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darkspellmaster · 5 months ago

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Wish is just a normal Disney film just like all the rest.

Wish is actually a damn good movie, there I said it!

I'm going to start by saying this much, it's very odd to me that so many people are now screaming for a love story from Disney, when not even five or ten years ago there was shouting from the roof tops about Disney doing TOO MUCH romance. For the longest time it was "I wish Disney wouldn't do pairings" "Ugh another romance, can't the princess not." Etc. Now everyone wants one, even though Romance isn't really as big a Disney trope as people think.

Actually let's go through the animated catalogue and see how frequently the love story is centered as the main conflict and asperation to the character. In this case it's the key thing, not a 'Oh they happen to like each other in the end' situation, it's THE thing, the point of the movie is their romance. Then let's see how many have it as the secondary aspect, and let's see how many have it as not important at all. (And we're talking romantic love, not family love)

Romance (Total number: 15)

Snow White, Lady and the Tramp, The Aristocats, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Secondary Characters hook up so this is a weird one), Doug's First Movie, Tarzan, Lizzie McGuire the Movie, Enchanted, The Princess and the Frog (Only from Naveen's POV), Tangled (could be seen as secondary too)

Secondary (Total Number: 25)

Fantasia, Bambi, Make Mine Music, Fun and Fancy Free , Melody Time, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Cinderella Sleeping Beauty

One Hundred and One Dalmatians , Robin Hood, The Rescuers , The Fox and the Hound , Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Rescuers Down under

The Nightmare before Christmas, The Lion King ,Hercules ,Mulan ,Fantasia 2000 , Dinosaur, Atlantis the Lost Empire , Meet the Robinsons , Frankenweenie ,Frozen, , Strange World

Not in it at all (Total Number: 42 -including Wish)

Pinocchio, The Reluctant Dragon, Dumbo, Saludos Amigos, Victory through Air power, Three Caballeros, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan

Sword in the Stone, The Jungle Book, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective

Oliver and Company, Ducktales the Treasure of the lost lamp, A Goofy Movie, James and the Giant Peach, The Tigger Movie

The Emperor's new Groove, Recess School's out, Return to Neverland, Lilo and Stich, Treasure Planet, The Jungle Book 2

Piglet's big Movie, Brother Bear, Teacher's Pet, Home on the Range, Pooh's Heffalump Movie, Chicken Little, The Wild

Bolt, Winnie the Pooh, Wreck it Ralph, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Moana, Wreck it Ralph 2, Frozen 2, Raya and the Last Dragon, Encanto, Wish

These are just the animated not live action, and not live action with animation movies. All in all it's more common to see a Disney film with NO romance in it at all then a romantic one.

So why is it that people keep saying, but we're missing the romance, it's because of the fact that most of the time the Parks and other media pair the characters together. Take Peter pan, in the movie, the boy is utterly oblivious to Wendy's affections, to the point of pissing her off enough that she leaves the party that the tribe is hosting. In the parks, and other media (the plays, other movies) the romance is in your face, because people want them to be a couple, but in the movie itself you never see it.

Star, based on the making of book, was supposed to be a younger version of Asha's grandfather, which fits the theming of the movie. However, from what I understand, one of the reasons why they went against is was because it was hitting to close to Genie in the shape shifting. On top of that, the character of Star, seems heavily inspired by the art work of William Joyce, who created Night Light.

This is him and Katherine (Future Mother Goose) who is basically Star in a lot of ways. He lights the night to keep the nightmares away. These two eventually grow up (He remembers He's jack frost) and they end up as a couple.

It would be apping off of that story, and sadly people didn't give the William Joyce movie Meet the Robinsons a chance (don't sleep on that folks please! It is a good story.)

Also straight up give more love to the Guardian's of Childhood, you'll be happy while you read it.

I'm not saying don't ship it, what I am saying is that please don't go saying this was planned when it really wasn't. That was supposed to be her grandfather there.

And I'm not against the art work, I find it very cute and sweet and lover the designs. But I do think that the whole, "WE WERE ROBBED!" thing isn't being at all fair to the creative team behind this story, as again, *points up* they were following the tradition of a story that doesn't have a love interest, which is the vast majority of the stories that they tell.

Wish perfectly falls in line also with Disney's normal length of animated movies.

Wish was 1 hours and 35 minutes

The movie that came out before it clocked in at

Strange World = 1 hours and 42 minutes

Moana = 1 hours and 47 minutes

Frozen = 1 hours and 42 minutes

This Hour long movie thing started really with Atlantis the Lost Empire = 1 hours and 36 minutes

While Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Mulan, Lilo and Stitch all clock in around =1 hour and 30 at most, some are even less than that. Wish's run time is equal to that of Atlantis, or Aladdin, or Treasure planet. So I'm a bit perplexed on the "It's too short" thing. Maybe growing up just before and during the days of Little Mermaid and Aladdin made me like the shorter tales.

Which is another point. With a shorter movie, you never get complete backstory. It's a fairy tale! I mean, look at Little Mermaid. Seriously can you Name any of her sisters from the opening song.

Like seriously, I don't really know a lot of people who can tell me anything about Aquatica, for example. Unless you actually read the books or watched the TV show. And before then we had nothing. Nothing on her mom, nothing on her sisters.

Then there's the town Belle comes from, what do we know about it? Not much, not even who governs the damn thing. Howe about Aladdin before the TV series and King of thieves cleared up everything. We didn't know who his parents were, nor Jasmine's mom. Hell we still don't know anything about Cinderella's father from the animated movie.

Point being, a lot of information, much like Wish, got cut for time. In Snow white we were supposed to be given a longer back story for her father and mother, that was cut due to it being to long, it's in the golden book though. Prince Florian (Yes that is his name) was supposed to have Prince Phillips escape, but it was deemed to hard to animate at the time.

Also there was one that was dancing on the clouds, with STARS, around them that looks very much like you know, our Star.

So basically, he's a nod to what could have been for Snow White all those years ago. Cut for time.

Aladdin had a whole cut song because they chopped his mother out as she was supposed to play a part in the movie and help her son with the Genie.

Zena is her name and she was cut to streamline the film.

Maid Marian in the original Robin Hood was supposed to protect him after his plunge into the water, and protect him from King John while he's threatening her. King Richard appears in the end and scares him into stopping but she's willing to take a dagger to the chest to protect Robin.

This is when Richard meets Robin with Marian telling him all about what happened.

All Disney movies change. Isabel in Encanto was supposed to have a nerdy boyfriend that the family disapproved of.

