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Broken Age story discussion (includes spoilers!)

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noknowncure - 21 January 2014 07:56 PM
Karlok - 21 January 2014 07:51 PM

If Tim Schafer had managed his funds better we wouldn’t be playing guessing games.

I know! We’d have missed out on the fun of speculating, swapping ideas and theories and having an ongoing community experience while we wait for the second half. We must just be lucky, I guess.

Grin

I’d much, much rather play the entire game instead of waiting months for part two.

EDIT: I’ve been browsing the reactions at the DF forums for an hour or so. Many bugs reported. I only noticed a few minor glitches myself. But what does bug me is that DF realized *before the release* that players falling through the clouds (me!) might miss the meeting with Gus, but there was “no time to agree” on a solution to this problem, although they came up with several good solutions. Thumbs Up

     

See you around, wolf. Nerissa

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Well, it is a beta. Hopefully it will be addressed in the final release.

As for the story, the order I played it in probably made it a bit more obvious to me:

I first did Vella’s bit up until she gets to the Cloud Colony, then switched to Shay. So as soon as he got down to Marek’s lair, where they were looking out of faceted screens/window-eyes and picking up people with grabbing arms, it was pretty clear that the Mothership was Mog Chothra. I did still wonder whether Alex was an older version of Shay somehow (particularly since his crash landing seemed to fit with Shay hacking the Space Weaver), and I guess that’s theoretically still on the table.

Gemini Rue spoiler:
If not, the twist is kind of the reverse of Gemini Rue’s, where we’re set up to think the two playable stories are contemporaneous with different (though related) people, and they turn out to be about (some of) the same people at two different points in time.

Speculation/questions:

[spoiler]There seems to be some element of Marek’s story being just another version of the fake childhood missions, but at the same time these ones actually do seem to matter (they are actually kidnapping maidens)... I don’t think the Mother is in on it. She seems quite sincere in not knowing about Marek, and might be just as much of a dupe as Shay. (I’m not even sure she knows they’re not in space.)[/spoiler]

Marek says that he needs Shay to pick out the ones to take because a boy his age has a special sense for these things, which seems to suggest it has to do with puberty, sexuality (but since he has no direct contact with them, also seems to imply some sort of extrasensory perception or intuition). The big question then, is what the girls are for. (We know that at some point in the past, one of them had her personality implanted into the computer, but it’s unclear whether this happens each 14 years, or it’s just the same Mother each time, maybe with her memory wiped.) Some sort of eugenics/planetary repopulation program (the towns are encouraged to pick their “best” maidens, after all)? And is the boy’s role over once he’s made his pick of girls? Is he perhaps killed off?

[spoiler]Why is all this happening? I don’t think we know enough yet to really propose a lot by ways of explanation. I see the possibilities as being either (1) a relatively benign program, probably something to do with the search for a new home planet (the girls as well as the boy make it out of each “harvesting” cycle alive and well, and the whole thing is done for some defensible reason) – the problem with this theory is that it’s strongly implied that Mog Chothra has in the past attacked towns which didn’t offer tribute; (2) some evil scheme by, for example, space aliens (what is beneath that wolf suit?) that definitely needs to be stopped; (3) computer systems running on autopilot, still executing a program that probably made sense once upon a time, but is now pretty much irrelevant, not to mention damaging and cruel. In the last case, it seems likely that it has something to do with Alex’s hacking/crash landing.[/spoiler]

Finally, I wonder: Alex/Shay and Vella and the other people of her planet all seem to be human. Are they the same species? Was Vella’s world settled by people from Alex and Shay’s system? (I remember the name of their star as Lunestra, but that’s probably not it.) And why is Alex so keen on getting away? If he was looking for a new planet, why won’t this one do? Or is there perhaps no space travel at all, and Alex is deluded the same way Shay was? (But then again, the ship tech seems pretty high, even if yarn-based, so why wouldn’t they travel in space?)

An intriguing setup, anyway. To be honest, I’m more interested in unraveling the mystery than in Shay and Vella’s continuing destinies, but at least I’m hooked for Part 2.

     

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you guys seem to be going OTT with the speculation lol. The story has been pretty straight forward so far and I think Tim Schafer will keep it that way. I just hope part 2 answers these questions:

* Who is Marek?

* Who/What is Mom?

* What are their intentions?

* What does Marek/The Ship/Mog Chothra want with the maidens, and what has happened to them?

* Is there a link between the one eyed god/alex and shay?

