Thank you for this. After collecting 5 sunface fragments in the main campaign more than doubling the playing time from 12h to 29h and never having the 6th spawn, I just rage quit everything, so its nice to see this here.
Theories I like Theia was the one driving the car, selene was a passenger, helios was her brother. Explains why the mother is in the wheelchair. Selene is a coping mechanism created by Theia. They are the same person. New things we learn in ascension (All considering that selene was the driver) The paintings and writings found in ascension seem to be by selene, suggesting the house sequences you play as the kid are as selene. This makes sense because we know from many sources that her mother was abusive. The only thing problematic with this is in one of those sequences, the child is playing a ps5, which came out in 2021. So the timeline doesn't make sense if we consider lots of clues that the events of the game occur from 1960-1980. It's pretty much confirmed in ascension that selene crashed the car resulting in the death of Helios, and spinal injuries that put Selene in a wheel chair for the rest of her life, as she was opposed to physical therapy. Throughout the DLC Selene keeps bringing flowers to her mother in the hospital, but every time she visits her mother it's just more of the same. Selene says while shoving away a wheelchair "Never a smile, never a word of praise, just need". When leaving this sequence, selene says "I will return, I will do better". Maybe Selene is still trying to get the affection she always wanted from her mother, and maybe even she believes she isn't good enough to get that. After reading the report of the fire, selene says "the price of freedom". In the sequence we get confirmation that the pregnant monster is Selelnes mom. When she gives her mom a gift of flowers, her mom shows a sign of love and hugs selene. Selene says "we never did this". Theia disappears as soon as Selene hugs her, and the 3 eyed monster guy shows up. Maybe while Selene was hugging her, Theia did or said something that showed Selene that her mother didn't really change. "Just another deception". Maybe the 3 eyed monster guy has always been a metaphor for Selenes abusive mother. We read a report that Theia Vassos has died due to combined effects of ______ and CTE, a result of concussions. CTE is known to cause major mental problems and can explain why Theia is so cruel to Selene. I cant make sense of the fire report. Did Selene burn down her childhood house with her mother inside of it? "Mother saved all her smiles for helios, now they can be together". Theia Vassos outlived Helios? Selene said in past hospital sequences that "this is where it all started, the shaming, the judging, after the crash". Theias verbal abuse toward Selene got very bad after Helios died. The rest is too damn ambiguous for me to get anything from at the moment. I hope they make a returnal part 2. Same story, and I hope they keep things super confusing, but sprinkle in more and more little clues that help us piece it all together. Didn't expect much when I bought this game but its became one of my all time favorites.
The crash, the one that crippled her Mother and killed her son Helios, are one in the same. It is implied through Returnal's original ending that Selene is the cause of the crash, deliberately, due to her debilitating mental health and frequent drug abuse (as implied in the house sequences with the pills which are also the name of the health pick ups throughout the game.) Selene and Theia survived the crash but it left Theia crippled and killed Helios. Why would she do this? It's implied throughout the hospital sequences and specifically the Helios house sequences that Selene ended up taking the abuse she received from her mother, out on Helios. Helios thought of her as "the monster" whilst Theia genuinely loved Helios and "saved all her smiles for him." Selene, doing everything she could to earn her mother's approval including trying to follow in her footsteps to become an Astronaut (which she ultimately failed due to them questioning her mental health and how it inhibits her decision making and actions as well as being suspicious of her behaviours), became jealous and apathetic towards her own son which ultimately led her to make a conscious decision to cause the crash (further implied by the fifth house sequence in which she caused the crash of "Helios" the ship, which is a metaphor for her son which she "abandoned.") Theia, now crippled, just further resents Selene which causes her to spiral and burn their house down with Theia inside. "Now they can be together again." The game itself is entirely metaphorical and inside her mind based on the literature and stories she reads which is around the house. It's all a metaphor for the cycle of failure of parenting, the only thing she ever related to with Theia in both the main game and the DLC is that she felt they both felt trapped by the fact they chose to have children they weren't prepared for. It wasn't the accident that caused Theia not to become an astronaut as that is something Selene would pursue on her behalf before she became crippled, it was her having Selene that hindered it and she always had a level of resentment