I would love to see a conversation between Happily Ever After Narrator, and the Narrator in the glass at the finale. If you did Happily Ever After, you can actually tell Finale Narrator that there was a world where he changed his mind, and he says (paraphrasing) "The fact that you found one universe in a million where I was delusion means nothing". I honestly don't think there's anything you could say that would convince him, other than getting to live through his "Happily Ever After". Words wouldn't be enough.
@@perplexedon9834 Exactly. The narrator of this chapter saw himself through the Smitten who was trying to give the princess a better life according to his own criteria and without asking her opinion. Also, he was able to have an example of what he would have done to his peers and realized that such a life was not worth living, in general we are afraid of dying because we value and enjoy our life (there may be other reasons but anyway) but the princess's life was not likeable thus she felt like she would not care if she dies at any moment. This is why the one we see at the end should have spoken with the narrator of Happily Ever After or should have been able to see the unfolding of the chapter himself. One still pursues his dream because he idealizes it while the other has seen with his own eyes that he would have inflicted a curse on the world rather than a salvation and to begin to question his beliefs and especially his approach.
@@mimoukilariTbf I think his peers would've actually been grateful of it. An endless repeating pattern of eternal bliss and forgetfulness? To us, yes that'd be hell, but those other people are already in hell - they're from the heat death of the universe and I think they'd gladly accept anything else. Plus, it was clear she was suggesting her own things, within the jurisdiction that it keeps everyone happy. And Smitten was hurting too. He clearly didn't want to keep going, but because it's what we said we wanted he has no choice. Plus the two narrators meaning would be catastrophic, not just because of the Construct, but because that narrator appears to have some doubts as well, and any acknowledgement of those doubts would likely prompt him to blurt out "Do want you want, I don't care" and destroy himself purely out of spite 😂.
I also like how in the Happily Ever After ending, during the table scene you two are the furthest apart you’ve ever been, showing that even if they want to be together, they physically can’t.
It fuckin shocked me to see this route finally show him that his whole philosophy and the reason he did all of this, was wrong. And he accepted it. Just letting these two beings he now knows he’s torturing for no reason have their time together.
I picked the slay option the first time (because I’m an achievement hound and wanted to get all the cruel options over with), so I was so surprised when the Narrator, who’s always been insistent about slaying the Princess, suddenly voiced his doubts.
13:02 I like the fact that in her final moments Apothy is actively trying to hold you above and away from the hands that are dragging her down while apologizing for not treating you her sole worshipper a little better. Its interesting that at her most supremely (justifiably) overconfident and arrogant she still cares for you in her own way.
The devs basically said this wasn't planned but it was something that moved them in the moment, so they put it in. Plus it gave them a chance to explore both the princess and the player as a shared apotheosis to contrast with the Tower.
I think one of my favorite details in the cage is when the Princess is describing the fight between our bodies, and says "It's all going to come to a head soon... ... Hah. Head." It's a nice little moment that shows that the Prisoner, who didn't make any sort of jokes or laugh about anything in her original route, actually does feel more relaxed having given up her imagined control over the situation. A weight has been lifted from her shoulders... or perhaps, a weight has been removed from beneath her neck. Also, a note for Princess and Dragon is that you can get the ending where you're merged together by freeing her, but choosing to cut her chains off yourself. Upon making that cut, you're sent back into the Princess' body, and Opportunist takes the, well, Opportunity, to finish the job, plunging the knife into your heart. Also, while Princess and the Dragon can only have Opportunist, the devs have stated that they were toying with the idea of it being possible for Contrarian to show up, which would've been characterized by hearing the blade being picked up, followed by a smash as it goes through the window. They scrapped this idea because they really couldn't figure out how to establish any tension in a scene where you're dealing with an unarmed contrarian. I'm sure it would've been funny, but I don't think it would have have been much more than just funny.
Might as well help those along for reaching 'The Princess and The Dragon' so, Spoilers! Act 1: - Take the 'Steel Claw' (Dagger) - Refrain from any dialogue with the Princess at any point. - Slay The Princess - Kill Yourself (to avoid the 'Good Ending') Act 2: The Specter - Welcome the 'Princess' into your body. - Attempt to Slay yourself. Act 3(?): The Princess and The Dragon (lacks an official title card but is promptly called that by the Princess)
@@nerdywolverine8640 I cheered when she did that. I think not having the Contrarian show up makes it work well as a meta joke but not something explicitly called out by the game.
25:43 there’s actually a third ending to this where you have the cheated who’s helps break free of the helplessness and get out of there together, with a minor deviation being, you can toss her back into the pit
I actually did it with the broken! By letting skeptic kill you willingly you get him. And he's very fitting for the route. understanding the princess's broken mind here and sympathizing with her. Definitely my favorite voice yo have here
@@Unknowncoolguy to get cheated, you should accept narrator's reward, insist you're happy and ignore skeptic until he eventually kills you by stopping your heart. To get broken you should say that you don't want to die again, until skeptic says that he'll kill you quickly and painlessly if you give him control over your body and the blade. Agree with his proposal.
Yeah, he missed a LOT of alternate ways to get to routes. You can get the fury by attacking the tower, you can get the epilogue by taking the damsel back up the stairs and telling her that you want to stay in the cabin, you can try to not slay yourself after the variant of the happy ending, which causes the sceptic to give you a heart attack and you get the cheated for the cage instead of the contrarian (which stops you from cutting yourself free, but you can throw the blade away still which gives you the option to get the cage to release you and bring her head to the top), you get a different version of the princess and the dragon depending on whether you were generally nice to the spectre before letting her possess you, or mean to her (I think that the key is whether you tried to slay her with the pristine blade when you first came down, but I'm not sure). Also, before PC, you were able to get the den stuck, but as soon as you did, that was it, the shifting mound came and took her away.
Ah-- finally, a better look at our glorious """bird""" man. As I thought, he's something between a crow, owl, and an abstract carnivorid (probably a cat of varying sizes).
Yeah all of the my least favorite voices get a lot of development. Although my favorite (the opportunist) still stole the show during the Dragon route ^^
@@tapseymoth803 Wait how can you not like Paranoid, they literally keep you going, keep your body alive in the other route. I love paranoid but there isn't a voice I really dislike!
There are several alternative endings you missed. For the Fury, if you don't have either the Broken or Cold with you you can't resist her torture and she ends up fusing you with herself. For the Apotheosis, bring both the Broken and the Paranoid and you'll be able to fight her like an anime protagonist with a giant sword. Finally, try going in the Cage with the Voice of the Broken or the Cheated and get rid of the dagger to unlock a way out with the Princess. For the secret ending, you simply have to slay the princess in every of the five routes.
how can i get to the cage with broken/cheated? i'm currently trying to 100% the game and i've only managed to get there with the skeptic+paranoid combo
@@waddledeepaddy24 for the cheated, keep resisting in the narrator's "happy ending" until the skeptic stops your heart. for the broken, i think you have to let the skeptic use the blade for you by saying you're afraid to die
You can still fuse with her if you have Broken, you just need to get there from the Tower. Naturally, because he's still holding on to what happened, he's the first to go.
you can also get Happily Ever After without unraveling the Damsel, which gives you the Opportunist instead of the Skeptic. You can also throw away the blade before you get trapped by The Cage and this alloys you to escape with the princess
Yeah. Unfortunately 2 out of 3 endings of The Cage are easily missable because it really depends on what voice you bring into The Cage. You can't throw the blade away if you're stuck with Paranoid and I don't think you can break your chains by force if you have Broken or Cheated.
@@jalapenoofjustice4682 Even with 100% achievement completion of Pristine Cut, I know there's still a good bit of stuff I haven't found or tried, like getting the Broken instead of Cheated or Paranoid in the Cage chapter aparrently, and there's certainly room for there to be more, especially since some specific dialogue options can give smaller dialogue differences in later chapters, like the princess and the voices remembering some stuff discussed before and as such having a bit different dialogue, and in some cases the order in which you go through the (explore) options gives different dialogue (even besides the obvious cases where it has bigger consequences).
36:26 it's a black hole on the horizon. Probably representing finality but also constant state of ending, since black holes are theorized to be the last things remaining in the universe once it nears to its death - like the Long Quiet freezes the existence in its final stage.
-The apotheosis fight is sooooo good (not the eye version but the huge sword version) even the broken is given his confidence back. I think you need the paranoid for this. -You get so much more insight into her pov -Cage is so cool exploring determinism and being able to both embrace and defy destiny/pattern -You can convince the narrator that he's wrong -You can see yourself -Hunted gets to slay, also the route gets to explore shame (edit) you can go to the cage without the knife and prove free will
Well, you don't convince the narrator he's wrong, he mostly just realises it himself. You can tell the one in the mirror about him but he'll just panic and dismiss him as delusional and irrelevant 😂.
Regarding the cage, there's so much more to the science of "we are ruled by our bodies". At the most basic, theres the reflex arc, in which you touch a hot stove and yank your hand away. This is controlled by a a single nerve cell in the spinal cord, and would happen even if you were headless. There's more though, because the spinal cord doesnt just carey signals, it processes them with what are called "central pattern generators". In several (unethical) experiments, cat's spinal cords were severed so that their brain had no control whatsoever of their hind legs. They were then put on a treadmill with a stick blocking on of their hind legs, and they *stepped over it*. There is a "stepping motion" encoded into the spinal cord that is triggered by pressure on the front of the leg. If you pay close attention while walking over uneven terrain or steps or so on, you'll begin to notice that it's like your legs are doing the walking, and you are occasionally just changing your direction. This is NOT just "muscle memory" in the brain, this is something your legs would keep doing if you were head less. Sometimes I become aware of this, and I realise just how much of an animal I am. Then of course there are all of the sub-conscious patterns that are actually controlled in the brain, but thats less explicitly relevant for The Cage.
You missed a bunch of variations in most of the new and expanded routes. • You can obtain The Fury from the Tower by killing her, and it goes over completely differently than from the Adversary. • If you have the Paranoid instead of the Contrarian in Apotheosis, your fight against her goes completely differently. • There's another choice that gives you Happily Ever After even if you don't start deconstructing The Damsel, though the only difference is which voice you get. • If you have The Cheated or Broken in The Cage (by letting Skeptic kill you one way or another instead of doing it yourself), you can throw away the knife at the start of the route, breaking the cycle. It's my favorite version of the route easily. • If you anger The Spectre by grabbing/stabbing her before letting her possess you, you get a more assertive version of her in The Princess and the Dragon that has a somewhat different ending sequence.
