So yeah what did you think of the ending?

I am a bit unsure whether you died and went to some heaven place or was revived by the white dudes.

I went through the majority of the game with a partner, but after I collapsed in the snow and was "revived" I was alone for a couple of minutes. At first I thought this was a pretty clear indication that I had died and was ascending by myself. Right before I passed through the final spot though, my partner showed up again and we walked through together, so maybe I wasn't actually dead after all It was the little emergent touches like that which I found so interesting.

It fit the theme and point of the game very well. With the Journey and interactions being a representation of a life lived, you transcend and are then reborn to live a different life.

@CommonReason: So you think that you did actually die?

@Shookems: The walking through the snow bit was probably the best part in the game.

@Hizang: In a way, yes. The entire game is a metaphor for life. Since their is no tutorial, you are lead only by curiosity and help from strangers. You go through a wide range of human emotions (happiness, fear, companionship) until ultimately it ends. The game seems ambiguous about what that means. I think this is largely because the developer was not trying to impose a specific ideology about what happens at the end of life. Everything turns white and the essence of your character is reborn again as someone else. It says a lot about death and rebirth, but not specifically what either of those mean.

It seems that everyone in this world has the same destiny, as told by the illustrations on the walls and cutscenes.

Everyone's life begins and ends the same way, but what matters is how you live your life, and if you are able to look back on it and say that you were happy with the way you lived.

Freezing to death with my partner was one of the most emotionally grabbing moments of the game, I was thinking this is it game done. I was a little shocked at how the mood suddenly changed after the dudes in white turned up. One minute you watching "life" slip away and then your in super bright and cheerful heaven. I would have liked there to be a bit more or a transition, though its tough to say how they could have done it.

That slow walk / death with an unknown bro was SO intense! It was way cool that you got to see a list of your partners along the way as well.

But anyway, I think your character just dies there and goes to some sort of afterlife.

@zonikjj said:

That slow walk / death with an unknown bro was SO intense! It was way cool that you got to see a list of your partners along the way as well.

But anyway, I think your character just dies there and goes to some sort of afterlife.

Seriously. My partner collapsed before me, and even though I saw it coming, I was still kinda freaking out.

It was so shit. Discuss.

@James_Giant_Peach said:

It was so shit. Discuss.

Yeah? Well, your face is so shit. Discuss.

@Djratchet said:

@James_Giant_Peach said:

It was so shit. Discuss.

Yeah? Well, your face is so shit. Discuss.

His face IS pretty shit, now that you mention it!

@Djratchet said:

@zonikjj said:

That slow walk / death with an unknown bro was SO intense! It was way cool that you got to see a list of your partners along the way as well.

But anyway, I think your character just dies there and goes to some sort of afterlife.

Seriously. My partner collapsed before me, and even though I saw it coming, I was still kinda freaking out.

LMFAO! Same thing happened to me! I was like, "LOL you lose sucka!" Then I died. Then I was like, "Awwww maaaan :("

@CommonReason said:

@Hizang: In a way, yes. The entire game is a metaphor for life. Since their is no tutorial, you are lead only by curiosity and help from strangers. You go through a wide range of human emotions (happiness, fear, companionship) until ultimately it ends. The game seems ambiguous about what that means. I think this is largely because the developer was not trying to impose a specific ideology about what happens at the end of life. Everything turns white and the essence of your character is reborn again as someone else. It says a lot about death and rebirth, but not specifically what either of those mean.

I agree completely. The beginning levels where you're learning how to fly is akin to learning how to walk, then you also learn how to talk, and you meet your friends, sometimes you lose them. I could say the level where you're happily sliding down the hills are akin to a person's youth; concerned with nothing but play and joy, as life passes you by quickly.

The chapter with the giant block snakes resemble the most terrifying, or tragic moments of one's life, the moment being completely unexpected and out of no where, hitting you like a sack of bricks.

The elevator level to me resembles ones true golden years (the lighting of this level BEING golden not being a coincidence, in my opinion). You accomplish so much, have so much at your disposal, move up so quickly. You've learned all you need to learn and now it's time to spread your wings and make what you can of the world, of your life.

