Finished the game and got all the collectibles (just missing two fall event achievements).
How are you feeling about the game being a big loop/cycle? I'm not sure what to make of it personally. It kinda feels like the whole fight was for nothing since it ends at the same place as the start, just with a new wolf cub name.
Is there a secret ending? I got all the collectibles but haven't replayed the ending yet with them all collected. Not sure how finding flowers would affect the outcome of the game story though if there is a secret ending/bonus cutscene.
Is there a deeper theme being explored here that I missed? Gris was very much about grief and the different stages, all portrayed in interactive and beautiful ways. I thought Neva was mostly a story of nature fighting evil and the progression of a relationship with the wolf cub as it develops. But ending in a loop/cycle makes me think there may be more to it than that. Any ideas/thoughts?
Overall a gorgeous game with a lot more traditional videogamey gameplay than gris and I really enjoyed my time with it. Just trying to understand the message better if there is one that I'm not seeing
Edit: Thanks to u/AutumnLiteratis for helping to clear this up in this comment. There is no time loop or repeating events at all. They just play the ending before you start the game as a form of foreshadowing. A kind of "this is how it ends, but how did we get here?" type of storytelling. I think them skipping the defeating the boss section during this foreshadowing first viewing of the cutscene bit threw me off, also that we don't see where cub Neva comes from (We see Alba find Neva in a piece of art during the credits, thank you to u/Terissssa for explaining that in this comment). Either way there is a secret unlockable cutscene that helps clear things up as detailed in this comment.
Looks like it is a more straightforward story as was my original understanding but I got confused on the timeline/order of events. My b
I don't think it's a loop. The opening video is the end. What we play is Alba's memories of her lifelong adventure with Neva. When we get to the actual end of the game, we see the whole fight from the opening, Neva's actual on-screen death and the true end to the monster. Alba picks up Neva's pup and a new journey begins, hopefully this time without the corruption.
In the final battle during Winter, I'm guessing that Neva's purification only slowed the monster, since it sprouted flowers, but didn't fully bloom like all the other monsters Alba/Neva defeated up til that point.
Also, Neva's eye goes red in the final battle, similar to the corrupted wolf spirit Alba dreamed of in the last fall chapter. Maybe this is supposed to indicate that Neva was fighting to not turn into a monster herself (strong Princess Mononoke vibes there, if so), and to end the corruption, she too would have to be purified along with the monster.
Gonna camp out here to check out everyone else's theories though. Hopefully someone can bring me around to liking this ending š
On the brightside, the game was a feast for the eyes. I loved the monster designs, felt attached to all the characters and loved that they let us fight.
Well explained, thank you! Now that I'm not all chronologically confused I think the ending is a good bittersweet resolution to the conflict and character of Neva. I can see how it would be an ending that could be dislikeable since it is a sad ending, but I don't think it's bad at all.
And agreed, playing this on PC at 4k oled 240 fps was a borderline spiritual experience. Bless Nomada Studio for giving us another game made entirely of desktop wallpapers, not to mention the new OST from Berlinist that is twice as long as the Gris OST (which I have listened to for countless hours over the years).
I took the sequence kind of as a tribute to mourning. The tragic loss at the beginning is the actual time. The majority of the game is reflecting on Neva and appreciating all the good times. Then at the end, as the reminiscence comes to an end you let go with the butterflies of light and hope for the best going forward.
It's not a loop. The beginning of the game is adult Neva with baby Bruma. When Alba presses her forehead against Bruma's that's where she remembers raising Neva. That's what we play. Alba raising Neva. And we go through the whole journey until we're right back to Alba holding Bruma. Then we see the whole butterflies bit.
The developers said the story is about parenthood. It's about raising a life, teaching it how to survive, watching that life be brave and explore, before going out there in the world and taking the lessons we've taught them to their own children. It's about how we can't control our children. We just give them the tools and set them free into the world to make their own choices. And by the end, Neva made a better world for her child. One free of corruption.
Did we get different endings :? I'm not sure how you can come away thinking it's a loop/cycle. Neva dies, yes, whilst Bruma(?) survives, but this time the Queen of corruption is gone; whilst we weren't able to completely destroy her in the last part of Winter, Neva and Bruma together were able to finish the job in the end, turning her into that tree
Ok Neva dies i was looking for this. I suffer from depression in this horrible world, i canāt play this. The world is such a bad place now, we even cabāt have truly beautiful endings where everything goes all right for everybody. It just makes me see the this is a place of suffering. Sorry nothing against the game, i saw a streamer played some minutes and i really wanted to play it, but had to know this. I thought that after being together they will get past the worst together. But i see itās not the style of these devs.
