A thing about the meat cage monster boss: the Chinese character on screen when it showed up, 鵺, pronounced as Ye, was a somewhat mystical bird in ancient Chinese folklore (not popular though). It's described as "looks like a pheasant" in the book Classic of Mountains and Seas. On the other hand, in Japanese folklore, this thing is pronounced as Nue, a proper monster with different animal parts put together, like a Chimera. I'm guessing the one this game used is the combination of both folklore. The name is still of a bird, just like all other replicas in the game. But this bird does not exist, it's a monster made of several replicas put together.
I think the secret ending reveals a gut-wrenching truth. The more I see the other endings and the lore surrounding them, I'm convinced that we never truly get to see Arianne again. The Arainne we meet is someone else playing the role, probably a confused Falke from deep within the Resonance dreamscape. Ending Ariane's portrait is a recolor of Falke's and their respective themes are just the same songs played forwards/backwards. It's explicitly stated that her memories were blending with Elster and Ariane. This would also explain why Adler's last stand is always right outside Ariane's door. He's protecting what little is left of Falke. Besides directly referencing The King in Yellow, the game also has this theatrical air to it, like a play. I think several of the characters, if not all of them, are unwittingly actors in this "play" of Signalis. Whether it's resurfacing Gestalt memories making them say or do things, or the mind of other Replica's confusing their own, no one is quite themselves. To become self-aware of this fact is to go mad, like the play in the King in Yellow. Perhaps Isa in her last moments remembers the truth, that her and her sister are already dead. Like becoming self-aware in a dream, you wake up. Adler shows signs of madness in his diary, frustration at his own lack of autonomy over his own actions and memories. Depending on how you interpret him, he's either the most mad or disillusioned of all the characters. He seems to despise his role but he plays it anyways, well-aware of the cycle. He could be seen as a lucid dreamer, the one that "wears no mask". In the end, Elster and Ariane died on the Penrose, with Elster unable to bring herself to fulfil her morbid promise. The Elster(s) we play as are haunted by the "ghosts" of the Penrose Program and feel this primal desire to find Ariane. But she's long gone. The secret ending is a funeral, with our Elster finally accepting the truth and passing on. Like a ghost with lingering regrets, it takes a ritual for them to find peace and finally die a proper death. The Ritual isn't just the secret ending, it's the whole game. There's a lot more to talk about, especially the cutscene at the end of Act 2 with a slideshow of (presumably) memories of the Vinetian War that Elster's Gestalt fought in, with her losing a right eye and possibly a lover, with a shot of her mourning over a grave similar to the Ritual ending. The game's got LORE. But I've already typed enough I think. If you read all of this I'd like to hear your thoughts, this game has a lot to dig into.
I like the theatrical approach to this! Taking Adler's "I wear no mask" as a declaration of being the one actor not playing a role but actually acting of his own agency, with everyone else following vague cues of memories and desires, is definetely not something I considered so far.
That's legit one of the most helpful interpretations. I always thought that the end bossfight was a lost opportunity becuase I didn't feel like Falke ahd Elster had any reason to fight each other. But if Falke was the stand-in for Ariane then it makes perfect sense - Elster promised to kill her. And now I finally get Adler and what was his deal. Knowing how much Falke meant to him it now makes sense for him trying to stop Elster. Wow even the red portal symbolising the door to Falke's room... That's so simple and yet I never caught that. I still don't really get what was Isa's part in all of this. She looks much more Involved in this story than even Elster is. It's like at some point of development she was supposed to be a playable character that would allow us to see everything from different perspective. Like Claire form RE2. It's so strange to me that we never got to confront Adler in a playable section and it was Isa who had more interactions with him. She even starts wih a knife and later is equipped with the rifle, like she was visibly progressing through the game. I don't really get her role in this play.
No ! Ariane became... is becoming a Chaos God thru' this Event Horizon kinda thing :)) ...being bioresonant (psyker) and all that :)) ... one AVA suit is missing, what did they unearth ? is not the perilous deposit, because Falke... synchronicity happens... The empress, the song of the stars :) Bioresonance is key :)... well keys :) Amazing title !
The redacted name of a top level on Sierpinski is "Reeducation". It's 100% legit - there's a way to reverse almost all the corrupted symbols in the game and this name can be deciphered from level name in save menu. Meaning, Sierpinski is, basically, a prison facility for those who underperformed in life - like Arianne. Choice between life-long labor camp and life-long solitary mission is a tough one...
At around 37:21 when you explain some of the symbolism of the white lily, I feel like it's probably not also a coincidence to point out that the japanese word for lily, 百合 (yuri) is also a word used to describe works about lesbian relationships. So much relevant meaning packed into that little flower!
I knew after playing Signalis that yet another thing I would love about it was hearing other people's thoughts on it, learning things that they noticed that I didn't, seeing the different ways people try to piece together the deliberately disjointed and recursive story that quite deliberately tries to evade complete understanding. I'm really grateful for your video! You had insights to offer that other videos I'd watched lacked, and you presented some pretty compelling arguments for your interpretation of the story, and gave me a new perspective on some elements of the story! Thank you!
White and yellow lilies were also a common way for lesbians to reciprocate their feelings in covert ways during the 19th and 20th century. While the reasons are obvious, the overtones of how Elster's and Ariane's relationship was kept in the dark cannot be understated knowing that context
19:20 My assumption was that the title of the first floor was "Re-education". A word like that can have negative connotations, and would hurt the image of the facility, hence Adler censoring it.
