lost friends this longing may have even been partially the reason for her deep depression aside from well living here in the first place we know that this took place around the time of arianne's graduation since her mother remarked she would be entering her military service soon and this was also around the time the teacher's evaluation was written since one line reads I can only hope military service will beat those frivolous ideas out of her in a way that this school has failed to do so far curiously Arianne never speaks of this military period and the only detail we learn about it is that she was placed in rotfront orbital where she may have been piloting and maintaining spaceships or stations to some extent despite the lack of information however I think it's safe to assume it was not a pleasant experience and she was looking forward to it ending as quickly as possible unfortunately her return home brought no relief as it was likely during this span of time that the imperial Espionage plot was uncovered in sector C and things went from bad to worse the monthly montfest celebration was suspended indefinitely and the protectors in charge went on the hunt for the rumored spies in Adler's diary found later he writes of a recent dream he had in which he conducted a test with Ariane that involved drawing tarot cards and asking her to guess which one he was holding while he assumes it to be a memory from his Gestalt life this is a shaky conclusion at best as the very next entry proves that his memory is not very reliable furthermore there is evidence that this memory actually belongs to the rot-front Spy known only as Sun we find his table of tarot cards in a hospital room suggesting this event did actually happen and that the Spy was impersonating a doctor it would appear that his goal was possibly to scout out bioresonant individuals among the enemy population which would be highly valuable information considering how impactful bio resonance was in the war this simple tarot card exercise would be an effective way to test for psychic abilities while also being easy to disguise as a memory test now an argument could perhaps be made that sun was the writer Nikolai and later served as the neural blueprint for Adler since they were obviously intended to look alike but this explanation makes several big assumptions that must be accepted first that Nikolai was on State records as being a writer but somehow managed to impersonate a doctor without being caught and second that he was captured by the authorities at the last minute before his escape and then was inexplicably chosen to become a replica blueprint while these events certainly could have happened it all feels a bit too convenient and I'm more inclined to think that we're seeing dream Distortion here regardless we know Arianne was covertly examined for bioresonance and passed the test which unsettled son enough to make him abandon his mission and attempt to return to katesh it is little wonder that in the midst of such stifling oppression Ariane was as desperate as ever to get away from everything especially considering her poor health but her prospects were quite Bleak she eventually received her work assignment to S2 23 sir Pinsky a Mining facility on Lang curiously named after the serpinski triangle a famous self-similar fractal it's important to note that serpinsky is not just a mine but also a re-education facility a place for troublemakers and non-conformists there was however a second option one day as she rode the empty train home Arianne noticed a recruitment poster on the wall for the Penrose program a state-sponsored program that would count as a valid work assignment instead of being forced into a veritable labor camp she could choose to become a scout officer and make her own decisions away from the constant supervision of the authorities the option was substantially more attractive and in time she applied and was accepted regarding rotfront she left it all behind except her memories of the place and its customs and superstitions including peridolia and the red eye for a time her Mission aboard the Penrose was everything Ariane had hoped it would be she was free from the Judgment of others could finally be alone and was even able to continue her painting hobby At first she and elster kept their distance but when the loneliness of long-term isolation conditions began to set in they gradually kindled a friendship having neglected to read the mission manuals and classified documents given to her at their Journey's commands Ariane was unaware of the destabilizing effect this would have on elster's Persona and further activities such as the viewing of War films destabilized her even more Arianne saw an elster a kindred spirit someone else who had run away from the world and as the line between elster and Lilith began to blur the Gestalt memories becoming her own elster saw an Ariane at the woman she had loved in a past life a romance blossomed and for the first time in a very long time they were happy but unfortunately it would not last upon entering phase 3 at cycle 3000 and receiving their new Mission parameters the two learned the truth that their Voyage was a one-way trip having failed to find any resources or habitable worlds supplies would soon begin to run out and the ship's functional systems would fail without the means for repair despite the official recommendation to end things quickly Arianne and elster struggled to survive as long as possible which turned out to be a staggeringly long time they were supposed to start running low on supplies after cycle 3000 approximately eight years into their Voyage but the latest diary entry we find is dated well after 5400 Cycles or about 15 years while it's unclear precisely how they managed this feat it likely involved a combination of Ariane using the cryogenic Pod intermittently and else they're not needing as many resources to survive due to her biomechanical nature as a replica things took a turn for the worse however when the ship's reactor started leaking causing them both to suffer terribly from the radiation and here we get to the promise at some point during this period Arianne made elster promise to kill her to end her suffering though it's never stated what the conditions were it must not have been an immediate thing as Ariane wrote that she didn't know if they would continue to wake up each day what is clear is that they both both continued to cling to life with Arianne likely spending more and more time in the cryogenic Pod as their carefully rationed supplies ran out finally the day came that Arianne feared when elster succumbed to the radiation and died quietly and this could not have happened at a worse time for Arianne was still in the cryogenic pod far from being the permanent rest assured by the phase 3 mission briefing Arianne found herself caught between Consciousness and sleep in constant pain from her radiation-induced cancer unprotected by a cryopod that was likely malfunctioning since the lid is later found open with the Diagnostics turned off elster failed to fulfill her promise this is what actually happened and would have been the end of it if Ariane had not begun to dream from this point on things get really complicated because the human mind with its Myriad memories and desires is complicated and the most immediate and fundamental point of complexity is the determination of what is real and what is not how much of what we see in the game is actually happening and how much is Just a Dream it's quite the brain teaser and also a bit of a trick question since I think the only reliable answer is all of it my personal theory is that all of cignalis is taking place within a dream or rather two dreams that have overtaken reality and become its new form and this is precisely why right to give this analysis a name I would simply call it the double dream theory [Music] after elster's death or at least ceasing a function Ariane understandably became desperate trapped as she was in a malfunctioning cryogenic pod experiencing constant pain in her shallow dreams she did the only thing she could think of attempt to wake elster up and she did this by projecting elster's memories via bioresonance while it may sound dubious at first for Ariane to have known elster's memories this is actually well established by the Colibri replica known issues document which states the following like most bioresonant individuals calibris will often subconsciously create an emotional feedback loop imitating and then broadcasting the emotions of those around them acting as a sort of amplifier this is precisely what Ariane did she subconsciously created a feedback loop with elster processing her memories which could later be broadcast back this bioresonant projection took the form of a very specific radio signal that we later learn is called The Magpie signal this is the titular signal of signalus that lays the foundation of the entire game and affects not only the Penrose but serpinsky as well along with showing up here on the title screen it also appears in the Radio Room the Penrose and on the rotfront radio towers and while The Magpie signal is certainly cryptic it is far from arbitrary back during World War One this type of radio signal was first developed for the purpose of Espionage shortwave radio stations known as numbers stations would broadcast an endless string of spoken numbers sometimes interspersed with musical motifs that could be decrypted by spies in enemy Nations the codes were unbreakable because they utilized one-time pads which contain random groups of numbers used to convert the letters of the transmission just like the sword document used in the wall safe puzzle these number stations have been plentiful and active ever since and were especially prominent during the Cold War in the aftermath of World War II this particular sequence in The Magpie signal is known as the three note Oddity a hungarian-based signal targeted at Germany that was active until 2005. while I don't intend to read too deeply into the real world history of these stations since as I explained in the introduction signalus has transformed its sources with new meaning I do think they are being used in a similar way in ariane's reactor note she recounts a dream she had in which her mother was listening to a number station and taking notes in a book while holding the king and Yellow on her lap we can make an educated guess that it was the magpie signal specifically since on the main menu the signal plays alongside the sounds of a clinking metal pole which evoked the image of the remote radio station it would make sense for this stream to be based off of memory and as such it appears to be implied that ariane's mother was a spy who was decoding messages from a number station over the radio but what is the significance of ariane's signal taking the form of this transmission I'll come back to this point later but for now there are a few more immediate questions I want to address to support this General explanation for starters how do we know bioresonance has anything to do with radio waves going back to what we learned about the Colibri replicas it is said that tuning a radio to the same frequency they are transmitting will cause a feedback loop and this is exactly what we see happen so radio waves must be at least a major component of bioresonance signaling if not the whole of it there's an even better question however one that had me puzzled for quite some time why is ariane's bioresonance so powerful how can it affect a location billions of miles away so strongly as to warp its very reality the answer is deceptively simple the Penrose vessel we read in the song of the Gods earlier that bioresonance is what lifted Humanity to the stars and since other technology stagnated in the 100 years since then it makes sense that all spaceships must be powered by bioresonance we also need to look at the math here the phase II Mission parameters inform us that the Penrose reaches the Oort cloud after about 1500 cycles and we know that Cycles are days from the chronometer adjustment note in which area on states she adjusted the Ship's Cycle calculations to equal the length of a day on venetta conveniently venetta is Earth so from this point on their Cycles were 24 Hours by our Reckoning taking all of this into account they reached the Oort cloud in roughly four years one month and 10 days which may sound reasonable until we consider just how insanely far away the Oort cloud is from the heart of our solar system the approximate distance to its closest Edge is 2 000 astronomical units or 186 billion miles to put this into perspective light from the sun takes a full two years to reach it and many years more to reach its outermost Edge this means the Penrose would have had to be moving at approximately 50 percent the speed of light the entire way and even with a strong launch there is just no way these clunky spacecraft could do that unless of course they used a device that could warp the fabric of space itself and effectively shrink the distance that needed to be traveled by a huge margin while on the subject of light speed I want to slip in a quick note about time dilation at a rate close to 50 percent the speed of light time would pass about 15 percent slower for Ariane and Ulster than for everyone