I think the transition from searching for your family into trying to ascend within survivor and monk's campaign makes a lot more sense when analyzing player motivation and how it affects the slugcat's motivation. The game places a large amount of emphasis on immersion, arguably to a fault, and the goals of the slugcat are no different. The slugcat serves as our window into the world, everything we know is what the slugcat knows. The slugcat knows how hungry it is, so we do too, the slugcat knows how long it will be until it rains, so we do too, the slugcat can only backflip once we know how to backflip, so on so forth. In this same way, we know that the slugcat wants to return to its family, so we do as well. However, this changes as the game goes on. At some point we are not merely searching for the slugcat's family, but trying to learn more about the world. We did not follow an overseer pointing at a robot half way across the world to find our family, we did so because we wanted to know what would happen when we got there. And, following the design philosophy of the game, anything we want necessarily must be what the slugcat wants, because otherwise the slugcat is no longer a rational actor within the world, but a strange, alien puppet that only exists when we do. Therefore, the slugcat follows the overseer to moon because it is curious about what will happen. This then continues into the journey to pebbles. The player will likely continue to think the goal of the game is to find their family, but this has clearly been put on the back burner. What would appear at first to be some weird side quest has evolved to dominate both the player's and the slugcat's thought process. Once you actually reach pebbles, this is spelled out for you. Pebbles does not say "you are searching for a way back to your family," he says "you are searching for a way out." To understand this, we must understand what "finding the slugcat's family" means to the slugcat. It essentially represents the "end of the journey" for the slugcat: the slugcat comes into an unfamiliar place, overcomes the obstacles within said place, and returns as a more complete character. In other words, a hero's journey. As for the player, the completion of this arc represents the completion of the game, as it is almost certainly assumed by most players that completing that task would end the game. The function that pebbles serves is to point out that you are no longer trying to find the slugcat's family. You didn't climb above the clouds through a massive supercomputer to find your family- you did it to see what would happen. So, pebbles works with the idea that you are obviously no longer trying to find your family, but trying to explore and learn more about the world, with the end goal of somehow completing the game. So, pebbles gives you a new goal: enter the void sea and break the cycle. This makes a lot of sense for the player, but less sense for the slugcat. Why would it want to do this? Well, as already established, the player's motivation is the slugcat's motivation, and by this point, the player is most likely not very fond of the ecosystem. Especially after trudging through unfortunate development, it is reasonable to say that the slugcat and player just sort of want shit to be over, and are willing to compromise for it over a goal that is likely dawning on both to be potentially impossible. And so, both the player and the slugcat want to ascend, so they do. Narratively, this can be seen as a subversion of the hero's journey into a pilgrimage. The player is meant to feel as though the narrative has dramatically changed because it did. This is pretty scatter brained and not connected very well at all, but it's the best I can do in 15 minutes in my phone so it's what ya'll are gonna get :)
my personal headcanon for the saint is that theyre more like a Bodhisattva. They dont ascend not because they cannot, but because they dont want to leave until everything else has already ascended. It goes back until its the last one left to go.
the hunter is never considered to canonically die. the permadeath after cycle 20 is not actually death, its the hunter's body getting weak enough to get consumed by the now fully developed rot. this means the hunter is always just barely alive to see his own body overgrown with rot destroy the ecosystem, and probably feel constant pain.
Don't worry, the constant pain isn't new, they were feeling it most likely long before we gain control over the situation, maybe even from the moment they were made.
I assume they wake up every cycle’s end and then immediately die due to pain, organ failure, etc. it’s also why Gourmand finds them in the same place the player died in. Constantly dying doesn’t do much for your karma level, plus I doubt the rot is intelligent enough to go to and sit still in a karma gate long enough for it to close.
We really don't know for sure that that's the case. Also it spawns a karma flower when hunter permadies, which is what happens when you die normally as survivor. I would also like to mention that hunter having the rot at all is purely a downpour thing. In the base game there's no evidence. The crosses on hunters body really just look like scars if you go over the images in aggregate.
@@elliotlea5457 karma flowers are only spawned on death for survivor if they had a karma shield on death. Monk, however, does have a karma flower spawn on death.
this interpretation can be taken from DP, but base game presents hunters illness as much more ambiguous. personally i find the latter more tasteful when it comes to hunter analysis, and I'd argue they do experience a true death
I'm pretty sure Saint is supposed to be a Bodhisattva, as one of the best translations for that word it literally just "Buddhist Saint". Basically they become enlightened but voluntarily remain within the cycle to help liberate other beings. I think that's what's happening at the end between him and the void worm. He's not being rejected by the worm, he's getting it to leave him alone so it won't drag him to the bottom of the void sea. That way he can go back to physical reality and help more iterators.
I KNEW IT, my theory was right in a way. Saint is way too connected with life and helping, to the point he rejects Ascension and becomes an echo. Tho what also happens is that a copy of him returns back to where he begins and keeps repeating, like an endless *cycle* yes i said the word, honestly saint’s campaign feels like a loop within the cycle themselves, talks to all the echoes, decides ascends 5 pebbles and moon(or not) goes to rubicon to talk to them then rejects the worm and REPEAT. I hope that the new scug where getting (which is know as the watcher for now) is either the echo version of saint or someone before/after saint. Tho so far he seems to be an echo of some sort bc of his shade of blue and the little golden particles that appear in his art card with also a tone of blue to it.
@@stormbreaker504 I think Saint technically qualifies as an echo for sure, but doesn't function quite like the other ones. He's not trapped in one place, and he doesn't reject ascension, he's already ascended. That's why he can get those crazy mind powers. I'm pretty sure ascension and enlightenment are the same thing. He just did it the old fashioned way through meditating instead of using void fluid. I'm also pretty sure Pebbles and Moon stay ascended when he goes back. And who knows how many other iterators he's ascended before he got to their facility. Based on the opening cutscene he's clearly done the whole 'come back from the astral plane' thing before. Though if he is a Bodhisattva, then he isn't really stuck. He could choose to leave the cycle but just doesn't.
I personally subscribe to the theory that Saint cared too much for others, wanting to help guide others to a place they, themselves could never achieve. This is why they always start on the second Karma and why they don't eat living being, they love too much.
I was in class not too long ago and we were learning about all the religions in the world and we got to Hinduism. This was the very peak of my rain world obsession and I was actually wigging out because my teacher just kept saying things and I kept going “like from rain world. I have reached peak brain rot.
My favotite headcannn about Rain World world is to explain what's the meaning of the saint campaign. Now, its origins i have no idea, what i liked to theorize is the ending, because it was extremely confusing, what i think it happened is that the saint became an echo for trying to UNASCEND, the saint was able to go past the void sea to see the secrets of... whatever the hell, where every ascended thing resides, and then it tried to leave, after all, the saint swam upwards instead of downwards and i believe it tried to kill the void worm because the void worm would've pulled it back, but the saint was met by reality: once you ascend there is no going back, i mean the region is literally called "Rubicon"! There are also some details i like to mix with this headcanon: 1-The phrase that is in one of the pearls: "Swim with the current or against it" 2-The symbol that represents the monk is a circle, which in some way represents "yourself", when the saint's karma turned into an empty circle, it was actually the representation of egoism, of "nothing but yourself" 3-This is by far my favorite: mixing in the other headcanon which says that creatures fulfill their greatest desires before ascending, since in survival's acension it finds the slugtree, monk finds survivor, artificer sees her children one last time etc. Saint doesn't get that of course, the focus for now is Pebbles and Moon, if you ascend them, they appear on Rubicon, and they say something interesting, they're experiencing knowing the triple affirmative! and how they would probably never figure it out! And after that, they dissapear, which re-enforces the headcanon that you experience your greatest desires before ascending. This is my headcanon for saint.
Just thought I'd point out that that phrase wasn't in a pearl, but from the echo in Silent Construct. "Our presence has been revealed to you now, young one. The attunement has become... much nearer. Like a ripple distorted upon a moonlit reflection. Repetitous, seemingly endless strife. An unimaginable curse. Swim with the tide or against it." Neat headcanon!
The Monk's campaign isn't accidental. He chooses to jump in after his older sibling and track him down. This is reflected in all storytelling aspects of Monk's journey (opening cutscene, dream visions, and both versions of his ending).
Hm If you think about it that way, this could explain why the Monk's journey is easier. He's travelling through areas that Survivor has already pushed through and wiped out the threats from. This would imply, canonically, Survivor is a fucking badass and after he passed through a region, creatures learned to think twice about messing with slugcats.
@@DJFlare84honestly I think that’s not quite the case. The language in the Devs comments about hunter are that their journey is harder because of their karmic imbalance due to being a predator in the body of a species of insectivores (notice batFLIES, and you can eat any size of centipede as any slugcats, even red ones), and monks is easier due to their being in harmony with the world. They are more attached to the world, because they’re pursuing their brother, but they are less interested in ever hunting and need less food. They literally just have such good vibes that the wildlife around them forgives them faster and wants to hurt them less, if you look at the reputation system in the dev tools.
9:12 Basically hunters "death" is because hunter is being changed from slugcat to a crawly mass of turbo cancer, which is being altered whilst a normal death like by a lizard or falling off a high cliff has their body destroyed or harmed to the point of not coming back Also the reason hunter has the death clock at all was because in being created their was a malfunction
I personally think the saint isnt unable to ascend, I think he simply choses not to. Everytime he restarts his campaign, he still decides what he does, and he decides to ascend the void worm (which isnt mentiones in the video but doesnt matter that much for this vide anyways), which is presumably what forces him to repeat the cycle. With all the other echoes, we have no idea if they still experience cycles, since they dont exactly die, but despite turning into an echo, saint keeps on cycling, keeps on dying, every cycle having just as much capability to change his ways than the one before. If he wants out, he can just not ascend the void worm, but I dont think he wants out. I think he wants to keep ascending as many creatures as he can, release as many souls as he can and once hes done in a morbillion years, he simply swims, leaves the void worm alone, and joins the rest of the world he helped ascend. I just think its a really nice ending to rainworlds story and dont see why it cant be the case. Its not very relates to the video, sorry, I just wanted to share this perspective i have on saint after finally beating rainworld (and downpour) recently. Great video though, loved it!
