Don't Starve's Storyline Explained

hello everyone today we will be talking about the don't starve lore three months after don't starve was released clay would hide hidden messages in their update videos following these would lead you to a bunch of images explaining the first chapter of the story on the 26th of june 1901 a man by the name of william carter was traveling from liverpool in england to america by port this man is actually maxwell and his real name was william carter he works as a stage performer and is probably traveling to america in order to find success with his new magic act unfortunately in a lot of subtle ways we learned that he did not find any success this is a poster for his show and it's obvious that no one cares about it it's peeling off it's overshadowed by other ads for other things not only that but some guy even vandalized his face which like you really have to hate someone to try to erase their face from a poster william isn't even that confident in this picture he looks like he has no idea what the hell he is doing see this rabbit he's holding yeah buying that put him in debt because william didn't have a lot of money entering america he was forced to take out a loan in order to pay for some cheap magic equipment this turned out to be an awful idea as not only was he unable to pay it back but now he is receiving angry letters threatening him to pay his overdue bill or i will find you this man just can't catch a break he travels to an entirely new country in the hopes of finding a new career but instead meets failure and immense debt in contrast to this we see a letter from william's brother jack which is written in such fancy cursive that i am thankful to wiki as a translation because otherwise i have no idea what this said william you finally come to america how exciting has your show taken new york by storm yet i fear we may have just missed each other the city was too much for me so i've gone west it really is amazing out here maybe you could visit sometime have you corresponded with mother lately the post is dreadfully inconsistent out here i can't believe she hasn't met the twins yet warmest regards jack what can i say it's a nice message what better thing to do in this situation than to visit your loving and supporting brother so that's exactly what he does he buys a train ticket to california and then the train crashes according to this newspaper only a dozen people were injured and just one man is missing fellow passengers described him as a tall nervous fellow with an english accent yeah that's william the people presumed he was dead since the circus wagon the train crashed into it a bunch of dangerous monkeys missing that end well the train crashed in the middle of a hot desert far from society so it's safe to say is dead but well now what do i do the main character of this story just died how how am i meant to continue making a video about the story where they [Music] oh let's see he's alive somehow against all odds william survived this event despite everyone saying he was dead he explains what happened in a letter to his brother jack the strangest thing has happened please discount all reports of my demise should they reach you i'm very much alive despite my recent misadventures i have discovered something a book of sorts i have yet to decode it fully what little i have deciphered has opened my mind to terrifying new possibilities i shan't say more true post i fear it may attract unwanted attention all will be explained when we meet i shall continue west fort with william what's interesting about this letter is that the address is crossed out implying he never sent this letter to jack after writing it the reasons for this are mostly unknown but i'm guessing he was just really paranoid that the government would read the letter and steal his newfound power anyways being dead actually has a lot of advantages for one that debt he collected earlier is now gone since it's pretty difficult to collect money from someone who's not alive and secondly this would serve as a new beginning for william and soon he would change his name to maxwell using whatever powers the book gave him maxwell would become much more successful in his career as a magician presumably because now he was using real magic in this next image it's pretty clear how rich he's gone he's staying in a luxury hotel he spends a high amount of money looking to hire an assistant and overall maxwell just looks a lot more confident however much darker things were happening behind the scenes as maxwell began experimenting with the knowledge found within this book in his diary he wrote about what he saw in his last ritual a terrible form took shape in the air above the ritual last night it was large and indistinct but its face was hostile and that chilled me to my very core my fear was so great that i almost stopped using the spell it made no hostile motions however after having hunt in the air for a time it shivered out of existence what was it was it observing me is it the guardian of some deeper secret which i am drawing closer in any event i am not keen to meet its like again to give you an idea of what kind of power maxwell was dealing with in this little piece of paper we see sketches of a life-giving amulet and a telelocator staff this would imply that maxwell would have discovered teleportation and immortality since in-game the staff allows you to teleport while the amulet will revive you after death things would continue this way for a while maxwell would summon shadows from the book to amaze audiences on stage while experimenting with dark magic off stage until one day maxwell would hire an assistant for his magic show this assistant was charlie who was completely unaware to what maxwell was doing and just assumed it was some clever trick in the letter to maxwell she writes those shadow things are so convincing they almost scare me and i'm part of the act we can work on the new finale when i get back from my sister's place unfortunately this finale didn't go as planned maxwell would usually come in to work every single day but suddenly he stopped showing up so charlie does the obvious