else so those four years would amount to about 4.7 years to those in the solar system a noticeable difference but not huge this is turning into a long-winded explanation but the main takeaway is simply that the Penrose must be outfitted with some kind of bioresonant hyperdrive and this acted as a perfect amplifier for ariane's Signal little did the nation of us know that the cheap scouting vessel they had sent off would become a Bonafide bioresonant nuke empowered as it was by this hyperdrive ariane's signal was so potent that it caused the Penrose to crash not on the planet but rather in a different dimension altogether something akin to the astral plane and from here we trace the signal from its source on the Penrose to The Mining facility on Lang the reason s23 serpinsky is a part of signalus at all is revealed in ariane's Workforce assignment whereby we learned that if Ariane had not been accepted into the Penrose program she would have been assigned to work there instead as the story progresses it becomes increasingly clear that bioresidence has the power to alter timelines and probabilities but more on that in a bit on a broad level ariane's influence over the serpinski mine was made possible by something the workers found deep within it details are appropriately vague we are simply told something was Unearthed something older than humanity and it strongly appears that what they found was a tear in the fabric of reality a gateway to the astral plane possibly generated by Ariane herself since she was clearly thinking about the place and how her life might have been different there this explanation provides an answer to one of the most confounding mysteries in signalus how can the Penrose be both billions of miles out in the Oort cloud and also be deep below the surface of laying because it now exists in a dimension accessible from both of these locations this dimensional Rift is the massive pit at the bottom of the mining site and when elster drops into it she lands in not one but two locations first on a strange Beach and then in the nowhere interestingly prior to making the jump elster states that she can hear the sounds of water from below the only water we see in the nowhere is a small puddle that doesn't look to be making any noise so I think she's actually hearing waves crashing along the shoreline the presence of six pillars leading up to the pit further reinforce its metaphysical nature we are told that Falk went personally to see this strange Discovery down in the mine and when she returned she had been changed but what exactly did she see Falk doesn't give many details about her experience within the rift mostly writing about the after effects from it in her diary like elster Falk may have first landed on the beach after after which she made her way to the gate Adler's dialogue indicates that she passed through it and in a red dream found at the end of the game Falk wrote that she saw Ariane in the red emptiness waiting for me she may have even spotted the Penrose if she ventured far enough while she certainly did not see during her foray into the rift however was the nowhere which at that point in time didn't exist as I'll explain later but this we know for sure upon exposing herself to the uninhibited song of reality she was flooded by the wave of ariane's signal her mind forcibly injected with elster's memories at length Falk returned to the upper levels of serpinsky and for a time was able to continue functioning but so overwhelming and persistent was the signal that she eventually slipped into a coma and began to dream just as the caliber units were designed to function as amplifiers for Falks owned by a resonance she became an amplifying node for ariane's Signal resonating with its immense power and as she dreamed of the serpinsky facility that fantasy C became its reality a second dream created by a second Dreamer this is why serpinsky feels so grounded and real we see later in chapter 3 that ariane's own Recreations of reality are much more surreal and rotfront is literally where she lived generating a massive Mining facility that she had never once seen or visited in Exquisite detail was certainly Beyond her but the replica Commander Falk who oversaw the entire facility would have known it well perhaps even better than a human in her place this idea of Falk being a second dreamer is very well supported by the many parallels drawn between her and Ariane for one she is lying in the same position as Ariane in a similarly shaped room both of which are mirrored by the sealed chamber in the nowhere Adler kisses her forehead just as elster kisses Ariane in the memory and promise endings and prior to the final confrontation we can see they look identical to each other besides the color of their hair which is only different because of ariane's a chroma trickia with elser's memories and ariane's appearance and purpose Falk essentially becomes both of them at the same time further evidence for the actuality of fall extreme is the fact that no one at serpinsky started getting sick until after Falk succumbed to the signal because ariane's dream was unable to affect the facility on her own it is also telling that the spreading infection takes the form of radiation poisoning because that is what Ariane herself was experiencing there's one final topic relating to serpinsky that I want to address briefly before moving on which really applies to the game as a whole the dates it becomes evident early on in signalus that there are multiple calendar systems which is very confusing but makes sense for this futuristic Society each planet would need its own calendar to account for their unique rotation and revolution periods and the outermost worlds would need a different system for years altogether due to the sheer length of their revolutions additionally there would need to be a universal System calendar so that each planet could stay in sync with the others there appear to be at least four date formats shown in the game my best guess is that the first two date formats are based on the planetary calendars of laying and rotfront with the first number of each indicating year whether these years correlate to each other is uncertain though since a technical year on laying would be much longer than the year on rotfront so it's hard to say whether the events at serpinsky are taking place 50 years in the future or around the same time but regardless the story plays out quite the same if I had to venture a guess arianne's graduation date is probably written in the Universal format due to the inclusion of a decimal point which would be a likely compromise for a calendar that has to combine the time cycles of every planet into a cohesive format while it's definitely interesting trying to piece the dates together I want to make it clear up front that my theory doesn't rely on them too heavily since they are left so ambiguous foreign [Music] it's easy to get lost in the weeds here because there is so much information to sift through but we can simplify our approach by going back to the whole purpose of the dream to begin with the promise the dream was started by Arianne is expanded by Falk and is colored by elster all for the ultimate purpose of enabling elster to fulfill the promise she had made to end ariane's life this is the why behind everything and as such everything needs to be examined through this lens furthermore we must remember that the story takes place completely within a dream that has overtaken and is shaping reality itself as a result we can't take anything we see at face value and there are a great deal of interesting parallels that may not have existed prior to the dream at all for example the way some of the serpinski replicas resemble rotfront gishdalts the matching piles of trash found in the Penrose serpinsky and rotfront and perhaps even the fact that there is a security breach at both serpinsky and rotfront sector C but among the most important parallels of all is the recurring appearance and constant presence of the King in Yellow a fictional dread play that drives the events of several stories within Robert Chambers anthology of the same name it's never actually shown whether the book appearing in signalus is chamber's novel or the play itself and while I don't think it really matters since it plays the same narrative function either way I'm inclined to believe it's the latter the play has two acts and three characters casilda Camilla and a mysterious stranger who is almost certainly the titular King in Disguise while the play's First Act is quite benign and disarming the second is filled with such devastating truths that all who read it invariably go mad and usually end up dead for to read its words is to expose oneself to the power of the Godlike entity known only as the King in Yellow a jealous being who demands total sacrifice of his subjects in a similar fashion The Mysterious white-haired Girl seen by those at serpinsky may have appeared benign and disarming at first but so devastating was the force of her signal that all exposed to it were irreversibly changed their individual identities contaminated in the name of sacrifice and while Falk is of course the prime example of this in truth everyone at serpinski has become a performer on the stage of ariane's dream compelled to play their given role over and over again until they are torn apart by the endless recycling of the world around them Ariana herself is clearly representative of the king a god-like being over all whose will is absolute but this raises an extremely important question is Ariane actually aware of what she is doing is she truly accountable for the horror she unleashes upon scores of innocent humans and replicas I don't think so for Ariane all appears as a dream a Delirious swirl of images that respond to her desperate signal and she may very well not realize what she sees as actually a twisting of reality itself alternatively it is possible that Ariane did catch on to the true nature of her dream but was unable to stop the signal she had started and found herself at the mercy of elster's success along with the others which was of course her situation to begin with either way Ariane is not the villain of this story she is a victim of Oppression just as much as anyone else an outcast in a cruel world where the only Escape is death and yusan alone can be held responsible for the bioresonant Calamity that falls upon serpinsky moving on there is one more fundamental aspect of signalus that informs the way we must view it quite literally and that is the meta layering of the overall narrative design from the beginning it is made abundantly clear that we are watching the story unfold through a screen the most basic evidence for this includes the glitching and tearing effects that can be seen regularly the most extreme of which cause elster physical harm as well as the inclusion of film grain and CRT filters that can be applied in the game settings additionally we see that concentrated bioresonance emitted by Colibri and Falk replicas disrupts the current image revealing a video marker as well as the underlying purpose behind the signal the island a manifestation of ariane's desire for death also notable are the appearance of gishdalt's file numbers and replica Data Bank overviews this page intentionally left blank screens and violence seen missing all of which make it seem as though we are parsing Through official government documents so whose point of view are we looking through we are given one more revealing clue in the form of the invisible red eye almost anywhere in the game drastically brightening the footage will reveal the silhouette of an unmistakable eye superimposed over the screen the only places it does not appear are during full screen first-person sequences for obvious reasons and elster's final return to the Penrose which I'll discuss later with insignolus the imagery of the red eye represents two things the government of yusan and Ariane herself and I think both are at play here Ariane is an active Observer of her dream not a passive one watching and guiding elster along every step of the way it is then quite possible that her bioresonance signal was later intercepted by government authorities edited and annotated accordingly as they tried to make sense of it at the very least they would have had access to the serpinski camera footage tracking elster's progress through the facility foreign [Music] and now we arrive at where the game officially begins elster wakes from her calibration unit following the Penrose crash and upon checking the ship's Central console finds a damaged photo of Arianne further inspection of the ship reveals she is nowhere to be found one of the two Ava suits is missing and the cryogenic Pod holds only a broken and bloody key card reasonably assuming that Ariane left the ship elster initiates the airlock cycle puts on the second Ava suit and strikes out into the snow as explained earlier this is not laying nor is it base reality at all but rather a different dimension that has been altered and shaped by ariane's dream evidence for this is abundant a star unit found later within the mine refers to the laying sky as being filled with stars which would not be visible from within such a snowstorm and this is supported by the serpinski vertical map which