directly with her for it. No matter what Selene did, she never felt loved and it got to the point where any signs of affection (such as the surprise hug with Selene in the hospital) felt like a deception to her. In her mind, she had been abused and rejected enough times that she distorted their relationship and never saw any good in it. The same as with Helios, she distorted their relationship thinking that she loved him when in reality, in the eyes of her own son, she was cold, distant and callous towards him even abusing him both mentally and physically by taking his favourite toy away from him and then abusing him when he came up to take it. It is the cyclical nature of abuse that ultimately leads to ruin. I even believe now that the years that passed between Act I and Act II of the game is in fact because she was imprisoned for her actions and that she was only at peace being incarcerated that the moment she was thrown back out into the real world she mentally slipped back into the fantasy she had created to run from the reality of what she had done only to find that she could no longer run from it. It explains why Biomes 4 - 6 are far more punishing and darker, reality starts blending far more with the fantasy, aspects of her life come to the forefront and she even fights herself as the final boss, the cold, callous monster she has become (indicated in the final phase of Orpheon when it transforms into the Astronaut which is again, by the true ending, confirmed to be Selene and is a metaphor for when she becomes "the monster.") All throughout Returnal you can tell she is mentally not all there, both in the fantasy and in the real world through all of the logs and notes and pieces of lore. She is forever in the cycle of failure because she chose it willingly and no matter how hard she tries to fight against it and escape it, she will never be free from the truth that she is ultimately the reason why her entire family is gone and that even when she does try to deflect the blame onto her mother, it doesn't absolve her actions, she made her bed and she can lie in it forever and ever on repeat, always guilty and never absolved of the blame. This is why I love this game, addictive gameplay and also a compelling, metaphorical way to tell a story of how generational abuse can lead to generational trauma which in turns can lead to and cause family/domestic violence and lead to far worse consequences as a result. It is a story about generational abuse and the horror of it and how an entire family is completely and utterly ripped apart and destroyed by it. I think of it like the film Mother! with how the entirety of that film was just a metaphor for how religion throughout history has resulted in the toxic state of the world now as all throughout human history, it is shown to be the root cause of war, of division, of terrorism, of authoritarian regimes, of oppression, how mankind took the initial idea of religion and twisted and contorted it into whatever suited their own ideologies and ideas at the time and watched on as that tore the world apart and consistently damaged it more and more over time, just an endless of cycle of violence, abuse, oppression, division and ruin that repeats and repeats and we never learn from any of it. That's the same lens I view Returnal through, the entire game is a metaphor inside Selene's mind for the story of her life being told and ultimately what the consequences of generational abuse can lead to. It's an issue many do grapple with, similar situations of taking on the demons and burdens of your predecessor, trying desperately not to become them, only to become them in the process and inflict the same trauma and pain onto your loved ones. I've seen people become exactly who they despised and ironically realise it all too late. It's a terrible mirror that personifies your entire family. I love the fact the game took a simple premise and turned it into something that people will endlessly theorise and discuss, intelligently linking passages and texts from Greek myth, which is also deeply entrenched in generational trauma and abuse with the tales of the Greek Gods and their family trees, to something as tangibly real life as this. They could've made it far more basic and simpler, but instead chose this method and interlinked it perfectly with the gameplay, the world and even the bosses and enemies themselves. I think it's a smart game and far more ambitious than it had any right to be. Certainly a rogue-like on par with Hades for how to make a game in a genre like this stand out and actually tell a compelling story using the central mechanic as its base.
In my first hospital scene I press the elevator button, crash the flower's vase, and the journal on the first room did not appear. Too diferent from this video. Ps: my first visit to the hospital was after I died on phase 3-9 of the tower.
I think she was pregnant when she's crashed and had a girl. She mentions the three of us and her husband was out of the picture. I don't think the guy playing the piano was her dad, I think it was her husband and than he left her after their son's funeral. She died in her 60's in that wheelchair. You can see that the skeleton creature in the wheelchair in the end is pregnant.