tin and visits him to see what is going on she finds that no one is home so she lets herself in judging from all the pictures on the wall you can tell maxwell is really proud of his work but something seems off about this place and after investigating the room she pulls a switch and finds a hidden room in the chimney the maxwell in the photo actually turns his head to this which suggests he's literally in the paint and watching her in this hidden room she reads maxwell's journal and looks at all his crazy discoveries while this is happening shadow hands appear from the other room trying to grab her this sends maxwell into a panic and he light to scare them off by this point charlie had discovered that there's a bunch of crazy writing everywhere on the wall one of these words was her own name so understandably she decides to run maxwell leaves the painting to confront her but by that point she is already gone he then searches the hidden room as if he's looking for something and that something was the codex umbra the magical book with charlie had taken when she ran out while this is happening charlie somehow manages to write a letter at the speed of light and mix it back to the front door with enough time to slide a ladder in max where are you i haven't heard from you in days i stopped by your place so i've got your and costume for the show i'll see you at the teether tonight i hope since maxwell had his book taken away from him he was forced to come into this show that night and it was on that show where something completely unexpected would happen it starts off as a normal magic show we can't hear any of the audio but it's implied that people really like maxwell and his show he does his usual thing of making shadows before deciding that this time he would do something bigger this time he's going to pull an actual living nightmare creature from the book when he reaches into the tome the shadow pulls back and tries to take him into the book he manages to break free but by this point it's too late the book flips to a random page and both of them are taken into the don't starve world which is the one i'm going to be calling the constant from now on what happens next is kind of unclear since this is where the chapter ends but the general idea is that charlie becomes the night monster that attacks you at night while maxwell becomes the king of the constant he basically has the power to make whatever he wants whenever he wants including statues of himself which there is a lot of all you need to know for now is that maxwell is kind of an awful person he randomly pulls people into the constant and makes them starve you'd think he'd have some kind of grand motivation for this but nope he just does this because he thought it would be funny speaking of people who got pulled into the constant let's move on to the next chapter of the story the animations so clay does this cool thing where they release a full animation anytime the game gets an update and i'm not just talking about the character reworks i mean literally every update they have some kind of video ready to drop most of them don't have any story significance but that doesn't mean that all of them don't in fact the character rework videos usually give us a lot of backstory for the don't starve cast i'll be going through these videos in order of when they came out which means our first stop isn't actually a rework video but the original trailer for don't starve wilson is a man who lives so far from society that he now thinks he's the smartest man alive i mean he literally puts up a sign that says genius at work outside his house you don't get more egotistical than that unfortunately for wilson he is nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is and when he inevitably fails he gets frustrated luckily a voice appears through the radio and tells wilson that he can give him the knowledge he's looking for this voice is maxwell who after becoming the powerful king of the constant has the godly power to speak through a radio wilson accepts this offer and then builds a portal using his newfound intelligence this entire deal turns out to be a scam as the portal takes him to the constant and now wilson is too stupid to make a shovel without a science machine we didn't know at the time but this video would be the star of a common trend maxwell finds character who is in need or struggling with something max will offer solution to their problem maxwell tricks them and takes them into the constant again you'd think he's doing this as part of some master plan but since there's no evidence maxwell even knew who wilson was he's probably just doing it for fun despite this the next short is one of the few ones that has nothing to do with maxwell willow was once an orphan who had a teddy bear named bernie one night she would get attacked by a nightmare creature from the constant this is really interesting because it implies that either maxilla pulled a few shadow creatures to the real world journey's magic show or that they were already leaking into there before that which would explain how maxwell got the codex umbra what's even more interesting is that willow seems to have supernatural abilities for example her teddy bear for whatever reason can scare away the nightmare creatures it's weird because we haven't seen them be afraid of anything and all of a sudden a small bear scares them another example is when willow somehow survives an explosion near the end of the video a bunch of fire passes through her and she doesn't react at all immediately after this an orphanage worker dies the fact that willow can survive the heat with a fully grown woman can't prove she has some kind of fire resistance anyways the entire orphanage burns down but she doesn't care she just leaves while all the children in there burn to death keep in mind that in this short willow is just a kid but when we see her in game she's supposed to be in her 20s meeting around 10 years pass before she even enters the constant imagine how many places she burnt down and the people she's killed in that time like i wouldn't be surprised if this woman's kill count was higher than maxwell's maybe