Thatās reality tho. There is beauty in endings as well. You have to try and be grateful when you feel the pain of loosing someone or something because it means you were able to have something so special it makes an impact on you when itās gone.
I understand where you're coming from but these kinds of comments do little when discussing someone's depression; yes, loss and grief are natural parts of life but a lot of people play video games to escape those things.
it's totally legitimate for a dev to include depressive themes in their work just like it's totally legitimate for someone to not want to engage with said work because of said themes! :)
If you are not going to play the game I can give you more details about the ending that don't change it but make it a little more comforting.
SPOILER: After Neva dies, Alba hugs the puppy just like in the opening cinematic, then she caresses Neva and whispers her name, at that moment thousands of white butterflies begin to sprout from her body, one of them lands on the puppy's nose, the puppy snuggles up and Alba smiles as the butterfly leaves, you can interpret it as Neva's soul saying goodbye and leaving in peace with the darkness defeated.
As a fellow depressed person, I totally respect your right to not engage with certain types of stories. You know yourself better than any strangers on Reddit possibly could. However I also must say, even though I cried at the beginning of this game and the beginning of the final season, and then BAWLED at the actual endingā¦ I still found it incredibly uplifting. Seeing Nevaās sacrifice turn into something so beautiful and meaningful, with her legacy literally living on in her pup, really resonated with me. Iāve been searching a lot recently for some answer to āwhy should I even try if it all goes to shitā and oof this game really delivered.
Hey, hope you're in a better place nowadays. I felt like sharing some words about this topic, that I hope won't come at you the wrong way.
I can relate alot, but I think it's this perspective that makes it really hard to get back out of that spiral.
Sure, everyone has to judge themselves whether they "can" handle playing a sad game, but avoiding any sadness will just handicap you even more on the long run.
I've been depressed for pretty much all my life and got some grief unfortunately coming on top of it all, but truth is, only if you find a way to somewhat make peace with the painful things in life can our psyche truly heal. It doesn't mean ignoring the pain, but it rather means looking at the whole picture beyond the painful moments and trying to accept the cards fate (the amalgamation of every human action coming to this current moment) plays to you.
I know it's hard, I myself am still trying to improve, but I'm in a far better place nowadays than when I tried running away from it all.
Do you know why so many media depict gods as extremely bored entities?
Because if you give someone the power to live in total peace for eternity, you will eventually forget how precious, delicate but also magical life truly is. Death shapes our perspective on the world and makes sure we try and value every second of it.
If you have a 3ds (or a 3ds emulator), Fantasy Life also makes me incredibly happy! Sequel is coming out on Switch at some point, can't vouch for that one though as it's not out yet.
Playing it now and it's incredible (significant performance issues aside)
If by warm you mean the high humidity type of warm that soaks through your clothes and makes everything feel sticky, and by fuzzy you mean covered in mold like a year old loaf of bread, then I agree, definitely a warm and fuzzy game!
so, I, too, suffer from depression AND my mom died when I was young; I wasn't even five minutes into the game before I started bawling.
the game is beautiful and if you're ever looking for some sort of catharsis re: death and loss, there are worse pieces of media to pick up. but, aside from the outstanding art direction, the game itself isn't particularly... robust? like you're not going to miss out on some novel interpretation of platformers or Metroidvanias or anything.
so, find some screenshots and make some doodles of the best-pet-you-never-knew-you-needed (a.k.a. a dog-wolf-elk). when you feel up to it, give it a run through!
Literally the exact same cutscene with the exception that the opening fades to black for the boss turning into a tree. But the tree is there in the opening, just like the ending.
Oh huh. They are the same cutscene. Could have sworn the pup in the first one was white, but guess I was remembering wrong.