* Mog Chothra has been coming every 14 years, so somewhere new boys are being born and used in this way, where are they coming from?

* Also, what happens to the boys once they turn 14?

My personal speculation. The maidens are used to give birth to boys and that is where the boys come from. Why else would the ship need maidens? That theory is a little dark though… also if this was the case WHY is this happening?

     

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After reading some MORE speculation…

Maybe Mom is a previous maiden, and used her personality… maybe that maiden really did give birth to a boy. (shay)

But who’s the father? Marek?

Hmmm but then rape comes into it… and i just think this is all very dark theorys for such a light hearted game! I think thats a good theory though. Ah well! lol

     
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After a brisk nap - 23 January 2014 09:37 AM

Speculation/questions:

[spoiler]There seems to be some element of Marek’s story being just another version of the fake childhood missions, but at the same time these ones actually do seem to matter (they are actually kidnapping maidens)... I don’t think the Mother is in on it. She seems quite sincere in not knowing about Marek, and might be just as much of a dupe as Shay. (I’m not even sure she knows they’re not in space.)[/spoiler]

One reason I think Mom knows what’s going on with Marek (it’s all part of the “master plan”) is how she behaves after they leave Danger System 5.

1) You’re now free to roam the ship with all fake missions canceled. Why would she do this? It’s not like Shay’s fake missions have any impact on what’s happening out in “space”. I think it’s because he’s graduated from spending his days on fake stuffed animal missions, to this seemingly real mission… but it’s all still constructed to keep him busy.

And 2) there’s a room near the kitchen you can’t get into, and when you try Mom appears at the door saying she’s working on a surprise for Shay in there. What’s the surprise? The timing and the way she says it makes it seem like it has something to do with what’s going on in a “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” kind of way.

Not sure if this is significant or not, but after Danger System 5 Mom says “someone tried to attack the ship but mommy’s taking care of it” and after Prima Doom she says basically the same thing but this time Dad’s taking care of it. Maybe Danger System 5 was an expected result so she (who’s running the programs) had it under control, but Prima Doom was unexpected and takes more muscle from Dad, who’s been working “outside the ship” during the day, to rectify?

     

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fov - 23 January 2014 11:58 AM

1) You’re now free to roam the ship with all fake missions canceled. Why would she do this? It’s not like Shay’s fake missions have any impact on what’s happening out in “space”. I think it’s because he’s graduated from spending his days on fake stuffed animal missions, to this seemingly real mission… but it’s all still constructed to keep him busy.

Well, the objection to that is that it doesn’t actually seem as if it’s all just to keep him busy. I understand how one can get that impression during the game, but remember that Shay & Marek’s “rescue missions” actually = Mog Chothra’s maiden-eating. That seems like something that’s almost certainly being done for some other, unknown, reason (and is quite possibly the whole point of Shay’s existence), not just to distract Shay.

The reason Mother gives to Shay, that the missions are canceled because he deliberately failed one (a scenario that might be outside of her programming to deal with), seems believable enough to me. Of course, that doesn’t mean that it’s not part of some bigger plan/program, just that I don’t think Mother/(the “conscious” part of) the computer knows about it. I might be wrong, of course. I think Mother being in on it would most probably mean that the whole scheme is benign or at least well-intended, since otherwise why would a former Sacrifice Girl (I’ll assume we can take her word on that) help carry it out?

And 2) there’s a room near the kitchen you can’t get into, and when you try Mom appears at the door saying she’s working on a surprise for Shay in there. What’s the surprise? The timing and the way she says it makes it seem like it has something to do with what’s going on in a “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” kind of way.

There are a few things like that which are presumably going to come up in Part 2. The snake and the trumpet, and the fishing rods.

Not sure if this is significant or not, but after Danger System 5 Mom says “someone tried to attack the ship but mommy’s taking care of it” and after Prima Doom she says basically the same thing but this time Dad’s taking care of it. Maybe Danger System 5 was an expected result so she (who’s running the programs) had it under control, but Prima Doom was unexpected and takes more muscle from Dad, who’s been working “outside the ship” during the day, to rectify?

Can you remind me again which locations/events in Vella’s world those names map to?

     
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aaroncarney - 23 January 2014 10:22 AM

* Who is Marek?

Why, AG’s founder of course! Grin Nerd

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

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After a brisk nap - 23 January 2014 12:23 PM

Not sure if this is significant or not, but after Danger System 5 Mom says “someone tried to attack the ship but mommy’s taking care of it” and after Prima Doom she says basically the same thing but this time Dad’s taking care of it. Maybe Danger System 5 was an expected result so she (who’s running the programs) had it under control, but Prima Doom was unexpected and takes more muscle from Dad, who’s been working “outside the ship” during the day, to rectify?

