Outlast 2 has an interesting story and ending. The cutscenes bring up more questions than answers and it’s up to the player to fill in the blanks and connect the dots. It’s one of those stories where you have to read “between the lines”, where the little details matter far more than the bigger picture.
In a very unique way, the game does much of its story-telling through collectibles (55 documents and 50 video recordings). Finding and reviewing these collectibles is vital to understanding what’s really going on.
After 10 playthroughs and reviewing all collectibles here’s my understanding of Outlast 2’s events and a synopsis of the story.
Theories and explanations are further down after the synopsis.
Synopsis:
- You play as Blake Langermann, husband and cameraman to your wife Lynn Langermann, who is an investigate journalist. Together you embark on a trip to find clues on the murder of a pregnant woman in rural Arizona.
- The game begins with a helicopter ride. Blake wakes up from a dream he had about Jessica Gray, a girl he was friends with in 4th grade. Jessica committed suicide, a memory that haunts Blake to this day. Blake and Lynn briefly talk about Jessica and then record an intro for their news report about the murder.
- Suddenly, there’s a flash of light and the helicopter engines fail. The helicopter crashes. Blake and Lynn get separated. The helicopter pilot is found skinned on a tree near the crash site. He clearly didn’t get skinned in the crash so Blake knows something weird is going on.
- Blake is now trying to find Lynn. On his search he encounters some hostile villagers. Everyone is out to kill him. It’s up to the player to escape. Along the way there will be another flash of light, causing all enemies to be in a state of paralysis. It’s evident that the light has a strong effect but Blake resists.
- Blake reunites with Lynn. He wants to know what happened but she refuses to say. Her only wish is to get away from here. Over the speakers, prophet Knoth can be heard, saying that he examined Lynn’s womb and concluded she is pregnant. He announces that the child of Lynn and Blake is the antichrist (devil) and calls out his followers, the “Christians”, to find Lynn and kill her before the child is born. (Note: the villagers see themselves as good Christians but Knoth’s teachings are deluded and advocate murder and blood sacrifice. They use the symbols of Christians but their faith is very distorted).
- Blake and Lynn run into a Christian search party. Then the “heretics” join them. They are a different cult that opposes the Christians. The heretics kill the Christians and take Lynn away. Blake is left alone in the dark woods.
- Blake escapes the remaining Christians and then there’s another flash of light. He now has his first vision (or hallucination / daydream). He’s suddenly back in the catholic school he went to in 4th grade, where his classmate Jessica committed suicide.
- After the vision you meet a lone villager called Ethan who is friendly and wants to protect you from the crazy people. From him you learn that the woman whose murder you’re investigating was his daughter, Anna Lee. She was raped by the prophet Knoth who got her pregnant. Knoth then wanted Ethan to slit Anna’s belly and kill the child. Ethan made up some stories to give Anna time to run away. As you learnt during the initial helicopter ride the police report said she had a lot of mercury in her blood and concluded that she strangled herself to death. Her murder remains unsolved.
- Blake finds shelter in the basement of Ethan’s house. He must then witness how Marta, a very hostile old hag, murders Ethan with an axe. Blake waits quietly in the basement and then escapes.
- Again Blake must escape some Christian search parties until he reaches the chapel. In the chapel he encounters a man who had his eyes cut out and is strapped to a wheel. His name is Josiah. The reason why he is being tortured is because he didn’t give up the location where the heretics are hiding Lynn.
- Blake hides in the chapel’s confessional box. Now he witnesses Knoth and his followers torturing Mary in front of Josiah. Mary is Josiah’s yokemate (spouse). Eventually Josiah gives up the location of Lynn to stop Mary’s pain, but Knoth kills them both anyway. Blake overheard the conversation and learned that Lynn is being held by the heretics in the mines. His goal is now to get to the mines to rescue Lynn.
- Blake makes his way through some other hostile areas and has a new vision of the school, this time not proceeded by the bright light. After the visions he finds himself on a hilltop. He tries to go over a broken bridge but an insect swarm comes flying at him and he falls down into the trees below. Now he goes through these dark woods and encounters Laird (a midget archer) and Nick (a bigger guy who is the archer’s mount). Laird is sitting on Nick’s shoulders and fires arrows. Blake escapes, has another school vision. After the school vision he is suddenly in the camp of Nick and Laird.
- Laird proclaims Blake the long awaited Scalled Messiah. He wants Blake to be reborn. To start the “rebirth process” they will nail Blake to a holy cross and leave him to die. Blake escapes by tearing his hands through the nails which wounds him badly. He escapes the camp but eventually gets caught in a fence where Laird and Nick pick him up again. This time they bury him alive to complete the rebirth.
- Yet again Blake can escape. Nick didn’t put enough dirt on the casket and as a result Blake could push it open from the inside and get out.
- Now Blake finds a rope with which he is planning to escape the woods. Laird and Nick get pushed down by some of the Scalled (who are the third faction in the game, outcasts living in the woods). Laird and Nick die from the fall.
- Blake’s visions start to get worse. He now sees demons chasing him. The visions will become much more frequent from here on out.
- Eventually Blake reaches a boat where he can make a raft and use it to go downriver. After a ~15 minute raft ride he will have his worst vision yet. He’s in the swimming pool of the school and the showers, toilets and flame detectors start to spray blood everywhere. After this vision it starts to rain blood outside. Blake’s hallucinations are now at their worst.
- On the path to the mines the school visions become more frequent and the demon that is chasing him in the school is getting more aggressive. He also runs into some of the heretic enemies before reaching the elevator to the mines. The elevator breaks and falls down but Blake survives the accident unharmed.
- He now goes through the pitch-black mines where he encounters Val, the female leader of the heretics and her followers. The heretics have Lynn and will try to kill Blake to stop him from taking her away. After all, they want Lynn’s child and anyone who’s in the way will be murdered. The only thing heretics are wearing is a crown on their head (made out of some branches), other than that they are completely naked.
- Val chases Blake through the mines. He escapes Val but then accidentally slides into the camp of the heretics where they have Lynn. One heretic blows some dust of unknown origin into Blake’s face. Blake can see Lynn in the distance; she is strapped into some contraption. The heretics are gathered around her. Blake is being grabbed by Val (the heretic boss) and has another vision – the most revealing one yet.
- During this vision it is revealed what happened to Jessica and why Blake is being haunted by those memories to this day. Jessica was fooling around with Blake in the kitchen’s storage room after school (their hiding spot). Blake repeatedly told Jessica that he likes Lynn and has been kissing Lynn already. Jessica is clearly interested in Blake and holding hands with him as they are trying to exit the school. On their way out they are seen by Father Loutermilch, one of the teachers. It’s a catholic school with strict rules (and they are only in 4th grade). Father Loutermilch is suspicious and asks Jessica to step inside the class room to discuss why they’re still in the building so late after class. He reassures Blake that he is not in trouble yet, but Jessica wants Blake to stay because she is scared. Loutermilch questions the two and suspects they were fooling around, which is a big no-no at their catholic school. He sends Blake home. Jessica is really scared of Father Loutermilch, who has a very threatening attitude towards her. She asks Blake to stay but he leaves anyway because Loutermilch told him to. On his way out the school he hears Jessica screaming. He goes back and follows the screams to find that Father Loutermilch has violently beaten Jessica unconscious on the staircase. It is known that Jessica later committed suicide (this not shown directly, just through some notes in the game and she is repeatedly shown hanging from a rope). This event was likely the reason she committed suicide. Blake didn’t love her (he loved Lynn) and didn’t stay with her when she needed him the most. Had he stayed, Loutermilch might not have attacked her so violently. The scene ends with Blake holding Jessica’s unconscious body in his arms.
- Blake wakes up in the mines again. Some enemies chase him to the exit, where he reunites with Lynn. How Lynn got there is unknown.
- Lynn and Blake escape the mines. It’s stormy weather outside, there’s lightning in the sky. Some trees get hit by lightning and go up in flames. They make their way to shelter but Marta (the old hag with the axe) shows up and wants to kill them before the birth. Through sheer luck or some higher power, the holy cross from the top of the church comes flying down and impales Marta. Now Blake and Lynn can escape to the chapel unharmed.
- Lynn has her baby in the chapel and dies shortly after birth. Blake holds the baby and blacks out.
- After he awakes, the prophet Knoth is sitting on a bench next to him. Knoth says that he killed all of his children (by which he means his “Christian” followers, they are all dead in the market square). He advises Blake to crush the baby’s skull with his heels and then slits his throat to end his life.
- Knoth is dead, Lynn is dead, all the “Christians” are dead, there’s no trace of the heretics or scalled. Blake goes down to the market square where all the corpses are. He is holding the baby in his arm. The baby is unharmed.
- At the market square Blake looks at the sun and has one final vision. He sees a girl with a bruise around her neck in the school kitchen. It appears to be Jessica. She says a prayer and the game ends.
- It is not revealed what happened to Blake or his baby.
- THE END.
Story Explained
- The bright light that crashes your helicopter and shows up before school visions is coming from a radio tower / microwave relay by the lake. It emits a strong microwave signal that controls people’s minds (this is explained via a document called “Old Traveler” found at the lake from one of the scientists). That’s why everyone has gone mad (except Ethan for some reason, the guy who protects you). Below is a picture of the full document explaining it:
- The brainwashing experiment is part of Murkoff Corporation’s secret program. They are the same company from the first game that reopened Mount Massive Asylum under false flag to experiment on humans. In the above document you can see the scientist referencing a bet he had with “Jenny Roland”. He means Jennifer Roland, who is known from Outlast 1 to be Murkoff Corp’s Pathologist. This proves the connection to Murkoff and the MKULTRA mind control program.
- In the beginning you (Blake) are still somewhat sane. But as you get closer to the tower and spend more time in the area you lose your mind more and more, get hallucinations and weird dreams of early childhood because the microwave brainwashing signal gets stronger. Blake blames himself for Jessica’s death because he didn’t love her, didn’t protect her when she needed him (she was fooling around with him but Blake liked Lynn. He also left her alone with the bad teacher who assaulted her, even though she asked him to stay because she was scared).
- The demon that haunts you in the school visions is Father Loutermilch, the teacher who violently assaulted Jessica. This can be seen by the scar above his right eye – the demon has the exact same scar. The memory of this event haunts Blake to this day, that’s why he sees Father Loutermilch as a demon in his visions (because Loutermilch was the bad guy and ultimately the reason Jessica committed suicide).
- In the end the microwave signal has gotten so strong that they all just murdered each other (brainwashing experiment, possibly gone wrong). The document speaks of anomalies in the signal strength and mentions that the signal is particularly strong at certain spots. There’s also a mention of the “feedback loop” which causes affected people to do crazy things.
Ending Explained:
- Blake finally loses his mind. The traumatic experiences and microwave brainwashing signals have broken him. He submits to the signal.
- It remains unknown what happened to the baby or if it was just an illusion to begin with. Maybe it’s just what Blake wanted to see. Before Lynn dies she says “there’s nothing there” which suggests there never was a child. She had been in the mines 800 feet below ground for most of the game, where the brainwashing signal might not be as strong. Blake and Knoth, however, were above ground most of the time and do see the child which could be a hallucination from long exposure to the microwave signal.
Unsolved Mysteries and Theories:
- Was Lynn ever pregnant or not? When you arrive it doesn’t show. There’s a recording immediately after reuniting with her in the end, in which Blake says it’s so cold and snowing outside, but there is no snow. In fact what you see is the world going up in flames, a hot storm and lightning in the sky. So maybe he imagined she’s pregnant, or the microwave signal made everyone think she was. But then half the game wouldn’t make any sense because everyone was after the child. The snow could also be a reference to the snow outside the school dream.
- Another theory is that the game does not take place over the course of a night like it seems, but actually Blake blacked out for weeks or months during the school visions and Lynn may have been 2-3 months pregnant when they arrived and she didn’t tell him (but how could he possibly miss this when they always travel for journalistic work together and live together. He mentions on the river that they haven’t done it in a few months). So it’s possible the game actually takes place over 7-8 months.