Okay. I think this video approaches rain world in a kind of surface level way. Applying the concept of godhood to iterators wholeheartedly feels... pretty redundant, they're supercomputers designed to find a method of ascending the entire world, and godhood is only ever alluded to in comparison to MICROBES, as shown in the very evidence you present. we could very easily apply that to ourselves, we are god-like in comparison to ants, but that does not make us actual gods! If you read his dialogue, Five Pebbles acts as a guide, and does not demand anything of you, only suggesting a direction, and giving you the means of taking that path if willing. One thing he does is make the claim that you, as all living creatures, experience some discomfort from the cycles. This is much more than just an assumption, because Moon verifies the same thing in the light blue outskirts pearl, and I mean- you're even able to physically bring her a karma flower to read, as evidence that these cycles exist and can be directly experienced. Everything he says is verifiable information. He's not a god, just a guy trying his best in the situation he's been thrust in by his creators. I simply don't understand how you came back from Rain World with this reading while constructing an entire video essay surrounding it. If you google it, there's a wiki online containing all of the pearl dialogue, echo dialogue and iterator dialogue out there. It's literally all right there. I mean this as respectfully as I can, but it feels like you're describing a different game here Not only that, but interpreting ascension as suicide, nothing more and nothing less, is also a pretty redundant way of examining it. it is inherently ambiguous, a leap into the unknown. It is also pretty ironic to cite the games Buddhist elements regarding spirituality, and then turn around and claim that the very core of the games spirituality is suicidal. These are ideas that have been perpetrated for a very long time, yet there isn't really any evidence for it within the actual text of the game. Regardless of what ascension truly is, LTTM, and her and FP's creators refer to ascension as a continuation of existence rather than a cessation of it. They didn't want to die, they wanted to ascend to the a higher spiritual plane of existence, a much more transhumanist than suicidal outlook. Same can be likened to survivor and monk in their campaigns. over the length of their experiences, they see glimpses of another side to a world that hint to something much greater than them. Meeting and listening to your first echo, seeing voidspawn for the first time, eating karma flowers, we, and in extension the slugcat we play as, are able to garner that there is greater meaning to these interactions. It all comes together upon meeting Five Pebbles, and gaining the mark of communication, the moment you go from an unknowing little beast, to being able to comprehend language, and the meaning of the world around you. Ascension can be interpreted as the natural conclusion to that journey, giving up company of others in search for true self-fulfillment, and the answers to your own existence. The way I like to see it, only through letting go, are monk and survivor able to truly find each other, and themselves. There is so much more i could get into but im gonna leave it at that, i really, really highly recommend you check out the wiki. It contains all of the pearl dialogue, echo dialogue and iterator dialogue out there and its a great read, you just have to know how to dig a little deeper in order to get the full understanding of it.
I don't apply godhood to the iterators wholeheartedly. But there certainly is a tier system of power that I want to illustrate of things being "godlike" to each other. And I say this at the end. If applying the concept of godhood to the iterators is redundant, then tell that to the game. The echo Distant Towers upon Cracked Earth directly says "I placed my faith into the hands of random gods" in reference to the iterators. Five Pebbles describes you as meddling in "the affairs of passing gods." If something is godlike compared to you, then it is effectively a god to you. That is what that means and what I wanted to illustrate. They are not God (capital G) but relative to you, they are gods (lowercase g). Also, I acknowledge that I'm taking something inspired by Buddhism and putting it through a largely Abrahamic lens. I just thought it was a neat thing to do and let me look at the world in a way that I otherwise wouldn't. My argument against ascension and viewing it as "suicide" is both the result of the lens I put on it, and dialogue from Rhinestones beneath Shattered Glass that always stuck with me: "Why did they always search for an escape, as if we were imprisoned? What offering from the void could usurp the gift of life already given? This moment, right here! It is where we are meant to be." Saying that death in this game is ambiguous or a leap into the unknown and that makes their motivation not suicidal also applies to real life. Even if you are suicidal in search of an afterlife, killing yourself in this world is still suicide. Many people have killed themselves to reach the promised land. It's still killing yourself. The beings in Rain World don't have the benefit that we do of knowing for certain that there are things on the other side. They might have faith, but they have no real proof. You are physically not able to ascend in this game without the aid of greater beings: be that Five Pebbles raising your Karma level or visiting all of the echoes to do the same thing. They are beings with power over your transcendence and do push you towards it. In my view, this is them altering your motivations/way of going about life through respect, reverence, or fear. Again, they are not God (capital G) but relative to you, they are gods (lowercase g). Yeah, I looked at the game in a different angle and took liberties with slugcat motivations and stuff like that to find conclusions that definitely aren't intended or accurate. Like I said, this video was an exercise in deeper thinking. More about the practice of looking at something differently and drawing something new from it. :)
@@SweetsIsOnline Okay, wall of text counter-argument jumpscare in-bound, but I'll try to offer an alternative perspective on this. Firstly, I don't think anyone is arguing that suicide and killing yourself are two distinctly different things, I don't know where that came from. "The beings in Rain World don't have the benefit that we do of knowing for certain that there are things on the other side." Huh? I'm pretty sure quite literally the opposite is true? In the real world we do not have any certainty about what lies after death, though this depends on your belief, of course. But in Rain World they at least had genuinely provable physics and metaphysics despite the ambiguity. Such as, for example, the fact the void sea exists, or that you can die under the influence of a karma flower, find that karma flower growing from the spot of your death, and even give it to Moon, who will tell you what it is, thus proving its existence, thus proving tangibility to the "death" you experienced. On the flip side, however, you are correct in the sense they didn't know for certain what lie on the other side, just what they sought out of it. What I believe you missed, however, is how many tangible things they had surrounding it, like I just mentioned. This is a world where stuff like death, rebirth, and concepts of an existence entirely beyond and distinctly separate from that are a very tangible thing, very different from our own world, and we are given a lens of what it would look like for these various creatures and characters to respond to that. View the world through its own perspective, rather than our own. This is an unsaid "rule" in just about all of fiction, even, and especially, the kind that reflect our own in some ways. Sometimes juxtaposition is necessary. There are undeniable death/birth iconography surrounding ascension, but I don't think it's entirely genuine nor considerate of all the possible nuance surrounding it to just bluntly assert it as nothing but suicide/total erasure simply put. Keeping that in mind, in such a context where these things are tangible things influencing the minds of many, it becomes a lot more understandable why one would ascend. Namely, after someone has lived a long-fulfilled life of who knows how long, possibly hundreds or even thousands of years, and seeks out some kind of closure, or even stimulation beyond comprehension. It's never exactly made out to be this urgent escape pod solution you seek out the nanosecond you hear about it, there's a lot more implicit patience surrounding it here. Top that off with the karma flower dialogue (the very plant where the symbol of enlightenment/ascension was derived from), and how memory/moment/qualia focused the ancients were, and you'd begin to understand the generalized goal of the populace wasn't necessarily total erasure simply put, but rather to become closer to the mind without the physical, cyclical constraints of the physical body, after having (presumably) already endured a fulfilled lifespan over a period of time. It's much closer to various retro sci-fi transhumanism concepts more than it is to suicide. Or even pre-sectarian concepts in Buddhism, where Nirvana is more of a transcendental consciousness more than a total end state. Thus quoteth Looks To The Moon: I hope this satisfied your curiosity, little creature? Or at least, I hope this gave a different perspective to consider in some way. I kinda refrained from including much in terms of in-game dialogue since the comment was already getting long, though hopefully it's at least somewhat clear what I'm referring back to.
@@SweetsIsOnline I appreciate the response! lemme get into my thoughts Regarding rhinestones, I personally enjoy their outlook and perspective, but they're also a little misguided. They're in love with the world, yet they're so in love that they're blind to understanding why anyone would want to move on. Their society pursued ascension out of very spiritual, transhumanistic ideals, and yet they can't even recognize it in their monologue, and frame it as if they simply needed to love life more lol. Yet, we pretty much already know that they did! Take the deep magenta shaded citadel pearl for example, the pearl is all about the most treasured and prized memories and experiences of an ancient who chose to ascend (all 621 of them). It's literally a pearl about how some random ancient enjoyed his life, and lived it to its fullest before choosing to ascend. Outside of that, we know they had enriching culture and art, and encouraged debates. As for the ascension bit, a leap into the unknown isn't inherently suicidal. Void fluid isn't some corrosive acid that kills you instantly, its a sea you swim into and don't come out of. We even see lots of plant life growing right below the surface of the void sea! It's their energy source too, one that's transported in pipes and whatnot. What I'm trying to say is, I'm not trying to argue that killing yourself isn't suicide, but like, that ascension just *isn't* killing yourself, its truly ambiguous and you don't know what happens. It's kiiind of like saying a great explorer is suicidal for exploring some deep cave where no one has gone before, extreme example but hopefully you get what I mean. Also, I don't think its really fair to equate it to our world, when our world doesn't experience the cycles like Rain World does. The nature of life and death is very very different in Rain World. And we DO have proof that the cycles exist, thanks to the karma flower, which is the only thing in game to remember the cycles upon which you've died, and is something you can tangibly hand to Moon, and have her tell you stuff about it. Understanding of the cycles is also described as a universal feeling, a discomfort that all living things share, but may not be able to equally comprehend. They knew the cycles existed, and sought for a way out of that. However, death is a part of the cycles just as much as life is! The Ancient's pursuit of ascension was to move on beyond each of them, onto something higher. This isn't the case of some religious group just having faith like the ones we have on earth, because for the Ancients, they had proof that the cycles were real, and they, like all living things directly experienced them themselves. As for the actual "gods" part, if I'm gonna be real, the echo Distant Towers upon Cracked Earth's dialogue is just a nice reference to the song that plays in the few rooms before you meet Five Pebbles, rather than something with any very real bearing on lore. Drawing symbolism from it is fine I suppose, but the echoes don't really push you towards anything at all. They each have their own perspectives, and all they really do is vibe and reflect on their own experiences in your presence, really just giving you as the player some nice individual perspective as to the relationship between the ancients and ascension. Like with eighteen amber beads, who literally remarks on having "grasped at the boundless infinites of the cosmic void." They're just pondering stuff in your presence, the exterior echo is a little jubilant about your newfound enlightenment with having gained the mark of communication but that's about it, they don't even guide you like FP does. At the end of the day, you're entitled to whatever you do, just hoping to help explain some of the lore side of things, because within the rain world youtube sphere, even in lore summary videos, it's pretty neglected unfortunately :( so that's where I'm coming from, trying to help out
While i really appreciate the passion you seem to have for this game to experiment with your own conclusions correct or not, i did notice some root problems that seem to twist a lot of elements in your theories, nothing special tho, i dont think a single rw story/themes youtube video has actually consulted half of the facts the game has to offer, or just asked people who have been reading this stuff for years so they can present it in a more digestible way (except one video), if you are a big creator is sort of your responsability to not snowball this stuff so much more than it already, maybe you should try to look at the elements with diferent lenses to see what topics the game wants to focus on the most, some things i really think you should read more about: 1. Spearmaster and Hunter are not purposed organisms, purposed organisms are way less animal like and are basically organs and tubes in boxes that do a thing, think about how you look at your computer and dont see it as an animal, its just a tool, a senseless device. However these fleshy things started to "come out of their boxes" when abandoned and evolved into all the creatures we see in game. Hunter and Spearmaster are some "step in between" sort of thing, a modified creature of sorts which has been given orders, but isnt a purposed organism by definition since it has considerably more freedom in every regard than random flesh and nerves forever stuck in boxes or forced to walk between tubes forever. The purposed organisms we can see in game still operational are the overseers and the iterators, with all their inner components being organisms of their own that barely resemble animals. 2. Iterators arent designed to make organisms, nobody really can nowdays, that was more of a thing their creators did, they however can make some unconventional attempts that dont go so well, as no significant harrasment says "excuse the unorthodox delivery method" making creatures isnt normalized, its very rare and by hunter's condition we also know is not very reliable, iterators do a loooot of things but making their own creatures isnt one of their main functions 3. Hunter story is realy complex, we absolutely dont know about its origin, how he fell in NSH hands or what relations he even has with it, the ending is very ominous and seems to represent hunter getting healed by NSH by the slow dissapearence of the veins on its skins as its embraced by NSH, Hunter truly has a will of its own and has never been implied he is being forced to do this, in fact you can just not do the neuron quest and ascend yourself to get the ending, which spearmaster really cant even do since the ending isnt really void sea related. 4. You and many others severely seem to simplify the void sea or other methods of ascending as "dying" which is probably the most raw simplification of a game concept that just completely twists the game themes, pebbles gives monk and survivor exactly what they want, even if we as players dont understand it exactly aside from the in game representation of getting frustrated at dying many times, the rules of this unniverse imply ascention is something seeked by all living creatures because the cycle will eventually exhaust even the most resiliant of lifeforms with very few outliers who still have reasons to enjoy their permanence within the cycle, The void sea is not the bad ending in any way, in fact when you arrive home your family isnt there anyways so you arent missing on anything, monk and survivor seem to reunite in the beyond which is portrayed in a beautiful way from an art prespective so i dont understad the hyperfixation of "reject the cycle, bad ending" a lot of people seems to have. Pebbles isnt changing your objective of finding your family because he is a god and you are scared of him, in fact he makes it very clear he himself is in a terrible state and his self praise as a god comes from an almost satirical sentence he is well aware of, when he helps you ascend, which is something you or any other lifeform couldnt do by default, he is giving you a new choice you never had, which eventually convinces the player to give up on an impossible task such as finding your lost family and instead embrace a way better fate by ascending away from the cycle and all its endless frustration, in fact this can even be seen as solace, our protagonist having suffered enough of the cycle and choosing a way out after facing reality, or monk even knowing (feeling) its sibling must be waiting at the other side. 5. The arc of this game is definetly NOT to depart from iterator control, IF we talk exclusively vanilla it barely really puts the emphasis on them and they are just a bigger play in the world you are almost insignificant to, and downpour even gives them more protagonisms as main characters giving them the center focus on 3 of their campaigns. A lot of the focus of the concepts in this game follow budhist themes and i assume is the fact that people arent really familiar with budhism to begin with what makes them never see the most obvious answers and themes the game tries to touch on. 6. the ancients (better named "benefactors", since the ancients were an old race that came so much before everyone else what little remains of them is half eaten by the void) didnt all just vanish one day, multiple pearls mention the "ever shrinking population", they wanted to finally end the entire world and the cycle but after what must have been ages they slowly gaave up and more decided to jump into a vat of void fluid and hope the iterators find a way to end the cycle for everyone on their own after they long departed. 7. About SOS and FP relationship, pebbles didnt want to straight, again, ascending is way more complex than that, otherwise getting the rot would be a viable way to do so and he doesnt seem so happy about it, what pebbles did was give up on finding a solution to the great problem and instead chose to find a way to ascend himself alone since that was in scope a way more manageable project to investigate, and with the limitations embedded into his genome he couldnt experiment the way he wanted so SRS helped him with a "suposed idea" that could work, which lead to all the rot and LTTM fiasco. Also finding the solution wouldnt free iterators from their task so they can like, idk do whatever, the solution itself ends the world and the cycle including the iterators, is the only way the can think of self ascention and why is an incentive for everyone, this is where pebbles branched ways and started to think of a diferent objective for himself.
