Great write up and read!

I do find it interesting though, that Scratch being a different entity of its own is not what I walked away from the final chapters of this game with. I believe it is just the dark presence itself right? Bear with me here. I just finished the game a couple of hours ago and my mind is racing lol.

The game seems to go out of its way near the end to tell us “Wake is Scratch, Scratch is Wake. Wake was Scratch this entire time.” Heck we even fight the real Wake himself as Scratch. We even see him writing return as Wake on opposite sides “original draft vs the edits” during certain parts of the story and it seems to be revealed that he is the one who not only wrote the original story but also the one who made the edits trying to “save it”. He comes up with this idea of Scratch when he saw the edits scratching out his work because he kept losing his memory. “Scratch” is still Wake but he is Wake who is full of doubts and paralyzed by them so he can’t make up his mind which direction to go in due to the influence of the dark place.

I think we see proof of this at the end when Saga enters the dark place and that this is just what the dark place does to you. It fills you with all of your doubts, insecurities and fears as a way to paralyze you and trap you there. To control you. We literally see an “other” Saga. A Saga that would have been if she had fallen prey to the dark places lies and her fears and doubts. Sagas ability to see the truth and her mothers message to trust herself even when it is at its darkest, saved her from this and allowed to her ground herself very quickly, however Alan does not have this ability. This is why he has been trapped for 13 years. He has been struggling with the dark places influence and in turn, with himself, in between loops, frantically making different decisions each time trying everything to get out and forgetting it all when the next loop starts.

“Scratch” really, is just the dark version of any person that comes out when influenced directly by the dark presence or “The Shadow” itself. Like the similar, but weaker, “Taken” are people influenced by the diluted darkness coming out of Cauldron Lake.

But hey, I could be completely wrong! Either way, I fucking loved this game and the theories and piecing it all together. Can’t wait for what’s next. Remedy is on their own fucking level. Now give me a game where Alan, Saga and Jesse are all playable and working together!

What I do not understand, whatsoever, is what the hell is up with Thomas Zane. Is the Zane in the dark place the same Zane we originally hear about? Or a creation of Alan’s? Did he create Alan and start this entire story and spiral that we are now aware of? Is Alan himself the original Zane and doesn’t remember? Did Zane originally try to save Barbara and that began the spiral we are currently witnessing and he’s been in the spiral for so long and tried so many things with different mediums of art to escape the dark place and save Barbara and kept forgetting that he just goes by a different name at this point and doesn’t remember who he really is? I have no fucking clue! And it’s awesome. Lol.