@Length of cycles: They actually are in days! There´s a note where Ariane states she changed the length in the ship system to match Vineta(=Earth) day cycles and wonders if Elster noticed.
Funny, how different things managed to lead different people to same conclusion. I deduced it from punishment of 2 cycles without food. 2 hours - not enough, while 2 months is too much.
Fantastic analysis! The game's logo is a tesseract, which is a fourth-dimensional hypercube. You even see it's presence in the open book of the yellow king. I believe that is "The being" being resonated with by Ariane and altering reality as a result. Pretty sure it is also the cube being shown in the coffin in the secret ending. It's really hard to know what the ritual actually is or did but my theory is that it allowed Elster to override Ariane's synchronicity with her own thus allowing her wish to be observed by the Red Eye. BUT: I think there's also a lot of symbolism that implies otherwise. I wonder if the monsters we see actually stem from the ritual being incomplete and we must figure out Ariane's most hidden wish (the lily) or something since it's a safe in her apartment displayed by her own psyche.
39:25 "I couldn't find anything I would call a clear connection about the link so tangential it might as well he astrology. That's right, I'm picky about the schools of mysticism I do and do not respect, faq u this is my show." Gigachad.
Fascinating take on the timeline! Makes a lot of sense. I think you've dived deeper into the "meaning" behind it all, more than most. Really interesting to listen to.
It’s highly suspicious. For a while I thought Erika may be the foundation for Elster units but it doesn’t really line up. Elster’s original Gestalt is most likely Lilith Itou, an aunt that fought in the Vinetian war. She’s the only Itou mentioned on the back of the Vinetian war photo and the flashbacks to the war line up with her. What makes this funny to me, is it means Arianne ends up getting with her friends’ aunt in a weird roundabout way. Since she was friends with the Itou sisters or at least knew them. I’m still hung up on why Erika is treated so mysteriously though. The scratched out pictures and lacking information on her is so weird, there’s definitely something there. Perhaps an untimely death?
39:21 actually 512, in the game's blocky font, is a palindrome, which you can also see portrayed more explicitly on the distal end of a key if you examine them :3 considering one of the documents talks about palindromes, it probably has something to do with gestalts, replikas, and the past lives that feed into present troubles that Elster in particular is facing
After finding your channel from your most recent upload on the horror of Knowing and mentioning Signalis, as a huge Signalis fan I obviously had to go find this video afterwards. I have my own multiple theories, many that conflict and contradict each other, on what happens throughout the game and I love to hear others' interpretations. Yours is very interesting as well! I never really put much stock in the idea of an extraterrestrial entity encountering the Penrose, but it is a viable theory. Lnowing this video was uploaded a year ago, I'm sure you've thought long and hard on other theories so this is just gasoline on a long burning fire, but I'd like to add something for you to consider. Radio astronomy is one of our most reliable methods for investigating deep space and distant planets, galaxies, and stars. Radio waves are often very powerful from natural sources and can interact with and amplify other sources, or dissipate and break the waves, reducing it to static noise. One of my pet theories is that the events we experience when we're playing is a result of the original Penrose leaving the heliosphere and experiencing a radio wave burst which amplified the bioresonance of Ariane who, at the time, was suffering in her sleep pod from cancer and dreaming of how life could have been different if she had gone to Sierpinski instead. With amplified bioresonance her dreams would be made manifest and transform reality, allowing their ship to arrive in the depths of Leng, but also the signal was disrupted by the competing cosmic radio waves, making the dissonance and chaos that we see present throughout the world we experience. There is also a theoretical possibility that since bioresonance does seem to have a genetic component and thus some biological physical presence in bodies, Ariane could have developed cancer IN the cells where bioresonance occurs and everything we experience is a direct result of unchecked, malignant bioresonant growth dramatically escalating her powers, but because she has failing mental faculties is extremely chaotic and undirected.
Maybe the fake ending could count to the pedestal logic in 37:00? The original Elster 512, the Elster from the fake ending, the Elster from the memory ending, the Elster from the leave ending, the Elster from the promise ending, and lastly the Elster from the artefact ending, but I don't know.
just to add an idea at 30mins - kietzh I think its meant to represent their freedom from the government, as it’s just a barren desert akin to the ship/Penrose project they find themselves on. Also arctic wastelands are typically classified as deserts. And this wasteland is where they can become reunited again. and the Sierpiński triangle I think is meant to represent the endless cycles they find themselves in.
I think the 512 is your ship number and since elster Ariane have been there for a long time, the 512 is stuck in their psyche dream-nightmare-subsconscious. Maybe they're dreaming inside the ship or just reminding elster to keep going back to Penrose 512. Imagine your a long term care patient (somewhat like Ariane), in a small clinic with several rooms with a large 512 label on most of them. It wouldn't be far fetched to see 512 over and over again in your dreams or made up adventures in your head. Anyways. They key of eternity looks very interesting. It probably has that star symbol of their country or ship and the key's teeth are actually 512 numbers. Eternity in the Penrose. Key of love with the handle of sierpinski triangle. Don't think they fell in love there. Maybe it's about arianes love for the Itou sisters as friends? Key of sacrifice shows the hexagon or maybe a tesseract. The hexagon forms in 6 sleeping elsters in the secret ending. The key teeth looking like a sword tip or guillotine.
