With the more parallels you reveal in these videos, the more fascinating this,game becomes. It shows how much love, passion and care the creators put into this game.
regarding add/gray and the recurring theme of "failing" at motherhood - it's noteworthy that add's statue is missing one of its breasts and that it is implied that gray died of breast cancer, possibly having undergone a mastectomy. the image of her breastfeeding lillie is one that initially just raised a specific question in my mind, but it's only after considering these continual tribulations with her daughters that the reason for its inclusion becomes clear - as add she repeatedly stumbled at creating her own children, and eventually lost the ability to do so when her womb was taken from her. as gray she repeatedly stumbled at nurturing others' children, and eventually "lost" the ability to do so when her breast was taken from her.
You're a madman, this is brilliant! I already thought that Void Stranger was a great game, but your reading of it definitely resonates with the themes of the story and I can hardly imagine it as not being intended or at the worst, a happy coincidence. Thanks for your work, I really appreciate it.
At around 15:00 you talk about the wormhole diagram, and I just wanted to point out that it's showing a wormhole branching two points in the same dimension over a shorter space/time than if you stay affixed to spacetime. There's no alternate dimension in that model. This is showing something closer to time travel or warp drive tech than dimensional portals.
Hey, Brian. I’ve been a fan of this interpretations series. There isn’t much about this game being discussed so, I appreciate the effort you have went into to decode this games many mysteries. I especially liked your analysis about how the game depicts Adds motherhood. I hadn’t thought of it that way. However, I would like to respond with my opinion about what I believe the Void is. I believe that it is a time gateway, rather than an interstice. The image seen during Cif and Zero’s conversation is a timeline looping over itself. The connecting tunnel represents the Void. Which is why the ending directly loops into the beginning the way it does. This can be seen in Lillies ending is you reach floor 255. When Add saves you, you are staring at the battle at the end of the timeline. You follow the comet down to earth and enter earth/the comet entry point, what looks like, over and over in that scene. After that scene you end up with Gray in the courtyard (I don’t know how you end up back in your timeline in your room after that scene but, I imagine the purpose is to show you what The Void is). While when Gray went through the Void, she ended up in the future. I also believe this is an explanation why you see the alphabet floors in reverse in Lillie’s playthrough. History repeating itself has been a huge theme in the game. Anyway, I hope that was understandable in some way and I really enjoyed your video and content as a whole! I wrote a few pages on the game once I was finished with it. I wish I could share. Maybe I’ll touch it up and post it somewhere. Please let me know your thoughts!
the pendant is interesting because it also appears in zeroranger, it can't be certain if it really is the same pendant but imo i think it may be it appears in only two very short moments in the game, once being clutched by grapefruit in the little anime opening-esque intro, and another time with type C's pilot in the fake credits scene, after picking up the lotus jewel from erasure when playing type C, right before the said credits scene breaks
9:44 In Void Stranger's case, I don't think the eclipses are actually summoned. It read more to me that they were the time when the Void Lords were more directly permitted to interact with the world outside Void -- Johann's despair happened to coincide with one, and he was given a time limit for his contract which seemed to coincide with the eclipse at Lily's kingdom. Lily also wasn't wearing the pendant when she was on the balcony (but later had it on during the wedding). (I'll also note that permission to interact doesn't seem to mean inability: a lot of things seem allowable so long as "DIS doesn't find out".) 11:04 This particular interpretation seems a bit more tenuous. Johann formed a kingdom separate from Lily's, but then made plans to sacrifice a separate kingdom to that. He tells Gray that he'd been planning this long before he met Gray, and one of the excuses he gives before his death is that he was "doing it for his kingdom, and bore no ill will to Lily's country'. (Excuses are just excuses, but the inference here is that he'd already made a kingdom with the powers the Void Lords gave him, but had to sacrifice another.) It's possible this was a case of just needing enough souls to meet his quota. My interpretation though, is that I think Johann was directed at Lily's kingdom specifically. There are a number of conflicting motivations in play here: DIS is searching for a particular soul; Zero has interest in the wellbeing of Lily and understands more about DIS's nature than others, and possibly doesn't want DIS to find Lily; and Cif knows who Gray is (though it's possible that they were also keeping tabs on Lily for Zero). When Lily chooses to sacrifice herself, she doesn't find herself on a fast track to meet DIS, but is instead placed within a 'memory state'. There seems to be some interference going on here, leading to DIS's search to be futile until the DIS ending occurs. 