Game Theory: The Curse is a LIE! (Edith Finch)

[Music] if you're reading this then unfortunately what i predicted came to pass i was on to something i was sure of it but i also knew that uncovering secrets like this could very well lead to my demise if i could just peek around the right corner if i could just open the right box or turn the right knob the truth would be made clear why why was this cold open in the style of fnaf when i was doing an episode about edith finch i guess that would remain forever a mystery [Music] hello internet welcome to game theory the show that exists to document my life instead of journaling like a normal person today we're finally covering a game that the theorist community has been asking me to cover for the past five years what remains of edith finch that's a long time to request a game and so i decided to reward your patience with a blind playthrough over on gt live a very long very thorough playthrough of the game this feels like i'm progressing the story forward but i don't want to progress the story forward i want to check out that other route he wants to be spicy i'm not being spicy i just want to make sure that i'm not missing anything you know sadly my walking speed is that of a snail but hey we made it all the way through can i just say you don't want shag carpet in your bathroom it's a dangerous game high risk certainly for what reward that's inviting bold if all the people in this house didn't die via tragic circumstances they would've been dying from like black fungus growing in their walls yeah there was a lot of commentary on proper building codes along the way i was afraid of the house i'm afraid of it collapsing under the the weight of its own poor structure and i gotta be honest now that i know what this game is truly about i am shocked that we didn't cover this thing sooner i mean it's right on brand for us fantastical stories a family curse dead kids and not just one but several dead kids i mean that's like the golden buzzer of getting fast track to a theory then again what do you say about a game that people have been combing over for the past half decade a game that's been analyzed up down and sideways and is practically memorized by its hardest core fans well what if i tell you that great grandma edie is a serial murderer that this supposed family curse that took the lives of at least 10 people was actually edie the entire time a serial killer bumping off members of the family one by one seems crazy right well sometimes crazy ideas lead to the best theories and i think today's can answer some weird logical inconsistencies that are found inside of the story so come with me friends as we scale the not so structurally sound tower of lies that's hidden inside this not so structurally sound house seriously this thing is like a late game jenga tower and we're about to pull the piece that makes it all come crumbling down hey i'm mixing metaphors at this point right like at one point we're climbing up this wobbly tower but now i'm pulling the tower down just saying i'm very confused about what i'm doing with this tower of lies right now just saying also before we start i'm just gonna say that there are a lot of names and details in the story i'm gonna do my best to keep it as streamlined as possible but you know might help to have a set of flash cards ready to remind yourself the difference between a gregory finch and a gus finch anyway this game is narrated to us by edith finch a young 17 year old mother-to-be who heads back to her abandoned childhood home before the birth of her son to try and learn the truth of her family's backstory the big twist at the end spoiler alert is that edith has already died in childbirth and that the whole game was her son christopher reading the journal that she left behind for him so already off the bat we're dealing with a story about stories about legends that are handed down from generation to generation we also have a story about unreliable narrators people telling their versions of events keep that one in mind it's gonna be super important so what's the big family secret that got a pregnant woman to scurry across the roof of her old abandoned house well her family is supposedly cursed people in the family keep dropping dead due to tragic or unusual circumstances a man is hit by a train after years of staying in a bunker a child star is killed off by quote-unquote monsters a young boy launches himself off a cliff while riding a swing and a small girl dies of poisoning from eating toothpaste and berries the list goes on and on as we explore the house room by room we get flashbacks to relive these fantastical tales of death one by one someone is yeeted off a cliff by a deer while another is crushed by a giant dragon slide a baby drowns in a bathtub while another child is killed in a storm but notice the word that i used here tales of death stories these aren't necessarily the real events that resulted in family members deaths these all have some mixed element of truth and fiction it's actually something that edith herself begins to realize halfway through her journey i thought it was time i heard the stories from myself and found out what happened to everyone else but now i'm worried the stories themselves might be the problem maybe we believed so much in a family curse we made it real and who was controlling those stories great grandma edie dear eden there's so many stories i wish i could tell you but there's only time for what edie who i suspect was responsible for many if not all of these deaths and was then using a fabricated family curse to cover up the murders egypt has a right to know these stories my children are dead because of your story that's a mighty big claim so let's just take a second to look at great grandma shall we the thing that first got me suspicious of her was her age and no that's not me being aegis that's me noticing a very clear pattern here in a family that supposedly cursed family where the average age of death clocks in at 19 years old where the oldest anyone has gotten is edie's father odin at 57 here's great grandma edie over here clocking it in at a ripe old 93 93 nearly double anyone else in the family the only other person who lives even remotely that long in this family walter who made it to his 50s literally locked himself in a bunker for decades oh don't worry we're gonna have a lot to say about walter here soon edie has gotten to live long enough to see her great grandchildren while all the others didn't even get to see their own kids grow up so why why did the family curse take so long to take edie's