This game was already perfect. Then they added more, and it’s still absolutely perfect. Hell, I never knew it was possible to make perfect… better, but holy shit they did it. Such an incredible team.
i see the smitten in happily ever after as a fake lover : he is in love but not of the princess , he love the idea of her and not the real her , as a simp , he think tha give her everything , gonna make her happpy , but a truth relationship is make of up and down , you are not a servant but an equal partner
I think he is trying to love the real her but he keeps getting it wrong, he keeps trying too hard. It's not until the torches go out that he finally realises this. Not to mention we're not there to reign him in. He's still good in Thorn though. And Burned Grey. Mainly because we're there
In my opinion, every voice has its good points and bad points. The Smitten believes in the good of the princess, but he is blind to the princess's flaws. This brings out the worst in him in the damsel route. In every other route, he gets to fall in love with an already self actualized princess, but in the damsel route, she is just a shell you moulded to love you. The unconditional love of the smitten is his greatest weapon but also his greatest flaw, and in the damsel route where she has barely any personality, he just loves her, and she loves him, but a relationship can't be build on nothing but love. And since that relationship in the happily ever after is just built on the pure concept of love, it's shallow. It is cruel to say he was a fake lover. He really did love her, but only the shell of the princess, the image of her he built up in his mind. Too caught up in the idea of his love, he failed to form a true connection, which made a loving relationship impossible.
Fun fact: Depending on how you interact with The Spectre, the Princess will have a different personality during The Princess and the Dragon route. She could either have be docile or assertive which relfect the two ways the player would see her depending on whether they take the blade or night during Chapter 1.
The role of the board game in Happily Ever After is genuinely so brilliant. It seems so obvious that it can be viewed as a analogy for spicing up your sex life, but I managed to miss that haha! My interpretation was that it also singularly takes the route out of the realm of relationships and applies it to every enjoyable experience of life as a whole, and even the game "Slay the Princess" itself. Thats certainly the Narrator's interpetation. Do you remember how great Slay the Princess was when you first played it? Do you remember how it got stale and you started skipping dialogue? Look at how fun it is now that there's new stuff! This too will grow stale. As well as as a perfect piece in the relationship commentary, it is like Abby and Toby (of Black Tabby Games) are looking straight at you and saying "We love you, we are so glad you appreciated our art so much. Please, when you're ready, move on with the memory of it rather than replaying it to meaninglessness". It's a feeling only a single other game has made me feel, Outer Wilds, where the ending of both the main game and the expansion thematically address the relationship between your curiosity, fear, and love for what you are experiencing, and then gives you permission to move on. There are some games I adore, like Celeste, that just keep me coming back for more, but Slay the Princess and Outer Wilds are 10/10s that I don't feel a strong need to replay.
This was the first new route I got when coming to the Pristine Cut and that meta theme hit me over the head. This game has meant a lot to me and it's so natural to want to hold onto it and be frustrated at the uncontrollable nature of time and experience and change, but the whole point of it is that we do need to move forward, that change is what gives it all meaning. It's a great inclusion to this expansion, a fitting goodbye.
Sorry if I quote it wrong, but in the base game Shifty said there was empathy and lonelyness in Fury's misery, here it was truly shown. What she does to you also does to herself, its not senseless torture, but making you understand what she went through, try to guide you to a realization that's beyond just words, it has to be felt or experienced. Something along the lines of having a soul, being different from just living flesh and instincts combined with a sort of Theseus' ship paradox. Are you still you if you if your body is ubwound, stretched infinitely thin, reduced to a single cell, took forms you just can't even comprehend,then put back together to its original state,repeatedly. Part of you would say yes no matter what, other parts would say no. Its one of my favorite chapters with this update, before that I didn't realy get what was it all about cause it was just one of the shorter chapter 3-s with not too much going for it outside the amazing designs and some fun interactions, it clearly wasn't bad but still this is quite the glow up!
@@martonszentkiralyi2251 The torture is also a good way to put yourself in the Princess' role in general. When Hero says they keep changing into horrible things they have no control over? This is her life through the entire game. Each Chapter the Princess changes into something stranger and she can't stop it, she has to live with it and adapt to her new reality, a little better, a little worse.
This really shows just how many more options there are cause when I got to The Fury I didn't get either of the routes you talked about. Instead I cut down The Tower and got Voice of the Stubborn with me and when she unwound the Long Quiet across the room he managed to will us to respawn with a new body. And we kept doing that, over and over, each time getting a new Voice and Narrator, only to leave them when we died again, until finally we became nothing and managed to strike her.
You can also get the fury by defying and slaying the Tower, and when the fury unravels you, you can still squelch forward with the stubborn, and get stuck in a battle of wills with the fury atomizing you and the stubborn reassembling you trying to score a hit on her. If you fight in the apotheosis with Paranoid... Some shit. Goes. DOWN. (like giant sword of righteous smite, knocking the goddess to her knees)
Best part is Broken gets replaced by a different voice each time, ending with Cold. Plus if you allow yourself to be disassembled and reassembled, Broken actually goes out first because of how we got there and it ends just after Stubborn goes before leading to a unique vessel. Also that's not what actually happens during that Apotheosis fight. I can't say anything else without spoiling it but there's so much more than just a giant sword. And she certainly doesn't get "knocked" to her knees either, it's much cooler than that.
To clarify, There was the option to slay yourself with the Spectre inside you where instead of leading to the Wraith it now leads to the Princess and the Dragon. In the video it almost sounded like there wasn't one.
There's actually another branch of the Cage open to you if you bring along the voice of the Cheated. This is done by accepting the happy ending and not trying to kill yourself, by which the Skeptic will refuse and end your life anyway. When you come back, the Cheated will be pissed off at the Skeptic and, not wanting to give him a chance to try and hurt you again, gives you the option to simply hurl the knife away before you even approach the cabin. Without the knife, there's no option for violence, so the Princess's body will slump, then open up the cage the head is trapped in, allowing you to leave the Cabin with her, peacefully. It's a wonderful reflection and foreshadowing about your ultimate choice in the heart of the Princess. The knife gives you more options, and so you're almost expected to take it. But the only way to be able to leave with the Princess together is to not give yourself access to that option of violence at all. It's very poetic.
I adore how when the Opportunist stabs the princess and you swap back, you go RIGHT back into the normal flow of the game, with the narrator and voices talking as they usually do
The Fury was, to me, the highlight of this expansion. The way she was, do not pardon the pun, fleshed out in Pristine Cut was phenomenal. Adversary!Fury in particular has such a despairing feel, because her deconstruction route is also her looking for something she can't have anymore; "Are you still there? Are you still you?" is her searching for that person she thought you were, the fighting partner she thought was her equal, but she changed, and you changed, and there's no way of going back to that. If you try to match her with Contrarian and Stubborn, you can beat her, but she still looks tired and disappointed by the end of it because well... she's just not that same person that could be satisfied with a good fight anymore. Having Cold and Broken being the ones to survive deconstruction is also such an interesting choice that played beautifully. Broken is already too defeated on a mental level to be brought down any further (although if you come from The Tower, he's the first to tap out), and patiently waits for Fury to let all out; Cold, on the other hand, has always been detached from corporeality to bother with the physical deconstruction (from the Wraith route: "You're thinking too much about your body. It's just a body.") - he knows what he is, and deep inside seems more aware than other voices about what the Long Quiet is. And yet by the end of it all, both Broken and Cold see Fury as an equal, someone who's tired and defeated and resigned, who longs deeply for something she lost and will never have again. Forgiving Fury and taking her by the hand to see the outside is probably one of the most touching scenes of the entire game.
A couple thoughts: The "are you still there" still happens during Tower, during which she's trying to actively hurt you but also make you understand how she feels, while also trying to make herself godlike again. She realises sooner that her efforts are futile and so decides to join herself with you instead which leads to the Rewound vessel. You can also do this from Adversary with Contrarian, the implication being that she's doing it to make you stronger. That particular Fury is definitely a lot more selfless than the others because of it. Plus Contrarian, like Broken in Tower taps out early, but in a very Contrarian way 😂. Coming off of that, I think the Fury you get from fighting her unarmed was indeed satisfied with what she gave us - it might not have been a fight, but it was still a challenge, an endurance test for the both of them; a physical one for us and an emotional one for her. I see it as her realising that her response to us constantly getting up was out of character for herself, and that she needed to pick up where we left off and see how much further we could push each other, like some kind of experiment. At one point she has a manic expression of obsession, excitement, curiosity and of course, fear. Then it all fades into seriousness and tiredness because they have both become nothing in that moment, and she willingly accepts death because she has nothing else to give us. We passed the test and she failed by letting her emotions overpower her. And she's okay with it. She's ready to move on. Then of course there's the quantum break route but that's pretty self-explanatory.
holy shit I literally just wanted to watch someone analyze Slay the Princess. I almost rewatched the doki club/princess video. Small world or something like that
It's definitely the smallest part of the update, but I adore the Moment of Clarity's new design- especially her mask shattering?! It's just perfect! I always thought her og design was too similar to the Nightmare.
I remember seeing a version of the New Fury with the Voice of the Cold. I actually really like it, he takes Broken’s role but I like seeing the different perspectives.
From what I have seen you don't need to actually start deconstructing the damsel to choose to stay in the cabin and initiate "Happily Ever After" which is an awesome spin btw
24:01 I found this route extra interesting because I suspect it's meant to foreshadow your final confrontation with the SM and how the Narrator ripped creatures with free will out of the unfeeling cycles of stasis and change, and how you can step outside of those two god-machines into the cabin and back into the original vessels that you began as. But in a twist of the Cage, you have agency now: your True cosmic selves remain outside in conflict (and likely would forever given their original natures + how they've been changed by the Narrator's creator) while the vessels that have faced the brunt of all the suffering and pain are left inside to decide what they *really* want. edit: 36:08 it's a black hole btw
@@ZuldimYT No worries, it took me a second to realize what it was. I've wondered about this shot, like does it mean that the world was being sucked into a black hole and now it's frozen there forever, safe but frozen? Or is the LQ's new world *actually* the black hole, destroying all of reality to return it to a simple empty slate... O_O
The various expanded/new routes do a lot with being able to be reached by multiple paths, and shaping the available voices appropriately. You can get the Opportunist in Happily Ever After if instead of deconstructing Damsel you walk her up the stairs and then suggest staying at the last minute. The Caged route takes this even further. One of the first things you can do in that route is try to throw away your blade, before you even get to the cabin. But Paranoid and Skeptic will gang up on you to stop it. However, if you got to the route by giving Skeptic the blade to kill you with due to accepting its necessity while not wanting to do it yourself... you get Broken instead of Paranoid. And then you _can_ throw your blade away, changing the subsequent events radically. You can also bring Cheated into the Caged route, I think by forcing Skeptic to kill you himself.
To get the new secret ending, all you have to do is end the route by killing the Princess in all five routes you take - you don't need to focus so much on specific steps, the red text always appears if you kill her even if you also die while doing it. The Cage ending where your bodies kill each other doesn't count, as it's not "you" that has killed "her", just your bodies.
