#penrose 512

[thebacklogreviews]

Signalis dealt me critical emotional damage so I decided to make a video about it

#video games #ps5 #video game criticism #signalis #lstr 512 #ariane yeong #lstr #elster #alina seo #lilith itou #penrose 512 #sierpinski #rotfront #rose engine #indie gaming #indie game #video essay #video essayists #vide game review #signalis review

[noctilia]

“Before I met Elster, I never believed I would find someone I could fall in love with like that.”

#elster #lstr 512 #fanart #signalis #signalis spoilers #based on one of the paintings on their bed on Penrose #during the 3000 cycles cutscene #obviously Ariane would’ve painted her wife #i just added a couple extra pixels #i am insane about this game #noctiliart

[yeetthatkolibri]

Warm up drawing for today using some custom brushes I've been toying around with this past week.

#signalis #elster #lstr 512 #penrose #stcr #storch #corrupted storch #she yuge #my fan art #yeetthatkolibri

[znarikia]

After it turned around, the Penrose-512 crashed on Kitezh in the sand, where two lovers embraced before the red sands took them.

After it turned around, the Penrose-512 crashed upon Leng in the snow, with its hole to Nowhere and the gate beyond.

After it turned around, the Penrose-512 crashed upon Rotfront in the snow, with the Red Eye in the sky, looking over it all.

Without turning around, the Penrose-512 crashed upon ░▒▓▒░▓▒ in the snow sand, where the two lovers embraced in the red sands beneath the Red Eye, beyond the gate and the hole to Nowhere.

#signalis #signalis spoilers #playing where in the galaxy is the Penrose-512 right now #when you crawl into the Penrose-512 to get repairs the sunlight streaming into it will occasionally flicker red #this game has made me very normal

[spoopy-moose]

I applaud people who can play horror games cause im literally crying and pissing every second I spend playing signalis

#stomping around the Penrose 512 going #WHERES MY SAVE ROOM WHERES MY HOURS OF COMPLICATED DIALOUGE WHERE TIME STOPS #now that I’ve got a new switch it’s even worse cause there’s viberations now #I’m going to cry all I want is to experience yuri but I have to make it through the incomprehensible horror first???? #WHERE ARE MY CHEAT CODES I NEED MY CHEAT CODES #I’m so fucking bad at video games #signalis

[teabree-shark]

I can’t stop thinking about Signalis. It’s been three months.

#get outta my head charles #LSTR my beloved #penrose-512

[thisgodwontforgiveyou]

and i dont even know whats up with the number 6

#other than it being the number of sides of a cube and the lines radiating to form the penrose cube symbol isa uses #but like THAT must mean something #esp because 512 is the other most conspicuous number and it isnt divisible by 6

[arainydancer]

how to love aboard the penrose-512

#signalis #elster #ariane yeong

[spring-maidens]

“I’m trying to concentrate, Elster!”

“But you look so beautiful.”

Elster maintenance on the Penrose-512.

#signalis #signalis fanart #artists on tumblr #digital art #fanart #ariane yeong #elster #elster-512

[gwenadier]

#tumblr polls #signalis #warhammer 40k #warframe #system shock #FTL: Faster Than Light #FTL #alien #dead space #marathon #space horror

[legendknit]

Groove in Penrose 512

#signalis #signalis fanart #original post #elster #ariane yeong #doodle #youtube #Youtube

[telltaletypist]

i like that there's 0 ambiguity whatsoever to the gay romance in signalis. for all its opaque symbolism and abstraction, for as much of it is left to interpretation, if there is one point the game is absolutely crystal clear on it's that at some point in time two women fell in love with each other on the penrose 512. the story makes no sense without that understanding. it's the beating heart at its core

#signalis

[demilypyro]

So after playing the game and turning it around in my head for several hours as I went back over all the info I gathered... here's what I personally think happened in Signalis.

This take isn't entirely comprehensive. There's a lot of elements I don't feel I'm smart enough to fully understand, and I acknowledge that the story being open to interpretation is the point. But this is what I took from the game.

During the war on Vineta, two soldiers of the Nation fight together against the Empire. Alina Seo and Lilith Itou. Spending many years together, the two fall in love.

Lilith dies in battle, and the Nation uses a backup of her personality to create the LSTR units. A heartbroken Alina is transferred to the Sierpinski mining facility on Leng.

On Rotfront, a young painter with latent bioresonant abilities named Ariane Yeong wishes to get away from it all. After completing her compulsory military service, she applies to the Penrose Program and spends many years in space, alongside her assigned Replikant unit: LSTR-512. Elster. Spending many years together, the two fall in love.