- One thing that’s clear is that Blake is getting more delusional as time goes by. This is evident by listening to the recording collectibles and he gets visions more often. There are many unanswered questions… maybe we have to wait for a DLC to get the missing pieces.
- Why was Ethan (guy who takes you in) not affected by the microwave signal? What does he mean when he says he has been “unborn”?
- Why is there a document saying Val is a man when she’s female in the game (Document #7: Val’s Secret)?
- Why does everyone think that Blake’s child is the antichrist?
- How did Lynn escape from the heretics in the mines all by herself? When we find her, she can barely walk without Blake’s support.
- What did Lynn mean when she said “there’s nothing there?” a moment after giving birth? It strongly suggests that she never was pregnant and never had a child, it’s just an illusion. Another theory is that she was talking about afterlife because she said it a second before dying and was delirious (she went to a catholic school, so probably believed in the afterlife). One contradiction is that both Blake and Knoth see the child after birth. Knoth notes this twice; he says after Blake blacks out “that’s the child, isn’t it?” and then goes on to suggest that Blake should kill the baby if he loves anything at all. So either both Blake and Knoth see a child due to mind control, or Lynn didn’t see things clearly while she was dying. Another point is that Lynn was trapped in the mines, 800 feet below ground, for most the game. It’s unlikely the brainwashing signal would reach that far so she was still somewhat sane and hadn’t been affected as much as Blake and Knoth who were above ground the entire time. But then why were the heretics so crazy; they were 800 feet below ground, too?
- During the birth scene the baby doesn’t have a shadow, supporting the theory that it was a hallucination from mind control.
- Furthermore, phantom pregnancies are mentioned in a document from Outlast 1 Whistleblower, titled “Miscarried Profits”. The document says that females can suffer from psychosomatic pregnancies because of how the “Morphogenic Engine” affects their immune system. The Morphogenic Engine was used in the first game to control Walrider (an experimental swarm of nanites). When reuniting with Lynn after the helicopter crash, she refuses to say what the Christians did to her. It’s possible they exposed her to a Morphogenic Engine and that’s why she’s going through the full process of a (phantom) pregnancy over the course of a night.
- All the video recordings taken during visions are corrupted. They have no picture but play a sound (sometimes a shape or logo can be seen flashing in the video file). If you revert the sound via video editing software they actually start to make some sense. A man can be heard speaking some prayers but it’s not clear who it is – could be Blake but he sounds very different in the recordings. The visions happen when the flash of light comes. The microwave signal made the helicopter crash at the start of the game so it probably messes with eletronics and that’s why the camera doesn’t work for a while. The fact that we hear a voice means something was really being recorded and supports the theory that Blake is wandering around in a trance while under the effect of mind control. A document from John, someone who hunted near the towers, reports the same thing. He too had a blackout and woke up miles away in a different direction. In the document he writes “I must have walked from inside my dream state because I found myself on waking a great distance away, and have not been able to trace my steps back to the humming towers”. Blake also wakes up in completely different places after the visions. This could mean much more time went by than the game makes us think. On some of the corrupted recordings it even sounds like two voices speaking. Were the voices possibly other people and did Blake meet up with them but doesn’t remember? The other villagers described in documents that they can’t remember where they went during the visions either and refer to them as “waking dreams”. The video recordings played backwards translate into some prayers and single words. They are all of religious nature but it’s hard to make out every single word.
- Another point John makes in his document is that he saw insects, mouths and sex organs in his visions – exactly the same things Blake was experiencing (mouths coming out of telephones, tongues grabbing him, swarm of insect lifting him up on the bridge). This could mean that mass mind control makes everyone see the same things, e.g. a child or pregnancy that isn’t really there.
- There’s a trophy and achievement for finishing the first playthrough called “Born Again”. Who was reborn (reincarnated)?
- Why does the girl at the end not have a bruise around her neck on the second playthrough, but it’s there on the first playthrough?
- For an in-depth overview of all characters, factions and how they are connected, see: Outlast 2 Characters & Factions.
Video Showcase of All Collectibles
Below is a video showing the contents of all documents and recordings in chronological story order. These provide very interesting hints. Pay attention to collectibles #78, 79, 82. Those explain the mind control and the connection to Murkoff Corporation. Another interesting find is collectible #14 called “Val’s Secret”. It says that Val is a man but in the game he (she) is female.
Have you found another hint or theory? What do you think happened to Blake and the baby? Let’s hear it in the comments below!
Savion says
Thanks so much for this, clears so many things up. About the 7-8 months theory, how would Blake survive without water or food, I’m pretty sure there was much in the way of food or water in that forsaken valley. Anyway thanks a lot for this. Great game especially for a sequel. As someone who doesn’t play these games and only watches, I hate how a big chunk of the story is in the collectibles, so it’s really up to the person I’m watching to find the collectibles of the even bother to put them in the video.
PowerPyx says
You do make a very fair point. Him surviving for weeks or months without food during blackouts would seem odd. This would support the theory that he was imagining the pregnancy in the end.
But then why would Knoth see him holding the baby in the chapel? There are many things that contradict each other. There’s another note of a traveler that says he went looking for the towers, saw some camouflage and the next thing he remembered was waking up miles away. So it’s possible these people are “sleep wandering” and possibly eating/drinking but they can’t remember.
ghost says
at the end lynn says there is nothing there. that could mean so many things bro. maybe none of this was real at all
PowerPyx says
Very good observation, this is a good hint indeed. There is a contradiction, however — Knoth sees the child and notes this twice. After Blake blacks out he says “is that the child”? and then goes on to suggest that he should kill the baby if he loves anything in this world. So either both Blake and Knoth see a child for no reason, or Lynn was delirious. I’m going to add it to the theories etc.
Dhans95 says
In the middle of the game while climbing up some stairs blake spots a radio tower..and records it thinking he can communicate or there could be another civilization living near..bcoz of it all the ppl were affected..in the first outlast…the females were getting pregnant due to being exposed to the dream machine while actually not being pregnant..so this only proves that no child ever was born..it was all an illusion…which explains why knoth and blake both saw the child..and if u would look the closely in the birth scene, the child had no shadow
Unkk says
The child also had no umbilical cord
David says
There was part of an umbilical cord, but if you look closely where’s the rest?
Where does it connect to the placenta?
It doesn’t, there is no placenta, just half a cord.
Speculativegamer says
Knoth at the end could also be an illusion conjured up by the delirious Blake don’t you think?
PowerPyx says
It’s possible, yes.
Nick says
If Blake was imagining the pregnancy, then why would Lynn die after the childbirth?
Am i missing something?
PowerPyx says
Lynn is probably a hallucination as well. How she freed herself from the heretics and suddenly ended up at the exit of the mines is unexplainable. It’s very unlikely she escaped on her own, given that she can’t even walk without Blake’s support. Near the end of the mine section some heretics blow dust of unknown origin into Blake’s face. I think from this point on he was imagining everything he saw. The weather outside etc. defies any logic and Blake is just seeing crazy things everywhere and rambling nonsense in his video recordings.
Her pregnancy (or hallucination thereof) is the biggest mystery – too many contradictions and missing pieces. We don’t really know what the Christians did to her, Lynn refuses to talk about it (maybe they put something in her or injured her during examanition of her womb).
Christian says
Well, at this point it’s possible that none of this is real. For all, we know our entire perception of Blakes life with Lynn(her being our wife) could be false. It’s technically possible that after Blake is exposed to the trauma f these events or simply the Radio Waves that his brain started to alter is memories in order to give him the drive to survive. After all his entire reason throughout the game is to save Lynn not escape himself where he could have gotten help and returned.
I haven’t watched all of the recordings yet, so correct me if I’m wrong, But is Lynn in any of the recordings at all?
Now, I know that Father Knoth and Val seem to reinforce Lynn’s Existence… But Knoth also seems to treat every pregnancy like the Anti-Christ. So it’s also possible that Blake happened to crash at the right time to get caught in this series of events.
Now, I also know this theory relates more to normal psychology rather than the Games logic with the science from the game, But at this point, its possible and some details from this and other theories could easily be interchangeable at this point
RoyalStride says
Or maybe Lynn actually died on the heli-crash and that was the trigger which broke Blake’s mind, as it reminded him of how powerless he was when Jessica died and the whole thing with the father, making him desire or crave for a chance to save Lynn, denying her death in his own mind, and going after the dream of a life with her, which usually is depicted with the word family (with children) which is then the reason as to why he goes on such a wild and crazy nonsensical chase to find her, gets involved in the whole situation, and right at the end, instead of him breaking further, he starts accepting his powerlessness and lets go of Lynn, which is why she dies, he looks broken but at the same time ready to move on, he doesn’t kill the baby as it’s the last bastion for the shell of who he used to be and finally the “world” is destroyed, he lets go of his past and remembers it one last time, talking to a Jess, who isn’t hurt, making the whole thing different right at the end, he got his own Redemption in some weird sickening way, and like that…was Reborn :D?
RoyalStride says
Maybe they all represented a part of Blake, Val, his inner desire to have sex or do naughty stuff with Jessica, Knoth, his own sense of duty and that which holds him back from becoming “a bad man”, the cross old lady, his own anger towards himself and so on :o wich could make several characters make sense and support the idea that the world Blake is in the game, is his own, his alucinations created it :o
Zioxic says
When you see the game at the end, you notice that the baby doesnt have a shadow and that black does. That proves the baby is not real
h-a-r-v says
Not “for no reason” – they BELIEVE it. And beliefs project the way we see reality .
FnT says
Makes sense it’s said that there were anomalies in signal, places where the signal was stronger. Now, my theory is that once you start believing in brainwash, you become a beacon and the guy next to you receives brainwashing information from two ends- the tower and, well, from you the people. Thus making “the signal stronger”. So he was told that his wife was having a baby while being influenced by brainwashing signals making the brainwashing process settle in faster. The result is- he started to actually believe that Lynn is pregnant even though they both, Knoth and Blake, are delusional.
Mirq says
Well, if he believe that Lynn is pregnant, maybe he never even met Lynn and it was everything in his mind (the escape, the birth, the baby)
Random says
It’s possible Lynn died to mercury. They said they cut her up and did something. The case mentioned about a murder at the start had mercury mentioned on the pregnant lady so maybe that’s why Lynn died, when she said something is wrong
Cody says
To be honest, we do NOT know what exactly Knoth saw. To him, maybe, Blake was carrying baby Diablo.
Why did Lynn die? How did you not see all the blood there? She simply bleed to death.
How did she escaped? Well, maybe the murder spree around the place helped her.
Why all of them see the baby? Because they are all affected by the same microwaves sent by Murkoff.
Mercer says
It could be that what Blake is holding is just something wrapped in his arms in a blanket. That’s why Knoth asks him “is that the baby” instead of just assuming it’s the baby like most people would. Especially since Lynn’s body was next to them one would assume that it’s definitely the baby. However if the baby is just an object wrapped in a blanket and Lynn is a hallucination, then it makes sense that Knoth would ask “is that the baby?”
Saul says
If lynn was never pregnant and Blake was hallucinating, what was Lynn’s cause of death?
Kyle C says
Didn’t Blake say that they cut open her stomach for some reason, believing that her “baby” would be their Messiah or whatever?
She probably bled to death. Not to mention whatever illnesses she contracted while being dragged around that place.
Mert says
It’s simple. I think that Blake is already died (or something is close to die) in mines while the elevator crashes. He dreams all these things ı guess. srry4bdenglish
Justin P says
Just a thought: Although there are many grey areas that don’t make much sense. Perhaps Blake actually is a prophet and Lynn is the mother carrying the baby that will start the antichrist. When the baby is born. The world ends and Blake dies (shown by him reuniting with Jessica) The world ends by the sun expanding and destroying the earth (presumably) The Christians could be the least affected by the microwave signal and the heretics actually the most. Notice that blakes hallucinations are the strongest as he gets closer the the mine. Perhaps the Christians were correct in trying to stop the “antichrist baby” from being born, and the heretics are the delusional ones trying to let the baby be born. Also I wonder if the christians in Outlast2 relate to the religious group from Outlast1. Also does Marta (the old hag) have any meaning other than a character to run away from? Also I’m a little confused about why Blake and Lynn decided to come there anyway. Wouldn’t the police have seen all the crazy shit when they made the police report? And the woman that “fell” out the window near the beginning of the game that looked pregnant, was that lynn?