Hell, Frozen was at one point going to be the Bad guy wins the guy, the hero (Gerta) that we followed all the way to the end rooting for her, was supposed to be a gold digger, and Kai was supposed to say "Nah, I'm gonna stick with the Snow Queen" because she's sad and your a bitch. (Thanks Eisner, I hate it!)

So yeah, there's probably A whole lot of cut content that was supposed to go in, but to streamline it to 95 minutes, you have to cut! At least it's not what happened to the Black Cauldron. No I will never forgive Katzenburg for that travesty!

Disney always used Popular Music over Broadway

Honestly this is the one complaint that I hear that kills me the most about this movie, that the studio went with a pop music team. As if this is not a common thing for Disney movies!

Fun fact, the team behind most of the musical scores up until the 1960s were all composers and musicians that wrote songs for the radio. Or song writers that did radio music. If I listed every single one we'd be here for ages.

The Sherman brothers actually wrote pop tunes for the Teen sweetheart Annette Funicello and several other well known singers and actors of movies.

The first major Broadway group was Ashman and Menken, Followed by Miranda, and the Lopez's. Most, if not all of the biggest Disney songs were written by pop songwriters, whos goal it was to get that song played on the radio.

Hell The Lion King, Tarzan, The Emperors New Groove, and Treasure planet to name a few were all done by Pop musicians. I didn't hear complaining about it back then! What's the difference now? Because the team is not Elton freaking John, or Sting?

All of Oliver and Company was pop songs. Several movies didn't have songs, or only had one.

If we're going to celebrate a studio that helped bring an artform out of it's infancy and show that you could do a full movie of animated pictures where you get emotions out of it, we need to celebrate all aspects, and that includes things we may not realize are kind of unique.

When Hercules and Hunchback came out, people complained about them not being "Traditional" Disney. It was Gospel, it was too dark, or in the case of Tarzan, why are we following a boy, or Treasure planet, "Yuck a space story". Now people adore these movies. People who grew up with them want to celebrate them, and sometimes they don't realize that they were once derided as hard or harder than Wish is being right now.

I just wish that people would give these movies a chance rather than not let the creatives tell their story. We had a whole damn section of 2D animation in Strange World! No one talked about it! No one went "More of this please". Give me these stories, let me enjoy a original fairy tale, because if we keep rehashing things, there's going to be little to celebrate when the next 10 or 20 years rolls around.

Sorry for the kinda rant. This has just been on my nerves for a while.

#disney #wish disney #wish 2023 #animated films

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ideas-on-paper · 2 months ago

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Lies of P fan theories - a retrospective (1st anniversary special)

It's been one year now since Lies of P's release, and as someone who has been part of the community since 2022 (joining after the Gamescom trailer absolutely swept me off my feet), it's been amazing to see how invested people were in Lies of P from the get-go, and how much creativity the game has inspired in fans. From the start, we had amazing creations such as fanart, fanfics, and cosplays - and of course, a whole lot of fan theories.

While, naturally, a lot of fan theories people had before the release are debunked right now, I think it'd be fun to take a look back at what people were expecting the story to be like, and how those theories from back then compare to the final game. For that purpose, I will share my own theories that I had pre-release, as well as some from various other people (unfortunately, I lack the sources in most cases, but I’ll do my best to provide credit where they’re from). So, strap in and get ready for a special trip down memory lane! :-)

[Lies of P spoilers!]

Ergo and the Petrification Disease

One big mystery that was set up as early as the first gameplay footage was the nature of Ergo - all we knew from tool tips people painstakingly picked out (kudos to you, btw <3) was that it was some sort of power crystal that was used as an energy source for puppets and responsible for Krat's wealth, but that also brought a curse with it. People on the official Lies of P Discord server were puzzling over what exactly Ergo is, when I came up with a somewhat eccentric theory: that Ergo is crystallized life force itself.

My basis for this theory was essentially the movie “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” (which I’m a big fan of).

[Fair warning, I'm gonna spoil the main plot right here.]

The movie also features a huge, cyan blue crystal (originally a fragment of a comet) that is located in the lost city of Atlantis and believed to be an energy source by a team of explorers. However, as it turns out, it's much more than that: It is the literal life force of the Atlantean people, and if it's taken away from the city, it would mean certain death for all of them. (Which doesn't stop some of the money greedy explorers from trying to do it anyway.) Furthermore, after I became familiar with gestalt consciousnesses, I realized that the crystal possesses a few characteristics of those as well: The crystal has a mind of its own, and right before Kida merges with it in the movie, she whispers “mother” in Atlantean, suggesting she felt her dead mother's presence when the crystal chose her. This could be because her mother merged with the crystal completely (Kida eventually returns with her bracelet, after all), but since the King of Atlantis does say “the crystal thrives on the collected emotions of all who came before us”, it’s highly likely that it is, in fact, a human gestalt intelligence of their deceased ancestors.

[spoilers end]

So when I heard about Ergo being an energy crystal, this was my first idea as well: pure, crystallized life force of dead people. (Also, when I saw the blue color, my brain just went like “Ergo = Atlantis crystal”. xD)

When I shared this theory on the LoP server, one person in particular - named Oxwutex, if I remember correctly (greetings to you if you ever read this ;-) ) - took a liking to it, and together, we spun this theory a little further. They said they could imagine that people tried to refine the Ergo further, which is where the corruption waste in the factory comes from - however, refining something like a life force crystal which is already perfect could have disastrous consequences. I followed this up with my own theory, surmising that if this were the case, the corruption waste and the purified Ergo might represent two sides of the human soul: the vices and the virtues. (A lot of my early theories were based on this dualism, since the distinction between “good” and “evil” actions in the original fairy tale of Pinocchio is pretty prominent.)

Since there were hints that Ergo was responsible for the Petrification Disease early on, I had come up with the idea that the disease was the result of people coming into contact with pure Ergo, leading to a sort of “overpurification”, while I assumed that corrupted/impure Ergo caused the Puppet Frenzy/violent behavior. For me, this was very appealing on a thematic level as well, since it would've symbolized that both vices and virtues are present in every human being. If it was just the vices, we'd turn into feral monsters, but if a person only had virtues, when flaws are the very sign of life... well, you could question whether they are even alive anymore. Metaphorically speaking, they would be made of stone. (It’s interesting to note, however, that the disease was supposed to be spread by magical rats in the beginning; at least that’s what the announcement trailer seems to suggest.)