However, the Penrose Program was a setup. The ship was never intended to complete its mission. The Nation had become aware of Ariane's latent abilities and had assigned her on a doomed mission, shooting her off into space to die on a ship that would eventually break down. On the 3000th cycle of their mission, the pair learned that they had been abandoned. Unwilling or unable to do it herself, Ariane made Elster promise to end their lives rather than suffering. However, Elster couldn't bring herself to do it. As time passed, radiation began to leak from the ship's engines, and Ariane and Elster both developed cancer. Elster died from the illness before she could bring herself to fulfill her promise.

Strangely, Ariane did not die. Possibly by some mutation from the radiation interacting with her bioresonant abilities, she was unable to die. She would survive at least another 2000 cycles after the Penrose was set to run out of supplies, all the while in constant suffering. The ship eventually crashed on Leng. Ariane's uncontrolled, mutated bioresonant abilities came into contact with the various Kolibries inside the Sierpinski facility, and her suffering was shared and amplified exponentially as it spread and repeated itself along the bioresonant hivemind. A psychic feedback loop spread like a disease. All gestalts died. All the replikants who weren't mutated or destabilized were left fighting for their lives, but none could stay unaffected forever.

Meanwhile, an accident had occurred in which all backups of the original mental template of Lilith Itou were lost. As a substitute, the Nation started creating new LSTR units using the latest backup of a decommissioned LSTR unit belonging to the Penrose Program: a copy of the mind of Elster, decommissioned after 3000 cycles. However, having never read the instructions, Ariane had taken zero precautions to avoid destabilization. All new LSTRs put into service after that time were affected. They were prone to hallucinations, had trouble distinguishing the present from the corrupted memories of their lives as Lilith Itou, and were consumed by one thought: fulfilling her promise.

As time passed, dozens of LSTR units came to the Sierpinski facility. Their destabilized minds were unable to distinguish Ariane from Alina, the two loves of their two lives. Every time one of them entered the facility, their destabilization further worsened the cascade of bioresonant mutation affecting the people within, and Falke in particular found herself affected by Elster's memories. Adler tries his best to stop this, by killing any Elsters who appeared, but it was just delaying the inevitable. Ariane's memories and Elster's hallucinations combine with Falke's supernatural abilities, causing the facility to become warped by images and places from Ariane's past, even turning an entire area into a replica of Rotfront and conjuring apparitions of Isa, a long-dead childhood friend of Ariane's. How much was Elster's hallucinations and how much was Falke's reality bending abilities is unclear.

Finally, one of the Elster units successfully makes it through the impossibly warped facility, kills Falke, and fulfills her promise. By ending Ariane's life, the feedback loop of suffering is stopped, and the cycle finally ends.

#signalis #signalis spoilers

[crualex-de-vil]

Restless nights aboard the Penrose-512

#signalis #elster #lstr-512 #ariane yeong #ariane #“in my restless dreams” #fanart #atomicdraws

[lstr-513]

YOU KILLED ALINA

While there is debate as to the physical presence of the real Alina Seo at the ████████ and Mining facility S-23 Sierpinski on Leng, the narrative presented to the player draws a picture of an Alina Seo having been there, experiencing the fall of the facility and leaving behind some notes that document this event; though she is nowhere to be found throughout the game... ...or is she?

What little we learn of her life at S-23 is contained in her four diary entries, which chronicle her contracting some form of flu, being quarantined in the medical wing, escaping the medical wing and fleeing from the corrupted replika and, finally, finding herself deep down in [NOWHERE], gradually losing her memories and her sense of self and starting to remember someone else's life, and crucially, her hair turning white.

Aside from the picture of Alina that LSTR-S2301 has on her person, we are given another peek at her appearance thanks to a worker pass we find. On it, she has her trademark hair clips, but is bruised and has several bandages across her face and body.

After the Nowhere section, Alina is mentioned a couple of times in the Rotfront and Ende sections, and each time her resemblance to Ariane is remarked upon. Ariane even wonders if one day she could "become like her", a decorated war hero.

Presumably, we do not see Alina again for the rest of the story. Elster, notably, drops all pretense of looking for her. We do, however, see her bandages.

On Ariane.

This is in stark contrast to the first we ever see of Ariane, in the title sequence, where she is shown without any visible wounds or bandages.

Based on these points, we can infer that Alina Seo, who was indeed on S-23, had literally become Ariane Yeong, overtaken by her psyche, in the same way LSTR-S2301, who was presumably on S-23, was subsumed by the memory of LSTR-512, who had died aboard the Penrose-512.