life compared to everyone else it struck me as suspicious even more suspicious though is that she keeps pictures of loved ones dying next to her bed and let me be clear i'm not saying pictures of dead loved ones though that is more than true i mean pictures of them in the process of dying on a shrine opposite her bed we see a photo of her husband sven falling off the top of a dragon slide that he was in the process of building this would be the event that would cause his death was the camera on a timer who took this thing edie regardless if her having that picture next to her while she sleeps isn't evidence that edie is totally disconnected from her emotions i don't know what is and mind you she has plenty of other pictures of him being safe and happy so it's not like this was the only one that she had to remember him by it is weird it is uncomfortable and it starts to show that great grandma edie may have herself some very strange views on death we see early on in the game that edie has a shrine dedicated to her dead father odin as part of that shrine she has on display two of his books mysteries of death and thereafter and joining the great majority we never get context as to what either of these two books may be about but with a title like mysteries of death and thereafter you can kind of guess it shows that to this early generation of finches there was something that persisted after death mysteries that continue on joining the great majority as a title is even more vague but the game designers clearly put it here as part of the shrine for a reason so why well i had a sense that it had to do with death as well and while it did take some digging my hunch was right the expression was first used by edward young an english poet who did a lot of philosophical writings on the nature of death the full quote goes as follows life is the desert life the solitude death joins us to the great majority here's the spark notes on that one for your next english paper everyone dies join the club so edie's father odin was the guy who literally wrote the book on death two books in fact and we see this obsession with death continue into edie's story sven built the house but it was edie who designed the cemetery what kind of family finishes building a cemetery before starting the house she even finds death funny including the tragic premature death of her own husband when edie told people sven was killed by a dragon she could also have said he was building a dragon-shaped slide that collapsed she could have but she didn't i asked edie once about the dragon in the pond she said it he killed her husband i was six it seemed like an odd joke to me even then that right there just gives us more evidence that edie and the truth don't always go hand in hand but just because edie's obsessed with death and happens to be a bit of a storyteller it doesn't make her a killer right well no not on its own but take all those details and look a bit closer at some of the death stories that were told throughout the game and suddenly grand grand starts to look a whole lot more sinister one of the most memorable sequences that we play through in the game is the death of barbara this one is told to us in the form of a pulpy tales from the crypt style horror comic basically barbara was a child star whose best years were behind her one night while her boyfriend's trying to teach her how to get her iconic scream back she's attacked by a murderous hook man we're shown that under the bed her younger brother walter is hiding out of fear but he witnesses the whole thing she fends off the attacker using a crutch knocking him over the balcony when she goes down to check on him in true horror story fashion the hookman's body has disappeared suddenly there's a knock at the door barbara opens it sending in dozens of monsters who've come for a party they wind up eating barbara alive and only leaving her ear behind and that is all we're told about barbara's death it's a weird story right and obviously it's heavily fictionalized and yet we know elements of it to be true we see the balcony of the edith home still broken where the hook man or whatever he was fell we also know that her younger brother walter did in fact see something that sent him running to the basement in fear living in a bunker under the house for decades in fear of what lay on the other side he even keeps barbara's crutch down there with him above the fake window that he created for himself either as a memory of his deceased sister or as a means of protection more likely a combination of both the truth about barbara's death is to this day one of the most persistent mysteries of the game one that people have theorized about for years guessing everything from her boyfriend being the killer to the house literally consuming her alive one theory i haven't really seen though is that it was edie great grandma edie did it intentionally or not she caused barbara's death let's look at the fact shall we as i mentioned before walter sees something the night of barbara's death something that causes him to lock himself in an underground bunker for decades out of fear when he's down in the bunker he gives us this line if you wait long enough you get used to anything even a monster on the other side of the door starts to feel normal he wasn't hiding from death or a curse he was afraid of a monster a monster on the other side of the door he's so scared of this monster on the other side of the door that when he does eventually decide to leave his bunker he digs a hole out the other side rather than going through the door and back into the house and think back who killed barbara in her story monsters we see that word being repeated connecting these two stories these two deaths together so what sort of monster could be on the other side of walter's door edie i saw edie sneak down to the basement once carrying packages i thought maybe she was hiding presents it turned out she was hiding a lot more than that edie is the monster whatever she's doing as a mother her kids are scared of her whatever she did to barbara it scared walter so much that he'd rather live in a basement and choose to knock a hole through solid rock using a sledgehammer then face her again my guess is that edie and barbara got into a fight about her boyfriend being in the house during the confrontation edie gets violent and angry she shoves barbara who's then knocked over the balcony railing falling to her death in fact one small detail that's easy to overlook but the game tries to make sure that we notice is the roller skates on the balcony as we climb the stairs