shows a Starry Sky as well the Penrose status monitor States this is an unknown planetary surface which obviously wouldn't make much sense if this really was laying and it also can't be a rogue Planet deep within the Oort cloud since there is no way this much ambient light would be present and speaking of the Oort cloud the sky in this sequence reveals another seeming impossibility two celestial bodies one much larger than the other that can only be Jupiter and one of its moons this planetary surface is rotfront which Ariane knew well though it is but a surreal representation of the place visible in the snow are large angular beams jutting from the the ground and the Mysterious gate along with a large perfectly round hole in the ground not having any other options elster passes through the gate descends into the strange hole and crawls through a narrow tunnel which leads into a small bedroom as we'll discover later this is in fact ariane's room in rot front sector C but importantly elster doesn't know that she does not recognize the room or anything in it she no longer remembers the promise she does however feel drawn to the king and yellow lying on the desk and upon picking it up the radio suddenly switches on and begins to transmit The Magpie signal in the following Montage we see quite a few things a rod front radio Outpost the computer screen turning from white to Red the Mysterious Island elster's skin slowly peeling away an ominous line pulled from the festival the words remember our promise Issa cutting herself over a strange symbol separated by sacrifice Ariane herself and finally the words wake up as a whole I think this complete prologue sequence can be understood as a representation of elster's memories being transmitted via the signal we are not playing the real physical version of her but rather the last wisps of her dying memory that Ariane is projecting to serpinsky the situation on the Penrose with Ariane missing along with an Ava suit is entirely fabricated by Ariane for the purpose of getting elster to leave the broken ship or rather coaxing her memories out of her broken body so a new cycle can begin with another elster unit we'll come back to issa's bit in the Montage later but the main takeaway for now is that we are seeing an indeterminate number of Cycles play out which is made obvious by the inclusion of the fatal error screen at the end that appears elsewhere when elster is killed so when we next move to serpinsky following the title screen we know that this is many many cycles later from the one we started in the snow [Music] chapter 1 starts in a first floor serpinski bathroom with elster looking intently at herself in the mirror after looking around for a bit she finds an injured star unit who warns her to leave since the facility is lost undaunted elster retrieves and shows her the photo from the Penrose which now depicts a completely different woman Elena SEO the star tells elster that she must be a worker all of whom had been sent down into the mine this is of course not actually Alina who died in the Venetian conflict a decade earlier rather she is an extension and likeness of Arianne formed from the probability of Ariane ending up as serpinsky had she not gotten accepted by the Penrose program in combination with ariane's dreaming about the woman in the photo she is in a way a self-insert of Ariane in her own dream and even shares her poor health evidence for the two actually being one can be seen in the brief images of Alina that flashed up twice during transitions once during the elevator malfunction on Level 3 and once again when elster jumps into the mining pit when placed alongside ariane's profile we can see that they match exactly furthermore the butterfly box bearing a clear symbol of transformation leads to one of ariane's memories nautalinas and we learned from Alina's diary that she was close with elster as Ariane was her final diary entry found later on in the nowhere reveals that her memories were beginning to blur with Ariane and her hair was even turning white which is notable since ariane's memories are not part of the signal only elsters this phenomenon can be understood as the Elena manifestation breaking down and returning to the one who created her in the first place we can apply this same probability manipulation reasoning to our elster unit as well simply put this is a completely different Ulster unit from the one in the prologue an elster who may never have been part of the Penrose program at all in a note written by the serpinsky protectors we learned that they had considered requesting an Ulster unit to do survey work down in the mine but postponed the decision indefinitely when Falk fell ill however Adler distinctly remembers conversing with an Elsa replica as they were both inspecting the mining site and an examination of his memory proved that this recollection was quite real in another timeline or in Adler's words another version of reality where events had played out differently an elster unit did indeed come to the Mind from the surface and this reality merged with base reality to create a hazy Zone in the Middle where elster 2 ends up this is why she is simultaneously familiar to some of the replicas at serpinsky while also being immediately recognized as someone who doesn't belong there Alina's diary entries Echo this as well in entry 1 she wrote that she hadn't seen elster in a few days but later in entry 3 she makes the remark I still haven't found any trace of elster it's as if she had never been here anyways following her exchange with the star unit elster finds Issa in the library having just used the Gestalt first aid kit we can see a bandage on her Palm confirming that the sacrificial scene in the prologue has already happened this first encounter is quite vague with elster briefly explaining her Surge and Issa simply responding that she is here to accomplish something as well the two part ways an Ulster drops down to the second floor where her most important Discovery is Elena's confiscated butterfly box opening it and claiming the plate of Eternity within triggers the radio Outpost sequence wherein we see the place of ariane's childhood at the time she was pulled away to sector c as confirmed by the letter from her aunt Camilla the sequence primarily functions as a way for elster to get the radio module which she needs to gain access to Keys hidden away in the levels wall safes one such key enables elster to use the elevator though it promptly malfunctions on Level 3 forcing her out to scout the area the main goal on this floor is to find the five Elemental key cards that will unlock the surgery room fire earth water wind and most notably gold which is obtained from the video cassette train sequence passing through the door and dropping to the next level brings elster face to face with her first Mina replica who has been corrupted like most of the others and it is only by defeating her that elster is able to find meet the administrator Adler he seems friendly at first and confirms that Alina CEO is indeed one of serpinsky's factory workers but after luring elster close to the empty Elevator Shaft he suddenly tosses the photo aside and shoves her in quietly saying you shouldn't have returned Adler was expecting her and as we'll see this exchange has already happened many times but first we witnessed the library sequence Issa wakes in a dark empty classroom at the mandelbrot polytechnical high school and heads to the library to check if Erica is still there peering through the door reveals an altogether worst sight however Ariane is being mercilessly bullied by some masked students shoved onto the floor and kicked the rest of the story is told through quick text blocks at the end Issa was paralyzed by indecision and fear and Erica eventually showed up to rescue Arianne Issa could never forgive herself for not taking action and was racked by guilt considering herself useless following this sequence elster wakes to find herself near the bottom of the Elevator Shaft which is filled with dead elster units they can be recognized as such by their orange chest plates so many cycles have passed so many units killed that the bodies were able to cushion elster's fall leaving her miraculously unharmed many literal interpretations that have already been offered for signalus assert these are all unique and different elsters that were summoned to laying by ariane's signal and these theories point to the elster overview which states all elster units were copied from a decommissioned unit from the Penrose program after the original neural pattern on Veneta had been destroyed allegedly arianne's elster was this unit which means all future elsters would have had memories of Ariane implanted within them to begin with and this is why all of them felt compelled to fulfill the promise while I do like this interpretation conceptually I don't find it very convincing since virtually every other piece of evidence works against it how would elsters from all over the solar system have been able to receive the signal when it only seems to be affecting Lane due to the dimensional Rift how would all these Ulster units have had access to ships they could fly solo to the edge of the solar system when resources were so tightly controlled why are none of the units in the elevator white when that was a standard configuration and finally how could they have possibly recovered the Penrose elster from deep space let alone a different dimension what I think is really going on here is that this is the same elster unit elster II who ended up as serpinsky when the timelines blurred together each time she fails the timeline gets recycled Anew and the signal is transferred again the decommissioned Ulster detail is still relevant because it reveals the important information that a replica unit's mind can be copied to another which provides a precedent for this phenomenon with elster2 as well as Falk later on this explanation also has nice symmetry with the fundamental tenet of the double dream theory there are two dreams and two elsters once Ulster explores down to the aurar replica dorm we see another cutscene in which Issa attempts to get into falk's room but is stopped by Adler perhaps it comes as no surprise then that elster's objective is to find Falk as well and more importantly open the owl box she holds close to her chest on this level elster also comes across the first physical versions of the Mysterious Island painting and I think it's about time to stop and talk about it in detail the painting's official name is Isle of the dead and was created by the Swiss painter Arnold beauclean as a prime example of German symbolism a particular note is the fact that beauclean painted five versions of it beginning in 1880 each with significant differences the fourth version appears in black and white since the original painting was lost in a bombing during World War II and only a single black and white photograph of it Remains the painting is an evident metaphor for death featuring tombs carved into the tall Cliffs and a Grove of cypress trees at the center alone oarsman ferries a white shrouded figure to the island on a small boat reminiscent of Caron transporting Souls across the river sticks and the reason it feels very familiar to elster is because it is a visual manifestation of the promise that she is slowly but surely starting to remember it is arianne's carcosa her deepest desire that remains forever just beyond her reach and the Bedrock layer of her Magpie signal this is also why the painting has power we read in the note Colibri in the management office that the replica in question was transmitting the image of the aisle so strongly it caused nausea in those nearby and elster experiences this effect as well when caliber units are encountered just as these replicas were designed to function as amplifiers for their Commander's bioresonance they now unwittingly serve this purpose for ariane's signal the set of Isle paintings also has a notable inverse a number of years after his first version of Isle of the Dead beauclean made another painting he called Isle of life that depicts a vibrant Green Island abounding with life and Beauty this aisle never appears on its own in signalus but can be seen briefly during several Montage sequences most notably the ones that play directly through elster in the fake ending it serves as a reminder that the bitterness of death would not exist without the joys and pleasures of life however fleeting they may be at length elster finds the owl tape in the Yule dorm and when placed in the workshop radio transmitter it begins to play the swan theme from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake at frequency 210 far from being arbitrary it is strongly implied that this track from Tchaikovsky's ballet is in fact false bioresonance signal responsible for the creation of the serpinski dream for starters tuning to this transmission on the radio is how elster opens Fox owl box which is remarkably similar to the way she later obtains the star card from ariane's Magpie box on rotfront using the magpie signal you'll also notice that the workshop radio is identical to the one in ariane's room which broadcasts the aforementioned signal and finally the Starling incident referred to in memorandum lighting malfunctions