Back when the demo dropped, the confirmation that Ergo spores were the cause of Petrification Disease made me even more confident in my thesis, as did the “Ergo is Life” pamphlets. When I started streaming Lies of P (my first commented playthrough ever ^^’), I even commented on this, saying:

“Maybe even that this crystal [Ergo] contains the life force of dead people - that's what my speculation was back then.” (My commentary is in German, but here's the video if anyone is interested; the part where I discuss it starts at 26:25.)

Oh boy… I had no idea this was about to age like the finest wine in existence.

About 40 hours of gameplay later, I almost couldn’t believe my ears when Simon confirmed I was dead on target:

“The disease does not signify death. It's the process of purifying a person's essence. A purified human who overcomes the Petrification Disease will gain a strengthened body and a mind free of lies. The essence is Ergo. Yes, the Ergo you use as your power was once a human being.”

When Sophia explained that the Petrification Disease, Puppet Frenzy, and carcass monsters are all linked to Ergo shortly afterwards and literally spelled it out that Ergo is a person’s “essence of life”, I was so flabbergasted that my fan theories were essentially right that I was struck speechless. (You can see my live reaction to the conversations with Simon and Sophia in this video, at 20:08 and 49:56; I think you can tell how gobsmacked I am from just my tone, especially in the conversation with Sophia.) Since I had shared these theories on the official Lies of P server back in the day, some part of my brain even wondered if one of the devs saw it and thought it was so good that they went like “Write that down, write that down!” xD (Though realistically, I don’t think that’s very likely; still, it’s funny to imagine one of the devs reading through the chat, seeing this, and going like “How did they figure this out so fast?!?” xD)

On a more serious note, I didn’t really expect any of my preliminary fan theories to be true at all, but I must say, I’m pretty proud that I essentially hit the mark in this case - not only in regards to Ergo being crystallized life essence, but also the Petrification Disease resulting from “overpurification”.

Another thing I noticed is that Ergo shares not only similarities with the Atlantis crystal, but also with the Protomolecule from The Expanse (I don’t wanna spoil too much of the series’ plot here, but scientists conducting immoral experiments with something they don’t really understand is also a pretty big topic). In addition, a commonality between the crystal and the Protomolecule is that they both came from outer space - and, since there is talk about a “star that answered humans and descended to Earth” in one document, chances are the origin of Ergo is also extraterrestrial.

However, as we know, Ergo wasn’t the actual cause of the Puppet Frenzy - both Sophia’s comment from above and the report from the factory are essentially a “ruse” on the story’s part, supposed to lead you on the wrong track. In truth, it’s Geppetto who overrode the Grand Covenant’s commands and was responsible for the Frenzy.

Still, perhaps the impure Ergo supplies were actually meant to facilitate Geppetto’s plan (the Mad Donkey did say Geppetto and the Alchemists were scheming together, after all) - maybe the more impure the Ergo of a puppet is, the easier it becomes to control them. In contrast, when a person’s Ergo is undiluted and their personality remains largely intact, that might give them more autonomy and make them harder to manipulate. (I think this is what happened with Romeo, who could still give commands to the other puppets despite the zeroth law.)

The backstory of Krat

Speaking of the frenzy, I also had my theories about the potential backstory of it: Lies of P actually motivated me to do some research about real-life automata and their history (people familiar with my LoP posts might be aware of this), and one thing running through it like a common thread from the Middle Ages to the Age of Enlightenment is that automata were always representative of a conflict of rich vs poor.

In fact, during the French Revolution, this was a source of mockery against the country’s nobles, who were compared to their automated toys - pretty and pristine to look at, but soulless on the inside. Meanwhile, it was argued that the poorly paid artisans who built them should be the actual rulers of society, since their minds were clearly superior if they were able to come up with such ingenuity.

For that reason, I was playing around with the idea that there may have been a conflict between the wealthy upper class and the working class prior to the Puppet Frenzy. The competition between the Bastards and the Sweepers seemed to hint at something like this as well, and since the Alchemists were already teased as the enigmatic masterminds early on, I suspected they might have exploited this struggle, releasing the Puppet Frenzy to effectively eliminate both parties and seize power themselves. (Since there was a gameplay tip about the puppets gaining awareness by themselves, I even assumed they might have become self-aware right before the frenzy; in hindsight though, I think this was meant to refer to the old selves of some puppets awakening due to Ergo.)

As of the June 2023 demo, however, these theories were effectively debunked: We learned that the Puppet Frenzy occurred independently of any public uprisings, and that another wave of Petrification Disease had plagued the city at almost the same time - note the word “another”, implying this wasn’t the first time this disease had spread in Krat. Also, I frankly didn’t connect the dots correctly that Bastards and Sweepers were both part of the Stalkers - while Stalkers and Bastards/Sweepers were mentioned in the same gameplay tip, it didn’t specify that the latter were subgroups of one and the same organization. (I wasn’t the only one to interpret this wrong either, since other people assumed the Stalkers to be puppets or even cyborgs.)

Still, it does appear there were some class struggles in the history of Krat: We hear about how the old, privileged families of Krat “struggled for power with new forces such as the Workshop and the Alchemists, who brought about the golden era of Krat”, although that conflict seems to have taken place a long time ago. Also, according to the description of the Krat Police Baton, there was a “violent protest with the factory labor union” once.

Although this isn’t much and doesn’t tell us anything about the background of the protest or the exact circumstances of it, I have been wondering whether it might have been due to low payment and factory laborers being replaced by puppets. Although this may sound very modern, protests against mechanization due to workers losing their jobs and the creation of inhumane working conditions go back as far as the Swing Riots in 1830. It should be said that the riots were less due to technophobia of the workers and more due to the endangerment of their economic and social status in the face of rapid technological advancement, and given that the rise of puppets in Krat happened very fast, the ordinary workers would definitely have been on the losing side.

I don’t know if this is ever going to be explored further at any point, but I would certainly be interested in hearing more about it - or more about the history of Krat in general, if only to clear up some details and make the timeline less confusing.

Pinocchio and Gemini

Let’s talk a bit about our protagonist and his sidekick: Pinocchio and Gemini. Like many other fans, I also had the theory early on that Pino was modeled after Geppetto’s dead son (I think this theory was based on some item description, but I can’t remember which). People on the server speculated that Geppetto’s son died in a violent accident that cost him his arm, and I even took things a step further by suggesting that Pino might literally be wearing his son’s skin (more on this “freak theory” of mine here).