maxwell is actually the hero of the story because he stopped this crazy pyromaniac from killing more people however what maxwell does in the next short is absolutely irredeemable warley is a tragic character he gives up his promising career as a sous chef in order to take care of his decaying mother unfortunately for him she has some sort of dementia which prevents her from recognizing wally imagine you come home from work or school or wherever you go and your own mom has no idea who you are there is no joke here this is just sad luckily through the sheer power of his incredible cooking skills he is able to make her remember him even if it's just for a brief moment as time went on it became harder and harder to do this so much so that wally was quote willing to try anything to bring back his beloved maman this is the part where maxwell shows up and fixes the problem and by fixing the problem i mean kidnapping warley's that he's unable to take care of his mother which means she is probably dead you know who else is dead that's right abigail also known as the twin of wendy and the daughter of jack carter which if you think about it means that if wendy is the daughter of maxwell's brother then that would make maxwell her uncle we don't actually know how abigail died but we do know that her death affected wendy heavily she starts having full-on hallucinations where she believes the abigail is alive only for reality to catch up and leave her alone again that's how severe it is since wendy can't accept the fact that her sister is dead she turns to spirit boards and people who claim they can speak with the deceased in a world with shadow books and magic bears you would expect this to work but no it doesn't she is almost ready to give up when suddenly she gets a sign i keep hearing strange music when i dream the same song repeating over and over is it you abigail are you trying to tell me something i don't know why max will explain ragtime music to his niece all night but eventually this leads to her getting stuck in the constant i'm assuming they made a deal but we don't know the exact details of it since it's never shown but hey at least maxwell kept his end of the offer this time since abigail is technically in there with her even if it isn't ghost form so it would seem that maxwell is starting to slightly help people now even if it is in a really twisted way this is true for our next character wickfrid she is a stage actor who is renowned for her ability to play the part of dive valkyrie and for her great singing voice our story begins with wickford reading the newspaper where we learn of a tragedy in san francisco remember when maxwell got pulled into the constant yeah well this event was so powerful that according to dole stars lore it caused a real-life earthquake many are still missing from the aftermath of this event which also probably includes anyone who witnessed maxwell's final show while reading this newspaper wickford stumbles upon an article about herself and it's not a good one despite being immensely successful she has no idea how to handle criticism so she chooses to fight it literally she starts beating the out of a newspaper just like a valkyrie would while this happens maxwell appears again to make another deal i can make the world your stage put you back in the headlines this is yet another trick but also another example where technically he didn't lie in game look luger genuinely believes the world is a stage which is why she never leaves the valkyrie role wickford isn't even her real name just the name of the character she plays so in a sense maxwell actually helped wickford return to this stage just at the cost of the actor who played her so far maxwell has been targeting random everyday people but that is about to change now it's time to get revenge on a character from earlier in the story remember george t witherstone the guy maxwell wasn't dead too yeah well today we will be trapping him in the constant because i am maxwell and i hate who the hell is this guy so apparently wes just so happened to walk into witherstone as he was being pulled into a portal this in turn ended up saving him as wes swapped positions and entered the constant by accident he even brought some crows with him which are birds that maxwell never created in the constant this pisses off maxwell so much that he traps him in a prison because he displeased me it's kind of funny how one of the survivors is in here by complete accident it just goes to show that max doesn't really care who he puts in the constant sometimes it's some failing scientist sometimes it's a failing actor and sometimes it's maxwell who failed to pull someone in although i wonder why maxwell didn't just try again like what's really stopping you from opening another portal to capture with her stone the guy literally has that gramophone you always appear in surely you can just try again but whatever let's not question maxwell's giga brain i'm sure this is all part of his master plan the last character in this section is weber believe it or not this spider-man was actually some kid living on a farm once his father was some kind of inventor and one day we see him receiving a strange item from another guy this person is wagstaff who will be important later but for now all you need to know is that he brought weber's dad a spider a real spider from the constant into the real world after webber is constantly ignored by his father he does the logical thing and breaks into his work room to push a random object to the floor by doing this he ended up releasing a spider which lunges at him trying to eat him the spider fails to consume him and they both turn into some kind of spider human thing that we see in game since his family no longer recognize him they start attacking him in fear and chase weber out of the house and into the nearby forest by this point webber is sad cold and alone at least until maxwell strikes a deal with him which ends up taking him to the happiest place on earth and that's the end of this chapter there's some animations that appear later in the timeline and a few that have yet to be made but i don't feel like