Hey all! If you enjoyed the video, be sure to check out Part 2, which makes some important corrections and addresses patches 1.1 and 1.2.

(Those corrections include everything previously pinned below)

1. "Synchronizität" is more accurately translated as Synchronicity, not Synchronization, and the developers have confirmed that this is what they intended. While I still think my high-level explanation of Chapter 1 holds up decently well, it is admittedly off the mark, and is certainly incomplete - see "Part 2" for a discussion on Synchronicity.

2. At 11:33 I say that Rot-Front was a Russian village; this is incorrect. It is actually located in the country of Kyrgyzstan, was originally settled by Germans, and was known by the name Bergtal prior to being renamed by the Soviet Union. Whenever I discuss other cultures in my videos, I conduct thorough research & try my best to represent them respectfully and accurately, but I do make mistakes.  Please feel free to call these out so that I can ensure correct information is being presented.

3. There appears to be widespread confusion and misinformation online regarding the nature of the Oort cloud, largely because it is a purely theoretical structure and there is no consensus on how big/far away it actually is. That said, the numbers I give starting at 32:06 - which were pulled from the National Schools' Observatory (NSO) - appear to be quite wrong and outdated, as pointed out by @Draco Rex. According to NASA (nasa.gov), the distance to the inner edge of the Oort cloud is currently thought to be within the range of 11-29 light days, and its outermost edge is POSSIBLY around 1.5 light years away from the sun. These are more accurate figures, albeit still speculative.

Ergo, the Penrose was traveling not at 50%, but 0.73% the speed of light - still incredibly fast, and fast enough (~4,895,501 mph) that I think my argument for bioresonance-powered spacecraft still holds up.

(P.S. I promise I will never mispronounce "tarot" again. Please don't unsubscribe :)

I got the Promise ending on my first playthrough and ended up on low health which made my controller vibrate. Now I am not sure if it's intentional, but I got to watch the entire ending unfold with these rythmic vibrations. When I saw the menu screen, the vibrations stopped as if Elster has finally expired and her heart stopped beating in my hands.

Hearing that the promise ending is the hardest to get whilst I did it unconsciously proves that I'll do anything for a good ending

I started watching this video 2 years ago, one day walking back from the gym. I stopped it right before the spoilers and said "I will buy and play this game. I don't want to spoil it for me"

Took me 2 years but I fulfilled my promise. I came back to this video, because by god I had a lot of questions after finishing the game, and I wanted to leave a comment to thank you for introducing me to the game AND explaining a lot of the things that went over my head (esp the backstory parts).

Incredible work. Thank you!

How???? How could you know all these concepts from different philosophies, arts, books…???
IMPRESSIVE WORK. This video deserves an Oscar

My initial interpretation of the Artifact Ending was that of a wedding.

The Key of Sacrifice, the Key of Love, and the Key of Eternity all could be interpreted as wedding vows. To love someone till death due them part and to sacrifice oneself for the other. In a sense, Elster has made these vows as she literally sacrifices multiple versions of herself, seemingly forever all for the love of Ariane. These vows are also shared by Ariane, with her sacrificing Isa, a dream version of herself, to aid Elster, her eternal dream of Elster fulfilling their promise out of love.

The artifact can then be seen as a wedding ring or proposal from Elster to Ariane, due to the Tesseract being placed in a tomb similar to Ariane's pod. As a wedding ring symbolizes marriage, so is the tesseract a symbol of their love and promise to one another.

The Red Eye and the verses could be pointing towards Ariane basically ascending to Godhood and peering down on her new home since when Elster picked up the King In Yellow, it said it was time to go home, specifically with Ariane. Ariane never felt like she belonged and was an outcast, so she had nowhere to return to except Elster. In a sense, Elster is her home, where she could stay for eternity.

As stated in the video, the promise has a double meaning: the promise of death and the promise to be together. With the Promise ending, Elster fulfills the promise to end Ariane's suffering. In the Artifact ending, Elster fulfills the promise for her and Ariane to be together. They also dance forever which contradicts Falke's saying that they would never dance again.

Even the lily supports this. Since Lilith placed a lily on Alina's grave, so does Elster, including all other variations of her. This means that their promise extends not only to half of LSTR-512's memories but also to Lilith's as well. It is a complete promise.