in which a Furious star unit destroyed the Yule's tape player hints that the song has real power the Yules are irresistibly drawn to it to the point that they will play Nothing Else and the star has no qualms about breaking quarantine to put an end to this madness emphasis on that last word there is also nice symmetry to this connection two birds two signals two dreams after opening the owl box and several Keys later Ulster gains access to the library and finds another copy of the king and Yellow on a bookcase which hides the astronomical key to Adler's lock box and the shrine diary within in it we read of his longing for Falk following her illness as well as his gradual realization that he is caught within a Time Loop and that things are not quite as they appear the final page reads the answers lie below I can feel it someone or something calls me from there in the mine and that is precisely where elster now armed with Adler's administrative key goes next she activates the mine shaft elevator and descends ever deeper at which point chapter 1 comes to a close so going back to the chapter title what does synchronization mean in the context of what we've seen happen in this first section a simple definition proves instructive the term synchronization can refer to two different functions causing a set of data to remain identical in more than one location or the activity of two or more things at the same time or rate and I think both of these functions apply here regarding the former function we can refer to the book by a resonance technology and its limitations which defines the related term synchronicity as the process of duplicating a neural pattern from a Gestalt host to a replica brain in this case we are witnessing the duplication of elster1's neural pattern to Ulster 2's brain in the process gradually becoming synchronized regarding the latter function elster's journey is gradually being synchronized with isas you'll notice that both of ariane's interludes the radio Outpost and the train give elster exactly what she needs to move forward to keep up with esa's path just as ariadne guided Theseus through the Labyrinth with golden thread Ariane helps guide elster through her Labyrinthian dream with a golden key the third interlude is unique in that it takes place from the perspective of Issa herself and at the end we see parallel shots of Ariane and elster that show they are finally in sync this is a pretty significant point that I'll revisit later in much more detail but for now let's proceed on to chapter 2. foreign [Music] in a general sense liminality refers to the transitional phase in a rite of passage in which the participant stands at or on both sides of a boundary or threshold the term is quite fitting in this context because this is precisely the point elster is at on her journey she is now midway between her original Self Ulster II and arianne's elster or elster1 her identity in a state of flux the chapter starts with Issa who has been hunted by Adler through the depths of serpinsky and is now cornered at the mining pit he tells her this has already happened countless times before trapped as they are in the cycle this time however Issa gets the upper hand and stabs him through the eye causing him to fall into the pit we returned to elster still descending into the mine after making her way through its many dark passages she slides down a massive sealed shaft leading to the mining site where she finds the great pit and jumps in a red countdown appears and elster suddenly finds herself on a strange beach with dark skies and a distinct rock formation in the distance this setting is in fact another painting the shore of Oblivion by Eugene brockt just as beauclean did with Isle of the Dead brocked painted eight different versions of the piece between 1889 and 1916 though only two remain preserved today The Works share another connection as well German Emperor Wilhelm II received a copy of each and hung them next to each other just as Falk does outside her bedroom the theme of death is quite heavy in the painting which depicts a desolate Rocky Shoreline littered with skulls and a massive outcropping looking over a dark sea left to interpretation the scene can be read as the last domain of life one final respite before Mortals are swallowed Forever by the great sea of the Dead this idea is echoed by the final note found in this section which reads it calls me in a sea of Flesh we will become one but I can never go back to being me the other notes looted across the shore consist of excerpts from casilda's song in The King and yellow act 1 scene 2 which serve as a description of the mysterious realm of carcosa the king and yellow itself can be found in a hole in the Rock though cannot be obtained since it is just Out Of Reach after enough time elapses in this section the countdown reaches zero and elster falls into the nowhere of the three major areas in signalus this one is the most perplexing and it's initially difficult to determine where when or even what we're looking at but a good place to start in coming to understand the nowhere is its strong theme which is that of a nuclear waste Repository as nuclear power plants have become more common in the present day and age so too has the highly radioactive waste they produce and one of the primary methods for disposal is to seal it away deep underground in dense repositories this is quite effective but comes with one major drawback nuclear radiation persists at dangerous levels for many thousands of years which means if any of these sites were to be dug up by an unsuspecting future civilization they would be exposed to the toxic material to raise awareness of this issue and provide guidance to nuclear waste facilities Sandia National Laboratories released a report in 1993 that issued recommendations for future proofing these sites one section of particular note laid out a warning message template with varying levels of complexity that could be used if this looks familiar it's because this is the exact same message found on an early door in the nowhere another method of warning proposed by the Sandia report was the use of hostile architecture that would convey The Poisoned nature of the land and one of the more striking design suggestions was the spike field a series of massive spikes protruding from the ground at odd angles the theme runs deeper than even these connections however prior to the Sandia report a German poll conducted in the 1980s gathered ideas regarding the preservation of knowledge about nuclear waste sites into the far future the first of which became known as the atomic priesthood this small pseudo-religious organization would be responsible for creating rituals and myths regarding the locations and dangers of nuclear waste sites as well as indicating the consequences of trespassing other ideas included the following biologically encoding warnings into the DNA of certain flowers which would be planted near repositories launching satellites that would transmit the data from orbit indefinitely breeding a special type of cat that would significantly change color when exposed to radiation constructing such durable storage locations that only an advanced generation could penetrate them through excavation or Drilling in which case they would also likely be able to detect the radiation levels and finally installing warning signs in a concentric ring around the repository in the most important Global languages as these languages evolved over time new signs would be added in wider Rings translating the older signs this concept of using multiple languages to convey the same information is one that forms the fundamental structure of signalus the game incorporates a Rich Blend of English German and Chinese all important Global languages into its storytelling but you'll notice that the different languages are mostly used to reinforce each other or the current scene rather than communicate brand new information this is fully intentional because their purpose is not just to tell a story but to communicate a warning to all receivers of the signal regarding the danger deep within serpinsky that can be understood regardless of what language they speak as I alluded to earlier in the video with this graphic the nowhere exists in the space where Ariane and falk's dreams overlap and represent a distant possible future of serpinsky in which the cycle is never broken and the facility has degraded so far as to be nearly unrecognizable in response to this the government of usan attempted to seal off the entire site or perhaps even the whole planet marking it as they would a nuclear waste repository and where is the primary warning placed at the very center of it all marking the dreamer or at least her shadow the room is immediately recognizable as the parallel of Falks with a central bed and chair off to the left side though you'll notice the shadow of a slow-moving ceiling fan that was not present earlier this along with the fact that only a smoky imprint remains in the bed May raise some doubts as to the identity of this room however there is strong evidence that this is indeed falk's room in the far future we simply have to look elsewhere during elster's confrontation with Falk at the end of the game one phase reveals her room with the bed chairs and tables and also a ceiling fan this is a clear transitional shot that Bridges together the corresponding Chambers in serpinsky and the nowhere and the loss of detail is a sign of reality turning into noise under the weight of the Relentless cycle represented by the endless cyclical motion of the fan foreign odd for only a vague imprint to remain a Falk when she is a replica and only humans are seen to disintegrate in this way I want to emphasize that this is not the actual future it is but a hazy incongruous possible outcome that doesn't yet exist it is nowhere on that note let's return to the sealed door blocking access to this chamber I stated earlier that the warning placed on the door exactly matched out of the Sandia report but there is in fact one key addition and that is the final line stating when blank within is killed a path will open here this refers to the cage monster Issa encounters that is labeled as a new way or Japanese Chimera a creature composed of several animals fused together and known in folklore to be a harbinger of sickness and bad luck not a moment too soon elster drops down into the khmera flesh pit and working together she and Issa are able to defeat the monster unfortunately Issa is knocked unconscious by her rifles recoil and is carried by elster into the next room where she remains until elster is able to awaken her by using the small bottle of ammonia as an inhalant this encounter draws attention to another core aspect of the nowhere flesh early on in signalus it appears as though the flesh might be an ancient Eldritch creature with the mind of its own but as the story progresses it becomes increasingly evident that it is actually a representation of ariane's cancer in a later cut scene with Adler he refers to the world as being torn apart and put back together by someone who doesn't understand how it works and that's exactly what cancer cells do they disrupt and hijack the human body's normal functions and use them to grow malignant cells that no longer resemble the original body at all and the fact that we see flesh growing directly in ariane's cryogenic pod in the fake ending implies that this is the point of origin additionally we learned that one of the serpinski workers was in possession of hydroxy carbamide pills which are a specific type of chemotherapy drug used for treating radiation-induced leukemia elster's main goal in the nowhere similarly to level 3 of serpinsky is finding six plates to open a mysterious door the plates of knowledge balance sacrifice flesh love and of course eternity as she collects these plates and encounters the dangerous Twisted replicas within the nowhere's confined spaces the screen will occasionally glitch much as it has in earlier parts of the game but something is different about the phenomenon here rather than simply scrambling the current video signal the glitches reveal an entirely different scene which is actually elster's earlier confrontation with the new a monster this occurs at all points of the nowhere as if to show that that moment is Frozen in time and may be an additional clue regarding the true nature of the area going out on a limb here it is possible that most of the nowhere sequence takes place within elster's mind during her fight with the new way and only by combining all six plates all six aspects within herself is she able to feed it the final line on the upper sealed door reads when blank within is killed a path will open here and that door provides access to the dreamer's shadow in a similar way slotting in every plate on the lower sealed door allows access to the emptiness where the dreamer Ariane herself lies but before elster can reach her she must climb back up the deep hole she first descended in the prologue now appearing in its raw form and encounter Adler at the gate notably he makes no attempt to stop elster from continuing on which shows that he still doesn't totally understand the meaning of his looping existence or the significance of the gate that changed everything elster