At the end I've come away with a load of questions that I feel like maybe I missed?
I get Sam is "mother" who was created as a perfect being. What happened to the original mother, did she die and Sam was reborn like Isabel was trying to do with Alva?

We're told Alva's dad comes from Esther city, how is that possible? How do Isabel and Alva already know John?

When we see Ulva in the dream that John has what's going on there? is it really her or is he just having a random dream that means nothing? If he is why have that in the game at all!

What's the Miasma and why is it alive?

And why are there three solomons!

Originally posted by Taear:

I don't think it's possible. The young solomon could be on the monkollywood train and have got older, that does work.
But old solomon has been dead for a very, very, very long time since the last day of Esther City is being repeated over and over and has been (presumably) for at least 100 years, maybe longer.

Why though? We don't know when Easter City time loop was activated. We do know that time jumps somewhat erratically in the city, so it may be very well possible that the three Solomons are the same person all along. Little one in the Alva's city, the cranky teenager on the train and then our paths got separated in the mist (again) and Solomon arrived in the Easter City something like 50 years ahead of us and built everything there (time loop itself including). The pirates squad told us they waited for Mother/Sam's coming a long, long time.

I can't say that i was satisfied with the story and the ending myself. It was implied that Alva died, but what happens with Isabel? Is she just stands there for all eternity on the underground railway like the soul-crushed humanoid robot she is? That's just plain sad (and somewhat lazy on the part of the writing). The Mother says that she still destroys the humanity, so John is the only human alive (and that's why we don't see literally anyone of the numerous cast in the ending sequence)? And so he's seeing things in the "happy" epilogue? Sad again and the whole quest was kinda pointless.

P.S. Almost forgot, we see William with both of his Daniels, and they are going somewhere and quite happy. So the humanity wasn't wiped out, after all? Where's everyone then? I feel like in the end the story was wrapped in kind of rush.

Because in Ester City they talk about creating things that already exist in the world. It's a long time ago.

That's just how time loops work: you can't really rationalize them back into a linear time flow. They basically exist in their own bubble, separate from the rest of the world.

Source: see any time loops movie — Donnie Darko, Interstellar, Edge of Tomorrow, awesome German tv-series Dark[www.imdb.com], etc.

I agree the ending kinda came up underwhelming because the mystery got broken too quickly. I also feel like time loops need further epilogues to chill after their revelations. This game sadly didn't have time for a sufficient epilogue and just had the ending we saw with... well you know what you saw.

I think you misunderstand - in Esther City they're making the fruit you eat in the underground area, they've just created it
So someone must have left at some point and given that fruit to elsewhere

I understand how a time loop works, but it must mean the time loop started a LONG time ago.

I just finished the game few minutes ago and boy oh boy....so many questions so little answers...

I hope that one of the devs will see this thread and enlight us about what the ♥♥♥♥ is going on...I enjoyed the game except the ending

I think there are multiple copies of Sam (Mother), as the robot inside the train says: "A small piece of Mother can keep the factory running for countless generations", meaning that potentialy, each factory has a copy of her (including the one in the initial town);
but that's my theory anyway.
There is also the part where Solomon says: "That smell on you, it remind me of the factory, don't tell me that you're...", which may imply Isabel could be a product of the human factory herself, and with her Alva too. But that's also speculation.

My theory is that each Solomon is the same person but at different ages. Child Solomon has this weird line before his fight about a future self who he wants to outdo or something. Considering they all look similar and this game has time shenanigans this is probably the case.

I don't think it's possible. The young solomon could be on the monkollywood train and have got older, that does work.
But old solomon has been dead for a very, very, very long time since the last day of Esther City is being repeated over and over and has been (presumably) for at least 100 years, maybe longer.

It'd make sense if we saw loads of cloning stuff in Solomon's grave but we don't.

I don't know if Uva is "real" or not, but even if Uva is fake, it still tells you something that John is thinking. It might be saying that John is struggling with moving on from what happened, because he feels responsible for the outbreak of miasma. So maybe it does mean something, even if it's not a "paranormal dream" that reflects psychic energy from someone else.

a ton of what happened in the last half of the game involved time travel/time anomolies.

I'm just as confused as you are concerning a few different things. I enjoyed the story but:
-I don't get the miasma and why it isn't just gone now
-we never see a train go directly west, if anything the game's point to the east was a huge metaphore for time, but it seems people do get back westward.

Easter city got timecycled to death just like the monkey train. The monkey train was years into the future. Easter city is stuck in a timeloop with very few people who are even aware that they are in a time loop anymore. Disabling the tower ended the loop, but it's time for eons was still spent in the time fog and it instantly turned into its decrepit destoryed state.

It seems Sam got sent back to Potrock somehow after creating the humans of Easter city, meaning there may have been literal westward and backwards time travel.
How Sam worked as a mother and saving humanity is poorly explained, and we only know she had some internal conflict with a part of herself that believed destroying and recycling humans over and over was the only way to exist. Apparently she can cycle herself, which might be why she appeared as a teenager at the end of the game, meaning she broke her own time loop cycle.

A ton of that has speculation with how much missing stuff there is. While I do like games with open-ended conclusions, this one really has too many of them sadly. It was still a fun experience though.

Like I totally get the time stuff for Esther City and Monkollywood, I don't think that's hard to work out.

But Ulva says stuff about john when he walks off, stuff that implies that she's dead and yet still aware.

Charon must do a full circle of the island, I assume. But that still doesn't really explain how Alva's dad left. Or how John was already known by Alva/Isabel.