12:59 We can get a bit of an answer for that from DIS itself. When Gray breaks the UI, the error message is always dated in the year 10xxxx. When Lillie or Cif breaks the UI, the error message is instead dated 11xxxx. It's a bit of a gameplay conceit for no years to pass during the player's playthrough of Gray's journey, but we can at least infer that 10,000 years have passed since Gray entered the Void to Lillie's entry. 25:45 Interestingly enough, the woman shown prior to this scene in the trailer (who wakes up in Void to see Demon Cif, and is asked "what is your wish") looks more like Zero than Add. Of course, there's definitely some misdirection there, since we know Zero isn't Gray or Add, and the figure in the transformation sequence has slightly longer hair (Zero has shoulder-length hair, Add has back-length hair). Still, recognising Zero in the trailer adds more questions about their role in the past and how they became 'Judge' in the current timeline without being a Void Lord. 29:06 Hmmm... I read it more that Lillie always opened the letter and then couldn't read it, pocketed the pendant, and then dumped the letter. And it was just that we were never shown that scene at the start, leading us to believe she dumped it without reading it. It's also possible that possession of the pendant is what allowed Lillie to use the Void Rod: Add stored parts of their consciousness in various artifacts before becoming Gray, so it would make sense if the pendant was one of those. And then after her cathartic reunion with Gray in the dreamscape after being rescued from the Void egg, Lillie gains the courage to truly recognise Gray as her mother and she chooses to wear the pendant at that time. (Though Lillie's choice of words in the ensuing trial allows Zero to free Lily, which also seems to be an outcome Zero and Cif were hoping for.) *EDIT:* Oh, before I forget. A little detail in that final trial scene that I particularly like but only noticed much much later. Watch the shards when the void shatters after Zero's laughing fit. One of them has a fleeting reflection of Cif smiling. Anyways, thanks again for the video. Looking forward to the rest of the playthrough, and the inevitable ZeroRanger lore video.
Some interesting thoughts here... one thing I will point out with regards to the last main point is that the achievements suggest Lillie does not open the letter the first time. The player does not have the pendant achievement during Lillie's descent until she gets sent back in time and opens the letter, so I think the game strongly implies the pendant was in the envelope in Lillie's bedroom trashcan while she was in the tower.
@@lorgon111 If the developers wanted to have the scene misdirect the player by making us think Lillie hadn't opened the letter at all, having the achievement pop up just as we hear it land in the trashcan would actively sabotage that effort. The achievement is a notice to the player that we have the pendant, not to Lillie; it would make just as much sense to have it not pop up until the later scene where we see her finding it. What we see of the entire scene colours what mood they want to present, after all: even if we're misled into thinking Lillie dumped the letter without reading it, it's a more accurate description of her feelings to Gray at that point. It's a similar reason for why we're not shown the contents of the letter until after Lily comes back, since Lillie expressing confusion at a letter she can't read would've equally changed how the cutscene felt. And if she *did* time travel back to that point to open the letter, I would imagine it would take more than "a small push" to get her into the hole a second time. Unlike Gray, Lillie is not in Void for any reason of her own and her main goal was always to get out. Without a reason to reach the bottom of Void, Lillie would not wish to return there, and I'd imagine she'd actively resist doing so. I suppose there is another possibility though. Memory states have been brought up more than once, with Lev seeking the "first memory state" in order to use DIS's power to return there. On a similar note, Void is littered with "Lotus-Eater Machines" which relive memories... and while the time they depict doesn't *seem* like they can be interfered with, the act of living the memory can be tampered with (as seen by Bee interrupting Lillie's memory). It could be that the remnants of Add's power allowed Lillie to relive that memory state and come out of it (back into the bottom of Void) with the pendant. This sidesteps the problem that time travelling back to that point might cause. It's a more complicated sequence of events though, so it doesn't quite sit right with me. I'm also not sure Add would have the power to use memory states in that way -- it might be something that's restricted to DIS going by some of the events in the game (there's a lot more explicit explanations of some things as dummied out scenes, but their canonicity is shaky given some of them cover plot threads that were clearly not taken). I still think the simplest explanation is simply that we were never shown that Lillie picked up the pendant at the start of the game, and that extends to not notifying the player via the achievement. Add rescuing Lillie from despair and Lillie reconciling Gray as her mother is more than enough to conclude her story.