@@animeotaku307 From what I understood online, any "chapter ending" where you are actively hostile towards the Princess normally will unlock the red option. But if you don't try hard enough (ex. if the Cage decapitates you and your and her headless bodies start fighting), it won't unlock the option.
Basically Quiet shows dominance and independence from her by proving he had dominance and independence over every of her vessels he met. Since the mound changes based on his perception it's not a matter of proving his dominance to HER. It's a matter of proving his dominance to HIMSELF. As soon as he believes her to be weaker than him, it becomes true and therefore he's able to obliterate her without any extra help.
There's another outcome for the Apotheosis (and honestly a very inspiring one at that) but it's a tricky outcome to find in the route because it depends first on actions of Ch. 1. I won't say more unless asked, to avoid unwanted spoilers
@@kinglycrimson In chapter one, do not mention that she's suppose to end the world. Then go The Tower route, go unarmed, and resist her until you end up in the Apotheosis route. I'll let you see the options available from there
@@kinglycrimson Let’s just say the writers did an AMAZING job of redeeming previously universally hated voices with all the new routes, especially this one :D
I love the Happily Ever After and the Princess and the Dragon routes. The Happily Ever After route is one of the saddest in my opinion. You just hopelessly watch the player and the Princess’s relationship fall apart and watching her desperately try to keep things going is heartbreaking. And seeing the player through the Princess’s eyes was horrifying, I love that we get to see a route from her point of view.
The princess and the dragon has a bit of a variation depending on if you attack the specter before letting her possess you. If you do swing and pass through the ghost the princess in the next chapter is more on guard, reluctant to have you but still gets closer. The main difference is when the Long Quiet attacks he she is prepared enough to fight back sending you back to your body in time to feel her punch to your jaw as she uses the blade to cut herself free. Slaying her is not a option here but you can go with either of the other two depending on trying to get to stop telling her you switched again or asking her to kill you and save herself, the later opens her up to trust and toss the blade out the window.
Happily Ever After is the only route in the entire game I had to take a break after finishing. Not after Razor or Beast's gore, not after the incomprehensible horror of Nightmare or Stranger, not after the bloated or burning face of the Grey. Something about Happily Ever After felt, despite its fantastical setting, so much more grounded than anything else. It is a fucking fantastically written route. I absolutely cannot replay it for a long while. Pristine Cut is such a fantastic update to the game and the new stories it tells are all incredibly done.
Let me just say, I have a PS5 and heard about the game in passing from Month Zander; didn't think much of it. Then, I saw Markiplier's video on it, which i watched the first one. Upon, hearing of the Pristine Cut and being able to get it on PS5 I had to physically restrain myself from watching anymore videos about the game to not spoil myself. And thank God I didn't because I bought the game as soon as it got released and I have sunk over 13 hours into it. This has been a great and fun game to play.
Ooh it doesn't sound like you got this ending for the Fury, spoilers if you don't want to know any alternate endings, but when I got to the fury with the voice of the Stubborn and the Contrarian, I forget what exact choice I made, but the stubborn eventually gives up and the Fury reshapes us, laments how even after all that she still feels empty inside, and tries to unravel both of us and make us one, much to the Narrator's dismay since this is exactly what he's trying to prevent. The process is cut off right at the very end by the Shifting Mound and when you approach her, all that's left of the Fury is gory ribbons and a heart.
You can still get that one if you get to Fury from Tower then either take the blade but give up or come unarmed. Because of the current state he's in, compared to post-Adversary, Broken naturally fades away first, then the rest plays out as it did with Contrarian.
during The Cage, if you toss the blade into the woods before you head to the 'cabin', you get a third version of the ending where you break the pattern, dont get your head cut off, and can take the princess's head out of the cage and outside with you
I seriously thought this was a Short when I clicked. Happy surprises abound Edit: And it's out on console now, so if I wanna stay spoiler free I have to stop watching 😢 To bring me such happiness only to snatch it away almost immediately after is malicious, Zuldim.
For the Dragon route my favorite ending of it is if you try to help cut her out to free her. Immediately your sent back into the princess’s body and the Opportunist is back in the driver’s seat and immediately goes to kill you both. There is also a version of it where if you try to kill her as a ghost and then go down this route where the princess is much harsher and aggressive towards you and your body
I don't think you can separate the mind from the body, and still be you, we are so much of those chemical signals flowing in your blood, making you feel calmed, happy, stressed, our gut biome influences our behaviour too, it puts a cap on how much joy you can feel, the same with some of your organs, without those and only being a mind, you would be an echo of yourself, and you would only feel the reminder of something, like "I was supposed to feel or like this, but now I don't" with so many things that you probably wouldn't even be you anymore
There's actually another ending in The Prisoner where you don't take the dagger with you which breaks the Princess' expectation of the endless loop you both share.
Thank you for this. I loved the original, but have been waiting for the Pristine Cut to see all that it has to offer. your recommendation just makes me all the eager to do the thing.
I actually quite like the new stubborn/contrarian ending for the fury route. I feel like it's sort of the answer to the question posed in the other one. A stubborn but emphatic Yes.
Lil note here 4:59 tho if you were start this chapter with tower broken actually does ended up submitting because if ya remember due to tower broken actually at least felt something with tower knowing that he failed to stop us and is now getting punished it caused to him actually submit And while if you were to fight during tower to fury stubborn actually managed to pull through while broken and the new voices ended up being gone but the cold being left And the cold is the same tho lot different since to for him it’s because he can’t feel pain nor anything at all to point to him it wouldn’t matter if he submit or not
36:33 The same goes for the regular old universe as well. In Nightmare where she takes her mask off, we see the horrors of cycle of life and death. Happily Ever After focuses on the bad parts of eternity, that doesn't mean it's the wrong answer. We are not suppose to know how the new universe would be exactly, we are not suppose to know the "right" answer or else it all would be pointless. It's more about belief. Unless we actually live in an eternal universe, we can't know.
going into Pristine Cut completely blind was the best decision I ever made (I spoiled myself on the base game as I always do with any horror game) I immediately booked it to Princess and Dragon because Spectre is my favorite chapter 2 in this game, and, according to the friends with me while I was playing, my reaction to accidentally getting yoinked out of my body and sharing with the Princess instead was priceless. also I got jumpscared by the bird man speaking with a British accent 😭
32:07 If you choose to leave with her, during the Princess and the Dragon, there's actually another way to get the cooler (slay) ending. Don't give her the blade, insist on cutting her free yourself. The moment you make any sort of cut, lethal or not, you begin flickering between each other's perspectives.
Actually what really happens is, you get pulled back, which is enough time for Oppy to do the deed, which in turn causes the flickering. You can also reverse the roles by attacking spectre once, resulting in her becoming more aggressive, getting Princess and the Dragon, then once you're back in your body she'll attempt to kill you. Failing to talk her out of it causes her to stab you, which in turn also causes you to merge.
35:29 I think that for this secret ending, the conditions for each vessel needs to show that that was a time you “won” or “beat” the princess. You stabbed the razor in the heart, you’ve devoured the beast, you toppled the god, no matter what, you need to show, no, to prove that you are stronger than the shifting mound. Then, and only then can you overpower her, because you truly believe you can.
Smitten's first instinct when trying to show the Damsel the merit of staying with tLQ is to rip open their chest and physically show her their heart like a frog dissected in a high school science class? I swear, Smitten has to be the most unhinged of all the voices.
knowing that this is the last update to slay the princess, saddens me, I didn't want it to end but alas it is what it is, hopefully game is cherish for the longest
It's an amazing game. As someone who got all of the achievements for the original game about a year ago, then came back to it for PC to once again get all of the achievements, I can't recommend it enough. There are ways to get to a lot of the routes you talked about that are different from the ways you mentioned (like you can get to the fury by means of the tower; I gave a full list in reply to another comment). Overall though, solid video. That said, I do kind of wish that Black Tabby had added an ending for allowing the Long Quiet to give the Shifting Mound the power to fuse them together once again, just to really stick it to the Narrator and completely undo what he had done before leaving the construct. That said, they did also add some small touches which are really nice (like if you did the epilogue route in your run, you can tell the Narrator in the broken mirror at the end that you saw a version of him that had lost faith in what he had done, and the Narrator calls that version of himself delusional).
Also to get the new ending, you just need to be violent with whatever ending, usually killing the princess will do it, but the main takeaway is that both razor routes work, both the arms race, and the solid form.
The repeating scenario of Happily Ever After is something i personally recognize in a sense. I got the mario party game, the second latest one, and i had someone to play with, they loved playing it, so we played it again and again and again (only for like an hour or two at a time) and i was thrilled to play it...But eventually, i ended up agreeing to play it purely because They wanted to, i could've played something else given the option, so, we made new rules, instead of trying to Beat the AI, we decided to try to Aid the AI, we picked our characters and then we decide on one character each as the AI to Help in winning, this means we had to fight eachother and the Other AI, while making certain our selected AI won. It was A lot of fun! And the fact that our selected AI would still try to take us out made it more exciting cause it means they could Essentially stab us in the back as we tried to help them...but eventually even That grew boring, and we stopped playing it all together since there was no more joy in it. Point being, everything eventually...Simply stops being enjoyable. I've played games for majority of my life...And i'm kind of getting sick of it, i still play, but, i wish i could do something else...except i Can't do anything else, because i Have nothing else. So just like them in their perfect room, if that is all you have in life, what was ones perfect, will instead become painful.
My first time playing the game, and I got the Happily Ever After ending on my second try. I didn't think I'd end up feeling so emotional early on in the game. I didn't even see lots of the really creepy stuff that happens in the game yet.
For this new secret ending I think depends of how you treated her. For example I got this option also in drowned Gray, Wraith when I didnt let her escape, Stranger because I saw worlds when I killer her, when I fougth with Apotiosis, killed Fury, killed her In Eye of the neddle... So I think you just must make sure you are more antagonistic/hostile to the Princess to do it... And yeah I tested it because Im one of those complecionist and got full gallery so I had to fight Shifting Mound few times for it
6:15 you can also get this ending if you kill the Tower and wind up on this route. I also find it interesting that she has different dialogue if you reach this route through different means. EDIT: 14:10 I got this route by suggesting that we stay here right before the damsel leaves. EDIT (again): 37:40 Oh right i actually did see that dialogue option, i think i got it by stabbing the Apotheosis in the eye.
If I'm not mistaken, the red dialogue options become unlocked if you choose and succeed in slaying the Princess. I could be wrong here but I'm just sensing a pattern, especially with how the contents of the dialogue imply this idea that you don't need her, you're stronger than her, you can kill her etc.