I got that BS irl with the number 178. It was the same bus the school district used for us since Pre-K school to Highschool. I think everyone has some little thing like that.
There are many inconsistencies in the story that are brought about to give a sense of unreality, but there is one so apparent it's amazing I've never seen anyone point it out: Elster awakes and immidiatly decides she has to save "Alina Seo" when if she's the same Elster we see after the fake ending then she already knows that Alina Seo is dead and Ariane is an "I have no mouth and I must scream" situation. In other words, Elster is clearly suffering from some form of amnesia because this is the only way to explain her motivations. We effectively play most of the game as Lilith Itou searching for her sister in arms. We can explain her memory loss by saying the gate whisked them away and placed them in Falke's head. What is mysterious is how she ever confused this person with Ariane.
thank you for this video. i recognized a lot of things in the game but don't have a real understanding of them so i wasn't able to do much more than point and go "ohhhh." very informative and helps me appreciate the game further
With how vague the game can get, I think that's gonna be the fate of any video that does not spend six hours re-iterating the entire experience. I'm glad you liked it!
Nice video. Although, I don't believe in some cosmic entity, that just does not fit with the game's themes. In fact, the more I think about it, the more plausible it feels to interpret all of this as cycles of guilt in the dying mind of Elster, barraged by bioresonant influence of dying mind of Arianne locked in the cryopod(yeah, thats lame). In Rotfront, we see in the diary that mining facility devoured by ocean of flesh was just one of many Arianne dreams as well. The only thing against it is that Sierpinski is too detailed. Arianne knew Isa, but Falke and Adler are too major of a characters for her to just dream up. Nevertheless, one thing I am 99% sure of is that the game is intentionally designed in a way that it cannot be completely explained and neatly interpreted with certainty. And that is so cool. I love it
Taking bioresonance into account it might not necessarily be people they dreamed up but rather minds pulled into their own collapsing ones since for example Adler points out he knows he's trapped in whatever this is. I think what helps prove it's part of the mind is the eye in the sky rather than looking down at everyone like they think I think it's actually them looking up but unable to see out of it
Finally got around to finishing this game and I'm really happy that we finally have an WLW game about needing to mercy kill your wife, the heteros have been hogging that shit far too long Anyways, brilliant analysis, very helpful for putting everything in context and provides a lot of perspectives I definitely wouldn't have thought of, great work ✨
Why putting persona degradation in quotes? If you look at other replika files, they describe cases of persona degradation. Like combat models becoming more cruel, even sadistic and unstable.
Two reasons. One, it's just directly pulling the term from the in-game documents without me elaborating, so the shift in tone is there to let people know they did not miss that term in their high school education. Two, it's more akin to a personality resurfacing, even if unpleasant, so while it is technically a socially-acceptable persona of the Replika falling off, calling it 'degradation' and framing it as something to be avoided at all cost for the sake of them fitting their role is incredibly cynical.
I had a couple thoughts when watching this video. 1) I think you're right with the opening scene being literal, or at least closest to literal reality. I think it's used as the opening before we properly enter the game, because it's the point where Elster broke her original promise. After the Penrose crashed, Ariane went out to see the new planet and die on her own, but Elster found her before this could happen and put her in the cryo pod. The rest of the game beyond this point becomes so warped and nightmarish because it's Elster torturing herself over her guilt of not just failing to keep her promise, but actually breaking it. 2) Your point of Alina being relocated to the mining facility after the war got me thinking on her journal entries, and about not hearing from Elster and wondering where she is. I think that rather than being Alina wondering after Elster's whereabouts, the actual journal was Alina wondering about Lilith Itou, and Elster, who was possibly based off of Lilith to begin with, began conflating their identities as part of her persona degradation.
I would honestly love if the game gave us a single more piece to say that "Elster" was Lilith's nickname or something, it would make so much click into place. But then again, ambiguity is why it's so strong to begin with.
@@LastMinuteEssays Hell, Elster could be a nickname for Lilith. Ol "Lster." We see theming in game which notes that nicknames are often used. Or it could just be another instance of synchronicity.
a real trailblazer of an analysis, god damn. can't wait to rewatch this soon, when still fresh from a new playthrough. this game really raises the bar when it comes to putting trust into an audience and I'm all for it (if a bit overwhelmed)
I would be so confused by this game in a pre-internet era, not gonna lie. It helps that the devs are straightforward and put all the works directly referenced in the credits, including paintings and music.
Third time watching this really great video I'm so thankful for you introducing me to this game it's my latest obsession just wanted to comment to boost it in the algorithm.
This was a fantastic video, thank you so much for making it!!! Ever since completing a watch of the game (I would have killed to be able to play it, but alas), I've been consuming as many theories and watching all of the videos that I can, and you went deeper into some definitions and references than I've seen before, and my mind is racing--I LOVE the ridiculous amount of depth this game has! A couple of things you might find interesting: 1. Someone already mentioned it, but popular theory (I thought I remember someone digging up a direct, for-sure connection in the game itself, but my memory is garbage) is that it's "re-education." 2. In the photo with Alina Seo, the woman standing next to her is widely theorized to be the original gestalt that LSTR units were created from. Some people even think that she's Lilith Itou. Which would mean that it was taken a long, long time ago, as evidenced by Alina seeing it and being inspired by it on Rotfront. (A lot of theories I see in the this-is-all-Ariane's-dying-dream theory camp state that we start at Sierpinski because it's said that Ariane would go there if she wasn't accepted into the Penrose program. So it's an attempt for her to live out that other life. And since she already admired the girl in that photo, Alina Seo, she essentially projected her into the situation.) They look very similar, and the PTSD of being a war veteran might be why LSTR units shouldn't be watching war films and such, as said in the pamphlet that Ariane never read. Not that any of this helps clear anything up, what with the beauty of this game being the more questions you have, the more insane this story gets, but still! That's a huge part of the brilliance of the writing. It's so tightly written and built that it makes you constantly think you're one step from putting it all together, even though you know better lol. Again, thank you for the video, and sorry for the long comment! I'm just a bit feral for this game at the moment.