Have given it a fair amount more thought over today, and the more I consider it, the more it feels to me that time travel as an explanation for Lillie's pendant scene is incompatible with what is shown ingame. Whatever explanation is behind the events shown has to cover the following: * The scene where Lillie opens the letter is identical the prologue. That means that the letter starts on the table (not in the bin), and there's a lamp on the table (so unless Cif junked a perfectly good lamp, they're already here hiding and this is directly before Lillie enters Void). * In the subsequent scene, Lillie is in front of the court as the bottom of Void, wearing the pendant. Bee does not turn up. The event that occurred with Add yeeting Bee to parts unknown either happens again (suggesting that Lillie again gets Voided and needs rescuing) or occurred previously and prevented Bee from doing anything during this run. * Certain events that the player can have Lillie instigate during her runs will have effects leading into Cif's run. This includes a possible outcome that could only occur if Bee was still around to cause mischief. Now, if you try really hard, you *could* still write a narrative sequence of events that included time traveling back to open the letter. But it's looking really messy by this point -- the event where Add banishes Bee seems like it must always happen, so what purpose does "sending Lillie back to get the pendant" serve? If Add has to save Lillie again, it doesn't sound like it stopped her giving up. And I wouldn't expect Lillie to give up so easily after having resolved her feelings about Gray in the previous scene. So, I still think it makes more sense for Lillie to have the pendant on her the whole time, but just not acknowledge it. Which I think is rather similar to her whole feeling about Gray during her descent.
@@TFMurphy It took me a couple of reads through, but I think I appreciate your point of view better here now. I agree there's no satisfying 'timeline' if Lillie got sent back in time and changed how she handled the letter. It had not occurred to me to treat the 'opening the letter' scene as a flashback to a moment that happened originally. It was not presented on-screen in Lillie's opening narrative - instead Lillie's opening "blacks out" between 'would you like to open it' and the letter being in the trashcan. So we can interpret that omission, and the achievement revocation as 'misleading the audience' regarding the whereabouts of the pendant. And then after Lily has her 'spiritual moment' (which could all be 'in her head' as Add just somehow shares some 'memory' with her; Add's only world-actions being to yeet Bee and 'resurrect' the Lillie egg) Lillie chooses to wear the pocketed pendant. A little bit of a 'Titanic' vibe, I originally didn't like it, but now I think it's a decent take.
Sincerely lovely reading, thank you very much! I have to admit it does go into the corkboard on a few occasions - see the comments about the diagram (it's a pretty common way to try and describe wormholes, so it's much safer to assume that was visual representation of warp travel notes) and Lev/Johann parallels (characteristic matchups are astounding but hard lore declares them separate, see the last memory obtained by getting all 128 crystals); but by abyss below does your argument broaden the interpretations of the game. Doubly appreciated since I never got into Berserk myself. I do note that an interpretation of the pendant I've heard is that isn't exactly a catalyst beholden to fate alone, but instead a container for Add's ...essence? soul? memory? What makes Add themselves, forcibly separated from their human form. Which might dovetail very nicely with it granting power to alter fate to Add's design; especially considering that the pendant is missing if Gray is the one to enter DIS and fuse back with Add, presumably fused into the core in the middle of her chest. The wrench in this idea is that the same octahedron core is present on Lillie in her version of the DIS descent, but she doesn't carry the pendant with her at that time. Also I wonder if Bee has any significant parallels with Berserk here; considering she is, of a sort, Add's pawn the same way Cif plays for Zero. Bee leaves notes in chests containing Add's burdens, as well as in the first locust chest, after all; it might be safe to assume she was the one tasked with stashing the artifacts in some way. Finally, can't help but wonder if you have more lore summaries coming up; considering there's a lot that has been revealed by you playing till the end. Recall how Add intended to finish DIS off along with themselves and the rest of the Void Lords; how the ending is them literally chasing Lev down at the eve of the comet's arrival, sealing (or breaking) the branching loop of fates and timelines (and the mural in the ending loops in on itself!); and all the hooks and catches into Zero Ranger, what with the daikons of the carcass endings, the Lotus Jewel, Zero herself being a reincarnation of Erasure, etc. It would be lovely to know if you have any new light to shed on the headcanons!
