In order to understand why Scorn ends the way it does, we need to take into account all of the clues we get along the course of the journey. We know that the mysterious factory we’re within is made of flesh and bone, and if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know things focus heavily on birth.
As you move through the world, you’ll find humanoids that are deformed, or have been experimented on, changing them. Our first protagonist dies while operating a machine that seemingly imitates the reproductive process, pairing eggs with cells.
Later, a new protagonist eventually takes a train ride to an ancient city, and here the statues offer some key clues. One of them depicts a human woman holding her pregnant stomach – this is one of the most clearly human depictions we’ve seen in the game thus far, with everything else seemingly changed or edited. Below this statue are several flowers, which earlier in the game we saw give birth to humanoids that died swiftly after.
We get more context inside, with a mural on the wall seemingly showing an ancient cosmic god – likely Cthulu, or directly inspired by it – that came down and possibly changed the human race. The exact reasons why are unclear, but when paired with the flesh-powered factory that births humanoids, it’s likely that the human race was turned into a power source for them.
It’s possible to harvest alien eggs and place them into golem-like creations. It seems as if the alien species became unable to properly reproduce, thus requiring a complicated factory in order to achieve that process, with alien eggs unable to produce fully-formed creatures, leaving them to control odd golems instead.
Our protagonist is connected to a hivemind, removing its own free will, transferring your control to another being. The final protagonist we play as is a modified humanoid, seemingly a pregnant male. A flower bursts from its forehead, revealing an eye. You take the corpse of your last protagonist and attempt to take it to the exit, before being overcome by a parasitic being, transforming all of them into a fleshy statue, stood directly before the exit, and finale, of the game.
You might think there would be a way to avoid this parasitic and depressing end, but there isn’t. Instead, it’s the ultimate message for this absurd race. These perverted humanoid creatures have had their civilization fall to pieces, with even further mutated humanoid creatures attacking one another for flesh, likely for survival. As the species literally eats itself and fails to reproduce, it dies off.
The ending of Scorn isn’t necessarily a satisfying one, but it should be celebrated for the conviction with which it dedicates itself to an aesthetic and a message.
Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of GLHF.
