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    Cryostasis

    Game » consists of 2 releases. Released Apr 15, 2009

    Arctic-themed Cryostasis has players explore a relatively faithfully constructed Soviet-era nuclear ice-breaker. Game mechanics include using heat and exhaustion to represent player stamina, using heat sources to regain this stamina, and the use of a flashback ability to alter the past.

    The ending of Cryostasis (Spoilers ahoy!)

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    Hamst3r

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    #1  Edited By Hamst3r

    It's been a few months since I've played Cryostasis. I thought it was a fantastic game with an interesting story. Dave and Vinny seem to be a bit confused about the story and ending, so this is a discussion thread about just that.
     
    This is how I interpreted the story.
     

    The Flaming Heart of Danko

     
    First off the Danko story. This is told via pieces of paper you find throughout the game. It's based off of a short story by Maxim Gorky.
     
    In the story Danko is leading a group of people deeper into the forest in an attempt to escape an attack. As they go further into the forest, further into the darkness, the people began to lose trust in Danko and his ability to bring them to safety. His desire to save them is so strong though that it fills his heart with fire. He rips his heart out of his chest and holds it high into the air, illuminating the way out of the darkness. As they exit the forest, the people are filled with joy. Danko only sees a brief glimpse of the free land before he falls over and dies. Only one person notices and they stomp on his burning heart to extinguish the flame.
      

    An animated adaptation of this story:

     
        
     

    The Captain

     
     The Danko story is basically the story of the captain, who has trust in his ability to navigate safely through the ocean, yet his crew is losing faith in him. Thus, there's not much more to say about the captain's story.
     

    The Transient

     
    The game starts off with you lying on the ground just inside the ship next to the first paper of the Danko story. Just a little bit further in to the ship you have a flashback of a man being pulled by a dogsled. The ice breaks and he falls into a pit. This is you. You were a meteorologist on your way to the ship to figure out why it crashed.
     
    As you continue further into the ghost ship you go around correcting all of the mistakes that took the lives of the crew. How you can do this, who knows. Eventually you get to a point where you're actually damaging the fabric of time, represented as red cracks appearing all over the walls.
     
    Eventually, you've altered time enough that you engage Chronos - the god of time - in battle. You kick his ass and end up saving everyone on the ship.
     
    After which, you return to your body moments before you fell into the pit and the captain of the ship rescues you. You've corrected everything, so no one died and thus you've saved yourself from dying.
     
    Now how the hell, if you're dead, are you able to save everyone on the ship? I'm not sure. Then again, how the hell are you able to jump into someone's minds and correct their past? Dunno, but I'm guessing those two things are intrinsically linked. Perhaps Chronos saved your life at the start of the game, which somehow imbued you with the power of time manipulation. Perhaps you're dead the entire game and just have this uncanny ability of leaping into people's brains.
     
    Anyways, that's what I gathered from the story. I've only covered the two main story threads. There are all the smaller stories going on about certain crew members, the captain and whatnot, but those don't actually add to the main story.
     
    If you've completed Cryostasis: Discuss.
     
    If not: Go play it!
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    mikemcn

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    #2  Edited By mikemcn

    I read the wiki after seeing that quick look and that game seems mad symbolic, like how the look of the enemies represent what they were like before the ship crashed, that game seems way over my head haha, i love to read about it though.\ 
     
    And i didnt play this game, so im not listening to that last sentence you wrote, i am sorry.....
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    jakob187

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    #3  Edited By jakob187

    Yeah, dood...that's a lot of thought for a generation where people seem to give a shit less about thought.  I really want to play that game, as it looks like an incredibly atmospheric adventure.

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    snide

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    #4  Edited By snide

    I don't need it to make perfect sense. I like the gaps it leaves in its story. You can guess as much from my review, but I think the story is pretty interpretive and something everyone is going to have a differing opinion on. I think you've got the plot down though.

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    wealllikepie

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    #5  Edited By wealllikepie

    i agree with dave, i think that some cracks in the game were left there intentionally and are open to interpretation, but yeah i also played the game and it made me wonder a lot about it. also, how would you explain the part where you go into heaven on kronos' hand after you defeat him?