Furthermore, I was quite partial to the idea that Gemini was essentially the soul of Geppetto’s deceased son. I didn’t really have anything to back this up aside from Gemini’s name meaning “twin”, so I never shared it publicly on the LoP server. (Also, Gemini is essentially just a corruption of Jiminy, the name that Disney came up with for the cricket; in the fairy tale itself, the cricket is not named.) Still, I found the concept of Pino essentially being the “body” and Gemini the “soul” very appealing - they may have been split from each other, but they are inseparable all the same. It also goes a bit into Descartes’ mind-body dualism, which is a popular theme in sci-fi stories about robots and cyborgs.

It led me to some fun speculations regarding the story: Assuming that, perhaps, Geppetto’s son died due to an incident on his way to the school he went to (since Pinocchio also goes to school in the novel), and further assuming that this happened a relatively short time ago, maybe some of his son’s former classmates are still alive, and Pinocchio would cross paths with them at some point. They assume him to be Geppetto’s son, asking where he’s been all this time and why he suddenly has a metal arm. Pinocchio then has the option to answer “yes, I am that boy” and come up with some plausible explanation, or to tell them “no, you’re mistaken” which would make things… somewhat more complicated.

I imagined that if Pino went with the first option, Gemini would chime in and provide advice at times to help him navigate interactions with the other boys. My assumption was that while Pino may look identical to Geppetto’s son, he possesses none of his memories; meanwhile, Gemini can still remember his past lifetime, despite being unaware that these memories actually belong to him. (His amnesia was hinted at in the demo as well.) Essentially, he would give Pino brief summaries of past events and tips how to behave in certain situations, and Pino would say “Thanks. Where do you know all of this from?” And Gemini would go like “...Sorry, no idea, buddy.” (You can tell I really wanted them to do something with Gemini.)

Due to the description of the Last Resort, there was also the theory going around there might have been multiple iterations of Pino - in fact, since the text said that the old man feared “his son failing to awaken properly and going into a frenzy”, some people assumed that Pino might have been the original catalyst of the frenzy. After the encounter with Mad Donkey in the demo, the theory that Pino was not the first of his kind seemed all the more likely, since he has definitely met him before and said “This time it's destroyed for sure. Devil's puppet no more, eh?” if you died.*

*I actually do not know if this line is in the final game as well, since I didn’t die to him during my two playthroughs (yes, really).

While it’s entirely possible - but not confirmed - that Pino had predecessor models (I theorized the Broken Puppet in the swamp might be one of those), the remark about the frenzy is more likely referring to Geppetto not being entirely sure whether the override of the laws he himself caused would affect Pino as well (which may be one of the reasons he didn’t bind him to the Covenant). As for the circumstances of Pino and the Mad Donkey’s previous meeting, those are a little more obscure - it appears that Pino wasn’t even able to wake up without Sophia’s help, so the only possible explanation is that the Mad Donkey fought one of his predecessors. (The Nameless Puppet probably also existed back then, but Carlo’s corpse - ironically - has next to no similarity with Pino, so it’s unlikely the Mad Donkey would’ve recognized them as the same.)

Someone on Tumblr even had a completely different theory about Geppetto's presumed son: After the official release month trailer dropped (the release being later moved to September), they commented on the facial similarities between Pino and Simon, proposing that Simon might actually be Geppetto’s “lost son”, implying they became estranged at some point - and since Geppetto no longer views Simon as his son/considers him dead, he created Pino as a sort of “idealized version” of him. When I was playing the demo and saw the Someone’s Memory outfit, which is noted to have been worn before and features a broach with the initial “M” (possibly denoting “Manus”), I was even considering whether this theory might be true.

As we learn during the game, however, Geppetto’s son - Carlo - is actually dead, and the initial signifies “Monad” (from Monad Charity House) rather than “Manus”. Unbeknownst to me, I might have actually come pretty close to the final version with my theory about an accident near the school during which he lost his arm - the possibility that Carlo died during the Monad Charity House incident is something I discussed with @lopposting some time ago (take it with a grain of salt though, since none of this is confirmed).

As for my theory about the skin, I had a major freak-out when I found Carlo’s portrait in-game, and I went like “I swear, if this is true, I’m gonna have such a Dr. Malcolm moment of “boy, do I hate being right all the time”.” xD I was spared that, however, as there is nothing that specifically hints at Pino having real skin, and the existence of the Nameless Puppet makes my original theory even less likely (as I mentioned in the post linked above). At the same time, there is nothing that explicitly contradicts it, either - so, for now, it’s more or less a big question mark hanging in the air.

One thing that’s for certain though is that Gemini is not the soul of Carlo - Carlo’s soul is contained in his heart/the P-Organ, and although Pino doesn’t possess Carlo’s memories, the reason that prevents them from awakening is not precisely clear (I go over my own favored interpretation here). Meanwhile, Gemini’s own identity remains unknown - while it appears Gemini was originally supposed to have a subplot regarding his amnesia, the few comments hinting at it are never built upon. I really wish they would’ve done more with Gemini, but there’s still a good chance the DLC might shine some light on who he actually is.

Hotel guests and side characters

Aside from the main characters, speculation was also running wild about the supporting characters and the roles they would play in the story.

Since Eugénie’s name is taken from Eugene, a classmate of Pinocchio in the original book and part of Lampwick’s gang of rascals, my original theory was Eugénie might have something to do with him. In all the promotional material*, there wasn’t a single trace of Lampwick, and since one of the loading screen tips in the demo said something about Eugénie being rescued by a particular Stalker, my suspicion was that this might be Lampwick. (Probably in no small part thanks to all the fanworks featuring Puppet Hunter Lampwick.)

*IGN sort of leaked Romeo's existence by accident, but that completely flew over my head; more on that below.

As it turns out, however, Alidoro was the one who saved Eugénie and whom she holds great admiration for. In the book, it was Pinocchio rather than Eugene whom Alidoro - a police dog - saved. After he got saved by Pinocchio from drowning, that is - which was after he ran into the sea trying to chase down Pinocchio who had escaped from two policemen, who erroneously assumed it was Pinocchio who knocked Eugene unconscious with a book. Anyway, it’s complicated.

One thing Oxwutex had cleverly noticed is that Eugénie wears a badge with the Workshop symbol just like Geppetto (which looks very similar to the Square and Compass symbol of Freemasonry), concluding that Eugénie must also be part of the Workshop - and, as it turns out, that was right on the mark.