Moon quite literally says "You are certainly a purposed organism yourself!" While reading the bright magenta pearl to Spearmaster... Pebbles' reading of the colored pearl from shaded also implies that miros birds are purposed organisms. "the crypts are guarded by extremely durable and aggressive purposed organisms." And if we go into a tiny bit of assuming, NSH raised Hunter, in whatever way you want to interpret the word. If we assume that in a broadcast between SRS and NSH they talk about Hunter. "SRS: Do you suppose you'll ever raise another messenger? NSH: If the need arises, I certainly would." "NSH: I'm tempted to start work on raising another messenger as a last ditch effort,"
@Gayori_boi Moon says you are a descendant from purposed organisms, not a purposed organism on itself, she makes it very clear that purposed organisms resembled boxes where something goes in and something goes out, or extremely simplistic tube shaped creatures, only when creatures started leaving their boxes (or evolving with them) we got to the current state of things And downpour has like 200 inconsistencies with vanilla so when it actively contradicts itself i will refeer to the original concept, miros being purposed organisms contradicts 2 other sources of information so i stick with the original rain world authors vision rather than the modded one. Miros birds being intentionally made that way is such an idiotic theory by the msc team, the crypts were cherished by people because it contained qualia and memories of long past individuals, how the fuck are you gonma access them if you have wild animal looking creatures just ruining everything, also security has never been a concern for the benefactors, literally we never see or hear anything in game regarding them caring at all about what comes after their departure, also miros are found in subterranean as well where there is nothing to protect, so you tell me how this theory can even stand on its own (ignoring the straight up contradiction with moon pearl readings). Every other purposed organism is simple, precise, controlable and act more as actual machines without any humanity or life of its own than creatures whatsoever, but sudenly miros are extremely inefficient and violent animals for some reason, protecting something whi h should be easily accesible for anyone.
I mean, the first part of the magenta pearl states that a purposed organism is a "small slug to clean the insides of pipes," which would have to not be one of those organs and tubes within a box. Her very next sentence, "Actually you are talking to one right now!" shows that she is in fact a purposed organism, and is far more advanced than simply a bunch of organs and tubes in boxes. The part where she mentions what you think all purposed organisms are, she specifically mentions the word "most". "Most purposed organisms were considerably smaller than me, and most barely looked like organisms at all. More like tubes in metal boxes, where something went in one end and something else came out the other." This would of course mean that while majority of purposed organisms were simple like that, it is not confirmation that all are like that. And finally, her next few lines after that. "There were of course those that were purposed for spectacle rather than industry - they enjoyed the privilege of glass boxes." This of course doesn't necessarily mean anything in one way or another, but I find it doubtful that the purposed organisms made for spectacle were just organs and tubes like any other. There would likely be at least some bizarre and more extreme changes, if not making them more animal-like. At the end of the day we can only speculate what sorts of things would be displayed. All of this was copied directly from the shoreline pearl
@@jevmenyt3422 Vanilla bright magenta pearl says "Most purposed organisms were considerably smaller than me, and most barely looked like organisms at all." The key word being "most". It never outright excluded the possibility of something looking like a more regular animal to be a purposed organism, just that most weren't. Skimmed through the vanilla pearl readings and one of possible blank pearl ones is "This is a growing instruction for the skeleton of a creature, but I don't recognize the creature. It was small, about your size." Which could be another purposed organism that would look like an animal, since that's my first thought of why they'd be growing creature skeletons.
@xanthemothcat iterators are a bunch of boxes and tubes, did you not see what five pebbles is? iterators arent their puppet, thats an interface, five pebbles is made of what the game calls coral, a reef of cables, simplified spiders, etc The slug does not cotradict my theory, most of them were boxes and tubes, a slug is still a simple tube organism, same as overseers, centipedes and garbage worms who more closely resemble their original form and i said so in my comment. The glass boxes literally means some were pretty enough to be beholded, which implies most were beyond unhuman and unremarcable to look at, in fact we can see one of those "glass boxes" in game, the memory crypts are full of cabinet beasts, a bulk of organc matter stored in adorned cages to be cherished The only purposed organisms we see in game meet these definitions, the iterators are an assortment of collective pieces to be the most refined purposed organism ever, overseers are tiny worm eyes with very simple minds, and cabinet beasts are just sitting storage containers with live qualia to be remembered. Most of the things we see in the background could very well be purposed organisms, shelters, gates, random machines in walls...
The world of rainworld is cyclical, it would make more sense if they believed there was no beggining and no creator. A god in such a world is anyone who can stand against a cycle. Someone who can escape (assend) or make something that isnt cyclical like a purposed organism. 9:10 hunter is a purposed organism not of the world, but of a god who can stand against it. Thus can die. 10:07 destiny isnt tragic. Fate can be tragic. But destiny is glorious. Fate is all that has been set in motion that you cannot change. Destiny is what you make of yourself. You cant be whatever you want, thats a blatantly false dogma of our era. But you can your own saviour. Fate has happened to you, and while your destiny is not something you can really choose either, you can choose to embrace it or run from it. It is heroic to seize your destiny and cowardly to run from it. We all have a different destiny and it is up t us to discover it and achieve it.
You’re able to regurgitate something you swallowed before ascending in your next Saint campaign, which implies that it repeats. So I think that what happens is that there’s one Saint and multiple timelines, so they have to enter the void sea to move on to the next universe to ascend the iterators, leaving behind an echo copy. Also, the Ancients are the civilization that built the depths, but there’s no concrete proof they were also the ones who made the karma art and built the iterators, so the civilization that did those things is usually referred to as the Benefactors (though I personally believe they’re the same civilization, just much more advanced).
love this videooo just wanted to say, that in Hunter's case, it seems to be most commonly agreed that the cancer was unintentional, and that their iterator was simply already infected. The DLC confirms that Pebbles is very much not the only iterator to develop The Rot, and Hunter was conceived as an idea around the time Spearmaster was sent out. He was a rush job sent to help Moon, and the rush caused it to be infected. Also you mentioned Hunter dying to The Rot contradictory?, but it ain't! If not ascended, Hunter lives on, still part of the cycle. It's just that Rot completely destroys its body, changing the nature of its existence. Its mind 'dies', but the rot-ridden body still stays a part of the cycle :)
9:11 death in Rain world only happens to those around you, from the perspective of every single being, you just wake up after death in a cycle, but if someone else dies during it and you pass on to the next, the one left behind will forever remain as a memory, while to them, they just woke up next to another version of "you" Also I imagine hunter is still alive just in infinite pain and with a loss of consciousness, or very little of it
13:13 interesting thing about this, from, what i understand we are supposed to realize from dreams that our entire family has died lmao, (dream of 3 spirit-like scugs in the background) thats why we kill ourselves, we have nothing left. fun game!
Huh, never saw that view! I always read it as the survivor/monk missing their family, but never even considered it might communicate "your fams dead lil scug". Interesting viewpoint!
I think the dream is more symbolic of your slugcat letting go of his family. He is beginning the process of leaving behind the physical world. That dream shows us that he is no longer looking for a way back to his origins -- he's literally turned away from the spirits that are behind him. He's looking for something else now. That dream is apparently also called the "acceptance" dream, because he has accepted that he won't be reunited with them.
interesting, i took it as us starting to accept we will never see our family again, left with only their memories (so, to us i guess they’d be no different than dead). i mostly think this because the name of the dream is “acceptance”
Rain World has absolutely captivated my life for nearly a year now, and I think I can confidently say it may be my favorite game, period. Its story, its gameplay, its characters, are all absolutely phenomenal, to me at least
“This video for me was sort of an exercise in deeper thinking, I could have gone through and done a normal review of the different mechanics and map changes in the DLC.” I’m still down to see this video as well if you choose to make it. :)
Yeah, the video just go too long for me and I decided to cut/sacrifice stuff. I could've talked a LOT more about the saint but decided to truncate for my own sanity.