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    drdamo

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    #6  Edited By drdamo

    The way i see it is that Chronos has accepted that the crew's lack of faith in the captain is their own fault (as the new guy talking about the RODS all the time manages to destroy the crew's faith rather quickly), however the player became the innocent bystander of their lack of faith as you came out there to help them. 
     To give you a chance to redeem yourself, and do what you came there for in the first place, you'd have to restore the crew's/ship's lack of faith, to prevent the chain of events that led to their and eventually your demise from happening in the first place.
     
    The ship's frozen tomb seems to refer to the coldness of losing faith from the crew (since a ship is it's crew and the crew is the ship, without everyone working together as a whole it'll fracture and eventually break, losing all hope of progress) 
    By warming or illuminating the various areas and making sure the dead played their part in having faith in the whole, you glue back the fractured whole piece by piece.
    This would also explain in some way why light and warmth heal you, since the "unfaithfull" seem to damage you with their lack of faith (and death being the total absence of faith), and especially why most of the time you're only able to make this happen by defeating, or better said overcoming, the "unfaithfull".
     
    The red seams are fractures in time, the unfaithfull time that led to it all. This would be abit like  a negative * a negative = a positive (faithlessness, or fractured faith, being fractured again, would eventually make an unfractured faith, i guess).
    Furthermore the reactor core is a metaphor for the ship's heart.  Why it has been ripped out and what the meaning of the scene where they drag the captain into the helicopter means, is ofcourse a direct reference to the Danko story where he rips out his own heart to light the way in a final attempt to regain the crew's faith. 
     
    The battle with Chronos seems to be a final metaphorical obstacle, to correct the fact that you changed the past, by defeating/overcoming time itself.
    And the endings show, how a small choice made in absence of faith can change the lives of many, if not all and how much simpler it woudl've been to have kept your faith in the first place.
    Or even simpler said: "The butterfly effect", altho that doesn't have to do anything with faith in particular.
     
    In the end i found this fantastically refreshing point of view on making choices and their consequences and the game itself had some freaky sinister moments, however some parts where abit lame to come across and could've been avoided.
    Especially all the times you figured the human anatomy would surely be able to jump or climb over a railing to skip a whole room or over a couch to reach the end of a hallway,  or the fact that not every weapon visible was useable.
    I mean i don't mind playing a fairly linear game, but if the railings would've been upto the ceiling and there was another couch stacked upon the first couch it would've solved that.

    -"Fear is the mindkiller"-

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    thebigJ_A

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    #7  Edited By thebigJ_A

    I just finished this game. Most of what you said makes sense, except for one thing. It doesn't seem at all like you are fighting against Chronos. Rather, you are fighting with him. I mean, you don't ever attack Chronos, you attack the same enemie you've been fighting the whole game. When you kill enough of them, Chronos gives you his hand, and carries you off to... I don't know, some sort of Limbo. Admittedly, it all seems very metaphorical, with the orange energy when you kill them, and the blue when Kronos does. I don't know what that represents. Maybe Orange being the "heat' you've used all along representing the good timescale, the blue the oppsite. IDK.
     
    One thing I'm wondering. When I got to lets-call-it-Limbo, you first have only the option to interact with the hooded guy (who is that guy, anyway? My guess would be some manifestation of yourself, but what?). It shows the scene where the engineer tells off the captain. Then I interacted with the engineer and changed it so he gives him the ship model. But, I also could have interacted with the hooded guy again. What happens if you do that? Is it some kind of bad ending?  Why is just the engineer their, and not the soldier or the naval officer? Seems like thay ought to be in Limbo too.
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    jamesisaacs

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    #8  Edited By jamesisaacs

    OH my word, how droll...

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    zorban_zorban

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    @thebigj_a: "But, I also could have interacted with the hooded guy again." - very late reply, but someone might still read this: the hooded dude just gives you a recap of what happened in the non-altered version of reality.

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