That celestial body in the secret ending is a black hole. Personally, I think the secret ending is the best, despite it being the loneliest, because it ends with a realistic view of an ocean - almost like The Long Quiet broke through to reality that is not dampened by the shifting mound. Although - this may be a stretch - but the secret ending could be an allusion to the bible's story of creation. The biblical story of creation uses the imagery of God hovering over water at the start of creation. The secret ending of the game portrays TLQ appearing alone above a large body of water, while being called a god, and asking what world he is going to create... Of course TLQ cannot be God on the account he was created by the narrator, but the imagery see too similar to be merely coincidence.
I will say I do think for the red text ending all you need is to kill the pirincess in the end or when it matters. For instance you can't slay either gray but both grays count for red text because you did kill her. There was *one* situation that I considered strange I didn't get red text but I don't remember what it was.
It might have been the stranger, as that’s another that automatically gives you red text. I’m pretty sure that it’s just based on doing the route in such a way that the princess speaks to you with red text first
@JestroGameDev oh no I found out what it was actually! The stranger is an always red text (there's no other way for that route to end). What it was was betraying the witch. Turns out being a scorpion doesn't count. I guess cause you don't really *succeed* in killing her.
For anyone going for the new ending, here’s some other choices I’ve found so far that will lead to it (I’ve been trying to get the cruelest ones done first to complete the gallery): * Leave the Princess in the basement after returning to your body in the Princess and the Dragon. * Throw yourself into the basement with the Wraith. * Slay the Fury after she unravels you. * Drop the Cage’s head into the hole you climbed out of. * Slay the Wild after you separate from her. * Get to either version of the Grey (you can only get one of them per route). * Hurl the Pristine Blade into the eye of the Apotheosis. What’s interesting is that each choice comes from you rejecting the Princess in some way. Which is reflected in your corresponding arguments against the Shifting Mound, claiming that you don’t need her. Which is also why she’s so angry when you do so. On another note, if you beat her but choose to offer your hand afterwards, the blade won’t be in the cabin when the Voice of the Hero takes you there. So you can’t get the Unending Dawn or Loop endings if you do this.
Yup. To get the new ending, you don't need any aspect of the princess, you saw 5, you didn't need anything from her, rejected every single one, and also you got really good in slaying her. So you have a clear picture of the world you want to create, about study and learning. I don't find this ending bad or sad, it takes very special LQ to get it, and for him it's exactly what he wants and can make it working. "Welcome back. Nothing was changed. There have been a little progress of course" - Dawn Machine, Sunless Sea
UPDATE: More options I’ve found, and one which might discredit my theory about all the choices needing to be a rejection of the Princess. For the Fury, leaving her after being unwound and slaying her with nothingness will give you options. Luring the Eye of the Needle out into the open and fighting her there will also give you an option. This is where my theory falls apart, because fighting the Princess on this route isn’t exactly rejecting her. For this version, fighting is affection.
My theory is that red options appear when LQ ends the story by proving himself to be superior to the Princess in some way. Either by being physically stronger and faster. Or mentally, by showing his independence or control over the situation.
Actually the Devs confirmed they've put the blade back since they realised it works as _the_ final choice for the player to make, aside from what they want to do with it if they take it... Or so I heard
So i got a LOT to talk about the beauty that is Pristine Cut, for the Fury it's so much better compared to the past and i like the difference of the voices giving options. Contrarion is my favorite of the voices for it because it shows how he's different in the others, while the stubborn is more about surviving and keep being tough, however he doesn't think to get back up, he thinks he can tough it out, but he can't, the pain hurts too much, the broken of course as said can't break any more than he already has, but the Contrarion breaks all the conceptions by just going "Well we're a pile of flesh now, but it'd be cool if we just kept going regardless" and you do, ya just continue on and on and on until there is nothing. He made the process go much more rapidly compared to the others. Personally, I don't like the Den even with the remake, sure it's better, much better compared to the past, however it's mostly you dealing with a creature with a SLIGHT bit of humanity left in it. But devolving into instincts was.... disturbing which is good, showing that doing nothing but killing, never trying to understand, ends in pain and only pain. I LOVE the change to Apotheosis. The paranoid makes it SO much better because of the fact he's one of the few voices who consistently figures out "If we believe, it's true", and he just goes insane with his belief that he can cause pain to the goddess. So much so that the Hero can fucking convince the broken, the dude who's been NON STOP SIMPING for her, into going into their cause of fighting back for the belief that they can beat her. HEA is such a beautiful story, about how despite everything, it just won't work. It also shows off how dangerous the Smitten is with his line of thinking (and surprising power over our body). But what i love about HEA the most is just, it's the perfect reflection of what the Echo wants. He wants a stagnant world with no death, no change. Here the Smitten shows what will happen in such a scenario, it will always start out seeming to be a beautiful idea, it's glorious, everyone lives happily, but eventually, it wears down in time, no change means nothing new, nothing new means nothing to look forward to, nothing to look forward to means stagnation, stagnation of the mind might as well be torture... what makes it worse is that the Smitten does this without meaning to, he just does everything he assumes the princess would love despite not really knowing her. This really shows why the Echo kind of just... gives up once the board game is brought out, he finally sees that this is what he wanted, and this is horrible for both the Mound, and the Long Quiet, so how bad will it be for normal humans? Also this is the 2nd time the game ever made me feel like a piece of crap for killing the princess... The caged is an interesting route, if i was to put it around 2 others that are similar to the feeling it'd be probably the tower and the razor. I love the environment, moment i saw the chains i went super cautious mode just like skeptic because of how many there were. But i feel the princess was weak. For the tower it was that, strong princess, weak environment, but the razor was a strong environment with a good princess. Both have good moments and bad. I can understand the caged's point of view, fits well, problem is with me is that i was just expecting the chains to be more of a literal hold on the princess than metaphorical considering how much of a literal hold it was on the long quiet, but that is probably more for the prisoner than the caged which we had a more literal hold there. Also once again the paranoid doing something unexpected, by goddamn HOLDING A VOICE BACK TO FORCE US TO TAKE THE KNIFE?! HOW DOES THE PARANOID KEEP COMING UP WITH SUCH GOOD SHIT?! Also again the paranoid figures out quickly, if we believe it, it's true, and starts having us hack the chains apart. Also the contrarion leading to the happy ending of the caged is interesting by doing his usual YEET. Then the princess and the dragon. MY GOD I LOVE IT SO MUUUUUUUUUCH. I just have to list it. First, the artistic representation at the end of the story during the confrontation between LQ and SM aren't just stylistic, it's how the princess ACTUALLY see's this shit, she see's everything in black and white, but the LQ see's everything in white and black, literal opposites of each other. You are literally forced to see what she see's. THEN YOU CAN ACTUALLY SEE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE, A FULL BODY ART PIECE. Also the feather positioned in front of the face of the LQ's body when the Opportunists in control makes it look like he's smirking and i like it a lot. I love how we now see how the princess has seen us, how every time we try to be romantic or blood thirsty, she can't really see a face, just a mass of feathers lurking around with lizard hands and legs. Then how the ending plays out, I first had the aggressive princess because i tried to grab her at the start. So when we finally swapped back and he took the knife i yelled "I'm back, kill me" because i wouldn't know if they could force control of my body regardless of being back, and i wanted her to stay safe after the encounter. Seeing her so reluctant once she figured it out makes me feel so trusting of her. The power of shared perspectives really help build relationships... Also it was odd seeing that window actually being put to use during the story, outside of the contrarion upstairs. Finally, this is the time i felt like the biggest piece of shit for killing the princess, after being together, seeing and understanding each other on a deeper level than before, choosing to just... stab her to kill at that moment felt wrong, horribly wrong.
yeah okay you can have a gallery in scarlet hollow by 1.0
YAAAAAAAAAY
Scarlet Hollow is sooo amazing! I looove your work!
What I love about the Happily Ever After is the Narrator realizing that he might be wrong.
This ending is goated
I would love to see a conversation between Happily Ever After Narrator, and the Narrator in the glass at the finale. If you did Happily Ever After, you can actually tell Finale Narrator that there was a world where he changed his mind, and he says (paraphrasing) "The fact that you found one universe in a million where I was delusion means nothing". I honestly don't think there's anything you could say that would convince him, other than getting to live through his "Happily Ever After". Words wouldn't be enough.
@@perplexedon9834 Exactly. The narrator of this chapter saw himself through the Smitten who was trying to give the princess a better life according to his own criteria and without asking her opinion. Also, he was able to have an example of what he would have done to his peers and realized that such a life was not worth living, in general we are afraid of dying because we value and enjoy our life (there may be other reasons but anyway) but the princess's life was not likeable thus she felt like she would not care if she dies at any moment.
This is why the one we see at the end should have spoken with the narrator of Happily Ever After or should have been able to see the unfolding of the chapter himself. One still pursues his dream because he idealizes it while the other has seen with his own eyes that he would have inflicted a curse on the world rather than a salvation and to begin to question his beliefs and especially his approach.
@@mimoukilariTbf I think his peers would've actually been grateful of it. An endless repeating pattern of eternal bliss and forgetfulness? To us, yes that'd be hell, but those other people are already in hell - they're from the heat death of the universe and I think they'd gladly accept anything else.
Plus, it was clear she was suggesting her own things, within the jurisdiction that it keeps everyone happy. And Smitten was hurting too. He clearly didn't want to keep going, but because it's what we said we wanted he has no choice.
Plus the two narrators meaning would be catastrophic, not just because of the Construct, but because that narrator appears to have some doubts as well, and any acknowledgement of those doubts would likely prompt him to blurt out "Do want you want, I don't care" and destroy himself purely out of spite 😂.
I also like how in the Happily Ever After ending, during the table scene you two are the furthest apart you’ve ever been, showing that even if they want to be together, they physically can’t.
Has to be the most touching route yet and also a glimpse of what the echo/narrator is
It fuckin shocked me to see this route finally show him that his whole philosophy and the reason he did all of this, was wrong. And he accepted it. Just letting these two beings he now knows he’s torturing for no reason have their time together.
I picked the slay option the first time (because I’m an achievement hound and wanted to get all the cruel options over with), so I was so surprised when the Narrator, who’s always been insistent about slaying the Princess, suddenly voiced his doubts.
It made me cry and have a moment of clarity as it shows a lot about certain relationships.
It was an actual rollercoaster of emotions.
@@glitchvlogs6597"a moment of clarity" 😱
13:02 I like the fact that in her final moments Apothy is actively trying to hold you above and away from the hands that are dragging her down while apologizing for not treating you her sole worshipper a little better. Its interesting that at her most supremely (justifiably) overconfident and arrogant she still cares for you in her own way.
The devs basically said this wasn't planned but it was something that moved them in the moment, so they put it in. Plus it gave them a chance to explore both the princess and the player as a shared apotheosis to contrast with the Tower.