So I'm part of the camp that sees The Saint AS the triple affirmative. Baring the noncannon challenge 70, it is the one closest in reference to Iterator. Now I'm not going to say it is Sliver of Straw, no no lol. But i think it was a purposed organism made by them. I also think that it chooses to return back to the cycle over and over, there is a fun little detail that whatever you have in your stomach is carried over between "saves" and that even though you delete the save file it still persists. It is cursed just like the iterators before it, a being of a singular task, with no way to turn the results inward. But rather than lash out against the world, it accepts itself. It returns over and over and over until all have been, will be, can be ascended. Leaving only itself, a living memory, an echo
I always had the idea that Saint was doing something like that, in pure defiance of the way Rain World works, and I think that was very direct with when it attacks that void worm. Void worms I think are probably the closest RW gets to any kind of incarnation of god in it's universe, being creatures that exist to escort the spirits of those who find a way out of the cycle to whatever lies beyond in their void sea, maybe save for those unworthy - some with a fragment of their consciousness too attached to the living world to leave it with the rest of them, some perhaps never even wanting to see that realm but throwing themselves in there anyway out of a desire to see and know all they can and being wholly destroyed due to how the void sea works (likely why artificer just evaporates instead of becoming an echo). And then there's Saint, the one creature who may genuinely be above "god" as it might be defined in RW. The one creature able to cross the rubicon and come back, quite literally, shown most purely when a void worm arrives to perhaps keep it from leaving that point of no return and Saint very directly defies that law of how Rain World works and sends the void worm away, returning in full body and spirit to the living world, to live life fully once more. Fuck if I know why that loops time for him though, I mean I guess if I'm assuming he's more than god at that point assuming he can control time wouldn't be the most out there thing to tack on, lol
"Hi! Please check out the video called 'Set Me Free || Rain World animatic [by 我先简单喵两句]'. It's a fan animation with Rain World and a song from a Chinese group called FulushouFloruitShow. The lyrics are about the reincarnation cycle of Buddhism, something that can be related to the plot of the game, especially with the Saint."
Rainworld draws inspirations from eastern religions, in particular indian poly-theism aswell as bhuddism comes to mind which is why i find that viewing it through the lens of an abrahamic "god" is inherently mis-leading. The game has very little to do with the western understanding of a monotheistic and all-powerful god, outside of the general parallels of spiritualism. Nothing describes the game better than it's own system of karma symbols, mainly the meaning behind them: violence, lust/desire, curiocity/exploration, gluttony and survival. There is no symbol for an abrahamic god.
my brain always goes ??? when the karmas are referred to as anything other than rage, lust, materialism, gluttony and self-preservation cause that’s what I learned but I barely see it around lol
I believe in the theory that Saint is Slivers tripple affirmative. That he somehow stands above the cycle and is programmed to accend everything he sees. He's like an AI gone rogue. And here lies the question... is he too proud? Or is he following what he's purpused to do.
I just finished Saint. Got all pearls, all campaigns and all collectibles before I did. I was really looking forward to killing FP before Artificer and after he read me my 24 hard-fought pearls (scavenger genocide and no passages happened) I felt very differently. I also went outside today and began to duck under roofs and watching for shadows, just to make sure no vulture is descending
Btw if you wanna look more into lore I highly suggest watching "The Complate Rain world timeline | Rain world: Downpour lore" by UraniumEater it is really well done and I found it to be most accurate. Everything is placed well in timeline
3:04 I quite literally did everything this dude said when I first got the game even though I knew it was a rage game. But since I started playing again after the 2 months I didn't, I love the game :3
Everyone characterizes Rivulet as a heroic heart surgeon on cocaine but I’m pretty sure this rat stumbled into an iterator superstructure, stole it’s emergency power supply, took it to it’s favorite person, and accidentally prolonged that person’s suffering. I hear a lot of people giving the Slugcats importance, but I’m pretty sure their actions didn’t change anything. All Spearmaster did was deliver an apology letter, Artificer killed a random scavenger chieftain, or just got sad and then got deleted. Gourmand is legendary, yea, but they opened one gate and then got everyone to avoid the facility. Even if Rivulet had never stolen the rarefaction cell, pebbles was going to fall anyways. Saint’s just having the most hostile recursive dream in the world.
i am becoming so so tired of rain world youtube videos treating ascension as nothing more than suicide 😔i get its funny material for jokes but it just misses.... so much nuance man.... joke about how the ancients were stoners instead, i beg of you
@@jonathansmith2438 Ascension might be an end to the cycle, but it doesn't seem like a total end to me. In the endings, the slugcats seem to retain their minds and even interact with other ascended beings. It's more of an escape than an ending, I think.
@ well, that is one way to view it. Makes me wonder about a theory I once heard, where artificer is the only slugcat that can truly ascend, and the rest didn’t actually ascend but stayed in some limbo sort of state. Rainworld doesn’t exactly give us much to go off of
Your point about Hunter's "admirable choice" is the reason why I don't believe that he was a purposed organism like Spearmaster. I feel like the only one who came to this conclusion, but the Iterators say that he chooses this and that it's noble of him, but it's actually NOT if he DIDN'T choose it and it's the thing he was CREATED to do. If Hunter was engineered from the ground up by NSH, then he's just executing his mission. The Iterators don't consider themselves noble for doing what they were programmed to do, even though solving the Great Problem would benefit every living creature. Hunter can only be noble if he was just a random slugcat (supported by the fact that he's not obviously bioengineered, not super strong or super fast or even super resourceful) who DECIDED to use his limited remaining lifespan to help a faraway godlike being he's never met before.
I like more risky rains but ill watch this as a way to appreciate how well written are your essays Edit: Okay you made me want to play this game (probably because im buddhist) and now you shall live with the knowledge you convinced a random guy in the internet to suffer. Thank you.
I wouldn’t say the desire to ascend is driven by the fear of god, it’s the fear of being stuck. When you die in this game you wake up at the start of the day, kinda like ground hogs day. Which at first sounds kinda awesome, I mean you’re practically immortal. Except, what happens as you age and your body starts to decay? Now imagine you are 100 years old and your in a constant state of fatigue and pain, only to have your suffering end for a brief moment by your natural death, just to wake back up and start the process over again, forever. This is why the people of rain world made these robotic god like entities. To work out a way to ascend and break the cycle. However, even these “gods” suffer the same fate of their creators. They work tirelessly on a seemingly impossible task as their bodies decay and wither. Knowing, that if they don’t find a solution to ascend they will spend the rest of eternity as a pile of rubble unable to move on. Luckily there is a “natural” way to ascend by jumping in the void sea. So why didn’t the people do that instead of making these “gods”. Well, because there’s a chance that you won’t actually ascend but become a ghost like entity called a “echo”. Which is where you aren’t quite living not quite dead and you are stuck roaming the world for eternity.
OOH edit: I NEED YOU TO MAKE A VIDEO ABOUT EVERY SLUGCAT CAMPAIGN WITH THE LORE THEY HAVE (including INV) AND MORE LORE VIDEOS actually, pls edit 2: also check out the video called "The End of Rain World" its really cool and is just a quick (actually tho) sumary of the LORE and then 20 minutes of talkink about the SAINT and its campaign ALSO HOW DID YOU SAY EIGHT SCUGS??? THERES NINE (playable rn, which means not counting the watcher or nightcat) bro really forgot about inv lmao
Have you or anyone heard of the theory that the karma sybols 6-10 are mirrored versions of 1-5 ex: if 5 is survival 10 is accention if 4 is gluttony 9 is moderation so on so on.
I think karma 5 is broader than just "survival & self-preservation", it does cover survival but it's more of an attachment to the self (may also cover identity). if 10 represents ascension, it mirrors all 5 of the natural urges
[[Spoilers for end of game Saint!]] Personally, I think that when the Saint becomes an echo, it is at least a little voluntary. Saint is, deep down, the Triple Affirmative. Despite its animalistic urges and needs, it has reached true ascension- and it must serve the Great Cycle. Saint has Rubicon instead of the Void Sea of the other scugs, the dream hell instead of escape, because Saint cannot ascend. The Great Cycle will not allow it to ascend, and so using the echoes of the gods it has at its disposal, it reminds Saint of this. For Saint has one purpose- to ascend *everything*. Each creature, each plant, each speck of dust and each grain of sand. And so it returns from ascension the only way it can- as an echo. It casts off the ascension and enlightenment it has earned as atonement for seeking out ascension for itself, and it repeats its journey. Saint’s cycle spirals, endless, crossing every single cycle, an infinity greater than another infinity. Saint is the gift to the world- and they can never receive it. They are doomed to continue onwards, endlessly, even worse than the ancients. Because Saint knows what it is. And it knows it can never escape. In lighter terms: scug gender. The only scug who has a confirmed gender is Arti, and even thats really only because of her role as “mother”. Theres no inherent gendering of scugs, which I love. They are just slugcats- and whatever pronoun works fine for them. Not a ton but I just love my lil gender-refusing slug rats 🧡
I didn’t really get it from anywhere. I recorded it myself a WHILE ago and have been using it ever since. And then I just zoom in and cut out the HUD and the hand at the bottom of the frame
I think the transition from searching for your family into trying to ascend within survivor and monk's campaign makes a lot more sense when analyzing player motivation and how it affects the slugcat's motivation.
The game places a large amount of emphasis on immersion, arguably to a fault, and the goals of the slugcat are no different. The slugcat serves as our window into the world, everything we know is what the slugcat knows. The slugcat knows how hungry it is, so we do too, the slugcat knows how long it will be until it rains, so we do too, the slugcat can only backflip once we know how to backflip, so on so forth. In this same way, we know that the slugcat wants to return to its family, so we do as well.
However, this changes as the game goes on. At some point we are not merely searching for the slugcat's family, but trying to learn more about the world. We did not follow an overseer pointing at a robot half way across the world to find our family, we did so because we wanted to know what would happen when we got there. And, following the design philosophy of the game, anything we want necessarily must be what the slugcat wants, because otherwise the slugcat is no longer a rational actor within the world, but a strange, alien puppet that only exists when we do. Therefore, the slugcat follows the overseer to moon because it is curious about what will happen.
This then continues into the journey to pebbles. The player will likely continue to think the goal of the game is to find their family, but this has clearly been put on the back burner. What would appear at first to be some weird side quest has evolved to dominate both the player's and the slugcat's thought process.
Once you actually reach pebbles, this is spelled out for you. Pebbles does not say "you are searching for a way back to your family," he says "you are searching for a way out." To understand this, we must understand what "finding the slugcat's family" means to the slugcat. It essentially represents the "end of the journey" for the slugcat: the slugcat comes into an unfamiliar place, overcomes the obstacles within said place, and returns as a more complete character. In other words, a hero's journey. As for the player, the completion of this arc represents the completion of the game, as it is almost certainly assumed by most players that completing that task would end the game.
The function that pebbles serves is to point out that you are no longer trying to find the slugcat's family. You didn't climb above the clouds through a massive supercomputer to find your family- you did it to see what would happen. So, pebbles works with the idea that you are obviously no longer trying to find your family, but trying to explore and learn more about the world, with the end goal of somehow completing the game. So, pebbles gives you a new goal: enter the void sea and break the cycle.
This makes a lot of sense for the player, but less sense for the slugcat. Why would it want to do this? Well, as already established, the player's motivation is the slugcat's motivation, and by this point, the player is most likely not very fond of the ecosystem. Especially after trudging through unfortunate development, it is reasonable to say that the slugcat and player just sort of want shit to be over, and are willing to compromise for it over a goal that is likely dawning on both to be potentially impossible.
And so, both the player and the slugcat want to ascend, so they do.
Narratively, this can be seen as a subversion of the hero's journey into a pilgrimage. The player is meant to feel as though the narrative has dramatically changed because it did.
This is pretty scatter brained and not connected very well at all, but it's the best I can do in 15 minutes in my phone so it's what ya'll are gonna get :)
this is an awesome comment! in a meta way, the slugcats desire to ascend can be juxtaposed to the players desire to complete the game :3
This is the most astounding summary of the rain world story i read, good job
Yayaya! The "Acceptance" dream supports this I think!
