Just got all the stars, damn that was a weird ending. Anyway, I think I've got a pretty good interpretation of the story. Note that this obviously has huge spoilers, don't read it unless you've either beat the game or have no intention of doing so.
Click here to view the secret text
×First, let's clarify who the characters are. Tim is not necessarily the man talked about in many of the texts (mainly the epilogue). Let's look at an example of the difference in style and setting of the text when Tim is referred to by name, this happens in every text outside of the epilogue and World 5.
World 3, Book 2, note that in the first book Tim is referred to by name:
For a long time, he thought he had been cultivating the perfect relationship. He had been fiercely protective, reversing all his mistakes so they would not touch her. Likewise, keeping a tight rein on her own mistakes, she always pleased him.
This is what we expect to read, an account of Tim and the Princess's former relationship, in fact we expect it so much that we assume this passage is talking about the Princess:
World 5, Book 1:
She never understood the impulses that drove him, never quite felt the intensity that, over time, chiseled lines into his face. She was never quite close enough to him--but he held her as though she were, whispered into her ear words that only a soul mate should receive.
The woman is obviously saying that the man is obsessed with something that gets in the way of the couples closeness, but what exactly?
Book 2:
Over the remnants of dinner, they both knew the time had come. He would have said: "I Have to go find the Princess," but he didn't need to. Giving a final kiss, hoisting a travel bag to his shoulder, he walked out the door.
Through all the nights that followed, she still loved him as though he had stayed, to comfort her and protect her, Princess be damned.
Oh, thank you. So the man is obsessed with finding the princess, just as Tim is, but it means something different to him. The woman, obviously interested in the man romantically, does not get mad that the man is going to find someone (or something) else. While Tim is obviously interested romantically in the Princess, the man wants to find her for another reason.
Yes, I know the two characters are far too similar to be completely different. I don't mean to be shoving quotes into your face, but here's another to think about, this is told from Tim's perspective:
He felt on his trip that every place stirs up an emotion, and every emotion invokes a memory: a time and a location. So couldn't he find the Princess now, tonight, just by wandering from place to place and noticing how he feels? A trail of feelings, of awe and inspiration, should lead him to that castle: in the future, her arms enclosing him, her scent fills him with excitement, creates a moment so strong he can remember it in the past.
This passage is saying that two things are related, emotions and memories. Note that in every world, an emotion is talked about which explains to the gameplay mechanic of the world. What the player is playing through are the emotions, Tim is the boy's emotional view of himself.
We'll come back to who the boy is later, it'll be obvious when you understand what the Princess is. First look at what may be the most powerful image in the game, the first thing you see, a city in flames. Remember that the events of the game are memories, so this image is after said events.
So what happens in the ending? Well, there are two scenarios:
1) Tim and the Princess appear to be helping each other escape from a beast, but at the end you rewind through the whole thing to find that the weird song you were listening to sounds a lot better backwards and that Tim was actually chasing the Princess who is saved by a knight.
2) You can only get this once and you need 7 of the 8 stars, this ending's purpose is to get you the final one. Tim and the Princess are able to run far ahead of the fire due to Tim's rewind ability and when the Princess drops a chandelier on Tim in reverse, Tim rides the chandelier up, touches the Princess and she explodes.
Yes, she explodes. Not only that, but you hear the distinctive whistling noise of a bomb being dropped shortly before the explosion. That's right, the Princess is a bomb.
An atomic bomb to be precise, the third red book is the biggest clue, as is the last book in World 1, here they are
Epilogue, Book 3:
He scrutinized the fall of an apple, the twisting of metal orbs handing from a thread. Through these clues he would find the Princess, see her face. After an especially fervent night of tinkering, he kneeled behind a bunker in the desert; he held a piece of welder's glass up to his eyes and waited.
On that moment hung eternity. Time stood still. Space contracted to a pinpoint. It was as though the earth had opened and the skies split. One felt as though he head been privileged to witness the Birth of the World...
Someone near him said: "It worked."
Someone else said: "Now we are all sons of bitches."
The especially poetic paragraph is from Robert Jay Lifton's The Broken Connection. He is describing the detonation of a nuclear device. The last two quotes were both said by Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge directly after the Trinity Test. Though this book is fairly straightforward, its hidden text is a good deal more abstract.
Epilogue, Book 3, Hidden Text:
She stood tall and majestic. She radiated fury. She shouted: "Who has disturbed me?" But then, anger expelled, she felt the sadness beneath; she let her breath fall softly, like a sigh, like ashes floating gently on the wind.
She couldn't understand why he chose to flirt so closely with the death of the world.
This is almost too obvious, an explosion of anger followed by a sigh "like ashes". Obviously something was just blown up.
It gets weirder. Here's the fourth book and its hidden text:
Epilogue, Book 4
The candy store. Everything he wanted was on the opposite side of that pane of glass. The store was decorated in bright colors, and the scents wafting out drove him crazy. He tried to rush for the door, or just get closer to the glass, but he couldn't. She held him back with great strength. Why would she hold him back? How might he break free of her grasp? He considered violence.
Epilogue, Book 4, Hidden Text
They had been here before on their daily walks. She didn't mind his screams and his shrieks, or the way he yanked painfully on her braid to make her stop. He was too little to know better.
She picked him up and hugged him: "No, baby," she said. He was shaking. She followed his gaze toward the treats sitting on pillows behind the glass: the chocolate bar and the magnetic monopole, the It-From-Bit and the Ethical Calculus; and so many other things, deeper inside. "Maybe when you're older, baby," she whispered, setting him back on hist feet and leading him home, "Maybe when you're older."
Every day thereafter, as before, she always walked him on a route that passed in front of the candy store.
Look for a second at what's behind the glass.
A chocolate bar.
Okay.
A magnetic monopole.
Wait, what? I looked this up, it's a theoretical magnet that has only one pole. Hardly what one would expect to be in a candy store.
The It-From-Bit.
I looked this up and found this quote:
According to this "it from bit" doctrine, the laws of physics can be cast in terms of information, postulating different states that give rise to different effects without actually saying what those states are. It is only their position in an information space that counts. If so, then information is a natural candidate to also play a role in a fundamental theory of consciousness. We are led to a conception of the world on which information is truly fundamental, and on which it has two basic aspects, corresponding to the physical and the phenomenal features of the world
-David Chalmers
Again, not standard fare for a candy store.
Ethical Calculus.
This refers to something that isn't defined in one's moral code, say Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This too is not what one would expect at a candy store.
Now go back to 1-1, at what moment does the ending proper begin? When Tim is looking at the princess through the glass. Note the emphasis on the pane of glass in the first quote from this book.
Finally, one last bit of proof. In the attic we can see another city, one not in flames. In this background, the Twin Towers are clearly visible. This happened before September 11, 2001, it takes place in 1945.
As for the knight, I think he does not exist in any form in the game's "real" world, but represents what would happen if the bomb was not set off, the Princess being taken away from the boy, a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project.
What do you think?
____________________________
Director of the Department of Orderly Disruptions
[Last edited by Snacko at 08-13-2008 07:12 PM : Because I felt like it.]