Moat likely the achievement is also used internally for progress tracking and potentially for catching file manipulations as well, although i haven't looked at the code myself, i would guess that it's probable. (Many recent indie games utilize the achievements in a similar manner).
I'm watching these in order and maybe you've already figured this out by now and I'll look silly commenting this. On ZERO Judge, it's hinted that she may be either a reincarnation of Erasure from ZeroRanger, or is straight-up Erasure after having left that universe after the Lotus Jewel's destruction. She may be drawn to Lily because, either via reincarnation or just coincidence, Lily reminds Erasure of her sister, Despair, the main villain of ZeroRanger. Bee and Cif have similarities in personality to the protagonists of ZeroRanger, Mido and Dori respectively. Those two have an older sister, Renji, though I'm not sure if she has an equivalent in this game.
That's a great interpretation, even though I feel like I have a great grasp on the overall story, your points are simply great to see, and reshapes a lot of the scenes I remember vividly The main example is how you showed how in the scene Lillie reads the letter at her ending, you get the pendant achievement. The implications of this little popup that I just haven't noticed before tell some much, and fix all the confusions I had about that ending. Thank you, I guess! So, when's your 3 hour video explaining the full ZeroRanger + Void Stranger timelines coming out? ;)
Before watching this video I was not a fan of Judge zero. It felt like she was there as fanservice for people who plaied zeroranger. After watching this video my opinion has changed. Still wish she would have been better integrated in the story.
With the more parallels you reveal in these videos, the more fascinating this,game becomes. It shows how much love, passion and care the creators put into this game.
regarding add/gray and the recurring theme of "failing" at motherhood - it's noteworthy that add's statue is missing one of its breasts and that it is implied that gray died of breast cancer, possibly having undergone a mastectomy. the image of her breastfeeding lillie is one that initially just raised a specific question in my mind, but it's only after considering these continual tribulations with her daughters that the reason for its inclusion becomes clear - as add she repeatedly stumbled at creating her own children, and eventually lost the ability to do so when her womb was taken from her. as gray she repeatedly stumbled at nurturing others' children, and eventually "lost" the ability to do so when her breast was taken from her.
You're a madman, this is brilliant! I already thought that Void Stranger was a great game, but your reading of it definitely resonates with the themes of the story and I can hardly imagine it as not being intended or at the worst, a happy coincidence.
Thanks for your work, I really appreciate it.
At around 15:00 you talk about the wormhole diagram, and I just wanted to point out that it's showing a wormhole branching two points in the same dimension over a shorter space/time than if you stay affixed to spacetime. There's no alternate dimension in that model. This is showing something closer to time travel or warp drive tech than dimensional portals.
Hey, Brian. I’ve been a fan of this interpretations series. There isn’t much about this game being discussed so, I appreciate the effort you have went into to decode this games many mysteries. I especially liked your analysis about how the game depicts Adds motherhood. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
However, I would like to respond with my opinion about what I believe the Void is. I believe that it is a time gateway, rather than an interstice. The image seen during Cif and Zero’s conversation is a timeline looping over itself. The connecting tunnel represents the Void. Which is why the ending directly loops into the beginning the way it does. This can be seen in Lillies ending is you reach floor 255. When Add saves you, you are staring at the battle at the end of the timeline. You follow the comet down to earth and enter earth/the comet entry point, what looks like, over and over in that scene. After that scene you end up with Gray in the courtyard (I don’t know how you end up back in your timeline in your room after that scene but, I imagine the purpose is to show you what The Void is). While when Gray went through the Void, she ended up in the future. I also believe this is an explanation why you see the alphabet floors in reverse in Lillie’s playthrough. History repeating itself has been a huge theme in the game.
Anyway, I hope that was understandable in some way and I really enjoyed your video and content as a whole! I wrote a few pages on the game once I was finished with it. I wish I could share. Maybe I’ll touch it up and post it somewhere. Please let me know your thoughts!
the pendant is interesting because it also appears in zeroranger, it can't be certain if it really is the same pendant but imo i think it may be
it appears in only two very short moments in the game, once being clutched by grapefruit in the little anime opening-esque intro, and another time with type C's pilot in the fake credits scene, after picking up the lotus jewel from erasure when playing type C, right before the said credits scene breaks
It appears at least two other times I know of; type B's fake credits, and in one of the time travel scenes
That is an amazing video. I love your deep dives in this!