Justin P says
Other evidence that the microwave signal could be stronger near the mine, or even coming from the mine is the giant waves and flashes of light coming from the direction of the mine as you float on the raft. Also the very strong hallucinations of raining blood only come when Blake is near the mines
Cody says
It cannot comes from the mines because:
1) Lynn is not affected by them.
2) You can video record a radio tower.
3) You get affected near the mines, because it is late in the game so you were exposed to them for a long time already.
4) Those strong flashes could be a radio tower signals.
Issa says
What if the achievement “Born Again” means that Lynn was reincarnated as the baby and that is why she had to die because she couldn’t be in two bodies at once
tappei92 says
The idea that Blake had unconscious in weeks and survive without any food could make the hallucination even stronger and his vision even worse than before.
dizzv says
I think the game takes place longer than it lets on because we can see the moon fill up through the game.
Jake says
Oh my God. All of you people with such nonsense theories
It wasn’t Lynn in the end. Lynn had her right arm and both legs cut off and you can clearly see that in the mines scene. Slashing sounds and Lynn’s screams of how much it hurts only back it up
Anna wasn’t dead in the first place. The pregnant women near end is Anna
Josh says
Your wrong. Her right arm was covered by a shadow and her legs were tied and lifted from the ground. If she was hanging by her left arm alone she would be swinging all over the place. Also, how would Anna know Blake’s name when they reunited also? She exclaims “Blake your alive!”
joão says
I watched that part again and i think i cant see her legs.Most likely it was amputated, idk i cant see clearly anyway.
Cody says
“All of you people with nonsense thoeries”
*Proceeds to tell a nonsense theory with no backup and saying “idk”*
Emma says
Did you all remember also that in the beginning of the game Lynn said “I cant work this with my diaphragm on” isnt that protection so she cant get pregnant? Or was it just some joke she made? Im confused lol
Crimson Bort says
I thought she was referring to the diaphragm muscle, which aids in breathing, not the birth control.
Knothic says
Dose anyone think that maybe Blake WAS blacking out for a really long time during the illusions of Jessica? (For food and water, he probably just ate some random shit he found during the hallucinations) also the baby could’ve well been the antichrist maybe the shadow was just something that the developers missed, or just shitty graphics.
My theory is that Blakes baby could’ve very well been the antichrist and the Christians were all just insane assholes who were mind controlled just to be fucking insane.. why else would they be living in a crappy old shanty town with a bunch of slaughtered people and animals in it? They are just insane..
and I’m sure you remember: Papa Knoth, Marta (the old hag), the leader of the heretics,(blonde bitch with short hair) and the midget dude with the fire arrows..
Anyway, my point is: remember when Blake mentioned that there was the signs of the apocalypse (blood rain, dead body’s in lake, etc.)
Well, there you have the four horseman. And plus, if Papa knoth really believes that the baby was the antichrist, why didn’t he at least attempt to kill the baby himself? Maybe he was afraid of the antichrist ruling over him? knoth was going to kill himself anyway..
So at the very end there are of course all of the dead people who I’m pretty sure killed themselves as a chance to get into heaven instead of having the antichrist bring an end to the world.
But if my theory is correct, that would mean the end of all future outlast games wouldn’t it? They can’t just go on with prequels..
So there is a strong possibility that I am wrong.. it’s all just a theory tho..
Shnyggelz says
I think the theory of the game being placed overt several months is pretty much negatied by the conversation that Papa Knoth has with Josiah in the chapel shortly after Lynn was taken by the Val and the Heretics. Blake only had like 1-2 School visions after that incident, and in the Chapel, Knoth stated to Josiah something like “The outsider woman has this world’s destruction in her womb! But Val and his apostates stole away the unborn enemy. The fiend’s father is escaped. SHE WILL BEAR HER FILTHY YIELD BEFORE DAWN”. This, tbh, doesn’t sound to me like months passed away after Lynn got caught by Val, and Knoth definitely stated that the baby would be born before particular night ends.
PowerPyx says
A very good observation indeed! But this makes me wonder about another thing… when Lynn first escapes from Knoth and his Christians she doesn’t have a big belly yet. So why would Knoth possibly assume (much less predict) that she will give birth in a few hours? Only explanation I can come up with is that Blake wasn’t affected by the brainwashing at that point, so Lynn didn’t look pregnant to him. All the villagers had been there for a long time and were under full effect of mind control. So they saw the pregnancy (and later when Blake loses his mind sees the pregnancy, too).
I recently added another paragraph to the theories & unsolved mysteries section. As many people have suggested, there could be a connection to the Morphogenic Engine from the first game. It made female scientists from Murkoff Corporation experience phantom pregnancies even though they never were pregnant. It’s far fetched but would explain how she went through a full pregnancy over night – because it was what the mind control made everyone believe and Lynn was somehow exposed to the Morphogenic Engine after Christians took her.
Samuel says
All that was in one night…
DeadPeach says
Isn’t it possible that Val is a man and because of the microwaves he believes he’s female? Actually when she first showed up I thought Val was a male in a dress.
DM says
Val is definitely a guy.
Rando says
Yeah, I just rewatched the PowerPyx speedrun video again and Val clearly had a flat chest. Val later appearing with breasts in the mines is probably a hallucination caused by the waves like Lynn’s pregnancy.
DM says
Yeah I noticed that too, but it looked like small mounds of mud on his chest to resemble breasts.
Devin says
Dm. He isn’t just a guy. He’s a gay af. He lick ya face first time you meet him. Like that’s gay af
DM says
That’s what I’m saying though…sorry I can’t tell if you’re agreeing or with me or not due to your broken English or inability to form sentences :P
Badruborg says
I need a DLC to this game right now. I wanna play somewhere near Mount Massive and/or Temple Gate gathering more Murkoff Clues like Waylon Park did. If they bring back the Walrider and Waylon Park then this is one hell of a party. I mean literally. Thanks a lot. It was awesome you elucidated some story points. I think some parts of the story is convoluted and needs the DLC to get it better paced. But, the gameplay mechanics are awesome. Also, it seems Murkoff used Knoth and his followers. That’s not unlikely. In fact, Billy and Knoth have many similarities. Knoth used to listen to late night radio and there is a chance this was all Murkoff doing. Additionally, one of the very first notes you find by Lisa is so similar to the “ecstatic rage” that Wernicke talked about. Also, Jane Doe, was found with mercury in her body which also ties in with Wernicke’s exit interview that talked about tumours of pure lead. These guys may have opened a gateway as Wernicke talked about and said nothing was supernatural. It feel the Morphogenic Engine also was here when Blake said he feels scissors in his teeth it’s like Miles saying buzzing in his bones.
The story is showing a lot of promise. Also, Val can be a man. I thought she was male too. Or, an intersex person because the heretics looks like Variants or traditional Variants is supposed to look like. This is interesting.
Korshenk says
One thing thing I noticed that you didn’t mention was that at the end of the game when Lynn gives birth to the supposed “antichrist.” Lynn says “There’s nothing there…” which I believe, could in fact be that Blake finally became “brainwashed” by the microwave signals and there was no actual physical baby. But, if that could be the case, then why did Lynn feel the pain of birth or even the sensation of being pregnant with a child? Is it real? Truely the antichrist? And maybe, just maybe, the reason why it appears that Lynn wasn’t effected by the microwaves, because there was no actual evidence that Lynn was actually dipping into any sort of delusions or insanity. Maybe, again, the microwaves only affecyed those who had a “strong” belief system, exceptional fears, regret, or some sort of strong emotion, so that the brainwashing could take effect. I could just be rambling as well but, atleast I tried ;)
PowerPyx says
Hey Korshenk, as you wrote your comment I was currently updating the post to reflect on just that haha.
Yes it’s a very fair point indeed that I had previously missed. I added more on this to the post, but basically Lynn was in the mines 800 meters below ground for most of the game. It’s unlikely any signal would reach that far, so she was probably not affected by it as much.
However, one thing that contradicts it, is that Knoth sees the child as well (not just Blake). So we have 1 person not seeing it and two seeing it (granted those two were more insane than her). The birth did seem very odd overall. Lynn also never says what the villagers truly did to her after reuniting in the forest at the start of the game. Knoth just says over the speakers that he examined her womb, but she refuses to talk about it.
Korshenk says
O wow lol I guess I should have waited then. But to your point of Knoth also seeing the child, shouldn’t that be because of the brainwashing (which you mentioned of insanity)? The “Murkoff Corporation” is pretty well versed in this sort of thing. It shouldn’t seem all too implausible for those who are brainwashed to see and experience the same things.
Korshenk says
Also, regarding the Heretics, are there any documents regarding them? Such as, how they came about, the previous whereabouts (if there are any) prior to going to the mines. I ask this because, as seen in the game the mines appeared to be at one point an “actual” mine, and probably became abandoned ahen the brainwashing started. Giving the possibility the Heretics could have been defectors, or just simply those who opposed the faith and ened up retreating to the abandoned mines to seek shelter or hiding.
Just a thought, don’t know if you’ve already looked into it, mentioned in the breakdown (so I probably overlooked it).
Korshenk says
**Just a thought, don’t know if you’ve already looked into it or mentioned in the breakdown (so I probably overlooked it).
PowerPyx says
There are documents from Val’s journal (she’s the leader of the heretics). She had a foster care with 40 children that she loved very much before the craziness started. But the “Christians” wanted these children as blood sacrifice to please their god. Val was very upset that these children got slaughtered and god never gave the sign they all waited for. So Val went rogue and got followers of her own to oppose the Christians. One document reveals that they dug a tunnel to meet in secret and discussed their visions (this was still in the early stages of the experiment when they had some sanity left). Beyond that I haven’t found anything else.
Long story short: Val and her people weren’t happy with slaughter of children, so they started their own cult.
Korshenk says
Ohhhh okay, thank you very much for the response! There’s only so much info I can get through watching let’s plays. And this definitely helps clarify some of the things I’ve been wondering about. Thanks again and keep up the good work!
Rando says
Is there any meaning to what Val said about her (his?) father fucking God to death? Was she referring to Koth as ‘father’?
Rando says
It could be a mass hallucination. Everyone keeps on saying that Lynn is pregnant and, well, everyone whose mind has been fried enough will start seeing it. Also remember Ethan’s daughter, Anna Lee who apparently had lots of mercury in her blood (with Lynn speculating that it was because of the river water being contaminated by the nearby mines) and how much worse Blake’s own hallucinations got after he drowned in it a bit (when he came out back to land, he was seeing blood rain all over).
Christian says
As a counterpoint to Lynn not suffering from hallucinations as bad as Blake or Knoth, while its likely that she isn’t insane, it’s possible she is, and here’s my logic
First off, It is probably true that the radio waves wouldn’t affect Lynn to the same extent while see is deep within the Mines. To an extent though, Lynn would probably start to suffer from hallucinations and delusions from breathing in toxic/unventilated air for such an extended amount of time.
Now, This wouldn’t explain why she also believes she’s pregnant like blake and Knoth. So, what if upon reaching the top segments of the Mine, the radio waves were able to change her delusions to resemble what Blake and Knoth were seeing. this would probably happen rather quickly due to her already weakened state of mind.
While this doesn’t explain her pain early in the game during the first time Blake finds Lynn, Its also possible that Lynn was harmed by Knoth during the examination in some subtle way leading to her not fully noticing until forced into a scenario where she needed to get away and quick.
This is just a theory, and its possible that the Toxic/unventilated air was just an overlooked detail but go ahead and let me know what you think 🙂
quinton petty IG:ITZ.GOLDENDRACO says
lynn says there nothing there because the baby was dead she was refering to life “saying theres nothing there meaning the baby was a stillborn” but blake and knoth see
the baby to be alive but thats only because they was above the ground and near the mines and lynn may have figure out what was going on while she was capture and also saying “theres nothing there” was gonna keep him in the right state of mind and he would drop the dead baby and realized what was happening but as you can see at the end the horn went off again and he lost his mind thats why the fire was around the light.AND YES THIS IS A RUN ON SENTENCE SO WHAT.