And then you enter into the longest, slowest chapters, where you slowly decay. Where you fly less and less, move slower, everything is harder to do. Then you can barely walk, the world is trying to stop you but you have to push so hard to continue forward. Every step becomes a chore. Then there is no flying at all anymore, only your companion, if you're lucky, to keep you barely warms. And then you die. An awful, miserable feeling.

Only to be contrasted with the sudden burst of energy and pure bliss that is the final ascent. You are filled with more life and power than you've ever experienced, and the world is a bright marvel, something you could have never even dreamed of. You move like lighting, and your strength is limitless. There is nothing you can't accomplish, and you finally reach the light that you've wanted all your life, but only in death could you achieve.

The only thing I disagree on is the meaning of the end. I feel it is intentionally ambiguous, I could easily see it being very depressing (in fact, I was leaning this way on my first playthrough). You think you've risen and reached the mountain with the power of a god, or at least gone to heaven, but then the light fades and you see your tombstone on the mountain, and then the light in the distance, saying that you never did reach it. It was an illusion that happens at your death; your body's last attempt to trick you into thinking you've achieved what you wanted to achieve. Your death then marks the rebirth of another, or even yourself, and you are doomed to simply repeat this Journey again and again, for all eternity, as preordained by some mystic omnipotent dictators. You can never reach your goal. You will die again and again to do so, just to please them.

Of course, that is only one of the two options, and now that I've played it multiple times I agree with your interpretation. But I do think there are multiple ways to view the ending, and I think that's intentional. And I think it's brilliant.

Interesting to see that most of the comments here seem to be leaning towards death on the mountain. I guess I never really considered it as I just went straight to the interpretation that you were going on this spiritual journey, guided by the elder spirits/gods or whatever you wish to call them in order to reach the summit and give your body back to the land in some sacrificial act. I felt that the end chapter meditation where it is fully revealed to you that the markings are of your path was the point were your character comes to the realization that his/her death at the peak and being spread across the land is the inevitable end. Thereafter your death would nourish the land until the time for another person's journey. It would be odd to think that the afterlife of your character dying on the mountain would consist of him/her succeeding on their journey only to die again or enter into another stage of the afterlife but I can see how one could view the last moments during the mountain ascension as the death of your character and everything thereafter being simply your characters visualization of the success that they never achieved. Or maybe even those thoughts being a gift from the spirits as a way of thanking you for your sacrifice. There is definitely some ambiguity in ending and in my opinion the game is that much better for it.

I interpreted it as your character dying and the ascension being a DMT trip (or whatever the equivalent is for these cloth creatures.) Of course that doesn't really account for the possibility to share that section with someone else. But I didn't think too hard about it. It made perfect sense on an intuitive level. Had echoes of "The Fountain" for me as your star flies over the landscape, landing where you begin. The eternal cycle, the ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail eternally. Love it, didn't really like Flower at all, it stank of pretentious university students and the message is incredibly forced and the whole affair struck me as generally very cheesy, but my 2 Journeys so far have moved me beyond words. At the end of my second Journey, after finishing the majority of the game with the same person and ascending together, as we were walking into the light at the end, I figured out I could bow to my friend, and they caught on and bowed back, and I felt myself beginning to cry as we wordlessly walked those last few steps together. Truly, truly moving.

I think interpreting the game as a metaphor for life is pretty valid. 
 
As for the issue of the other player still existing after the "death", this could easily be explained within the constraints of the same metaphor by suggesting that the other player symbolizes and reinforces the central theme of the game: life is a path that everyone has to walk. If you do in fact die, as does the other player, then their presence is in line with that idea because they are walking the same path as you are. 
 
That's not how I interpreted the game though. 

 
When we start the game we are alone, and there is no indication of there being other cloth people, so its possible they are just nomadic and are attempting to reach the mountain for their own reason, but considering the huge boons granted to two cloth people working together, and the fact that the game only lets you work cooperatively without any means of harming or hampering the progress of another cloth person (player), suggests that they are alone out of desperation instead of personal desire. 
 