9:44 In Void Stranger's case, I don't think the eclipses are actually summoned. It read more to me that they were the time when the Void Lords were more directly permitted to interact with the world outside Void -- Johann's despair happened to coincide with one, and he was given a time limit for his contract which seemed to coincide with the eclipse at Lily's kingdom. Lily also wasn't wearing the pendant when she was on the balcony (but later had it on during the wedding). (I'll also note that permission to interact doesn't seem to mean inability: a lot of things seem allowable so long as "DIS doesn't find out".)
11:04 This particular interpretation seems a bit more tenuous. Johann formed a kingdom separate from Lily's, but then made plans to sacrifice a separate kingdom to that. He tells Gray that he'd been planning this long before he met Gray, and one of the excuses he gives before his death is that he was "doing it for his kingdom, and bore no ill will to Lily's country'. (Excuses are just excuses, but the inference here is that he'd already made a kingdom with the powers the Void Lords gave him, but had to sacrifice another.)
It's possible this was a case of just needing enough souls to meet his quota. My interpretation though, is that I think Johann was directed at Lily's kingdom specifically. There are a number of conflicting motivations in play here: DIS is searching for a particular soul; Zero has interest in the wellbeing of Lily and understands more about DIS's nature than others, and possibly doesn't want DIS to find Lily; and Cif knows who Gray is (though it's possible that they were also keeping tabs on Lily for Zero). When Lily chooses to sacrifice herself, she doesn't find herself on a fast track to meet DIS, but is instead placed within a 'memory state'. There seems to be some interference going on here, leading to DIS's search to be futile until the DIS ending occurs.
12:59 We can get a bit of an answer for that from DIS itself. When Gray breaks the UI, the error message is always dated in the year 10xxxx. When Lillie or Cif breaks the UI, the error message is instead dated 11xxxx. It's a bit of a gameplay conceit for no years to pass during the player's playthrough of Gray's journey, but we can at least infer that 10,000 years have passed since Gray entered the Void to Lillie's entry.
25:45 Interestingly enough, the woman shown prior to this scene in the trailer (who wakes up in Void to see Demon Cif, and is asked "what is your wish") looks more like Zero than Add. Of course, there's definitely some misdirection there, since we know Zero isn't Gray or Add, and the figure in the transformation sequence has slightly longer hair (Zero has shoulder-length hair, Add has back-length hair). Still, recognising Zero in the trailer adds more questions about their role in the past and how they became 'Judge' in the current timeline without being a Void Lord.
29:06 Hmmm... I read it more that Lillie always opened the letter and then couldn't read it, pocketed the pendant, and then dumped the letter. And it was just that we were never shown that scene at the start, leading us to believe she dumped it without reading it. It's also possible that possession of the pendant is what allowed Lillie to use the Void Rod: Add stored parts of their consciousness in various artifacts before becoming Gray, so it would make sense if the pendant was one of those. And then after her cathartic reunion with Gray in the dreamscape after being rescued from the Void egg, Lillie gains the courage to truly recognise Gray as her mother and she chooses to wear the pendant at that time. (Though Lillie's choice of words in the ensuing trial allows Zero to free Lily, which also seems to be an outcome Zero and Cif were hoping for.)
*EDIT:* Oh, before I forget. A little detail in that final trial scene that I particularly like but only noticed much much later. Watch the shards when the void shatters after Zero's laughing fit. One of them has a fleeting reflection of Cif smiling.
Anyways, thanks again for the video. Looking forward to the rest of the playthrough, and the inevitable ZeroRanger lore video.
Some interesting thoughts here... one thing I will point out with regards to the last main point is that the achievements suggest Lillie does not open the letter the first time. The player does not have the pendant achievement during Lillie's descent until she gets sent back in time and opens the letter, so I think the game strongly implies the pendant was in the envelope in Lillie's bedroom trashcan while she was in the tower.