AyyItsYaBoi says
Korshenk, if you look at Lynn she’s wounded, BADLY wounded, so bad that she couldn’t walk by herself. There were cuts all over her body and she was slowly bleeding out. This is why she dies after she says “there’s nothing there”, because she finally died from blood loss because Ethan didn’t tend to her wounds.
Mutlucan says
Man i need more information about the game.
İ only understand that jessica loved us and we didnt love her. Then one day father sexually abused her and push her into stairs. Then we saw and he said i dont know what you see and threaten us. Then we scared of him from that time. Also he is the inner demon in school. Then jessica being raped, she committed suicide.
But there are so many unanswered questions.
People always wondered about why there arent any woman in outlast 1 then dlc we got the answer.
Morphogenic engine hurted womans as i remember. But in this game seems like they found a way to do it on women.
Murdoc says
Has anybody noticed the backwards voice in those static video clips Blake records while hallucinating? Someone needs to remix that audio and post it on youtube!
Jake says
I have noticed that there could be a connection between the locust swarm and the walrider since we saw it in the comic issue 3 it possessed the ants. Blake mentions in the recording that it tried to pick him up. In the hallucination recordings if you listen closely you can hear someone speaking backwards or something.
Murdoc says
Issue 3 kind of bugs me, because how can Billy still be alive AND still be the Walrider if Miles killed him and became the new host at the end of Outlast 1?
Jake says
Maybe the nano robots stores their memories. In issue 3 we clearly saw that Billy is still there and in issue 4 the ants destroyed the evidence in Miles’s apartment. Definitely both of them are present in some form. There is no way Billy knew where Miles lives nor Miles where Billy lives.
Murdoc says
That’s a pretty good theory. It would also mean the Walrider is capable of dividing itself among multiple hosts, and we see that with the ants. So there’s potentially multiple Walriders just roaming around the world of Outlast.
Rrodriquez says
What about all the signs of the apocalypse Blake sees. Such as when the blood rain falls and dead fish in the lake. Granted it could be the brainwashing already messing with his brain but still. Or what if Lynn was raped by Knoth since he did rape Ethans daughter and that’s the child? Like you said he killed all his children already why wouldnt he want to kill this child.
Murdoc says
That part confuses me too. It depends who he’s referring to when he uses the word “children”. We know that Knoth sired a bunch of children with the women of the cult, as he seems to have a prima nocta thing going on. But if Knoth did kill all of his followers, how come he doesn’t have a scratch on him when he appears before Blake?
someone says
probably through a mass suicide as the game is heavily inspired from happenings where cults such as heavens gate commit mass suicide because of their beliefs.
anarchy753 says
They basically did anything Knoth told them to. If they were willing to kill child after child just because he told them to, a mass suicide (shown by all the corpses in the town at the end with bottles of cyanide) probably wouldn’t be out of the question if he told them it was necessary. These people are living in a community right under mind altering radio/micro waves, they’re clearly not sane any more.
Theoryxx7 says
Man i have a ideea did Ethan is the character we are playing in outlast 1?
Yoh says
No, the protagonist from the first Outlast is named Miles.
Christian says
well as to why we know that Lynn wasn’t raped, it’s somewhat simple.
So at the end of the game, Knoth says to Blake that he wasn’t able to kill the child because he was powerless against it since it was conceived of your seed and not his. This is what leads to him asking you to kill the child because, in Knoth’s eyes, only the Father of the Anti-Christ has the Power to kill it.
Brotmetheus says
Just a quick thought on the (i believe) 3rd or 4th to last recording, where Blake has Lynn in his arms and talks about Jessica and the snow and finding a grown up: as mentioned further up in the comments, it might actually have something to do with the flashbacks and the snow at the school. Personally I think that when Blake’s talking in the recording, he is referring to when he found Jessica at the stairs (like shown in the flashback, after the encounter with the teacher) and the scene with Lynn is kinda reminding him of how it was with Jessica and he justs thinks it out loud (I mean both Jessica and Lynn are close to death, they come out of a “hellish” place, etc.). Could also just be that at this point he is that far brainwashed, that he confuses the past with the present, but I like my thought about him just reminiscing about how it possibly went with Jessica, where he went out with her afterwards to find said grownup and possibly help her.
Murdoc says
The Outlast series definitely has some of the strongest writing I’ve seen in a horror game, and the way it deals with the relationship between Blake, Lynn, and Jessica is a testament to that.
Epicmouze says
Okey, I’ve been looking at things from many points, I’ve played the game from start to end with all colletibels. One thing that make most sense to me is that, when Lynn was captured by Knoth, he “raped” Lynn and Blake heard that in which case could explain why Knoth and Blake could see the baby and not Lynn and as Blake still torment himself with nightmares that it was his fault that Jessica died, and the baby is a “she” which Blake only knew and Knoth just like all his other “spawns” they slit the throat off but blaked ingnored that and in the last recording he says that the baby will do its work toward God and with the ending you can see Jessica and Blake praying.
Murdoc says
Knoth definitely did something invasive and sexual to Lynn while the Gate had her. But it’s not entirely clear if he just raped her, as he refers to it as an “examination”, which implies that he had some way of detecting the pregnancy.
Christian says
I don’t believe he raped her because, at the end of the game, Knoth talks about how he was powerless against the child because it wasn’t created by his seed. That us also why he asks Blake to kill it instead of attacking Blake and killing the child himself
Murdoc says
I don’t know if this was made clear anywhere in the game, but why can’t Blake fight back against anybody? He headbutts and kicks a couple people, so why doesn’t he ever pick up a weapon? The Variants in the first game are have enhanced strength from the experiments, but does the second game ever say that’s the case with the Temple’s Gate as well? Or is enhanced strength directly tied to the brainwashing and deformities that result from exposure to the Morphogenic Engine?
anarchy753 says
The opening text says neither Blake nor Lynn are fighters, so it could be reasonable that there’s a big step between fighting people off, and picking up a weapon and murdering people out of convenience.
Murdoc says
Maybe, but we’re talking about confronting insane, murderous, rapacious cannibals that have kidnapped your wife to rip her apart and kill the child inside her. Given that situation, I think most people would choose to arm themselves.
Cody says
Because gameplay and plot reasons. That’s all.
It’s like “why does he have to crawl inside the fallen tree, just jumped around that!”
Blackfall says
I got most of the things but only thing that I didn’t understand is white maden lynn pregnant?
Blackfall says
God my bad who made *
Jake says
Anyone knows exactly how much time passes between outlast 1 and 2? Waylon sends his email to Miles in 2013 the comic takes place directly after the events at the asylum but the letter shown above was written in 2015. Maybe the 5th issue covers it up but this large time gap could be a changer regarding Lynn’s pregnancy and how much time passes in the actual game.
SinT says
My theory:
Lynn feels stomach pains, it could mean that she WAS pregnant and in her first trimester. All the pain, stress and suffering could cause her a miscarriage and that’s why she felt that huge ache.
Blake was exhausted(he couldn’t ran ten meters without getting annoyingly slow as the game progresses), most likey hungry and dehydrated very so in the end plus all the stress also could make him more and more sensitive to the radiowaves. The christians were affected since long.
The heretics were most likely affected as well. Also my grandfather worked in a mine and he told me that a lot of his collegues got actually sick and/or mad. So it could also explain.
When Lynn sais “There is nothing, she could mean that she didn’t give birth. There is an illness called: mass hysteria/ collective hyteria, when a group imagines the same illnes, disease or delusion.
(like it was shown in the films in the Salem witch huntings)
So imo it was one big Mass Hysteria.
Cody says
She wasn’t pregnant at all, it was phantom pregnacy (which is mentioned in documents in Outlast 1).
Tychee says
what if the ending with the baby that is so weird is going so he feeld guilty for jessicas death what if that baby is jessica. Just reborn because she died very young do to that stuff that happend in the school and him not loving her that would make sense to me but else im mindfckd at all with that baby.
CHEENA says
One thing that does throw me off is towards the end 9for the game when they are running to the chapel why was she saying she’s coming she’s almost her. She as to referring to the baby coming. If there was no baby why was so in dire need to lie down to supposedly give birth? This game has left so many unsolved questions.
Cody says
Phantom pregnancy.
Carrie Hill says
More DLC needed! The biggest problem must be the whole giving birth thing of Lynn. Maybe the main character of following DLC will be Ethan? (This gives me a feeling about a crossover with the resident evil 7 btw).
Steve says
Nah that’s “IMPOSSIBLE”
Steve says
Hello I have a question who was the guy who comes running to attack you at the 2nd school flashback and then disappears…please reply anyone…
PowerPyx says
You mean the flashback after Blake reunites with Lynn, then the heretics take her away? In my opinion the ghostly shape running through the corridor is Blake when he was young. At second last school flashback (just before exiting the mines) you see the school through the eyes of young Blake. The teacher sends him home. But Blake comes running back the very same corridor because he hears Jessica crying. So black ghostly shape in corridor is probably a memory of that moment.
Kanarya1907 says
I think it’s a demonic figure of father LouterMilch. because when we were young, he did some bad things that is why he haunts us
Yannick L says
This may be super far-fetched but I have this feeling like the whole game is a metaphor for the events that happened at the Catholic school.
The Church leader is representing the principal who wants to kill the baby. The baby is a metaphor for the horrible things he’s doing to Jessie (likely this might not be the first victim).
He doesn’t want his secret to be out so he has to silence it/kill it by any means. The secret in this case represented by the antichrist aka the worst thing according to the Catholic Church. Once the secret is revealed (the baby is born) he kills himself. He had always been able to keep his victims from talking; systematically killing the “babies”, but not this time and now that his secret is out, the guilt is too much to bear and it feels like the end of the world to him; hence the recurring signs of the apocalypse as your progress throughout the game.
Lynn is a carrying the baby/secret (maybe Blake told her what he had seen at the school) and
Blake is in denial as he probably experiences PTSD from the experience, or doesn’t want to talk after the principal manipulates him (the recurring session talks throughout the game.) She carrying the secret for all three of them as the both know Jessie Killed herself after the assault, feeling let down by her friends, betrayed by her faith and out of ressources to fight back. She feels confused as she deeply believes in god until the very end but was destroyed by a man who acted in his name.
They are carrying in the guilt and the choices and are each dealing with it in their own way.
Jessie kills herself, Blake goes into denial and Lynn keeps the secret until she can’t keep it in anymore. The pregnancy is used as an image for something inevitably about to burst out one day or another.
They’re reporters a representation of one who tries to gather information or investigate in a situation without taking sides. They’re in the midst of it and are trying to figure out how to get out of there.
At first she doesn’t want to talk, either out of guilt or as she knows young blake isn’t ready to be caught under fire for exposing the highest authority, that is until the secret is forced out of her by the heretics who I’ll come back to in the next part.
The two factions represent respectively the Catholics in the know aka the principal’s colleague or peers, who would rather help the priest bury the evidence because they look up to him and the Heretics are those who want to see the secret out, maybe a metaphor for parenting figures who want to use the secret to their benefit regardless of the psychological consequences the kids are going through. I think of the Heretics both as a metaphor for Jessica’s parents who are trying to pressure Lynn and Blake to reveal the secret (maybe testify in court), and rivals of the principal in faith probably as another faction of Catholicism. Both are trying to get something out of the situation by using Lynn and Blake going against the very idea of parenting and faith. They all think they’re doing something right while they are becoming monsters to kids who have become preys. The heretics are represented as anti christians because they represent an authority that wants to challenge the order in place.
The helicopter crash represents the day Lynn reveals the secret to a parenting authority or spread rumours about the events and that’s when the two factions are created.
Crushed by the pressure of knowing what happened to her best friends and feeling pressured on both sides, Lynn feels torn apart between her loyalty her faith and her sense of justice.
After she she lets the secret out she caves in and “dies” from having to heavy a burden to carry at such a young age.
