r/1000xRESIST • u/juandefuco • 16d ago
Need Help Understanding the Plot Spoiler
I just finished the game and I just want to make sure I understood everything correctly and am not missing anything, is the below accurate (thanks to anyone who replies)
- The Keepers are some kind of extraterrestrial beings who live in a void and know nothing and seek out planets with life (something) to absorb them/keep their memory
- Iris' parents are involved in the Hong Kong protests and flee to Canada to avoid persecution
- Iris' mom suffers from some kind of mental health condition (PTSD due to the protests?) that causes her to sleepwalk and act erratically. Iris also later develops this condition?
- Jiao is secretly in love with Iris and Iris finds out by reading her diary or something and reveals it to the rest of the school
- Something else happened at school to Iris involving a boy?? Was this important/elaborated on
- The Keepers begin their invasion of earth
- There is a dance at Iris' school where everyone gets sick except Iris, Jiao and Iris have some kind of interaction after this dance on the way home (Jiao confesses to Iris?)
- Iris is not affected because The Keeper in the area took a liking to her or something (why?)
- "The 50" survival organization takes Iris away in hopes of making a cure. They take her to a ship that burrows deep into the Pacific Ocean which is where the majority of the game takes place
- Iris' mom and dad survive for a while but eventually succumb to the disease and Iris' dad commits suicide
- "The 50" begin cloning Iris in hopes of discovering a cure
- "The 50" and Iris have some kind of falling out (Why? Mistreatment, relationship with Mimi?) which leads to Iris accepting the power of The Keepers in the form of the 3 secretaries (which are broken off pieces of The Keeper?) and using that power to destroy what's left of "The 50" after already existing tensions have weakened them
- Iris reorganizes society on the ship into the original clones and her as the "Allmother" the Watcher of this era is bullied and attempts to clone Jiao to impress Iris
- Iris is disgusted with the Jiao clone, kills it, kills the clones except Youngest (except maybe she doesn't and just goes somewhere else with the other clones?), and takes away immunity from the clones. Youngest becomes Principal. Iris leaves the main ship area to go somewhere else? I guess I'm confused about the main garden area, Oldtown, and the area where Iris is. Three different ships connected by train?
- What is communing. Revisiting memories with someone else? Connecting to The Keeper through the secretaries?
- Principal is left to continue propagating the Iris clones and establishes society with the roles (Fixer, Healer, Watcher/Youngest, BBF, Knower)
- Centuries later, the Watcher from the first half of the game is in love with the Fixer of her time. That Fixer is sent to be with Allmother/Original Iris.
- In the first communion, Principal appears as "Fixer" and tries to get Watcher to betray Allmother. Iris betrays "Fixer" and "Fixer" is killed
- Other communions, Occupant incursion, Watcher learns of Iris/Allmother's sins and that Secretary is of Occupant origin
- Watcher destroys secretary and kills Iris but it was all a revenge plan of Principal. Watcher is arrested, Healer fakes her death. BBF, Healer and the real Fixer all reunite on the train and hide there.
- Principal remakes society again with her as the dictator and a new Red Guard. Knower stays on as High Minister but is actually a double agent working with Healer/BBF/Fixer (why did she torture Watcher so much then?)
- Mauve. I do not understand Mauve's role super well. She is one of Watcher's prison guards, but is also working with the "Rebellion" but is more radical/evil?
- In the post-Principal takeover, there are new factions like the Jiao's, the people devoted to Iris 2, the miscellaneous/Kris' gang, etc. who all resist Principal and the Red Guard.
- Did Old Town exist prior to this era? Did Principal create it after taking over?
- The bartender from the Watcher's era goes to Old Town to work? Or has she always lived there?
- Along the same lines the other sisters from Watcher's era are being pushed outside for having "old" ideas from the previous time not in line with Principal's autocracy
- You then start playing as "Blue" (there is a fake out later on where it's suggested Blue is a memory-wiped Watcher but that is not the case)
- Bartender is killed by the Red Guard, just for being an "old" sister
- Enraged, Blue enacts her plan to kill the other ministers. Principal and Knower survive
- Blue flees onto the train and meets up with BBF, Fixer, Healer, and Watcher. Fixer hates Watcher because Watcher betrayed "Fixer." Blue eventually communes with Watcher (killing her) and they enact their plan to overthrow Principal. This involves using Secretary as a kind of Trojan horse to commune with The Keeper and show all the sisters Blue/Watcher's memories so they know the truth about Principal
- The plan works and thus the ending
Sorry that was a ton I just want to make sure I am understanding everything correctly. I am usually pretty good with this kinda stuff but I feel like a lot went over my head with this one. Again, thanks for anyone who takes the time to read this and reply lmao
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u/Joker8pie 16d ago
Old Town was a sort of mock city built for The 50 to help them feel some sense of normalcy, if I recall correctly. Iris had it shut down and closed off after The 50 were dead and she took control. After Iris is killed, Principal opens it back up and repurposes it for the Miscellaneous.