@@lorgon111 If the developers wanted to have the scene misdirect the player by making us think Lillie hadn't opened the letter at all, having the achievement pop up just as we hear it land in the trashcan would actively sabotage that effort. The achievement is a notice to the player that we have the pendant, not to Lillie; it would make just as much sense to have it not pop up until the later scene where we see her finding it. What we see of the entire scene colours what mood they want to present, after all: even if we're misled into thinking Lillie dumped the letter without reading it, it's a more accurate description of her feelings to Gray at that point. It's a similar reason for why we're not shown the contents of the letter until after Lily comes back, since Lillie expressing confusion at a letter she can't read would've equally changed how the cutscene felt.
And if she *did* time travel back to that point to open the letter, I would imagine it would take more than "a small push" to get her into the hole a second time. Unlike Gray, Lillie is not in Void for any reason of her own and her main goal was always to get out. Without a reason to reach the bottom of Void, Lillie would not wish to return there, and I'd imagine she'd actively resist doing so.
I suppose there is another possibility though. Memory states have been brought up more than once, with Lev seeking the "first memory state" in order to use DIS's power to return there. On a similar note, Void is littered with "Lotus-Eater Machines" which relive memories... and while the time they depict doesn't *seem* like they can be interfered with, the act of living the memory can be tampered with (as seen by Bee interrupting Lillie's memory). It could be that the remnants of Add's power allowed Lillie to relive that memory state and come out of it (back into the bottom of Void) with the pendant. This sidesteps the problem that time travelling back to that point might cause.
It's a more complicated sequence of events though, so it doesn't quite sit right with me. I'm also not sure Add would have the power to use memory states in that way -- it might be something that's restricted to DIS going by some of the events in the game (there's a lot more explicit explanations of some things as dummied out scenes, but their canonicity is shaky given some of them cover plot threads that were clearly not taken). I still think the simplest explanation is simply that we were never shown that Lillie picked up the pendant at the start of the game, and that extends to not notifying the player via the achievement. Add rescuing Lillie from despair and Lillie reconciling Gray as her mother is more than enough to conclude her story.
Have given it a fair amount more thought over today, and the more I consider it, the more it feels to me that time travel as an explanation for Lillie's pendant scene is incompatible with what is shown ingame. Whatever explanation is behind the events shown has to cover the following:
* The scene where Lillie opens the letter is identical the prologue. That means that the letter starts on the table (not in the bin), and there's a lamp on the table (so unless Cif junked a perfectly good lamp, they're already here hiding and this is directly before Lillie enters Void).
* In the subsequent scene, Lillie is in front of the court as the bottom of Void, wearing the pendant. Bee does not turn up. The event that occurred with Add yeeting Bee to parts unknown either happens again (suggesting that Lillie again gets Voided and needs rescuing) or occurred previously and prevented Bee from doing anything during this run.
* Certain events that the player can have Lillie instigate during her runs will have effects leading into Cif's run. This includes a possible outcome that could only occur if Bee was still around to cause mischief.
Now, if you try really hard, you *could* still write a narrative sequence of events that included time traveling back to open the letter. But it's looking really messy by this point -- the event where Add banishes Bee seems like it must always happen, so what purpose does "sending Lillie back to get the pendant" serve? If Add has to save Lillie again, it doesn't sound like it stopped her giving up. And I wouldn't expect Lillie to give up so easily after having resolved her feelings about Gray in the previous scene.
So, I still think it makes more sense for Lillie to have the pendant on her the whole time, but just not acknowledge it. Which I think is rather similar to her whole feeling about Gray during her descent.
@@TFMurphy It took me a couple of reads through, but I think I appreciate your point of view better here now. I agree there's no satisfying 'timeline' if Lillie got sent back in time and changed how she handled the letter. It had not occurred to me to treat the 'opening the letter' scene as a flashback to a moment that happened originally. It was not presented on-screen in Lillie's opening narrative - instead Lillie's opening "blacks out" between 'would you like to open it' and the letter being in the trashcan. So we can interpret that omission, and the achievement revocation as 'misleading the audience' regarding the whereabouts of the pendant. And then after Lily has her 'spiritual moment' (which could all be 'in her head' as Add just somehow shares some 'memory' with her; Add's only world-actions being to yeet Bee and 'resurrect' the Lillie egg) Lillie chooses to wear the pocketed pendant. A little bit of a 'Titanic' vibe, I originally didn't like it, but now I think it's a decent take.
The diagram you point out at 14:50 actually closely resembles the models of an Einstein-Rosen bridge
I genuinely enjoyed watching this video. Thank you.
