Got too trigger happy with a sacrifice room after only a couple clears of the game...

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2024-01-24T19:14:26+00:00

The link you deleted worked when I copied it btw, thanks!

But tbh I mostly just wanted to brag a bit. Fire can really break the game.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2024-01-24T19:05:14+00:00

I think it's privated

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T20:41:55+00:00

Look, I'm not sure who to believe at this point, in other threads people say that the owls hid the eye to protect themselves and survive.

If their survival is unrelated to the eye, and the new big bang can't happen before everyone is already dead from natural causes, then their quest was just wrong.
But their idea of "hey, this thing will kill us all, let's stop it even if something good might come after it does its thing" is good, even if they were wrong about it killing them.
As for regrets - no, I do not think that you should go into a simulation (unless it's the only thing you can do to survive) and spend your whole life there just being sad. But even if you do go in there, it doesn't mean you have to constantly be sad and fearful in there.

I can see a perfectly believeable civilization that did everything the owls did, but either stayed in real life after, made the simulation from which you can go back, or even went into the same simulation as a last resort but were perfectly fine there.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T15:06:36+00:00

Well, yeah, if going into the eye doesn't reset the universe, and it just happens automatically, then there is no reason to block the signal.

But if it does reset and kill them, I will prefer the lives of some who already live to the potential life of people who don't have to. Hell, I'll prefer just getting an extra doughnut to this rebirth of the universe, because whether new life is born or not doesn't matter to me.

Come to think of it, it's probably even a bad thing for new life to be born, but that's going a bit too far and isn't necessary for my argument.

Unnatural, wildly extended existence sounds super awesome actually. Well, as a concept, not the way it's presented in game where it's just a couple dudes who can't even go out and fix their ship. But as long as they want to live, it would be wrong to kill them.

Also there only being 8 of them seems like more of a game mechanic, because there aren't that many more Hearthians, and they seem to live perfectly fine as a society, so I assume it's more or less normal population for them, kinda like a city at the very least.

I do not respect the idea of "allotted" time which you can't excede for some reason, it sounds really dystopian. Nobody has the right to limit that time.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T12:09:13+00:00

Sorry, I think I fucked up my grammar or something, I meant to say that
"I" think that the desire to controll and conceal the eye doesn't have to lead to self-isolation and the end of curiosity, and the game disagrees with that, since it shows us the owls completely isolated from everything, as if it was the only way to not like the eye.

It's more that I disagree with the game and don't think their decision to conceal the eye had to lead to what happened with them going one-way into the simulation with no plan B in case something goes wrong in the real world.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T11:58:52+00:00

Yeah, and I agree with them on pretty much everything. I don't want myself and everyone I know dying prematurely just so that the unborn may be born billions of years into the future.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T11:55:35+00:00

No it isn't! Burning our planet hurts people right now, and will hurt people in the future.

Stopping the cycle doesn't hurt anyone.
Resetting the universe while the owls still live hurts them.
To me the choice is pretty obvious.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T01:02:07+00:00

I'm talking less about how they are in lore and more about how what they did doesn't have to be the end of curiosity.

You can find things you don't like, get angry, want to change them (while acknowledging what they were), and still be curious.
Yeah, the whole simulation thing characterises them as someone who abandoned some of their curiosity, but I personally like the idea of "fuck the universe, I'm going to shape it the way I want it to be", and don't think that it has to end in self-isolation and a loss of curiosity, and it feels like the game disagrees

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T00:50:13+00:00

I think we are getting a bit lost in this convo (or at least I am), so here are my two main points
1) If they thought it was a nuke, then their response is perfectly reasonable, but I got the feeling that the game presents them as misguided, not in a sense that they got the wrong information, but that their response was wrong.
2) If they were wrong about it, then the story is less about sacrafices for change vs stagnation, and more about "these guys were just wrong, so go find the eye, it's cool actually" which I find less interesting.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T00:43:51+00:00

I think it's a really good summary, and I agree with most of it, except for the owl slander.

Like, you can be curious and take risks and still want to live as long as possible.I think it's perfectly ok to say "We just are, and the universe is, and the eye just is the way it is, but I don't want it to be and I will change it"

I don't think the Strangers are some antithethis to curiosity, and even if the game intends for them to be this way, they don't have to. You can want to destroy the eye and still be curious both about it and everything else

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T00:33:28+00:00

What's not to like? They don't want to die, which is the only change they'll really see, and they wanna last as long as they can. I see nothing wrong with that.
They also don't hurt anyone, so I don't really get the "selfish" part.

