A Story Analysis of Scorn
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- čas přidán 8. 06. 2024
- Scorn is an interesting and conflicting game. It has a lot of intriguing plot elements with some incredible art design but a lot of this game's story is just not there. There is nothing confirmed to the player so it makes it hard to understand what's going on.
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:23 Scorn
24:16 Outro
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Music Courtesy of Scorn Soundtrack:
• AETHEK - ENCAPSULED
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Hope You Enjoyed!
#Scorn #Gingy - Hry
"I can guarantee you won't go hungry, 'cause at the end of the day, as long as theres two people on the planet, someone is gonna want someone dead" -Meet the Sniper, Valve 2009
Me eating food and still hungry during the video 🫁🥱🧠🥱🫀🥱
Piss
"As long as there's two people on this planet, someone is going to be "the weak" - Social Darwinist meme I heard the quote from, also fits.
Cain and Abel
We're just quoting TF2 as philosophy now, huh?
The game showed me one thing:
When mystery is beautiful and light-hearted, I tend to accept it without asking too many questions.
But when mystery is horrifying and gross, I feel the need to fill it with meaning, have to urge to explain and rationalize.
And it seems like I am not the only one that feels this way.
That's an apt point to make when something benefits us we tend to just accept it, but when it upsets us we need to understand why.
What you said reminds me of psychological trauma. Often, when something pleasant happens to us we simply accept it and don't question it. Why would we? If someone gives you a cookie, you don't ask why. You simply take the cookie.
However, when something traumatic happens, we often say things like, "this is a punishment for something I did in the past." Or "why did this happen to me, do I really deserve this?" We then self-reflect too much. Wonder if we worked harder and did more for others, would awful things still happen.
If you lived in what you perceive as paradise, why would you care to figure out how or why you are there. You'd simply be happy that you are there. But if you lived in what you perceive as hell, then you'd question how or why you are there. How to get out? How to never find yourself there again.
This is a profound psychological observation that might be closer to the meaning of the game then why might think.
@@11cylynt11 It's because of evolution right? The reason we ruminate and regret is to prevent the same mistake from happening in the future so we can survive better.
@@BartBe It's literally just evolution...
In the end, both characters met the worst fate. They can't die. Forever trapped in that monstrous form. Unable to move, to speak. Forever trapped in that position, like a plant. One fused to the other. Jesus, I'm feeling bad right now.
Honestly reminded me a lot of the creature in "I Have No Mouth and I must Scream"
Then they will simply starve in a matter of months at most.
They couldnt speak before, lacking mouths and all that, so.. Silver linings and all that?
What's to make you believe that they are conscious? The parasite wasn't conscious it became an animal
i always figure the gigantic creature you kill is what you ultimately turn into. you take it to the uncorrupted hive mind so that it can take root there and consume it as well. its possible that the first character becomes the parasite, then infects the second, who then carries it to a new area to exploit. so in a sense you are actually playing 3 different characters throughout the game.
I think the key lies on the game's old title: Dasein.
Now, this is also quite the theory, but I do find it consistent with what the game features.
First of all, the game moves in a metaphorical layer, not necessarily an analogy layer, and certainly, not on a literal layer. While the game's technical prowess and artistic inspiration makes it beautiful to look at in a literal sense, the events in it and the way they are resolved is what pushes it into the metaphorical side of things.
So, moving on. Dasein (pronounced DAH-zane) is a reaaaally complex philosophical postulate formulated by Martin Heidegger in the 20s. In short, Dasein is an absolute, incontrovertible state of existence that affects the world around it simply by virtue of existing. The absoluteness of Dasein means that, once you exist, that existence is absolute and undeniable, and permanent in the universe. You cannot be "deleted" from existence: even dying affects the world around you, and there's no way to subtract yourself from whatever actions you made in life, nor removing yourself from others' perceptions. Certainly, Dasein ramifies into a lot of other things, and that's why it's such a debated upon philosophical theory, but this will suffice for what I think Scorn is trying to say.
Keep that there on the table. The other important concept to understand, is Kant's understanding of trascendence. We have to note that Heidegger was massively influenced by Kant, so it's no wonder we have to deal with him. In a VERY condensed way, Kant's notion of transcendence involves knowledge beyond experience (again, this is a very simplistic and reductionist way to look at it, but this is a youtube comment on a game, I'm not going to bore you all to death with this). This knowledge could be attained through mastery of Metaphysics, a field of knowledge proposed by Kant in which our conscience could expand beyond the trappings of our flesh and very limited senses.
Heidegger had some issues with this at first, but he eventually would conciliate his views of Kant with his own work. Anyhoo, the idea Heidegger had about metaphysics, is that Dasein prevents us from attaining true transcendence, since the very act of existing will preclude of us from seeing ourselves as anything other than the consciences that spawned us. His way to conciliate this early vision was through the realm of imagination as a pseudo-transcendence, a way for mankind to know things before experiencing them. But that's a bit of a tangent.
Okay. So. Back to the game. The way I see it, is... Well, evidently, SPOILERS AHEAD -- SPOILERS AHEAD.
Now. As I was saying. The way I see it is that, effectively, your first character dies, and then you are born as the second one. Everything the video says is true in that regard. However, the creature that is supposedly your previous character, can be seen as the influence of the previous existence in your current one. Sure, you played a bit as that character, it "died", but your second character can't get rid of the fact that he existed, and that becomes literal when he latches to your back. You are carrying someone else's existence on your back, literally, and it's killing you, literally, because he refuses to die.
The game goes on, under the halls of ruin and life taking over. While the meat growths have the appearance of being hostile and repulsive, very often we find the creatures will leave us alone by just running away a bit, and they often just walk around looking for the hole with which they can leave... and the do. Lots of them are just stuck to the meat tendrils, oblivious to your presence, and the huge being that just stares at you would imply that the growth isn't explicitly hostile. It's just life, surviving, doing what it can with what it has, and helpless to stop a more dedicated existence. It is also Dasein: it exists, and by existing, it's shaping the world around it. Even if you kill it, you cannot undo the damage it has wrought.
You move on to the temple, dying. The temple is a way to transcend: you abandon your flesh, and your mind is elevated to another plane. You no longer reside on your previous body, you can now swap several. But still, the process in incomplete. You not only need help in doing it (which is also proven by how voluntarily the character enters the armature that will "kill" him), but you also need to preserve the shell where the last tether to your conscience still resides.
But that's when the previous existence forces itself upon you. It won't let you transcend, and just as you, who did everything you had to to survive, it will do so as well. So, the first character finishes assimilating you, guaranteeing his survival, but in doing so, denying you, the second character, the so desired transcendence. You are incapable to abandon your world through the existence of someone else, and you are trapped in a flesh prison, just inches away from transcendence, a state you will never know since your body is earthbound, literally.
Dasein, therefore, as a philosophical concept, is key to the metaphor Scorn presents. You can even say the Scorn title refers to both the emotion that the first character feels for the second one, seeing as he still has a chance a transcendence, a chance he lost, or the emotion you can feel for that first character, refusing to die despite his life being worthless, just a parasite in a doomed world.
It is a quite chilling, impactful depiction of a philosophical concept, and everything I just wrote rides on just knowing the game originally was called Dasein. It can read as a lot of bullshit, and that's okay, but for me, that knowledge made everything click.
I hope you enjoyed the wall of text, and I hope it makes you enjoy Scorn even more :D
Beautiful analysis.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read it!
Interesting, so Dasein is basically karma and transcendance requires detachment. And knowledge beyond existence basically requires making a highly informed choice. I’d say that existence/its effect on you is not set in stone though, and rather that beyond existence is far more set in stone. But knowledge beyond existence requires knowing that previous existence was necessary, whether you can witness it or not.
@@adurpandya2742 I see what you're getting at, but Dasein is not really karma. Dasein is the ontological concept of existance, devoid of purpose, and regardless of any type of direct consequence.
Karma is closer to an idea of cause and effect, given that karma involves an action or a deed that directly or indirectly influences you, those around you, or the world you are facing. Dasein, in contrast, means that your very existence creates an effect, and that existence is not your choice, nor is it something that brings with it misfortune or redemption. It just "is". Dasein is a german word that can be translated as "pleased with existence", and some philosophers went with the "being-there" translation (though Heidegger really didn't like that). Dasein is more about being conscious of that existence, and how we are bound to it regardless of what we do, be it evil or good, or whatever. It just IS, and just by being, we make an impact.
Karma, as I understand it, moves a bit further by involving some sort of retribution through Samsara, which is something Dasein purposefully avoids, since it's not concerned with morality or reward, but with studying the effects of human condition and its BEING in its most basic form.
In terms of Kant's Transcendence ideas, his thoughts were more focused around the idea of true prescience and/or omniscience by way of having certainty or absolute knowledge without requiring experiencing it in any way whatsoever. Through this line of thought, Kant gave shape to some concepts of divinity and ascension from a philosophical standpoint. Transcendent knowledge, according to Kant, is knowledge that can be acted upon absolutely a priori, making it devoid of time, and therefore, sidestepping the entirety of the human experience.
I get what you mean, but, given the Dasein choice, and the fact that the developers are Serbian, I think the influences are more germanic than hindu in nature.
For an excellent game on karma and Samsara, try E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy. That one's a doozy too :D
A very interesting analysis. I will try and read it again when it's not 2 am...