passes through this gate and here we see the technical first ending that can be better described as a fake ending there is a lot to unpack here we first see the words at the end the way home I am waiting followed by a view of the vast emptiness many Fallen elster units can be seen lying on the ground or propped against the angled beams as elster approaches ariane's Focus turns to her and we see elster Flash in different colors green yellow and magenta a subsequent shot of Ariane also shows this color splitting which is quite easily explained as elster nears the source of the signal it begins to break down around her revealing its component layers of light waves we then see an unfamiliar oil painted landscape which is in fact an extreme close-up of the work Wanderer above the sea fog painted by the German artist kaspar David Friedrich in 1818. the painting is considered one of the most representative works of the Romantic Movement and is widely interpreted to symbolize self-reflection Ariane then inquires who elster is looking for which may seem like an odd question but remember elster is still looking for Alina and Arianne knows this as she states I've been waiting Alina CEO we then see a line with multiple versions of Ariane though only the very last one clearly Alina turns around but that's not who Ariane herself has been waiting for she has been waiting for you she calls elster's name and multiple versions of elster are shown turning in Rhythm two red one white one red and missing an arm and one wearing an Ava suit and why has she been waiting for us we see the line of Aryans again except this time all turn in perfect sync and we get a better look at who they really are Alina isaba without her signature braid Aryan in uniform and two versions of Ariane wearing white but there is someone out of place here at the very front of each line Falk you can tell from her long hair as well as the mark on her shoulder that this is unmistakably the replica Commander this once again reinforces the fact that she has become both Ariane and elster the dreamer and the Seeker following this rapidly changing images of the three paintings appear shrinking as if in response the screen glitches and elster is physically hurt Falk appears with Adler at the gate just as elster did earlier a white square turns blood red echoing the prologue's monitor screen the enigmatic symbol appears elster's Lilith memories flood through her in a rapid montage and elster slowly deliberately touches the Penrose which is followed by the words remember our promise she climbs up the ship's hole and the words wake up appear then for the third time in this sequence we see the aisle paintings flashing through her directly as elster attempts to open the entrance hatch this is an important Association that goes back to the nature of the aisle as a representation of death since Ariane is unable to bring herself to the aisle elster must instead bring it to her she acts as an agent of death in her fulfillment of the promise however I think there's another layer to this as well as a substitution for carcosa the Isle of the Dead also represents irian's deepest desire or rather desires plural she Longs not only for the sweet release of death but the sweet Embrace of her love elster as well two conflicting desires that can never be reconciled unless of course the great song of reality could be persuaded to play another Melody altogether but here elster fails her arm breaks she falls to the ground and her eyes go dark but not before one final appeal to wake up on a basic level at least it's clear what's happening in this sequence elster fails because she hasn't remembered the promise she is still compromised by her search for Alina as a result of her destabilized Lilith memories and thus hasn't truly woken up when you start the game again after the credits things appear almost exactly as they did at the beginning but not quite this time the Penrose is functional and still on course having just awoken from the calibration pod elster goes through her regular maintenance check in the process finding the unopened Ulster known issues document as well as ariane's painting of the shore of Oblivion following her completion of the list she reports to Ariane herself and we witness what is undoubtedly the happiest scene in the entire game the two Embrace reunited once more and we learned from Ariane that this is their 3000 cycle anniversary over eight years on the Penrose with the updated Mission parameters still enroute they begin to dance blissfully unaware of the bad news awaiting them we then transition to subsequent shots of the two asleep together the second of which must take place significantly later since ariane's hair is much longer also if you've been wondering about the mark on her left arm it appears to be the mark of a Penrose Scout officer since the same lines can be seen on the ship itself finally we close in on the ship's control panel and witness the origin of the signal based on falk's statement in a red dream that official Penrose broadcasts began with a song it seems as though this is the very transmission the two were waiting for in which they learned their mission was effectively over the news was surely devastating for both Arianne and elster forever burned into their minds and this emotional trauma is quite possibly the reason ariane's signal later takes its form there's also a certain irony in the fact that the dooming transmission sent by usan into the void returns to Herald's the Doom of the serpinsky facility but wait doesn't this contradict what I said earlier about the magpie signal being received and decrypted by Iris back on rotfront well maybe but it's complicated aside from the possibility that its usage simply changed over time we must remember that the signal is that of a shortwave number station which are normally used to communicate with spies in enemy countries why would a signal like this be used to transmit into deep space and why would a Penrose transmission need to be encrypted in the first place this raises some doubts regarding the prior explanation and may indicate other factors at Play alternatively perhaps the signal showing up on the control panel simply represents ariane's bioresonance being Amplified and transmitted by the Penrose vessel and the time Jump established in the first cut between Ariane and elster could imply the third shot occurs much later as well when elster died and Arianne began to dream either way the magpie signal is definitely ariane's dream signal which is the most important Point here following this memory sequence we returned to elster still lying on the ground and an apparition of Ariane appears first smooth and then bandaged possibly a representation of elster's memory of her becoming more accurate remembering her as she is rather than as she was once again the question is posed do you remember our promise elster's eyes open and she crawls back up to the Penrose in the snow rot front again elster drops into the ship but it's important to note that she doesn't use the hatch she tried earlier rather she drops directly into arianne's room through what must have been a breach in the ship's Hull an unsanctioned entrance the ship is in its crashed State here and elster enters the cryogenic chamber to discover a fleshy Mass inhabiting the Pod with a dead elster and white off to the side the screen then flashes you and I merging into we in what is I believe our strongest clue as to what the promise actually was you'll notice it is often referred to as our promise rather than simply the promise and this shows it was certainly not a one-way thing elster did not just promise to kill Ariane to end her suffering rather they promise to end it together each making an oath I won't leave you behind upon remembering this elster is more determined than ever to press on no matter the cost and proceeds to take the arm and chest plate from the dead unit and Dawn them herself and from here all that's left for her to do is once again jump into a massive pit of Flesh the next Shore sequence occurs this time directing you right instead of left across the beach and once again the King in Yellow is visible floating aways off in the water instead of Simply timing out as the first sequence did this section ends when elster boards the small boat grounded on the shore a red lantern hanging from its bow this is in fact the second time we've seen it the first was back on level 6 of serpinsky where the vessel had been constructed by Aura replicas within their dorm room it's a small detail but shows that the alluring pull of the aisle and perhaps even this Shoreline experience was shared by Alice serpinsky as the boat shoves off a single star falls into the sea and the chapter ends the imagery of the falling star shows up multiple times in signalus and to understand its significance we must turn to the Book of Revelation from which many passages are drawn throughout the course of the game Revelation chapter 9 verses 1 through 6 reads the fifth angel blew his trumpet and I saw a star that had fallen from Heaven to Earth the key to the shaft of the Abyss was given to him he opened the shaft of the abyss and smoke came up out of the shaft like smoke from a great furnace so that the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the shaft following this a plague of venomous locusts emerge from the smoke having power to torment those who do not have God's seal on their foreheads and so great would be their pain that in those days people will seek death and will not find it to over generalize just a bit the star is Abaddon or the devil the abyss is hell and the key is the authority to open its wide ma to the world the connections here are apparent the large hole Ulster comes upon in the prologue is the shaft of the abyss and she herself is the falling star given the key for surely the Penrose must have shown like a star as it fell into this adjacent reality and the keyhole on the management office's Isle of the Dead is located directly on the boat's shrouded figure whom elster has just become on the shore of Oblivion while in the original passage Abaddon is opening the shaft so hell May emerge from it this is subverted as elster opens the shaft so she can descend into hell herself but what meaning does elster see in the falling star a similar object appears in Lilith's memories almost certainly a bomb or rocket as evidenced by the other one's present and vanetta's status as a war-torn world this is further supported by the descriptions associated with the key of sacrifice which are themselves a restructuring of Revelation chapter 8 verses 7 9 and 12. on the horizon I saw a star fall into the sea and the sound of thunder like trumpets of angels Flew Over The Water a mix of Hail Fire and Blood hit my wet face and a third of all creatures that lived in the sea died this may be how elster sees herself as an object of Destruction one with a promise to destroy Something Beautiful [Music] the word gestaltzerfall literally translates to shape decomposition it is a type of visual agnosia or brain disorder in which complex shapes begin to break down into their smaller components the longer you look at them similarly if a person reads or hears the same words over and over again they eventually cease to have any meaning and this is the exact phenomenon we see at the beginning of the chapter elster finds herself back at serpinsky though it's in much worse shape than before with the flesh growing rampant she once again retrieves the key from classroom 4B and on the chalkboard are the words you've been here before clearly a reference to the poster found in the staff room earlier in the game which states if you didn't write it down it never happened so by implication the fact that this was written down means that it did really happen and it has happened so many times that the world is falling apart around her ceasing to have the meaning it once did there is another secondary definition of the term gestaltzerfall which does not directly apply here but is worth bringing up since it is highly relevant to the story as a whole it can be described as a phenomenon where the output signals from the brain go beyond their expected range this is what signalus is all about a bioresonant brain output signal that traverses the vast emptiness of space to affect places and realities that should have been Out Of Reach elster makes her way to the upper classroom just as before but this time the hole in the floor is a massive fleshy pit and upon jumping in we get a short sequence with Adler he approaches and kisses the dreaming Falk in her room musing over the destructive nature of the cycle the words I have become whole again and I hate everything up here and while it's difficult to say who exactly is speaking here I think it very well may be Adler himself becoming whole means he has finally reconciled with the dream and embraced it as indicated by the pervasive red light in this scene and the way his replica shell plating vanishes to reveal the flesh underneath he also States I wear no mask a line pulled from the King in Yellow spoken by the unnamed stranger I explained earlier in the video that ariane's dream can be thought of as a grand performance with each character given a role to play and Adler's decision here to remove his