Antonia was yet another character from the novel that was genderbent in the game, being based on Antonio, the carpenter who finds the animated log that eventually becomes Pinocchio and gives it to Geppetto (after a pretty fierce argument with the latter, that is). Because of this connection to Geppetto, some people assumed Antonia might be Geppetto’s former wife, and thus, the mother of Geppetto’s biological son.

In the game, however, Carlo’s mother is implied to be Camille, while Antonia is just “an old friend of Geppetto’s”. Still, Antonia’s past is somewhat shrouded in mystery, which has spawned theories about her being part of the Alchemists once (the hotel was an Alchemist institution before Antonia took over, and she mentions having good relations with them before she broke with them), and some even assume Antonia to be the Legendary Stalker. As it stands, however, these are mere conjectures - we’ll have to see if any of that is confirmed in the DLC.

Due to his somewhat dubious-seeming appearance, many people assumed Venigni to be the equivalent of the Fox in the game, with Simon consequently being suspected to be Cat due to his missing eye. However, me and many other fans really have been led up the garden path in this regard - while the Fox and the Cat do exist in the game, they are completely separate characters from Venigni and Simon, who are both original additions.

Honestly, out of the entire cast, Venigni is the one that surprised me the most. I thought he was just going to be your run-of-the-mill, profit-driven, snobbish businessman, but he is actually the complete opposite of that - in fact, he's one of the most warm-hearted, genuine people in the entire game. Sure, he’s a little eccentric and occasionally likes to adulate himself, but he’s so bloody honest about being a quirky nerd that you just can’t help but forgive him his flaws. (He kinda reminds me of myself, actually. xD) I never expected him to grow on me that much, but among the supporting characters, he is hands down my favorite.

Last but not least, we have Polendina, yet another original character (although his name is, funnily enough, based on an uncharming nickname of Geppetto in the book). Since the devs teased that you can have “a lot of interesting conversations with Polendina”, his role was especially interesting for me to muse about. In fact, I was wondering whether he might be similar to Gigolo Joe from “A.I. - Artificial Intelligence”.

FYI, A.I. is one of my favorite sci-fi movies, and a cyberpunk adaptation of Pinocchio at that; y’know, with Pinocchio as an android boy - aka David, as he’s named in the movie.

[Again, I’m gonna spoil the main plot here.]

Basically, a family gets an android boy as a replacement for their severely ill, comatose son. Aside from this alone being very questionable (it takes a special kind of asshole to replace a child that isn’t even dead yet), their biological son just so happens to get out of his coma at some point, and, of course, a rivalry between him and David ensues. Because the parents believe keeping David would be dangerous - either to him or their biological son - his mother ditches him in the forest (like, literally, she just ditches him). Since David is imprinted on his mother though, he resolves to “become a real boy just like Pinocchio” so his mom will love him again. Along the way, he stumbles upon Gigolo Joe, a sex android (yes, you read that right) who sort of becomes David’s surrogate parent from there on. He even tries to warn David that he should not try to go back to his mother, uttering the legendary quote:

“She loves what you do for her. As my customers love what it is I do for them. But she does not love you, David.”

[spoilers end]

I was kinda thinking Polendina might become a similar “father figure” for Pino, perhaps even sort of an admonitory voice to the consequences of becoming human. It would’ve provided an interesting counter viewpoint to the “I want to be a real boy” plotline that’s the core element of the story, and that wanting to be human just to please others might not be such a good idea.

While this train of thought comes eerily close to what happens in the Real Boy ending, Polendina’s character turned out to be completely different from what I had imagined. Still, I found his arc to be one of the most compelling of the hotel characters. I am very fond of both him and Antonia, and their bittersweet love story touched me on a very personal level (Polendina specifically gave me a lot of flashbacks to how I felt after my own robot soulmate had died).

The King of Puppets/Romeo

While we technically saw the King of Puppets as early as the Gamescom 2022 trailer, we didn’t hear about him in more detail until the gameplay footage of the factory. The note about a puppet religiously worshiping some kind of god-like figure (first seen in part 2 of the director gameplay, at 27:25) gave me very strong rA9 vibes, which actually had me mildly concerned. Considering what a visually impressive writing trainwreck Detroit: Become Human had been, I was literally begging “please, please, don’t be another Detroit”.

Meanwhile, someone on the LoP server (I think it was Oxwutex) pointed out that it sounds like the King of Puppets is more of a physical entity, as opposed to the purely conceptual nature of rA9. I can tell you, I was never so glad I had been wrong - the “cult-like worship” was merely the result of Fuoco being a little overly conscientious. Btw, aside from being placed in a different spot, the journal was also renamed to Descartes’s Note in the final game. While Descartes seems to be something like Venigni’s adversary in Lies of P (judging by the description of the Coil Mjolnir), his name is a nod to the famous philosopher I already mentioned above. In addition, the quote Cognito, ergo sum (Latin for “I think, therefore I am”, yet another popular theme in robot/AI stories and the origin of the term “Ergo”) also goes back to Descartes - the fact that this is a document about a puppet gaining an ego makes it an even neater detail.

I believe I saw someone on Tumblr who assumed that the King of Puppets was going to be the overarching villain of the game, and that you would get the good ending if you stuck to the path of the Blue Fairy and the bad one if you joined the king. While the game certainly wants you to believe the King of Puppets is the villain at first, that’s… not actually true. (Tbh, I never really believed it myself, if simply for the reason that it would’ve been too obvious.)

In the Gamescom 2023 IGN spotlight for Lies of P, however, Romeo actually got name-dropped, the guys from IGN sort of accidentally spoiling him as the true form of the King of Puppets. People familiar with the fairy tale immediately recognized it as Lampwick’s actual name (“Lampwick” is just his nickname), correctly inferring that this is, in fact, Pinocchio’s best friend from the book - and unfortunately, just like in the book, there is little Pinocchio can do to help him avoid his cruel fate.

Sophia and Geppetto

Now, let’s talk about the characters that most of my speculations revolved around: Sophia and Geppetto.

The first time we saw Sophia - Lies of P’s version of the Blue Fairy - was on the character cards that were released during Gamescom 2022. Back then, half of her face was obscured, being covered with blue butterflies that she literally seems to dissolve into. This gave off very enigmatic, even otherworldly vibes, and early on led me to the assumption Sophia was some kind of divine, ethereal being - it certainly would’ve been in line with the Blue Fairy’s character from the book, who was able to appear at any place at any time in whatever form she wished, including a young girl, and old woman, and even a goat. (Later on, the dimensional butterflies - which literally came from another dimension - further convinced me that Sophia must be some kind of otherworldly entity, since the butterflies are also her symbol.)