The monster at the school is an avatar for the guilt/PTSD induced by the principal in Jake, who feels like he killed (hanged) Jessica the second he walked out of the room and the relentless hunting of the monster is in my opinion a metaphor for the effort of the principal to manipulate him to no end to make sure he never talks about what he’s seen.
The scary old monster lady reminds me of these hardcore catholics ladies who will blindly hurt anyone who will smear the name of the lord.
The father who helps Blake is another parent whose kid died in the same situation but was too coy to talk after she told him what happened. He probably transferred her to another school to avoid the pressure of challenging the authority/his faith and she ended up killing herself as well. This is why he chooses to help blake and ends up being killed by the lady representing the oppression of faith.
Once the secret is out (the baby is born, the church leader is dead) he finds the light, peace with himself. Like an infant, it’ll be part of his life forever, but he can finally start to live again knowing there’s nothing to fear anymore. Maybe he recovers faith as he find his own truth and understand that both factions were not representing who they said they were. But he’s free of their handle.
Everyone on either side is “dead” because they were all trying to use the secret to their own benefit instead of seeing who was really in need of help, going against the very god and positions they thought they were serving.
The game can be both seen as the journey through ptsd, guilt and faith for Blake, Jessica and Lynn and also as it is : a survival horror with flashbacks.
That’s the beauty of it, it’s about reading between the lines and both are valid stories with a higher moral that is dealing with guilt and creed.
I think that’s long enough. 🙂
YL
Ryan says
I thought a very similar way about it being basically a huge metaphor thing too basically.. glad I wasnt the only one to think of it like that.
Yannick L says
also hope my english isn’t too horrible to read, not my first language
Ari says
Blake was being tormented to become the next to control the Walrider. The fake pregnancy proves the presence of the Morphagenic engine. Blake is told to kill the child. This isn’t to be taken literal as the child isn’t real. What he is actually doing is telling him not to give in to the insanity. The light at the end was likely that of a search team looking for him, but he is simply too broken to realize what is going on, which is what they need to control Walrider. This was all just a ploy to make Blake go insane to control the Walrider.
Du says
I like your theory better. Knoth’s line was probably a metaphor. He killed his followers, but God was still silent, meant that he was referring to Murkoff’s workers as God and why they kept silent about it and didn’t do nothing. I guess when he knew about that, he knew about all the insanity that he had done, killing himself so that he could be truly with god and not live a day with all the suffering and torture he made to himself and his followers. His last line before slitting his throat is to kill the baby, like what you said, is to not give into insanity, but he just did that. He gave into it, and the bright light wasn’t an explosion, It was God, Murkoff’s workers reaching out to him and making him be the next walrider.
What I dont truly understand yet, is the part when blake was running from all the demons. The demons weren’t real right, so how was he able to sustain physical injury and not a mental one. Or he looks it as a physical one in his mind, since raining blood was pouring in?
Ari says
The more I thought about, and after watching Powerpyx’s speedrun, excellent job on it btw, I think I understand a but more.
The baby is actually real. The baby is Walrider. It’s all he has left. He was broken down to a point that it’s all he has left. He is insane, he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. He is ready to submit to it. It is his child. He will do anything to protect it. It’s likely that they realized from the first attempt at controlling Walrider that something just didn’t work.
Now if they were to drive a man insane, punish him mentally with his troubled and traumatic past, kill his wife, and leave him with the last thing he has in the entire world, he would do anything to protect it. Walrider is the baby, and as his father, he will do whatever he needs to protect it.
This seems like a very good candidate to control Walrider now doesn’t it?
Cauthon says
So! Personal take on the story is this! Jessica didn’t hang herself, she was fleeing upstairs from the teacher, he tried to approach her at the top, she panicked and fell backwards over the railing and broke her neck on the stairs, hence why in the vision her neck is showing internal bleeding and all bent. The teacher says it’s not what it looks like and convinces people that she hung herself, which Blake traumatized as a child internalizes as a false memory. This is reinforced in the beginning of the game when Blake interrupts Lynn to say that “Jane Doe” wasn’t murdered since the police say it was a suicide, this sounds to me like a triggered response. Skipping far forward to the very end, there is no baby, hence why Lynn says what she does. The last Video he takes is him stating “She’ll grow up to do all the things she was born to do” In this he’s projecting this imaginary baby to convince himself that he’s saved Jessica now and he’s finally ridding himself of the repressed guilt he felt at her death. Granted this is all brought on by the mind altering effects of the Relay Towers, which seem to simply exaggerate already present mental tendencies, hence why all the desperately religious take their faith to extremism and have religious visions; whereas Blake has visions of his repressed past and starts to take on some of the influence of the town around him ie: seeing the baby, seeing the biblical plague signs, etc.
Murdoc says
I really like this theory! It explains a lot more about Blake’s character in context with the situations he finds himself in. It also makes the hallucination segments more sinister and internally confrontational in nature. And it explains why Blake hears the voice of Father LouterMilch trying to reassure him that he’s not evil.
Cauthon says
So! Personal take on the story is this! Jessica didn’t hang herself, she was fleeing upstairs from the teacher, he tried to approach her at the top, she panicked and fell backwards over the railing and broke her neck on the stairs, hence why in the vision her neck is showing internal bleeding and all bent. The teacher says it’s not what it looks like and convinces people that she hung herself, which Blake traumatized as a child internalizes as a false memory. This is reinforced in the beginning of the game when Blake interrupts Lynn to say that “Jane Doe” wasn’t murdered since the police say it was a suicide, this sounds to me like a triggered response. Skipping far forward to the very end, there is no baby, hence why Lynn says what she does. The last Video he takes is him stating “She’ll grow up to do all the things she was born to do” In this he’s projecting this imaginary baby to convince himself that he’s saved Jessica now and he’s finally ridding himself of the repressed guilt he felt at her death. Granted this is all brought on by the mind altering effects of the Relay Towers, which seem to simply exaggerate already present mental tendencies, hence why all the desperately religious take their faith to extremism and have religious visions; whereas Blake has visions of his repressed past and starts to take on some of the influence of the town around him ie: seeing the baby, seeing the biblical plague signs, etc.
Hallucination lmao says
It’s not hallucination story. It’s about end of days story bible version. The signs of the apocalypse continue to unfold through out the whole game. All birds die, all fish die, blood moon, it rains blood, pestilence takes over the people etc. The girl at the end it’s not Lynn, it’s the missing girl of 8th months preggo that they are doing story on. You get a glimpse of Lynn near the end where her legs are cut off when they are in the mines at the end.
1st sign, THE FALSE TEACHER – THE FALSE CHRIST 2nd sign, everyone will start killing eachother and there won’t be peace on earth 3rd sign, famine 4th sign, death 5th sign, Verses 9-11 of Revelation 6 describe the next of these seven seals. This passage begins, “And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them, that were slain for the word of God …” (Revelation 6:9). This is discussing God’s own people—people who knew God and the true gospel—being killed. 6th sign, great earthquakes before end of the world 7th sign, angelic trumpets before God’s wrath finishes the sinned, and his return to Earth comes again where he’ll rule once more. Revelation 6:17 introduces the seventh seal: “For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?” That seventh seal is spoken of in Revelation 8 and 9. It consists of those seven trumpets.Here is where Christ explained the seventh seal: “And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matthew 24:31). That seventh seal includes seven trumpet plagues that God pours out on mankind. What you hear when you get out of the chappell when you hold the baby at teh end? Angelic trumpets.
The sound you hear and the white light you see it’s Gods Trumpets before each sign begins. Google it.
PowerPyx says
It’s a very interesting spin!
However, I don’t think Lynn’s legs were cut off in the mines. They simply hung her in some weird contraption, maybe to ease her pain or so she wouldn’t have to stand for an extended period of time. On the first playthrough I too thought her legs were cut off but upon closer examination it appears her legs are just tied behind her back.
That murdered woman you mean is Anna Lee, daughter of Ethan. She was found dead by the police. It says in the text intro when the game starts that Blake and Lynn are investigating her (presumed) murder (or alternatively suicide). Then on the initial helicopter ride Blake mentions that the police report concluded she strangled herself to death (so yeah, she’s dead) and they found a lot of mercury in her blood (which I guess was discovered during autopsy, why else would they do a toxicology report). I don’t see how she would be alive and end up back there again. But we never actually see a photo of her so there’s room for interpretation. The scene regarding Lynn’s legs is also intentionally portrayed in such a way that on first glance it looks like her legs are missing.
The theory would be missing the connection to the first game and walrider. According to the flashbacks, Blake went to a catholic school. So he would definitely know the bible and all the signs of the apocalypse you described. If he’s under the influence of mind control his belief system could play into it, and causes him to see these things. So in a way what you described could be what’s going through Blake’s mind and why he sees and hears the things that he does.
Rando says
Wouldn’t Blake hallucinate all that bible imagery BECAUSE he came from a strict Christian school as a child and would, therefore, have been strictly taught about all these things?
Murdoc says
I don’t think ALL of the bible imagery is a hallucination–at least not the birds or fish dying. The birds and fish die after a blast from the radio tower, and we find a document that confirms the broadcasts have an effect on the local wildlife. So it’s entirely possible that some of the biblical signs Blake sees are “real” in the sense that they’re side effects of whatever evil experiments Murckoff are conducting.
Dave says
Hi! First of all, thanks for all the speculations and explanations. It’s really hard to figure out the truth around that game. Something I would like to share, is that event in the mines, where Val blows some dust in our face. Is that just for the sake of the last revelation (so we know what really happened in school)? Or did it influence the whole last part of the game with the big apocalypse thing? Maybe it’s the afterlife Blake is seeing, just before he steps into the big light. Just wanted to throw some ideas in here 🙂 Have a nice day all!
Murdoc says
I really want to understand that bit as well.
Just some info from the first game says
I don’t know if anyone mentioned this, but the first game mentioned that some of the experiments resulted in female patients having psychosomatic or phantom pregnancies which also ended up killing most of their patients. This is most likely what happened to Lynn who had a phantom pregnancies in the span of one night to a couple of days and why she said nothing was there. Blake hallucinated the baby in the end or perhaps wanted to believe that there was a baby there
ggg says
game was very weird. I don’t know if the weird flash made the town people crazy, but someone could have altered the water and foods and spread poison in the air. if a scientist wants to play god and experiment on people then that scientist should be its own lab rat. finding a cure would be top priority…
fdsw says
About Val
Did Red Barrels gave us a bi-sexual character for real ? (Eddie Gluskin from the Whistleblower is being hallucinated from marriage to the girl so I can’t considered him)
Or maybe this game takes place the same events with 1 but Blake is being a victim of the Murkoff experiment somewhere in Arizona?
Victoria Sommerfeldt says
val isn’t bisexual, she’s a trans woman. as for eddie, i think he had childhood trauma relating to finding a wife and having kids when he grew up, so he took it out on other patients when he was admitted to murkoff psychiatric. either that or eddie has internalized homophobia and tried turning the male patients into females so he would feel “normal” and live up to what was expected of him (again, childhood trauma).
Baby says
Maybe at the end Jessica finally forgive Blake, that’s why she said a prayer.
a23845525 says
Just remind you, it is 800 feet, not meters.
PowerPyx says
Thanks, you’re right about that – will update right away (roughly 243 meters then).
Baby says
Somehow the banned scene looks like Lynn’s legs and right arm are cut off but the normal one she seems like being held weirdly. So about that I’m not entirely sure.
DemonsEdge says
this might sound crazy but what if val is modern day Jessica?
KT says
What I thought when she said nothing is there was that she at that point knew she was dying and saw no after life (because sometimes at that moment people see “a light”). So I thought it was that .. I never thought she meant the baby.
DM says
A little confused concerning whatever happened to Val when you wake up in the mines after the final school flashback with Loutermilch. Was that Val being beaten on the ground by the Ezekiel cult? Or did he escape?
Also, there will be DLC, but I get the feeling we’re going to be one of the people working in that Radio Station/Microwave Relay Tower we didn’t get to investigate ;)
Nomad says
This might not be that big of a deal, but anyway the document mentions dr. Ewen Cameron. IRL Donald Ewen Cameron was a Scottish psychiatrist who was involved in project MKUltra mind control stuff .