Can you remind me again which locations/events in Vella’s world those names map to?

1) Talon Nebula (Meriloft)
2) Danger System 5 (Sugar Bunting
3) Prima Doom (Shellmound)

After a brisk nap - 23 January 2014 12:23 PM
fov - 23 January 2014 11:58 AM

1) You’re now free to roam the ship with all fake missions canceled. Why would she do this? It’s not like Shay’s fake missions have any impact on what’s happening out in “space”. I think it’s because he’s graduated from spending his days on fake stuffed animal missions, to this seemingly real mission… but it’s all still constructed to keep him busy.

Well, the objection to that is that it doesn’t actually seem as if it’s all just to keep him busy. I understand how one can get that impression during the game, but remember that Shay & Marek’s “rescue missions” actually = Mog Chothra’s maiden-eating. That seems like something that’s almost certainly being done for some other, unknown, reason (and is quite possibly the whole point of Shay’s existence), not just to distract Shay.

That’s an interesting point, but even so I’m not convinced that the rescue missions weren’t also part of the master plan. Maybe they were on standby until Shay signaled that he was ready to progress past “child’s play” by deliberately sabotaging a mission, and once that happens the next phase of project Dandelion kicks in?

As for the timing… Sugar Bunting found out that Mog Chothra was on the way because of Meriloft’s Maiden’s Feast. I wonder how Meriloft found out about it?

 

 

     
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I know the Mother character seems over-the-top to most people here, but she actually isn’t. I know this because I’m a mother. Believe me, the impulse to keep your children safe (even if it means infantilizing them) is universal. Sending them off into a world with real dangers, as you smile and wave good-by, takes character.

Alex (the guy who looks like Shay grown up) said that he was looking for another planet for his people, after his home planet was destroyed (or about to be destroyed) when he crash landed. Apparently he wasn’t alone on his ship (he says “we” a couple of times when referring to the incident), but no one else from the crew seems to have been around after the crash. Either they were all killed in the crash or they are in cryostasis.  Alex was around long enough before putting himself into cryostasis that, if the Maidens Feasts were happening when he arrived, he should have heard about them – so he shouldn’t have been surprised and appalled when Vella told him about them. So it seems that Mog Chothra started his rampage after Alex’s ship crashed.  I wish we could have learned if Alex saw Mog Chothra during the battle – if Mog Chothra is a technology from his home planet, presumably he wouldn’t have fired on it if he could identify it. Or at least I would have expected him to comment on it.

There were some oddities that really made me wonder – the head shrinking thing, for instance. Is Shay just a computer program generated within the ship? And yet he left the ship without any problem. And the very end of the Shay sequence – when we see him again at the end of the game, he’s not where we left him.

When I first played the sequence with Alex,  I thought maybe Shay was in some sort of escape pod, launched right before Alex’s ship crashed, and the computers in the escape pod took over and did whatever they could to “parent” Shay. But the Maidens Feasts have gone on for decades. And, as others have commented, Mog Chothra, showing up in every town every fourteen years – possibly for hundreds of years—must have “eaten” many, many maidens. So unless Shay is in a time loop of some sort, there must have been many other “Shays” as well. What has happened to them?

One out-of-the-box idea for what’s happening to the maidens: Is there a chance that some of the maidens are transformed into the “friends” that Shay encounters on the ship? (This assumes that someone on Mog – probably Marek – can gather maidens without Shay’s help.) All those knitted buddies who are sentient – could they be transformed maidens from the past? And the transporters that are sentient and sigh if Shay decides not to use them – could they be past maidens? It’s as though Shay is being raised in a very stimulating environment for a child, with dozens of sentient helpers— but without real people to love. Then, when he finally rebels, he’s put in a situation where he thinks he’s rescuing helpless creatures, but actually he’s kidnapping them. And it’s done in such a way that he’s clearly drawn in and implicated in the action – HE chooses which maidens to kidnap. This all might be a form of training to create a specific type of young man. One without any past human contact who is being taught that other humans are disposable.

     

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Just thinking aloud as t’were, but maybe we’re being led to assume that Shay is sleeping for literal nights, but the time between his sleeping and waking is actually very different - ie. once he’s asleep, he’s held in stasis until the mission requires him to wake. For this to work, I guess it would require the computer to know about his rebellion and allow him to fake sleep.

fov - 23 January 2014 04:36 PM
After a brisk nap - 23 January 2014 12:23 PM

As for the timing… Sugar Bunting found out that Mog Chothra was on the way because of Meriloft’s Maiden’s Feast. I wonder how Meriloft found out about it?

