Or here we have an adventure in Comaland. Polly fell into a well and the whole game is a hallucination of a dying brain. Sad.

Possible, but then she would have hallucinated the leave ending too? And Arkhan was real enough to steal Polly's lighter. Don't know many lighter-stealing dogs in the real world.

With the lighter, it's possible she dreamed it.
And regarding the endings. After finishing the game, I was reminded of the concept of Ambrose Bierce's twist. Especially after the ending if you don't help the Tormented.

I do think it is real at some level. The only thing that makes me doubt it is the differences between endings. Alice disappearing depending on whether she throws away the lighter could be a metaphor for letting go instead of there being an actual resurrection.

I hope it's not just "dying dream lol" since there is absolutely nothing that would foreshadow it beyond Polly falling in a well.

The lighter doesn't affect the ending.

In the train ending, whether Alice is there or not depends on whether you kept the horns and tail. If you have the horns and tail, Alice won't be on the train; if you sawed off the horns and sold the tail, she'll be there.

Unfortunately, the choices you make during the game don't affect the ending. Or at least I didn't notice.

Yes, that is *how* you unlock the ending. But in the endings themselves is:

- Alice is there, Polly throws the lighter and then Alice is no longer there.

- Alice isn't there, Polly keeps the lighter and Alice suddenly appears in the seat.

The headband Polly wears isn't big enough to hide the horns, but then again, Kai and Kato didn't have horns in the human world. The eyepatch might be needed for real tho, Arkan's eye was visible in the human world.

It might be a dying dream, but there is no proof of it (or very little beyond the abyss being a reflection of the real world, and Polly hadn't seen the real world's old town yet she travels there in the abyss).

And honestly, the game is too good to end up in "dying dream lol". I'm still laughing about Callisto Protocol's DLC ending.

Originally posted by Argosax:

- Alice isn't there, Polly keeps the lighter and Alice suddenly appears in the seat.

Damn, I just checked that ending, and Alice showed up...
When I completed that ending with full Imp power the first time, Alice didn't show up, or maybe I didn't see her.

So I mixed up the endings with the train. There are horns and a tail, Alice stays, but if you saw off the horns, she disappears.

Everything is as you wrote.

I did promise to return the lighter both times, so maybe? I just checked YT videos and it's the same, but maybe they did the same.

weird, cause I did that ending with both horns and tail, and she still appeared in the train as you keep the lighter.

I don't per say think that Alice was necessarily "resurrected" physically in the real world but more so a fragment of her has been unmasked in the Abyss. Because by that logic Polly being deceased would defeat any meaning of that conclusion. Alice can't leave the Abyss because she is dead, which is why she tells us that we'll manage without her because we've become strong by accepting the fact that what has happened has happened.

If we are to go by video game logic, Polly is indeed still alive as she survived with a sliver of health after falling down. An addition to that there's several dead ends where Polly doesn't die but we end up having to reload from checkpoint. We just see that Polly is really dirty, but we can't conclude anything from that. However she could also be dead from that fall there's nothing that says it isn't possible.
But aside from that why it's less likely is due to the fact that we find out, the eye of Arkan lets the wielder see hidden pathways between worlds. More than likely Arkan (the dog) purposefully led us to this path in order to bring us to the Tormented King as he had been eyeing us for a while as we find out later. And by falling into the well we ended up in the Abyss where dead souls usually end up, which is why people constantly point out that we don't belong in the realm.

It seems to me more so that the Abyss is a reflection or a mirror world of the real world, and the imagination is vast, whilst Polly hasn't seen a lot of these areas for the most part we don't know if the city looks just like Polly envisions it. It could be created with memories alongside things she's seen in books, heard about and more, your brain tends to fill in missing pieces to make sense of things.

The fact that Alice wasn't present in ending sequence but then appears as you hold onto the lighter feels rather simple to explain. By choosing to keep the lighter, Polly effectively holds onto her hope, the thing that made her carry on with life. Nothing will divide them and by keeping the lighter the last memory she had of her sister before the accident (giving Polly the lighter) stays with her but consequently not moving on (or perhaps the opposite)

Now I've heard that apparently there is an option to toss away the lighter, and during this sequence Alice is on the train up until you throw away the lighter where she disappears. I don't actually know what Polly says in this sequence or if she says the same thing as she does when she keeps the lighter. However just like with the earlier ending perhaps this is Polly's decision to move on and not attribute Alice's memory and legacy to one item.