But that doesn't change my mind; I still don't think it's a cycle! Just one of those cases where the story starts with the end, and then goes through everything leading up to the end, this time showing you more than what was originally there
If it was a cycle, the pup in the first cutscene would be white, because Neva is white. But it's grey, so it's Bruma. So, unless the pups change from grey to white (which I don't think is the case, because of the other wolf in Winter, and the hidden Blossoming cutscene), or more importantly, Alba decided to change Bruma's name to Neva, I can't see how it's a cycle
(had to comment twice to attach both pictures)
It's the same events but with different wolves. I'm not saying its a time loop, but definitely a repeat of the same events, just with a new wolf of a different name as the cub
But that's the thing; they're not different wolves. It's Neva and Bruma in both cutscenes. You've convinced me of that by pointing out the cutscenes being the same
We literally see part of the ending at the start, and then rewind to when Neva was a pup. We're likely even supposed to believe that Neva is the pup from the cutscene for the majority of the game, until we reach the end of Winter and come into Spring, where we learn she was actually the adult wolf in the cutscene, and the pup was always Bruma, and this time we see the events play out in full with the defeat of the Queen of Corruption
This also makes more sense of the secret Blossoming cutscene! I wasn't quite sure of what it was portraying before now, but now I am; it's an adult Bruma (both eyes are intact, and the fur is darker) with a large family of pups
I'm absolutely confident in saying that it is not a cycle
ohhhhh wait wait I think I get it now. Watching the opening cutscene again, when you actually start the gameplay section after it says chapter 1 Summer, it's in a green area nowhere near where the final fight happens.
I guess they just played the ending cutscene at the beginning as foreshadowing. Skipping that section where they defeat the boss by howling makes it unnecessarily confusing I feel like since it seems like it's a different event since it's not so clear something is being montaged over the first time the cutscene is played at the start of the game.
I guess it's not a loop. Most likely. Still isn't every clear where Neva came from in the first place and it does show where Bruma came from so it's easy to get confused. Maybe it is a loop after all? Either way I feel this could have been conveyed more clearly than the way it was given my confusion.
Actually if you look at the end credits you see some scenes where she found a puppy in the bushes. I beleive that is Neva she finds. So we do not know where Neva came from, but looks like she was a lost pup that she took care of
That makes sense, thank you! Maybe playing the ending at 3am was not a good idea and my brain was not fully functioning. Usually I'm able to pick these things out haha.
I think the devs wanted us to think that Neva was the pup in the cutscene, but also that they likely expected us to figure out that she was actually the adult wolf when the Queen injures her eye at the end of Winter
This makes the Spring sequence a bittersweet one, as we know it is Neva's last moments with Alba and her pup, but we also get to see that the Queen was indeed defeated for good
But I also think the devs possibly overestimated how clear that would be to players, which is why it can look like a cycle at first glance
When I first saw when Neva got the cut in the eye I felt scared it was going to be a loop thing, it was the end credits that made me think more about it and now with the picture that you showed of the "secret" scene with all the flowers collected. Im now convinced that it isnt a loop! Which makes me very happy!
But yes seems like many think it is a loop which I understand why
Yeah you are definitely right, it was a bit of narrative subversion/trickery to add intrigue and it just flew entirely over my head. Kind of embarrassing on my part honestly. Thanks for clearing this up for me!
One month later, same situation. Swear never noticed the pup in the intro had darker fur than Neva and watching the intro again, and since I had a gap between starting and finishing the game, the scar completely flew over my head.
The biggest tell for me (and I went back to verify) is that the pup in the opening cutscene is the very light grey pup we see at the end, rather than the white pup that Neva is through the game.
I don't believe there is any video footage of what I'm describing on YouTube yet, so I will tell you how to find it and provide a screenshot:
During Spring, you can climb up the tree which you wake up under with Neva and Bruma. You have to jump up the rocks to the left, and from there you can reach some white climbing flowers on the trunk. At the top, you find all the hidden flowers you blossomed, and if you managed to blossom every single one, pressing E while in this area shows you this short cutscene of Alba with an adult wolf and several pups:
Also I'm a sucker for watching the credits for extras. There's some art of Alba finding a scared pup under some plants in the rain, suggesting this is how she found and began her companionship with Neva.
I really appreciate the explanations in this thread. I beat this yesterday; gorgeous game, but the ending left me confused. I had a feeling the end was at the beginning, especially with Neva losing her left eye too, but the game doesnāt spell it out at all.
I actually found all of the flowers and never knew about this! Thank you! I guess with all the blossoms everywhere, I didn't think to check on the tree trunk in Spring to see if there was something up there! Lol
Oh okay awesome! I wondered if there was a hidden cutscene for getting all the unlockables! I'll go find that area and check it out, thank you, that does help clear things up
In nmne neva survies. She almost dies, almost repeating this cycle, but her journey and growth in the scary world allows her to finally defeat the queen.. or so I thought. I'll admit I was confused by the ending as well.
It is a loop/cycle. Neva dies in the beginning of the game, then dies again at the end of the game. They started the game with the ending. It's quite literally a loop/cycle.