Mog Chothra probably phones ahead.

     
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Becky - 23 January 2014 04:43 PM

Alex was around long enough before putting himself into cryostasis that, if the Maidens Feasts were happening when he arrived, he should have heard about them – so he shouldn’t have been surprised and appalled when Vella told him about them. So it seems that Mog Chothra started his rampage after Alex’s ship crashed. 

I think Mog Chothra and Maiden’s Feasts started after Alex crashed, because he knew Sugar Bunting as Steel Bunting, which was “full of badasses”. Vella’s grandfather says at the beginning that they used to be a brave community but turned to baking and nonviolence as an attempt to appease Mog Chothra. Maybe Alex’s crash started the cycle somehow?

Speaking of Vella’s grandfather, his last name is Beastender, so Vella “has Beastender blood”. A hint about her destiny?

     
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Some very interesting discussions here, with a lot of observations that I certainly missed!

I’m really curious about Dad, and what he’s up to during the “day”. And I wonder what Mom is hiding in that room?

It’s been a week now since I played the game, and I’m saving my second play through for when Act 2 is released… so my memory is a bit fuzzy on everything. These are some of the ideas I had when I finished the game though—

Interesting that Mom claims to have been a sacrificial maiden. I wonder if 14 year-old maidens are taken by the Mog and then are… errr… impregnated by the 14 year-old spaceship captain, in order to create a new boy. And then the maiden and captain somehow become computer programs, which raise the boy as Mom and Dad… until 14 years later, then the cycle repeats.

Also, I wonder if Alex is actually Shay’s enemy—ie, his clan/people were at war with Shay’s 300 years ago. That might explain why their suits are different color, and why Prima Doom (Shellmound) is considered by the space weaver to be a dangerous location. So perhaps, 300 years ago, Alex and Shay’s ancestors were at war, Alex was defeated, and Shay’s people have since been free to roam the world and terrorize its people in their Mog ships.

     
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I really like all the speculation here, everything I’ve thought of is something that someone has touched on except this:
If it’s true that the maidens are all picked in an effort to find a suitor for Shay and they bear a child who becomes the new Shay, and they become the mother and father of the computer, then sure, that makes sense, if a little morbidly. However, the part that confuses me is, why? I mean, it’s only 14 years. You’re not an adult ready to become a computer and raise a child at 14 (I guess I would never be ready to become a computer but you get the idea), and yet it’s every 14 years that Mog Chothra shows up. So do these people/AIs have really short lifespans or are they just really young parents who get unceremoniously wiped out of existence when their own children hit 14?

Which brings me to my next question: what happens to the old computers? There are no grandmother or father AIs and if they’re just wiped, why? I feel like there needs to be an in depth explanation, even though it does make sense that this is a story loop that happens over and over again. I’m also not convinced (and by that I mean I did think so at first, but now I definitely don’t) that Shay and Alex are the same person - different voice actors for one, and I also don’t think that Shay and Vella repeat the same cycle over and over again, since there have been ceremonies before Vella that went uninhibited by ‘Beastender blood’. As well as what someone mentioned before; that Alex was surprised about Mog Chothra, and still thought that Sugar Bunting was Steel Bunting. I liked the explanation that maybe Shay and Alex were from different planets who were at war - it made sense to me but I’m not sure why, aside from the red vs blue notion; heavily ingrained in gaming brains.

As for all the negative reviews I’ve seen on the split parts of the game, I disagree entirely. I mean, it could just be from months of watching The Walking Dead, but I am a serious lover of a good cliffhanger and this is definitely among top ten of the games I’ve played. I’ve been left feeling like I did at the end of Limbo, except that was without the promise of answers; the promise of the next part is the perfect solution for my restless mind. I also loved the simplicity of the puzzles and point and click; it let us focus almost entirely on the story line, awesome cut scenes and somewhat shallow but intriguing character development.