-- I thought about what you mentioned regarding there not being any flesh at the end location of the game. It's like the society that once occupied the location of the last chapter did everything they could to prevent the flesh from reaching them and this was somehow their last bastion. You find all those hive mind connected people "living" in some sort of eternal inter-connected "matrix-like" experience, safe and sound away from the flesh. Then, at the end, the protagonist almost makes it to where they would join that collective and is killed by the creature they brought over. The game ends with the protagonist becoming the flesh, which looked like it already started spreading. It feels like the game was about experiencing the extinction of a sentient alien race. You play as the character who snuffs out the last hope by unintentionally bringing the infection over to the only place that may have allowed some fraction of their species to survive.
Oooh that's cool. The MC brings the infection through his old self.
It's also interesting, in his final state he looks somewhat eternal as well & still, like the matrix hive mind, except the new MC exists in a sort of prison, contained by the old MC & his jealousy, or perhaps, scorn? for the new character, & perhaps, for the new world.
that's one level of interpretation, and it sounds valid to me. but it doesn't answer the question of what is the true source of the infection? the giant creature at the bottom of the station, is it an alien invader or some being that the flesh took over?
wow this is an amazing theory!
Okay this makes a lot of sense and more to think about or potentially a great base for other theories.
Thanks for sharing!
To me it felt more like he wanted to go through that gate, you can see when the parasite arrives he tries to desperately move towards the stairs, he was so close to salvation/rebirth but he couldn't reach it, you can see it in his eyes the look of scorn and despair as he is solidified right at the doors of salvation. As the parasite takes over him you can see him look at the giant statues as if it were to say, save me God, but the god's have abandoned him.
Dude this game came out like two minutes ago your pace is nuts
I think there was a reviewer-copy sent out before launch
If he was able to beat the game that fast the first time playing I would be stupidly shocked this game definitely requires patience going In blind lol
@@jadenbowers4607 the game takes 2 hours lol , it’s not complicated at all
@@tokillag0d It takes 2 hours if you're playing it wrong.
The game got no story
My current theory is that the hive-mind people have created this huge biotech facility that is literally a living machine. But the facility itself has gotten infected with what could only be described as a cancer. The giant flesh creature is a literal tumor that has grown around parts of the facility. Hive-mind people created a system where the facility creates and controls what could only be considered a sort of cancer-fighting system where the facility itself grows, births and controls “T-cells” (which kill cancer). You are playing as one of these anti-cancer organisms created by the facility to try and curb the spread of death while the hive-mind people all play escapism and believe the facility will save itself while they’re plugged in. But the facility has become increasingly messed up and in desperation has begun trying to speed up the process for producing these anti-cancer fighters. That’s why there are so many failed births and why the premature ones are so messed up.
I mean think about it. The entire facility is literally like being inside a body. The mechanics are designed in such a way that only specific organisms can interact with them, like many cellular processes in the body. You’re constantly getting transfusions of fresh blood and can only achieve certain things through interacting through other 3rd party “cellular” processes like healing or getting ammo through your inventory flesh thing. It literally feels like you’re in blood vessels at points, getting ferried through this giant body in all sorts of ways. With these constant reminders of what you are littered everywhere. Thousands of former dead “T-cells” all around you constantly.
You should read the art book, it explains pretty much everything
@@javannapoli2018 Yeah I posted this before I looked into it. You gotta give a little credit though. I was KIND OF approaching close. Kind of.
@@hypnotoad311 your theory sounds super intersting and would even make sense with the last stage where we see the hive mind, which could mean that the cancer cells have finally reached the brain of the body :)
@@javannapoli2018 well, I don't have the scorn art book, so spill the beans please.
it was about birth
Three things that I thought were interesting about this game, but they may just be developer oversights:
1. The characters always know how to use a lever or other object, but doesn't know what they do
2. The entire place is built for human sized creatures, which may be a coincidence
3. The last thing is that, the characters for some reason have a will to live, no matter how much pain they feel
I think the second part is moot, unless you're assuming the architecture to be alien to the people.
I mean, if it some odd post apocalypse sort of thing, it's THEIR rooms, machinery, etc. Even if it was alien, it's seemingly a facility around utilizing the human looking people.
According to the artbook, everything you see in the game was built _by_ humans (or a distant-future equivalent). None of what you see in the game is alien in origin
Wdym oversights? We are playing a humanoid born into the world, everything has innate will to live(that’s what fear is), and the human sized doorways is because these building were constructed by members of the species we play as
Below is an excerpt from the Art Book for scorn that explains a lot of stuff the game doesn't directly tell you.
"Our protagonist is humanoid," says Peklar. ""We wanted to
express features that are human, but we took some liberties
and over-exaggerated elements s certain themes show
through. You should be aware of your body at all points in the
game because your relationship to the world is going to happen
through your body." This is why, during all times when players
are in control, it's possible to look down and see the effects of
various afflictions on the protagonist's torso.
Beyond being, the second protagonist theme Ebb wanted to
embrace was one of entropy: of bodies getting progressively
sicker and decomposing. Being trapped in a rotting prison," is
how Acovic describes it, citing "fragility" and "vulnerability'
as essential characteristics that played into his artwork. Many
early character designs were either amended or rejected simply
because the forms looked too strong
The third and final theme critical to Scorn's leading role is
one of rebirth. "The idea of being reborn is more potent than
being born, because you change drastically, and you are aware
of the changes" Peklar says. "| wanted to explore losing control
over your body. So that's why the parasite exists, because it's
taking control of you and all your functions.
Throughout the game I kept thinking of "I have no mouth and I must scream". Not just because your character literally has no mouth and is constantly in situations that most of us would agree would warrant a scream. But the message of that story/game being the eternal suffering of humans at the hands of a cold unempathetic machine. Also, the big fleshy thing is a dead ringer for the last lines of "I have no mouth...". Not saying there's necessarily some huge philosophical connection there. Just interesting.
the big slug thing also bears a striking resemblance to the blob at the end of the IHNMAIMS game
I see where you’re coming from.
That's a bringo.
The huge creature have the same face like those humanoides. From the official lore, there are "humans" who are born to be used for the mind hive, than baby size smart ones who control cyborgs and another who are born crippled, later to be reproduced in a factory 🏭 for a "protein liquid".
This is like the 8th video that's made reference to that story. I guess there's a possibility of spontaneous convergent thought but not all of them
The interesting thing that I've not seen anyone mention yet is that in the very final area, the bodies in the racks don't just have a strand of nerves in their skull connecting them to the hive mind on the ceiling, but also a tube connected to their groin. Which I assume connect to the two pregnant bodies.
This goes against the theory that the people in the palace tried to leave physical existence behind. Their bodies are held in the racks both to contribute to the hive mind above, but also to contribute to the reproduction of more of them below.
It could be true and could be not.
At this point it's hard to define what makes sense from the practical point and what is just a part of ritual visuals. Because in the first part almost everything is a mechanism or practical thing for accomplishing some goal, like workbench in the factory building. While in the last part there's a lot of statues, grotesque architecture, "gobelens" on walls and other just visual stuff so we can make an assumption that it could be just duty to ritual rules or tradition or what is it called in scorn world to put your dead flesh on the wall after u done the procedure.
Also if their bodies is still being used while they connected to the hive mind then what do they feel - pain from all bodies at once or nothing at all as they freed from flesh? Or is there even 'they' since you may lose your identity after the asention.
It can be both. They could be leaving physical existence behind, but they could also be conscious about the fact that leaving physical existence behind would doom their entire race, so the armatures they're hanging in could be a way to preserve the functioning of the flesh, while the mind leaves the world behind.
The character caused his own demise and suffering because he refused to leave his body in the room. The thing becomes unplugged from the mind. The character then gets absorbed but looks alive while the statues mock him for trying to cheat the test as they only want those who share their beliefs completely among themselves.
hey i just want to say i love your profile picture!!
@@snoochh Beep is strongest.
Not remembering the “as long as two people are left on earth one is going to try to backstab the other” thing is so funny to me because (as far as I know) it’s from tf2’s Meet The Sniper
If anyone remembers The Flesh from The Magnus Archives, and what it means, I think this game basically encompasses that fear and everything it represents.
That’s such a good observation and reference. It’s wild how well TMA can connect with other media
Man I'm just shocked this game finally came out
Yeah I thought it was gonna be vapourware until I saw the trailer for it like an hour ago. Wild that it did end up getting released.
im just glad that what i think about it is not actually canon.
in the future women went extinct so they made femboys
also i thought they used coom as fuel
now knowing thats not the case im gonna tell my friends in discord that im just stupid
No shit. I have been waiting almost a decade.
@@olly123451 *cough cough agony cough
@@Wrigley953 Agony ended up being worse than this. I mean, Scorn ended up being the game the devs have shown, but Agony was screwed over a bit and changed up
As someone that doesn't plan on playing the game this was a great story video, most other videos on Scorn have nothing to say about the story because there is so little to chew on. All of your thoughts were fantastic and you even got to the point that I thought you would eventually that none of this matters. That the game is a metaphor for the meaninglessness of life. We are born, we suffer for our species or ourselves or our masters, then we die without having actually gotten anywhere. Well made video, thank you for sharing.
Tbh it depends on how you go about things. You blast countless creatures without a second thought for freedom and maybe you're punished for your actions. Or they its on purpose to get everyone thinking.
Nihilistic Godless Materialistic Depressed Hopeless. Modern Western society in a nutshell.
I agree this was a great thought experiment about what the hell was going on here.
It really makes you think.
Why are we here ?
What is our purpose ?
How will death be ?
Death may be like passing out and nothing .
Or you may wake up on the other side of god knows what.