Considering the areas you walk through are all destroyed, and the little cloth wisps are often caged, and the world in general has been trapped in various ways, it definitely seems like the world has suffered some tyrannical regime, though its unclear if it has ended and these are just the after effects, or if it still continues. The only enemy in the game are the cloth dragons, so they could be behind it, or servants of whoever is. 
 
The journey itself is long and arduous (not for the player though!), and you continue pressing on up that mountain as you freeze to death, so there is definitely a very powerful motivation for the character to continue on in the face of death.  
 
The player is being led by the white spirit, which is indicated to be a god, I think that the end area is not heaven but in fact the realm of the gods. Its hard to say if every cloth person on the journey is also being led by the spirit, one would assume the information the spirit shares would be public knowledge if that were true, though the cloth people can't really communicate at all. (Also, who built everything?!)
 
So I think the game is about the journey of the cloth person to ask the gods to save the world, or restore the world. The player doesn't make it of course, but the god(s) decide to grant the player some power to finish the mission for some reason (pity? inspired?). The sparkling light that flies through the desert could be confirmation of the gods granting that wish, I believe it was green in colour, which is the colour of new life (reading way into it). Its possible the wish was to save his village or maybe to just return to his home (maybe he lost his way, and that's why you start alone in the middle of nowhere?), that sparkling light could be the player being transported back to his home.
 
Who knows! I guess :P
 
 
One other thing on the metaphor for life, the gods helping the player at the end, could definitely symbolize that you need to put faith in others and not do everything on your own. The presence of another player with whom the game is much easier to play with also reinforces that idea.

Well I was gonna argue that the whole thing is the Hero's Journey stripped down to its barest elements but yeah I don't feel like defending that interpretation right now. But I will leave this helpful chart to give my interpretation some easy validity.

I am slowly starting to hate theories... my brain hurts.

@Duffyside said:

The only thing I disagree on is the meaning of the end. I feel it is intentionally ambiguous, I could easily see it being very depressing (in fact, I was leaning this way on my first playthrough). You think you've risen and reached the mountain with the power of a god, or at least gone to heaven, but then the light fades and you see your tombstone on the mountain, and then the light in the distance, saying that you never did reach it. It was an illusion that happens at your death; your body's last attempt to trick you into thinking you've achieved what you wanted to achieve. Your death then marks the rebirth of another, or even yourself, and you are doomed to simply repeat this Journey again and again, for all eternity, as preordained by some mystic omnipotent dictators. You can never reach your goal. You will die again and again to do so, just to please them.

Even following your interpretation I don't think that is a depressing ending.The goal is not about reaching the light at the top of the mountain. The name of the game alone tells us that. I think the very last moment exemplifies your goal, the journey. You travel back along your entire path witnessing everything you have been through and the others alone the way. It is affirmation that everything you did getting to that point had all the meaning in the world, It even gives you the impression that your journey will live on forever after you've gone. It will live on in the memories and journeys of others who walk the same path. I do think you are gone at the end of the game, and I think by taking you back to the start it isn't showing you that you are reborn, but showing you that we all walk to same path, so we can find solidarity in each other. The reason I don't think you are reborn is because if you start a new game you a get a new song. This is another beings journey.

I interpreted it a little different. I imagined it was some sort of spiritual pilgrimage, where many had fallen (as seen in the hieroglyphic-like wall drawings). Can't work out if we made it in the end physically, but spiritually we crossed the finish line. :)

Pretty sure you die. Those markers along the way are where the people who came before you fell.

Excellent, absolutely excellent game. It is definitely a journey of life and how your body just gives out at the end only to be taken to the afterlife. Wow. Just Wow.

Do the glyphs in the game give back story? The ones I saw seemed to tell a story of a group of people finding the cape things (the glyph were it shows the white robed people standing around a ribbon in the desert) and then using them to create advanced technology (the glyphs that show houses with lights) at some point this group either woke up the leviathans (because they were overusing the cape's power) or created the Leviathans (using the capes power). Eventually they're was a war or something (the glyph where it shows two figures standing back to back with a broken cape in between them) and it seems like the Leviathans were used in that war (the glyph where it shows people riding Leviathans)

This would explain the cape whales, the cape flying things, the cape jellyfish, the cape kelp and the ruins scattered throughout the game. What do you guys think?