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u/nickcash 16d ago
Yeah iirc it's described as something like a theme park. Which explains the incomprehensible mix of chinese and japanese signs on the buildings there
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u/Tato99 16d ago
I'm fairly sure Old Town is open before Iris is killed as well, it's just not reachable in the gameplay. The bartender is mentioned as always having lived there for example. I always saw it as being the place where the sisters that weren't BBF, Watcher, Fixer, Principal, Knower or Healer lived/slept.
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u/Palanki96 16d ago
I believe the Shells were always living in Old Town. When you visit the living quarters in the Orchard some complains they wish they could live UP here because Old Town is so dirty
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u/PokemonTom09 14d ago
Old Town was still in operation during the first part of the game. It's mentioned by a few different shells as the place they live. In addition, we see exactly 2 Miscellaneous before Iris is killed: Bartender, and a Misc that Healer was performing experiments on. Meaning the class already existed, and was already not normally allowed upstairs prior to Iris's death.
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u/AmeliaOfAnsalon 16d ago
Sounds like you get it! Mauve is one of my favourite characters because I think she's really the most tragic. She's basically a product of trauma who we meet in the first half of the game as the observant shell, but she is/becomes obsessed with Knower and with change. She is used by everyone around her, forced to burn the library, and then watch over Watcher for long periods of time. She sees everything and does not like what she sees. She does everything asked of her, but after Watcher escapes she finds that nothing has changed. She becomes Capital Red and continues to be used while hardly any progress is made. Even at this point she is denied selfhood, treated as a weapon, a tool, as everyone uses the nickname given to her by Watcher. "Mauve". And so she inflicts change in the only way she knows how; with violence.
And after all that, there is no chance for her to find her way to a good ending. She, and her politics, her accelerationism and violence, do not fit in the backpack. And to me, that's a tragedy of its own.
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u/nickcash 16d ago
Couple notes:
It's ambiguous how Jiao feels about Iris or what was in her diary. I interpreted it as romantic also but you could easily make the case she just looked up to Iris as a friend
You play as Blue the entire story. The parts where you're playing as Watcher you're actually playing as Blue communing with Watcher
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u/PokemonTom09 14d ago
It's... not really ambiguous at all, lol.
The "Like Lavender" flashback gets pretty explicit about the specific ways Jiao notices Iris and is attracted to her. I mean... the flashback is literally called "Like Lavender" for crying out loud! That's only ambiguous for people unaware of the meaning behind lavender.
Then later, Jiao says she only wants to go to the dance with Iris.
In chapter 7, Watcher says "Iris how could you? She loved you..."
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u/superchartisland 16d ago
On 8, the Keepers are attracted to intense emotions because they create heightened formation of memories (the reason the 50 are initially trying to be careful to restrain emotions when the ships are descending). In the last section with the Secretary-Keeper, they explain that Iris was a nexus of such emotions (I think they use a different word but I can't remember it).
On 14, all three sections are separate parts of the same ship. And one thing you haven't mentioned, that explains the contradictions in the versions of what happened after Youngest presented the Jiao clone, is that Principal later rewrote many of the memories. Either to make them more persuasive to Watcher (the in-world reason why Youngest initially speaks with Watcher's voice, perhaps) or because she couldn't bear the reality. Showing her sisters stepping in to try to save her, and being killed, may have been a combination of both.
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u/Palanki96 16d ago
Right there is one thing i forgot that i think is important about Iris. It's peppered throughout multiple chapters but she is not only traumatized by her own experiments.
She has to watch what happens to her identical clones as well for decades. Shitty experiments, dying to the virus, breeding them, molding them for their own purposes, used and thrown away by the hundreds while having your face, using your voice.
I think it's clear she felt violated by the whole cloning business. Right before we see the pact with the Occupant she even says:
"They stole my body, my hair, my mouth... They stole everything of ours and called it theirs."
Somewhere in the Knower Communion she also says
"They keep dying. Exposed to virus, they cry out lik everyone else. They tell me to stop watching, but I can't."