Life having no meaning or, at least, being extremely arbitrary lines up well with the parasitic creature being a metaphor for human suffering. It causes the second character a great deal of harm throughout the game and ultimately prevents them from achieving their goal. But they had no hand in it's creation. It's almost like a person crippled by a birth defect or getting horribly maimed by random circumstances they had no part in and no control over.
It's actually an exploration of themes more than anything else. The three main themes they wanted to explore were existence, entropy, and humanity's relationship with technology. Through the game, they essentially are asking if we are losing our essence to technology. They decided from the get go that not even they would know what was going on, story wise. It was done on purpose because we are all born into this conundrum, and each has a journey of self discovery, more or less
i loved when john scorn said “it’s scornin’ time” and scorned all over those guys
When John Scorn came out as gay to his parents, I cried. So emotional. Great game!
Haha no
So much scornication...
I think the real scorn was the flesh we met along the way.
That thing you become at the end could be a new beginning for the flesh covered place you came from before, like bringing in something like a disease or even a new way of thinking into a place that was trying to keep it out. Without a choice, like most things in the game for the others you interact with, you're left in a position you can't escape from all for the "potential benefit" of another.
the thing you depend on for survival ultimately stabs you in the back.
@@LordOfNihilLiterally, too.
On their Twitter - it sort of just says that we’re brought into a barren hell scape that was once an incredibly industrialized civilization, now reduced to nothing. Though the art book is coming out, so there may be noted to aid. And of course the soundtrack has labels which may help with inferring details with terms.
To boot - for the art work that is revealed, it says that the primary character is making a “pilgrimage” to a “holy light” in a place called Polis, a white, chalky church-like area. And that the flesh of the world is described as “malignancy.”
Another thing - when they revealed that large beast near the end, the Twitter sort of implied that all of this cancerous fleshy fauna is derived from that creature, which can supposedly sense fear.
A bit disappointing that they'd characterize it with all that definitive religious stuff, I saw the theme of ascension a lot more clearly and it making a lot more sense, which sure, can be religious too, but it doesn't have to be at all (a higher realm of existence)
so its cancerous creatures we encountered
@@andrada9506 Essentially yeah. The presence of flesh usually indicates where they’ll appear - being dubbed “Crater creatures” by the creators of the game
@@mkzhero it's not definitive, you're projecting your rabid intolerant atheism that doesn't allow you to see religious representations as anything other than literal. it's clearly metaphorical in the game
The atmosphere screams loneliness, alienation, despair and abandonment. I believe that the events that transformed that planet didn’t just happen 10, 20 or even a 100 years ago, but actual hundreds of thousands years prior. Therefore, it gives this extinction feeling, that whatever life which existed and greatly thrived in the past has, inevitably, disappeared from existence ages ago.
This reminds me of the original concept for the so called “space jockey”, from the original alien movie. Greatly advanced species reduced to mere carcasses, forgotten in some dead and inhabitable corner of the ever-expanding universe.
Absolutely, it's long destroyed. I just see it as some kind of long extinct bio-fiddling space empire, whose biological experiments went nuts when the civilization itself was abandoned or went extinct.
Idk that wouldn't explain all the working tech and some of the lifeforms still being alive. It looks like whatever happened was recent, with just enough time to start "settling in" by the time the character wakes up. I'd give it a few years max tbh
Edit: Also in the video he covers how the flesh is growing fast, so it would seem like a rapid process. This honestly may have happened within the span of a few months to a year
@@KevinJohnson-cv2no If I had to guess on the timeline, character (A) begins probably a week or two after shit hits the fan, the tech still works well, things are in decent condition, and the bodies haven't fully decayed yet, also the lack of flesh corruption, so whatever calamity that hit this world must have been recent; its likely character (A) wanted to reach that final location where the "leaders" or "royalty" isolated themselves from the calamity, but was unfortunately mutated into the parasite, however something to note is that the parasite is still very likely character (A) in the sense that they are most likely still fully sentient and maintain consciousness of their actions.
Character (B) most likely begins over a year after the events of character (A), as the flesh (most likely the original calamity in some way) has spread considerably, the tech is in disarray, and bodies are just skeletons now. Things progress until the end of the game and we know how that ends so that is as much as we know regarding the timeline.
Haven't seen anyone else point this out yet, but personally I was struck with how similair the giant creature looked to the blob creature in the bad ending of "I have no mouth and I must scream". I'm not particularly familiar with said piece of media, but I am wondering if it could be a homage or the game designers were trying to communicate something by drawing paralells.
The giant monster at 17:00 looks as if it’s spawning the flesh. It’s a mutant, a cancer of the previous empire. It’s also most likely a soldier-type creature attempting to become a ‘mother’ with the creatures it spawns
17:14, here’s a theory I’ve got, it wants to die, but is unable to kill itself, thus it needs you to do the job for it, this would explain its passive behavior toward you, since it’s so big and can’t move it’s unable to access the controls to damage it without potentially breaking them with its massive hands. Whatever this is, it wants you to kill it
You may be onto something. The creature is very similar in appearance to the protagonist of "I have no mouth and I must scream".
@@RealLifeIronMan my first thought when I saw the ending to the game
@@RealLifeIronMan few of the creatures in this game resemble that character
@@Camo-un8ee me too
I wouldn't want to live in a hostile environment like that where all i can do is suffer
I remember at one point the devs refused to elaborate on Scorn Guy, saying it'd lead to spoilers. So I think there was a greater story intended at one point that they had to cut due to troubled dev time.
I hope they're planning to make dlc. Scorn is so weird and I love it
If they offered any elaboration it wouldn’t be a Lovecraftian horror game.
@@201hastings ah yes giving a least some information on who you play as would make it a non lovecraftian game
@@201hastings i guess most of lovecraft stories are not lovecraftian then.
@@azrieldalusong5042 DLC? IT WAS TWO HOURS LONG AND TOOK YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm convinced that this game is more of design portfolio than actual game meant to be played
Ljubomir Peklar has a 'bible' of the entire story and creatures in detail he used to direct the game. The artbook talks about many of the creatures and places.
@iamjoeysteel Giger didn't work on this game though?
@@randomlygeneratedname5620 Ljubomir Peklar. How about you look up the artbook instead of asking for corrections you goofy guber.
Yeah all this looking for metaphors and philosophical diatribes in the comments is goofy. Scorn exists because some people wanted to make a game based on giger and beksinski's art. and that's as far as the developers got with it. Hired a group of outstanding digital artists who created outstanding digital art, and then when it was time to add all the rest of the parts that make a video game, a video game, the devs just shrugged. The game feels like a series of museum exhibits because that's what it is, the products of some artists that the player wanders through. The makers of scorn put literally no effort into creating any narrative elements whatsoever, and even the visual and thematic cohesion is iffy and unrelated enough that it destroys any potential visual storytelling present. If the goal of the dev team was to create a 3d museum filled with knockoff art, why even bother with the game aspect at all?
As a depressed person who is refusing to sleep till tomorrow night. This analysis has given me a weird 180 on my "humanity is on a downward spiral" mentality. I dont know why. But this is what I needed thank you.
how is it going?
@@bryanttidwell7531 pretty well! Thank you!
Hey man, how’re you doing?
meh, humanity is just humanity. we have had decadence and falling standards of living before in history so its not new to have all these problems to worry about. if anything we are lucky in the western world that many places won't feel the starvation or diseases that plagued pre modern societies. will there be further shakeups and cultural enrages? yes. the internet has changed the social dynamic and culture is going to need to catch up, probably in a violent way. but the change will occur and we will just be back where we started, just doing our thing best we can.
so no, humanity isn't going in a downward spiral, we are just going through the motions. we have before and we will again in the future because that is the nature of change.
I like how the whole world of Scorn seems to be one living organism? In a sense, through the game we travel from more periferal parts of the body, to the central nervous system.
In don't think it's coincidental. Look how all the fleshy parts in the last act of the game are highly organised, everything seems to be at it's place, when compared to the rest of the game. The "brain" of this world is healthy. The "body" however is ailing, infested, falling apart and barren.
Hear me out. The world of Scorn has cancer. All those masses of tissue spreading and proliferating in wrong places (uncontrolled cell growth and metastases)... the destruction and death of sentient beings (healthy cells dying, become disturbed and leading to system failures)... the barren landscape (cahexia - wasting of the body, resources being used up by growing cancer).
The world has cancer. The cancer, however, is yet to spread to the CNS of this world. And we, the player, who reck havoc in the Brain? We, who get there via fast travelling train? We are brain mets. We are part of the cancer. Focused on our own survival, ignoring the interest of the whole body... we coming from some pod in the cancerous mass, somewhere in the world. We, who ultimately are staying in the brain, deformed and sprouting little tentacles. We are cancer.
I think that's what this game is about.
The Genesis Wall is canonically confirmed to be alive, pulsating and be filled with organs
i think it's a body that is dying and going through necrosis. the flesh monster creatures are the rot slowly eating away the body, the two main characters are trying to keep the body running, the first one succumbs to the rot, then latches onto the second one and keeps it from reaching the central nervous system
Damn dude, that's the best theory I've read so far. You are just a cancer cell waking up to an unknown existence, trying to survive, unaware of the damage you are causing.
If this interpretation is true, where does the whole "reproduction and creation" imagery fit in then?
Who heck wants to play being a cancer and destroying life? Well, i guess ill try this game.