W comment
Amazing analysis
I think the saint was too caring of the world, and couldn’t leave it behind, becoming like a caretaker to the world at the end.
my personal headcanon for the saint is that theyre more like a Bodhisattva. They dont ascend not because they cannot, but because they dont want to leave until everything else has already ascended.
It goes back until its the last one left to go.
I completely agree. The Saint really is Bodhisattva and not a devil. This is more then your headcanon...this is literally what Saint does.
the hunter is never considered to canonically die. the permadeath after cycle 20 is not actually death, its the hunter's body getting weak enough to get consumed by the now fully developed rot. this means the hunter is always just barely alive to see his own body overgrown with rot destroy the ecosystem, and probably feel constant pain.
Don't worry, the constant pain isn't new, they were feeling it most likely long before we gain control over the situation, maybe even from the moment they were made.
I assume they wake up every cycle’s end and then immediately die due to pain, organ failure, etc. it’s also why Gourmand finds them in the same place the player died in. Constantly dying doesn’t do much for your karma level, plus I doubt the rot is intelligent enough to go to and sit still in a karma gate long enough for it to close.
We really don't know for sure that that's the case. Also it spawns a karma flower when hunter permadies, which is what happens when you die normally as survivor.
I would also like to mention that hunter having the rot at all is purely a downpour thing. In the base game there's no evidence. The crosses on hunters body really just look like scars if you go over the images in aggregate.
@@elliotlea5457 karma flowers are only spawned on death for survivor if they had a karma shield on death. Monk, however, does have a karma flower spawn on death.
this interpretation can be taken from DP, but base game presents hunters illness as much more ambiguous. personally i find the latter more tasteful when it comes to hunter analysis, and I'd argue they do experience a true death
I'm pretty sure Saint is supposed to be a Bodhisattva, as one of the best translations for that word it literally just "Buddhist Saint". Basically they become enlightened but voluntarily remain within the cycle to help liberate other beings. I think that's what's happening at the end between him and the void worm. He's not being rejected by the worm, he's getting it to leave him alone so it won't drag him to the bottom of the void sea. That way he can go back to physical reality and help more iterators.
I KNEW IT, my theory was right in a way.
Saint is way too connected with life and helping, to the point he rejects Ascension and becomes an echo. Tho what also happens is that a copy of him returns back to where he begins and keeps repeating, like an endless *cycle* yes i said the word, honestly saint’s campaign feels like a loop within the cycle themselves, talks to all the echoes, decides ascends 5 pebbles and moon(or not) goes to rubicon to talk to them then rejects the worm and REPEAT. I hope that the new scug where getting (which is know as the watcher for now) is either the echo version of saint or someone before/after saint. Tho so far he seems to be an echo of some sort bc of his shade of blue and the little golden particles that appear in his art card with also a tone of blue to it.
@@stormbreaker504 I think Saint technically qualifies as an echo for sure, but doesn't function quite like the other ones. He's not trapped in one place, and he doesn't reject ascension, he's already ascended. That's why he can get those crazy mind powers. I'm pretty sure ascension and enlightenment are the same thing. He just did it the old fashioned way through meditating instead of using void fluid. I'm also pretty sure Pebbles and Moon stay ascended when he goes back. And who knows how many other iterators he's ascended before he got to their facility. Based on the opening cutscene he's clearly done the whole 'come back from the astral plane' thing before. Though if he is a Bodhisattva, then he isn't really stuck. He could choose to leave the cycle but just doesn't.
I personally subscribe to the theory that Saint cared too much for others, wanting to help guide others to a place they, themselves could never achieve. This is why they always start on the second Karma and why they don't eat living being, they love too much.
I was in class not too long ago and we were learning about all the religions in the world and we got to Hinduism. This was the very peak of my rain world obsession and I was actually wigging out because my teacher just kept saying things and I kept going “like from rain world. I have reached peak brain rot.
Nah bro, you just ascending
Home boy gonna get the true hunter experience Fr💀
BRAIN ROT? ROT? RAINWORLD REFERENCE?
The fact that “Rain World brainrot” counts as Rain World brainrot because it contains the word rot
THE CYCLE.
Rainrot is real
My favotite headcannn about Rain World world is to explain what's the meaning of the saint campaign. Now, its origins i have no idea, what i liked to theorize is the ending, because it was extremely confusing, what i think it happened is that the saint became an echo for trying to UNASCEND, the saint was able to go past the void sea to see the secrets of... whatever the hell, where every ascended thing resides, and then it tried to leave, after all, the saint swam upwards instead of downwards and i believe it tried to kill the void worm because the void worm would've pulled it back, but the saint was met by reality: once you ascend there is no going back, i mean the region is literally called "Rubicon"! There are also some details i like to mix with this headcanon:
1-The phrase that is in one of the pearls: "Swim with the current or against it"
2-The symbol that represents the monk is a circle, which in some way represents "yourself", when the saint's karma turned into an empty circle, it was actually the representation of egoism, of "nothing but yourself"
3-This is by far my favorite: mixing in the other headcanon which says that creatures fulfill their greatest desires before ascending, since in survival's acension it finds the slugtree, monk finds survivor, artificer sees her children one last time etc. Saint doesn't get that of course, the focus for now is Pebbles and Moon, if you ascend them, they appear on Rubicon, and they say something interesting, they're experiencing knowing the triple affirmative! and how they would probably never figure it out! And after that, they dissapear, which re-enforces the headcanon that you experience your greatest desires before ascending.
This is my headcanon for saint.
Just thought I'd point out that that phrase wasn't in a pearl, but from the echo in Silent Construct.
"Our presence has been revealed to you now, young one.
The attunement has become... much nearer.
Like a ripple distorted upon a moonlit reflection.
Repetitous, seemingly endless strife.
An unimaginable curse.
Swim with the tide or against it."
Neat headcanon!
The Monk's campaign isn't accidental. He chooses to jump in after his older sibling and track him down. This is reflected in all storytelling aspects of Monk's journey (opening cutscene, dream visions, and both versions of his ending).
Hm If you think about it that way, this could explain why the Monk's journey is easier.
He's travelling through areas that Survivor has already pushed through and wiped out the threats from.
This would imply, canonically, Survivor is a fucking badass and after he passed through a region, creatures learned to think twice about messing with slugcats.
monk is a fucking g i aint even gonna hold you
@@DJFlare84 The game may enforce a fear of god but it also enforces a fear of *S C U G*
@@DJFlare84honestly I think that’s not quite the case. The language in the Devs comments about hunter are that their journey is harder because of their karmic imbalance due to being a predator in the body of a species of insectivores (notice batFLIES, and you can eat any size of centipede as any slugcats, even red ones), and monks is easier due to their being in harmony with the world. They are more attached to the world, because they’re pursuing their brother, but they are less interested in ever hunting and need less food. They literally just have such good vibes that the wildlife around them forgives them faster and wants to hurt them less, if you look at the reputation system in the dev tools.
I love everything about rain world except playing it
Try console commands, yeah it'd cheating, but it's much more relaxed and enjoyable for the FilthyCasual 😆
That’s so real
@@CLCasualcoward
I love everything about rain world
@@Ggfdjs agreed
My TL;DR:
*"See how the serfs work the ground."*
*"See how they fall."*
Tally Hall referenced (thanks, Merlin's artbook)
9:12 Basically hunters "death" is because hunter is being changed from slugcat to a crawly mass of turbo cancer, which is being altered whilst a normal death like by a lizard or falling off a high cliff has their body destroyed or harmed to the point of not coming back
Also the reason hunter has the death clock at all was because in being created their was a malfunction
I personally think the saint isnt unable to ascend, I think he simply choses not to. Everytime he restarts his campaign, he still decides what he does, and he decides to ascend the void worm (which isnt mentiones in the video but doesnt matter that much for this vide anyways), which is presumably what forces him to repeat the cycle. With all the other echoes, we have no idea if they still experience cycles, since they dont exactly die, but despite turning into an echo, saint keeps on cycling, keeps on dying, every cycle having just as much capability to change his ways than the one before. If he wants out, he can just not ascend the void worm, but I dont think he wants out. I think he wants to keep ascending as many creatures as he can, release as many souls as he can and once hes done in a morbillion years, he simply swims, leaves the void worm alone, and joins the rest of the world he helped ascend.
I just think its a really nice ending to rainworlds story and dont see why it cant be the case.
Its not very relates to the video, sorry, I just wanted to share this perspective i have on saint after finally beating rainworld (and downpour) recently.
Great video though, loved it!
Okay. I think this video approaches rain world in a kind of surface level way. Applying the concept of godhood to iterators wholeheartedly feels... pretty redundant, they're supercomputers designed to find a method of ascending the entire world, and godhood is only ever alluded to in comparison to MICROBES, as shown in the very evidence you present. we could very easily apply that to ourselves, we are god-like in comparison to ants, but that does not make us actual gods!
If you read his dialogue, Five Pebbles acts as a guide, and does not demand anything of you, only suggesting a direction, and giving you the means of taking that path if willing. One thing he does is make the claim that you, as all living creatures, experience some discomfort from the cycles. This is much more than just an assumption, because Moon verifies the same thing in the light blue outskirts pearl, and I mean- you're even able to physically bring her a karma flower to read, as evidence that these cycles exist and can be directly experienced. Everything he says is verifiable information. He's not a god, just a guy trying his best in the situation he's been thrust in by his creators.
I simply don't understand how you came back from Rain World with this reading while constructing an entire video essay surrounding it. If you google it, there's a wiki online containing all of the pearl dialogue, echo dialogue and iterator dialogue out there. It's literally all right there. I mean this as respectfully as I can, but it feels like you're describing a different game here
Not only that, but interpreting ascension as suicide, nothing more and nothing less, is also a pretty redundant way of examining it. it is inherently ambiguous, a leap into the unknown. It is also pretty ironic to cite the games Buddhist elements regarding spirituality, and then turn around and claim that the very core of the games spirituality is suicidal. These are ideas that have been perpetrated for a very long time, yet there isn't really any evidence for it within the actual text of the game.
Regardless of what ascension truly is, LTTM, and her and FP's creators refer to ascension as a continuation of existence rather than a cessation of it. They didn't want to die, they wanted to ascend to the a higher spiritual plane of existence, a much more transhumanist than suicidal outlook.
Same can be likened to survivor and monk in their campaigns. over the length of their experiences, they see glimpses of another side to a world that hint to something much greater than them. Meeting and listening to your first echo, seeing voidspawn for the first time, eating karma flowers, we, and in extension the slugcat we play as, are able to garner that there is greater meaning to these interactions. It all comes together upon meeting Five Pebbles, and gaining the mark of communication, the moment you go from an unknowing little beast, to being able to comprehend language, and the meaning of the world around you. Ascension can be interpreted as the natural conclusion to that journey, giving up company of others in search for true self-fulfillment, and the answers to your own existence. The way I like to see it, only through letting go, are monk and survivor able to truly find each other, and themselves.
There is so much more i could get into but im gonna leave it at that, i really, really highly recommend you check out the wiki. It contains all of the pearl dialogue, echo dialogue and iterator dialogue out there and its a great read, you just have to know how to dig a little deeper in order to get the full understanding of it.