     

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These are my guesses to the questions raised by Act 1. They are both logical and simple. Even if the official explanations we’ll get in the second act won’t be exactly equal to these ones, they’ll most probably have parts of these answers in them (because they simply make a lot of sense):

What is a Mog Creature? As we found out from the game, the Mog is actually mechanical and only looks organic from the outside. Inside of it there’s Shay’s fake space ship surrounded by a space panorama hologram - we can see this when Vella steps inside the Mog mouth (that afterwards closes); there are stars and universe blackness fading out towards the mouth’s hexi-wall. Also some hexi plates have dislodged revealing a bright background. So the Mog is actually a doubly-deceiving artificial creature: to Shay the Mog is a space ship and to everyone outside of it it’s a sea monster that eats people. A small initial clue are the red eyes - they are hexagonal, just like almost everything on Shay’s ship.

Who is Marek? He says he is a recent stowaway. Because we know that Shay’s ship is not in space but inside the Mog mechanical creature that means that either Marek has been eaten by the Mog or he is lying about it. He knows way too much stuff about the Mom computer and the (fake) ship’s “tech” to be an outsider. That means he is someone that was there when the Mog/ship creature was built or reiterated or someone that saw enough cycles to really understand everything about the artificial creature. My best guess is that Marek is the Moon Father. Because: the father doesn’t appear often enough in the game and would seem a waste of a character; the father says at the beginning something like “.. your Mom, you know how she is.” meaning that they do not share the same principles; it would explain how Marek knows every detail of how the ship works; it would be up to a dad to teach the kid how to “hunt”; Marek often calls Shay “young cub” with a dad-like affection; pushes Shay out of harm’s way (falling debris) with a parental concern; the dad moon ball appears at window edges all playfully, giving you a stealth/undercover feel; dad moon and Marek are never both in the same screen.

Why I think Marek is NOT the mom? (even though Marek and mom are/could be in close cooperation): she would have a hard time to not call Shay “sweetie” and stuff like that; she would never push her son into making hard decisions; also, it would be very illogical for her to all of a sudden go against herself with a sudden change in attitude and goals.

What is it with all the weird stuff: talking trees, people living on clouds, the ship working on “yarn tech”? The “yarn tech” is fake because Shay’s ship is fake. There is no universe traveling and no bending/knitting of time and space, the Mog just travels from town to town on the same planet. The talking tree is more interesting because it is said that the trees started talking recently. So there is some sort of reality distortion here. Maybe the plague dam separates one type of affliction (a sickness) from another different type of affliction (magic infiltrating reality). People that walk and live on top of clouds seems like magic to me. Also, all these towns and people are poorly tech advanced. Feels like a “Longest Journey” vibe but maybe that is not the case.

What is the purpose of the Mog? It is said that Mogs come from beyond the plague dam. That means that there are parts of that world where people and creatures could be suffering from some sort of sickness. Marek says that the captured creatures are stored on the ship in quarantine because they could be sick OR because Shay may be sick and should not get the creatures infected. Why does a Mog come every 14 years? Maybe because there is a need for young girls every 14 years. Why just girls and not boys also? Also, why is it that Shay is alone on a ship with just a mom and a dad computer? Shouldn’t there be some living and breathing adults beside him? The obvious answer comes in the form of that certain sickness. I think Shay is sick and may not live past 15 or 16 years old. I also think Shay is the last of his people, not counting Alex. The only way the people from beyond the plague dam can preserve their knowledge and tech is by sending a Mog with a young boy to the other parts, and capture girls with the best traits. The hope is that, eventually, a new baby without the sickness will be born. This sickness is confirmed by the fact that there is only one boy (Shay), not many, and also there are NO adults on the ship. This is very dark, but I guess the captured maidens are used for impregnation and usually the born kids also carry the virus, thus the need for the Mog to return again in 14 years. The last impregnated girl was the Mom computer. She gave birth to Shay, then immediately died (from the sickness). But not before her memories were extracted into the Mom computer. The Moon Dad was the previous ship commandeering boy. How come some people do not get sick (like Alex)? People that live outside the “plague” zones, don’t get the “dead by 15” virus. However their reality kind of gets sick, meaning that magic and low tech advancement occurs. That explains the hostile talking trees that oppose wood crafting and the other weird stuff. Alex landed in such zone (300 years ago) and could not communicate properly with the people so he went into cryo. Also, the first human ship ever to land in that world happened even longer ago, otherwise there couldn’t have been any people for Alex to meet.

Tell me what you think about these theories.

     
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OverflowURS - 03 February 2014 10:03 AM

strong]What is a Mog Creature? So the Mog is actually a doubly-deceiving artificial creature: to Shay the Mog is a space ship and to everyone outside of it it’s a sea monster that eats people.

That can’t be entirely true. How does a sea monster get up to the clouds of Meriloft?

 

     

See you around, wolf. Nerissa

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