mask his recognizable faceplate signifies that he has broken out of his role in the story he is now fully aware of the loop and begins trying to stop it in Earnest which no one else does though not shown here we know that he makes his way back to the gate and there he waits but before the sequence ends we are shown one more image Isa looking in a mirror now missing her right eye as a refresher we last Saw Issa in the nowhere with both her eyes intact so it's clear that something has happened off screen here did Adler catch up with Issa and take her eye as he tried to do at the mining pit could that perhaps be another reason he considers himself whole again or is this a new Issa from a new cycle regardless her appearance here is an interesting detail especially considering what happens in the final area rot front this is where elster finds herself following the previous sequence alone in a ruined atrium of sector C in stark contrast to serpinsky which felt mostly grounded in reality rotfront is very abstract and surreal appearing far more dreamlike the subway train is still running despite the complete absence of any humans ariane's teeth are found on the table in the guest station the butterfly safe is originally set to elster when you first find it as though waiting for you and when else takes damage the screen will often glitch to show multiple rooms all tangled together what does seem to be real however is the plethora of information lying around regarding sector C Ariane and the e2s and this seems to be the main purpose of the area for elster to learn more about ariane's past in order to alter the course of her future and one of the best examples of this is her discovery of the original photo of Alina in the Yong photo store finally the true form of this photo is revealed along with the significance of the number 512 that has been prevalent throughout the whole game Lilith belonged to unit 12 of the fifth Venetian Infantry Division 512 taking this into consideration I don't think that the original elster unit from ariane's Voyage is technically unit 512 at all rather any Ulster unit that becomes destabilized and experiences a resurfacing of their Gestalt memories reverts to this number mistaking it for their identity and this happens to both elster units in signalus extending this line of thought a bit further it stands to reason that the numerous other occurrences of the number 512 such as on the Penrose are likely inaccurate as well and are only perceived as such by elster's degraded persona but back to the photo despite this being the second iteration of the photo scene in game I think this is actually the original the photo always was Alina Ariane kept a copy for herself and had brought it with her on the mission as a token elster sees two different versions of the photo as a result of her destabilized Persona to her Alina and Arianne were one in the same in terms of gameplay the overall design of Rod front is similar to the previous areas in that elster must collect six different keys of swords in this case turret cards that enable her to complete the planetary mural the tower card is found in the guest station with the teeth the sun card is found in the P.O box with the spy's note the lovers card is found embedded in a painting of the aisle the moon card is found in the butterfly safe the star card is found in the magpie box in ariane's hospital room and the death card is found by the photos of Issa and Erica in the e2's Bookshop immediately prior to this last one however is elster's final encounter with Isa standing alone in the Bookshop Issa States I couldn't find her I've looked everywhere but she's not here anymore I can't go on I'm sorry following this she notices elster and reaches out for her but promptly melts into flesh that oozes onto the floor we then see the words forgive me this is a startling abrupt end to one of our main characters and begs the question why what was esa's purpose in this story at all let's start with the basics if there was still any doubt at this point whether Isa was real or not the matter is resolved by the photos of Issa and Erica that are marked with black lines which indicate that the subjects are dead and probably have been for some time it is possible they were executed in the aftermath of the Spy plot due to the E2 bookstore's mildly anti-revolutionary Tendencies which may have drawn the attention of the authorities but there isn't enough evidence to push this beyond the realm of speculation regardless the eso we encounter on elster's journey is ariane's memory of her from the time they were both in school and wearing the white and green school uniforms but it goes deeper than that for ISSA is also Ariane herself way back in chapter 1 when elster gains access to the elevator on level 2 you actually have the option to write it back up to level one before it gets stuck on Level 3 and doing so leads to an extra conversation with Issa in addition to learning the important information that Erica is issa's sister if he pay close attention to her dialogue here you'll notice that her words are eerily similar to ariane's she makes the comment have you ever wondered if you're speaking to someone for the last time without knowing I wish I could go back so I could say something else this is very close to something Ariane writes in one of her last notes around cycle 5000 every time I go to sleep I wonder if I'll wake up again I'm scared that it'll be the last time I said goodnight to her did I say it right will she be okay what if one of us just won't wake up tomorrow such parallels continue to appear in the following chapters as well after waking Issa into nowhere following the new way confrontation sheer marks the air in this place feels thick like you could bite it it's like there's this fog inside my head Arianne wrote nearly this exact same thing in a note at cycle 1840 it's like there's this fog inside my head I want to breathe fresh air when elster makes it back to the Penrose for the first time she finds a note from Ariane detailing how she had lost another tooth there was so much blood my hands were shaking and we get a glimpse of this scene when elster jumps through the broken meat grinder similarly there is the brief shot of Issa looking into a mirror her bloodied hand shaking but perhaps the strongest evidence for esa's identity as a manifestation of Ariane is that she shows up in the line of ariane's seen earlier in the fake ending and in this final bookstore encounter we get a profile shot that perfectly matches up with that of Arianne and Alina I have two separate but potentially connected theories about issa's purpose in signalus first Issa is ariane's desire and attempt to save herself she makes this interesting remark in the aforementioned level one conversation you don't need to worry about me I can take care of myself now I can't keep relying on others that's why she left me after all I'm sure of that now I don't think it's Erica she's talking about here it's elster we know that ariane's worst fear came true one day when elster just wouldn't wake up and it's feasible to consider that in her dreamy delirium Arianne would try coming up with rationalizations for why elster would have broken her promise the apparent conclusion she came to was that she needed to solve her own problems and her solution was to create a version of herself that manifested as one of the E2 sisters someone who had rescued her in the past who could travel through the dream instead of elster in order to fulfill The Promise by finding herself of course this doesn't work as Isa becomes lost and is unable to find the real Ariane before falling apart interestingly the mark she leaves on the floor is very similar to others that we see throughout the game including on the shore of Oblivion and on the Penrose itself these could possibly indicate spots where Issa failed in previous cycles and it's tragic to think that she could get so close while never being able to enter that last door my second theory goes back to the idea of synchronization that I covered at the end of chapter one Issa is still a manifestation of ariane's desire to save herself but she does this indirectly by pacing elster in the world of professional track and field there is a technique known simply as pacing in which pacemakers run just ahead of an individual who is attempting to break a record the goal of these participants is not to win the race or sometimes to even finish at all but rather to keep the star runner on track for the record and they do this by holding an extremely fast pace for the first part of a race before dropping off in a similar way Issa helps to pace elster through the first part of her journey by taking specific actions in specific places shortly before elster does these include crossing paths in the library and the EV Lobby trying to get into falk's room jumping into the mining pit running into the new way in the nowhere and finally awaiting elster's arrival to the Bookshop when viewed through this lens we can interpret the sacrifice Issa makes in the prologue as a preemptive sacrifice of herself just as pacemakers sacrificed their own performance to Aid another Ariane is sacrificing her manifestation of Issa fully aware that she will burn out and fail relying on the hope that elster will succeed where she cannot as for Erica and why her face is always obscured this is the simplest answer of all Arianne didn't know the E2 twins well enough to tell them apart only knowing one face so only one can be properly represented in her dream but why is Esa shown instead of Erica to make sense of this detail we must return to the library sequence an easy explanation is that Ariane mistook Erica for ISSA when she arrived which is certainly plausible but I think there's more to it than just that following this incident at the library Issa could never forgive herself for not taking action and she reveals that at least for her this moment of paralysis forever overshadowed her short friendship with Arianne now I know this is extremely speculative but my final thought about Issa that ties it all together is simply this issa's role in signalus may be a chance at Redemption for what happened in the library so long ago perhaps the cosmic scales were unbalanced by her inability to move past this moment of weakness as well as by her untimely death and when the Great song of the Gods miraculously granted her soul a second chance in the form of ariane's reality altering signal she seized it Issa May indeed be one of ariane's projections but why should that mean Issa herself is not in there somewhere at the very end of things even in death Issa was willing to Brave the darkest depths of ariane's nightmares and finally make the sacrifice she had been unable to in life ultimately enabling elster to succeed in fulfilling the promise to rescue Ariane one more time on that note let's get back to Rod front when all six turret cards have been acquired the dial Ring which had been caught in the Skylight falls into the lobby due to the expanding flesh above more interesting however is the dead elster that appears to have fallen with it we've seen plenty of such units by this point like the ones in the serpinski elevator but what's odd about this one is that it's still orange if the cycle always repeated itself each time with the same events playing out the same way we would expect this unit to be white because elster is unable to access Rod front until she reaches the Penrose and retrieves the white armor this shows that there are variations or outliers within the looping cycles in which things play out quite differently after picking up the Fallen dial and adjusting all of the mural rings to match the tarot cards the wall symbol opens up to reveal a tunnel leading right back into ariane's Radio Room from the prologue this time however elster recognizes everything in it and the radio is actively transmitting if you tune the radio module to 210 The Magpie transmission can still be heard this clearly shows that ariane's signal has been steadily transmitting ever since it began in the prologue and just like in that sequence so long ago the king and yellow Waits upon the desk having now appeared a total of five times along elster's Journey the number of seals on the book has decreased until this point when there are none left interacting with it reveals the last seal has been broken and that it's time to go home this is the last time the book is to be found in signalus and its significance has become apparent elster has been using the King in Yellow to gradually decode The Magpie signal a process represented by the seals just as ariane's mother Iris used the book to decode the original Magpie signal but now the message it carries is the promise you can think of elster's Journey as one giant ritual a synchronization of identity with each additional seal broken each new memory gained she passes through liminality to emerge on the other side of the ritual threshold and elster reborn now fully cognizant of her promise and poised to save the world and its creator from gestaltzerfall this door in the Radio Room represents that final threshold and now that elster is finally ready she passes through and finds herself in ariane's home in sector C the apartment of her aunt Camilla this all but confirms