Thank you for the video, here is my theory about the story: I believe the society that once lived in this world had an infertility problem. The reason why they are worshipping procreation and pregnancy is because of the declining birthrate of their species. The facility that we start in seems to be a factory for producing people. On the higher level you can find pumps that when you activate certain machines start to pump something from underground. I believe that after their species started to decline in numbers these people found some substance underground that would help them boost their numbers (the meat infestation is also a lot worse underground, which also point to it coming from there). This material is the grayish "oil" that covers the protagonist when the machine explodes. It seems to boost cell proliferation, which also means it can increase the chance of the appearance of cancerious tissue. They most likely were still in the middle of refining the process and that's why a lot of the artificially created people (who were most likely defective) are repurposed as fuel for the machines. At some point the very hazardous substance that they used started to spread its infection to the surface, it seems that whatever comes in contact with the substance mutates in horrific ways (the starter character fused with his weapon and became that crawly thing), this eventually caused the people to flee back to the city, abandoning the facility and all the still incubating eggs. Most of the births after this are unsuccessful, the newborn die shortly after birth, but all of them seem to want to go to the city. We play as two newborns who are slightly less imperfect so they can survive longer. I've got some ideas about the ending too, but this is what I'm a bit more confident in. The sculptures in the city point towards the idea that this species originally procreated naturally, but were eventually forced to experiment with other methods for survival. Once everything failed, the remaining leadership created the unified conciousness so they can survive and after some time passes the game starts. I know it's full if holes, but this is the best idea I could come up with about a potential story.
Another idea is that they had the same problem Earth does. They just used up all their resources and needed a quick way to get fuel and food, so they created a quick-reproducing mass of flesh to fix this issue. Like a massive external tumor that they could eat and fuel things with. Problem is, it was too successful. On the opposite end, due to mass overpopulation and sudden population crash from lack of resources alongside a long reproductive cycle that was suddenly no longer sustainable, they needed to create a way to reproduce using stored sperm and egg. They spent a while trying to perfect it but abandoned it after the tumor-like mass became uncontrollable
I think you’re right. I’m hijacking this comment to make another point:
The reference to Dasein is a Heideggerian concept, it refers to the spiritual capacity for recognition of the self and phenomena. Almost like the concept of self-awareness. According to Heidegger, this self-awareness comes from history: our consciousness is the indivisible product of history, inseparably and wholly defined by it. Our capacity for thought is the product of the work and procreation that precede us, and any ideas we think are original are intrinsically an extrapolation of the society that produced us.
The “Dasein” in Scorn could be the player character: the final product of this decaying society who seeks to understand the nature of his being - and inherently his culture’s - by ascending to the “pearly gates”.
Agree with your take. What’s your theory about the ending?
I like your teory because i dont like symbolism its more exiting this way.
I figured this alien race was met with parasites and the machines were them trying to extract the aliens from the parasites, and it sort of caused a mass murder of this civilization kind of like alien
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but the art book explains quite a few things. It certainly doesn't explain the plot, but it provides much more context for what you see around you.
It’s perfect. From the absence of meaning to the meaning that can be found, this is a phenomenal experience
This is a studio based in Belgrade, Serbia (at list it was at the time). Some guy that I know worked there, so in like 2014, 2015 I went to do some alpha testing, to solve some puzzle, which I failed in given time. Remember that when I talked to developer I suggested them to add bit more context to the puzzles, since I didn't have a clue wtf was going on, although maybe I was just ashamed I couldn't solve the puzzle. Remember the developer said the choice to be so obscured and alien to human experience was deliberate. Anyways if I remember correctly, the game is set to a distant, very distant future (I think on Earth, but not sure), so distant that the current mater of events are also so distant and alien. Kind of remind me on the first episode of Futurama when Fry gets frozen, and we see all those things happening in a background, civilizations just passing one after the other.
Source : “Dude trust me”
@@justclerk5621 "I have a boring life and so i assume other people are the same" -Just Clerk
@@DripTitan6988 damn internet peeps really this guillible?
@@thechrisman1345 there is nothing to lose to believe on a youtube comment that sounds logical and interesting.
*Wait wait wait* you were alpha testing this game in 2014???
I think it's interesting that the big creature 17:14 isn't actually killed. After the lift stops you can still hear it moaning and if you look out the window after you get out of the tunnel leading from the lift you can see it just hanging there moving around. I'm not saying I think it's the source of it, but if it is you literally brought it to the last flesh free place lol. Also the creature that latches on to you is 100% the first character you play as. It looks just like the guy from the main menu the cut scene shows it waking up and crawling in the same room the first guy gets hit with the goo in, It has the weapon he found attached to it and it also has the wrist key thing on its left hand that you can see if you look down. So your dead on with that one. I just don't understand if he was purposely trying to sabotage the place causing the explosion to happen of if it was an accident.
I believe it like the other monsters you encounter are parasites. So it's still the original character however it's not just him it's a host for the parasite controlling him now.
Clearly, he is the parasite, and the best logical proof is: the parasite have teeth (canine teeth) and looks different. The protagonist have no mouth and looks more "human". The characters design looks different and this is the most logical proof. I think we play the antagonist and the protagonist almost in the same time in the begging game.
I'm glad you made this comment because I was thinking this same thing during the video. The giant creature isn't dead and your first character kills your second character.
My thinking is that the gigantic thing is the end point of the meat not origin of it
@@Daventry85 yer' right, the two(three?) humanoid heads in the abomination at the end are thrashing, trying to get out, so it's very likely that a parasite took control of the first character when it got covered with the goo, which then proceeded to do the "thing" at the end.
When you accept scorn is intended to be an experience in itself and isn't really trying to convey anything significant as games like Soma might, it becomes easier to understand what's actually happening in front of you.
In all I think the game had some of the most interesting visual and audio design, plus the overall discomfort you feel at points is so well done.
Good point
Soma is an actually great game that makes use of its game aspect to add to its splendid narrative and atmosphere. Scorn clashes with itself on several levels, with everything game-like being a detriment to itself for how poorly it is integrated. It's not even fair to compare them, really.
@@VladDascaliuc No I agree that that Soma is amazing and miles above Scorn in almost any aspect, but it feels like Scorn has been recieved in the wrong way and is being treated like something to be dissected rather than experienced, (if that makes any sense).
@@natej1026 That, to me, sounds like a cope out for it lacking in anything beyond the visuals. What do you mean with "Scorn has been recieved in the wrong way"?
@@natej1026 Scorn has been recived like it has cause at the end of the day it just comes off as a needless gory/ gross game with ZERO story that is remotely explained in the game at all
SOMA though has a story and at the end of the day you sorta atleast know what happens
I've dreamed to play this game as soon as I saw first trailer and I am absolutely blown away with it. My jaw was literally dropped the entire time, I've never seen sth like this before. I adore the fact that we are given not a single word or clue who/what/where/what for we are and what we're supposed to do next. I grew up in the 90's when video games were just like that - no tutorials, no CZcams to see how to pass a section or cheat - just pure mix of frustration and satisfaction when you finally overcome your objectives in the game.
Back to Scorn - this is just a piece of art. The attention to details is insane and for me aka HUGE Alien fan it was just a dream come true and I cannot wait for a sequel of some sort.
Guys - just imagine this studio making a part II of Scorn that connects to birth of Xenomorphs. TAKE THAT RIDLEY!!!!
agree ,they should ve done alien prequels or sequels like this not dummy prometheus
this game reminds me of Zdzisław Beksiński's art
He also said something about interpretation : "Interpretation is imposed by others. Speaking immodestly paintings are to be admired or contemplated, admired without asking what it is..." I can dig with Scorn just being modern art not meant to being interpreted
Him mixed with hr giger makes some scary ass nightmare fuel
Definitely the best new horror game we've had in years
I was thinking more of i have no mouth and i must scream, but now that you point it out i can see it
Especially the one whith pillers absorbing or fusing with people in the desert
Note: regarding depictions of gore in artistic subject matter. The visual alone of gore should evoke feelings of discomfort. Epigenetic studies have shown that lived experience is stored as data in genetic code and passed down to the next generation. This is one of nature’s most ingenious gifts to all living life. When human brain sees gore normal response is to equate subconsciously with death. So regarding the artist’s quote “interpretation is imposed by others” No, most of the time at least at this stage in human development subconscious interpretation is imposed by nature and our ancestors lived experiences. The second of which still being considered “others” yes technically still true.
Personally? I’ve heard this bit from abstract artists way too much when their art lacks substance for our reptilian brains to interpret; History shows time after time that obsession with and the depiction of, gore in an individual tends to say more about the individual and their desire to depict and create it, than the interpretation the observing party puts to it. THUS, putting entirely more emphasis on the creator that tends to lean toward gore. Sometimes artistic subject matter and paintings are left completely up to interpretation. With no need to really ask what it is. But in the case of gore in general I’d have to say the interpretation is pretty straight forward and we should be asking the artist wtf it even is because it just looks like lackadaisically written gore for the sake of it. Lazy is lazy. Gore is gore. Lame is lame. A society obsessed with serial killer tv shows and depictions of gore is a sick society indeed.
A point about the creature and it's death at 17:53, you actually DO get to see your actions. If you stick around long enough, the creature continues to moan in pain. When leaving, if you keep to your right, there's a window a ways away that allows you to view the platform, and the creature, stabbed and dangling, thrashing around. You should still be able to hear them before and a little after seeing them. If you can't hear them, you went too far. The window is a bit before you board the train.
This event, and the one with the pod baby at the beginning were two of the most gut-wrenching parts of this game. You were forced to harm another, someone who had done nothing to you at all, in order to continue.
Harming others is easy
Absolutely love the analogy to interactive exhibits in a museum. Describes exactly how it felt to play.
