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offtheories · 7 years

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It's a Mad World

Okay so this is a long one, warning you now, and is spoilerific.

First off, I want to just post these things to go with one of my points:

The map of the Zones in the Nothingness:

And this is an image of nuclear radiation spreading into the ocean after the fallout from Japan’s factory explosion:

Okay so I haven’t played OFF myself, but I’ve been watching a playthrough by a youtube gamer. I kinda glazed over it initially even though I knew the game was interesting, open for interpretation, and a lot of things I usually enjoy just because I was working on a project and it was good background noise while not distracting me too much.

After about six of nine parts of the way through I started paying attention again and saw how much the game had changed and was listening to the player himself exclaiming about what was going on and how he wasn’t sure if the character he was playing was actually a good person.

So I started watching it over again and also read several fan theories about the world and plot of OFF.

The theories about Hugo being a sick little boy or the Batter being a deranged father didn’t quite pique my interest just because they seemed rather…obvious. And overused. Like the theory about Ash being in a coma after his first battle with Pokemon, or Frankie from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends being a mentally challenged child who has literally imagined the world the show exists in. To me personally it just seems too easy, like the horrible story that ends in “it was all just a dream”. The deeply unsettling world and dialogue of OFF seem too thoroughly engineered to make you think to let “it’s all just a sickly little boy’s fantasy” really be the answer. And in my opinion it doesn’t give enough credit to the many small nuances, major traits of the world, and details that come along in the story.

The theories that intrigue me most are the ones that actually seem to make sense with how the world works instead of just discounting the odd colours and bizarre “four key elements” as negligible. Like the theory that the world of OFF is post-apocalyptic of a nuclear disaster, where humans have survived, but just barely, and have been forced to adapt to new ecosystems created by the mutated world.

For instance, the bizarre colour palette, the fact that people breathe smoke, and that a primary food source (meat) is harvested from cows and even rivers. All of these are similar to colours associated with “nuclear” colour schemes, neons and sharp contrasts. The Nothingness shows small splotches of colour in an empty darkness, which, if you look at nuclear fallout in infrared vision on a map, you can see that they look similar - the green being areas where the nuclear fallout has dampened a good deal, the red centers the place where it remains active - or even referring to the Guardian of each zone, located at the center of them all. The rest of the world is shown as black, because there is no life left to show up on the map. It’s completely cold and dead, and hence, like anything utterly cold on an infrared heat map, it’s black.

SPOILER WARNING

As for the major plot, as the gamer goes through the game, “purifying” the zones of their spectres, when returning to zones that have already been purified, the gamer finds the zone washed out and empty of all colour, the citizens gone - despite having been “saved” from the spectres - and in their place, “humanoid” monsters have replaced them.

Some key details I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen other fan theories mark into account:

The Batter, throughout the game, is consistently asked and assumed to be working for the “Queen”. However, AT THE VERY beginning, he OPENLY declares to The Judge that no, he is NOT working for the Queen whatsoever. Considering he is “observed” by the player, who is considered to have some important authority in this game, and even is given important tasks to perform beyond the fourth wall that The Batter could not do himself, it can be assumed the Batter was sent by someone ELSE, someone completely different - it could be the player themself, or yet another source entirely. Whatever the case, the Batter is NOT working for the queen - the people who ARE we later find are the Guardians of the Zones, and, a key character, Valerie, The Judge’s younger brother.

The reason this is so important is because when the Batter finally encounters Valerie in Zone 3, Valerie tells him outright he is in control of the Spectres that are terrorizing everyone - and Valerie SAYS he is sent by the Queen to bring justice to the zones.

Rewind back to the previous three Zones that the Batter has cleared. As I watched, I noticed that while the Spectres appeared in many places and directly interfered with the work of the citizens there - simply by terrorizing them and chasing them out of their work spaces - none of the Spectres were once, by any of the citizens there, to have directly actually HURT anyone. The only person we ever saw the Spectres directly attack was Dedan, the first Zone’s Guardian.

Yes, there ARE citizens encountered that begin to attack the batter, and we see their heads replaced by some sort of straight black explosion going off screen. BUT all of these citizens before attacking seem to be behaving oddly - not aggressive, but different from usual, and some of them ask for help, and some of them simply say they aren’t feeling well. But again, no citizens have reported to the Batter once to have seen any Spectres attacking people, touching people, or “possessing” them in any way. They simply tell him they’re scared, too scared to go near the Spectres.

As the Batter progresses deeper into each zone, the Spectres and various other monsters cluster more thickly around each Zone boss. Now, all of the Zone bosses are still in place - Valerie has left each of them there either without confronting them at all, or simply not addressing them yet. The ONLY Guardian Valerie ends up attacking is Japhet, who obviously defeats him.

Now consider how Japhet defeats Valerie - he doesn’t say that he killed him, only is using him as a puppet - like he’s possessed him.

