The plot and ending of Scorn - what's going on here?

Scorn is a twisted and ambiguous horror that asks a lot of questions throughout the story - from the very beginning to the dark ending. Below we shared our opinion on how we see the plot, what is its meaning and how to interpret the strange ending.

Although throughout the 5-6 hour campaign we do not find any notes and information regarding the lore, there are still some clues in the game that will shed light on what is happening.

The ending of Scorn - the most shocking moment - is confusing, but before it there are some puzzles that allow us to explain what we saw in the ending.

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What is a parasite?

One of the biggest questions is what kind of mysterious monster clings to the main character in the second act. Merging with the character and gradually taking over his body, the creature at one point becomes a key part of the campaign, depleting your health and killing you as you explore the gloomy city. So who is it?

Blowing it all off, the parasite is the character we played in the first act. Although the game never explicitly pays attention to him, there is a clear hint that the protagonist who explored the caves at the beginning of the game is not the character who wakes up in the desert at the beginning of the second act.

After the explosion of a large organic tree in the first chapter, the liquid flowing from this mass infects our character. In the final moments of the chapter, tentacles appear on his arms. And then, presumably, he turns into a parasite that feeds on the flesh of other humanoids.

There is some evidence to support my hunch. First, when the protagonist first encounters a parasite in the second act and it clings to it, the protagonist immediately gains access to the rifle. The same weapon that we found in the first act.

Not enough evidence? In the last moments of the game, we are forced to surgically remove the parasite from the back while on the operating table. If you point the camera at the parasite, you can see the shape of a person lying on his side and looking at you. The protagonist of the first act at the end of the introductory chapter remained in exactly the same position.

Scorn has other hints as to what the parasite is. For example, you can recall the fact that the main character in the second chapter needs a special wrist implant to open doors. But in the first act, we picked up such an implant by another character. Putting all this evidence together, it becomes obvious that the parasite is a character from the first act.

What happened to the city?

The city of Scorn is a veritable labyrinth of flesh-covered buildings, acid-spitting monsters, and eviscerating parasites. Not the friendliest place in the world, is it?

While we don't encounter a single creature throughout the game that doesn't try to tear us apart, Scorn clearly has the echoes of a gigantic civilization; the one who built this interconnected labyrinth of highly developed organic mechanisms and biological adaptations.

While this has never been fully confirmed, it definitely gives the impression that this city, built entirely of organic materials, fell victim to some kind of rapidly growing infection. Mutated organisms sprout from every wall, parasites roam the tunnels, and gigantic artificial structures are cluttered with masses of flesh.

The best example of this is in Act 4, when an elevator that appears to be transporting people from the labyrinth to the rail system from above is hijacked by a huge creature. As a result, you had to penetrate the monster and take the elevator up, breaking through his brain. This world is essentially one large organism, and it appears to be infested with a parasite that is slowly devouring it.

The end of the game - what is the meaning of Scorn?

In the fifth act, the protagonist will try to get out of the underworld and get to the surface using the railway system. It's still an ominous place, but it doesn't seem to have been affected by the infection (or anything else) like the underground part of the world.

Upon entering the palace, you will see dead bodies hanging from the totems surrounding the central room, and the roof is covered in other flesh. This is the least of your worries, although the lab below contains mutated embryonic fetuses, automatons with grenade launchers, and two pregnant humanoids that the player eventually transfers their consciousness into.

This palace appears to hold important answers to questions about the protagonist's enigmatic goal. After collecting two vials of blood, pouring them into a pair of pregnant bodies, and successfully ripping off the parasite from the back, the protagonist will return to the central room of the palace and sit on the mysterious device. It will perform a surgical operation, severing his flesh and tying his mind to the general consciousness from above.

Once the protagonist is connected to the roof, he will be able to control the pregnant bodies, using them to open the human flesh doorway and climb out. What does this tell us about the previous civilization? There is little evidence, but this chapter contains the best clues to what happened to the people who lived here before we arrived. The dead bodies in the central chamber seemed to have once been just like us; these people underwent the same procedure as the protagonist. There are also "wires" sticking out of their heads, connected to the mass that covers the palace. Voluntarily or not, the former inhabitants of this place left their bodies, connecting their brains with the general mind of the hive.

As the lab shows, the idea of mind transfer has been at the forefront of civilization research. During the game's final battle, you place embryos with fetuses in the automatons found in the palace's laboratory, and two of them take control of a separate body.

Obviously, the idea was to be able to take control of a stronger body, which is what the protagonist does at the very end when he controls two pregnant humanoids. Was it planned by the former civilization? Some kind of ethereal rebirth, or perhaps a journey to an entirely new world through the portal we see at the very end? Or did they decide to leave voluntarily, and the world they created just rots and collapses in their absence?

It's not so obvious, but the protagonist seems to have some kind of plan until the last moment. He tries to complete the ritual, but ultimately fails. Given that we see quite a few "hive mind" bodies in the central room, it seems that some of the people did succeed.

The theme of "Renaissance"

Before putting it all together, it's also worth noting the game's unyielding focus on resurrection. When the protagonist of the first act loses consciousness and plunges into the liquid, we move into a new character who crawls out of the cocoon by pulling the umbilical cord out of himself. It's like he was reborn.

Then in the first act there is a minecart puzzle: we need to remove a living egg from the wall, break it and use a helpless creature that we, in fact, forced to be born in a new world for it.

Meanwhile, the entire Parasite story arc is centered around rebirth. The monster clings to us and tries to take over the body, trying to be reborn. Then we get to the palace, the parasite is separated, and the main character is reborn as two pregnant hosts.

However, the parasite returns, consuming the protagonist and causing him to be reborn as part of a shared being. Rebirth is obviously one of the game's key ideas, as much of Scorn revolves around the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

What does all of this mean?

Let's put it all together and try to understand what's really going on in Scorn? There are still many gaps, and it is unlikely that they will ever be filled except by speculative theories. Although we can explain the obvious: both the main characters of the game have a single goal: to cross the desert, get to the palace and perform the ritual.

We see the protagonist of the first act trying to cross the desert during the opening cutscene, falling into an underground labyrinth, and eventually dying from an infection that ravages the underground city. After seeing the end of the story of the first protagonist, some time later we move on to the second character. He also tries to cross the desert to get to the palace, and succeeds to a large extent.

On his adventure, he eventually encounters a mutated version of the protagonist from the first act, who clings to him and slowly consumes him. As the game progresses, the parasite becomes more and more vicious, turning the protagonist into something inhuman.

After a long journey through the labyrinth city, the couple arrive at the palace, where the protagonist removes the parasite from his back (although not killing it). He then undergoes a painful procedure in which his consciousness is linked to the palace's hive mind, allowing him to control other beings.

Using two pregnant humanoids, he begins the ritual, opening the door to a mysterious portal that will presumably allow him to leave the palace (just like the people who lived here before him). Just as he is about to enter it, the parasite suddenly returns, stopping the ritual, merging with the protagonist and transforming into a giant mass of flesh.

The protagonist is reborn, but not in the way he expected. He is doomed to spend eternity decaying as part of a gigantic mass of flesh and bone. Such a schedule...