I think one of my favorite details in the cage is when the Princess is describing the fight between our bodies, and says "It's all going to come to a head soon... ... Hah. Head." It's a nice little moment that shows that the Prisoner, who didn't make any sort of jokes or laugh about anything in her original route, actually does feel more relaxed having given up her imagined control over the situation. A weight has been lifted from her shoulders... or perhaps, a weight has been removed from beneath her neck.
Also, a note for Princess and Dragon is that you can get the ending where you're merged together by freeing her, but choosing to cut her chains off yourself. Upon making that cut, you're sent back into the Princess' body, and Opportunist takes the, well, Opportunity, to finish the job, plunging the knife into your heart.
Also, while Princess and the Dragon can only have Opportunist, the devs have stated that they were toying with the idea of it being possible for Contrarian to show up, which would've been characterized by hearing the blade being picked up, followed by a smash as it goes through the window. They scrapped this idea because they really couldn't figure out how to establish any tension in a scene where you're dealing with an unarmed contrarian. I'm sure it would've been funny, but I don't think it would have have been much more than just funny.
Aw, man. Would have loved that.
@@animeotaku307 Same, I love the contrarian😍
Might as well help those along for reaching 'The Princess and The Dragon' so, Spoilers!
Act 1:
- Take the 'Steel Claw' (Dagger)
- Refrain from any dialogue with the Princess at any point.
- Slay The Princess
- Kill Yourself (to avoid the 'Good Ending')
Act 2: The Specter
- Welcome the 'Princess' into your body.
- Attempt to Slay yourself.
Act 3(?): The Princess and The Dragon (lacks an official title card but is promptly called that by the Princess)
the minute she threw the blade out the window i was like damn i hope the contrarian could also be in this route lol
@@nerdywolverine8640 I cheered when she did that. I think not having the Contrarian show up makes it work well as a meta joke but not something explicitly called out by the game.
25:43 there’s actually a third ending to this where you have the cheated who’s helps break free of the helplessness and get out of there together, with a minor deviation being, you can toss her back into the pit
I actually did it with the broken! By letting skeptic kill you willingly you get him.
And he's very fitting for the route. understanding the princess's broken mind here and sympathizing with her. Definitely my favorite voice yo have here
@@SwimSwayer Oh!
That’s so cool, i haven’t seen anybody mention that.
Can you explain how to get to this route with broken or cheated? I tried some stuff but i couldn't do it.
@@Unknowncoolguy to get cheated, you should accept narrator's reward, insist you're happy and ignore skeptic until he eventually kills you by stopping your heart.
To get broken you should say that you don't want to die again, until skeptic says that he'll kill you quickly and painlessly if you give him control over your body and the blade. Agree with his proposal.
Yeah, he missed a LOT of alternate ways to get to routes. You can get the fury by attacking the tower, you can get the epilogue by taking the damsel back up the stairs and telling her that you want to stay in the cabin, you can try to not slay yourself after the variant of the happy ending, which causes the sceptic to give you a heart attack and you get the cheated for the cage instead of the contrarian (which stops you from cutting yourself free, but you can throw the blade away still which gives you the option to get the cage to release you and bring her head to the top), you get a different version of the princess and the dragon depending on whether you were generally nice to the spectre before letting her possess you, or mean to her (I think that the key is whether you tried to slay her with the pristine blade when you first came down, but I'm not sure).
Also, before PC, you were able to get the den stuck, but as soon as you did, that was it, the shifting mound came and took her away.
Ah-- finally, a better look at our glorious """bird""" man. As I thought, he's something between a crow, owl, and an abstract carnivorid (probably a cat of varying sizes).
I can't believe they managed to make Broken cool. What the fuck!
Just wait until you see apotheosis with paranoid
Yeah all of the my least favorite voices get a lot of development. Although my favorite (the opportunist) still stole the show during the Dragon route ^^
@@tapseymoth803 Wait how can you not like Paranoid, they literally keep you going, keep your body alive in the other route. I love paranoid but there isn't a voice I really dislike!
_"heart, lungs, liver, nerves"_
They made Broken cool and Smitten terrifying! It's incredible.
There are several alternative endings you missed. For the Fury, if you don't have either the Broken or Cold with you you can't resist her torture and she ends up fusing you with herself. For the Apotheosis, bring both the Broken and the Paranoid and you'll be able to fight her like an anime protagonist with a giant sword. Finally, try going in the Cage with the Voice of the Broken or the Cheated and get rid of the dagger to unlock a way out with the Princess. For the secret ending, you simply have to slay the princess in every of the five routes.
how can i get to the cage with broken/cheated? i'm currently trying to 100% the game and i've only managed to get there with the skeptic+paranoid combo
@@waddledeepaddy24 for the cheated, keep resisting in the narrator's "happy ending" until the skeptic stops your heart. for the broken, i think you have to let the skeptic use the blade for you by saying you're afraid to die
@@rockinmusicquarterly12 thanks :]
@@waddledeepaddy24 np!
You can still fuse with her if you have Broken, you just need to get there from the Tower. Naturally, because he's still holding on to what happened, he's the first to go.
you can also get Happily Ever After without unraveling the Damsel, which gives you the Opportunist instead of the Skeptic. You can also throw away the blade before you get trapped by The Cage and this alloys you to escape with the princess
Yeah. Unfortunately 2 out of 3 endings of The Cage are easily missable because it really depends on what voice you bring into The Cage.
You can't throw the blade away if you're stuck with Paranoid and I don't think you can break your chains by force if you have Broken or Cheated.
@@valhunter97 I think it's actually pretty cool that there's stuff like that in the game - makes everyone's playthrough more unique
@@jalapenoofjustice4682 Even with 100% achievement completion of Pristine Cut, I know there's still a good bit of stuff I haven't found or tried, like getting the Broken instead of Cheated or Paranoid in the Cage chapter aparrently, and there's certainly room for there to be more, especially since some specific dialogue options can give smaller dialogue differences in later chapters, like the princess and the voices remembering some stuff discussed before and as such having a bit different dialogue, and in some cases the order in which you go through the (explore) options gives different dialogue (even besides the obvious cases where it has bigger consequences).
*Paranoid not Skeptic.
@@valhunter97It's not that bad. It's like Den - Stubborn wants to fight her and Skeptic wants to lure her out. Neither want to do the alternative.
36:26 it's a black hole on the horizon. Probably representing finality but also constant state of ending, since black holes are theorized to be the last things remaining in the universe once it nears to its death - like the Long Quiet freezes the existence in its final stage.
-The apotheosis fight is sooooo good (not the eye version but the huge sword version) even the broken is given his confidence back. I think you need the paranoid for this.
-You get so much more insight into her pov
-Cage is so cool exploring determinism and being able to both embrace and defy destiny/pattern
-You can convince the narrator that he's wrong
-You can see yourself
-Hunted gets to slay, also the route gets to explore shame
(edit) you can go to the cage without the knife and prove free will
How can you convince the narrator of that? I don’t see that in the video
@@eldritchcupcakes3195they meant happily ever after chapter when they said prove narrator being wrong
@@eldritchcupcakes3195 He says there are some things worse than to end in happily ever after
Well, you don't convince the narrator he's wrong, he mostly just realises it himself. You can tell the one in the mirror about him but he'll just panic and dismiss him as delusional and irrelevant 😂.
@@QuickquestionSuxballsBut we don't prove him wrong. He proves himself wrong.
Regarding the cage, there's so much more to the science of "we are ruled by our bodies". At the most basic, theres the reflex arc, in which you touch a hot stove and yank your hand away. This is controlled by a a single nerve cell in the spinal cord, and would happen even if you were headless.
There's more though, because the spinal cord doesnt just carey signals, it processes them with what are called "central pattern generators". In several (unethical) experiments, cat's spinal cords were severed so that their brain had no control whatsoever of their hind legs. They were then put on a treadmill with a stick blocking on of their hind legs, and they *stepped over it*. There is a "stepping motion" encoded into the spinal cord that is triggered by pressure on the front of the leg.
If you pay close attention while walking over uneven terrain or steps or so on, you'll begin to notice that it's like your legs are doing the walking, and you are occasionally just changing your direction. This is NOT just "muscle memory" in the brain, this is something your legs would keep doing if you were head less. Sometimes I become aware of this, and I realise just how much of an animal I am.
Then of course there are all of the sub-conscious patterns that are actually controlled in the brain, but thats less explicitly relevant for The Cage.
You missed a bunch of variations in most of the new and expanded routes.
• You can obtain The Fury from the Tower by killing her, and it goes over completely differently than from the Adversary.
• If you have the Paranoid instead of the Contrarian in Apotheosis, your fight against her goes completely differently.
• There's another choice that gives you Happily Ever After even if you don't start deconstructing The Damsel, though the only difference is which voice you get.
• If you have The Cheated or Broken in The Cage (by letting Skeptic kill you one way or another instead of doing it yourself), you can throw away the knife at the start of the route, breaking the cycle. It's my favorite version of the route easily.
• If you anger The Spectre by grabbing/stabbing her before letting her possess you, you get a more assertive version of her in The Princess and the Dragon that has a somewhat different ending sequence.
Oh the last thing about dragon route I didn’t know. I need to try that.
In Happily Ever After, each Voice you can get has their own achievement, so you do need to play both versions for 100% completion.
My jaw dropped finally seeing what the Long Quiet looks like in more detail than a pair of arms, maybe some legs, and eyes shining in the dark.
This game was already perfect. Then they added more, and it’s still absolutely perfect. Hell, I never knew it was possible to make perfect… better, but holy shit they did it. Such an incredible team.
i see the smitten in happily ever after as a fake lover : he is in love but not of the princess , he love the idea of her and not the real her , as a simp , he think tha give her everything , gonna make her happpy , but a truth relationship is make of up and down , you are not a servant but an equal partner
I think he is trying to love the real her but he keeps getting it wrong, he keeps trying too hard. It's not until the torches go out that he finally realises this. Not to mention we're not there to reign him in.
He's still good in Thorn though. And Burned Grey. Mainly because we're there
In my opinion, every voice has its good points and bad points. The Smitten believes in the good of the princess, but he is blind to the princess's flaws. This brings out the worst in him in the damsel route. In every other route, he gets to fall in love with an already self actualized princess, but in the damsel route, she is just a shell you moulded to love you.
The unconditional love of the smitten is his greatest weapon but also his greatest flaw, and in the damsel route where she has barely any personality, he just loves her, and she loves him, but a relationship can't be build on nothing but love. And since that relationship in the happily ever after is just built on the pure concept of love, it's shallow. It is cruel to say he was a fake lover. He really did love her, but only the shell of the princess, the image of her he built up in his mind. Too caught up in the idea of his love, he failed to form a true connection, which made a loving relationship impossible.
Fun fact: Depending on how you interact with The Spectre, the Princess will have a different personality during The Princess and the Dragon route. She could either have be docile or assertive which relfect the two ways the player would see her depending on whether they take the blade or night during Chapter 1.