For a second, take the Batter out of the scene and picture it as what we know so far: Valerie is an envoy sent by the Queen with an army of Spectres to assist him in “bringing justice” to the Zones. He moves past Dedan and several areas leaving behind only Spectres that cluster near the Zone Bosses - individuals that while being “Guardians” of the Zones are clearly abusive or negligent of the citizens that live there. If Valerie is performing an investigation, he’s determined that the Guardians are part of the injustices going on, and appears to be keeping the public away from dangerous areas where the extremely powerful Guardians would easily abuse, hurt, or kill them while in their “unjust” states. However, Valerie doesn’t stop these Guardians or eliminate them - for a reason.

Moving forward, Valerie has finally confronted a Guardian, Japhet, and lost. His investigation has come to a sad end. We can assume that Valerie either found reason to believe Japhet was the root of injustice in the zones, corrupting the other Guardians and making them abusive of their wards, or that during his investigation of Japhet, Japhet attacked him first as he became aggressive when he found that Valerie was there to end whatever is going on - whether Japhet IS in charge or not. Whether Valerie initiated the attack or not, it came to the same end.

If Japhet is capable of possessing people, he could easily be suspected as having been the one warping other Guardians, and as a result, certain citizens of their zones. Nonetheless, the Queen’s own investigator had reason for not killing them himself - and I suspect the reason why is the radiation fallout inhabiting their zones.

If we stick with the post-apoclyptic theory that everything is mutated by radiation and existing in a state of fallout, where some “supernatural” rules exist - after all, the spectres seem to be outright ghosts and there are talking cats and whatnot - then it’s reasonable to assume that perhaps while things exist in a sort of ecosystem with radiation, it’s not quite successful. Aside from the spectres there are physical monsters. There are talking cats. There are mutated people - Dedan, Japhet, Sugar, and the enormous fat guy boss are evidence of that. Dedan, Sugar, and the big guy could easily be warped humans that survived the initial fallout (perhaps the queen is too) and possess a prolonged lifespan along with certain abilities. The key ability shared among them is possibly the ability to keep their zones protected from too much radiation.

Now bring the Batter back into play.

Once these Guardians are gone, the Zones lose their colour - radiation and heat will peel paint off walls and blacken it, warp colours, kill plant life, resulting in colourless worlds. As the Guardians die, radiation floods the Zones they were protecting with their power. The remaining humanoid race, previously existing well enough, are quickly warped into “humanoid” monstrosities - while the Spectres could be classified as monsters, they were never classified as “humanoids”. These new humanoid monsters are much more powerful than any of the Spectres ever were, as powerful as Japhet himself. If the Guardians draw their power from radiation as well as direct an excess away from their Zones, then the newly contaminated humanoids have that power dispersed amongst their new monstrous forms, accounting for the huge jump in power.

I mentioned that Dedan, Sugar, and Big Man at the end look like warped humanoids that survived the first fallout. However, Japhet is apparently a bird - like the Judge and his brother, Japhet could be a bird mutated by fallout. Perhaps, like the other Guardians, he’s from the first fallout, accounting for his size and power. Like the phoenix, he’s risen from the ashes, earning him his name as a bird of fire.

The Batter is a new factor not intended for the mechanisms of this world at all. He’s completely disrupting things on his holy crusade that seems almost unwarranted. Yes, the Spectres are a nuisance, and yes, the Guardians are corrupted, but even with Valerie’s demise the Queen obviously knows something is going wrong and seems to have things handled. So why is the Batter here, taking everything apart? When returning to the Zones after they turn grey and infested with new, horrible monsters, he never remarks on any of this or asks Zacharie, the Judge, or other recurring characters about what’s going on - so maybe he knew it would happen or maybe he didn’t, and that means he either doesn’t care, or knew it would happen and felt it was right.

I’d like to briefly address the existence of the citizens - how they’re all identical and all have the same apparently timid demeanour, and the same single-minded attitude about “work”. Some of them comment, either at death after being “purified” or while performing their tasks, that they would rather be in Alma, or that somewhere, things are better, and if they work hard enough they’ll get there. This clearly reflects the current attitude of our modern world, that as long as we work hard, don’t complain, don’t get fired, and just keep doing what we’re told, we’ll make it to the green grass and the nice house and a comfortable retirement.