I'm more curious as to why Alice decides to shoot vs not shoot Polly depending on whether she retains the full power of the Imp or not. Is it perhaps as simple as because she's in a weakened state? Or does it hold some other symbolic meaning?

There's a lot more I have in mind but I'll stop here as I don't wanna write a huge block of text lol.

Also Kai & Kato being in the beginning could perhaps be that Imps are able to leave the Abyss and are around the society of their world (which also to an extent makes the statement from one of the teachers of the orphanage make sense about how the orphanage suddenly just did a 180) Or perhaps they died, or perhaps they are not the real Kai & Kato, but a mirrored version of them.

i just try to remove only the tail at the end, and alice showed up and i don't have the achievement for removing the imp power ending so, i think it's related to the horn, or i'm having a glitch

So, fun fact here, but relayed with the caveat that I'm not trying to say what I believe is or isn't canon. During my first playthrough of the game, the very first time I entered the kiosk, the message behind the bar said: "You are in a coma. Wake up." I have only ever seen that message the one time. I can prove it, though, as there is video evidence of it on my YouTube and Twitch pages.

That having been said, I'm inclined to believe that it's possible the game was also *either* a dream fueled by Polly's anxieties or did happen as the game depicts. In the latter case, I'm inclined to believe that the true ending would have to be the one wherein you retain your full Imp powers but choose to return to the mortal world...

Polly's journey is rooted in trauma and regret(s). It would make sense that she would want to throw away the version of herself that allowed all the bad to happen and retain the strength(s) that she obtained. Rescuing Alice and being able to leave with her, which is to say achieve the ending wherein she doesn't disappear after a certain point after joining you on the train, is the epitome of catharsis. She made many mistakes, some more severe than others, but she made up for it in the end. She did right by the person she loved the most; her twin sister. The angel to her devil. To be able to board a train out of Hell and leave toward the closest thing resembling Heaven with her? There is no better end to the story.

So, fun fact here, but relayed with the caveat that I'm not trying to say what I believe is or isn't canon. During my first playthrough of the game, the very first time I entered the kiosk, the message behind the bar said: "You are in a coma. Wake up." I have only ever seen that message the one time. I can prove it, though, as there is video evidence of it on my YouTube and Twitch pages.

Yeah, rewatched my playthrough and that quote can partially been seen when I get out of the bar right after I get the horns.

Originally posted by ProjectE0S:

So, fun fact here, but relayed with the caveat that I'm not trying to say what I believe is or isn't canon. During my first playthrough of the game, the very first time I entered the kiosk, the message behind the bar said: "You are in a coma. Wake up." I have only ever seen that message the one time. I can prove it, though, as there is video evidence of it on my YouTube and Twitch pages.

That having been said, I'm inclined to believe that it's possible the game was also *either* a dream fueled by Polly's anxieties or did happen as the game depicts. In the latter case, I'm inclined to believe that the true ending would have to be the one wherein you retain your full Imp powers but choose to return to the mortal world...

Polly's journey is rooted in trauma and regret(s). It would make sense that she would want to throw away the version of herself that allowed all the bad to happen and retain the strength(s) that she obtained. Rescuing Alice and being able to leave with her, which is to say achieve the ending wherein she doesn't disappear after a certain point after joining you on the train, is the epitome of catharsis. She made many mistakes, some more severe than others, but she made up for it in the end. She did right by the person she loved the most; her twin sister. The angel to her devil. To be able to board a train out of Hell and leave toward the closest thing resembling heaven with her? There is no better end to the story.

I tried recreating this and it turns out there seems to be a very low chance for this message to appear. I managed to get it myself by entering and leaving the kiosk constantly. Polly's misadventures are definitely filled with regrets and trauma. I'm also personally inclined to believe that the leave endings are the "better" options, albeit with a twist. Tossing the lighter is Polly willing to accept that she no longer needs to cling onto Alice to move forward and allowing herself to be forgiven for her what the player can assume is her largest mistake and regret; in her view, allowing Alice to succumb to the fire she started. Whereas keeping the lighter Polly either doesn't forgive herself or perhaps she still does, but keeps the last memento she has of Alice, the lighter she stole and gave her ahead of the plan to escape the orphanage.

I like the analogy you bring up of any other place than the orphanage being a heaven as when they were confined to there life was hell every single day. Apart from the occasional tom foolery and spying on the workshop teacher. In the end nothing will divide them because they are bound to each other. As long as Polly never forgets about Alice. (this last part was directly from the launch trailer).