waiting another year just so i could finish this video so let's continue because this story is far from over so quick recap we have a guy who finds a magic book only to misuse its power cosmic to enter a strange uncompromising world it is inherently traps multiple people with him presumably to watch them suffer in the world he created but what actually happens to the survivors in here is there any story to be found past this point the answer is that they die multiple times according to this heavily outdated forum post eventually though something would happen to change that canonically wilson finds this thing called a maxwell's door in the wilderness which would likely lead him to the man that took him here it's similar in appearance to the portal that took him to this wretched place in the first place so it's interesting that wilson would activate it after all that he's learned maybe after a constant cycle of debt he figured he had nothing else to lose or maybe he entered it with the promise of confronting the man that took him here either way after entering the door wilson is greeted with this [Music] oh you found my portal did you you think you would have learned your lesson by now let's try something a little more challenging shall we this is adventure mode you're tasked with gathering pieces from the corners of the world to assemble a portal and you do this five times each time the world gets progressively harder as maxwell gets more and more desperate to get rid of you if you continue to press onward he even tries to strike a deal with you say pal let's make a deal you can stay here settle down even i'll give you food gold pigs whatever you need all i want in return is a truce it's really weird throughout this entire game maxwell is portrayed as this godlike ruler of the world and now the same person is practically begging you to stop trying to beat adventure mode what could possibly bring a man so powerful to this almost paranoid-like state in the final level of adventure mode maxwell is furious you insolent pitiful insignificant ad do not arouse the rat of the great maxwell you will regret coming any further the last world in this challenge has you building a portal again but this time in complete darkness should you manage to successfully construct it you reach don't starve's ending which is probably the coolest part of this entire game there's nothing like this in all of don't starve as it's the closest thing we'll ever get to a proper conclusion normally when you progress to a new world it would say chapter 1 of 5 or chapter 2 of 5 or so before you're greeted with maxwell talking over you but when you get to the end you're greeted with a screen reading epilogue checkmate not the end or the last level but epilogue implying that what you're about to see isn't really the ending to the game but rather what happens to the characters after the final chapter is complete when you wake up there's no immediate danger or threat in this world just a single path lined with maxwell's torches and as you travel along this road ready to confront the man who took you and everyone else here a familiar tune begins to play [Music] [Music] [Applause] when you reach maxwell he's not more than some old guy strapped to a chair listening to the same song over and over again you can even turn off the gramophone which prompts maxwell to say this turning it back on will make him say i guess i deserve that showing that he might regret the actions he committed to everyone in this world the inevitable action he keeps referring to is putting the key in the box which will free maxwell from the chair that he is strapped to [Music] and so the cycle continues but what does this all mean surprisingly enough this one speech from maxwell probably reveals more lore than all the story we've had until this point the fact that maxwell doesn't know what year it is out there shows us that time travels differently in the constant than it does in the real world i mean we can clearly see the only thing keeping him alive is the chair imagine how long he must have spent here to instantly disintegrate when the chair is removed he says that there wasn't much here when he showed up just dust the void and them which would mean that maxwell created everything we see other than the shadow creatures that pulled him here however despite his immense power he can't even get up off his chair because they won't let him what you need to understand is that playing don't starve is like playing chess there's a reason the ending is called epilogue checkmate in the original game you get the players one of eight pawns you are basically powerless against the caney maxwell and his clockwork rook bishops and knights however should you manage to reach the king you would find that he isn't as powerful as you once thought just like in chess the king doesn't have much mobility and is pretty much weaker than every piece on the board in reality the real ones in control are the ones moving the pieces which in this situation are the shadow creatures or as maxwell calls it them you can't change the rules of the game the only way to free maxwell is to take his place and become the new king on the nightmare throne [Music] and that is the end of the story no seriously that that's the end of don't starve story however when don't starve together got released we got an entirely new storyline for an entirely new game and a few months after the release of that game we got a trailer for the upcoming update line a new rain in this trailer we returned to wilson on the nightmare tron though comparing his and maxwell's appearance it's clear he hasn't been on it for that long he doesn't even have a beard being that he couldn't have been there for longer than four days he just kind of sits there when suddenly the nightmare lights start going out one by one almost like someone is approaching remember charlie maxwell's assistant i mentioned earlier that when she got pulled into the constant she got turned into the creature that kills you in the dark but that's not really the full story unlike maxwell who became the king of the world charlie seems to be one with the shadows now