I don't apply godhood to the iterators wholeheartedly. But there certainly is a tier system of power that I want to illustrate of things being "godlike" to each other. And I say this at the end. If applying the concept of godhood to the iterators is redundant, then tell that to the game. The echo Distant Towers upon Cracked Earth directly says "I placed my faith into the hands of random gods" in reference to the iterators. Five Pebbles describes you as meddling in "the affairs of passing gods." If something is godlike compared to you, then it is effectively a god to you. That is what that means and what I wanted to illustrate. They are not God (capital G) but relative to you, they are gods (lowercase g).
Also, I acknowledge that I'm taking something inspired by Buddhism and putting it through a largely Abrahamic lens. I just thought it was a neat thing to do and let me look at the world in a way that I otherwise wouldn't.
My argument against ascension and viewing it as "suicide" is both the result of the lens I put on it, and dialogue from Rhinestones beneath Shattered Glass that always stuck with me: "Why did they always search for an escape, as if we were imprisoned? What offering from the void could usurp the gift of life already given? This moment, right here! It is where we are meant to be."
Saying that death in this game is ambiguous or a leap into the unknown and that makes their motivation not suicidal also applies to real life. Even if you are suicidal in search of an afterlife, killing yourself in this world is still suicide. Many people have killed themselves to reach the promised land. It's still killing yourself. The beings in Rain World don't have the benefit that we do of knowing for certain that there are things on the other side. They might have faith, but they have no real proof.
You are physically not able to ascend in this game without the aid of greater beings: be that Five Pebbles raising your Karma level or visiting all of the echoes to do the same thing. They are beings with power over your transcendence and do push you towards it. In my view, this is them altering your motivations/way of going about life through respect, reverence, or fear. Again, they are not God (capital G) but relative to you, they are gods (lowercase g).
Yeah, I looked at the game in a different angle and took liberties with slugcat motivations and stuff like that to find conclusions that definitely aren't intended or accurate. Like I said, this video was an exercise in deeper thinking. More about the practice of looking at something differently and drawing something new from it. :)
Hello, Mr. Rainworld.
@@SweetsIsOnline Okay, wall of text counter-argument jumpscare in-bound, but I'll try to offer an alternative perspective on this.
Firstly, I don't think anyone is arguing that suicide and killing yourself are two distinctly different things, I don't know where that came from.
"The beings in Rain World don't have the benefit that we do of knowing for certain that there are things on the other side."
Huh? I'm pretty sure quite literally the opposite is true? In the real world we do not have any certainty about what lies after death, though this depends on your belief, of course. But in Rain World they at least had genuinely provable physics and metaphysics despite the ambiguity. Such as, for example, the fact the void sea exists, or that you can die under the influence of a karma flower, find that karma flower growing from the spot of your death, and even give it to Moon, who will tell you what it is, thus proving its existence, thus proving tangibility to the "death" you experienced.
On the flip side, however, you are correct in the sense they didn't know for certain what lie on the other side, just what they sought out of it. What I believe you missed, however, is how many tangible things they had surrounding it, like I just mentioned.
This is a world where stuff like death, rebirth, and concepts of an existence entirely beyond and distinctly separate from that are a very tangible thing, very different from our own world, and we are given a lens of what it would look like for these various creatures and characters to respond to that. View the world through its own perspective, rather than our own. This is an unsaid "rule" in just about all of fiction, even, and especially, the kind that reflect our own in some ways. Sometimes juxtaposition is necessary.
There are undeniable death/birth iconography surrounding ascension, but I don't think it's entirely genuine nor considerate of all the possible nuance surrounding it to just bluntly assert it as nothing but suicide/total erasure simply put.
Keeping that in mind, in such a context where these things are tangible things influencing the minds of many, it becomes a lot more understandable why one would ascend. Namely, after someone has lived a long-fulfilled life of who knows how long, possibly hundreds or even thousands of years, and seeks out some kind of closure, or even stimulation beyond comprehension. It's never exactly made out to be this urgent escape pod solution you seek out the nanosecond you hear about it, there's a lot more implicit patience surrounding it here.
Top that off with the karma flower dialogue (the very plant where the symbol of enlightenment/ascension was derived from), and how memory/moment/qualia focused the ancients were, and you'd begin to understand the generalized goal of the populace wasn't necessarily total erasure simply put, but rather to become closer to the mind without the physical, cyclical constraints of the physical body, after having (presumably) already endured a fulfilled lifespan over a period of time. It's much closer to various retro sci-fi transhumanism concepts more than it is to suicide. Or even pre-sectarian concepts in Buddhism, where Nirvana is more of a transcendental consciousness more than a total end state.
Thus quoteth Looks To The Moon: I hope this satisfied your curiosity, little creature?
Or at least, I hope this gave a different perspective to consider in some way. I kinda refrained from including much in terms of in-game dialogue since the comment was already getting long, though hopefully it's at least somewhat clear what I'm referring back to.
@@SweetsIsOnline I appreciate the response! lemme get into my thoughts
Regarding rhinestones, I personally enjoy their outlook and perspective, but they're also a little misguided. They're in love with the world, yet they're so in love that they're blind to understanding why anyone would want to move on. Their society pursued ascension out of very spiritual, transhumanistic ideals, and yet they can't even recognize it in their monologue, and frame it as if they simply needed to love life more lol. Yet, we pretty much already know that they did! Take the deep magenta shaded citadel pearl for example, the pearl is all about the most treasured and prized memories and experiences of an ancient who chose to ascend (all 621 of them). It's literally a pearl about how some random ancient enjoyed his life, and lived it to its fullest before choosing to ascend. Outside of that, we know they had enriching culture and art, and encouraged debates.
As for the ascension bit, a leap into the unknown isn't inherently suicidal. Void fluid isn't some corrosive acid that kills you instantly, its a sea you swim into and don't come out of. We even see lots of plant life growing right below the surface of the void sea! It's their energy source too, one that's transported in pipes and whatnot. What I'm trying to say is, I'm not trying to argue that killing yourself isn't suicide, but like, that ascension just *isn't* killing yourself, its truly ambiguous and you don't know what happens. It's kiiind of like saying a great explorer is suicidal for exploring some deep cave where no one has gone before, extreme example but hopefully you get what I mean.
Also, I don't think its really fair to equate it to our world, when our world doesn't experience the cycles like Rain World does. The nature of life and death is very very different in Rain World. And we DO have proof that the cycles exist, thanks to the karma flower, which is the only thing in game to remember the cycles upon which you've died, and is something you can tangibly hand to Moon, and have her tell you stuff about it. Understanding of the cycles is also described as a universal feeling, a discomfort that all living things share, but may not be able to equally comprehend. They knew the cycles existed, and sought for a way out of that. However, death is a part of the cycles just as much as life is! The Ancient's pursuit of ascension was to move on beyond each of them, onto something higher. This isn't the case of some religious group just having faith like the ones we have on earth, because for the Ancients, they had proof that the cycles were real, and they, like all living things directly experienced them themselves.
As for the actual "gods" part, if I'm gonna be real, the echo Distant Towers upon Cracked Earth's dialogue is just a nice reference to the song that plays in the few rooms before you meet Five Pebbles, rather than something with any very real bearing on lore. Drawing symbolism from it is fine I suppose, but the echoes don't really push you towards anything at all. They each have their own perspectives, and all they really do is vibe and reflect on their own experiences in your presence, really just giving you as the player some nice individual perspective as to the relationship between the ancients and ascension. Like with eighteen amber beads, who literally remarks on having "grasped at the boundless infinites of the cosmic void." They're just pondering stuff in your presence, the exterior echo is a little jubilant about your newfound enlightenment with having gained the mark of communication but that's about it, they don't even guide you like FP does.
At the end of the day, you're entitled to whatever you do, just hoping to help explain some of the lore side of things, because within the rain world youtube sphere, even in lore summary videos, it's pretty neglected unfortunately :( so that's where I'm coming from, trying to help out
why are all these comments so long 😭
Honestly if this just became a Rain World channel I would be all for it. Great video!
"While they may be _your_ god, but they are not their own."
Are we just gonna ignore the fact that he was recording on his roof
While i really appreciate the passion you seem to have for this game to experiment with your own conclusions correct or not, i did notice some root problems that seem to twist a lot of elements in your theories, nothing special tho, i dont think a single rw story/themes youtube video has actually consulted half of the facts the game has to offer, or just asked people who have been reading this stuff for years so they can present it in a more digestible way (except one video), if you are a big creator is sort of your responsability to not snowball this stuff so much more than it already, maybe you should try to look at the elements with diferent lenses to see what topics the game wants to focus on the most, some things i really think you should read more about:
1. Spearmaster and Hunter are not purposed organisms, purposed organisms are way less animal like and are basically organs and tubes in boxes that do a thing, think about how you look at your computer and dont see it as an animal, its just a tool, a senseless device. However these fleshy things started to "come out of their boxes" when abandoned and evolved into all the creatures we see in game. Hunter and Spearmaster are some "step in between" sort of thing, a modified creature of sorts which has been given orders, but isnt a purposed organism by definition since it has considerably more freedom in every regard than random flesh and nerves forever stuck in boxes or forced to walk between tubes forever. The purposed organisms we can see in game still operational are the overseers and the iterators, with all their inner components being organisms of their own that barely resemble animals.
2. Iterators arent designed to make organisms, nobody really can nowdays, that was more of a thing their creators did, they however can make some unconventional attempts that dont go so well, as no significant harrasment says "excuse the unorthodox delivery method" making creatures isnt normalized, its very rare and by hunter's condition we also know is not very reliable, iterators do a loooot of things but making their own creatures isnt one of their main functions
3. Hunter story is realy complex, we absolutely dont know about its origin, how he fell in NSH hands or what relations he even has with it, the ending is very ominous and seems to represent hunter getting healed by NSH by the slow dissapearence of the veins on its skins as its embraced by NSH, Hunter truly has a will of its own and has never been implied he is being forced to do this, in fact you can just not do the neuron quest and ascend yourself to get the ending, which spearmaster really cant even do since the ending isnt really void sea related.
4. You and many others severely seem to simplify the void sea or other methods of ascending as "dying" which is probably the most raw simplification of a game concept that just completely twists the game themes, pebbles gives monk and survivor exactly what they want, even if we as players dont understand it exactly aside from the in game representation of getting frustrated at dying many times, the rules of this unniverse imply ascention is something seeked by all living creatures because the cycle will eventually exhaust even the most resiliant of lifeforms with very few outliers who still have reasons to enjoy their permanence within the cycle, The void sea is not the bad ending in any way, in fact when you arrive home your family isnt there anyways so you arent missing on anything, monk and survivor seem to reunite in the beyond which is portrayed in a beautiful way from an art prespective so i dont understad the hyperfixation of "reject the cycle, bad ending" a lot of people seems to have. Pebbles isnt changing your objective of finding your family because he is a god and you are scared of him, in fact he makes it very clear he himself is in a terrible state and his self praise as a god comes from an almost satirical sentence he is well aware of, when he helps you ascend, which is something you or any other lifeform couldnt do by default, he is giving you a new choice you never had, which eventually convinces the player to give up on an impossible task such as finding your lost family and instead embrace a way better fate by ascending away from the cycle and all its endless frustration, in fact this can even be seen as solace, our protagonist having suffered enough of the cycle and choosing a way out after facing reality, or monk even knowing (feeling) its sibling must be waiting at the other side.
