An Analysis and Discussion of the Cryostasis Story

[czerro]

I don't think we are to believe that the crew of the North Wind was stranded in the arctic for 2 decades to rescue Alex at the end. I think you are correct about Kronos but a little off about "the comfortable ship". The ship was always The North Wind, but for whatever reason there was the possibility that The North Wind wasn't going to exist to pick up Alex. A cyclical paradox: The North Wind can only exist to pick up Alex if Alex can somehow influence the events of the past to save the North Wind. In the end they save each other resolving Kronos' dilemma: consolidating the two timelines into one and resolving the paradox.

Edit: I think I may have been too focused on the Why and How of the paradox. I think in most western entertainment/cinema we expect everything to be explained at the end, but this particular story isn't really reliant on the Why or How. I think we are simply to understand that Something occured that resulted in two diverging timelines of which Alex (the player) is the only one capable of repairing. We don't need to know the specifics, only that 1) Alex was to meet the North Wind for pickup in 1980-something 2) The North Wind became icebound in 1960-something. Why or how this happened isn't important to the player, they are simply acting as an agent of Kronos to fix the paradox.

[sp3000]

The hooded figure walking around has some serious significance in the story.

He appears in three forms.
The First is coat covered in bloody hands. The second is something that resembles the scales of a fish or dark stones. The third is a antiquated world map. Each of these forms stands next to the main characters at the very end.

Now on a replay of the game, I noticed that the figure with the world map appears right before the second in command officer radios HQ telling them of the captain's incompetence. I think this is supposed to mean that the world is arriving on the ship whereas it was previously isolated from any contact with the outside world.

The game is trying to make a commentary about the problems of humanity and the world. This is also evident when at one point there is a globe trapped in icy chains. It's important to note that this occurs right after the prison scene where you see the world through the perspective of your enemies. The end of this scene has you entering the mind of the guy who is hitting the pan on the floor. You then see the world being formed as we know it today. The events on the North Wind are perhaps meant to mirror the problems of the real world.


The most central theme of the game is the inability of people to understand each other and consequently close their mind to others. You can see this almost everywhere, from the story of Danko, to the infighting between the Captain, the executive officer, the security officer, and the engineer, to the way that each enemy is literally locked inside their mind with a prison of their own doing. Every problem in the game arises from the close mindedness of each character, their inability to understand and accept what others think.

As the Captain says "And so the thin layer of human knowledge cracked under the weight of nature."