I'm glad you enjoyed it so much! Regarding the photo - yes, the woman in it is ridiculously similar to Elster. Considering the photo was made mid-combat and Lilith had the time to get back and raise teenage daughters, I think that's more than enough time for that lady to get scanned and imprinted onto a new Replika unit. A decade or two is a lot of time, especially as the revolution itself is like 100 years old. Elster also gets frontlines and a nuclear explosion flashing in her flashbacks, most likely from the conflict on Vineta/Earth. I gotta admit, I'm not sure of how the photos from medical records and Replikas being very similar work. As you said, I think imprinting by Ariane might be the closest to the truth we got.
Now that I write all of this, I think the book saying that Bioresonance is how they even got Replikas might be a clue to how the events are unfolding. It is the same process, but on a much larger scale.
I was hoping you can make a review about this game. The music,art style and narration are turly top notch for an indie game. I haven't invested myself into a story that much for quite some time, and signalis chaged that. Also, nice video.☺️
Rotfront is almost certainly a memory reconstruction on the lower levels of Sierpinski. You can see the rotary elevator thats used to move around the lower levels in the "main room" of the area (the one with the moon dial puzzle), just barred off and unusable.
Between Alina's journal mentioning her turning white and 'Ariane' having the exact same patchwork of bandages and band-aids, I believe it's Alina's body overwritten by Ariane's thoughts and appearance. Her not recognizing Elster at all in one ending might be a part of that as well, but Alina's journals do mention the name Elster so [wiggles hand ambivalently]
easily my favourite game this year, and while i never found signalis itself to be scary, i feel like it might've been responsible to a recent horror awakening i've had as just this week i was able to finally play through SOMA and came out wishing it was scarier. now it's got me wanting to take another crack at alien isolation. thank you cute german lesbian robot girls
@@LastMinuteEssays Oh yeah, the 'original photo' that the first Elster has is just a bloched up version of the photo you find on Rotfront of the Elster template lady, so I think the fact it looks like that might just be a persona degradation thing. Might be the same thing when the Elster at Leng is hoisting around a picture of Ariane saying she's looking for Alina, what with them mentioning that all the current Elsters are made off of the found template of another Elster after they lost the original template and all the boot sequences we see referencing them as LSTR-512. (Like half that, half Ariane accidentally corrupting reality and so on)
@@LastMinuteEssays They looks like multiple replika joint together in a cage. We see those cage was used as punishment in isolation in chapter 1. The level layout is a mishmash of different previous levels completed with rooms that look eerily similar to certain room in other levels. The doors on this levels also have cage like fences around them.
I finished Signalis last week and I'm still obssessive over it, I really didn't expect for it to have such depth. Anyway great review, it goes into things that most other reviewers didn't pick up on.
A thing about the meat cage monster boss: the Chinese character on screen when it showed up, 鵺, pronounced as Ye, was a somewhat mystical bird in ancient Chinese folklore (not popular though). It's described as "looks like a pheasant" in the book Classic of Mountains and Seas. On the other hand, in Japanese folklore, this thing is pronounced as Nue, a proper monster with different animal parts put together, like a Chimera. I'm guessing the one this game used is the combination of both folklore. The name is still of a bird, just like all other replicas in the game. But this bird does not exist, it's a monster made of several replicas put together.
Oh, that's interesting, thank you!
I think the secret ending reveals a gut-wrenching truth.
The more I see the other endings and the lore surrounding them, I'm convinced that we never truly get to see Arianne again. The Arainne we meet is someone else playing the role, probably a confused Falke from deep within the Resonance dreamscape. Ending Ariane's portrait is a recolor of Falke's and their respective themes are just the same songs played forwards/backwards. It's explicitly stated that her memories were blending with Elster and Ariane. This would also explain why Adler's last stand is always right outside Ariane's door. He's protecting what little is left of Falke.
Besides directly referencing The King in Yellow, the game also has this theatrical air to it, like a play. I think several of the characters, if not all of them, are unwittingly actors in this "play" of Signalis. Whether it's resurfacing Gestalt memories making them say or do things, or the mind of other Replica's confusing their own, no one is quite themselves. To become self-aware of this fact is to go mad, like the play in the King in Yellow. Perhaps Isa in her last moments remembers the truth, that her and her sister are already dead. Like becoming self-aware in a dream, you wake up. Adler shows signs of madness in his diary, frustration at his own lack of autonomy over his own actions and memories. Depending on how you interpret him, he's either the most mad or disillusioned of all the characters. He seems to despise his role but he plays it anyways, well-aware of the cycle. He could be seen as a lucid dreamer, the one that "wears no mask".