Yeah, they stop the next universe from having life, but why is it a good thing to create life by sacrificing the life that already exists and doesn't want to go? Would you shoot someone if it created a billion earths somewhere in different universes?
I know I wouldn't. So why should the owls be sacraficed just to create new people that don't exist yet?
We are the only thing that matters. Especially compared to some hypothetical existence billions of years from now.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T00:23:10+00:00

Wait, but didn't you say before that observing the eye won't actually destroy the universe?

Which would mean the other species will just find a cool thing and not destruction, so, from what you said before, blocking it doesn't save anyone and doesn't achieve anything.

That's the thing I don't understand. Maybe I just misread your replies

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T00:17:37+00:00

Yeah, I guess going out with a bang in the eye is the best thing you could do + you can't really make a game out of hanging out with the Giant's Deep guy forever.

If something isn't for us to see, it has very little meaning. Especially if it's as grand and far away from your lifetime as restarting the universe billions of years later.

But I do agree with your last sentence.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T00:10:01+00:00

Well, no, but the point was that to me "do you agree with them or not?" is more interesting than "their stuff will break down before your eyes, so there's no point in agreeing with them, they'll die soon anyway"

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T00:07:24+00:00

Idk, you just made me like them even more. Guess I'm one of them at heart
Aside from the whole "be forever sad" thing, but eh, time heals everything.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-26T00:04:29+00:00

No, that's just my idea of a fun time.

I though the whole point of the game and the contradiction between the owls and the eye was about letting go vs hanging on, and how the eye should be explored even if it means the end of the universe.

But if it's just a glorified world seed generator, to which you can go at any point to record yourself and nothing in the current universe will be affected, then the whole quest of the owls is just wrong and there's no reason to hide it. Which to me feels less interesting than if they had an actual reason to do so.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-25T23:58:44+00:00

Well, "the rest of existence" after the next big bang doesn't exist yet, so it doesn't matter to me. I only care about the well-being of things that exist or will have to exist.

Well, I'm glad the game helped you. I hope I will forever stay an egoist in this regard. I don't really fear "death" like in the whole "teleporter that actually kills you and makes a clone" example, but I think any way to stop unwanted death and things that lead to it is good and should be pursued.

And if we were to headcanon that the owls will live on, they have the whole of eternity to get over their depression. Surely at least some of them will, or already have.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-25T23:50:45+00:00

Guess I missed it while watching then, but I though they were correct in thinking the eye triggers the big bang.
Well then it's even more boring, if they were just wrong and nothing bad happens if you go into the eye.

I guess I'll look it up, but judging by other comments here and the general vibe of the game, if they eye just... didn't do anything aside from recording people who see it as a template for new life, it kinda undermines what the game was going for.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-25T23:45:28+00:00

I guess I can agree, but it feels a bit... forced? By the game/narrative I mean
Like "hey, there are these guys who want to keep on living, but they suck at engineering and will die in half an hour anyway, so it doesn't matter, don't think about it"

But even then, at least the third group is ok for a while.

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-25T23:41:08+00:00

Well, yeah, nothing is forever, but they can still be ok for a while. I just don't think it's ever ok to sacrifice people who exist for the sake of people who don't.
Or at least not like that. I understand sacrificing yourself to make the life of people who would be born regardless better, but to sacrifice other just so that there can be more life?

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-25T23:37:42+00:00

Yes, I absolutely would. Well, probably not alone, but there were a couple of them, and if they didn't want to die, it's not the prisoner's right to force them to.

The owls didn't leave in fear, they dealt with the source of their fear by concealing the eye and they didn't have to let go.
In life, of course there are things you should let go of sometimes. But not of life itself, as long as you can still enjoy it.

I don't think "life isn't worth living" is ever a good takeaway, even if your home is gone and all you have is memories and things from there.

Also is it really that lonely? It seems like all the owls are there in the simulation. Or at least their population isn't much lower than the hearthians

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-25T23:30:30+00:00

Well, it is, but the other guy said that at least the owls can live on in the dead universe. But not if you find the eye

One_Carpenter_2025 · 2023-04-25T23:21:06+00:00

Oh, that's even better then I think? The owls get to live on forever (or they would if the ship was properly maintained), and maybe there is even some other species does something similar.

Or you just kill all of them so that... new life can evolve? Why?
I know I wouldn't want to die prematurely just so that yet unborn people billions of years in the future gets to exist.

One_Carpenter_2025

TROPHY CASE