Let's think about this: selene has a brother named helios, his mother was pregnant with him at the time of the accident, causing everything we already know. Time passes and Thea does not want therapy or anything, breaks her relationship with selene, while with helios is very different, she loves him and a lot, hence the phrase _“Mother saved all her smiles for Helios”_ then in an attack of jealousy and desperation to get affection from his mother, causes a fire, killing helios intentionally or accidentally, obviously Thea is more shattered than she was already, possibly blaming selene for what happened. Here could happen the "hug" that is seen in the representation of the hospital, selene thinking that finally got a little affection being so excited and much for it so that she says _“we didn’t ever do this”_ but realizing that nothing else was a lie, it would cause such an impact that selene is disappointed, angry and above all with an immense desire for revenge towards Thea, if we see in the part where she grabs the wheelchair and pushes it with great force, Plus the times we've gone to selene's house and seen in the basement the wheelchair and the representation of Thea it's pretty obvious what happened: *Selene pushed Thea through the stairs and locked her up in the basement* letting her die slowly and painful for *all* damage she caused her, i guess this is the why in the autopsy of Thea we saw “traumatic encelophalopaty” This means that Selene KILLS her own mother and little brother, and after years, She regrets of it _“now they can be together”_ the sentence she said in shown of regrets for her acts, this is why her son has the name of Helios, Selene put it in the memory of her little brother and a promise to be a better human being, to be a better mother…which thing she can’t achieve no matter how much she tried, she can’t do it, she lost Helios twice, once because of her mother and the second because herself…
Selene shows aggression a number of times. When in the DLC she finds the russian doll for example. Or all the shooting the game is based of. All of the bosses seem to be either part of her family or anything related.
Basically from what I’ve guessed she’s in her own version of hell, her mother was also stuck there. But the ending cutscene means her mother finally was forgiven and went to heaven while Selene still has to atone for her actions
![How to Survive The Tower of Sisyphus [23 Millions Scored]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KaUYWMHK4lg/mqdefault.jpg)
![NORMAL and TRUE Ending - Returnal [HEAVY SPOILERS] | Playstation 5, No Commentary, 4K60](/img/n.gif)
Thank you for this. After collecting 5 sunface fragments in the main campaign more than doubling the playing time from 12h to 29h and never having the 6th spawn, I just rage quit everything, so its nice to see this here.
Same
Theories I like
Theia was the one driving the car, selene was a passenger, helios was her brother. Explains why the mother is in the wheelchair.
Selene is a coping mechanism created by Theia. They are the same person.
New things we learn in ascension
(All considering that selene was the driver)
The paintings and writings found in ascension seem to be by selene, suggesting the house sequences you play as the kid are as selene. This makes sense because we know from many sources that her mother was abusive. The only thing problematic with this is in one of those sequences, the child is playing a ps5, which came out in 2021. So the timeline doesn't make sense if we consider lots of clues that the events of the game occur from 1960-1980.
It's pretty much confirmed in ascension that selene crashed the car resulting in the death of Helios, and spinal injuries that put Selene in a wheel chair for the rest of her life, as she was opposed to physical therapy.
Throughout the DLC Selene keeps bringing flowers to her mother in the hospital, but every time she visits her mother it's just more of the same. Selene says while shoving away a wheelchair "Never a smile, never a word of praise, just need". When leaving this sequence, selene says "I will return, I will do better". Maybe Selene is still trying to get the affection she always wanted from her mother, and maybe even she believes she isn't good enough to get that.
After reading the report of the fire, selene says "the price of freedom". In the sequence we get confirmation that the pregnant monster is Selelnes mom. When she gives her mom a gift of flowers, her mom shows a sign of love and hugs selene. Selene says "we never did this". Theia disappears as soon as Selene hugs her, and the 3 eyed monster guy shows up. Maybe while Selene was hugging her, Theia did or said something that showed Selene that her mother didn't really change. "Just another deception". Maybe the 3 eyed monster guy has always been a metaphor for Selenes abusive mother.
We read a report that Theia Vassos has died due to combined effects of ______ and CTE, a result of concussions. CTE is known to cause major mental problems and can explain why Theia is so cruel to Selene.
I cant make sense of the fire report. Did Selene burn down her childhood house with her mother inside of it?
"Mother saved all her smiles for helios, now they can be together". Theia Vassos outlived Helios? Selene said in past hospital sequences that "this is where it all started, the shaming, the judging, after the crash". Theias verbal abuse toward Selene got very bad after Helios died.