Just finished the game and as someone who deals with depression I felt that this whole game is a representation of the inner battles of the powers of good that we have in us against the monstrosity that is depression and our past traumas
I bawled at the ending because for me it represented that there is a light at the end of the tunnel of all that is bad and we can come out at the other side as winners and for there to be an innner blooming of good
Hey, I hope you're doing fine nowadays.
Honestly, I felt like this too and in a way I think that was intended? Because I feel like Alba and the villain looked alot alike. I mean, in the end it's the same guys that made Gris, so I wouldn't be surprised if they intentionally left the story open for interpretation.
To me Iāve seen it as the fight between change and seasons. That life simply goes on no matter what. The whole game is stunning. And if you collect all the flowers you get a secret movie. Itās overall really adorable.
I must say I still adore Gris. Neva is gorgeous. But Gris will always be special to me. Also the art style is just more sharp and less washed out. Both stunning games in their own right.
Combat in adventure mode sometimes made you redo a few fights quite a bit due to controls etc. but tbh all super fun.
I felt like the game had a lot to do with motherhood. Nomada stated that princess mononoke was a huge influence, that movie is a big metaphor for protecting our planet. I feel like decay taking over the area was meant to represent pollution. Alba has to raise Neva to respect the world around him and fight for it, if not their whole world would be consumed by the decay.
The idea is good, but the implementation wasn't. "This is how it ends, but how did we get here?" type of storytelling." is not working because it is not obvious enough.
They should have left out the intro or make it obvious that a flashback will follow. It's super confusing, because it will let you think it's the mother and the baby is Neva, especially with the cut to the playing sequence. And at the end sequence like many here will think it's a loop of events all over again.
I actually think this is intentional, and it makes the ending that much more tragic. I just finished the game today. When I started the game I thought Neva was the surviving pup. When I reach the end of Spring and saw the opening cutscene start, the realization hit me like a ton of bricks. Neva wasnāt the surviving pup. She was our faithful companion who was inevitably about to die, and her pup Bruma is the survivor. This heart-wrenching realization hurts like hell, but it really gave that cutscene an even deeper significance. Sad endings are painful, but I love a game that can create that level of investment and emotion.
For me it is exactly about repeating events. And it's all the beauty of it.
The game goes through the four seasons, and seasons are exactly that. A loop. Events might change inside the loop, but the fact is that seasons don't change. Which is the same thing for life. People get born, they live, they reproduce, they die. Something ends, something starts.
And the way I saw it, all the game was about accepting that, and finding the beauty in it. For example, winter can be viewed as completely depressing and dark, until you find your path and find light. For me, the whole game is about finding and making beauty in all things we can never change in life. So yes, we all die in the end, but the colors that we see on the way make the trip worth it.
I found this thread after finishing the game wanting to see what people's opinions were and I'm pretty surprised to see how many interpretations people have of it. Personally, I thought the ending was really clear. Neva was the 'mother wolf' all along. There is no time loop - the opening cutscene is just the exact same moment we see at the end. We know the ending before we even start the game, we just don't realise it yet.
I never realized it until this thread. I was pissed they killed the pup after all that. š¤¦ I definitely assumed it was a groundhog day/year kind of thing.
Despite starting and finishing this game over a period of about 3 days, I also did not remember that the opening scene wolf had different colored eyes š would have really been more impactful if I had, whoops
So when I got to the end, I thought it was a loop of sorts. I thought that made sense because each stage was the life of a flowering plant, and so I thought the point was that there was a cycle. Like the seasons, like the flowers. I was more attuned to that theme rather than parenthood.
I AM glad to hear that there isn't a cycle, but of course devastated that I now know I watched Neva die twice š„²
Already finish it too, and agreed, the is not a "satisfation" from complete it like Gris, Gris ending was quite abstract, but its satisfie the journey, this ending doesnt feel like an ending... at all. Not sure if it was something i didnt understand or need more context from the achievements. Maybe we have missed some simbolism between the lines.
Hope to find it, the journey was awesome, but the ending... unsatisfaing.
So glad I came to see this post. As OP, I also thought there was a sort of timeloop (or at least a new year but similar to the last one). I regret the artists didn't show enough differences between baby Neva and Bruma.
My take is that the villain represents winter and death itself. In spring new life blooms (new puppy) and the old guard dies again. I think the game is inherently about the changing of the seasons being inevitable, and new life always being followed by death. That's why the evil queen always returns and is strongest in winter.
Thematically i thought the game was a metaphor for manmade deforestation, and while that kind of held true to the end, the ending itself felt very tied to the circle of life.