Until I hear a real and true sounding story (which could take a long time) I’m gonna stick with what he said about coming up with your own story. I feel like the developers would give SOMETHING if they wanted to portray a story here but they don’t at all and it really just seems like art or something behind the scenes that’s very well hidden. This game is gorgeous in its own way no other game is like it.
There’s an artbook for the game that does have a bunch of actually established lore and there’s some good Reddit posts discussing it and laying it all out and attempting to break it down. Worth looking into, I enjoyed what I read.
18:00 You can actually see the giant creature hanging off the facility you smash into when you launch the maze puzzle elevator. The creature can be seen squished between the maze elevator and the structure above when you make your way along a walk way. The worst part is that it seems like it's still alive.
The creature in the finale is very similar in shape to the "columns" from the room where the first character was flooded, which means that such cases have already happened in the past and were quite common considering how many such "columns" there are.
Maybe that’s how the large masses of flesh came to be.
Is t the creature in the finale literally the first character anyway?
honestly the quote you were saying about people backstabbing each other could be from the meet the sniper tf2 trailer where he says "if there are still 2 people on earth, one person gonna want someone else dead"
I seen the first character who became the parasite that attracted to us as a negative and something just trying to kill us but the way it has a face and brain and connects it to us I feel like the first character still has control and connects to us almost like it’s saying “take me with you” it also helps us in ways like it also wants to make it to the end as well, and like the beginning when he says we backstabbed someone we met 2 seconds ago the first characters selfishness attaching itself to us ended 4 lives, the first and a second characters, the mothers life, and the babies life
Great thought process
Godzilla had a stroke reading this.
nice one
That's what I sometimes felt like. The parasitic creature is married to you through thick and thin. Wants to come with you to the pearly gates and or doesn't want to get left behind by you.
I’m not sure there were mothers or babies. I think the the ‘pregnant women’ at the end were androids. They had no blood when they got the hand upgrade, they only had a flower-faced symbiote. But others have commented that the flesh infection will most likely overtake all the nobility that’s in the connected consciousness. Good riddance I say
the end reminds me of the short story "i have no mouth and i must scream" revolves around an AI that develops hate for humanity, kills everything except a couple of humans that it keeps torturing for rest of eternity
What kind of torture
@@jerrydinoballs It's literally easier to say what kind of torture wasn't had on those characters. It's worth looking into, it's a strange game but lots of interesting story.
@@jerrydinoballs The story is pretty short and there’s an audiobook of it by the author available on CZcams. I recommend because the guy has a good voice and really gets across the hate the evil computer (AM) feels towards the very idea of humanity. Also it’s only about 30-40 minutes if I remember correctly
@@jerrydinoballs Wendigoon did an excellent description of the story on his channel if it's of any interest!
@@jerrydinoballs nikocado onlyfans content on repeat
The game seems heavily inspired by the "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" novel, precisely there's a glaring similarity between the endings of both the game and the novel, not ot mention the great flesh monster looks quite similar to the "slime" ilustration in the game of the same name.
Wasn't that a game about a AI torturing the last humans for entertainment?
@@miracon000fez yep
This gives me an idea, what if there was a game where you control multiple different characters in a sequence of completely different lives, but their personality is defined by what you did as you played them. In the end you have to accomplish a goal as a group and that might be not even possible based on how sane some of them are and their biases. The goal of this is to demonstrate that your actions and your explanations of why you did something are the only things that define who you are.
Looks to me like a biomass of some sort. And in the end, that biomass might have transferred its consciousness (or maybe a biologic hive mind) and used the protagonist to reach the other side of the civilization. And now, it was successful in also infecting that region. It actually morphed the protagonist and would most likely take over that new area now since you destroyed the previous one earlier in the game.
Damn, yeah that makes a lot of sense. Also why the giant creature in the previous facility was so passive. It was a poor sap who was used as a vector for the spread of this plague and was probably just as trapped in its own body as we become.
@@clan741 Mind you, the creature was attached to us during our run in that area.
@@clan741 Haven’t played the game, but that’s how I thought of it too. The protagonist will likely transform into that giant thing from before and infest the area with the same biomatter that was spread throughout the main area of the game
@@clan741 Nah, i think that it didnt attack because we had the creature strapped to us. It knew that we were being used. What youre saying makes sense too though, maybe it wanted to die?
@@miklyways it doesnt make sense because the first protagonist didnt know the goo rezervoir would explode. and the giant creature was in a weird location, free and not contained by anything, it also had arms. its just speculation but the giant creature had moving flesh things on its back so maybe it made the chickens that the player fights. it doesnt attack the player because of the parasyte? wishful thinking, they are probably different species anyway. the hive mind is also a stupid concept because we never intetact with it. the operation on the main character is never completed. nothing makes sense because its a bad game with cut content
Damn dawg, didn’t this just come out? And we already are blessed with an analysis? I love it. Thank you, Gingy!
its cause the game only takes 3 hours to finish
@@mattdekker5693 its called reviewer-copies. Some youtubers also gets tv shows and such for review purposes.
@@mattdekker5693 3 hours long 7 years to develop
@@MrHotguy034 game development takes a long time
I'm glad you figuring that out
@@thechrisman1345 a long time yeah if the game is great not 7 years for a 4 hour game. and i have been gaming for over 20 years i know everything about games
My theory is that this is truly one of the games of all time
Really interesting look into a really interesting game. It was fun to hear you attempt to analyze it, even though the game seems to kinda defy such pursuits.
If you haven't yet, it is very worth to look into the Scorn Artbook! It has so much written lore that never gotten into the game! It explains so many questions we pondered during the gameplay!
Lovely video btw! Thank you so much for making it! Love your thoughts 💜
Wait, art book?!
Time to hunt I guess
@@crowdemon_archives you can just pirate the deluxe edition of the game and copy paste the artbook in a new folder and uninstall the game. easy
@@spooky2466 just read it. It shows that Mr. Scorn (your main character), was just sleeping in the modern day and it was all just a dream.
But why didn't they want to put it into their game and make a good game I wonder 🤔 really good $30 worth of amazing art though lol..
Nice!
I think the thing that weirded me out the most and I keep thinking about is why on earth statue A at the end of the game takes and attaches the carving knife arm to its shoulder to keep stabbing the protagonist as it carries him. Assuming the protagonist is controlling them via the hive mind he's been connected to...why? Why continually carve up your own chest? It's so bizarre.
The hive mind was eerie. I mean, we humans don’t fully understand our brains fully function or how life and death works. The hive mind is an idea that things can work like that. What a game.
I think the knife is an anchor to keep the mind attached to that body through pain, avoiding it to being lost in the hive mind it was just connected
@@rudolfkoala9240 I agree with you. It tries to keep a connection and prevent the protagonist from fading out.
At least symbolically it strikes me as a rejection of the flesh. If you look at all the other crucified figures around the room, they've been splayed open and gutted as well, so I would assume that being operated on by that thing was the character's "goal," whatever that means given that the character seems somewhat unaware of what's happening and might just be following some vague instinct driving them to go there.
@@rudolfkoala9240 This, but also it might be that whatever rift thing they tried walking threw is fucks with the consciousness of people attempting to pass through, thus the whole ritual around it.
I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about this game- but if anything, I think this is an extremely well-made proof of concept that this small studio can concoct deeply disturbing atmospheres and scenes. There's scary games (Dead Space), there's jump-scare cheap games, but then there's this. I always felt like there was some appalling truth lurking around the corner. Scorn was ultimately limited by the tiny but passionate workforce it had behind it. I would *love* to see these guys, with their mastery of the H.R. Giger style, get brought on to a much more expansive game project as the art designers.
I like your take on this. Searching for meaning when there is none really encapsulates the human experience. So many of us spend our entire lives searching for the one true answer but regardless of what we believe, death and entropy always wins.
Great word, “entropy”👏.
I think you miss another, more likely take on it - the end of the game, and the reason for all of the machinery and facilities seem to be the final location, which looks like some kind of temple of rebirth and/or ascension. You could look at the bodies and disposability as a metaphor for how many we sacrificed and will sacrifice in the future, not out of malice or intent, but out of sheer evolution before we can finally ascend to a higher realm of existence. The monster attached to you and ultimately preventing it from happening could be a metaphor for the weakness of flesh holding us back.
Alternatively, it could be that you where duplicated when that explosion happened, and player A, that's now a mutant symbiote, SCORNS player B that is literally him because B got to keep his humanity, goal, and everything about him, got a new body while A got left behind and mangled. So i tries to take over, but helps because the goal is the same for both of them, though in the end, he merges with himself preventing both him and his clone from reaching the goal of ascension.
Ultimately i agree though, i really hate this kind of esoteric storytelling and lack of detail because there's too little info and no answers to explain and tie it all together properly. I AM certain about the ascension thing in the end though, the rift in reality, how its unlike anything that was shown before, the people/statues paving and showing the way make it pretty obvious THAT is the goal behind it all, and that beyond that point is something entirely different.
That's a very interesting idea.
It leads me to think a lot of Scorn is playing with this idea of cybernetic biotechnical transcendence.
The ratio & mechanism of biological & technological integration varies greatly.
In the fleshly area, flesh seems to kind of cover over & infect everything, life is scornful here, disgusting, dispensable trash. The life/flesh that covers over everything is itself meant to be hated. If it was an experiment, it was a messy one, & most would likely call it a failure.
Yet in this final area, there seems to be a since of purity in it. Life seems to have arrived at this sort of evolution, whether because of the previous experiment or in spite of it. Life & the creation of it, rather than death & the disposal of life, is venerated, even deified.