In the end, Elster and Ariane died on the Penrose, with Elster unable to bring herself to fulfil her morbid promise. The Elster(s) we play as are haunted by the "ghosts" of the Penrose Program and feel this primal desire to find Ariane. But she's long gone.
The secret ending is a funeral, with our Elster finally accepting the truth and passing on. Like a ghost with lingering regrets, it takes a ritual for them to find peace and finally die a proper death. The Ritual isn't just the secret ending, it's the whole game.
There's a lot more to talk about, especially the cutscene at the end of Act 2 with a slideshow of (presumably) memories of the Vinetian War that Elster's Gestalt fought in, with her losing a right eye and possibly a lover, with a shot of her mourning over a grave similar to the Ritual ending. The game's got LORE. But I've already typed enough I think.
If you read all of this I'd like to hear your thoughts, this game has a lot to dig into.
I like the theatrical approach to this! Taking Adler's "I wear no mask" as a declaration of being the one actor not playing a role but actually acting of his own agency, with everyone else following vague cues of memories and desires, is definetely not something I considered so far.
That's legit one of the most helpful interpretations. I always thought that the end bossfight was a lost opportunity becuase I didn't feel like Falke ahd Elster had any reason to fight each other. But if Falke was the stand-in for Ariane then it makes perfect sense - Elster promised to kill her. And now I finally get Adler and what was his deal. Knowing how much Falke meant to him it now makes sense for him trying to stop Elster. Wow even the red portal symbolising the door to Falke's room... That's so simple and yet I never caught that.
I still don't really get what was Isa's part in all of this. She looks much more Involved in this story than even Elster is. It's like at some point of development she was supposed to be a playable character that would allow us to see everything from different perspective. Like Claire form RE2. It's so strange to me that we never got to confront Adler in a playable section and it was Isa who had more interactions with him. She even starts wih a knife and later is equipped with the rifle, like she was visibly progressing through the game. I don't really get her role in this play.
No !
Ariane became... is becoming a Chaos God thru' this Event Horizon kinda thing :)) ...being bioresonant (psyker) and all that :))
... one AVA suit is missing, what did they unearth ? is not the perilous deposit, because Falke... synchronicity happens... The empress, the song of the stars :)
Bioresonance is key :)... well keys :)
Amazing title !
You can interpret Signalis anyway you want, so I don’t agree with you at all
The redacted name of a top level on Sierpinski is "Reeducation". It's 100% legit - there's a way to reverse almost all the corrupted symbols in the game and this name can be deciphered from level name in save menu. Meaning, Sierpinski is, basically, a prison facility for those who underperformed in life - like Arianne. Choice between life-long labor camp and life-long solitary mission is a tough one...
This explains the rather glaring fact that a mining facility has a classroom that nobody seems to mention.
Oh, that is very interesting! :)
It's also possible to make out the german word for Re-Education under the redaction when looking at the lift's map of Sierpinski.
The triangle symbol is literally called a “Penrose triangle”, my mind was blown
Oh damn, you're right
And It’s a loop that is broken at one angle, and infinite viewed from another angle, aaaaa it has to be significant
What about Sierpinski Chaos Game ? 🤔...
At around 37:21 when you explain some of the symbolism of the white lily, I feel like it's probably not also a coincidence to point out that the japanese word for lily, 百合 (yuri) is also a word used to describe works about lesbian relationships.
So much relevant meaning packed into that little flower!
I knew after playing Signalis that yet another thing I would love about it was hearing other people's thoughts on it, learning things that they noticed that I didn't, seeing the different ways people try to piece together the deliberately disjointed and recursive story that quite deliberately tries to evade complete understanding. I'm really grateful for your video! You had insights to offer that other videos I'd watched lacked, and you presented some pretty compelling arguments for your interpretation of the story, and gave me a new perspective on some elements of the story! Thank you!
White and yellow lilies were also a common way for lesbians to reciprocate their feelings in covert ways during the 19th and 20th century. While the reasons are obvious, the overtones of how Elster's and Ariane's relationship was kept in the dark cannot be understated knowing that context
I thought “yuri” was used to describe works about male/male homosexual relationships?
Am I just thinking of the wrong word?
@@ZacksRockingLifestyle you’re thinking yaoi
@@clammmin3098 oh, that sounds right, thank you
19:20 My assumption was that the title of the first floor was "Re-education". A word like that can have negative connotations, and would hurt the image of the facility, hence Adler censoring it.
It is indeed "Re-education". The name was discovered by dataminers a while back.
Oo, interesting
What I got from the game itself and a few reviews is that Signalis is one of the closest things we have to horrors beyond human comprehension
@Length of cycles:
They actually are in days! There´s a note where Ariane states she changed the length in the ship system to match Vineta(=Earth) day cycles and wonders if Elster noticed.
Funny, how different things managed to lead different people to same conclusion. I deduced it from punishment of 2 cycles without food. 2 hours - not enough, while 2 months is too much.
Fantastic analysis! The game's logo is a tesseract, which is a fourth-dimensional hypercube. You even see it's presence in the open book of the yellow king. I believe that is "The being" being resonated with by Ariane and altering reality as a result. Pretty sure it is also the cube being shown in the coffin in the secret ending. It's really hard to know what the ritual actually is or did but my theory is that it allowed Elster to override Ariane's synchronicity with her own thus allowing her wish to be observed by the Red Eye.