The rest is too damn ambiguous for me to get anything from at the moment.
I hope they make a returnal part 2. Same story, and I hope they keep things super confusing, but sprinkle in more and more little clues that help us piece it all together.
Didn't expect much when I bought this game but its became one of my all time favorites.
The crash, the one that crippled her Mother and killed her son Helios, are one in the same. It is implied through Returnal's original ending that Selene is the cause of the crash, deliberately, due to her debilitating mental health and frequent drug abuse (as implied in the house sequences with the pills which are also the name of the health pick ups throughout the game.)
Selene and Theia survived the crash but it left Theia crippled and killed Helios. Why would she do this? It's implied throughout the hospital sequences and specifically the Helios house sequences that Selene ended up taking the abuse she received from her mother, out on Helios. Helios thought of her as "the monster" whilst Theia genuinely loved Helios and "saved all her smiles for him." Selene, doing everything she could to earn her mother's approval including trying to follow in her footsteps to become an Astronaut (which she ultimately failed due to them questioning her mental health and how it inhibits her decision making and actions as well as being suspicious of her behaviours), became jealous and apathetic towards her own son which ultimately led her to make a conscious decision to cause the crash (further implied by the fifth house sequence in which she caused the crash of "Helios" the ship, which is a metaphor for her son which she "abandoned.")
Theia, now crippled, just further resents Selene which causes her to spiral and burn their house down with Theia inside. "Now they can be together again."
The game itself is entirely metaphorical and inside her mind based on the literature and stories she reads which is around the house. It's all a metaphor for the cycle of failure of parenting, the only thing she ever related to with Theia in both the main game and the DLC is that she felt they both felt trapped by the fact they chose to have children they weren't prepared for. It wasn't the accident that caused Theia not to become an astronaut as that is something Selene would pursue on her behalf before she became crippled, it was her having Selene that hindered it and she always had a level of resentment directly with her for it. No matter what Selene did, she never felt loved and it got to the point where any signs of affection (such as the surprise hug with Selene in the hospital) felt like a deception to her. In her mind, she had been abused and rejected enough times that she distorted their relationship and never saw any good in it. The same as with Helios, she distorted their relationship thinking that she loved him when in reality, in the eyes of her own son, she was cold, distant and callous towards him even abusing him both mentally and physically by taking his favourite toy away from him and then abusing him when he came up to take it.
It is the cyclical nature of abuse that ultimately leads to ruin. I even believe now that the years that passed between Act I and Act II of the game is in fact because she was imprisoned for her actions and that she was only at peace being incarcerated that the moment she was thrown back out into the real world she mentally slipped back into the fantasy she had created to run from the reality of what she had done only to find that she could no longer run from it. It explains why Biomes 4 - 6 are far more punishing and darker, reality starts blending far more with the fantasy, aspects of her life come to the forefront and she even fights herself as the final boss, the cold, callous monster she has become (indicated in the final phase of Orpheon when it transforms into the Astronaut which is again, by the true ending, confirmed to be Selene and is a metaphor for when she becomes "the monster.")
All throughout Returnal you can tell she is mentally not all there, both in the fantasy and in the real world through all of the logs and notes and pieces of lore.
She is forever in the cycle of failure because she chose it willingly and no matter how hard she tries to fight against it and escape it, she will never be free from the truth that she is ultimately the reason why her entire family is gone and that even when she does try to deflect the blame onto her mother, it doesn't absolve her actions, she made her bed and she can lie in it forever and ever on repeat, always guilty and never absolved of the blame.
This is why I love this game, addictive gameplay and also a compelling, metaphorical way to tell a story of how generational abuse can lead to generational trauma which in turns can lead to and cause family/domestic violence and lead to far worse consequences as a result. It is a story about generational abuse and the horror of it and how an entire family is completely and utterly ripped apart and destroyed by it.
I think of it like the film Mother! with how the entirety of that film was just a metaphor for how religion throughout history has resulted in the toxic state of the world now as all throughout human history, it is shown to be the root cause of war, of division, of terrorism, of authoritarian regimes, of oppression, how mankind took the initial idea of religion and twisted and contorted it into whatever suited their own ideologies and ideas at the time and watched on as that tore the world apart and consistently damaged it more and more over time, just an endless of cycle of violence, abuse, oppression, division and ruin that repeats and repeats and we never learn from any of it.