Sincerely lovely reading, thank you very much! I have to admit it does go into the corkboard on a few occasions - see the comments about the diagram (it's a pretty common way to try and describe wormholes, so it's much safer to assume that was visual representation of warp travel notes) and Lev/Johann parallels (characteristic matchups are astounding but hard lore declares them separate, see the last memory obtained by getting all 128 crystals); but by abyss below does your argument broaden the interpretations of the game. Doubly appreciated since I never got into Berserk myself.
I do note that an interpretation of the pendant I've heard is that isn't exactly a catalyst beholden to fate alone, but instead a container for Add's ...essence? soul? memory? What makes Add themselves, forcibly separated from their human form. Which might dovetail very nicely with it granting power to alter fate to Add's design; especially considering that the pendant is missing if Gray is the one to enter DIS and fuse back with Add, presumably fused into the core in the middle of her chest.
The wrench in this idea is that the same octahedron core is present on Lillie in her version of the DIS descent, but she doesn't carry the pendant with her at that time.
Also I wonder if Bee has any significant parallels with Berserk here; considering she is, of a sort, Add's pawn the same way Cif plays for Zero. Bee leaves notes in chests containing Add's burdens, as well as in the first locust chest, after all; it might be safe to assume she was the one tasked with stashing the artifacts in some way.
Finally, can't help but wonder if you have more lore summaries coming up; considering there's a lot that has been revealed by you playing till the end. Recall how Add intended to finish DIS off along with themselves and the rest of the Void Lords; how the ending is them literally chasing Lev down at the eve of the comet's arrival, sealing (or breaking) the branching loop of fates and timelines (and the mural in the ending loops in on itself!); and all the hooks and catches into Zero Ranger, what with the daikons of the carcass endings, the Lotus Jewel, Zero herself being a reincarnation of Erasure, etc. It would be lovely to know if you have any new light to shed on the headcanons!
Thank you for the binge content!
this game is so cool !! thank you for these videos !
I really enjoyed this video. I‘m looking forward to the next one!
I actually started playing Void Stranger AND reading Berserk pretty much at the same time... I swear I didn't know
I just finished reading all the Berserk manga recently and would highly recommend it
Speaking of Lev...
Open the chest with Add's Scepter(Upgraded) as Cif for a joke ending that has lore none-the-less.
25:47 I had lots of thoughts about your own brand room, but this is actually a very good interpretation on how AddGray lost their womb
Moat likely the achievement is also used internally for progress tracking and potentially for catching file manipulations as well, although i haven't looked at the code myself, i would guess that it's probable.
(Many recent indie games utilize the achievements in a similar manner).
I'm watching these in order and maybe you've already figured this out by now and I'll look silly commenting this.
On ZERO Judge, it's hinted that she may be either a reincarnation of Erasure from ZeroRanger, or is straight-up Erasure after having left that universe after the Lotus Jewel's destruction.
She may be drawn to Lily because, either via reincarnation or just coincidence, Lily reminds Erasure of her sister, Despair, the main villain of ZeroRanger.
Bee and Cif have similarities in personality to the protagonists of ZeroRanger, Mido and Dori respectively. Those two have an older sister, Renji, though I'm not sure if she has an equivalent in this game.
I'll watch this one after reading Berserk
That's a great interpretation, even though I feel like I have a great grasp on the overall story, your points are simply great to see, and reshapes a lot of the scenes I remember vividly
The main example is how you showed how in the scene Lillie reads the letter at her ending, you get the pendant achievement. The implications of this little popup that I just haven't noticed before tell some much, and fix all the confusions I had about that ending. Thank you, I guess!
So, when's your 3 hour video explaining the full ZeroRanger + Void Stranger timelines coming out? ;)
Before watching this video I was not a fan of Judge zero. It felt like she was there as fanservice for people who plaied zeroranger.
After watching this video my opinion has changed. Still wish she would have been better integrated in the story.
zero looks like Grey's interpritation for Tail
Good stuff.
So if I'm understanding this correctly, Act II is sort of a branching timeline? I never tried getting into DIS playing as Lillie so I wouldn't know.
Act 1: gray and lilith
Act 2: Cif
Act 3: Lev ending
Alright, I have to ask… have you played Zero Ranger yet? Or at least watched a playthrough?
no and yes
@@lorgon111 I think you should.
wow!