BUT: I think there's also a lot of symbolism that implies otherwise. I wonder if the monsters we see actually stem from the ritual being incomplete and we must figure out Ariane's most hidden wish (the lily) or something since it's a safe in her apartment displayed by her own psyche.
Ah, the hypercube. That makes sense, including the object in the end
39:25 "I couldn't find anything I would call a clear connection about the link so tangential it might as well he astrology. That's right, I'm picky about the schools of mysticism I do and do not respect, faq u this is my show."
Gigachad.
Fascinating take on the timeline! Makes a lot of sense. I think you've dived deeper into the "meaning" behind it all, more than most. Really interesting to listen to.
Ah yes, i understand it all now
*I dont understand it at all*
Mood
The fact that Erika's face is not shown to us in full may be important. You didn't mention much about sisters
That's true! I didn't find myself having much to say on them, so I have ended up really skimming over them as characters.
It’s highly suspicious. For a while I thought Erika may be the foundation for Elster units but it doesn’t really line up. Elster’s original Gestalt is most likely Lilith Itou, an aunt that fought in the Vinetian war. She’s the only Itou mentioned on the back of the Vinetian war photo and the flashbacks to the war line up with her.
What makes this funny to me, is it means Arianne ends up getting with her friends’ aunt in a weird roundabout way. Since she was friends with the Itou sisters or at least knew them.
I’m still hung up on why Erika is treated so mysteriously though. The scratched out pictures and lacking information on her is so weird, there’s definitely something there. Perhaps an untimely death?
39:21 actually 512, in the game's blocky font, is a palindrome, which you can also see portrayed more explicitly on the distal end of a key if you examine them :3 considering one of the documents talks about palindromes, it probably has something to do with gestalts, replikas, and the past lives that feed into present troubles that Elster in particular is facing
OOOOOOH
Such an obvious thing too, dammit
Did they? I thought it was paraidolia?
Just finished your disco elysium 3 hr essay and i wish this was 3 hrs too lol. Amazing work. You deserve more subs
After finding your channel from your most recent upload on the horror of Knowing and mentioning Signalis, as a huge Signalis fan I obviously had to go find this video afterwards. I have my own multiple theories, many that conflict and contradict each other, on what happens throughout the game and I love to hear others' interpretations. Yours is very interesting as well! I never really put much stock in the idea of an extraterrestrial entity encountering the Penrose, but it is a viable theory. Lnowing this video was uploaded a year ago, I'm sure you've thought long and hard on other theories so this is just gasoline on a long burning fire, but I'd like to add something for you to consider.
Radio astronomy is one of our most reliable methods for investigating deep space and distant planets, galaxies, and stars. Radio waves are often very powerful from natural sources and can interact with and amplify other sources, or dissipate and break the waves, reducing it to static noise. One of my pet theories is that the events we experience when we're playing is a result of the original Penrose leaving the heliosphere and experiencing a radio wave burst which amplified the bioresonance of Ariane who, at the time, was suffering in her sleep pod from cancer and dreaming of how life could have been different if she had gone to Sierpinski instead. With amplified bioresonance her dreams would be made manifest and transform reality, allowing their ship to arrive in the depths of Leng, but also the signal was disrupted by the competing cosmic radio waves, making the dissonance and chaos that we see present throughout the world we experience.
There is also a theoretical possibility that since bioresonance does seem to have a genetic component and thus some biological physical presence in bodies, Ariane could have developed cancer IN the cells where bioresonance occurs and everything we experience is a direct result of unchecked, malignant bioresonant growth dramatically escalating her powers, but because she has failing mental faculties is extremely chaotic and undirected.
Hah, interesting. I knew that radio is used a bunch in the field, but not the full extent of it. Definetely something to think about, thanks!
The aesthetic is pretty cool ima go check it out I don’t really got time to watch the video right now but I’m sure it’s amazing like always
I don't deserve this level of trust lmao
I hope the winter sale nets you this game
@@LastMinuteEssays nah you for sure do your videos always make my day
Maybe the fake ending could count to the pedestal logic in 37:00?
The original Elster 512, the Elster from the fake ending, the Elster from the memory ending, the Elster from the leave ending, the Elster from the promise ending, and lastly the Elster from the artefact ending, but I don't know.
I absolutely loved signalis
For 3 reasons
1 the atmosphere
2 smart puzzle design 👌
3 the story with it's use of world building
just to add an idea at 30mins - kietzh I think its meant to represent their freedom from the government, as it’s just a barren desert akin to the ship/Penrose project they find themselves on. Also arctic wastelands are typically classified as deserts. And this wasteland is where they can become reunited again. and the Sierpiński triangle I think is meant to represent the endless cycles they find themselves in.
I think the 512 is your ship number and since elster Ariane have been there for a long time, the 512 is stuck in their psyche dream-nightmare-subsconscious. Maybe they're dreaming inside the ship or just reminding elster to keep going back to Penrose 512.
Imagine your a long term care patient (somewhat like Ariane), in a small clinic with several rooms with a large 512 label on most of them. It wouldn't be far fetched to see 512 over and over again in your dreams or made up adventures in your head.
Anyways.
They key of eternity looks very interesting. It probably has that star symbol of their country or ship and the key's teeth are actually 512 numbers. Eternity in the Penrose.
Key of love with the handle of sierpinski triangle. Don't think they fell in love there. Maybe it's about arianes love for the Itou sisters as friends?