@Djratchet said:

@zonikjj said:

That slow walk / death with an unknown bro was SO intense! It was way cool that you got to see a list of your partners along the way as well.

But anyway, I think your character just dies there and goes to some sort of afterlife.

Seriously. My partner collapsed before me, and even though I saw it coming, I was still kinda freaking out.

I too freaked out a bit when my partner collapsed even though I kinda knew it was coming. We had been together the whole game and it sucked seeing him/her like that... but than we both came back and finished the game together, walking into the light. I loved every moment of it.

Are you even a living thing in this game ? I only played the game once but doesn't one of the cutscenes show the red dude coming out of the stars or something ?

Pretty sure you die. I can't remember a game ever having the emotional impact that Journey had on me. The connection that you feel to your partner throughout the game is like nothing I've ever experienced. Incredible game.

It's obvious that you were reliving the memory of the last organic stored in a server by our synthetic overlord in a space station on a deep-space orbital platform in the Hades Nebula.

I agree that in some form you die, but the light travelling over the land you've just walked and landing where you started at the end of the credits makes me think you're in some sort of limbo. Especially since when you get to the top of the tower you see your journey drawn in a cylindrical room - implying that there's some sort of cycle to what's going on.

I kind of think the Journey is life, you start off, you get your feet wet, you meet people, things are bright, things are a breeze, things go down hill, it's gets dark and scary, you come to a point where you can't move and you collapse, but then you ascend to paradise and the level that is all bright and happy mirrors your Journey (seriously it takes a set piece from each chapter like the Seaweeds or bridge.) I liked how my partner and I for the most part spent the entire journey together, I had 1 partner but they got stuck in a wall, but the next guy followed with me to the end. It was awesome.

The story the ancient wall glyphs and the white caped dudes are telling is certainly of how their discovery of a new energy source (the red cloth) led to the rise and downfall of theyr empire. The Journey is a lesson for future generations to learn from their ancestors mistakes. The Planet might have been their home at one point but they quite clearly show a exodus into space in the wall glyphs causing me to believe the desert planet is no longer the player characters home.

The energy source runs out and the civilization is torn in a war for the last remaining scraps. All the containers you free the cloth creatures from are actually defunct war machines created to harvest the last remaining cloth, these are the same devices that chase you in the later stages of the game built by your ancestors.

Allot of it is a nod to how we treat oil today, our civilization thrives on it and we treat is like a unlimited resource and even starts wars to obtain more of it.

Throughout the game, I would like to walk up to my partner and give him a burst of energy, and they'd reciprocate. When I started walking through the snow and wasn't able to do that, I was a little sad. It's weird how much of a connection you feel toward somebody you've never met.

For me it doesn't matter. The ending is just the end, its the journey there that matters. I love how the anticipation builds so much for it during the "death" and "heaven" sequences, but it all just ends in bland white light. I mean that's the best part right? Anticipation of finally getting what you sacrificed so much to obtain. What you get may not be so great, but the trip to get it was at least memorable.

Mitch Robbins: [Mitch rubs and pats Phil's back] Hey Phil, come on Philly... It's OK man, it's not that bad...

Phil Berquist: [Phil's head is still in Mitch's shoulder] My life is over! I'm almost 40 years old, and I'm at the end of my life!

Mitch Robbins: Phil, hey.

[Mitch raises Phil up so he is looking at him]

Mitch Robbins: You remember when we were kids, and we were playing ball, and we hit the ball over the fence out of bounds, and we yelled, DO OVER?

Ed Furillo: [grins, remembering] Yeah!

Mitch Robbins: Your life is a do over. You've got a clean slate.

Journey is about the 'do over'. Maybe you missed out on help or friends to help you along the first time...maybe you didn't help other enough. Its okay life if a do over.

I just finished it. I had a couple of companions along the way, but I lost my last partner just before I was almost at the top of the mountain. I figured I would make it, even though the steps I was taking were getting smaller and smaller. When I finally collapsed in the snow, my jaw dropped. Unbelievable.