5. The arc of this game is definetly NOT to depart from iterator control, IF we talk exclusively vanilla it barely really puts the emphasis on them and they are just a bigger play in the world you are almost insignificant to, and downpour even gives them more protagonisms as main characters giving them the center focus on 3 of their campaigns. A lot of the focus of the concepts in this game follow budhist themes and i assume is the fact that people arent really familiar with budhism to begin with what makes them never see the most obvious answers and themes the game tries to touch on.
6. the ancients (better named "benefactors", since the ancients were an old race that came so much before everyone else what little remains of them is half eaten by the void) didnt all just vanish one day, multiple pearls mention the "ever shrinking population", they wanted to finally end the entire world and the cycle but after what must have been ages they slowly gaave up and more decided to jump into a vat of void fluid and hope the iterators find a way to end the cycle for everyone on their own after they long departed.
7. About SOS and FP relationship, pebbles didnt want to straight, again, ascending is way more complex than that, otherwise getting the rot would be a viable way to do so and he doesnt seem so happy about it, what pebbles did was give up on finding a solution to the great problem and instead chose to find a way to ascend himself alone since that was in scope a way more manageable project to investigate, and with the limitations embedded into his genome he couldnt experiment the way he wanted so SRS helped him with a "suposed idea" that could work, which lead to all the rot and LTTM fiasco. Also finding the solution wouldnt free iterators from their task so they can like, idk do whatever, the solution itself ends the world and the cycle including the iterators, is the only way the can think of self ascention and why is an incentive for everyone, this is where pebbles branched ways and started to think of a diferent objective for himself.
Moon quite literally says "You are certainly a purposed organism yourself!" While reading the bright magenta pearl to Spearmaster...
Pebbles' reading of the colored pearl from shaded also implies that miros birds are purposed organisms. "the crypts are guarded by extremely durable and aggressive purposed organisms."
And if we go into a tiny bit of assuming, NSH raised Hunter, in whatever way you want to interpret the word. If we assume that in a broadcast between SRS and NSH they talk about Hunter.
"SRS: Do you suppose you'll ever raise another messenger? NSH: If the need arises, I certainly would." "NSH: I'm tempted to start work on raising another messenger as a last ditch effort,"
@Gayori_boi Moon says you are a descendant from purposed organisms, not a purposed organism on itself, she makes it very clear that purposed organisms resembled boxes where something goes in and something goes out, or extremely simplistic tube shaped creatures, only when creatures started leaving their boxes (or evolving with them) we got to the current state of things
And downpour has like 200 inconsistencies with vanilla so when it actively contradicts itself i will refeer to the original concept, miros being purposed organisms contradicts 2 other sources of information so i stick with the original rain world authors vision rather than the modded one.
Miros birds being intentionally made that way is such an idiotic theory by the msc team, the crypts were cherished by people because it contained qualia and memories of long past individuals, how the fuck are you gonma access them if you have wild animal looking creatures just ruining everything, also security has never been a concern for the benefactors, literally we never see or hear anything in game regarding them caring at all about what comes after their departure, also miros are found in subterranean as well where there is nothing to protect, so you tell me how this theory can even stand on its own (ignoring the straight up contradiction with moon pearl readings).
Every other purposed organism is simple, precise, controlable and act more as actual machines without any humanity or life of its own than creatures whatsoever, but sudenly miros are extremely inefficient and violent animals for some reason, protecting something whi h should be easily accesible for anyone.
I mean, the first part of the magenta pearl states that a purposed organism is a "small slug to clean the insides of pipes," which would have to not be one of those organs and tubes within a box. Her very next sentence, "Actually you are talking to one right now!" shows that she is in fact a purposed organism, and is far more advanced than simply a bunch of organs and tubes in boxes.
The part where she mentions what you think all purposed organisms are, she specifically mentions the word "most". "Most purposed organisms were considerably smaller than me, and most barely looked like organisms at all. More like tubes in metal boxes, where something went in one end and something else came out the other." This would of course mean that while majority of purposed organisms were simple like that, it is not confirmation that all are like that.
And finally, her next few lines after that. "There were of course those that were purposed for spectacle rather than industry - they enjoyed the privilege of glass boxes." This of course doesn't necessarily mean anything in one way or another, but I find it doubtful that the purposed organisms made for spectacle were just organs and tubes like any other. There would likely be at least some bizarre and more extreme changes, if not making them more animal-like. At the end of the day we can only speculate what sorts of things would be displayed.
All of this was copied directly from the shoreline pearl
@@jevmenyt3422
Vanilla bright magenta pearl says "Most purposed organisms were considerably smaller than me, and most barely looked like organisms at all." The key word being "most". It never outright excluded the possibility of something looking like a more regular animal to be a purposed organism, just that most weren't.
Skimmed through the vanilla pearl readings and one of possible blank pearl ones is "This is a growing instruction for the skeleton of a creature, but I don't recognize the creature. It was small, about your size." Which could be another purposed organism that would look like an animal, since that's my first thought of why they'd be growing creature skeletons.
@xanthemothcat iterators are a bunch of boxes and tubes, did you not see what five pebbles is? iterators arent their puppet, thats an interface, five pebbles is made of what the game calls coral, a reef of cables, simplified spiders, etc
The slug does not cotradict my theory, most of them were boxes and tubes, a slug is still a simple tube organism, same as overseers, centipedes and garbage worms who more closely resemble their original form and i said so in my comment.
The glass boxes literally means some were pretty enough to be beholded, which implies most were beyond unhuman and unremarcable to look at, in fact we can see one of those "glass boxes" in game, the memory crypts are full of cabinet beasts, a bulk of organc matter stored in adorned cages to be cherished
The only purposed organisms we see in game meet these definitions, the iterators are an assortment of collective pieces to be the most refined purposed organism ever, overseers are tiny worm eyes with very simple minds, and cabinet beasts are just sitting storage containers with live qualia to be remembered. Most of the things we see in the background could very well be purposed organisms, shelters, gates, random machines in walls...
I love the 2 seconds of cruelty squad music :3 ( 0:42 )
The only issue with this video is that there IS no more, dude i am really addicted to your content, is the BEST that i watched in the month
The world of rainworld is cyclical, it would make more sense if they believed there was no beggining and no creator. A god in such a world is anyone who can stand against a cycle. Someone who can escape (assend) or make something that isnt cyclical like a purposed organism. 9:10 hunter is a purposed organism not of the world, but of a god who can stand against it. Thus can die.
10:07 destiny isnt tragic. Fate can be tragic. But destiny is glorious.
Fate is all that has been set in motion that you cannot change.
Destiny is what you make of yourself.
You cant be whatever you want, thats a blatantly false dogma of our era.
But you can your own saviour.
Fate has happened to you, and while your destiny is not something you can really choose either, you can choose to embrace it or run from it. It is heroic to seize your destiny and cowardly to run from it.
We all have a different destiny and it is up t us to discover it and achieve it.
Fun fact, in the game files, the iterators puppets (the humanoid characters that 'talk' to us) are referred to as Oracles.
9:42 I don’t think he was forced I think he was told to and just does, he could decide to not but he does anyway
You’re able to regurgitate something you swallowed before ascending in your next Saint campaign, which implies that it repeats. So I think that what happens is that there’s one Saint and multiple timelines, so they have to enter the void sea to move on to the next universe to ascend the iterators, leaving behind an echo copy. Also, the Ancients are the civilization that built the depths, but there’s no concrete proof they were also the ones who made the karma art and built the iterators, so the civilization that did those things is usually referred to as the Benefactors (though I personally believe they’re the same civilization, just much more advanced).
love this videooo just wanted to say, that in Hunter's case, it seems to be most commonly agreed that the cancer was unintentional, and that their iterator was simply already infected. The DLC confirms that Pebbles is very much not the only iterator to develop The Rot, and Hunter was conceived as an idea around the time Spearmaster was sent out. He was a rush job sent to help Moon, and the rush caused it to be infected.
Also you mentioned Hunter dying to The Rot contradictory?, but it ain't! If not ascended, Hunter lives on, still part of the cycle. It's just that Rot completely destroys its body, changing the nature of its existence. Its mind 'dies', but the rot-ridden body still stays a part of the cycle :)
9:11 death in Rain world only happens to those around you, from the perspective of every single being, you just wake up after death in a cycle, but if someone else dies during it and you pass on to the next, the one left behind will forever remain as a memory, while to them, they just woke up next to another version of "you"
Also I imagine hunter is still alive just in infinite pain and with a loss of consciousness, or very little of it
13:13 interesting thing about this, from, what i understand we are supposed to realize from dreams that our entire family has died lmao, (dream of 3 spirit-like scugs in the background) thats why we kill ourselves, we have nothing left.
fun game!
Huh, never saw that view! I always read it as the survivor/monk missing their family, but never even considered it might communicate "your fams dead lil scug". Interesting viewpoint!
I think the dream is more symbolic of your slugcat letting go of his family. He is beginning the process of leaving behind the physical world. That dream shows us that he is no longer looking for a way back to his origins -- he's literally turned away from the spirits that are behind him. He's looking for something else now. That dream is apparently also called the "acceptance" dream, because he has accepted that he won't be reunited with them.
interesting, i took it as us starting to accept we will never see our family again, left with only their memories (so, to us i guess they’d be no different than dead). i mostly think this because the name of the dream is “acceptance”
Rain World has absolutely captivated my life for nearly a year now, and I think I can confidently say it may be my favorite game, period.
Its story, its gameplay, its characters, are all absolutely phenomenal, to me at least
Yet another video to go to my "after I beat rain world" playlist
13:40 you know that like every creature in rain world wants to die, right?
3:29 This line is incredible, absolutely love your writing!
The way my head snapped away from what I was doing when you began quoting Ozymandias
“This video for me was sort of an exercise in deeper thinking, I could have gone through and done a normal review of the different mechanics and map changes in the DLC.”
I’m still down to see this video as well if you choose to make it. :)
I have recently been obsessed with binging rain world stuff because this game is the best I've ever played. So simple yet complex wonderful amazing
13:52 Ruffles Mentioned!!
Neat video, tho it’s about Rain World so i’ll always love it
Love me my rain world essay! Suprised you did not talk a lot about the saint afterlife, with both bots in the same room.
Yeah, the video just go too long for me and I decided to cut/sacrifice stuff. I could've talked a LOT more about the saint but decided to truncate for my own sanity.
I love your editing and how you present yourself so much. please don't slip on a banana peel and die
i never noticed how there isn't any *real* god in rainworld, which is super weird thinking about it considering theres a sort of "heaven" - the void
Nice to see you going through your Rain World phase. Truly one of the games of all times.
2:50 Artificer, Hunter, and Spear Master: "Am I a joke to you?"
So I'm part of the camp that sees The Saint AS the triple affirmative. Baring the noncannon challenge 70, it is the one closest in reference to Iterator. Now I'm not going to say it is Sliver of Straw, no no lol. But i think it was a purposed organism made by them.
I also think that it chooses to return back to the cycle over and over, there is a fun little detail that whatever you have in your stomach is carried over between "saves" and that even though you delete the save file it still persists.