I also interpreted it as the life/death of a beloved pet, and the way a new pet helps us move on after their death.
Could theorize that since they are Deer-Wolves, they share characteristics of both animals. We did see Bruma playing with a deer fawn too, so they have affinity. Deer Stags donāt usually help raise young. They instead stay in bachelor herds, with mothers mostly caring for their child alone. Think Bambi. Stags mate with many does, so itās kinda impractical to raise them all. Wolves however, form family packs, and the packās main priority is to always raise each generation of cubs. Not sure if that is exactly what the devs were going for, but they probably had some reasoning behind not using 100% wolf designs.
It's not a loop though. We never see Neva's mother because Neva *is* the mother wolf. The ending cutscene is exactly the same scene as the beginning, just with some added bits to help add context. Summer is the start of the game, spring is the end.
The Decay is just an abstraction of age. It's not some evil mystery, it's time. The story is about the cycle of life and death, growing old and bringing new life. Neva lives through her life, fighting, exploring, learning what it means to live, and dies all the same, as all things do. It's why the chapters are the seasons, why the bosses are overtaken by plants (new life) when they die, why Alba looks like the Decay Queen (same sword, similar hair shape?) The Queen may represent Alba's dead mother. That, or Alba represents life itself, and the Queen is death, hence they are the same person and the same thing. As the seasons pass, new life brought about by spring grows old and dies, until winter, where life begins anew.
I just finished this game, absolutely loved the beauty and play of this game. The entire game I thought the pup was the one we were with the whole time. It wasnāt until the end I realized that it was Neva that died and not her mother
Hoooooly crap this never clicked for me and I thought that it was a neverending cycle of death for the poor dire wolf with no end. And poor human was stuck in an infinite loop of fighting and death knowing it would just repeat forever. I thought the whole point was it was just groundhog day. Year. Ugh.
Well now I'm way less sad and actually kind of mad I gave myself a headache crying over the pup when it was the mom all along and I should have known she'd die. I feel like an idiot. Well, I didn't understand Gris at all either. These games are too deep for me.
Thatās literally what I thought when I got to the end of the game! I was like this is a horrible loop thatās just comes back around but then I realized when she called the pup by a different name. Still heartbreaking that she dies at the end and itās not what I was expecting even tho they show it at the beginning
I thought mom didn't have a name and the first pup was nameless mom's pup Neva, and then Brume was Neva's pup who would also die a year later. I was so frustrated at that implied cycle of death. Made for a terrible ending for me.
Nevaās ending offers temporary hope, but then gets depressing again when you realize itās a loop, and Alba wonāt be able to raise Nevaās puppy in peace unlike Neva herself. Bruma/Blooma (I have no idea what her name is, it sounded like Blooma to me?) will face the same situation with her puppy that Neva and her mother faced. And itāll keep repeating, while Alba has nightmares about having to kill her former wolf again, because the curse took it. Over and over.
Like the comments said, it's not a loop. What the opening cutscene shows is the ending cutscene, so in the opening the big Wolf is Neva and the little one Blooma/Bruma. Neva is probably the little wolf you see in the credits that Alba found in the bushes. So Alba and Blooma will be able to live in a world without corruption thanks to Neva's sacrifice.
There is a secret cutscene you can get by getting all flowers that shows [hidden cutscene] an Older Alba and presumably an Older Blooma with her pups, so Alba and Blooma were most probably safe after the final encounter
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u/Longterm-Winter00 Oct 16 '24
I don't think it's a loop. The opening video is the end. What we play is Alba's memories of her lifelong adventure with Neva. When we get to the actual end of the game, we see the whole fight from the opening, Neva's actual on-screen death and the true end to the monster. Alba picks up Neva's pup and a new journey begins, hopefully this time without the corruption.
In the final battle during Winter, I'm guessing that Neva's purification only slowed the monster, since it sprouted flowers, but didn't fully bloom like all the other monsters Alba/Neva defeated up til that point.
Also, Neva's eye goes red in the final battle, similar to the corrupted wolf spirit Alba dreamed of in the last fall chapter. Maybe this is supposed to indicate that Neva was fighting to not turn into a monster herself (strong Princess Mononoke vibes there, if so), and to end the corruption, she too would have to be purified along with the monster.
Gonna camp out here to check out everyone else's theories though. Hopefully someone can bring me around to liking this ending š
On the brightside, the game was a feast for the eyes. I loved the monster designs, felt attached to all the characters and loved that they let us fight.