I like it, poor little cloth man died and went to heavens :(

Whether you interpret the ending as the character dying or somehow being revived (spiritually or physically), my interpretation of the overall progression was that it effectively didn't really matter. In my mind, the game is about fulfilling a purpose. Whether that purpose is something as broad as the act of living itself (the metaphors for birth/death certainly exist) or something more specifically religious, viewing the journey as a pilgrimage, the act of "the journey" seemed to me to be very specifically about a character driven to fulfill what he/she/it believes is its purpose for existing. Whether it dies or lives at the end, it did exactly what it was supposed to do without questioning, without wavering. It is unyielding dedication to a singular purpose, though the exact nature of that purpose is of course rather ambiguous.

What really hammers that point home the idea of the game as an overarching metaphor for life itself is the multiplayer aspect. Like life, we can move through it entirely on our own, but it is ultimately more rewarding to take that journey with someone else. And like life, you never know when that partner may enter your journey, or how long they'll be with you.

Again, that's just my own random theorizing. The game is obviously meant to be taken any number of different ways, which is why it's so amazing to me. Subtlety and ambiguity are not things that most game developers understand, let alone have mastered. What's even more impressive to me is how well people have taken to the game. Even people who dismiss thatgamecompany stuff as "art game nonsense" or whatever seem pretty enraptured by what Journey does. That, in and of itself, is a pretty amazing accomplishment.

Well, that's why it's called "Journey" and not "Destination." Like Don Williams, Jr. said: "The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.”

Favourite part of this game was that huddling against your partner in the snow sections kind of "warmed you," filling up your cloth.

Not specifically ending related, but I have to say I choked up a bit when, before the final area, the white clothed being showed my progression through the other areas and how at the very start I was alone, but every step after that I had a companion with me.

I'm not sure exactly why, but I became very determined at that moment to finish this final step of the journey together with my companion.

@CommonReason said:

@Hizang: In a way, yes. The entire game is a metaphor for life. Since their is no tutorial, you are lead only by curiosity and help from strangers. You go through a wide range of human emotions (happiness, fear, companionship) until ultimately it ends. The game seems ambiguous about what that means. I think this is largely because the developer was not trying to impose a specific ideology about what happens at the end of life. Everything turns white and the essence of your character is reborn again as someone else. It says a lot about death and rebirth, but not specifically what either of those mean.

I would agree with this.

Though I also had the impression very early on during the playthrough by watching the murals that I am on a journey to sacrifice myself to restore the the desolated/destroyed country. But although I expected to die I was bummed out when it actually happen, especially that your companion collapses right before you...

And as a reward for your sacrifice you see the country in it's former restored glory before you finally step into the light... But in the end this is just wild speculation as the game is pretty open for interpretations, which is good in my book.

Well I understood the game (as some of the people posting above) as a metaphore of life and the ending itself as a birth of a new being. We can't tell the gender of the players in the game, but the two create a pair which live that life together and in the end create an offspring. That's also why you have a new symbol in every run, because each "Journey" is a life of another generation. It can be viewed from many different perspectives, but this is how I understood the story (and there is more in the tablets, telling the story of the race raising and falling in war). I also find it fascinating how multiplayer is implemented in this manner of thinking - sometimes you go all the way with the first partner you meet, another time it takes several to find the one to enter the "mountain of creation" with (or you can even end up by yourself).

@Quipido said:

Well I understood the game (as some of the people posting above) as a metaphore of life and the ending itself as a birth of a new being. We can't tell the gender of the players in the game, but the two create a pair which live that life together and in the end create an offspring. That's also why you have a new symbol in every run, because each "Journey" is a life of another generation. It can be viewed from many different perspectives, but this is how I understood the story (and there is more in the tablets, telling the story of the race raising and falling in war). I also find it fascinating how multiplayer is implemented in this manner of thinking - sometimes you go all the way with the first partner you meet, another time it takes several to find the one to enter the "mountain of creation" with (or you can even end up by yourself).

I like to think the game has an open enough theme that there's no 'true meaning' and it is all down to what the player takes from what it offers - and I kinda dig your interpretation of it :D.