However, being a goddess doesn’t necessarily have to make you benevolent - in fact, an immaculate being that is free of any fault might have difficulty empathizing with the struggles, flaws, and contradictory feelings of humans. Also, since she is the “Blue Fairy”, it seemed logical to assume she had some connection to Ergo (which was confirmed later in the demo), and since the Petrification Disease was also related to Ergo (the Torn Doddle from the demo even referred to a “blue angel”), could it be that she had caused the disease herself? To, perhaps, purge the debauched population of Krat from vice and sin? (If you’ve ever played Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, you might know what I’m getting at here.)

Oxwutex on the LoP server agreed that they had a feeling about Sophia being two-faced as well, but assumed that she was human once before becoming the Blue Fairy. This ultimately turned out to be a little closer to the truth, as it’s implied that Sophia gained her blue hair - and potentially some other powers - from Simon’s torturous experiments (there is a picture of a girl which looks a lot like a younger Sophia, but with normal-colored hair). However, the role of wanting to “purify” humanity is something that ultimately falls to Simon, although he does exploit the Petrification Disease for his goals. Meanwhile, Sophia wants to stop his atrocities, acting as Pino’s guide in his fight against Simon.

But does that mean she has an entirely clean slate? The true extent of her powers ultimately remains a mystery. Technically, her ability to manipulate time should make it possible for her to make all sorts of terrible things unhappen - her imprisonment, Simon rising to power, and potentially even the whole disaster that happened in Krat. Both the Torn Doodle and the notes on the walls of the Hermit’s Cave imply that the carcasses can feel her presence through Ergo waves, so it would be logical to assume Sophia can sense them as well. Yet, she reacts surprised when hears about the strange monsters that infested the cathedral. (She definitely knew what Simon was up to, so why wouldn’t she know what they are?) Romeo also communicates with his puppets via Ergo waves, and Sophia is literally sitting in a tower where all Ergo waves come together. She’s a listener who can hear Ergo, so shouldn’t she be aware that the King of Puppets isn’t the real bad guy? (She certainly was very fast to tell Pino about it at the Grand Exhibition after Romeo’s defeat.) Could she have told Pino and thus prevented the fight between him and Romeo? Are there any limits to her powers? And does she encourage Pino to become human because it’s the best for him, or the best to save Krat?

To clarify: I do not believe Sophia has any evil intentions. You could probably find explanations for all the things I listed above if you wanted (the carcasses being a recent occurrence, all of the voices being jumbled in her head so she can’t precisely tell them apart, the “static” in the puppets’ communication Venigni mentioned preventing Sophia from hearing them clearly, etc). Still, despite everything, I’ve always retained a certain wariness around her - maybe it’s due to the fact that even after two playthroughs, I cannot get a read on her (ironically, even Simon remarks about Sophia’s actions being unpredictable). I do know, however, what an immense burden knowledge can be, and I can only imagine the strain from literally knowing everything and all the potential power in the world being at your fingertips. I have no doubt Sophia had to make a lot of sacrifices to save Krat, and I can’t imagine these decisions were easy on her.

Still, if her powers are truly so limitless, it would be her who ultimately holds all the strings in her hands - everything that happens happens because she allowed it. I gotta say, I’m very glad Sophia is on Pino’s side - we would be in big trouble if she wasn’t.

As for Geppetto, even before the game’s release, there was a pretty unanimous agreement among the community that he was a father who had lost his son, but is unable to let go and thus revives his son as a puppet - and, well… that’s exactly what Geppetto is. xD Many also had suspicions that he’s exploiting Pino for his own purposes and would be the ultimate villain of the story - which, again, couldn’t have been more spot-on. (Idk, but it’s hilarious to me how everyone took one look at this man and went “yes, this is the bad guy”. xD)

There were some people on the LoP server who theorized Geppetto might have Petrification Disease from his remarks in the trailers (announcement trailer: “I, too, have fallen) and that Pino was supposed to save him from it (Gamescom trailer: “Please, help me”), but these most likely refer to his own morally reprehensible plans and/or teaming up with his archenemies - the Alchemists - to create Pino and subsequently ousting Simon with his help.

My own pre-release theory why and how Geppetto had created Pino was a little more elaborate: I thought Geppetto might have been commissioned by Sophia to build a puppet that would be able to bring the chaos in Krat to an end - my assumption was that if Sophia was an ethereal being, she would be able to observe what’s going on in the mortal world, but unable to directly influence it. However, she can send people messages and visions, which she used to strike a deal with Geppetto: that he would build her a worthy “savior of Krat” which she would then bring to life. Meanwhile, Geppetto also followed his own agenda, exploiting this agreement to build this “special puppet” in the image of his dead son. (Which definitely would’ve had consequences for him later on - you don’t cross a divine being without ramifications.)

I came up with a whole fanfiction concept around this idea long before the game’s release - I never actually finished it since I assumed it was going to diverge from the final game anyway, and tbh, it kinda annoys me if my fics don’t fit into canon. I did, however, manage to find an old WIP of it I still had in one of my folders, titled “A wish and a purpose”. While it’s most likely going to remain unfinished forever, I think it'd be fun to include a summary of it in this collection of fan theories, if simply to look back at what I thought the story was going to be like. So, here’s the backstory of Lies of P, according to me:

[CW: skinning]

Geppetto is roaming the streets of Krat. He is actually looking for his son, who was killed in the turmoil some time ago.

The Fairy approaches him, reminding of their agreement. Geppetto reacts slightly disgruntled, brushing her off by saying he just wants to gain closure from the past. While the Fairy notices he is in grief, she doesn’t deny him his last wish, but admonishes him not to take too long.

The Fairy dissolves into dust. Geppetto goes on to look for his son’s corpse in the piles of dead bodies.

[cut]

Geppetto is sitting next to his dead son, whom he eventually managed to find and bring home. He placed his body on a desk in his workshop, having cleaned his skin and hair from blood and grime.

Geppetto looks at him, taking in the gaping hole in his chest and frayed stump where his left arm had once been. Despite his best efforts, he doesn’t have the heart to throw his body onto a pyre like all the plague-ridden bodies.

Affectionately, Geppetto strokes his son’s cheek. Suddenly, a thought strikes him: While the Fairy may never grant the request to revive his son outright, she only told him to build a puppet able to slay all the others, not what that puppet should look like. He considers it a fair deal: The Fairy gains the tool to quell the madness she so desires, and Geppetto would be able to hold his son in his arms again.