216prophet says
We know Knoth impregnated his daughter, and had her killed. What if he did that to Lynn? Because it’s a “abomination”? Idk just thoughts
Crax says
Since Outlast 1 we knew that not everything in the game can be explained through science. While the radio tower’s apparent effects is mind control, there’s obviously something supernatural about it. Personally, I thought that the baby does exist, but not in the physical sense. it’s a supernatural baby. This explains how Lynn was suddenly pregnant and gave birth to the baby in what seems to be a single night.
Moreover, the hallucinations seem to suggest that the baby is a reborn Jessica. The ending seem to suggest that Jessica was ultimately reborn from Lynn’s womb, killing Lynn in the process (an act of revenge?) and stealing Blake’s mind completely. Of course, the baby might not be Jessica at all, and simply a monster that manifests and manipulates Blake’s guilt so it can be cared for long enough to work independently on its own.
So ironically, the Christ dudes in the game are actually the ‘good’ guys. They were trying to kill the monsters that are spawning caused by the radio tower’s signal but lost their minds in the process (or they would’ve tried to destroy the radio tower instead… I smell DLC) and ultimately failed in the end.
PowerPyx says
I like the idea that the baby represents Jessica on a deeper spiritual level. The baby that Blake sees is a girl. There’s also a trophy / achievement for finishing the first playthrough, called “Born Again”. Rebirth = Reincarnation; which is a topic often discussed in religion.
So many good theories in here. Keep them coming people 🙂
DiaVoLUX says
This game is related to outlast 1 because the radio waves were from those who made the madness
Kurigosh says
Duuuude, another thing that i realized but i dont know if it will help. When we were at the church and saw knoth in person torturing that woman, it took a reaaaaally long time and a long boat ride to even get close to the mines. What im saying is that there is no way that blake and lynn were able to run from 800 feet down a mine to the church in so little time. So i think blake might have hallucinated even leaving the mine in the first place. So knoth wasnt really there and there was no baby. That would explain the cheer luck that blake had when marta died.
anarchy753 says
You can clearly see her right hand is there, and that her arm’s just in the shadows. Her legs are stung up behind her, you can see blood, but it’s not bloody stumps, it’s the same blood that can be seen down her thighs when she’s with you later.
anarchy753 says
I took some things differently.
Firstly Jessica, in the main flashback where you walk into the stairwell, finding Jessica with a bruised neck and the Father praying on the steps above her, I don’t think he abused her, but that she was dead at that point. Her neck is severely bruised, so it looks as though when the Father chased her she (probably being pushed or pulled by him) fell down the stairs and broke her neck. Rather than her later committing suicide, the Father staged her hanging herself (why else would you hang yourself in school) which would at least partially account for a neck injury, and wrote her suicide note on the blackboard. Blake, traumatised as a child could’ve blocked out/suppressed the events he saw, or was coerced and pressured into believing it by the Father, which makes sense as to why he’d have flashbacks slowly revealing more of what happened.
I think Lynn was pregnant, if only because she mentions some discomfort even from the first scene when she talks about some of her equipment not fitting right in the cramped space of the helicopter which could also be due to some early signs of pregnancy. Whether she actually had a baby or not is to be seen, with the stressful events over what could be months of the game, she could well have lost the baby, and what Blake witnesses is the miscarriage of the corpse, or placenta which could be why Lynn said ‘there’s nothing there.’ As others have said, phantom pregnancy, and death from it were prominent in the women in Outlast.
Ethan’s mention of being “unborn” to me seems to be his way of saying the reverse of born again/reborn, rather than being converted to the faith or following it, he has become disillusioned, initially following what Knoth said until it became so wrong for him that he broke free of the mind control, at least enough to rebel against his child’s mutilation and his grandchild’s murder.
The note from the outsider about the mind control towers mentions that the owls in the area are constantly fucking, which would explain some of the events in the town. Many of the peoples’ visions relate to sexual organs, and many note how turned on they are after the visions. Knoth seems to know something about this because “Scalled Bound” mentions that Knoth has said it isn’t safe to fuck anyone but him. He has cast out anybody afflicted by syphilis (as people have tried to tell the villagers, shown in “Our Quarantine”) and other STIs, letting them become the “Scalled” which are basically just people with untreated syphilis (having neurological problems, sickness, blindness, dementia, paralysis). “Sundries from the Sinful World” mentions Knoth having a supplier of penicillin from the outside world, passing it off to the villagers as a study aid, but is obviously keeping himself disease-free.
It’s possible the ultimate goal of the Murkoff mind control is to produce a child, as the villagers are fucking like rabbits, and Knoth has some idea in his visions that a child born in the village will be the anti-christ, culling all the unborn babies before they can fulfill the prophecy, shown by many women suggesting the children they carry could be the anti-christ, and his proclamation that Lynn is also carrying it. We’ve seen the pit of dead babies in the first area of the game, and there are no young children in the village, clearly no child has survived to be born.
Time seems to be somewhat warped in the game, look at just how many dead babies there are in the midwife’s pit, how Val talks about multiple aborted children in her diary, yet all of this seems to have happened under Father Knoth. From chapter 3 of his gospel; Knoth was 34 when he first experienced visions on the 26th of November, 1971. Since there are notes from 2015, that makes him 78, giving him roughly 44 years to leave civilisation, form a tribe of followers (basically any outcast of society), eventually build Temple Gate, and be exposed to mind altering waves long enough to go insane and follow his crazy aborting ways. The last part may have been fast as Blake shows how a fragile mind takes somewhere between 1 night and 9 months to go completely off the deep end.
anarchy753 says
Also, people are starting to become warped and disfigured like the Variants. Marta is larger and stronger than most people, in “Outside Marta’s Chapel” Knoth says “My intimate companion since your childhood.” This implies she was born or at least raised in Temple Gate, exposed to the mind control, and has a vicious nature, encouraged and nurtured as a killer by Knoth so she’s little more than an attack dog for him to set on people. It’s even possible she is Knoth’s child. Other than her, Laird is crippled, basically still in a child’s body, while Nick is larger and stronger than most. It certainly isn’t confirmed in the game, but I believe they are conjoined twins, one underdeveloped as the other thrives, though strangely reversed in terms of intellect.
Chattle says
I feel like everyone is missing the Mercury bit from the first woman they found dead. After Knoth give Lynn her “examination,” she experiences really bad stomach pains. She was probably a few months pregnant, and they made her drink Mercury. This explains why she didn’t want to tell Blake what had happened to her. The game takes place over the course of one night, after which Lynn has a miscarriage. This also adds context to her “there’s nothing there” comment.
Rupert says
Those of you wondering about Lynn’s “missing” left arm and legs. They are there, she hasn’t been chopped up. I went into the code so I could noclip around and her limbs are obscured by the shadows.
Nameless says
Probably they did it on purpose to confuse the player or just giving more than 1 explanation 🙂
DawSYNC says
I think Jessica did not commit suicide. I believe the priest killed her on the stairs and Blake was too scared to say anything. Blake then helped the priest fake her suicide by hanging her up which is why he feels guilty about the entire thing. In one of the recordings Blake talks about not wanting to get blood on his boots; That must mean that he helped the priest because he did not want to be identified (via boot prints).
I also think the end is the radio-tower being blown up because it malfunctioned and people were having hallucinations while inside the facility. (maybe blown up by the DLC main character?)
That’s my interpretation of the story anyway.
Donut says
When Blake and Lynn are reunited out of the mines, doesn’t the recording after that have him say he got out with Jessica instead of Lynn? That would explain why he says it’s cold out, he still thinks he’s hallucinating and that he got out of the school with Jessica.
EConomy says
Im going to say that this Baby is real.Because Knoth says at the end It is to Strong to get killed already,but it was just Born and it is the First Baby we See in this game.The stomach of Most women were cut Open to Might Kill the antichrist.One proove is that there Are so many dolls of children.The Woman Are missing new borns and These Knoth People Are not behaving like Christians,the only think they Are christians.So this Baby is the only person,who regret nothing in life and has no sins.The real Christian,who is Supported By god.
Thats why Martha got killed By a cross,from god,to Protect the new born.
Val and the heretics,who Are not affected By the signal, Are living in the mines to Protect the birth of the new Born to end this nightmare.They didnt kill Blake because why would they,he would not kill Lynn.They like him because he’s the Outsider who creates the new Born without sins.
Like Ethan,he acted like a real Christian and Protected his daughter.So his belief helped him to not ne affected By These Signals.
Maybe the light at the end is god?or a Signal,so Blake Reminds his pray with Jessica.
Crimson_bort says
So after taking in tons of different theories, and some notes from the previous games I have a theory. The note about the relay mentions the driven believers becoming projectors. I interpet this as they project their insanity on everyone else. That’s the only way all the villagers believing in the same crazy stuff makes sense. They are all having Knoth’s ( the most driven believer’s) madness projected on them. This is aided by high levels of mercury in the environment. (Based on the mention of high levels of mercury in Jane Does Blood) Blake succumbs to this, which is why he see’s the baby that Knoth believed to be real. (Which is also a symbolic representation of him letting go of his guilt about Jessica) Blake was force fed Lairds blood, which could have also been high in Mercury and aided in his insanity. Also has mystery stuff blown into his face at the end. This would explain why Lynn does not see the baby, she wasn’t all ready insane enough from mercury poisoning to be fully affected by the relay tower. Also someone mentioned the psychosomatic pregnancies from Whistleblower. That is definitely (IMO) why Lynn acknowledges shes pregnant, but does not see the baby. The light at the end is either blake dying, or the relay tower exploding. Still not sure on that one. Jessica was definitely killed in the stairway, probably unintentionally by the priest. If it was intentional, I would say its because he raped her and impregnated her and wanted to cover it up. There’s no indication of this in the game, but it definitely would fit with the theme. I know I’m missing some stuff here….
ElleBee says
I think all of that is fairly possible. It is kind of weird that Blake keeps saying Jessica even when he means to say “Lynn”. I agree there is some guilt factor there, although maybe we’re gonna have to wait for a DLC to understand better or get more confused!
And I also think that Lynn was not pregnant and Blake unintentionally killed her; I think he actually opened her up and he hallucinated the birth and the baby, the only real thing was her death. I think he was on a very high level of brainwash that Lynn was not in yet; I guess they kept her safe in the mines and didn’t blow that weird dust on her face for “the baby’s sake”.
Also, I think Val’s people(?) were a part of some different experiment, or maybe they just reacted differently because even physically they look a lot like Murkoff’s doing. Idk, might be.
Nazem says
The baby’s umbilical chord is cut by itself idk if this ties up with the baby being an illusion but I hope that helps.
Snake says
Hello powerpyx , been following your guides for years dude, i wanted to say that i shared ur story explaination at gamefaqs and i mentioned that it was your work , hopefully ur gonna track it , if ur uncomfortable with such action just let me know and i’ll request a removal right away , i only wanted to share such awesome story telling.
Nameless says
I think that the microwave from the tower not only could send signals to the people at the area, but also could receive the thought, memories or something like that. And the tower would translate the thought from people into signal and send it to others. That’s why Val would become more like female by the time game going on, because the thought she believes he is female affected others by the tower, which getting stronger and stronger. That could explain the baby question too, because father keep saying the baby by speaker all the time around the village
antonpp says
Yet another theory.
Everyone gets crazy thanks to that mind-control thing. And all around especially mad about children and pregnant women. It goes to that point when people affected by hallucinations think about any woman as if she is pregnant. So happens to newcomers: good christians think that Lynn is pregnant, heretics think she is pregnant and the protagonist starts thinking the same in the end.
But imagine the most obvious plot twist: Lynn has never been pregnant. Of course, the story is crazy enough, but let’s just stick to the fact that a child cannot be born in a day.
People in the village are already crazy when the story takes place and there is nothing special about them thinking that Lynn is pregnant. On the other hand, in the very beginning Blake seems to be quite surprised with the news that his wife is pregnant. But more insane he gets, more he thinks that that is true. But what happened with Lynn’s belly? Well, I guess heretics could fill her womb up with stones or something. Thus, she dies not because of birth-giving, but because of the wounds he got back in the mines. Her last words fit perfectly: the depth of the mines kept her sane and thus she understands that there is no child.