that the radio room is in fact ariane's rot front bedroom the spare room referred to in Camilla's letter and just as the Seven Seals in the Book of Revelation lead up to the end of the world the six seals of the king and yellow prefigure the end of both dream worlds in which so many have suffered elster's departure through the front door is literally the beginning of the end and on the other side she finds a long note littered hallway that can only lead to one place back to Falk elster has to escape the second dream in order to find Ariane in the first and for this to happen she must deal with the dreamer elster finds Falk lying in her bed as before though now she is awake her dialogue in this scene is quite interesting after asking elster why did you return she explains there's nothing for you here she'll never dance with us again no matter what we do and she doesn't even want us anymore the reason for this is that neither Falk nor this elster unit are the replica that Ariane fell in love with so long ago but rather have had those replicas memories forcefully implanted within them false bitterness and Desperation is really quite understandable what must it be like to be filled with such love and longing for a person who doesn't even know you exist to be tortured by Vivid memories of them that are not actually your own as falk's story now comes full circle let us revisit her signal Swan Lake one more time and examine its significance in a new light for those unfamiliar with the story of Tchaikovsky's famous ballet I think a very brief synopsis is well worth our time it all begins when princess debt decides to take a solitary walk down by the lake where she is discovered by the evil Baron von rothbart and transformed into a swan by day later Prince Siegfried comes upon her while hunting and after seeing her human form when she transforms back at night falls in love with her he learns that the only way to break the enchantment is to promise his love to her and remain faithful to that vow he begins to do so but the baron appears and the ensuing confrontation takes up the last of the Moonlight that same day siegfried's mother the queen throws a ball at which he is supposed to find his bride rothbart's daughter odile shows up Enchanted by rothbard to look like Odette thinking it really is her Siegfried mistakenly vows his love to odile after which rothbart's trickery is revealed distraught he returns to Odette and with no hopes of breaking the spell she and Siegfried both drown themselves in the lake and their Spirits are freed to be together while it should be acknowledged that the story has a great many variations especially with regard to the ending the parallels to signalus remain consistent Ariane can be seen as odet the white swan trapped in a curse that has rendered the state of her body out of her control elster is Siegfried seeking to break the curse and free her Love At Last and Falk is odile the Black Swan caught between the motives of The Prince and the princess transformed with the identity of another and ultimately unwanted by the one whose love was vowed to her just as Siegfried must overcome his mistaken vow to odile before he can be with Odette so too elster must defeat Falk before she can return to Ariane after their brief Exchange in falk's room the illusion crumbles to reveal the true fleshy state of the dream and we see the phrase this God won't forgive you it seems pretty clear that this is referring to Falk herself who is revered as a God by other replicas and is quite literally the creator of this Twisted world she tells elster both of us we are incomplete let us become whole again and the battle begins along with being essential to escaping the second dream this fight to the death may also be necessary because the original elster's memories are split between the two replicas creating dissonance only one individual can fulfill the promise upon her defeat we see Falk phase back and forth and another Montage ensues in which we witness her memories elster and Ariane embracing in the Starlight just as in false drawing the Isle of the Dead Falk motioning at Adler from the gate elster 512 and a promise character but extremely dim this Show's Falk did know about the promise to some extent but either did not fully understand it or was unwilling to go through with it which explains why she never attempts to carry it out herself these memories complement and complete those of elster 2 and knowing this Falk States now we are one and dies and Ariane watches it happen elster once again meets Adler at the gate but this time he's openly hostile insisting that elster's continuous return to the Penrose is the cause of this world's rapid degradation for every time she fails the world is recycled Anew in a new Loop in which things are twisted added removed it's not entirely clear what Adler's plan is to stop this however since the cycle clearly repeats even if elster dies before reaching the Penrose perhaps he believes that they can wait out the dream if they last long enough or in his desperation he simply wishes to slow the destruction regardless it's not hard to see where Adler is coming from not only has his world been corrupted and turned inside out but his very God is being twisted and destroyed as well and it is elster's fault she refuses to listen and in an instant is stabbed in the eye and shoots Adler through his this motif of losing an eye is one that has cropped up multiple times now it happens to Adler twice as well as to Issa and elster and the reason for this can be traced back to Lilith's memories we see that she herself lost an eye in the Venetian War her right one to be exact and this pattern can be seen as Lilith's trauma resurfacing with an Ulster and spreading throughout the dream additionally I think there's a symbolic aspect to this as well dream dreaming about the loss of one's eyes and terribly uncommon and while there are admittedly many ways to interpret this occurrence one such interpretation is that it represents having lost an important person in your life and feeling lost or incomplete as a result notably Only The Seekers and signalus are affected by this pattern not the dreamers since they have all lost and are searching for someone very important to them alternatively the loss of an eye can be seen as a reference to the Norse god Odin who sacrificed deny in order to obtain greater wisdom in similar fashion perhaps this pattern in signalus represents the sacrifice necessary in order to obtain the truth Adler Issa and elster all must suffer and sacrifice to uncover the truth of their broken World anyways undeterred by this traumatic setback elster presses on to the Penrose and with her stronger armor is finally able to open the main hatch and drop into the ship one last time here she observes the true state of the Penrose at the end of its voyage and finds ariane's notes scattered about chronicling the harrowing last days before her cryosleep but of course we have to ask the big question is this the real Penrose or is elster still within a dream a detail of no small significance is that the All-Seeing red eye present over the whole game is not visible in this section since the eye is symbolic of ariane's gaze within the dream this strongly implies that what we are seeing is in fact the real Penrose or rather the Penrose as it exists in base reality we can also see in the ship many items and situations that influence parts of ariane's dream trash piled in every Corridor blood-stained copies of the Isle of the dead blue and red medical canisters the reactor room flooded with green liquid and of course the body of elster1 finally elster 2 comes face to face with the cryogenics chamber door and it is here we get to the game's multiple endings [Music] signalus has four distinct endings all of which are equally valid as conclusions to the game and it's even implied that all four occur at least once during elster's Journey the specific criteria needed to achieve each ending remains fairly ambiguous and is related to the style in which you play the game whether that be cowardly balanced or aggressive this matters because at its core what sets each ending apart is elster's self-realization or the extent to which she is able to reconcile the innate Lilith inside her with the elster she has become in the leave ending elster does not enter the cryogenics chamber at all but instead is seen leaving the Penrose her last words are brief in the end I had to leave you behind but it's too much forgive me she removes her blood-stained white chest plate casting It On The Ground behind her the backdrop here is key she is on Veneta in this ending her Lilith Persona remains too strong leaving elster confused with regard to her true identity her idea of go going home is not returning to Ariane but leaving her behind to return to her home planet it should come as no surprise that this is the Cowardly ending obtained by running away from enemies frequently checking locked doors and lingering within safe zones as a side note it is possible that the dead elster units we see in the fake ending sequence are those who obtained this ending and as they cease to function the cycle began anew in the memory ending elster finds and awakens Arianne with a kiss but Arianne no longer remembers her while this is consistent with known side effects of radiation which includes significant memory loss when the brain is affected I don't think that's the main factor at play here rather the key detail is the appearance of the cryogenics chamber itself the room is rendered in high detail appearing much as it did in elster's memory of the place in this ending her elster Persona is too strong and the room's detail is representative of her brain carefully scanning everything in the room as if she was still going through her maintenance checklist while she does remember the promise she is not focused enough on Ariane to follow it through and as such Ariane does not recognize her as the replica she fell in love with the line I'm back but you aren't you anymore refers just as much to elster as it does to Arianne and elster simply asks to lay by her side in her last moments this is the balanced ending which is obtained by taking moderate actions killing enemies in your path talking to other replicas encountered in the game and avoiding damage when possible and it is this elster unit from whom the white armor is taken during the fake ending perpetuating chapter 3. in the promise ending elster finds and awakens Ariane in the cryopod as before but this time irian remembers her and importantly the chamber is different it is red and hazy all detail obscured for nothing matters except what is found at the center of the room Arianne in this ending Lilith and elster are finally reconciled equal the replica who first fell in love with Ariane in the Happy Days of their Voyage was not fully elstered nor fully the Gestalt Lilith but someone in between someone who saw nyrian not just the Alina she had loved in a life long ago but the beautiful strong individual whom she was right then and it is this elster who back from the dead fulfills the promise at last this is the aggressive ending which is obtained by killing as many enemies as possible taking heavy damage and dying repeatedly it is the most difficult to achieve and requires the most effort on elster's part there are at least two pieces of evidence that indicate the cycle is finally broken in this ending first as the light leaves ariane's eyes we see the red countdown finally reach zero and shortly after this the screen glitches violently knocking Ulster to the ground this could be showing that the signal now bereft of its origin is beginning to fall apart along with the Twisted reality that it created the final secret ending artifact is quite different from the others both in the process necessary to obtaining it and in the conclusion to elster's Journey that it depicts which is easily the most cryptic of the four notably it must be obtained through the use of sstv signals the acronym stands for slow scan television and refers to the manner in which static images can be transmitted using a radio signal there are three frequencies in elster's radio module that when fed through an sstv decoder result in the three following images these can then be linked to their locations in the game and when interacting with each Zone while the corresponding frequency is playing on the radio three keys can be obtained the keys of Love eternity and sacrifice respectively I want to point out here that the use of sstv signals is a pretty important detail since it reinforces the fundamental premise that every location in the game is being generated or transformed by ariane's by a resonant signal which itself is passed through radio waves once all keys have been found they can be used to open the locked safe found in irian's bedroom and reveal a lily flower waiting within picking it up triggers the ending which begins with Revelation chapter 9 verse 6. and in those days people shall seek for death and shall not find it we then see elster placing the Lily upon a short pillar before collapsing at its base and the camera moves up to reveal a fallen elster unit at the base of all six at the center lying within a rectangular shape reminiscent of a bed or cryopod is the artifact a