and is evidently a lot more powerful this is shown when she can free wilson from the nightmare throne the tin that was previously impossible to escape from after freeing wilson charlie picks him up and seemingly changes personality before she seemed friendly but now she starts electrocuting him to death for no reason i guess everyone here is just unnecessarily cruel after literally killing wilson charlie switches back to her friendly personality ashamed of what she has done this is the part where the two sides of her start violently fighting over what color the throne should be like one side goes uh make it white but then the other one goes like no make it dark and then eventually one of them turned to one single person the new ruler of the constant the trailer ends with a simple message don't starve to get her if you were to click the now defunct link in the description you would reach a bunch of comic pages that as far as i can tell updated daily for a single week and surprise surprise maxwell is alive again despite clearly dying in adventure mode because i guess respawning is just a common thing in this universe when he comes back into the constant he realizes that he no longer holds any kind of power which is kind of a problem when you fill the world with killer hounds and spiders there's even a quote that shows this in the game when examining a hound he says they don't recognize me anyways maxwell escapes total insanity by putting on a garland which as we all know makes you invincible to every problem in existence as he does this maxwell notices a light in the distance and this light is a wilson space i don't know how but despite respawning after maxwell he somehow already managed to build a base which just goes to show the difference between the two wilson has experienced practically every danger in the continent so he knows how to deal with it meanwhile maxwell struggles to survive without the power of the throne these two break into the most epic fight when they notice each other but then wilson notices a shadow hand trying to steal the fire the two unite over the common enemy and have a truce they sit there doing literally nothing for at least four days judging from the fact that wilson grew a beard before wilson offers maxwell some food he then asks him how the hell is he alive when he clearly died twitch response maxwell then asks his own question and wonders how is it possible that wilson escaped the nightmare throne which prompts wilson to then explain the don't starve lore up until this point the next day is when things get interesting maxwell looks through wilson's blueprint before wilson takes it away likely because he doesn't want anyone seeing how stupid he actually is in response to this maxwell shows him some real knowledge inside his codex umbra and the two of them get to work building a portal which would presumably lead them out of this place obviously though it wouldn't be that easy as charlie quickly takes over this portal and turns it into the florid poster the thing that you spawn in from at the start of every game now the portal teleports all the survivors to one location which is the backstory for every public server in existence and that's the end of the comic and the end of the prologue for don't starve together the survivors have to work together to fight off whatever charlie is going to do with her new power which brings me to the last part of this video the first nine seconds of the winona video gave us more information than every other short combined there's a missing poster maxwell's old adverts wix's blueprint and even the dst portal it's obvious that someone wants to find out the connection between every disappearance but the question is who there's even a letter from charlie to winona that we've never seen before this letter is important because winona is the one putting this chart together in hopes of finding her missing sister charlie is winona's sister and she went missing along with maxwell that fateful night all of this searching eventually leads her to a man who might know something wack staff this is the same person who gave weber's data spider and the same man who created the radios which maxwell talks through luckily she got a job at the factory he owns so now she can ask wagstaff where what the hell is happening there everyone else runs out of the factory since it is collapsing but winona not wanting to waste their only chance runs into the back room to see what is going on unfortunately wagstaff is taken into the collapsing portal before winona can ever say a word and that is the end of this she then rebuilds the portal only to come face to face with her missing sister clay even flashes the photo of her family just in case you couldn't make that connection she tries to pull charlie back into the real world but just like when maxwell tried to pull a shadow creature the reverse happened and both parties get trapped in the constant and that's the end of the video the story from this point just gets really blurry it's also an unfortunate coincidence that the same day i finished this video wolfgang's rework video also drops and just so happens to reveal some lore that could potentially change the earlier parts of the story and i think i'll talk more about that in part two all the main stuff has already been covered the only thing left to do is to decipher some ancient morals and return of them which i'll probably do in a part two the reason i've decided to split this video into two is because what i've covered here is basically all you need to know about don't start plot i've tried my best to cover everything as it appears without delving into my own theory so you could form your own conclusion the next one is going to be the opposite involving a lot of speculation about the ruins the mood and how i think the story will play out from here if it's already out by the time you're watching this then it will be linked on screen right now but until then goodbye

Channel: OrangE

Views: 1,903,181

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Id: klrHnnb3AIw

Length: 32min 57sec (1977 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 16 2021