Btw. Excuse my grammar, English is not my native language.
Athenis says
When Jessica and Blake are talking about him and Lynn kissing, they are talking about the play they are in. He says they have not kissed yet, wanting to wait until the real show instead of rehearsals, only doing a cheek-kiss instead. Even though it’s clear Jessica likes Blake, and Blake likes Lynn, no one was “together”.
I’m also pretty sure Jessica died from her injuries falling down the stairs, and the hanging was to cover it up. All the things the priest says to Blake as the game goes on seemed very prodding, like trying to get Blake to do something he doesn’t want to do. It would make sense given Jessica can appear with or without the rope marks at the end. If the clues were found showing her death wasn’t caused by hanging, the rope marks wouldn’t be there.
RosalieZ says
Suppose that all recordings in the showcase are subjective, then:
1. It DID rain blood ( or something seemed as blood) in the town in the late stage of the game.
2. It seems like some unknown power broke all recordings that were taken in the school, and made the voice tracks backward.
3. In those broken recordings, backward messages show an anonymous man submitting a murder to Jessica. This man claimed that he had a “talent” that could pass to “her”, and “she” would use the “talent” better.
4. There WAS a woman running out of the mine with Blake, but, neither her face nor her body showed up in the recordings, no evidence to judge her identity or physical state.
5. In the end of the game, Blake said “she will do everything that she was born to”. Who is the female that Blake indicated?
6. No sign to judge if there was truly a baby by Blake’s recordings.
RosalieZ says
The fully reliable deductions so far:
1. The theory that this story was totally imagined by Blake is false. Videos prove that the crazy town was true, so was the helicopter accident at the beginning.
2. No sign to judge the actuality of the school scenes.
3. According to Blake’s video recordings, the characters that 100% acted in this story are: Blake, Lynn, the pilot, Ethan, Marta, Josiah, Knoth, Laird&Nick. The existence of all other people is suspicious given the unstable mental state of Blake. However, the dead people that recorded by Blake are absolutely real.
coyfox says
Ok here is the story as I see it, Papa Knoth as the prophet sets all the hallucinations in motion with his scripture. Basically he “predicts” the end of days with the blood rain, the locusts, the syphilis plague ect. All of it is mentioned in the scriptures that you pick up, and then you start experiencing more and more of it as Blake falls deeper under the mind control/hallucinations created by the Murkoff Project. This explains why Knoth and Blake at the end both see the baby. The baby isn’t real. Everyone is just listening to Knoth’s prophecies and falling under one giant spell. The Heretics welcome the antichrist, the Christians want to kill it.
Now remember, Lynn does get hit with microwaves in the very beginning before she goes into the mines. Someone mentioned it earlier in the comments, but in the first game, the women in the insane asylum were showing symptoms of pregnancy and then would give birth but there was no baby. This is an actual phenomenon that occurs. Basically you believe that you are pregnant so intently that you body responds in turn, releasing hormones that cause you to show symptoms of pregnancy and appear pregnant. It it safe to assume that after Knoth inspects Lynn and proclaims that she is pregnant with the antichrist, which then Lynn even questions herself (Blake asks…wait are you?…Lynn responds…No,no…I can’t be…I don’t know…)that with the power of the Murkoff microwaves Lynn experiences this phenomenon.
So now in the end of the game when Lynn is giving birth, she actually believes that she is, compounded by Blake believing she is after being exposed to a greater majority of the microwaves, she looks visually pregnant to him, whereas she did not at all in the beginning. To her surprise there is nothing there after “giving birth” and says, “there’s nothing there”. She can see this likely due to the fact that she hasn’t been exposed to the waves 800ft below in the mines. She dies because, well let’s face it, considering everything Blake experienced it’s unfathomable that he’s not dead. (Side note, perhaps he’s not dead for the same reason the Doctor after removing all his skin in Whistleblower didn’t die from shock. Less under the mind control waves, Lynn is more susceptible) She is also probably already starting to die when they are going through the storm (She mentions being cold and hot like a fire, Blake sees this as the environment changing, but it may just be Lynn’s body experiencing temperature changes. )
As for Jessica, Blake and her were not fooling around in the biblical sense. They were in 4th grade and Blake’s responses to Jess infer that he is naive and innocent in response to the kissing scene of the play that Blake and Lynn are in.
The father/teacher was molesting Jessica, this is apparent in the way he talks to Blake about not understanding his feelings and how he should go pray. It’s also apparent because Jessica is already afraid of him before anything happens meaning that it has probably happened before and which is why she wants Blake to stay with her. This is further emphasized by the imagery of the demon version of the father/priest in Blakes dreams (tongues/groping hands) along with the thematic sexual abuse of Papa Knoth’s “children”. Her father is likely beating her which is why she posts on the email forum, why the father/teacher threatens to call her parents because he knows that she is being beaten and knows that she won’t tell them what’s happening to her.
After the priest chases her when she screams, she ends up falling down the stairs (because she is pushed or falls while running from him we don’t know) and breaks her neck. The priest covers up what happened by making it look like suicide. Suicide is very taboo in Christianity. Those who commit suicide go to hell. Thus adding additional guilt to Blake never coming clean about what he saw along with his guilt of not staying with Jessica and preventing her death in the first place.
Lonely Gamer Girl says
That is how I saw it as well
Desperate Ho says
But I wanted Val to lick my face again…. 🙁
va1iantbrian says
So just an old document from whistleblower for thought, there was a note saying that exposure to the morphogenic engine from females were fake pregnancies leading to death…could this be related to Lynn’s fate perhaps?
Chavamara says
They mention something similar in the tie-in comic, “The Murkoff Account” so it must be connected. You can check it out on the Red Barrel website.
Golden Witch says
Who knows if any or how much of this is even real considering we are playing.a guy who becomes more and more insane and delusional as the game progresses.
Consider this:
You are a delusional MC with a traumatizing past seeing bloodthirsty people everywhere who obstruct your way from getting to a woman. “Nothing else matters but Lynn”.
And for these rapists, murderers and completely fucked in the head people, you are a messiah.
For all we know “theres nothing there” was simply a reference to Blake imagining his relationship to Lynn and the entire game is actually from the POV of a psychopath stalking his beloved who saw everyone else as his enemies from getting to rape her.
Itachi324 says
This game can be related to this : “People Live their Lives bound by what they accept as correct and true. That is how they define “Reality” . But what does it mean to be “correct” or “true”? They are merely vague concepts… Their “Reality” may all be a mirage. Can we consider them to be simply living in their own world, shaped by their beliefs?
Lonely Gamer Girl says
It’s implied that Jess died when she fell/was pushed down the stairs and then was framed as a suicide, as Blake (can’t remember the exact point, sorry) goes (paraphrased) “she hung herself, wait, no,”
a reason why this could be the truth is that it was obviously a tramatic memory, one that Blake likely blocked out as a child. As he got closer to the towers (in the hellicopter) he begins to remember more, starting with his dream. These dreams obviously aren’t a common occurence due to Lynn’s “I haven’t thought about her in ages”
Blake remembers Jess’s death as a suicide because he still went to that school, and possibly just blocked it out alltogether. As the mind-controlling becomes stronger as he is around them more, his memories become ‘unlocked-‘ he can see them more clearly and is remembering his trauma. Near the end, when his mind finally breaks, he can remember what really happened: Jess died on that stairwell and the entire thing was framed as a suicide by hanging (implied by when she screams as she is hanging from a noose, as well as how the demon drags her up- she’s not hanging of her own accord)
Of course, that’s just what I think. I would love to hear your responses~
Chavamara says
That’s what I got out of it.
Chavamara says
I have a theory on why Lynn “appeared” pregnant. In the tie-in comic, “The Murkoff Account, Issue #2”, the head of the Mount Massive I.T. department, a Ms. Haas, believes that and appears to be pregnant. However, it is discovered that her pregnancy is fake, and is a side effect of the Mount Massive experiments that is affecting most of the women working on the site. Perhaps Lynn’s “pregnancy” is a similar case, where she developed a psychosomatic pregnancy from the effects of the radio signal which was accelerated by being brought in close proximity to the tower and everyone believing she was pregnant.
KunalVjester says
There isn’t an Umbellical chord toooo so the child is surely a hallucination I guess
Bex says
Regarding the initial Jane Doe having a lot of mercury in her blood, before penicillin they used to treat syphilis with injections of mercury. If the syphilis didn’t cause madness, then the mercury usually would. It’s a stab in the dark but might be an explanation!
PowerPyx says
Very interesting find! Would definitely fit the story line. Actually, now that you mentioned it — there is a document saying that Knoth takes penicillin. Meaning he probably suffers from syphilis and that’s how he’s treating it. We know for a fact that Knoth forced himself on Anna Lee (the Jane Doe / Ethan’s daughter). Knoth may have transmitted the illness to her. We’re on to something here.
Steve says
Was the blood rain at the end was just a hallucination or was it real..ANSWER PLEASE
(I’m not yelling.)
PowerPyx says
It was a hallucination.
Levi says
My theory about the town attacking everyone is that the mind control makes them relive terrible memories and their unconscious state acts violently towards that. That may also be why Blake wakes up in different areas. I don’t know. I could be wrong.
Ken says
did u guys know about this website?
murkoffcorp.lu
Aolaris says
hey there, just wanted to tell you some of my theory:
Well, in most of the points I agree with you, BUT there is one thing: the achievement and Blake losing his mind.
If you listen and watch closely (as someone who only watched let’s-Plays of it, I might have seen things differently / more in detail), Blake starts talking about Jessica in the Videos and at the end, he says something like ‘She has done what she had to, to be born’, so that might mean, he thinks Jessica is his little daughter, who has taken vengeance on Lynn for taking her ‘boyfriend’ (Yes yes, it is not really plausible).
Also, the part when he mentions snow… In the school when you run after the priest and Jessica, in order to help her and find her all bruised up, she is still moving and breathing (yes I know she could have died right afterwards, but i don’t think so!), so I think Blake was talking about him and Jessica finding a grown up in order to help them with what happened to Jessica, while he was walking with Lynn and recording.
By the way: have you tried comparing the prayer at the end with the corrupted videos? Maybe the prayer says the same thing as in the videos?
Keely says
I’m not sure if this has been addressed, but Jessica did not commit suicide. It was clear to me that the fall down the stairs from fighting the priest broke her neck. I posit the priest strung her up after the fact to make make it appear as a suicide, and convinced the poor, impressionable protagonist that it was all in his head.
Alejandro says
Es muy parecido a evil within, el personaje estuvo conectado a una máquina todo el tiempo y esto es muy parecido con outlast , lo mas seguro el despertó dentro de su sueño y todo lo que paso fue causa de la maquina de microndas por la misma culpa de la empresa del primer outlast , o otra teoría puede ser que al final fue una bomba que mando murkof para acabar con el pueblo , porque ellos supieron que el experimento había fallado eso podría ser una buena teoria.
(iFox17) PixelDaFoxYT says
WHY IS THIS STILL A THING
Kylie says
Jessica didn’t commit suicide, Father L was a dirty pedo who did things to her, hence her fear of him, he killed her by pushing her down the stairs and convinced Blake not to tell anyone then hung her up to make it look like suicide, the monster of Father L even plays with himself, the many arms likely represent how he could’nt keep his hands to himself
Kylie says
This info for example:
As Blake is leaving he hears Jessica scream. She starts calling out his name for help and telling Loutermilch to leave her alone. She starts running away from Loutermilch who goes after her. Blake follows them to the doors leading to a stairwell. It is there he discovers Jessica, badly beaten and neck apparently broken. Loutermilch, at the top of the stairs, tells Blake that the situation is not what it seems.
It is heavily implied that Loutermilch physically and sexually assaulted Jessica. School tapes in the game show that Loutermilch had an unhealthy obsession with her. He also rejoices at her death being a way he has escaped culpability for his actions. It is implied that Loutermilch had covered up Jessica’s death as a suicide to escape punishment.