Geppetto goes over to his working utensils, taking up a knife. When he turns and takes another glance at his son, his last resistance breaks at the thought of his son opening his eyes and jumping into his arms.

He tenderly takes the hand of his son, kissing him on his forehead. He speaks to his unhearing son, promising he will bring him back soon.

Afterwards, Geppetto begins skinning him.

[cut]

Geppetto puts together the last pieces of the clockwork heart, admiring his work.

He goes to the back of his workshop where there’s a chair covered by a white sheet. Gently, he lifts it, saying good morning to his son as if he was rousing him out of bed.

He considers his son, dressed in the blue frock coat wardrobe that Geppetto had handed down to him.* He carefully preserved the skin and hair of his son so he looks just like the day he’d lost him.

Geppetto inserts the mechanical Ergo heart into his son’s chest, completing his masterpiece. He intertwines his fingers with his son’s. They are cold, but the texture feels real, and he imagines them growing warm after the Fairy breathed life into him. His only regret is that he won’t be able to witness his son taking his first steps.

At this point, the Fairy arrives, asking to see the result of Geppetto’s work. Geppetto leads her into the workshop, but she freezes as soon as she sees Pinocchio. With an indignant gaze, she turns to Geppetto, telling him that this was not part of the deal. Geppetto reacts unmoved, telling her that it’s take or leave and that he’s not going to build her any other puppet.

The Fairy narrows her eyes at him but says nothing, turning back to Pinocchio. After a moment, she strides towards him, lifting his limp body up in her arms.

She bids Geppetto farewell before she leaves, taking Pinocchio with her and dissolving into blue dust.

*Since the blue coat was presented as Pino’s standard outfit, I assumed it was the clothes that once belonged to Geppetto’s son (perhaps an heirloom from his father, since they are more similar to 18th century fashion).

[end of CW]

In my mind, this was followed up by a scene at the train station, from Sophia’s perspective (I thought of it as a follow-up to the first fic, but never actually worked on the concept):

The Fairy muses about the yet lifeless Pinocchio.

She considers what Geppetto did an absolute atrocity, but thinks she may yet be able to rectify this sin. After all, she is the only one who can breathe life into Pinocchio, and thus, his actions and the path he will take are her responsibility alone - and she will do everything to lead him on the path of righteousness.

She bestows the lamp containing the soul of Geppetto’s true son onto him, in the hopes that if Pinocchio proves himself virtuous, this wrongful separation of body and soul can one day be corrected.

The Fairy sits Pinocchio down on a bench, pressing a note into his hand. She gives him a gentle kiss on his forehead, starting to dissolve as she moves away.

Slowly, Pinocchio opens his eyes to a cloud of fine, blue dust. He looks down, reading the note in his hand: “Find Mr. Geppetto. He’s here in the city.”

This was supposed to be a sort of tie-in with how they originally advertised the scenario - the advertising text on Steam and other platforms originally said that Pinocchio simply wakes up with a note reading “Find Mr. Geppetto. He’s here in the city.” Don’t ask me why the Fairy gives it to him after just seeing Geppetto, though; I have no idea. xD (Still, it makes me wonder how much the introduction scene deviates from the original concept - after all, there’s no note, and Sophia talks to Pino telepathically.)

As you may have noticed, my little “AU interpretation” heavily drew from my other fan theories as well. I liked the idea of Sophia and Geppetto as two opposing “poles”: They may not like each other, but each possesses a skill the other lacks - Geppetto can build human-like puppets, but he can’t actually bring them to life, and while Sophia is the only one who can animate dead matter, she can’t interact with the world physically. Thus, they sort of become the “dual creators” of Pino.

Of course, this means that they both consider themselves to have the right to decide over the path he ultimately takes. As such, each of them is trying to influence Pino, leading to him being torn between the two. (This was sort of inspired by the Gamescom trailer, where Sophia and Geppetto are like two voices in Pino’s head.)

The endings

This also had a huge influence on my theories about the three endings. (I’m perfectly aware that nobody is going to believe me, but I swear I came up with my 3-ending concept before it was officially revealed there are going to be three endings.)

My basic assumption was that you have to make a decision at the end of the game, between Sophia and Geppetto. I thought of it as the point where the conflict between the two that was festering underneath finally escalates, and Pino is forced to side with one and battle the other. Depending on who you pick, you’d get a different ending.

Ending 1 would occur if you chose Sophia:

After battling Geppetto, she commends Pinocchio for his work, saying that thanks to his good deeds, he will finally be able to become human. Suddenly, she rips the lamp containing Gemini from Pino’s belt, and before he can ask her about the reason why, the black rabbits appear and Sophia orders them to seize him. Sophia explains that unfortunately, there is no other way to correct the wrongful separation of a soul from its body than for the body to die, but thanks to his consciousness being sufficiently cleansed, Pinocchio shall be reborn one day. Meanwhile, Pino gets quite literally buried alive - he desperately scratches at the lid from the inside of the coffin, crying for anyone to help him. However, no one comes…

If this doesn’t sound like your typical happy ending, well, that’s because it isn’t. xD My idea for this sort of came from a comment under the Gamescom 2022 trailer, in which someone remarked that the rabbits are inspired by four rabbit undertakers the Blue Fairy calls on when Pinocchio doesn’t want to take his medicine in the novel - thus, they suspected the scene where the rabbits prompt Pino to hop in the coffin was from the bad ending when you don’t listen to the Fairy’s advice. (It’s the intro for their first boss fight in the game though, and it seems like the line “Hop in the box, liar” was specifically recorded for the trailer.) I gave it a bit of a different twist though, since there’s the fact that Pinocchio quite literally dies at the end of the original fairy tale: He wakes up in his bed as a real boy, and later looks at his “dead” puppet body remarking “How ridiculous I was as a puppet! And how happy I am, now that I have become a real boy!”.

From this and the assumption that the rabbits were indeed working for her, I concluded that she literally might kill Pinocchio to “make him real”. (Some other people, however, suspected that the Black Rabbit Brotherhood was an independent organization from some of the gameplay tips about the Stalkers - ultimately, this proved to be right.)