shimmering object resembling a tesseract this is followed by Revelation chapter 10 verse 7. the mystery of this God is finished as she announced to her servants the prophets we see the crashed Penrose a massive red eye in the sky and the words remember our promise before a final shot of elster and Ariane dancing within the broken ship there is quite a bit of information to unpack in this short ending as in the promise ending the elster and Lilith aspects of elster II are fully reconciled in the artifact ending the gravestone pillars and Lily are pulled directly from Lilith's memory for the purpose of perpetuating one of elster's memories and the result is a new ending that appears to break out of the loop in which the others take place elster never returns to the actual Penrose or fights Falk and the sequence contradicts falk's statement that she'll never dance with us again no matter what we do but what does it all mean going back to the Ring of elster units we can see that each one is a different color since we know the elster replica only comes in orange and white configurations a reasonable conclusion is that each Ulster is from a different timeline one in which the color could be green brown or red it's impossible to say how many realities were affected by aryan's signal but this shows it was far more than just her own and at the center of the mall is the artifact the most ubiquitous yet elusive object in the entire game if you weren't already aware the strange symbol displayed on the main menu is simply a representation of the artifact clearly this object is key to understanding signalus from beginning to end in addition to its appearance here the symbol can also be seen during the prologue when Esa makes a blood sacrifice on the astrolabe connected to Adler's lock box on the tarot card table beneath the planetary mural on the locked safe and on Falk marking her vulnerable for a golden spear during the final fight furthermore the symbol is alluded to in the pattern of six that runs throughout the game inventory items are limited by the rule of six which is conveniently represented by a cube and six keys are needed to open the special access doors in serpinski and the nowhere and there are of course six tarot cards as well but the pattern goes deeper repeatedly we are shown that the six sides of the artifact correspond to the six inhabited worlds of the solar system Each of which is also represented by a specific shape I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that on one level the artifact represents base reality it represents the song of the Gods as it pertains to the whole solar system to both the Empire and a nation of usan in the way in which they have chosen to leave an imprint on The Melody of the universe and for the nation of usan this involves one major act sacrifice the sacrifice of anything anyone any idea to further the cause of the Revolution and one such sacrifice was the young pile Ariane jettisoned on a suicide trip into the void as a glorious demonstration of the nation's power if we assume the symbol represents reality then elster's interaction with it as a tangible object separate from herself shows that she has managed to slip Beyond its boundaries creating an outcome that shouldn't be possible there are some interesting connections to be made regarding the artifact as it appears in this form first in Robert Chambers story The Mask the sculptor Boris develops the strange liquid solution that can transform any object into Pure White marble with blue veins and a Rosy light at its heart after transforming a single lily flower Boris and his attending friend Alec briefly Muse over whether the plant has been destroyed or preserved though without a verdict it is possible that the light we see glistening within the artifact is elster's final memory and wish a dance with her lover that will last for eternity and like Boris we must ask ourselves has this memory been destroyed or preserved for its state has been fundamentally altered this is not the same joyous but transitory scene that played out so long ago but is rather an everlasting Recreation of it elster and Ariane dancing as ghosts in a ruined ship also worthy of note while on the topic of the artifact is the presence of a strikingly similar object in Slavic folklore as the legend goes in the heart of bouillon the island which vanishes and reappears with the ocean tide there is a brilliant white object known as the alotir it is a living magical stone located on the borderline Between Worlds and if discovered grants the finder happiness for all time additionally the a lot here is considered to symbolize the center of the universe and the transition from one world to another this idea neatly supports the previous explanation as elster has found her happiness in this object in the convergence of multiple realities speaking of transitioning Between Worlds though there is one final key to understanding the true nature of the artifact ending that also explains what exactly happens to Ariane near the very beginning of this video I briefly mentioned the similarity between signalus's description of the song of the Gods and the concept of Tau in Taoist philosophy and now I want to revisit this idea in Greater detail specifically looking at the connections between Taoist Alchemy and cosmology on the most fundamental level Taoist cosmology is a system designed to explain the nature of the cosmos and its relationship with Humanity with the concept of the Tau at its Center as a refresher the Tau can be understood as the unified essence of the universe that flows within all things and keeps the universe in Balance this form of cosmology is predominantly correlative which means it is concerned less with how and why diverse phenomena occur and more concerned with defining the relationships present between such phenomena the purpose for making these connections is to show how all things in their infinite diversity are in fact contained within the principle of unity and originate directly from the Tau the system has two important sets of emblems the bagua or eight trigrams and the Wu Xing or five elements let's start with the bagua the eight base trigrams represent eight interrelated Concepts that together constitute the fundamental principles of reality and are as follows Heaven Lake Fire Thunder Wind water mountain and Earth each trigram is composed of three lines which can be either broken representing Yin or solid representing yang these symbols are closely associated with and directly correspond to the five elements recognized in Wu Xing water fire wood Earth and metal the latter three of which must each correspond to two trigrams as Illustrated in this chart so that the five can equal eight and since both of these emblem sets are correlative there are a huge number of associations for each one including such things as numbers directions attributes animals body parts and so forth this pattern of extended linear associations should be familiar since it forms the backbone of all of signalus's major puzzles which I touched on earlier in relation to the artifact itself though the ones we see here are appropriately different from the bagua or Wu Xing since they apply in a different reality from our own one good example of the trigrams being used in this pattern of associations is found on the special access surgery door on serpinski Level 3 with 5 of them marking the slot for their corresponding Elemental key the selection of these particular five is quite interesting however the trigram corresponding to the Earth key is actually mountain and the one corresponding to the water key is Lake when combined together you can see that all of these five Concepts Loosely form the image of the Isle of the Dead a detail I think is quite intentional since everything ties back to the promise trigrams next appear with significance during the fake ending in which three show up briefly in unison wind heaven and lake or 5 1 and 2 clearly intended to evoke Lilith so obviously Taoist cosmology was intended to be an important part of signalus but why what greater purpose do these Myriad connections serve to answer this we must now transition to Alchemy the natural philosophy of Taoist Alchemy has two branches wide on or external Alchemy and nadon or internal Alchemy external Alchemy is all about transmuting physical substances from one form to another and practitioners of why Don combined lead Mercury and other metals together in an attempt to create the golden Elixir a substance believed to Grant immortality in contrast internal Alchemy was a later development that borrowed the language of wydan and combined it with cosmology to create an entirely new school of thought focused on human beings instead of physical substances the goal was still to create a golden Elixir but it now took the form of ultimate self-realization elevating oneself to the original state of Oneness embodied by the Tau the means to achieving this involved tracing the process of creation backwards to its original Cosmic emptiness in which trigrams play a key role as the combination of Kian and Heaven and Earth are what ultimately produced The Golden Elixir this process can be clearly seen in the way signalus is structured though it is notably distorted the entire serpinski dream is a downward spiral in which realities being unraveled into a state of emptiness and the idea of becoming one haunts all individuals trapped within Ariane is quite literally the gold key a golden elixir in the making who finds herself Trapped In The Space Between Heaven and Earth the artifact ending shows us the culmination of all of these disparate elements finally shedding her cryogenic Chrysalis Ariane transcends her human State and joins with the song of the Gods manifesting as the red eye the significance of Revelation chapter 10 verse 7 to the ending is that this outcome was actually seen and predicted before it happened the prophets referred to In this passage are in fact calibri units local nodes for Ariane signal one of the Transmissions seen when encountering calibrian Rod front reads beyond the sun in the dark behind the Stars I saw the face of God a shape and color that words cannot describe I saw the six sides of the world unfold and the light swallowed me I had become one with nothing where life and death are meaningless considering how Central these cosmological themes are to the whole of signalus along with the prominent symbolism of the artifact itself it would be reasonable to assume that the artifact ending is the definitive one were it not for one small detail just before the last scene the words remember our promise appear one final time for all it accomplishes for all the probabilities that it miraculously joins together this outcome still leaves the promise unfulfilled a fact of which Ariane is all too aware as she gazes down upon the Eternal memory while I still subscribe to the idea that all four endings canonically happen I think it is intentionally left for the player to decide whether the promise or artifact ending is the best one which outcome do you think provides the most favorable resolution to ariane's nightmare destruction or preservation [Music] well we finally made it and I have just a few final thoughts first off thank you so much for watching and if you're interested in seeing future videos like this please consider subscribing to the channel and leaving a comment down below second I want to reiterate something I said at the very beginning of the video that my goal in making this breakdown was not to come up with a definitive explanation for signalus but rather to promote greater understanding of its remarkable story and shed some light on its most persistent Mysteries whether or not you agree with my interpretation as presented here I sincerely hope I've given you more to think about and A Renewed desire to continue the search for meaning in this beautiful game for just as the Isle of the dead and shore of Oblivion paintings have multiple versions that are all treated as equally valid diverse interpretations of signalus are equally valid as well even when contradictions arise for gestaltzerfall is par for the course the longer you look at the entirety of elstonerian's story the more it seems to fall apart the question is what pattern do you see in the chaos finally I'd like to end with a poem that I think beautifully articulates what signalus is all about let the Red Dawn surmise written by Bliss Carmen the first half of which can be found in the king and yellow let the Red Dawn surmise what we shall do when this blue Starlight dies and all is through if we have loved but well under the sun let the last Morrow tell what we have done foreign [Music]

Channel: Indie Xplorer

Views: 84,605

Keywords: signalis lore, signalis story, signalis story explained, signalis lore explained, signalis review, signalis game review, signaisl, signaisl story, signaisl lore, what is signalis, signalis game

Id: x1Gv8yjEXw8

Length: 126min 7sec (7567 seconds)

Published: Mon May 01 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Loquor_de_Morte]

...There's nothing but 2:06:07 at the end.

[u/AJDLdeBrudi]

This video slaps, highly recommemd it to everyone!

Don't let the length scare you, the video is neatly ordered and can easily be watched piece by piece