When your about to die in the snow, the mountain in the background disappears. I haven't heard anyone mention that. What was the symbolic meaning of that, in terms of life and death? Life has no meaning, but as long as you create one for yourself you'll have a long life with ups and downs? Considering that the mountain was your goal, whether it truely existed or not in the present time, and you died at the end (being the popular theory). Its safe to say that all the other tombstones were other journey people who reached different points in their lives and essentially gave up. You being one of the few who made it the furthest to experience more out of life then the others. Especially the 3 tombstones at the start of the game lol.

@thehuntsmen5434 said:

When your about to die in the snow, the mountain in the background disappears. I haven't heard anyone mention that. What was the symbolic meaning of that, in terms of life and death? Life has no meaning, but as long as you create one for yourself you'll have a long life with ups and downs? Considering that the mountain was your goal, whether it truely existed or not in the present time, and you died at the end (being the popular theory). Its safe to say that all the other tombstones were other journey people who reached different points in their lives and essentially gave up. You being one of the few who made it the furthest to experience more out of life then the others. Especially the 3 tombstones at the start of the game lol.

I think the tombstones are just meant to demonstrate just how many people (or whatevers) lived in the old world before whatever catastrophe happened. Once you realize that each one marks a death you start to think back to all the ones you passed before without really thinking that hard about it.

@VisariLoyalist: In the murals and visions you see it shows a war happening and a lot of people died. Then the sand covered up everything. So the gravestones aren't likely to be the previous civilization's people, also considering a lot of them are in some really weird spots. Plus their would be a ton more gravestones of that was the case, just based on what they accomplished and built, there would be thousands of them.

@OmegaPirate said:

I like to think the game has an open enough theme that there's no 'true meaning' and it is all down to what the player takes from what it offers - and I kinda dig your interpretation of it :D.

I totally agree that there is not a single right explanation. And that's what makes this game great, it kind of requires from the player to insert what they "want to see" - kind of like when you read a book as opposed to watching a film: your imagination fills in the blanks and makes the experience more personal.

Journey is great you guys, so different.

EDIT: also the three gravestones at the very beggining mign be a symbol of two parents and a child, lost in the past. And the endless cycle continues when you start the game... (and finish it)

I am reading allot of story interpretations that are flat out wrong.

The story the wall glyphs tell clearly shows.

• Everything starts with a simple farmer culture
• A new energy source is discovered (displayed in red)
• Civilisation thrives with a big leap in technological advancement due to the new energy source
• Energy source starts to grow depleted and conflict arises
• A massive exodus takes place, it is implied allot of people still stay behind.
• The Player arrives. surrounded by gravestones and the now defunct remains of a ancient civilization
• While the objects you find the many cloth creatures in at first seem little more than crates it is soon discovered these are actually crashed war machines used to farm up all the remaining cloth.

The Planet might have been their origin at one point but they quite clearly show a exodus into space causing me to believe the desert planet is no longer the player characters home.

So what is the "Journey"? A ritual of sorts where one discovers the origins of their ancestors and learns from the grave mistakes of the past that eventually led to the downfall of their home-planet.I am not convinced the cloth creatures are anything more than just machines whose service is to guide and assist the player. There are no adult or child variations and long periods of captivity or being buried in the snow does not appear to harm them

Yeah, he's dead and was reborn as a new being. The biggest hint, you know besides the ending, was the name of the trophy at the end; "Rebirth."

@JasonR86 said:

Yeah, he's dead and was reborn as a new being. The biggest hint, you know besides the ending, was the name of the trophy at the end; "Rebirth."

There is more than one way to feel reborn, one is taking a arduous journey of self exploration.

Keep in mind that its probably been several hundred years since your ancestors undertook the exodus as shown in the wall glyphs. The shining star is most likely theyr method of fast travel.

The Player finished his rite, discovering the rise and downfall of his ancestors and is allowed a glimpse at the utopia they squandered and can possibly reach again if their civilization matures enough.

There is not a single journey but a process that continuously takes place it is simply a rite everyone has to go trough once as they pass into adulthood. When the player is finished he/she simply returns back to his spaceship or whatever neighboring planet they found to to settle down, reborn as a more experienced and knowledgeable person.

I found this interview that seemed quite interesting;

http://www.dualshockers.com/2012/03/13/gdc-2012-jenova-chen-unravels-the-secrets-behind-journey