WARNING: The following post contains a
massive amount of spoilers for Closure, an amazing game whose
excellent story can't be more highly recommended. You will probably
enjoy the game a lot less if you read this explanation of what I
think is going on in the game. This post is intended to provoke
thought about the game's story and give my interpretation to people
who have already completed it. Please read at your own discretion.
Don't ruin it for yourself, it so worth experiencing first hand!
In the first level, the factory worker
falls while adjusting a light. He has an accident at work and lands
in a shaft. He travels through the factory, but he may, in fact,
already be dead from his fall at this point. My first impression was
that he was working tirelessly and monotonously in the factory
throughout the different levels. But once I got deeper into the game
and its themes, and read some other peoples' opinions online, I
started to think he was dead the whole time after his fall. He
travels through the factory and relives his tedious life of working
(note the clocks everywhere). Reminds me of a co-worker of mine who
dropped dead almost immediately after retiring. We spend so much of
our time in life at work... RIP Robin. His body is then taken out by
helicopter. I guess you could also think that maybe he's still alive
and being medevaced, but I think if he's dead it's a better
explanation of why you travel through the factory, and why you end up
right back where you started. Also, note the appearance of the
spirits you will see throughout the game in the furnace flames at the
top of the factory in the last level. They are observers of death,
and they feed off it.
In the game's second part, you play as
a young woman who has just been in a horrific car crash. She has been
critically injured in the crash, and her spirit wanders through the
woods to the hospital where her body is on life support. You see her
body in distress on the microscopic level, her heart being shocked in
an attempt to re-start it, and finally, her lying on what will be her
death bed, a heart monitor barely registering life beside her. This
was the most affecting part of the game for me. That last level
where you see her cells and heart, and then her lying in the hospital
bed was shocking and disturbing. My favorite part of the game. I know
I saw the female spirit watching somewhere in these levels. Can't
remember exactly where...
Thirdly, we have the section where you
play as the little girl, following her cat into the night and the
bizarre carnival. The lights in her house flick on as the adults
realize their little girl is missing, but she is already far out into
the night. If Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes
is to be believed, evil night carnivals are symbolic of growing up
and the nightmares adults face. The end of childhood. The
beloved pet is always just out of sight, disappearing the second it
is glimpsed. After seeing much of the freakish circus, the little
girl finally catches up with her cat, only to see it vanish for good
before her eyes as a hideous spider-demon-like clown looks on in the
background. Her story has a bit of a good ending. She returns safe and
sound to her bed. But she's had her first experience with death and
loss in the death of her pet. Just a foretaste of the many deaths we
all experience throughout our life times. Also, someone has used the
toilet since she left.
Finally, the
spider demon faces a handful of levels as himself. Who is he, and
what is he doing? There aren't any clear answers to this. We know
from official descriptions that he is called the spider-demon,
although the game never tells us this. The trophies give us some
hints. The trophy for completing the tutorial is “The River.” He
has crossed the river Styx, into the realm of the dead.
Completing the game earns you the trophy “Welcome to Purgatory.”
My interpretation is that he is in purgatory, trying to get out. The
moths he gathers in order to access the final level and ending are
symbolic of death and the dead, if the short film Bunny with the
anthropomorphic bunny with a dead spouse is to be believed. The
spirits that have been watching throughout the game watch as the
spider-demon completes the most complex final levels, more active and
animated as he draws nearer to completing his enigmatic goal.
Finally, he reaches them, and offers them the three experiences with
death he has gathered from the human world, a worker's accident, a
young girl's terrible car crash (possibly a suicide? This just
randomly popped into my head), and a young girl's first experience
with death, the loss of her pet cat. Having done this, he sheds his
body, and his moth spirit, along with the other moth spirits he has
collected. He ascends higher and higher, past the bodies of spider demons
who have tried to leave purgatory before him, until he finally
literally reaches what everyone is seeking in their experiences with
death: Closure.
I've heard some
people say that he may be helping the three people to closure with
their experiences with death. That is certainly a possibility, and
the more I think about it, it makes a lot of sense. My gut impression
is that he isn't up to anything so friendly. The music in the scenes
where he takes on the other characters' personas is so full of horror
and malice, it really shocked me the first time I saw it. And the way
the pillars crush the masks of the people as he offers them to the
spirits in the end is pretty rough, not like he's gently leading them to closure or anything like that. These two things make me think he
is using and abusing these people for his own journey to closure. I
could be wrong though, and I love that there are multiple
explanations and theories that make sense. I don't quite get any
meaning out of the tombstones with roman numerals on them, other than
the association of stone markers with death. Just another clue as to
what is going on, I guess.
In case your curious, this guy on GameFAQs has tried every combination of putting the masks on the different pillars, and got the same ending each time. Here is his post: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/643242-closure/63100720
My thoughts and interpretations of
what is one of the very best stories in gaming. Please let me know on
twitter and the comments if you agree or disagree, I'd love to talk
more about this game!
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