The role of the board game in Happily Ever After is genuinely so brilliant.
It seems so obvious that it can be viewed as a analogy for spicing up your sex life, but I managed to miss that haha! My interpretation was that it also singularly takes the route out of the realm of relationships and applies it to every enjoyable experience of life as a whole, and even the game "Slay the Princess" itself. Thats certainly the Narrator's interpetation.
Do you remember how great Slay the Princess was when you first played it? Do you remember how it got stale and you started skipping dialogue? Look at how fun it is now that there's new stuff! This too will grow stale.
As well as as a perfect piece in the relationship commentary, it is like Abby and Toby (of Black Tabby Games) are looking straight at you and saying "We love you, we are so glad you appreciated our art so much. Please, when you're ready, move on with the memory of it rather than replaying it to meaninglessness".
It's a feeling only a single other game has made me feel, Outer Wilds, where the ending of both the main game and the expansion thematically address the relationship between your curiosity, fear, and love for what you are experiencing, and then gives you permission to move on. There are some games I adore, like Celeste, that just keep me coming back for more, but Slay the Princess and Outer Wilds are 10/10s that I don't feel a strong need to replay.
This was the first new route I got when coming to the Pristine Cut and that meta theme hit me over the head. This game has meant a lot to me and it's so natural to want to hold onto it and be frustrated at the uncontrollable nature of time and experience and change, but the whole point of it is that we do need to move forward, that change is what gives it all meaning. It's a great inclusion to this expansion, a fitting goodbye.
37:16 Nothing is truly Hell if you have someone dear to share it with. The problem was the shadow limited the options you had with each other.
Sorry if I quote it wrong, but in the base game Shifty said there was empathy and lonelyness in Fury's misery, here it was truly shown. What she does to you also does to herself, its not senseless torture, but making you understand what she went through, try to guide you to a realization that's beyond just words, it has to be felt or experienced. Something along the lines of having a soul, being different from just living flesh and instincts combined with a sort of Theseus' ship paradox.
Are you still you if you if your body is ubwound, stretched infinitely thin, reduced to a single cell, took forms you just can't even comprehend,then put back together to its original state,repeatedly. Part of you would say yes no matter what, other parts would say no. Its one of my favorite chapters with this update, before that I didn't realy get what was it all about cause it was just one of the shorter chapter 3-s with not too much going for it outside the amazing designs and some fun interactions, it clearly wasn't bad but still this is quite the glow up!
@@martonszentkiralyi2251 The torture is also a good way to put yourself in the Princess' role in general. When Hero says they keep changing into horrible things they have no control over? This is her life through the entire game. Each Chapter the Princess changes into something stranger and she can't stop it, she has to live with it and adapt to her new reality, a little better, a little worse.
This really shows just how many more options there are cause when I got to The Fury I didn't get either of the routes you talked about. Instead I cut down The Tower and got Voice of the Stubborn with me and when she unwound the Long Quiet across the room he managed to will us to respawn with a new body. And we kept doing that, over and over, each time getting a new Voice and Narrator, only to leave them when we died again, until finally we became nothing and managed to strike her.
You can also get the fury by defying and slaying the Tower, and when the fury unravels you, you can still squelch forward with the stubborn, and get stuck in a battle of wills with the fury atomizing you and the stubborn reassembling you trying to score a hit on her.
If you fight in the apotheosis with Paranoid... Some shit. Goes. DOWN. (like giant sword of righteous smite, knocking the goddess to her knees)
Best part is Broken gets replaced by a different voice each time, ending with Cold.
Plus if you allow yourself to be disassembled and reassembled, Broken actually goes out first because of how we got there and it ends just after Stubborn goes before leading to a unique vessel.
Also that's not what actually happens during that Apotheosis fight. I can't say anything else without spoiling it but there's so much more than just a giant sword. And she certainly doesn't get "knocked" to her knees either, it's much cooler than that.
To clarify, There was the option to slay yourself with the Spectre inside you where instead of leading to the Wraith it now leads to the Princess and the Dragon. In the video it almost sounded like there wasn't one.
I might be misremembering the original version of The Spectre, I thought you accessed The Wraith by refusing to let her possess you and being killed?
@@ZuldimYT It came in the update before the pristine cut, that’s probably where you got mixed up
@@PhantomcrustaceanAh, yes, that would be why I got mixed up.
@@ZuldimYT That too, I think that is still an option. But only the "killing her with you" route was changed. As far as I remember.
Nope. Before the update, killing Spectre with you just ended that chapter with her being absorbed by the Shifting Mound.
There's actually another branch of the Cage open to you if you bring along the voice of the Cheated. This is done by accepting the happy ending and not trying to kill yourself, by which the Skeptic will refuse and end your life anyway. When you come back, the Cheated will be pissed off at the Skeptic and, not wanting to give him a chance to try and hurt you again, gives you the option to simply hurl the knife away before you even approach the cabin. Without the knife, there's no option for violence, so the Princess's body will slump, then open up the cage the head is trapped in, allowing you to leave the Cabin with her, peacefully. It's a wonderful reflection and foreshadowing about your ultimate choice in the heart of the Princess. The knife gives you more options, and so you're almost expected to take it. But the only way to be able to leave with the Princess together is to not give yourself access to that option of violence at all. It's very poetic.
I adore how when the Opportunist stabs the princess and you swap back, you go RIGHT back into the normal flow of the game, with the narrator and voices talking as they usually do
The Fury was, to me, the highlight of this expansion. The way she was, do not pardon the pun, fleshed out in Pristine Cut was phenomenal. Adversary!Fury in particular has such a despairing feel, because her deconstruction route is also her looking for something she can't have anymore; "Are you still there? Are you still you?" is her searching for that person she thought you were, the fighting partner she thought was her equal, but she changed, and you changed, and there's no way of going back to that. If you try to match her with Contrarian and Stubborn, you can beat her, but she still looks tired and disappointed by the end of it because well... she's just not that same person that could be satisfied with a good fight anymore.
Having Cold and Broken being the ones to survive deconstruction is also such an interesting choice that played beautifully. Broken is already too defeated on a mental level to be brought down any further (although if you come from The Tower, he's the first to tap out), and patiently waits for Fury to let all out; Cold, on the other hand, has always been detached from corporeality to bother with the physical deconstruction (from the Wraith route: "You're thinking too much about your body. It's just a body.") - he knows what he is, and deep inside seems more aware than other voices about what the Long Quiet is. And yet by the end of it all, both Broken and Cold see Fury as an equal, someone who's tired and defeated and resigned, who longs deeply for something she lost and will never have again. Forgiving Fury and taking her by the hand to see the outside is probably one of the most touching scenes of the entire game.
A couple thoughts:
The "are you still there" still happens during Tower, during which she's trying to actively hurt you but also make you understand how she feels, while also trying to make herself godlike again. She realises sooner that her efforts are futile and so decides to join herself with you instead which leads to the Rewound vessel.
You can also do this from Adversary with Contrarian, the implication being that she's doing it to make you stronger. That particular Fury is definitely a lot more selfless than the others because of it. Plus Contrarian, like Broken in Tower taps out early, but in a very Contrarian way 😂.
Coming off of that, I think the Fury you get from fighting her unarmed was indeed satisfied with what she gave us - it might not have been a fight, but it was still a challenge, an endurance test for the both of them; a physical one for us and an emotional one for her.
I see it as her realising that her response to us constantly getting up was out of character for herself, and that she needed to pick up where we left off and see how much further we could push each other, like some kind of experiment. At one point she has a manic expression of obsession, excitement, curiosity and of course, fear. Then it all fades into seriousness and tiredness because they have both become nothing in that moment, and she willingly accepts death because she has nothing else to give us. We passed the test and she failed by letting her emotions overpower her. And she's okay with it. She's ready to move on.
Then of course there's the quantum break route but that's pretty self-explanatory.
holy shit I literally just wanted to watch someone analyze Slay the Princess. I almost rewatched the doki club/princess video. Small world or something like that
It's definitely the smallest part of the update, but I adore the Moment of Clarity's new design- especially her mask shattering?! It's just perfect! I always thought her og design was too similar to the Nightmare.
I remember seeing a version of the New Fury with the Voice of the Cold. I actually really like it, he takes Broken’s role but I like seeing the different perspectives.
"It gives you a lot to think about, it'll make you feel things.."
Yes, it does. The spectre especially makes me feel things, if you catch my drift.
From what I have seen you don't need to actually start deconstructing the damsel to choose to stay in the cabin and initiate "Happily Ever After" which is an awesome spin btw
I've just finished my first ever playthrough of this game last night. God it's so fucking good.
24:01 I found this route extra interesting because I suspect it's meant to foreshadow your final confrontation with the SM and how the Narrator ripped creatures with free will out of the unfeeling cycles of stasis and change, and how you can step outside of those two god-machines into the cabin and back into the original vessels that you began as. But in a twist of the Cage, you have agency now: your True cosmic selves remain outside in conflict (and likely would forever given their original natures + how they've been changed by the Narrator's creator) while the vessels that have faced the brunt of all the suffering and pain are left inside to decide what they *really* want.
edit: 36:08 it's a black hole btw
Yeah, my wife pointed out that it's a black hole when we did a watch through. I don't know why it didn't read as black hole to me.
@@ZuldimYT No worries, it took me a second to realize what it was. I've wondered about this shot, like does it mean that the world was being sucked into a black hole and now it's frozen there forever, safe but frozen? Or is the LQ's new world *actually* the black hole, destroying all of reality to return it to a simple empty slate... O_O
@@ZuldimYT Black Hole + Water World? Yeah those aren't mountains, they're waves.
The various expanded/new routes do a lot with being able to be reached by multiple paths, and shaping the available voices appropriately. You can get the Opportunist in Happily Ever After if instead of deconstructing Damsel you walk her up the stairs and then suggest staying at the last minute.
The Caged route takes this even further. One of the first things you can do in that route is try to throw away your blade, before you even get to the cabin. But Paranoid and Skeptic will gang up on you to stop it. However, if you got to the route by giving Skeptic the blade to kill you with due to accepting its necessity while not wanting to do it yourself... you get Broken instead of Paranoid. And then you _can_ throw your blade away, changing the subsequent events radically.
You can also bring Cheated into the Caged route, I think by forcing Skeptic to kill you himself.
To get the new secret ending, all you have to do is end the route by killing the Princess in all five routes you take - you don't need to focus so much on specific steps, the red text always appears if you kill her even if you also die while doing it. The Cage ending where your bodies kill each other doesn't count, as it's not "you" that has killed "her", just your bodies.
Not necessarily killing her; I got a red text option on the Dragon route by separating and then leaving her in the basement.