Each Zone has a distinctly different appearance, purpose, and Guardian. Yet all the citizens are identical. If we’re going really strictly with nuclear fallout, perhaps these drones are clones of the same individual, all imprinted with the same basic personality to maximize productivity and minimize disruption. The Zones need to function, and the citizens are really more like cogs in a machine than actual people. They can feel fear and their only differences are based on the Zones they’re in and the work they’re supposed to perform. They all wear the same clothes because they’re not complex enough to care about individuality or need it. Maybe they’re even not intelligent enough to notice. There’s no designation between genders, and you never see any children anywhere. All we see are asexual workers in formal clothing going about their tasks with dedicated routine. They never project any concern for family members they may have or each other - they get distressed over their tasks not being finished or being interrupted. No children and no apparent gender would imply this is a race of humanoids that doesn’t reproduce and doesn’t need to - they’re made in a factory, just like the factories they work in. In one Zone, the bodies of those who die there are turned into sugar, but all the other Zones have no such system or mention of disposing of the dead. If you want to be really morbid, perhaps the Zone of liquid meat is the liquified remains of thousands of dead clone citizens, liquidated and refined to feed themselves underground or somewhere else, then pumped through pipes to this zone where the rivers surface, the meat is harvested, and the cycle continues.

No Zone is self-sufficient. Each Zone contributes to the whole “world” of OFF, building the ground under people’s feet, producing the smoke they breathe, the meat they eat.

Getting back to the story, I haven’t seen much beyond this, but what’s happened so far convinces me that while things were going wrong, and maybe the world was run in a horrifying way, it’s the barest remains of what used to be, and it appears the Queen is trying to keep the world alive in whatever way possible. The identical citizens are an echo of what the modern world was, but her system is beginning to break down and she sends Valerie to resolve it. Enter the Batter, whose origins are unknown, whose handler is unknown, whose intentions are unknown - but he’s got his own identity and appearance, is larger than the citizens just like the Guardians are, and gradually becomes as powerful as them. It’s possible he is like them - an original human from the first fallout. And because of him the already shaky system is becoming utterly shattered.

At this point I have two theories of the Batter’s origins - one being that with the presence of ghosts, supernatural elements, and the circle entities that accompany him to assist, possessing no personality or thought of their own, may be symbolic of halos, and from here you can speculate it’s some actual divine intervention come to finally put to rest the world that should have died long ago, or an outside entity who, like the Queen and the Guardians, is a survivor and has encountered her world and found it so despicable, they send the Batter, their own agent, to end it. To “purify” it. The Circles accompanying the Batter are entities sent with him to assist him as his challenges grow. They help him with assassinating the Guardians of the Zones.

This means that the radiation kept at bay will take over and warp and finally kill the citizens and nuclear fallout will continue on its due course. It kills, but eventually it fades, and if the Guardians of the Zones do manipulate it, perhaps they and the Queen have in fact kept the radiation alive to preserve their system, give them their power, and fuel the unnatural ecosystem they’ve adapted to. Instead of accepting their own deaths and letting the radiation take over until it finally disperses and the world begins to renew itself, they’ve kept it alive and used it. The Batter is sent to purify this world of the poison that creates it while destroying everything else. He switches the world “OFF” to turn off one last nuclear generator that produces radiation and supplies the Zones with their power. This world is finally dead. It “falls into Nothingness”. As Enoch says at his defeat, “without Guardians, this world is doomed to fall into the Nothingness”. Into death, but into a natural death, instead of unnatural life. The natural world is finally allowed to rebuild.

One other theory I have is that the Batter was once a worker of one of the Zones. He did his job, worked his way up, and once he reached Alma, he discovered the horrifying truth of how this world functions. He was intelligent enough to get promoted through Zones - if such a thing is possible - and his intelligence allows him to comprehend how wrong this world’s system is. Instead of becoming a part of the Queen’s plan and perhaps joining greater ranks, as the Judge and Valerie have, he rebels and goes all the way to Zone 0. He brings with him a relic of the old world, which we see is not outlandish - one of the Zones has plenty of relics, such as rollercoasters in a theme park. It could be the bat is not a simple bat at all, but a weapon designed to combat more powerful forces. If Zacharie, who also has his own appearance and identity, and yet is not an agent of the Queen, possesses an upgraded bat later in the game for purchase, it’s possible he did once work for the Queen and became upset by her system and left her. However, he did not have the motivation to destroy the world, simply exist in it on his own terms. The Judge, who apparently doesn’t even know Valerie is in Japhet’s Zone until he sees him possessed by Japhet, could also be a former agent of the Queen. After Valerie’s death, the Judge is clearly out of his mind, and it’s possible both he and Zacherie are a little bit mad.

The Batter takes his own name, and like Zacherie and the Judge, is a little bit mad. Mad befriends mad, and the Judge asks the Batter who the person is that’s with him - that being the player. The Batter now possess a split personality after asking for a name, and receiving it. Later on, he asks this part of himself to do things that normally he wouldn’t be able to comprehend, because with realizing how broken his world is, the former citizen can only survive through a controlled madness. And he seeks vengeance, and freedom through mercy killing. He’s literally gone postal, going around smashing up the world with a bat, having confronted how empty his existence is and being confronted with a horrible answer.

That’s all I have so far, and that’s what personally makes sense to me.

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