Meanwhile, Ending 2 would happen if you side with Geppetto:

After defeating the enraged Fairy, Pinocchio runs into the arms of Geppetto, who hugs his son lovingly. As they embrace, the lamp from Pinocchio’s belt falls to the ground, forever extinguished. Geppetto and Pinocchio spend their next years happily, the very picture of father and son - until one day, Geppetto dies. Pinocchio, however, knows no other existence than being his father’s son, and since he doesn’t age, the other citizens eventually figure out he’s a puppet, shunning him and chasing him out of the city. As such, he is left to wander aimlessly, forever in search of a purpose…

What this was meant to represent is that with accepting Pinocchio as his son’s replacement, Geppetto’s actual son (Gemini, according to my assumption) dies, metaphorically and literally. I was also concerned about the very real issue of Geppetto being an old man and Pinocchio outliving him - even if Pinocchio did age regularly, his father would die long before him. Being his father’s perfect son was literally the whole purpose of his existence, and without it, he finds himself confronted with the psychological horror of his life being meaningless, on top of being subjected to the immense cruelty, hatred, and prejudice of humans.

It was really meant to show how much of a sick, misguided direction Geppetto’s “father’s love” had taken, and how detrimental it would be for Pinocchio’s self-development to comply with his wishes and play the part of his son.

Since both of these options are pretty bad, to say the least, I came up with a third variant. To get this, you’d basically have to say “nope” to both Sophia and Geppetto, and since neither takes no for an answer, you’d have to fight both of them consecutively (making it the most difficult ending to achieve):

After recovering from the strain of having to battle both Sophia and Geppetto, Pinocchio realizes that, for the first time, nobody is setting a direction for him - he is free, but having only lived to fulfill the wishes of others so far, he doesn’t really know what to do with it. However, Gemini reminds Pinocchio that they still have each other. Pinocchio agrees, laughing, and together, they go out on a journey to travel the world…

Admittedly, it’s still not roses and sunshine, but a lot more positive than the other two. Also, it’s the ending where both Pinocchio and Gemini (speak: body and soul) stay alive, and I just had so much fun imagining them say “screw it” to everyone’s expectations and go on a big adventure together. xD

Is it normal for body and soul to exist separately? Nope. Is it the “correct” way to live? Nope. Do they care? Nope, they’re just going to have the best time of their life together. xD

Of course, my versions of the endings differ significantly from those in the final game, but I’m actually kind of impressed that I managed to guess the scheme of the endings correctly: Sophia (Rise of P), Geppetto (Real Boy), and Freedom (Free from the Puppet String).

What I envisioned Geppetto’s ending to be like actually comes pretty close to the Real Boy ending, although you could say I was a bit more subtle in my approach - the overall mood was meant to be more sinister rather than downright evil, leaning more into the underlying psychological horror instead of violent slaughter. (I must say, Geppetto really surpassed my expectations right there. xD) The overall moral of the story (or at least what I’m getting from it) also seems to be that stepping in the shoes of Geppetto’s son is a very bad idea for Pino - after all, it’s heavily implied that Pino isn’t Carlo.

On the other hand, while Sophia’s ending is similar in theme to what I imagined, it significantly differs in flavor. Still, Pino does die in the Rise of P ending, giving his own Ergo/life to Sophia, who is implied to revive him afterwards. (This is actually the “reverse action” of what Pino did for Sophia when he gave her peace, so Pino is essentially giving her Ergo back to her.) In addition, Sophia and Pino do a little reenactment of the La Pietà pose, which is also a throwback to the Saintess of Mercy Statue in the Grand Exhibition.

There are actually quite a few references to the Pietà posture in media, including one in The Last Unicorn (after the Unicorn/Amalthea becomes human and Molly holds her). Thematically, the Pietà is interpreted as a symbol of mother’s love, suffering, and salvation - and, in case of The Last Unicorn, Amalthea learning what suffering is due to her time as a human is also what led her to develop compassion. The Saintess of Mercy Statue also stands for rebirth, since it’s the place where you can reset your stats.

Overall, I think they did an excellent job with this ending - retaining the theme of death from the original story, but giving it a more hopeful note through the theme of rebirth. (I also appreciate how the message of game is essentially that for things to improve, it’s sometimes best not to cling to the old and simply let it die.)

As for the Free of the Puppet String ending, it’s largely the same as Rise of P, but with a different flavor and minus the final cutscene with Sophia. (I kinda wish they would’ve done more with it, but resource limitations exist, and it was probably easier just to reuse the animation.) One interesting thing about it though is that you can still potentially get the Proof of Humanity if you trade it for the Nameless Puppet’s Ergo afterwards - despite Free from the Puppet String being the low-humanity ending.

I’ve had an interesting discussion during my playthrough, based on the quote “every living human being is a slave to something” by Askeladd from Vinland Saga. Basically, I said that, if you want to view it that way, humans are also just slaves to their emotions and desires. The man Askeladd was referring to was enslaved by his greed for gold, Geppetto is enslaved by his obsession with Carlo, and Arlecchino is enslaved by his bloodlust. I concluded that “maybe, it’s just a matter of the prison that we ourselves choose”.

The item description of the Proof of Humanity is quite intriguing in this regard:

“Puppets are tied to strings. Humans have cut their own strings. The boy made a choice and became human.”

While I wouldn’t say that all humans have cut their strings - rather that they can - what this description says is that being human means you are free to choose whether you let yourself be enslaved, be it by someone else or your own desires.

Pinocchio didn’t become human because he chose to become human - rather, he became human because he made a choice.

Conclusion

Anyway, enough of my philosophical ramblings. While, as I expected, not all of my fan theories were true, I’m kind of impressed how many good calls I actually made. ^^’ (I suppose all that research about clockwork automata, my ongoing obsession with fictional robots and AI, and checking out the original Adventures of Pinocchio did pay off after all. xD) Still, there are a lot of unanswered questions, and many fan theories remain unresolved - we’ll have to see whether any of these are confirmed in the future, be it in the DLC or any other media (director Choi did confirm they received various offers to expand the IP).

Despite the story differing quite a lot from my expectations in most places, I am extremely pleased with the treatment Round8 Studio and Neowiz gave this classic fairy tale. It’s been said that successfully subverting expectations in an engaging way isn’t simply about doing the most unpredictable thing - rather, it’s about “giving the audience what they want, just not the way they expect it”. And, in my opinion, Lies of P accomplishes this to a T.

However, I’m curious: What were your expectations when going into the game? Did you also have theories about how the story would develop, either beforehand or while playing it? And how do those compare to the actual story?

I would love to hear about all your theories - maybe, we can make something like a big fan theory anthology out of this. ^^ Because if one thing is for certain, it’s that Lies of P’s success was in no small part thanks to its community. To this day, I continue to be amazed by the love and dedication fans shower this game with, and I consider myself lucky to have been part of this journey, from before the game’s release until now.

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