@@animeotaku307 From what I understood online, any "chapter ending" where you are actively hostile towards the Princess normally will unlock the red option. But if you don't try hard enough (ex. if the Cage decapitates you and your and her headless bodies start fighting), it won't unlock the option.
@@dariocarraresi1823 Each of the red texts is the Long Quiet arguing back against the Shifting Mound's assertion that you need her.
Basically Quiet shows dominance and independence from her by proving he had dominance and independence over every of her vessels he met.
Since the mound changes based on his perception it's not a matter of proving his dominance to HER. It's a matter of proving his dominance to HIMSELF.
As soon as he believes her to be weaker than him, it becomes true and therefore he's able to obliterate her without any extra help.
First time hearing my name in a video. God, I got so spooked for a second. Happy to support you Zuldim! Great video as always!
I guess you could say this cut of game meat is pristine!
There's another outcome for the Apotheosis (and honestly a very inspiring one at that) but it's a tricky outcome to find in the route because it depends first on actions of Ch. 1. I won't say more unless asked, to avoid unwanted spoilers
Tell me
@@kinglycrimson In chapter one, do not mention that she's suppose to end the world. Then go The Tower route, go unarmed, and resist her until you end up in the Apotheosis route. I'll let you see the options available from there
@@kinglycrimson Let’s just say the writers did an AMAZING job of redeeming previously universally hated voices with all the new routes, especially this one :D
@@S0RNGthe opportunist gets a redemption arc? When?
@@S0RNGActually Cold wasn't universally hated, just misunderstood. Loads of people still liked him even if there were vocal haters
I love the Happily Ever After and the Princess and the Dragon routes. The Happily Ever After route is one of the saddest in my opinion. You just hopelessly watch the player and the Princess’s relationship fall apart and watching her desperately try to keep things going is heartbreaking. And seeing the player through the Princess’s eyes was horrifying, I love that we get to see a route from her point of view.
But it's not just falling apart, it's allowing something strong to take its place.
I know recency bias is a thing, but Damsel 3 is without a doubt my favourite pathway.
Mainly because it genuinely brought me to tears.
The princess and the dragon has a bit of a variation depending on if you attack the specter before letting her possess you. If you do swing and pass through the ghost the princess in the next chapter is more on guard, reluctant to have you but still gets closer. The main difference is when the Long Quiet attacks he she is prepared enough to fight back sending you back to your body in time to feel her punch to your jaw as she uses the blade to cut herself free. Slaying her is not a option here but you can go with either of the other two depending on trying to get to stop telling her you switched again or asking her to kill you and save herself, the later opens her up to trust and toss the blade out the window.
You are you in the same way a computer is the mech it pilots.
Sure, the flesh isn’t you, but what makes it you is how connected it is to your brain.
Not sure if you've been told yet, but Black Tabby Games (the developers of the game) shared this on their tumblr!
Happily Ever After is the only route in the entire game I had to take a break after finishing. Not after Razor or Beast's gore, not after the incomprehensible horror of Nightmare or Stranger, not after the bloated or burning face of the Grey. Something about Happily Ever After felt, despite its fantastical setting, so much more grounded than anything else. It is a fucking fantastically written route. I absolutely cannot replay it for a long while. Pristine Cut is such a fantastic update to the game and the new stories it tells are all incredibly done.
I cannot watch because I have to play the new routes myself. What a burden...
Real
Let me just say, I have a PS5 and heard about the game in passing from Month Zander; didn't think much of it. Then, I saw Markiplier's video on it, which i watched the first one. Upon, hearing of the Pristine Cut and being able to get it on PS5 I had to physically restrain myself from watching anymore videos about the game to not spoil myself. And thank God I didn't because I bought the game as soon as it got released and I have sunk over 13 hours into it. This has been a great and fun game to play.
Ooh it doesn't sound like you got this ending for the Fury, spoilers if you don't want to know any alternate endings, but when I got to the fury with the voice of the Stubborn and the Contrarian, I forget what exact choice I made, but the stubborn eventually gives up and the Fury reshapes us, laments how even after all that she still feels empty inside, and tries to unravel both of us and make us one, much to the Narrator's dismay since this is exactly what he's trying to prevent. The process is cut off right at the very end by the Shifting Mound and when you approach her, all that's left of the Fury is gory ribbons and a heart.
You can still get that one if you get to Fury from Tower then either take the blade but give up or come unarmed. Because of the current state he's in, compared to post-Adversary, Broken naturally fades away first, then the rest plays out as it did with Contrarian.
I can also confirm that there are red options for Wraith, Adversary, and Wild.
during The Cage, if you toss the blade into the woods before you head to the 'cabin', you get a third version of the ending where you break the pattern, dont get your head cut off, and can take the princess's head out of the cage and outside with you
Or you can drop her. 😂
I'm joking by the way. Don't do that.
I seriously thought this was a Short when I clicked. Happy surprises abound
Edit: And it's out on console now, so if I wanna stay spoiler free I have to stop watching 😢
To bring me such happiness only to snatch it away almost immediately after is malicious, Zuldim.
It's fantastic to see that they added even more goodness to this masterpiece. Thank you for covering it. You are awesome :D
For the Dragon route my favorite ending of it is if you try to help cut her out to free her. Immediately your sent back into the princess’s body and the Opportunist is back in the driver’s seat and immediately goes to kill you both. There is also a version of it where if you try to kill her as a ghost and then go down this route where the princess is much harsher and aggressive towards you and your body
I don't think you can separate the mind from the body, and still be you, we are so much of those chemical signals flowing in your blood, making you feel calmed, happy, stressed, our gut biome influences our behaviour too, it puts a cap on how much joy you can feel, the same with some of your organs, without those and only being a mind, you would be an echo of yourself, and you would only feel the reminder of something, like "I was supposed to feel or like this, but now I don't" with so many things that you probably wouldn't even be you anymore
There's actually another ending in The Prisoner where you don't take the dagger with you which breaks the Princess' expectation of the endless loop you both share.
Thank you for this. I loved the original, but have been waiting for the Pristine Cut to see all that it has to offer. your recommendation just makes me all the eager to do the thing.
I find the thorn incredibly romantic actually. It’s deciding to change, to end the cycle.
Was not expecting a heel turn from The Smitten.
Ah yes, like the Batter in Off, you can never tell you're a monster until you see it from the other side.
I actually quite like the new stubborn/contrarian ending for the fury route. I feel like it's sort of the answer to the question posed in the other one. A stubborn but emphatic Yes.
I've also seen the Fury with the Cold and the Stubborn.
Lil note here 4:59 tho if you were start this chapter with tower broken actually does ended up submitting because if ya remember due to tower broken actually at least felt something with tower knowing that he failed to stop us and is now getting punished it caused to him actually submit
And while if you were to fight during tower to fury stubborn actually managed to pull through while broken and the new voices ended up being gone but the cold being left
And the cold is the same tho lot different since to for him it’s because he can’t feel pain nor anything at all to point to him it wouldn’t matter if he submit or not
oh my god thank you for mentioning scarlet hollow! i really hope it gets the attention that slay the princess got. love it
9:57 I see it as less overcoming and more about the fact that even beasts have care and empathy.
36:33 The same goes for the regular old universe as well. In Nightmare where she takes her mask off, we see the horrors of cycle of life and death. Happily Ever After focuses on the bad parts of eternity, that doesn't mean it's the wrong answer. We are not suppose to know how the new universe would be exactly, we are not suppose to know the "right" answer or else it all would be pointless. It's more about belief. Unless we actually live in an eternal universe, we can't know.
My only thing I wish was different was some of the overhauled ending sprites. Like seeing the den/long quiet hybrid would have been awesome.
We do get to see Rewound Fury though
going into Pristine Cut completely blind was the best decision I ever made (I spoiled myself on the base game as I always do with any horror game)
I immediately booked it to Princess and Dragon because Spectre is my favorite chapter 2 in this game, and, according to the friends with me while I was playing, my reaction to accidentally getting yoinked out of my body and sharing with the Princess instead was priceless.
also I got jumpscared by the bird man speaking with a British accent 😭
The Princess and the Dragon route gives one of the best horror visuals when Opportunist chooses to kill you and the Princess. It's so creepy.
The ability to help the Den out of the.. "basement" is actually a really interesting idea that I haven't really considered before.
I'm not gonna lie, I thought that strange shadowy.. _thing_ in the Happily Ever After chapter was just like, a really abstract throne.
The celestial body in the background is an enormous black hole with an accretion disc.
32:07 If you choose to leave with her, during the Princess and the Dragon, there's actually another way to get the cooler (slay) ending. Don't give her the blade, insist on cutting her free yourself. The moment you make any sort of cut, lethal or not, you begin flickering between each other's perspectives.
Actually what really happens is, you get pulled back, which is enough time for Oppy to do the deed, which in turn causes the flickering.
You can also reverse the roles by attacking spectre once, resulting in her becoming more aggressive, getting Princess and the Dragon, then once you're back in your body she'll attempt to kill you. Failing to talk her out of it causes her to stab you, which in turn also causes you to merge.
35:29 I think that for this secret ending, the conditions for each vessel needs to show that that was a time you “won” or “beat” the princess. You stabbed the razor in the heart, you’ve devoured the beast, you toppled the god, no matter what, you need to show, no, to prove that you are stronger than the shifting mound. Then, and only then can you overpower her, because you truly believe you can.
Smitten's first instinct when trying to show the Damsel the merit of staying with tLQ is to rip open their chest and physically show her their heart like a frog dissected in a high school science class?
I swear, Smitten has to be the most unhinged of all the voices.
knowing that this is the last update to slay the princess, saddens me, I didn't want it to end but alas it is what it is, hopefully game is cherish for the longest
It's an amazing game. As someone who got all of the achievements for the original game about a year ago, then came back to it for PC to once again get all of the achievements, I can't recommend it enough. There are ways to get to a lot of the routes you talked about that are different from the ways you mentioned (like you can get to the fury by means of the tower; I gave a full list in reply to another comment). Overall though, solid video.
That said, I do kind of wish that Black Tabby had added an ending for allowing the Long Quiet to give the Shifting Mound the power to fuse them together once again, just to really stick it to the Narrator and completely undo what he had done before leaving the construct. That said, they did also add some small touches which are really nice (like if you did the epilogue route in your run, you can tell the Narrator in the broken mirror at the end that you saw a version of him that had lost faith in what he had done, and the Narrator calls that version of himself delusional).
Also to get the new ending, you just need to be violent with whatever ending, usually killing the princess will do it, but the main takeaway is that both razor routes work, both the arms race, and the solid form.
The repeating scenario of Happily Ever After is something i personally recognize in a sense.
