[SPOILER] Who’s who? Penumbra narrative puzzle

[Nycticorax]

I totally agree with the facts you rehearse concerning Overture and Black Plague, which are compatible with and offer a welcome complement to my rehearsal in the opening post. Yet I have worries about your interpretation of Requiem, namely on the one hand your understanding of the Player's role, on the other hand your account of the relationship between Red and the Tuurngait. Let me tackle these points in the reverse order for your theory's sake.

In particular, according to your Overture (2), "Red" refers to a genuine human caught in the furnace. According to your Requiem (4), "Red" refers to a proper part of Philip's consciousness, Philip not being identical to the Player and having been in turn caught in the furnace. So my question is: when is Philip supposed to having been caught in the furnace, since as you yourself imply, the only time Philip reaches the furnace, it doesn't get into it?

More generally, your Requiem (1-4) imply an endorsement of what I've called hypothesis (ii) – that Philip ≠ the Player, see above. Yet you do not join (ii) to any of my other hypotheses; in fact you deny both my (1) and (2) since you claim not only that Philip is NOT dead, but also that Philip is NOT unconscious but in the furnace. Call the conjunction of (ii) and this last hypothesis 3-ii. I've given an argument against your 3 in the last paragraph and against (ii) in my 1-ii and 2-ii paragraphs above. So I conclude you'd better rally my flag and accept that the puzzle can't possibly be solved without committing to inconsistency or excruciating assumptions. The story is indeterminate and this indeterminacy cannot be possibly overcome, for overcoming the indeterminacy would require that something or something else were the case, yet neither the something nor the something else can possibly be true.

[Black Rabbit]

I totally agree with the facts you rehearse concerning Overture and Black Plague, which are compatible with and offer a welcome complement to my rehearsal in the opening post. Yet I have worries about your interpretation of Requiem, namely on the one hand your understanding of the Player's role, on the other hand your account of the relationship between Red and the Tuurngait. Let me tackle these points in the reverse order for your theory's sake.

In particular, according to your Overture (2), "Red" refers to a genuine human caught in the furnace. According to your Requiem (4), "Red" refers to a proper part of Philip's consciousness, Philip not being identical to the Player and having been in turn caught in the furnace. So my question is: when is Philip supposed to having been caught in the furnace, since as you yourself implies, the only time Philip reaches the furnace, it doesn't get into it?

More generally, your Requiem (1-4) imply an endorsement of what I've called hypothesis (ii) – that Philip ≠ the Player, see above. Yet you do not join (ii) to any of my other hypotheses; in fact you deny both my (1) and (2) since you claim not only that Philip is NOT dead, but also that Philip is NOT unconscious but in the furnace. Call the conjunction of (ii) and this last hypothesis 3-ii. I've given an argument against your 3 in the last paragraph and against (ii) in my 1-ii and 2-ii paragraphs above. So I conclude you'd better rally my flag and accept that the puzzle can't possibly be solved without committing to inconsistency or excruciating assumptions. The story is indeterminate and this indeterminacy cannot be possibly overcome, for overcoming the indeterminacy would require that something or something else were the case, yet neither the something nor the something else can possibly be true.

Let's see...where to start...

In my opinion Red is two things
The first red we meet is an alter ego of Redwood who reaches a breaking point and the tuurngait take advantage of that
After the tuurngait learn about him breaking his promise they use his guilt about Red to imprison him....and well now that I said that it seems that a more logical theory exists...I think you mentioned it. Maybe he was unconscious and all of Requiem was inside his mind. Which could also explain why Red was in the end of Requiem...maybe it was indeed because the tuurngait tried to use his guilt to keep him there dead after they found out that he betrayed them... hmmm

it seems that this is closer to your hypothesis...then again maybe I made mistakes because I tried to see it from a different angle...More of the occult you could say. after all Red was many years old just because the tuurngait wouldn't let him die...that's why I tried to make a theory that's right on the boundaries between real and unreal

[Dongra]

The story is pretty self explanatory until Requiem. Personally, I only see Requiem as a puzzle game and nothing more. It's a shame that they butchered the end of of a great series with Requiem. Requiem was by no means a bad game, it had very clever puzzles, but the lack of any information or real conclusion was disappointing. It would be nice to see another chapter revealing the fate of Philip or maybe a new story relating to the Mines, Archaic facility and the Tuurngait.