Some have said this is also a story about a species of alien experimenting on humanity in order to determine a way to repropagate their own species, I think much of that may have been true in the first, fleshly area.
Yet in the final area, it seems as if humans have been allowed to ascend in their own right, to a sense of mastery over the flesh. A more controlled integration of flesh & metal, with the babies more gently inserted into near, geometrical eggs rather than veiny, bumpy pods. & then inserted into biomechanical exosuits, which are themselves already biotechnical.
Even the automaton technician in the end seems to potentially be performing a procedure on the MC in order to help them make a perhaps ascendent transition, which they deny.
& perhaps because they deny it, the old MC, as you said, comes back & reintegrates with the new MC, tainting the pure biotechnics with the old.
Yet it appears to be transcendent in its own sense, appearing as if it's going to exist indefinitely in that state, yet perhaps in a transcendently hellish state, albeit, eternally.
weakness of the flesh. very good. the original character became the flesh by doing his job of maintaining the fertilizer facility. a criticism of wageslavery?
@@cagneybillingsley2165 doubtful... And it's not really his job either, the devs have an artbook which says you are "on a pilgrimage to a holy light"... As in, you're kind of a stranger to this place, you don't seem to know what you're doing and the explosion which lets out the mutative biomass (which is probably used for engineering, and do notice the tool the first protagonist uses, which is the product of said bioengineering does NOT mutate, while he does) is more of an accident. Again, too hard to speak of what it all means as there's not much facts to it all and it can be interpreted in way too many ways, but considering the ending is more or less concrete with what that gate is (some higher realm, maybe literal, maybe heaven, maybe the world of gods), and that you don't make it because of yourself can only mean it's either the weakness of flesh holding you back if taken metaphorically, or in the literal sense, that you where brought down by the 'scorn' of your 'old self'. I guess a combination is also possible, but either way, the ending is the only thing that makes some concrete sense and you can go off of.
@@mkzhero I've seen some other interpretations, regarding the entire story being a metaphor about the creation of life (procreation and birth) and cycle of life/death. It's obvious how much inspiration the game had from H.R. Giger (Alien designer)... and his works were heavily based upon the process of procreation, birth, and women.
There's lots of symbolism and design choices in Scorn that suggests some aspects of creation/birth and the end, the gate at the end is well... ya know, representing being born. But something something, metaphorical miscarriage etc.
Honestly I don't care about metaphors, I would've much rather preferred an interesting sci-fi bio world without the need for metaphors
@@wildsilver3677 Idk man, you're really mangled by the end, even if you'd make it to being born like that you'd be fucked, so idk if it works. Being RE born maybe... But then why would the creature try prevent you from it? Why wouldn't it go for it themselves? So yeah i don't think that works. But yeah i'd prefer a more concrete thing...
I'm pretty certain the thing at the end is an egg. The roots around it look familiar to the ones the first protagonist breaks out of, so I imagine the Parasite is using someone's body to produce a new offspring. Or, perhaps it is the first of its kind and means to produce more similarly to how the Xenomorphs have a Queen. That parasite might be a Queen starting to birth its first generation of offspring.
Good theory. Haven’t seen anyone mention this before
@@odin_191 I have, and it's kind of a bummer because unless the human that transformed carries on in some sort of conscious way it's feels like a sucks for him
oh you know, that egg theory is not bad at all. the parasite/first protagonist is more than able to traverse on its own the facility, and even to reach the final portal by its own means but it doesn't. the need it has for another host or body seem to have roots on the principle that two beings can procreate a third one, if we still consider the result an "egg". it'd be a sort of an ironic ending, since two creatures engage in the oldest ritual of procreation through raw interaction inside a facility where breeding was carefully planed and executed by machines mixing up engineered primordial soups
10:04 I've heard this rehashed many times over the years. "So long as there are two men left on earth there will be war" is the original line from Sol T. Plaatje's book Mhudi, released 1930.
My personal favorite is from the Sniper in Team Fortress 2: "At the end of the day, as long as there are two people left on the planet, someone is gonna want someone dead"
Love your video documentary type videos, keep up the work 😃
Something that i appreciate about this game is that it can be interpreted both as a metaphorical, deep, artistic in terms of themes story or just a simple "humans/alien especies fucked up and everything has gone to hell" story
Here's my take: the setting of the game is the remnants of a now mostly extinct race of highly technologically advanced beings. Their technology had at some point become so interwined with bio-engineering that they became one and the same. The flesh we see overtaking the place is an unintended byproduct of the genetic engineering this race had been doing. In a way, this flesh, and the monster that attatches to us represents the human body and biology in general. We, and the prior race, represent the human mind or soul. To us and the race that came before us, this flesh is nothing but a tool that is to be discared when it is no longer of use. The flesh, which has no other goals besides survival and reproduction, resents our callous exploitation, and that is the "scorn" the game is named after. At the end of the game, your character attempts to transcend their flesh as their predecessors may or may not have in the past, but the flesh doesn't let go so easy. In it's spite, the flesh rips our victory from us and bars us from transcendence, shackling us to the flesh forever.
Amazing. Well thought out. Now I can see it being that way too. lol it’s also a bit similar to a theory I recently posted here.
I really enjoy your vocal speech style. It’s Almaty like a melody with each subsequent sentence a pitch higher.
A lot about the world of Scorn is actually answered in the Art Book for the game.
Transhumanist Gamer's Scorn Lore video explains it all.
Really interested in Scorn lore but damn I couldn't stand listening to that guy narrate.
@@MyFearEatsMe i get what you mean. change the video speed to 1.25 and its bearable again. dude talks super slow.
@@MyFearEatsMe i liked it actually a lot.
It's kinda ironic that you need to look into outside material to somewhat understand a game that purposedly tries to make itself hard to understand. Isn't the game supposed to be enjoyed as is?
@@VladDascaliuc it's like having a old school rule book
The final area having statues depicting birth like a sacred thing while the starter area making it out to be disposable is interesting. I feel like there's a lot to digest here while at the same time feeling like the most surface level explanation is the most likely. Knowing one of the key influences was Beksinski, one of his more popular quotes comes to mind: "Meaning is meaningless to me. I do not care for symbolism and I paint what I paint without meditating on a story." While I don't think the devs are following this, it has been on my mind whenever I try to assign meaning to anything I've come across in the game.
I'd say Giger was the actual influence
Well I think that also is kind of the point of the game. Life itself is meaningless. We give birth just because we can. Animals do that to continue their species, out of instinct, out of survival, mostly because they don't have consciousness. For us, we can make a conscious decision to not give birth to any offspring, any consequences not exactly pertaining to the discussion here. Eventually the human species will die since the universe itself will die. There is no way to live eternally as a species. If you think about it this way, what is the point of it all and then this extends to the game pointing out the same thing.
Having said that, there's definitely a story here. I am copy pasting what I wrote before in a different comment:
The lower level is probably an organic mutation created by the old MC himself. Down in the level below seems like they were doing some experiments on biological flesh and with the explosion it seems to have gotten out of hand and mutated beyond repair. That's why the creature at the top of the station had huge boobs, clearly a 'mother' to those beings but if you had created her then she won't hurt you, that's why she is probably so passive. Whatever happened before the infection or mutation of the flesh there were sentient and semi-sentient creatures, and the mother seems to be a level above semi-sentient. We see the mother having a face, but no mouth, and no eyes, but somehow, she knows where you are. She squeals in pain, but she knows that the old MC is the one who created her so doesn't do anything about it. The top level is probably in line with the video except that the whole station is some sort of an 'ascension' ceremony for truly sentient life capable of solving all these puzzles (since they were experimenting with semi-sentient artificial life to make them sentient), if you are religious, it would be akin to ascending the steps of heaven. The ending where the old MC comes back and joins with you waiting at the steps/gates of heaven and the MC or 'self' forever wondering what is beyond those steps/gates is kind of a metaphor for life itself. We humans are creatures who explore the unknown, no matter how sure you are about the 'self' that you possess, you don't know what was before the beginning and what will be after the end. So, the ending of the game does make sense like that.
This is definitely one of those games where you need to read the artbook. It answers a lot of questions.
Like what the giant monster was and what those little jar babies where.
Although it kind of sucks that you need a separate piece of media to explain things that the game itself failed to do. I’m all for if they wanted players to make their own conclusions but then why release an art book that explains it and not some in game codex?
@@Metro431 You have to justify that collector's edition.
Whenever i play games likes this that are so alarmingly vague i just immediately think the devs are just banking on people like matpat (or yourself) to come up with cool ways to connect the dots and then incorporate that into a sequel. Thats probably not whats going on with scorn (benefit of the doubt and all that) but at the same time this game could have been just a slide show of very provocative and disturbing images and it would have had the same effect on me which was just me thinking "oh ok sure", "cool cool cool, whatever", and "yupp that might as well also happen" during playing this. kinda reminded me of "hello neighbor" in that sense
I'd definitely like to see a movie with this aesthetic, Alien really is the only one we have
If they made this into a movie I imagine it should be like Event Horizon, a ship either goes through a black hole or creates a portal to go through and the crew wake up in this hellish world
event horizon was dog rot. if they make a film based on this, it has to be more imaginative
Why ? Here you have a 4-5 hour game that you can experience in some ways better than a movie and really good visuals.
@@Assassin5671000 and?
@@cagneybillingsley2165 that's quite a rancid opinion, screenshoting this
prometheus is similar too
I loved the part where Scorn Guy looked directly at the camera and said "It's Scornin' time".