So, what does it all mean?

Well, it might very well imply that the promise Elster so heartbreakingly had to keep was not even fulfilled on the right person. Instead, through a tragic set of circumstances, she ended up killing the lover of her original gestalt neural pattern donor.

Ironically, the person like whom Ariane had one day hoped to become, ended up literally becoming Ariane instead and inheriting all the suffering that that entailed.

Further points:

While one might assume Lilith Itou would appear in Elster's lineage, she doesn't. Meanwhile, Alina prominently figures in the Ariane lineage. (Side note: both lines end in Falke.)

Alina's in-game model has white hair, and is just a recolored version of Ariane.

The bandages on Ariane are flipped from what we see on Alina, the same way as how the portrait on Ariane's medical file is the flipped and recolored version of Alina's keycard portrait.

Bonus GIF of bandages appearing on Ariane in the false ending:

#signalis #signalis spoilers #ariane yeong #alina seo #now as for her attachment to LSTR-S2301 or even existence of said lstr unit is a far more nebulous affair #long post

[meowsequence]

The paradox of white chest plate is solved!

Warning: 1) Heavy spoilers 2) Lots of text 3) My point of view may change later

Let's recap some "Fake Ending" and "Continue Game" events:

Elster enters the Gates and goes through red desert. Red is the colour of bio-resonance and Ariane's wrath and suffering, or, in other words - Hell. Loops are also part of Hell.

She sees many corpses which are not (!) results of "Leave" ending - these don't look like they died with inner peace, they are far from Penrose-512 and, most importantly, they are still in Hell. These Elsters just never found the Ship or didn't dare to come closer. Remember Ariane's "come closer" call?

This time Elster finally made it to the ship! But then she got injured by invisible strike. Invisible means bio-resonance and there is only one bio-resonant in Hell - it's very creator Ariane. She didn't forgive Elster. Red part of Ariane feels betrayed and who can blame her?

Despite feeling Ariane's wrath, which hurts in many ways, Elster keep going. She puts her hand on the ship and awful noise stops. She climes up Penrose-512 and tries to open the hatch. "Ghost in the Shell" reference shows that Elster does not care of her body, she didn't forgive herself neither. And she fails. Again. And she falls down dying. Again.

She's actually dead, just look at her eye at main menu! The tragic story of Penrose-512 repeated.

We chose to continue and we see memories of Elster and Ariane being happy (interesting detail - back window is blue here)

We coming back to Elster's dead body and see how Ariane's figure appears next to it. Then we see how Ariane's face blends into bandaged version. I guess we can read it as Aline taking over Ariane or it is Ariane's other side kicks in as she looks at poor Elster? The side that is tired of suffering and wants it all to end - the White (sorry, white won't be visible) colour side, aka what's left of original Ariane. (Is it a proof that there are 2 long-haired Arianes in the line-up, so either one of them Aline or Ariane has 2 sides?) And then…

Elster's last memories are taken out of Red Hell (and therefore - out of loop) into White (snowing) Limbo. Just same way it was transferred from dead Elster on Penrose-512 to Hell in the beginning of the game.

Elster opens her eyes and climbing back. She does not use the hatch. Instead she appears in Ariane's room on the same place where original Elster-512 died. She has another dreadful injury now - her heart was brutally ripped out. That is the scary price for another try. It is hard to admit, but love was the reason of Elster's failures. And now she's desperate enough: she gave a promise and she'll do anything. We see exposed blue bones, blue is Elster's colour. And Ariane accepts Elster's hart as a sacrifice and… forgives her?

Finally, we are approaching the chest plate paradox that is announced in the title! But first, couple words about our sponsor… Do you like brain rot? Have you ever been going to bed and saying "man, I wish I had something to think about again and again instead of healthy sleep"? Try Signalis! Providing broken harts and sleepless nights from 2022! And if you are an artist, you are cursed for additional 50%! Okay-okay, now serious XD

Remember that we are still in White Limbo, outside loops of Red Hell. Another Elster's body we find by the cryo-pod is not a result of other in-Hell endings! It shows us WHERE and HOW we should have died! Arm/armour - is a sign of Ariane's forgiveness. We cover red chest plate and arm markings (the colour of Ariane's wrath) in white and blue - colours of Ariane and Elster. And that will protect us. Now she's ready to jump back to Hell. Now Red side of Ariane can't stop her anymore! What she's gonna do about it, huh? Except… hm… driving Adler mad and wake up Falke? >_>

#signalis #spoilers #ariane yeong #lstr 512 #signalis elster