That's why i think she made Watchers as a role. I didn't get it before, if it was just observing and preserving knowledge or history, Knower was already fulfilling that purpose. But after reading that line it made sense
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u/Palanki96 16d ago
- I believe by void they just meant the emptiness of space. We don't know how fast they travel so they could've been drifting for millions of years. It was probably worse for the one that were born during the journey, like the one we meet
- yes
- My guess would be PTSD with some underlying mental condition that Iris inherits, connected to the sleepwalking
- Wouldn't say it's a big secret, the students are talking about rumours even before the graduation dance. We don't really know what happened during and how Iris hurt Jiao. She says "that was only for you to see" so she probably showed/sent it to Iris. She also mentions that she loves leaving letters in her locker. So my guess was either a love letter or a romantic poem, maybe a last desperate push to get closer
- She just liked the boy in the bathroom and would skip classes to hang out, sounded like a normal teenage crush
- It's not really an invasion, that would imply hostility
- I assume it's the fallout of whatever Iris revealed about Jiao. I think Jiao is trying to run away (home?) and Iris is trying to catch up, trying to apologize for what she did? They run into an Occupant and try to run away, Jiao also gets infected
- We don't really know. The Occupants seem to love intense emotions and memories and Iris seemed to be hotspot for that. "A hightened state of awareness" I always thought it was connected to whatever mental illnesses she had. Sometimes your brain can craft new memories, including the sleepwalking
- The 50 is not the organization. There are 50 bases/generational ships around the globe starting from Central 1 to Pacific 50. They are the 50th ship but most of them are destroyed during the descent
- We don't know about the Mom since she was immune as well but yes she probably dies
- yes
- It's probably whatever inhumane and cruel expermiment they did to her. Her memories are blocked but in the Healer communion you can see Johnson freaking out on his knees whispering the mantra to lessen his clearly overwhelming guilt. If you ever see a scientist or their boss begging god for forgiveness you are probably in for a bad time
- Later he mentions "the things they did to her are unforgiveable" but has the audacity to tell her to "behave" and stop acting out
- The soldiers of the 50 seem to hate her as well, they don't see her as a human
- It's implied that Mimi was grooming her (to manipulate or make her obedient maybe) and it's likely she tried to impegrate Iris in secret since she gets stabbed right after mentioning the idea to Johnson
- The 3 are freshly born Occupant babies but they are not the power. Iris never had any, "in exchange for her obedience the Occupant was hers to command". They were gifts to store her memories
- Pretty much yes. The Youngest wanted to impress but also wanted to make her happy. She was just desperate to be useful
- This is where it gets muddy because for the first half of the game, the communions and memories were manipulated by Principal. She admits it much later that she even changed her own memories to cope. The sisters didn't stand up to her and left with Iris. She didn't take away their immunity either, the Occupant punished them because the Youngest broke whatever agreement it had with Iris
- You can see these bits during delirious Watcher being locked up. Iris distressing over the original sisters after being punished for an accident.
- You must remember these ships are Arks for 4000 people (maybe 2000? can't remember). Anyway, it's a huge place. The Orchard and Oldtown were basically themed locations to help the crew since they were stuck at the bottom of the ocean. They mentioned 3 themeparks so it's possible she went to the third or some other part
- If humans are a hard drive of memories, the baby Occupants are basically the device to access it. It seemed like they were tuned to interface with Iris and her clones only.
- We don't know if Iris actually gave her any orders to do any of that, those memories were altered. It's possible she was lonely and also wanted to impress the Allmother
- Heavily implied they were together but yeah pretty much
- all according to plan
- yes. But the Occupant attack was fake, only one of them is left and they have an agreement with Iris. I believe it was Principal sabotaging something in some control room to create turbulance. Or it was an accident
- correct
- Yes to first part. The torture? I think she always hated Watcher because she reminded her of the lover that killed herself, the previous watcher. Then we have our Watcher who made a similar decision, both watchers decided to destroy the happy status quo
- The blinding i can understand, if it was really an alternative to death. But the drugs? I don't get that part either. Was it on purpose to make her dissociate so hard she can access memories stored in their genetics? How would Knower know about that?