That's the same lens I view Returnal through, the entire game is a metaphor inside Selene's mind for the story of her life being told and ultimately what the consequences of generational abuse can lead to. It's an issue many do grapple with, similar situations of taking on the demons and burdens of your predecessor, trying desperately not to become them, only to become them in the process and inflict the same trauma and pain onto your loved ones. I've seen people become exactly who they despised and ironically realise it all too late. It's a terrible mirror that personifies your entire family.
I love the fact the game took a simple premise and turned it into something that people will endlessly theorise and discuss, intelligently linking passages and texts from Greek myth, which is also deeply entrenched in generational trauma and abuse with the tales of the Greek Gods and their family trees, to something as tangibly real life as this.
They could've made it far more basic and simpler, but instead chose this method and interlinked it perfectly with the gameplay, the world and even the bosses and enemies themselves. I think it's a smart game and far more ambitious than it had any right to be.
Certainly a rogue-like on par with Hades for how to make a game in a genre like this stand out and actually tell a compelling story using the central mechanic as its base.
Anyone know the song when she is in the place with other knelt down selenes
Your hospital scenes were different than mine. I have only done 2 yet but both were different than your first 2.
In my first hospital scene I press the elevator button, crash the flower's vase, and the journal on the first room did not appear. Too diferent from this video. Ps: my first visit to the hospital was after I died on phase 3-9 of the tower.
Idc this was my game of the year
I think she was pregnant when she's crashed and had a girl. She mentions the three of us and her husband was out of the picture. I don't think the guy playing the piano was her dad, I think it was her husband and than he left her after their son's funeral. She died in her 60's in that wheelchair. You can see that the skeleton creature in the wheelchair in the end is pregnant.
so she dead on the end ya the truth she die ya???
I'm playing on PC and the game keeps crashing during the 2nd Biome of the tower. Any advice on how to avoid that ?
Get a better computer.
Did Selene physically abuse her son, Helios?
I don’t know but I’ve always thought that Selene’s mom was abusive and so was Selene’s to her child.
Let's think about this: selene has a brother named helios, his mother was pregnant with him at the time of the accident, causing everything we already know. Time passes and Thea does not want therapy or anything, breaks her relationship with selene, while with helios is very different, she loves him and a lot, hence the phrase _“Mother saved all her smiles for Helios”_ then in an attack of jealousy and desperation to get affection from his mother, causes a fire, killing helios intentionally or accidentally, obviously Thea is more shattered than she was already, possibly blaming selene for what happened. Here could happen the "hug" that is seen in the representation of the hospital, selene thinking that finally got a little affection being so excited and much for it so that she says _“we didn’t ever do this”_ but realizing that nothing else was a lie, it would cause such an impact that selene is disappointed, angry and above all with an immense desire for revenge towards Thea, if we see in the part where she grabs the wheelchair and pushes it with great force, Plus the times we've gone to selene's house and seen in the basement the wheelchair and the representation of Thea it's pretty obvious what happened: *Selene pushed Thea through the stairs and locked her up in the basement* letting her die slowly and painful for *all* damage she caused her, i guess this is the why in the autopsy of Thea we saw “traumatic encelophalopaty”
This means that Selene KILLS her own mother and little brother, and after years, She regrets of it _“now they can be together”_ the sentence she said in shown of regrets for her acts, this is why her son has the name of Helios, Selene put it in the memory of her little brother and a promise to be a better human being, to be a better mother…which thing she can’t achieve no matter how much she tried, she can’t do it, she lost Helios twice, once because of her mother and the second because herself…
no, the child in the car is confirmed to be Helios as stated in the credits
Selene shows aggression a number of times. When in the DLC she finds the russian doll for example. Or all the shooting the game is based of. All of the bosses seem to be either part of her family or anything related.
Wtf, never explain anything!
Basically from what I’ve guessed she’s in her own version of hell, her mother was also stuck there. But the ending cutscene means her mother finally was forgiven and went to heaven while Selene still has to atone for her actions