This theory also explains why "Remember our promise" appears. It could be that Ariane is reminding Elster for them to be together. While this next part is more pure speculation, Lilith could have also wanted to marry Alina, but due to Alina's death, left the promise unfulfilled. The "Remember our promise" line could be Elster/Lilith remembering to marry Ariane/Alina.

This theory probably isn't true at all, but it's what I first thought of and I like thinking that the lesbian Goddess gets to dance with her robot wife forever in peace.

To oversimplify it: A psychic woman has a nightmare so bad it destroys space communism.

I love how the quote "Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.” can be linked back to bioresonance and just how little humanity understands it. Its mysterious nature leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but that's only because humanity never thought to ask them. They built an interplanetary civilization on something they barely understand, and are now completely out of their depth.

If i was a game dev, i would be ecstatic knowing someone care so much about something i made and analyzed it thoroughly. Great job my man, made me connect so many dots and come to terms with my own interpretation, which i believe is ultimately the most important thing the game tries to tell you: how do YOU feel about this heartbreaking narrative?

Can we take a moment here to appreciate that this was made by just two people????

I just want to share how I feel devastated. For Ariana and Elster for the unending cycles of bitterness, yearning, and hopelessness for there will never be an happy outcome. For Falke who has to experience the love that’s not hers. Ariane’s note about last good night destroys me. I feel so connected and I still don’t know how to process these feelings yet.

Why cant the space lesbians be happy...

I think the eye during the lily ending dance scene has a different meaning now that isnt Arianne still witnessing and suffering in the penrose.

The use of it during the game was her dreaming and witnessing the events. But in the lily ending there is a literal giant eye looming above the penrose. So it could be interpreted differently. The eye could now be Arianne ascending beyond life and death with the help of the artifact to get both of the things she wanted when originally she could only pick one. Her death to end her suffering or her life to love Elster.

And the "remember our promise" that's still there during this ending could also be post tense instead of it being pretense during most of the game. So instead of originally it meaning "remember our promise so you can uphold it." it's now "remember our promise you went through hell and back to do?" Which is just to recall everything Elster did for Arianne out of love.

Tried to wrap up loose ends which is hard to do for this game

To be honest, I saw the title/premise and immediately thought “ugh, one of those literal plot synopses that misses the point”, and I was glad to be proven dead wrong. Incredibly thoughtful and thorough. Truly impressive how much you managed to catch and synthesize, and how well you did it.

It's so horrific to think about this game, Ariane was alone most of her life and when she finally got happiness through Elster, it's taken away, and even when Elster reaches Ariane. It doesn't matter. There is no happy ending. And Falke and Adler too, Falke can never be whole, and find the love that isn't hers. And Adler can never stop the cycle, and is forced to relive this, over and over and over again, his body slowly deteriorating each cycle. This game, it has no happy ending for anybody, nobody is left
unscathed and un-traumatized.  Including the player. This game can either make you better with a new sense of gratefullness for your life, or make you really, really, depressed.

My jaw dropped when you pointed out that Ariane was basically sharing her radiation sickness with Falke and then everyone on the Sierpinski. Not done with the video yet but this is some mind bogglingly thorough research and logic.

Perhaps it's just because it's the ending I got, but I much prefer the Promise ending rather than the Artifact ending. As you said, seeing an image or word a bunch of times can cause the image/word to become meaningless, especially when everything else deteriorates around them. I think as sad as it is, Elster holding onto their promise and finally giving them both their peace is better.

I swear ever since I played and finished Signalis I have been pondering and theorizing about it. It doesn't let me go, none of it. I watched plenty of analyises this that and what not. but finally I can make peace. Your breakdown is amazing, in depth and colludes with a lot of my own theories about the game. So many questions were left unanswered and I am that type of person that needs to know it. I just have to and man.... I love you for this video, finally helping me understand it all.

I just realized the reason the gestalts that become replika templates have their historical records erased so that replikants can't find out about their previous lives via public record. Would probably take the whole "real memories resurfacing" problem to a whole new level.

I am currently re-running the game again, and I found out that in the [52:15] moment the lift does not malfunction. In fact, the key card belongs to a STAR unit from the medical floor 3, and I assume she shouldn't have access to other floors in this particular lift (STAR quarters below have different means of accessing them, if she lives there). It is logical that her card is confiscated and she is summoned to the administrator to receive a warning about overstepping her boundaries. Even this small moment is carefully thought of. This game doesn't cease to amaze me!