i got the garden of generosity. that ending scene is super well done. i got shivers from the statues representing our story.
as for the story, i have some speculation of what the penrose is for.
i guess the core concept of the game is the egg story but with a sci fi twist. the egg story: (gotta ask
Pyke if he would confirm or deny also would really appreciate how accurate this is to your vision or i missed everything lol):
it is also partly inspired by Isaac Asimov's famous "The last Question"
https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
in my view, the penrose is some kind of a God maker the "egg" / the Multivac. it was sent from the future, built by people using the Nest's nanotechnology or something based of it but probably alot more advanced from another timeline. its purpose is to create a god for some reason. from here it is pure speculation, but here is what i got at least:
say there is timeline A. in this timeline the penrose didn't exist. humanity live as normal, similar to our timeline. no penrose, no sudden advancement, everything happens naturally. in the far far future something happened that put the whole human race, or the whole solar system or even the whole universe in its battle against entropy. the penrose was created as the final desperate act of humanity and other sapient species they met or created. it was sent to south africa in the 1970's with sole purpose of changing the future. the penrose itself is part a database, a supercomputer, a technology treasure trove. all this is to attract people and advance humanity. again, this is probably an act of desperation that the timeline A people would risk something so big that basically gamble by changing the timeline. maybe it needed a person, or at least a sapient being to serve as it core. all the technology inside is to attract people and DARIS's protocol is basically choosing a person to be the penrose trinity figurehead. out of the many scientists, political figures, military figures, none of them gets chosen. instead, it was a journalist, an ex soldier turned pilot and an agnate. why them? why not smarter people? stronger or more influential people to be ascended? there is some kind of some unifying bond between mark, don and pooch. those are severe trauma or loss.
pooch is special because she's an agnate, and i guess the penrose decided that it needed an artifical sapient being be a part of the trinity, and that made sense why the penrose "shared" its trove of highly advanced technology so agnate could be invented and born as their own race. now Mark lost his fiance, and don was an ex soldier out due to PTSD and both of them had troubled life. POOCH was basically a sapient lab rat that experienced great mental turmoil that even humans cannot undergo. maybe these traumas are important for the ascendancy. one that fateful day, the 3 met and DARIS suddenly had the perfect candidate. 3 is significant number in christianity and alot of other religion and mysticism, the trinity, and penrose is a triangle. 3 is what DARIS needed and the 3 all met that day and during the prologue, DARIS scanned every single one of them and digitize them. now i think it don't have to be exactly Mark, Don and Pooch. it be anyone that fit the criteria. i think our heroes are simply the first 3 that fit the criteria. hell, Mark, Don and Pooch might not the only one trio. there might be countless trio that is undergoing the same adventure as us that DARIS "recruited" over the centuries.
now the objective isn't really to create a benevolent God. it is simply even if we get the generous ending, the simulation continue. it require minds that understand the intricate ripple and effect of a decision, basically creating something as close to omniscience as possible, by subjecting them to practically infinite lives and simulation. to create a god that can create a perfect world, as perfect as it can be without some unforeseen errors or flaws. if the project succeed, they will merge all the memories of the trio into one and gave them access to the full arsenal of penrose's technology that can easily reshape planet and its inhabitant in a whim (the biome seed device is the prime example of what the technologies are capable of and maybe that's primitive compared to the real capability of penrose)
now this is where it gets trippy. very trippy. i almost made my head hurt thinking about it.
what. is. real? almost the whole game is a simulation. we know that the prologue is real. the story DARIS told about the real mark, don and pooch is real. everything is a big question mark. the whole 98% of probably isn't accurate to the actual reality. the least extreme is all the factions, and world in the real world are almost the same as the game (the agnates uprising happen, all the factions exist) but some details, especially the heroes stories and the player's decision are tweaked according on how the simulation went.
the most extreme is the actual world looks nothing like in the game. its base in reality that it is one of the potential future that the world can go after the Penrose appeared. what we played is 000000.1% of the potential timeline that could have happened.
i could go deeper into this. Old Doli said the penrose exist in all point in time between the beginning to the end. say the beginning is when the Penrose appeared in timeline B. the end is the probably the death of life as we know, the that final moment when penrose was created. with penrose, they delayed the "end" indefinitely. each time the penrose failed, it send itself back to the the beginning. to do it all over again, with slight variation. hell the simulation might be done on each timeline, but each time the 'God' failed, the penrose travels back, update its data, and begins anew. the penrose is an impossible triangle. infinite regression, fractal timeline. i think it is possible the shape of penrose itself represent the basically infinite time it have to do its job before the universe or whatever the stake is saved.
if the scale was universal (and imo, considering of miracles the penrose are capable to do something really final like the heat death of universe might be the only thing that such technology cannot defeat), then there might be billions and billions of penrose, each habiting different planets with different sapient beings and they are always sent to the point where that targeted species start to tinker with advanced technology (aka the 1970's for us) so there are unfathomable numbers of simulation ran inside unfathomable numbers of timeline created until hopefully at least 1 can escape from death of all thing.
in the end, i might be overthinking it and i spent too much time thinking and typing this lol, but it was fun. great game and definitely one of the best "open interpretation" story i have ever experienced and how fun it is to speculate. will leave a review this weekend.
. And don't get me wrong, I think the whole concept behind the arena and the priests is great. Just maybe not from a gameplay pacing perspective.
) and the encounter with the Children made me literally lol. But also shudder a bit given the implications. It's a pity you can't go back to the One / the Nest and tell them about it.