Key of sacrifice shows the hexagon or maybe a tesseract. The hexagon forms in 6 sleeping elsters in the secret ending.
The key teeth looking like a sword tip or guillotine.
I got that BS irl with the number 178. It was the same bus the school district used for us since Pre-K school to Highschool. I think everyone has some little thing like that.
I, too, have the brain worms after playing this nightmare. May the algorithm Protektors have mercy on your fractal iteration.
There are many inconsistencies in the story that are brought about to give a sense of unreality, but there is one so apparent it's amazing I've never seen anyone point it out: Elster awakes and immidiatly decides she has to save "Alina Seo" when if she's the same Elster we see after the fake ending then she already knows that Alina Seo is dead and Ariane is an "I have no mouth and I must scream" situation.
In other words, Elster is clearly suffering from some form of amnesia because this is the only way to explain her motivations. We effectively play most of the game as Lilith Itou searching for her sister in arms.
We can explain her memory loss by saying the gate whisked them away and placed them in Falke's head. What is mysterious is how she ever confused this person with Ariane.
I believe Codex Entry brought that up in her vid, so you may want to check that out
thank you for this video. i recognized a lot of things in the game but don't have a real understanding of them so i wasn't able to do much more than point and go "ohhhh." very informative and helps me appreciate the game further
With how vague the game can get, I think that's gonna be the fate of any video that does not spend six hours re-iterating the entire experience.
I'm glad you liked it!
Nice video.
Although, I don't believe in some cosmic entity, that just does not fit with the game's themes.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more plausible it feels to interpret all of this as cycles of guilt in the dying mind of Elster, barraged by bioresonant influence of dying mind of Arianne locked in the cryopod(yeah, thats lame). In Rotfront, we see in the diary that mining facility devoured by ocean of flesh was just one of many Arianne dreams as well.
The only thing against it is that Sierpinski is too detailed. Arianne knew Isa, but Falke and Adler are too major of a characters for her to just dream up.
Nevertheless, one thing I am 99% sure of is that the game is intentionally designed in a way that it cannot be completely explained and neatly interpreted with certainty. And that is so cool. I love it
Taking bioresonance into account it might not necessarily be people they dreamed up but rather minds pulled into their own collapsing ones since for example Adler points out he knows he's trapped in whatever this is. I think what helps prove it's part of the mind is the eye in the sky rather than looking down at everyone like they think I think it's actually them looking up but unable to see out of it
Finally got around to finishing this game and I'm really happy that we finally have an WLW game about needing to mercy kill your wife, the heteros have been hogging that shit far too long
Anyways, brilliant analysis, very helpful for putting everything in context and provides a lot of perspectives I definitely wouldn't have thought of, great work
✨
Thanks, senpai
Why putting persona degradation in quotes? If you look at other replika files, they describe cases of persona degradation. Like combat models becoming more cruel, even sadistic and unstable.
Two reasons. One, it's just directly pulling the term from the in-game documents without me elaborating, so the shift in tone is there to let people know they did not miss that term in their high school education. Two, it's more akin to a personality resurfacing, even if unpleasant, so while it is technically a socially-acceptable persona of the Replika falling off, calling it 'degradation' and framing it as something to be avoided at all cost for the sake of them fitting their role is incredibly cynical.
I had a couple thoughts when watching this video.
1) I think you're right with the opening scene being literal, or at least closest to literal reality. I think it's used as the opening before we properly enter the game, because it's the point where Elster broke her original promise. After the Penrose crashed, Ariane went out to see the new planet and die on her own, but Elster found her before this could happen and put her in the cryo pod. The rest of the game beyond this point becomes so warped and nightmarish because it's Elster torturing herself over her guilt of not just failing to keep her promise, but actually breaking it.
2) Your point of Alina being relocated to the mining facility after the war got me thinking on her journal entries, and about not hearing from Elster and wondering where she is. I think that rather than being Alina wondering after Elster's whereabouts, the actual journal was Alina wondering about Lilith Itou, and Elster, who was possibly based off of Lilith to begin with, began conflating their identities as part of her persona degradation.
I would honestly love if the game gave us a single more piece to say that "Elster" was Lilith's nickname or something, it would make so much click into place.
But then again, ambiguity is why it's so strong to begin with.
@@LastMinuteEssays Hell, Elster could be a nickname for Lilith. Ol "Lster." We see theming in game which notes that nicknames are often used. Or it could just be another instance of synchronicity.
a real trailblazer of an analysis, god damn. can't wait to rewatch this soon, when still fresh from a new playthrough. this game really raises the bar when it comes to putting trust into an audience and I'm all for it (if a bit overwhelmed)
I would be so confused by this game in a pre-internet era, not gonna lie.
It helps that the devs are straightforward and put all the works directly referenced in the credits, including paintings and music.
Third time watching this really great video I'm so thankful for you introducing me to this game it's my latest obsession just wanted to comment to boost it in the algorithm.
Oh man, I actually sold a copy of this? Goal achieved.
This was a fantastic video, thank you so much for making it!!! Ever since completing a watch of the game (I would have killed to be able to play it, but alas), I've been consuming as many theories and watching all of the videos that I can, and you went deeper into some definitions and references than I've seen before, and my mind is racing--I LOVE the ridiculous amount of depth this game has! A couple of things you might find interesting:
1. Someone already mentioned it, but popular theory (I thought I remember someone digging up a direct, for-sure connection in the game itself, but my memory is garbage) is that it's "re-education."