in barbara's story a skate rolls down randomly later the other skate is the thing that ultimately sends the hook man plunging over the balcony that detail feels important it feels real that is the instrument of murder here and if there was any doubt that the monster on the other side of the door is edie walter also tells us this i can't believe i've been down here for 30 years on that first day after the shaking started i didn't think i'd survive a week this isn't fear of a curse that's imminent fear that is fear of a real palpable current threat someone determined to silence a person who's seen too much and we know for a fact that there is indeed some dark secret to find inside the finch household very early on in the game we get this line i was four when milton disappeared mom spent months searching for my brother then she sealed the doors whatever milton had found in the house mom didn't want it getting out milton is the only finch to go missing to not have himself a confirmed death he found something and then he disappeared it would seem like his fate is that of walters you learn the truth you go poof speaking of walter you know what else is suspicious his death walter waits years to leave his bunker only for him to immediately get hit by a train the thing is there's no train the game takes place on a very real island orca's island is an actual place in washington state and there is a train on that island kinda it's a privately owned train by whoever owns the property that it resides on from what i can tell it's not so much of a railroad as it is a ride it is hardly the massive steam locomotive that's implied in walter's story and that still doesn't explain why it was going underneath the private residence of the finch household just doesn't add up walter never specifically mentions the train either however if you look on the other side of the bunker there is a model train set that walter was clearly building maybe that happened to be the source of inspiration for the story that would ultimately cover up the truth about his death cause you see there's one other thing that you have to know about great grandma edie not only does she love making up stories she loves the fame that comes from her stories in her room we see this newspaper hanging up on the wall i'm pretty hype about winning a family day out at druid world it's like a lame youtube giveaway like yo if you smash that subscribe button leave a comment down below i'm gonna given out three passes to druid world if you can manage to get over your excitement for druid world you can see the article about the mole man we're told by edith that edie gave a big interview about a mole man living under the finch house my mom was furious a mole man living under the finch house that my friends is walter that is her traumatized son edie literally called her son a mole man and sold the story to a cd newspaper that is the sort of person that we're dealing with here in another part of the room we get this short story one summer they evacuated the island but edie refused to go for a few weeks she was a celebrity she loves the fame and she is shameless in pursuing it and nothing shows that more clearly than barbara it struck me as odd the first time i played the game that a comic book would publish the story real or fictionalized about the tragic death of a very real young woman and i wasn't the only one edith calls this out as she wanders through the house of all the stories people wrote about barbara's death i'm surprised edie saved this one right your daughter dies but you keep the comic book that retells her getting eaten to death i mean that's pretty sinister even for someone who jokes about death and sure we later get this line edie told me all barbara wanted was to be remembered but again edie lies edie lies a lot for the real reason that comic book is there look no further than great grandma's bedroom right next to that mole man story in edie's room and right under the article where she's made famous for not leaving the house we see a binder labeled barbara concepts concepts concepts for what well i think it's concepts for stories she sold barbara's story just like she sold walter's story as the mole man this whole wall is kind of like her wall of fame little bits of time that she got to be passively famous she's either directly or indirectly related to the deaths of those around her at which point she twists them into something fantastical faraday guess it's her creating fictions that make her less responsible for the deaths also probably part coping mechanism and lastly is to make those deaths beautiful poetic blame it all on this legendary family curse that allows her stories to live on all barbara wanted to be was remembered edie yeah i think you might be just talking about yourself so far i've mainly focused on walter and barbara but edie being a monster is shown less explicitly in other stories too when leaving his bunker walter says this i know it's out there somewhere whatever killed barbara and molly and calvin well let's look at both molly and kelvin then shall we molly is the first finch child that we meet and the first death that we play through the story goes that she's sent to bed without dinner and because she's hungry she decides to eat things like a tube of toothpaste some christmas berries likely holly berries based on the color and an old carrot it's speculated that this combination somehow poisons her but i looked into the food that she ate and i just don't realistically think that it could have actually killed her the carrot was in the same bowl as what appears to be gerbil droppings so she could have gotten salmonella something that's known to be transferred in rodent droppings but that wouldn't have killed her she would have been sick with symptoms like stomach cramps vomiting and a fever but all of that would have passed within a week or so holly berries are a similar story she only eats about three and while they certainly can be poisonous she'd have to have eaten 20 or so to have actually ingested a deadly amount the toothpaste same pattern while toothpaste in 1947 and thankfully stopped using soap as an ingredient they were just starting to use fluoride which again can be poisonous in large amounts but one tube of toothpaste is highly unlikely to be fatal but still all of this is missing the major point here why was molly hungry in the first place i'll be gone soon but i wanted to tell somebody about what's gonna happen it started when mom sent me to bed without dinner edie her mom sent her to bed without dinner we can see that her halloween