It is cursed just like the iterators before it, a being of a singular task, with no way to turn the results inward. But rather than lash out against the world, it accepts itself. It returns over and over and over until all have been, will be, can be ascended. Leaving only itself, a living memory, an echo
I always had the idea that Saint was doing something like that, in pure defiance of the way Rain World works, and I think that was very direct with when it attacks that void worm. Void worms I think are probably the closest RW gets to any kind of incarnation of god in it's universe, being creatures that exist to escort the spirits of those who find a way out of the cycle to whatever lies beyond in their void sea, maybe save for those unworthy - some with a fragment of their consciousness too attached to the living world to leave it with the rest of them, some perhaps never even wanting to see that realm but throwing themselves in there anyway out of a desire to see and know all they can and being wholly destroyed due to how the void sea works (likely why artificer just evaporates instead of becoming an echo).
And then there's Saint, the one creature who may genuinely be above "god" as it might be defined in RW. The one creature able to cross the rubicon and come back, quite literally, shown most purely when a void worm arrives to perhaps keep it from leaving that point of no return and Saint very directly defies that law of how Rain World works and sends the void worm away, returning in full body and spirit to the living world, to live life fully once more.
Fuck if I know why that loops time for him though, I mean I guess if I'm assuming he's more than god at that point assuming he can control time wouldn't be the most out there thing to tack on, lol
23:04 That line goes hard
seeing a new sweetisonline rain world upload is like having a reverse lobotomy. we are LOCKED IN.
I second this other man who shares my name but has one extra word!!!
"Hi! Please check out the video called 'Set Me Free || Rain World animatic [by 我先简单喵两句]'. It's a fan animation with Rain World and a song from a Chinese group called FulushouFloruitShow. The lyrics are about the reincarnation cycle of Buddhism, something that can be related to the plot of the game, especially with the Saint."
Rainworld draws inspirations from eastern religions, in particular indian poly-theism aswell as bhuddism comes to mind which is why i find that viewing it through the lens of an abrahamic "god" is inherently mis-leading. The game has very little to do with the western understanding of a monotheistic and all-powerful god, outside of the general parallels of spiritualism. Nothing describes the game better than it's own system of karma symbols, mainly the meaning behind them: violence, lust/desire, curiocity/exploration, gluttony and survival. There is no symbol for an abrahamic god.
6:06 the French revaluationist slug cat
my brain always goes ??? when the karmas are referred to as anything other than rage, lust, materialism, gluttony and self-preservation cause that’s what I learned but I barely see it around lol
I don’t know why but the clips of him filming on a log and a rooftop made me laugh
7:00 the lust image making me feel romantical
sweets back at it again
23:03 MAHABRE STREETS FUNGER MENTIONED (or hinted at)
bros so underrated his content is so high quality ;-;
That hard G sound really takes it from "God" to "Gawd"
He's hooked! Love this new video!
I believe in the theory that Saint is Slivers tripple affirmative. That he somehow stands above the cycle and is programmed to accend everything he sees. He's like an AI gone rogue. And here lies the question... is he too proud? Or is he following what he's purpused to do.
Sweets yet again dropping peak. Classic Sweets
I just finished Saint. Got all pearls, all campaigns and all collectibles before I did. I was really looking forward to killing FP before Artificer and after he read me my 24 hard-fought pearls (scavenger genocide and no passages happened) I felt very differently.
I also went outside today and began to duck under roofs and watching for shadows, just to make sure no vulture is descending
9:52 funny enough we do gotta kinda commend pandas for doing so because they often don't to the point it's a problem
Btw if you wanna look more into lore
I highly suggest watching "The Complate Rain world timeline | Rain world: Downpour lore" by UraniumEater
it is really well done and I found it to be most accurate. Everything is placed well in timeline
3:04 I quite literally did everything this dude said when I first got the game even though I knew it was a rage game. But since I started playing again after the 2 months I didn't, I love the game :3
yaaaay, Redwall mentioned!
20:05 REDWALL MENTIONED AHHH, MY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
Ive been waiting on another vid from you
23:03 Fear and hunger music in my rain world video?
00:00 why are you on the good ending beach from the myhouse.was doom map?
Because it's a great and thematically appropriate backdrop
Hell yeah Sweets IS online again!
new rain world content on yt? *consumes*
Omfg I’m so excited to play saint, I’m almost done spear master, and I’ve finished every other campaign
Everyone characterizes Rivulet as a heroic heart surgeon on cocaine but I’m pretty sure this rat stumbled into an iterator superstructure, stole it’s emergency power supply, took it to it’s favorite person, and accidentally prolonged that person’s suffering.
I hear a lot of people giving the Slugcats importance, but I’m pretty sure their actions didn’t change anything. All Spearmaster did was deliver an apology letter, Artificer killed a random scavenger chieftain, or just got sad and then got deleted. Gourmand is legendary, yea, but they opened one gate and then got everyone to avoid the facility. Even if Rivulet had never stolen the rarefaction cell, pebbles was going to fall anyways. Saint’s just having the most hostile recursive dream in the world.
I watch affairs of passing gods to sleep
We back with Rainworld yippee
i am becoming so so tired of rain world youtube videos treating ascension as nothing more than suicide 😔i get its funny material for jokes but it just misses.... so much nuance man.... joke about how the ancients were stoners instead, i beg of you
Glad someone else feels the same way.
Ughh yeah. I think ascension is more of a transformation/experience than a suicide/ending.
@@randomperson-kx6mvit is 100% an ending though, the ancients ascended to escape the endless cycle, because immortality really sucks.
@@jonathansmith2438 Ascension might be an end to the cycle, but it doesn't seem like a total end to me. In the endings, the slugcats seem to retain their minds and even interact with other ascended beings. It's more of an escape than an ending, I think.
@ well, that is one way to view it. Makes me wonder about a theory I once heard, where artificer is the only slugcat that can truly ascend, and the rest didn’t actually ascend but stayed in some limbo sort of state. Rainworld doesn’t exactly give us much to go off of
I just got back to playing rainworld and got so happy to see this vid :D
Your point about Hunter's "admirable choice" is the reason why I don't believe that he was a purposed organism like Spearmaster. I feel like the only one who came to this conclusion, but the Iterators say that he chooses this and that it's noble of him, but it's actually NOT if he DIDN'T choose it and it's the thing he was CREATED to do. If Hunter was engineered from the ground up by NSH, then he's just executing his mission. The Iterators don't consider themselves noble for doing what they were programmed to do, even though solving the Great Problem would benefit every living creature. Hunter can only be noble if he was just a random slugcat (supported by the fact that he's not obviously bioengineered, not super strong or super fast or even super resourceful) who DECIDED to use his limited remaining lifespan to help a faraway godlike being he's never met before.
EXACTTLLYYY
Erm actually one of Arti's kids died to leeches only one died to a scavenger and it was an accident on it's part (really good video btw :D )
Fear of god? Joke's on you doubley so, not only do you fear God, you're unsure which one to fear.
I think how hunter is able to store a spear on his back is because he sticks it though the rot on his back
Its been 9 months since he played this game and hes stuck in the same cycle (haha funy reference) as me
Redwall mentioned in a rainworld video??? Hella based.
I would love to see your take on Prey 2017, please please please please
You didn't mention that gourmand can literally create a demon core
Now give us an opinion on every region and region change
I like more risky rains but ill watch this as a way to appreciate how well written are your essays
Edit: Okay you made me want to play this game (probably because im buddhist) and now you shall live with the knowledge you convinced a random guy in the internet to suffer. Thank you.
2:50 I have another word my parents
Mans been working out.
LETS GOO! 6:27
I wouldn’t say the desire to ascend is driven by the fear of god, it’s the fear of being stuck. When you die in this game you wake up at the start of the day, kinda like ground hogs day.
Which at first sounds kinda awesome, I mean you’re practically immortal. Except, what happens as you age and your body starts to decay? Now imagine you are 100 years old and your in a constant state of fatigue and pain, only to have your suffering end for a brief moment by your natural death, just to wake back up and start the process over again, forever.
This is why the people of rain world made these robotic god like entities. To work out a way to ascend and break the cycle. However, even these “gods” suffer the same fate of their creators. They work tirelessly on a seemingly impossible task as their bodies decay and wither. Knowing, that if they don’t find a solution to ascend they will spend the rest of eternity as a pile of rubble unable to move on.
Luckily there is a “natural” way to ascend by jumping in the void sea. So why didn’t the people do that instead of making these “gods”. Well, because there’s a chance that you won’t actually ascend but become a ghost like entity called a “echo”. Which is where you aren’t quite living not quite dead and you are stuck roaming the world for eternity.
Would you be interested in playing minute of the island?
OOH
edit: I NEED YOU TO MAKE A VIDEO ABOUT EVERY SLUGCAT CAMPAIGN WITH THE LORE THEY HAVE (including INV)
AND MORE LORE VIDEOS
actually, pls
edit 2: also check out the video called "The End of Rain World"
its really cool and is just a quick (actually tho) sumary of the LORE and then 20 minutes of talkink about the SAINT and its campaign
ALSO HOW DID YOU SAY EIGHT SCUGS???
THERES NINE (playable rn, which means not counting the watcher or nightcat)
bro really forgot about inv lmao
Hey sweet, love your content, you should do a video on a game called ender lilies: quietus of the knights. I like it.
Have you or anyone heard of the theory that the karma sybols 6-10 are mirrored versions of 1-5 ex: if 5 is survival 10 is accention if 4 is gluttony 9 is moderation so on so on.
I think karma 5 is broader than just "survival & self-preservation", it does cover survival but it's more of an attachment to the self (may also cover identity). if 10 represents ascension, it mirrors all 5 of the natural urges
literally my favourite creator right now. UPLOAD MORE NOW
garbage roller plants
[[Spoilers for end of game Saint!]]
Personally, I think that when the Saint becomes an echo, it is at least a little voluntary. Saint is, deep down, the Triple Affirmative. Despite its animalistic urges and needs, it has reached true ascension- and it must serve the Great Cycle. Saint has Rubicon instead of the Void Sea of the other scugs, the dream hell instead of escape, because Saint cannot ascend. The Great Cycle will not allow it to ascend, and so using the echoes of the gods it has at its disposal, it reminds Saint of this. For Saint has one purpose- to ascend *everything*. Each creature, each plant, each speck of dust and each grain of sand. And so it returns from ascension the only way it can- as an echo. It casts off the ascension and enlightenment it has earned as atonement for seeking out ascension for itself, and it repeats its journey. Saint’s cycle spirals, endless, crossing every single cycle, an infinity greater than another infinity. Saint is the gift to the world- and they can never receive it.
They are doomed to continue onwards, endlessly, even worse than the ancients. Because Saint knows what it is. And it knows it can never escape.
In lighter terms: scug gender.
The only scug who has a confirmed gender is Arti, and even thats really only because of her role as “mother”. Theres no inherent gendering of scugs, which I love. They are just slugcats- and whatever pronoun works fine for them.
Not a ton but I just love my lil gender-refusing slug rats 🧡
Many say saint is the triple affemitivet
hey where did you get the house.wav backround? somthing about the vibe of it is screaming to be my new backround.
I didn’t really get it from anywhere. I recorded it myself a WHILE ago and have been using it ever since. And then I just zoom in and cut out the HUD and the hand at the bottom of the frame
@@SweetsIsOnline honestly i really want it, it looks like an awesome backround, could you please please give a download link?
I just realized... i have those shoes 😄
Alright a newcomer to the rain world fandom lets see how long it takes before they mention animal sex
Edit: 9 minutes and 54 seconds
Why did you private the Ocarina of Time video? Curious