2. In the photo with Alina Seo, the woman standing next to her is widely theorized to be the original gestalt that LSTR units were created from. Some people even think that she's Lilith Itou. Which would mean that it was taken a long, long time ago, as evidenced by Alina seeing it and being inspired by it on Rotfront. (A lot of theories I see in the this-is-all-Ariane's-dying-dream theory camp state that we start at Sierpinski because it's said that Ariane would go there if she wasn't accepted into the Penrose program. So it's an attempt for her to live out that other life. And since she already admired the girl in that photo, Alina Seo, she essentially projected her into the situation.) They look very similar, and the PTSD of being a war veteran might be why LSTR units shouldn't be watching war films and such, as said in the pamphlet that Ariane never read.
Not that any of this helps clear anything up, what with the beauty of this game being the more questions you have, the more insane this story gets, but still! That's a huge part of the brilliance of the writing. It's so tightly written and built that it makes you constantly think you're one step from putting it all together, even though you know better lol. Again, thank you for the video, and sorry for the long comment! I'm just a bit feral for this game at the moment.
I'm glad you enjoyed it so much!
Regarding the photo - yes, the woman in it is ridiculously similar to Elster. Considering the photo was made mid-combat and Lilith had the time to get back and raise teenage daughters, I think that's more than enough time for that lady to get scanned and imprinted onto a new Replika unit. A decade or two is a lot of time, especially as the revolution itself is like 100 years old. Elster also gets frontlines and a nuclear explosion flashing in her flashbacks, most likely from the conflict on Vineta/Earth.
I gotta admit, I'm not sure of how the photos from medical records and Replikas being very similar work. As you said, I think imprinting by Ariane might be the closest to the truth we got.
Now that I write all of this, I think the book saying that Bioresonance is how they even got Replikas might be a clue to how the events are unfolding. It is the same process, but on a much larger scale.
Signalis 🎉
I was hoping you can make a review about this game. The music,art style and narration are turly top notch for an indie game. I haven't invested myself into a story that much for quite some time, and signalis chaged that. Also, nice video.☺️
Very much agreed which is why I crowned signalis👑 as my favorite game from 2022 ❤😃
Thank you for making a video about this underated game, I have subscribed to this channel!!
Rotfront is almost certainly a memory reconstruction on the lower levels of Sierpinski. You can see the rotary elevator thats used to move around the lower levels in the "main room" of the area (the one with the moon dial puzzle), just barred off and unusable.
Ok after beat this game i finally can watch this video and don't spoil game for myself
Nice, have fun!
Popping in to like and comment and give you my fucking word that i'll come back once I play this for myself
see you in 5 years
22/12/2027, I'll come back to this comment and roast your butt if you don't deliver
Finally bought the game so gonna be fun to see if my interpretations match up with this vid
I'm a bit confused about the Alina seo part. Why does Ariane looking like Alina's photograph mean that elster never reached Ariane in the end?
Between Alina's journal mentioning her turning white and 'Ariane' having the exact same patchwork of bandages and band-aids, I believe it's Alina's body overwritten by Ariane's thoughts and appearance.
Her not recognizing Elster at all in one ending might be a part of that as well, but Alina's journals do mention the name Elster so [wiggles hand ambivalently]
easily my favourite game this year, and while i never found signalis itself to be scary, i feel like it might've been responsible to a recent horror awakening i've had as just this week i was able to finally play through SOMA and came out wishing it was scarier. now it's got me wanting to take another crack at alien isolation. thank you cute german lesbian robot girls
Robot girls making making yet another cultural reset, what legends
Thank you for this video and your very interesting analysis!
Could I ask you to play paradise killer? There isn't enought videos on it
I've heard some good stuff about it. I'll definetely have an eye out on the next sale
Wow, epic pemmican reference, +1
The cops will not stop me from eating mummified roboflesh
@@LastMinuteEssays Oh yeah, the 'original photo' that the first Elster has is just a bloched up version of the photo you find on Rotfront of the Elster template lady, so I think the fact it looks like that might just be a persona degradation thing. Might be the same thing when the Elster at Leng is hoisting around a picture of Ariane saying she's looking for Alina, what with them mentioning that all the current Elsters are made off of the found template of another Elster after they lost the original template and all the boot sequences we see referencing them as LSTR-512. (Like half that, half Ariane accidentally corrupting reality and so on)
Yeah, the fact that the photos are degraded in the exact same way is pretty suspicious in itself. Good catch.
Also why do these videos have such low viewership
The inherent cruelty of the UA-cam system
The 2 boss is a chimäre
I suppose, but narratively it still doesn't tell me much. It's a cool design tho.
@@LastMinuteEssays 🤷♂️
@@LastMinuteEssays They looks like multiple replika joint together in a cage. We see those cage was used as punishment in isolation in chapter 1. The level layout is a mishmash of different previous levels completed with rooms that look eerily similar to certain room in other levels. The doors on this levels also have cage like fences around them.
the aesthetic is great but it bored me pretty fast tbh
That's unfortunate
I finished Signalis last week and I'm still obssessive over it, I really didn't expect for it to have such depth. Anyway great review, it goes into things that most other reviewers didn't pick up on.
Thank you, that's great to hear. I avoided other videos on principle before finishing this one...and then I never got around to them anyway.