I got the mario party game, the second latest one, and i had someone to play with, they loved playing it, so we played it again and again and again (only for like an hour or two at a time) and i was thrilled to play it...But eventually, i ended up agreeing to play it purely because They wanted to, i could've played something else given the option, so, we made new rules, instead of trying to Beat the AI, we decided to try to Aid the AI, we picked our characters and then we decide on one character each as the AI to Help in winning, this means we had to fight eachother and the Other AI, while making certain our selected AI won.
It was A lot of fun! And the fact that our selected AI would still try to take us out made it more exciting cause it means they could Essentially stab us in the back as we tried to help them...but eventually even That grew boring, and we stopped playing it all together since there was no more joy in it.
Point being, everything eventually...Simply stops being enjoyable.
I've played games for majority of my life...And i'm kind of getting sick of it, i still play, but, i wish i could do something else...except i Can't do anything else, because i Have nothing else.
So just like them in their perfect room, if that is all you have in life, what was ones perfect, will instead become painful.
The paranoid keeping my body from shutting down is such a bop
I just hope he continues and crafts more great games
It's two people - they're husband and wife.
@ that’s even better
I got the red dialogue but didn’t realize it was part of a new secret ending
26:10 there is actually one more version fo this route were instead of the paranoid voice u get voice of the cheated
I do recall someone saying they can get broken in this chapter as well apparently
Yep, can confirm that. The voice depends on how you "end" after narrator presents you with "eternal bliss" as your reward
My first time playing the game, and I got the Happily Ever After ending on my second try. I didn't think I'd end up feeling so emotional early on in the game. I didn't even see lots of the really creepy stuff that happens in the game yet.
For this new secret ending I think depends of how you treated her. For example I got this option also in drowned Gray, Wraith when I didnt let her escape, Stranger because I saw worlds when I killer her, when I fougth with Apotiosis, killed Fury, killed her In Eye of the neddle... So I think you just must make sure you are more antagonistic/hostile to the Princess to do it... And yeah I tested it because Im one of those complecionist and got full gallery so I had to fight Shifting Mound few times for it
I got red text from The Wraith by resisting her possession and throwing us backwards.
I love the happy ending epilogue omg
6:15 you can also get this ending if you kill the Tower and wind up on this route. I also find it interesting that she has different dialogue if you reach this route through different means.
EDIT: 14:10 I got this route by suggesting that we stay here right before the damsel leaves.
EDIT (again): 37:40 Oh right i actually did see that dialogue option, i think i got it by stabbing the Apotheosis in the eye.
If I'm not mistaken, the red dialogue options become unlocked if you choose and succeed in slaying the Princess. I could be wrong here but I'm just sensing a pattern, especially with how the contents of the dialogue imply this idea that you don't need her, you're stronger than her, you can kill her etc.
That celestial body in the secret ending is a black hole. Personally, I think the secret ending is the best, despite it being the loneliest, because it ends with a realistic view of an ocean - almost like The Long Quiet broke through to reality that is not dampened by the shifting mound. Although - this may be a stretch - but the secret ending could be an allusion to the bible's story of creation. The biblical story of creation uses the imagery of God hovering over water at the start of creation. The secret ending of the game portrays TLQ appearing alone above a large body of water, while being called a god, and asking what world he is going to create...
Of course TLQ cannot be God on the account he was created by the narrator, but the imagery see too similar to be merely coincidence.
Oooh shit let's fucking go! Wild how quickly you got this out!
I will say I do think for the red text ending all you need is to kill the pirincess in the end or when it matters. For instance you can't slay either gray but both grays count for red text because you did kill her. There was *one* situation that I considered strange I didn't get red text but I don't remember what it was.
It might have been the stranger, as that’s another that automatically gives you red text. I’m pretty sure that it’s just based on doing the route in such a way that the princess speaks to you with red text first
@JestroGameDev oh no I found out what it was actually! The stranger is an always red text (there's no other way for that route to end). What it was was betraying the witch. Turns out being a scorpion doesn't count. I guess cause you don't really *succeed* in killing her.
The celestial body in the new ending is very clearly a black hole.
Bro its been 4 days how.
Sleep deprivation, mostly
For anyone going for the new ending, here’s some other choices I’ve found so far that will lead to it (I’ve been trying to get the cruelest ones done first to complete the gallery):
* Leave the Princess in the basement after returning to your body in the Princess and the Dragon.
* Throw yourself into the basement with the Wraith.
* Slay the Fury after she unravels you.
* Drop the Cage’s head into the hole you climbed out of.
* Slay the Wild after you separate from her.
* Get to either version of the Grey (you can only get one of them per route).
* Hurl the Pristine Blade into the eye of the Apotheosis.
What’s interesting is that each choice comes from you rejecting the Princess in some way. Which is reflected in your corresponding arguments against the Shifting Mound, claiming that you don’t need her. Which is also why she’s so angry when you do so.
On another note, if you beat her but choose to offer your hand afterwards, the blade won’t be in the cabin when the Voice of the Hero takes you there. So you can’t get the Unending Dawn or Loop endings if you do this.
Yup. To get the new ending, you don't need any aspect of the princess, you saw 5, you didn't need anything from her, rejected every single one, and also you got really good in slaying her.
So you have a clear picture of the world you want to create, about study and learning.
I don't find this ending bad or sad, it takes very special LQ to get it, and for him it's exactly what he wants and can make it working.
"Welcome back. Nothing was changed. There have been a little progress of course" - Dawn Machine, Sunless Sea
UPDATE: More options I’ve found, and one which might discredit my theory about all the choices needing to be a rejection of the Princess.
For the Fury, leaving her after being unwound and slaying her with nothingness will give you options.
Luring the Eye of the Needle out into the open and fighting her there will also give you an option. This is where my theory falls apart, because fighting the Princess on this route isn’t exactly rejecting her. For this version, fighting is affection.
My theory is that red options appear when LQ ends the story by proving himself to be superior to the Princess in some way. Either by being physically stronger and faster. Or mentally, by showing his independence or control over the situation.
Actually the Devs confirmed they've put the blade back since they realised it works as _the_ final choice for the player to make, aside from what they want to do with it if they take it...
Or so I heard
@@valhunter97That theory holds up more than mine.
So i got a LOT to talk about the beauty that is Pristine Cut, for the Fury it's so much better compared to the past and i like the difference of the voices giving options. Contrarion is my favorite of the voices for it because it shows how he's different in the others, while the stubborn is more about surviving and keep being tough, however he doesn't think to get back up, he thinks he can tough it out, but he can't, the pain hurts too much, the broken of course as said can't break any more than he already has, but the Contrarion breaks all the conceptions by just going "Well we're a pile of flesh now, but it'd be cool if we just kept going regardless" and you do, ya just continue on and on and on until there is nothing. He made the process go much more rapidly compared to the others.
Personally, I don't like the Den even with the remake, sure it's better, much better compared to the past, however it's mostly you dealing with a creature with a SLIGHT bit of humanity left in it. But devolving into instincts was.... disturbing which is good, showing that doing nothing but killing, never trying to understand, ends in pain and only pain.
I LOVE the change to Apotheosis. The paranoid makes it SO much better because of the fact he's one of the few voices who consistently figures out "If we believe, it's true", and he just goes insane with his belief that he can cause pain to the goddess. So much so that the Hero can fucking convince the broken, the dude who's been NON STOP SIMPING for her, into going into their cause of fighting back for the belief that they can beat her.
HEA is such a beautiful story, about how despite everything, it just won't work. It also shows off how dangerous the Smitten is with his line of thinking (and surprising power over our body). But what i love about HEA the most is just, it's the perfect reflection of what the Echo wants. He wants a stagnant world with no death, no change. Here the Smitten shows what will happen in such a scenario, it will always start out seeming to be a beautiful idea, it's glorious, everyone lives happily, but eventually, it wears down in time, no change means nothing new, nothing new means nothing to look forward to, nothing to look forward to means stagnation, stagnation of the mind might as well be torture... what makes it worse is that the Smitten does this without meaning to, he just does everything he assumes the princess would love despite not really knowing her. This really shows why the Echo kind of just... gives up once the board game is brought out, he finally sees that this is what he wanted, and this is horrible for both the Mound, and the Long Quiet, so how bad will it be for normal humans? Also this is the 2nd time the game ever made me feel like a piece of crap for killing the princess...
The caged is an interesting route, if i was to put it around 2 others that are similar to the feeling it'd be probably the tower and the razor. I love the environment, moment i saw the chains i went super cautious mode just like skeptic because of how many there were. But i feel the princess was weak. For the tower it was that, strong princess, weak environment, but the razor was a strong environment with a good princess. Both have good moments and bad. I can understand the caged's point of view, fits well, problem is with me is that i was just expecting the chains to be more of a literal hold on the princess than metaphorical considering how much of a literal hold it was on the long quiet, but that is probably more for the prisoner than the caged which we had a more literal hold there. Also once again the paranoid doing something unexpected, by goddamn HOLDING A VOICE BACK TO FORCE US TO TAKE THE KNIFE?! HOW DOES THE PARANOID KEEP COMING UP WITH SUCH GOOD SHIT?! Also again the paranoid figures out quickly, if we believe it, it's true, and starts having us hack the chains apart. Also the contrarion leading to the happy ending of the caged is interesting by doing his usual YEET.
Then the princess and the dragon. MY GOD I LOVE IT SO MUUUUUUUUUCH. I just have to list it. First, the artistic representation at the end of the story during the confrontation between LQ and SM aren't just stylistic, it's how the princess ACTUALLY see's this shit, she see's everything in black and white, but the LQ see's everything in white and black, literal opposites of each other. You are literally forced to see what she see's. THEN YOU CAN ACTUALLY SEE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE, A FULL BODY ART PIECE. Also the feather positioned in front of the face of the LQ's body when the Opportunists in control makes it look like he's smirking and i like it a lot. I love how we now see how the princess has seen us, how every time we try to be romantic or blood thirsty, she can't really see a face, just a mass of feathers lurking around with lizard hands and legs. Then how the ending plays out, I first had the aggressive princess because i tried to grab her at the start. So when we finally swapped back and he took the knife i yelled "I'm back, kill me" because i wouldn't know if they could force control of my body regardless of being back, and i wanted her to stay safe after the encounter. Seeing her so reluctant once she figured it out makes me feel so trusting of her. The power of shared perspectives really help build relationships... Also it was odd seeing that window actually being put to use during the story, outside of the contrarion upstairs. Finally, this is the time i felt like the biggest piece of shit for killing the princess, after being together, seeing and understanding each other on a deeper level than before, choosing to just... stab her to kill at that moment felt wrong, horribly wrong.
I got to the Fury by resisting the Tower.
9:13 Man this is why I love this game 😭
You haven't been able to throw the dagger away when you start The Cage haven't you? :3
5:00, as an old deranged man said, "You can't break what's already broken"
0:41 oh okay, that save some time I guess. I’ll be back after I buy and play though the game