candy's gone my guess is that this detail is showing us why she's being punished she ate her candy when she wasn't supposed to and when you try to go out the door you get this mom can i come out now sweetheart it's late go to sleep she's a 10 year old girl who is literally locked in her room and starving to death that is not okay intentionally or no edie's actions of locking her kid in her room and not feeding her resulted in the child's death in some way that's not all right next to the mole man and barbara stuff we have yet another binder of concepts molly concepts perhaps the story of a girl who goes hungry but instead of violently starving to death while locked in her room the whole thing is made magical when her hunger transforms her into a cat just like we play through in the game heck i wouldn't be surprised if edie fabricated molly's journal in the first place as for calvin well he launches himself off a cliff while playing on a swing i mean he didn't build that swing set at the top of a large cliff that blame absolutely falls on his parents that's not all notice his leg it's in a cast it's broken now is that necessarily edie's fault i don't know i can't find any proof one way or the other but it's made abundantly clear that her kids are afraid of her and this house is hiding some dark secret that makes people run for their lives so wouldn't be surprised at best edie is an aggressively neglectful parent worse she's actively attacking her kids and worst worst case scenario she's killing him off when they step out of line and then covering up the truth with fantastical stories it's interesting to note that every death in the finch family has been connected back to edie in some way any family member who lived with her or was close to her has perished edie is always there edie is there calling to molly as she starves she's there calling to kelvin to come in before he launches himself off a cliff she's the monster on the other side of walter's bunker door barbara dies in her house and then edie goes on to sell the story there is no curse here there is only edie she is the curse and i think she knows it for all the commentary that's been going on about this game i've never really seen anyone talk about edie's final story which you would think would be the most important one of the batch it's the story that she tells to edith the night before edith and her mom run away it's actually a story that edie writes in the form of a book hidden in the now sealed off library dear edith there's so many stories i wish i could tell you but there's only time for one this is about what happened on the night you were born it's also the only story in the game that goes unfinished basically the story is about one night when there's a particularly low tide edi is able to revisit the ruins of her old house one that had sunken under the waves decades ago on the way there she gets lost when the fog rolled in i lost my way i got turned around i started seeing things eventually she makes it to the house as she says in her own words that night a lot of things came back to me or maybe i came back to them things i can't explain but that i need you to try and edith what are you doing in here she opens the gate a light turns on in one of the windows and then the book is ripped away from edith before she can finish what is this story all about what is edie asking edith to do things i can't explain but that i need you to try and try and what figure out explain pass on what i think this is meant to be edie's confession her telling the story of her past abuses and past misdeeds in the way that only she can in the form of a highly symbolic overly fantastical story full of symbolism the line that sticks out to me here is when the fog rolled in i lost my way got turned around but what was all of this what way did she lose and what does her coming back to the old house mean well edie says that this is the story of what happened the night that edith was born we know that edith was born in 1999 at that point there hadn't been a quote unquote death in the family since 1983. the next death would be in 2003 when milton finds whatever secret is inside the finch household and suddenly disappears walter leaves his bunker and immediately dies by quote-unquote train in 2005 and then there's edith's brother lewis in 2010. could this whole story be symbolic of edie's journey with her father's ideals she's heading back to the old house she's heading back to her origins back to the teachings of her father she says that when she gets back to the house she remembers things like she'd come back to old friends the light turning on at the end would be the representation of that enlightenment but what is she being enlightened to is it a return to the importance of family is it a return to being a monster does she realize that by killing people off she's once again helping them join the great majority a lot of this sounds like the actions of an addict they may know what they're doing is wrong but their old habits can be like a crutch the friends that they feel safe around despite knowing it's bad for them maybe that's why dawn rips the book out of edith's hands because she's figured it out and doesn't want edith reading it to get similar ideas edie wrote it to edith to explain her actions so edith might take the lessons and apply them for the future generations the family edie knew she was getting old and couldn't keep going forever maybe this was meant to be a passing of the torch however you slice it edie is a monster i don't think there's any way to deny it whether or not she actively killed off members of her family intentionally can't truly be proven at least not yet but it seems likely that she's been directly involved with many of the tragedies that befell the family and then she went on to brand the family and its curse in the local pop culture so that she could be immortal she was selfish she was cruel and she was seemingly violent and when people learned the truth of the finch matriarch they had a habit of disappearing walter milton what remains of edith finch is a mystery of trauma all pointing back to the actions of one woman remember this final story is told to you in the library a place where edie told me once that every finch who ever lived is buried somewhere in the library it's the story of all their deaths and why all their deaths relate back to her either that or you know edie loved taxidermy maybe that last line is a bit more literal than you might think but hey that's just a theory a game theory thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 2,902,874