Bruh
The last two robot things after he gets brutally merged with an in a state of never ending torment “well THAT just happened”
@@Cushla-np4pt "dang man sucks to suck, but we gotta get back to work"
Scorn gives me the feeling that no matter where you go, your fate is sealed from the moment you were born in this place.
Nothing can save you, nothing may go out of it.
A very depressing place to be in. I feel like only despar and suffering exists here. It's really hard to describe this game and it's motive behind it. But the story behind it is very grim and dark. I just hope we don't reach that point in our lives where people are discarded as garbage because of overpopulation.
I just got a chance to finish this game tonight. It def is one of its own kind but I did enjoy your theory of what the game was meant to represent. I enjoyed the puzzles the most which was the bulk of the game. However, the ending gave me no closure as I myself was left wondering what the game was supposed to be about and what the story was trying to tell. Great video.
Babe wake up new gingy vid
Alright honey....
I feel like Scorn is meant to be one of those games that’s MEANT to not have a clear cut story so you can build your own narrative about it and theories. Like you said, it’s meant to be an interactive art game of sorts and although it isn’t my thing, I can respect the direction the devs went with it
Kinda like Little nightmare.
I have to say I love your videos Gingy, and I have never experienced a game that made me feel this way before, but this was just too much. Scorn is a game I can’t and will never touch
would be cool to see what the files and assets are named. that should give a few more hints about the game.
also you see the huge monster after getting to the top of the elevator. it swings a bit then stops telling us that it died. i think that level is just supposed to make us feel bad for the monster because for me at least it looks like it wants us to kill it to end its suffering
This was a good analysis, and I think it's kind of funny that you started with "I am logical and do not understand art", and then did a solid analysis of art and meaning.
Your pronunciation of some things aside, this was solid man.
H.R Gigger
Theory: you are the next giant producer of flesh creatures, spreading the infection to new areas
Scorn is a very artistic piece, left to the observer to interpret, but to me at least it was pretty clear. And it's funny how many of its salient points you nail, but you didn't put together the bigger picture. It's basically the movie "Moon", but told by H.R. Giger. A race of aliens? (humans?) use organic technology based on mutations/abuses of lessers created from their likeness. They created this facility to keep their consciousness alive forever. They are the upper class society. You, the protagonist, are just one of many completely replaceable cogs in their machine; the lower class of their society, who's sole purpose is to be used and thrown away for the benefit of the upper class. The organic biotech their equipment revolves around needs occasional maintenance. You clear out the occasional organic overgrowth to keep things running for them. Often you fail. They don't care. They'll just birth another of you to use up. You struggle to succeed where replaceable cogs have failed. Congrats! Your efforts, meaningless to you, have kept the upper class alive for that much longer. You did your job. You served the purpose for which you existed. Now you can be a part of the next cog to replace you the next time the organic tech of their lofty perch needs maintenance. Your struggles and pain bought them more life. Have a nice day. Now get off my lawn! And don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you. It's not supposed to be a satisfying conclusion. It's supposed to make you angry, and hopefully you'll then relate that anger towards the class system of society that is basically just using you up so that they can life their high lives. Which is why all of that shocking horrible imagery is used, to add to your upset and discomfort with the situation. Ironically, for the piece of art that it is, IMHO it is overpriced and therefore the creators themselves a (minor) cog in the upper class using and abusing the masses for their benefit. LOL Obviously a lot of work went into making this game, work that has to be paid for somehow, but at the end of the day it's still supporting consumerism while making its statement against it. Oh well. Can't win them all. There are lots of other minor poignant commentaries in Scorn too, like the decay in said lofty perch of the upper class, that they're blind to, but that's the gist of it. At least, that's my interpretation. There's no alien mutagen virus or blob. There's no war won or lost. It's just a continuous struggle in a world stacked against you that has absolutely no intention of rewarding you for your efforts, you should just have been happy to have served any purpose at all before you were used up and discarded, even if that purpose serves you in no way whatsoever. Bleak, but an appropriate commentary on society. How do *you* win? Well, that's for each person to figure out, isn't it? If there even is a way to win.
It could be about the inevitability of death. After all the monster that you encounter again and again and that eventually defeats you is the corpse of your previous character.
Or perhaps its part of Scorns larger statement that all life is parasitic; all life feeds on other life. You feed on the other characters in the game and finally you are fed upon.
Perhaps it's both; reality is a dog-eat-dog world, for most of the game you're doing the eating, at the end you're getting eaten. There is ultimately no other way to live and that is why life itself deserves nothing but scorn.
I personally get strong vibes of Gnosticism (the material world is corrupted, material knowledge is corrupting) or maybe some notions of Buddhism related to death and rebirth (dukka, samsara, sunyata and all that stuff).
But it could be anything
I followed the game since the project was announced and I think the dropped "Dasein" part is incredibly important in talking about Scorn. "Being there" is critical: you can look down at your body in-game and eventually switch perspectives to see it fully. You watch as *your* body is subjected to these violent acts, the game is doing everything it can so you can "be there." How Scorn makes you *feel* physically/mentally/spiritually/philosophically is individual, as is whatever meaning you derive from it. Is there clear-cut lore... maybe, but at least for me that is less important than what I believe the devs set out to do, which was to make you the individual feel like a part of this world: scared, confused, frustrated, awestruck, pained.
Scorn is art. It's up to interpretation, and that's not for everyone. Whatever you as an individual get out of it is what's important, and if that isn't satisfying or fulfilling then that's perfectly fine; art is subjective.
The creature at The Lowest Point bears a striking resemblance to what happens to the last living human in I Have No Mouth And Must Scream.
The ending of that game basically has the human become... well *that*, a long necked, immobile, blob with no mouth and who is utterly immortal, yet feels indescribable pain in every moment of its existence.
The resemblance is too good to be anything but intentional, which I feel has some serious implications for what these people were doing and what eventually happened to them.
Ultimately, killing that thing wasn't so much as defeating a great evil, but more putting an unfortunate victim of the evil out of their misery. Basically, it doesn't attack you simply because *it wants to die*.
Thanks for making this!
you know, the very reason that you might want to take the "child" with you, to not abandon it there, acts as proof against this terrible, suicidal, cannibalistic argument that the devs seem to be making. In fact it works against them. You *want* to take that person along, but the game doesn't let you. The devs force their nihilism onto you and ignore any resistance to it, and then use it as proof of how terrible you are for abandoning this helpless being. Life is precious and we innately understand that. That's why adherence to morality, in some form or another, is such a universal human concept. Stop trying to depopulate the earth. Stop trying to sterilize humanity. Stop dismembering babies in the womb. Instead of limiting human freedoms, work to expand their utility.
Isn't the ending of the game strikingly reminiscent to the starting scene?
Very much feels like some kind of interpretation on life death, birth and reproduction.
A cycle alluding to the fleshly intrusion of mankind and the desire to live onto the mechanical drive to procreate and die that entraps it.
Especially with the themes of sex, rebirth, and pregnancy in the chair
@@RaptieFeathersPretty much.
If we get really abstract and ignore the journey and focus on the player entity and the thing that hijacks you/hunts you we are left with a sense of completion through conjoinment.
You start the game emerging from the result of conjoinment, breaking free (birth).
You travel and at some point are penetratively merged with another entity which while visually messy actually enables the completion of your journey. (sex)
You break free of it's shackles and try to ascend to something/somewhere experiencing only suffering when separated from the other creature (the struggle to have a human identity beyond the drive to procreate)
Ultimately this leads to your death just before enlightenment and the only way to continue to exist/start the journey again is to become conjoined, like you are at the start of the game and the birth cycle starts anew (the end of your life, accepting that your immortality is only possible through giving birth).
This seems like a stretch at first but when you consider the heavy biological and sexual overtones in the game it's reasonable to conclude might be the intended message.
It's a reasonable choice to logically interpret the journey as an allegory for birth, life, death and the battle for self that has to be waged against the biological imperative to have your existence subsumed by the drive to procreate.
Edit: At the same time it's also just a game with an interesting aesthetic. really up to the eye of the beholder.
No, it isn't.
I know 'less is more' and 'show don't tell,' but this is one of those things where the concept and creation is so fascinating that I'm upset it didn't 'tell' me at least a couple things. I could listen to hours of stuff like this.
I honestly think that was the point. You want a reason, a meaning as to what you experienced any why, and I think they are very intentionally not giving you that answer. An effective way to bring about a feeling of discontentment and emptyness. Given this game, it makes sense. You don't get all the answers, and damn if it can't feel bitter some times.
seeing the concept art, they didnt show enough, and for a $40 game i was hoping to get a little more than 5 hours of gameplay. For what it is, i love it but it really needed a little more meat.
@@distractedfish35 "Meat", nice pun, lol
@@Reveticate that sounds a little too pretentious. I'm more than willing to believe that the reason they only explain so much is because that way any inconsistencies could be dismissed as you just not understanding it
@@jacquestuber628 It's also pretty common that the less you show, the more people get to play with their own imagination and interpretation, which is actually a fun thing to do if the subject matter is interesting. Giving straight answers destroys the possibility of wondering what it means.
Damn…. Going through the circle with the chair you push for the arm, the scooper is first and I had no idea exactly what it would do but I assumed since there were a few sections of track you could shift, one after the next. I figured we had to run it through all of them and instead the “scooper” did the trick. I bc would have rather left it alive and let out help though. Not too mention it being completely backwards from what common sense tells you.. that the scooper would scoop it more “safely” than the saw would. I would had never guessed thee was a method to let it live if I hadn’t watched this.