The reason Blake feels regret is because he stayed silent and didn’t tell the truth surrounding her death. Though, at the end of the game Blake realizes he was manipulated by Loutermilch to stay silent and that it wasn’t really his fault. As Jessica doesn’t seem antagonistic towards him this may confirm his belief. Jessica may have understood that Blake was not completely at fault as Loutermilch had a veiled way of threatening people. This is shown when he first discovers the duo and tells Blake that the boy surely doesn’t want to get into trouble.
Kylie says
Also there is a theory that Blake desperately wanted their to be a baby, he wanted to raise that baby to live a full life to make up foe 10 year old Jess having her life cut so tragically and brutally cut short, after all the baby is a girl. The baby has no shadow, the umbilical cor is already cut, the baby came out too fast, shortly after the baby is suddenly clean and swaddled in clothing that came from who knows where. The Mukaltra experiment Caused phantom pregnancies, maybe Lynn seeing she’d given birth to nothing realised it wasn’t real, hence, there’s nothing there. she did get brainwashed a bit aswel but being underground most the time the effects were far more minimal. She looked injured so maybe the heretics did stuff to her and she died of blood loss, or someone had a theory the baby was planted in her!, they could have, and Lynn saying there’s nothing there is her, just before she dies, realising there’s no heaven or god and all that, just darkness. Hopefully the comics and dlc will clear up these uncertainties
Ara says
Anna Lee was killed by Pauline Glick from the Murkoff Account (the Outlast Comic). Paul (Anna Lee’s uncle) was killed by Paul Marion.
Steven says
Hey there!! Let me throw in some thoughts ;-)
I think there is really so much room for a theory to come up with and i share some points that you’ve mentioned.There are many things to talk about but i try to keep it short ;-):
1.I think nothing is real, his dreams and the “real world” is only inside his head! Sounds crazy?
But think about it… we are all sure that the journey he is on is about guilt and his demons from the past.It is pretty obvious that the father from the catholic church is the monster, chasing him in his dreams… the scar, his voice, you can’t miss that. Also the way how Red Barrel designed the monster makes it clear….it got so much hands ( image for touching and molesting) and a huge tongue. The fact that Blake was scared and ran away as a child when Jessica was molested…this guilt of not helping her and then not even telling anyone( he makes that clear in the reversed messages in his dreams), leading to her death is still “chasing” him as an adult! That is why the father(Monster = Past) is chasing you the whole game :-).
2. I think we all could’ve expected that Red Barrel is trying to make a connection to Outlast. Mentioning the radiotower and seeing the lights before your halluzinations is not a coincidence:-). But i don’t think that everybody is going crazy, like all the people in town, in the mines….everybody except Lynn?And is it possible, that different people got the same halluzinations at the same time( Knoth and Blake with the baby?) But imagine…what would all of this mean if you knew that Blake is also a “patient”…i’ll get back to that later ;-)
3.The theory that Lynn is sane and the others are crazy is bit misleading to me. First of all, she also admits that she is pregnant…right after the rescue. She also sees how “Marta” got killed by a staff coming from above and none of them is wondering how that could be possible! So if she is sane and Blake isn’t, at least she would have said something to him, no?;-)
Before i come to my conclusion…let my ask you a few questions:
Is it a concidence that the game makes it very clear, that towards the end, you take an Elevator to go deeeeep down( 800 feet i think),after that you are taking the stairs to go even deeper and after you find Lynn and try to escape, the mine collapses and everything is falling apart?
Coincidence that at the moment you rescue Lynn, a heavy storm is outside!! Even with lightning and stuff….out of nowhere you still get chased the last time by Marta, but as soon as you got the “Baby”, the storm is over and left EVERYBODY dead outside??
So this is how i see it…maybe if you think of everything as images that stand for something, makes it easier to understand what happened:
In my opinion, as soon as the first light wave hits you, nothing after that is real! The Journey with Lynn is in fact the Journey of himself dealing with his guilt that plays inside his head, deep in his subconscious, triggered by the light wave. Because of the massive guilt he feels, somehow the lights made him come up with a story about a girl he needs to rescue( like Jessica), he filled the story with characters ….characters that equal the side of Blake, that are clinging to this feeling of guilt because, they were created out of it :-)! That’s why almost eveybody in this game is trying to stop Blake from rescuing the Baby…that is why Knoth is trying to kill the Baby…the Baby is a start of something new…here it is the start for Blake of forgiving himself, knowing that he was just a scared child back then. Knoth in my opinion is the guy who equals all of the negative feelings ( blame, fear, sadness etc…) that were born through the experience with Jessica’s death and that is why Knoth wants to stop the Birth of the child…because as Blake forgives himself( the birth of the Baby) Knoth has no longer the possibility to exist…so he kills himself!! That is why he is talking about the Baby at the end! The storm and Marta at the end …both things that are trying to stop them from having the Baby! But as soon as he forgives himself, the storm is over and everybody is dead outside…meaning that fight inside is over and this world he made up, with all its characters in it died! I think the last scene made that clear… i saw the ending with the signs of a rope around her neck with the pale face….so you know that is not real too. She is telling him…: Don’t worry….i’ll never let you go and you’ll never let me go”, meaning…it’s ok, don’t worry( forgivness), we will still always be together.
So guys! Don’t mark me on everything, but that is how i see the story, and i think besides of all that: it was pretty scary game!! Just great :-)
narkar says
It’s crazy, I scrolled through all the responses and you’re the first to have the same thoughts as I do.
It just makes so much sense that everything in this game is just a dream. There are two possibilities for this, I think.
1. After the crash, Blake is captured by the Murkoff Corp. and since the crash probably was traumatizing they use him as a patient. What if Murkoff found a way to inject dreams into the patient’s heads, a bit like in Inception? Or if you remember Cube Zero, where they analyze the dreams and thoughts of the subject. If you put those two together, Murkoff would have a perfect way to create a level of insanity and traumata to make Blake the new host for the Walrider.
2. Blake is already dead (right after the crash) and we are playing through his twisted thoughts right before death.
Both of these theories would help with some unsolved mysteries:
If Blake is dead or in a coma and just dreams all of this, he doesn’t need food or gets supplied with it via machines.
This would also explain the jumps in time and place, since all of this isn’t actually happening in real time.
Another point is the sudden beams of light throughout the game. This could either be him leaving the coma or dream state for a short time or his last efforts of his body to stay alive (light at then end of the tunnel before death).
The connection to Murkoff within the storyline could either come from the published Whistleblower documents which he might have read or (if he is a patient) part of the Inception.
What do you think?
Stryker2402 says
In the end when you finally get Lynn back she’s yelling that the baby is coming. Maybe there was a baby it’s just since everyone around had been brainwashed they all got it in their heads it was the antichrist. And if you notice, it said there was no shadow when the baby was born well if you look closer there was a shadow. If it’s Blake’s or not there was a shadow as he pulled away, but there was no shadow for either the baby or Blake’s arms while the baby was being delivered.
As for Jessica. It would make sense that she was assaulted but this game overall has been completely surrounded by sexual senses. The writings and gospels always make it very sexual and continues to talk about sexual acts so it leads me to believe that Jessica could have possibly been sexually harassed or even raped which lead her to commit suicide. Father Loutermilch made Blake leave the room but Jessica was obviously scared to be left alone with him. When Blake found her at the bottom of the stair case you could hear Father Loutermilch saying “I don’t know what you think you saw…” So obviously Jessica was refusing and he took a different approach and pushed her down the stairs or assulted her.
Any thoughts?
Junky says
I think this is the worst psycho trip i have ever witnessed and pray to god every day please or he will flash you. may knoth be with you
AddaCZ says
If you look through the game several times a month, you will see that the month changes. So Lynn was probably pregnant when she was in a helicopter, but she’d kept it in front of Blake. Knoth told her she was pregnant. At the end of the game Knoth can not hurt a child because he’s not his father and so he tells Blake to kill him if he likes this world, that’s all. So the baby must be Blake. Those glimpses are definitely the Murkof project, and they make everyone go out there, but the baby should be real. Although Lynn says there is nothing in the world before death, she could talk about the afterlife because she was a believer. The moon in the game indicates that time is changing, so it could not go into the game just for the night, but for weeks or even months. According to my Lynn, she was already pregnant, and there was a longer period of time than an evening, as some wrote, but months too. So the baby could be real, and as some people wrote that there was no shadow in one scene, so you can not see it clearly, because the baby is so small that the shadow does not really see it. It’s true that Blake is a little crazy at the end , But I think the child is real, but the whole truth can only be learned from developers.
Deme Tav says
Suppose Knoth raped Lynn and thought he got her pregnant (he couldn’t have known without certain advance technology which he doesn’t have). That could also be why Lynn didn’t want to tell Blake what the Christians did to her. The raping theory could be backed up Knoth wanting Ethan to kill the baby within Anna and also wanting Blake to kill the baby when he had it in his hands.
john says
hi
Nameless says
‘sup 🙂
john says
i think there’s probably no baby
Alex says
Maybe the skinned pilot was actually Lynn but Blake blocked it out of his mind just like what happened with Jessica.
mamath says
i’m surprise that no one said that the baby might actually is jessica reincarnated. because at the end we see jessica and blake praying,and tell somethink that the should be togeether forever,or some shit
Dean says
When he talks about how it’s snowing he’s thinking about Jessica and getting her home that day after she was attacked
DAVED says
This is old, but the feedback loop is why they both see the baby. After a certain point one person’s hallucinations influence others.
The September 15th note in the game.
Matt L says
After my first playthrough I was very confused about what had unfolded at Temple Gate, but after just finishing the story a second time I think I have a solid theory.
Blake was raised Catholic, obviously a firm believer in God & a devout Christian.
One of Jessica’s hangman clues in his Catholic school hallucinations spells out “Not telling is the same as lying”
I think Jessica’s suicide was a cover up from Loutermilch to hide the fact he broke Jessica’s neck throwing her down the stairs. This was what I took to have happened rather than a mere violent assault, due to Loutermilch being further up the stairs when Blake finds Jessica dead on the stairs.
My theory is that none of the events at Temple Gate ever actually happened. The morphogenic engine powered by the radio tower caused an EMP disruption to the helicopter’s systems causing it to crash, possibly killing Lynn outright & leaving Blake injured on the verge of death, while also slipping into madness from the effects of the morphogenic engine pulses more & more over time as life slipped away from him. In Outlast 1 it is stated that the engine has much more profound effects on those who have experienced severe psychological trauma, which was why it was used on asylum inmates at Mount Massive during the Walrider experiment.
I believe the entire events of Outlast 2 are an effect of the morphogenic engine on Blake’s guilt for not coming forward about Jessica’s murder at the hands of Loutermilch, while he is also having a religion induced “near death experience”. The name Temple Gate could be a reference to the gates of heaven (or hell) as he is going through this near death experience. The religious symbols of armageddon throughout the game could also be explained by this. The raining blood, the siphilis enduced sores & boils on the Scalled, the plague of locusts, fire & brimstone from the sky & earthquakes in the mines & even the death of the first born child at the hands of a horned beast (possibly Val in her crown of branches) are Christian symbolism of armageddon from the book of Revelations.
I think the entire game is just Blake losing his mind over the guilt of staying silent about Jessica’s murder, as his life flashes before his eyes & his terror of the book of revelations coming to fruition, due to exposure to the morphogenic engine warping his sanity, while dying in the wake of the heli crash.
As the game ends and the light of the sun fills the screen, this could be the final moment as he sees the light in the tunnel, that so many people claim to see during near death experiences, as his life force finally leaves him.
Tim says
Frankly, I think it’s just bad storytelling. I strongly dislike stories that are left to “interpretation”. To me that’s the writers failing to tie the story together, so they expect us to do the work.
me says
well there are a lot of comments here but I’ll just say thanks for making this. I was confused by the ending at first but this really cleared things up. I think there should have been more hints regarding the microwave antenna, but it’s clear the writers knew what they were doing and tried to make it confusing.
QueenSerena420 says
when blake talks about the snow during the storm when you first get with Lynn, he actually says Jessica’s name and says they need to find a grown-up and it wasn’t his fault. I believe in his mind he was a child again and saved Jessica and not left her alone.