Keywords: what remains of edith finch, edith finch theory, edith finch, what remains of edith finch theory, edith finch curse, edith finch gameplay, edith finch explained, edith finch deaths explained, edith finch gregory death, edith finch lewis death, edith finch ending reaction, edith finch reaction, edith finch all deaths, edith finch game theory, matpat, edith finch ending, game theory, game theorists, what remains of edith finch gameplay, what remains of edith finch walkthrough

Id: P3yAkg9v5VY

Length: 23min 46sec (1426 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 03 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Shart_eater]

He’s definitely missing a few parts and exaggerating how bad Edie is. But the Edie killing Barbara theory is interesting

[u/Straight_Ace]

OMFG I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FOR YEARS!!

[u/ProfessorPrel]

The theory soesnt make sense. Yeah, I can understand that edith might have fabricated the death causes. But then, why even look at the death causes for proof that edith is the murderour? And why would walter hide from something that is givibg him food to survive? He contrafict himself so much, its unbelivable

[u/sooroojdeen]

The theory is definately interesting but it doesn't explain how Edith ended up dieing at a similar age to the other family members. Edith died when she gave birth to her son, this was after Edie died so it's unlikely that she would have any influence on it. Some parts of the theory makes alot of sense like Edie possibly having something to do with Barbara's death but for most of the others I ust don't buy it. What's more likely to me is that Eddie wrote those stories as a way to cope with the death of her loved ones.

As for Edith's mother (Dawn) died before the events of the game took place so she wouldn't have been alive to rip the book away from Edith's hands, this is proof that Edith is likely imbelishing her own story.

[u/3Burnttoast47]

Hes really starting to reach with these theories

[u/RivetSquid]

Wow I just... don't understand how anyone can decide, "the grandma is addicted to murder," after a game segment where you start of with a maladapted daydreaming fantasy like you've seen at several points already, then it builds into a death happening at the height of a delusional episode, all the while a therapist explains what's happening. Takes like two seconds to Google, "does mental illness run in families."

Depending on how you interpret what Edith says about her, it's also entirely possible to believe that Edie wandered off and died similarly after they left, since she apparently had an episode the night of Edith's birth too and is currently on medication when the dinner fight starts.