Notable detail that differentiates the two player characters: the first one has teeth to define a mouth; the second one does not have any mouth
One of the most remarkable games I've ever played. Was blown away.
The best way I could describe it is "Trying to escape an H. R. Giger painting," which is, apropos of some of the themes you raised, impossible. It makes a lot more sense if you consider Giger and Alien. From that view, I was immediately content with the total sense of mystery-horror, knowing that I was never even really meant to understand why, from where, how, etc, and instead just get immersed in the atmosphere of it.
A good specific comparison would be that late scene in the original Alien - the Space Jockey scene. In it, the crew find this eerie, truly other-worldly husk of a creature that defies explanation, but with symbolic aspects to it once you take it in. That scene was meant to convey the sense of another world far outside of human reference. This entire game was that scene. Every time I fired it up to play it, I was revelling in the feeling of being inside an H. R. Giger world, and when you reach that last stage that's brighter, with some color and without the nightmarish flesh and discarded bodies, I'm reminded of his quote: "There is hope and a kind of beauty in there somewhere, if you look for it."
Honestly I felt like I was in another world playing this game, and as a fan of Alien: Isolation, I enjoyed that sense of being lost, very far from anything I understand yet totally immersed in it, and trying to find my way out. I felt that the end was a little abrupt and yes (***SPOILER***), I wanted the character to escape. I get they were doubling-down on some of the messages of hopeless futility, etc. However, as Giger himself said in that quote, there is hope. Would have been nice to have one of those 2 engineer-like beings at the end escape, while the other was amalgamated back into some chimera.
Cheers for the discussion.
I have been watching your videos for a long time now but watch them every now and then when I felt like watching a story analysis or when YT recommended to me one of your videos, so since Scorn came out today, I just watched the ending and I was speechless like I was expecting a dark ending but I immediately thought it would be a good ending when the main character almost reached freedom or "heaven" but nope SIKE! I was crushed when this thing came out of nowhere and just kills the main character, now he is suffering right in front of the gates of freedom/"heaven"
what's also crazy is that none of those people or creatures have no mouths and our main characters went through a lot of pain, misery, and agony, imagine the way pain they were dealing with what's even scarier is that they don't have no mouths to scream, its just silence and nothing, it even reminds me of the short story "I have no mouth but I must scream!" Scorn is just a masterpiece of a living nightmare or living silent hell!
and yeah, now I'm gonna say: Congratulations! You got yourself a new subscriber!
The giant monster literally looks like the transformed human at the end of "I have no mouth but I must scream".
@@DGneoseeker1 I know what you mean but no, because in the old game of "I have no mouth, but I must scream!" is the last character becoming a big or giant blob stuck in one place without being able to move while in the graphic novel the last character becomes a blob yes but still moves around the remains of the earth, all alone, just silence and going insane non-stop, not just that the blob is so much in intense nonstop pain and the madness that he is last remaining living being on earth just wants to make it scream sooo yeah, can understand also why its call "I have no mouth, but I must scream"
Fun fact: the creator of "I have no mouth, but I must scream" (also r.i.p) was bluffing once to Marvel that they stole his idea of the Hulk and saying he was a monster in one of his short stories, so Marvel did without hesitation and scared of being sued gave the creator free Marvel comics till his death, I know its wrong to lie espically to a million (or billion) dollar company and the risk of being sued by them but receiving free Marvel comics for the rest of your live is such a Giga Chad move lmao!
Thanks for unintentionally affirming my guess that it was my own corpse I was encountering over and over again like in the short adventure game “Tormentum”! I was going nuts
10:06 "'aslong as theres two people left on the planet, someone is gonna want someone dead" -tf2 sniper
Dude I feel like I've been waiting for this game for like 40 years. Weird but cool game no language no dialog nothing. Very unique though.
The creature the second protagonist turns into looks quite similar to the one big being at the "lower point". So maybe we, the players, are a part of this cycle.
Oh shit, you may be right. Not only that, but now I realise we are pretty dumb for not asking a very obvious question: why does that creature has a human face? Like, it's literally right before us and we didn't even think that it having a face would make zero sense, since its offspring looks like random alien abominations that have nothing to do with humans.
Maybe the parasite was using the protagonist to get to where it thought it could find more life to infest, and when it realised that it found that place, it started the transformation to another one of that creature to start the next step: reproduction and expansion.
It would explain why the creature itself isn't attacking us, and only the offspring does: it was transformed and made prisoner, a living incubator of sorts, that still has concience.
When I played it and finished it I was left confused but now watching a few videos like this the ending was so perfect.
I just stumbled upon your channel with this video and really liked your complete retrospective videos and was wondering if you have a video about dishonored soon?
In English, there are no rules for how to pronounce words with "ei" and "ie." In German, it's simple: pronounce the second letter. So "Dasein" is (more-or-less) "dah-sign." Also, I strongly recommend googling the word: there's a whole Wikipedia page on the philosophical concept, and it's interesting reading.
As for my own fan theory: Scorn's world is one built upon a society and culture where parasitism is an inherent part of existence. Or was, since everything seems to be breaking down, as any world built upon such selfishness must in the end. Technology and construction are all living things, used and discarded at need or whim, and the main character sees nothing wrong with using anything/anyone (the boundary between the two gets really blurry) to further his goal of progressing further along the path, even if that use means the death or abandonment (or worse!) of the beings so used. The creatures of the game either are there to be used like objects by the protagonist, react violently to the protagonist, or attempt to use the protagonist like an object, a vehicle for their own goals.
Allegorically, this is a world built upon selfishness, and we can clearly see its ultimate fruits in how the game ends.
But, again, that's just my take on stuff. Since there's no official Word of God here, yours is just as good, and this is (again, in my opinion) an awesome video for making me think about stuff. :)
@@DimiShimi bist du deutscher?
@@armani9731 Just grew up there.
@@DimiShimi ouh ok. I was thinking maybe your are a german because you speak clearly about Our language and say true Things. Sorry for my Bad Englisch btw. Its not the yellow from the egg😉
I like my 2 nightmare artists so much, the whole game's theme screams - suffering is living.
From the torment of flesh to achieve your goal to mass murdering to obtain puzzle pieces. The monster and mechanical stabbing really take the cake for me, as if the upgrades wouldn't work if pain is not part of the equation. As if we wouldn't know happiness that is beyond our grasp, if we don't suffer enough.
If ppl still get no fulfilling answer here. The one I will take away is the sick mentality that just being alive is no longer happiness itself, and u had to exploit life to get whatever artificial happiness u/others crafted. This civilization created biological marvel that bodies wouldn't die from extreme injuries, health related issues, hunger and mutations. Yet, it looks like hell.
And perhaps that is the best ending here. Just two ass hole characters, intertwined in their incapability to be content, forced to experience the scenario of "if I can't get it, no one can get it". That is their hell, meters away from heaven. Torment of mind.
awesome
Hr Giegers artwork was inspired by his night terrors he had when he was young. The strange thing is i had the same night terrors with the same imagery when i was 5 and this was before i even knew who Hr Gieger was.
The imagery in this game is same as i saw in my night terrors when i was young and they would leave me traumatized for days. My parents would have to give me a cold shower to snap back into reality. I was left terror stricken and convinced that it was a real place ,i could not shake the feeling for days.
One of my first thoughts about the big creature, once it had started opening up, was that it was probably fully intended as a transport of some kind. Especially once we got shown the weapons factory.
to be real, Scorn is simply as a Art-Game inspired from H.R. Giger designs and ideals without context or meaning, but i would be more interested if they actually make a sequel on this or maybe just a simple DLC for anyone is curious of the origins of that fleshy nature surroundings and such much.
this game reminds me alot of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream
AM will never be satisfied
I THINK, therefore, i AM
A theory I saw posted somewhere else for the ending was that the creature was trying to help you because it wanted to escape, and when you removed it became "scornful" that you removed it even though it was trying to help you and did that to you in because of that. Notice how during the game while at time it was digging into to you, it was trying to cover you in a sort of armor and improved your HP, but in the end it just quickly backstabs you causing you to fall to the ground.
I agree that we likely are playing as a different “person” when we woke up the second time with none of our “equipment.”
H.R. Giger's art is one of my favorite "disturbing" art styles. Adds a feeling of dystopian to the universe(s) it exists within.
Edit: got to the part where you said dystopian xD glad someone else felt that way.
Zdzislaw bekzinski is also inspiration to this game specially the big humanoid head.
I had this feeling the whole time that maybe instead of being on some distant planet, that this might instead be taking place inside something. I know this sounds a bit strange but hear me out. Geiger always gave the feeling through his art that birth is death. Living is pain and death. What if the character you are is making it's way mechanistically through the foundry of the female reproductive system only to be aborted in the final act? It seems to me that the first character you are was stopped via chemical means and is reduced to the form of the parasite that latches onto the next character maybe as a means of trying to cling onto the possibility of escape. Your character only seems to have 2 drives, one is to live and the second is to keep going blindly forward as if driven by some unknown purpose. Just as the genes are driven to reproduce and survive. When thinking of the game in reverse it seems the final bridge leading to the far portal in shaped similarly to the birth canal and the area being decorated in such and exogenous way could suggest that it is so because it is in the area of physical stimulation by means of sexual contact. Its the cathedral of the sexual senses. Further back to the beginning of the game you cross the barren land of the uterus and the almost industrial part of the reproductive systems continuing to attempt to do the job of creating. Maybe this is an inhospitable to life reproductive system but one nonetheless. In the end it seems our character is aborted as the scalpel continues to cut and cut at the body of what is left and ultimately captured to be reassimilated into the whole.