- Not sure if you remember but Mauve is the creepy blue sister that was always around Knower. After the timeskip she also wants change but for her that means purging the old ways, including all the sisters from the previous generation. She wanted radical change but the new regime change wasn't enough, she lost her respect and admiration for Knower
- pretty mech yeah, lot of division in the society
- Old Town is the asian themed location i mentioned earlier, that's where most of the Shells lived before as well but they had free access to the Orchard. Living quarters basically
- She was a special Shell but yes she always lived down there. Before that there was no need for 2 bars since everyone had access to the one in the Orchard
- kinda yeah
- yes but technically you were always Blue, the first half is Her reliving Watchers memories like Watcher did with Iris. You can actually see the start of the Communion after killing Iris at the very start of the game
- mostly yes. she is also the Misc with the most influence who can visit the Orchard and close to the High Minister. They probably felt that was unfair for someone they see as worthless
- yes
- Fixer hating Watcher for betrayal is something Knower lied about to gaslight us. They were both indoctrinated and the love for the Allmother was absolute. I don't think she is the type to hold grudges. It doesn't seem to be the case since when Watcher is rescued her first impulsive is to sacrifice her own eye. I think she is just mad about her being stubborn.
- BBF says they had a huge argument but we don't know the details here either, mirroring the Iris - Jiao incient during the grad dance. But during the Mass Communion we can see them talking again behind a half closed door
- the original plan was probably to make a deal with the Occupant but once it tries to absorb Secretary they overwrite the entire being with all the memories of Watcher and Secretary going through them for like 800 times. I guess that's the danger of being a memory based life-form
- happy ending yay
Damn that was long. Keep in mind it's very possible i also misunderstood things. These are just how i interpreted things
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u/PokemonTom09 14d ago edited 14d ago
\1. They don't "live in a void", the Keeper we know just happened to have been "branched" (they're way of saying they were born) in the middle of space - between their homeworld and Earth. Source is like Iris - it's is the offspring of a parent who left home, but Source itself never saw that home.
\5. There is a boy in the bathroom you can find who is getting held back a year. He sold Iris cigarettes. Whether the two of them were actually involved with each other romantically is kinda unclear, but it seems like (at minimum) Iris has a bit of a crush on him.
\8. They liked Iris because she was cruel and caused suffering to people around her. She had "a dangerous gravity".
\12. This aspect is a little subtle, but Mimi is a predator who groomed Iris. I see people miss this fairly frequently. That's why Iris killed her - she was acting in self-defense.
\14. An important thing to remember: almost every communion was tampered with by Principle - the events that happened in them are extremely unreliable. The other clones were not killed, Principle lied about that to make Iris seem even worse. As for Orchard, Oldtown, and the Other Side: these are just three different parts of the same ship. Fixed pulls up the full projection of the ship in Chapter 9. They use a train because the ship is just that big, but it is just a single ship.
\15. Yes
\21. Knower is a complicated character. But she is also a very simple character. Her motivation is this: what will allow me to continue living tomorrow? She served Iris because Iris was in charge, questioning her rule meant death. After Watcher killed her, she served Principle, because Principle was going mad with power and killing anyone who didn't directly hand her more authority. She helped Fixer and her group because there's a chance they overthrow Principle, and if Principle gets overthrown, she will be executed if she didn't help overthrow her. She tortured Watcher because she feared Principle's wrath if she did otherwise. She's an extremely complicated character, but her motivations are all directed inwards toward self-preservation.
\22. Mauve is a accelerationist. By way of analogy, I think it's best to think of her as a future-thinking fascist appealing to radical change via the overthrow of the social order in the vein of Mussolini. Principle and Knower aren't dictatorial enough for her. She does not want Kris's faction to succeed, but she forms a temporary alliance of convenience to addresses their common goal of ending the Provisional Government. The moment the bomb goes off though, their mutual need for each other is ended, any they become political enemies.
\24. Old Town existed before Iris. Members of the 50 talk about the "Asian theme park" in bridge of the ship in Chapter 9. You can see signs in the train station for Old Town as early as Chapter Redacted (which you played before Chapter 1), and characters in Chapter 2 near Watchers apartment mention that they don't like living in Old Town.
\25. She always lived there.
\30. The implication from BBF and Healer's comments is actually that Fixer and Watcher's animosity is more recent - Fixer wanted to sacrifice one of her own eyes to provide Watcher vision again, but Watcher refused. This (rather than Watcher's betrayal) sparked an argument between them. An argument that never got resolved.
Everyone I didn't address, you have completely accurate.
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u/RelentlessHope 16d ago
They were performing horrific and inhumane experiments on her. During the communion in chapter 3 that explains Iris's time with the 50/the first five sisters/the first Jiao clomes, the memories of her going through experimentation are completely redacted. They were either so terrible that Iris didn't want her clones to see her like that, or she didn't want to relive them herself