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Community Playthrough #29: Syberia
Although, in my eyes after the Oscar incident in Syberia 2 I hated Hans with a passion, hoping he would fail in his mission or at least get stepped by a mammoth.
He he - I must admit that I simply doesn’t remember Sybberia 2 as well as the first. There are individual scenes I remember, but not the story as a whole. So I guess my final opinion on this will have to wait until I have also finished the sequel, though I do remember that I enjoyed the story in the first much more.
You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ
Iz - I happen to have a pilot’s license, although it is not current. IFR, or Instrument Flight Rules is often joked about by pilots as meaning I Follow Railroads. An appropriate possibility for this game, No?
He he I didn’t know that - But not really.
Even though we don’t actually see any track switches in the game, then I find it hard to believe that the rails starting in Valadine is only a one way track for Aralbad, and without Oscar she wouldn’t know which direction to go in.
Besides given the option of taking a (luxurious) train that is already there and is free, compared to making arrangements and paying for a small plane to follow the tracks, then I think I would also have chosen the train. Not to mention that she would probably run into similar problems with getting fuel for the plane, as she does having to wind up the train at each station.
You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ
Iz - I happen to have a pilot’s license, although it is not current. IFR, or Instrument Flight Rules is often joked about by pilots as meaning I Follow Railroads. An appropriate possibility for this game, No?
He he I didn’t know that - But not really.
Even though we don’t actually see any track switches in the game, then I find it hard to believe that the rails starting in Valadine is only a one way track for Aralbad, and without Oscar she wouldn’t know which direction to go in.Besides given the option of taking a (luxurious) train that is already there and is free, compared to making arrangements and paying for a small plane to follow the tracks, then I think I would also have chosen the train. Not to mention that she would probably run into similar problems with getting fuel for the plane, as she does having to wind up the train at each station.
I’ll give you the luxurious train. But Anna’s letters to Hans always pointed east. So doing an IFR from the Valadilene station would not have been a stretch. Although, we don’t know the fuel economy of the plane. Moot point, but something that is fun to consider.
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
There’s a difference of course between Kate’s motives and the player’s reaction to the events. She isn’t “vindictive,” but when she walks towards the plane she obviously decides that Marson’s business plans aren’t her priority any longer (compare the sequel), and I don’t think she is at all interested in the employment opportunities in Valadilene (besides the fact that it looks like the manufacturing is mostly done by automatons). For the player, her reaction is rewarding (the bullying boss who is after a big deal), and the same goes for her reaction to Dan.
Kate’s - short but already prepared - struggle to choose for the adventure in stead of working on another big case is in fact - nicely - shown twice: at the plane, but also at the moment when she walks towards the plane (her hand touches her mouth, showing her hesitation, and she is shaking her head).
Not only Helena needs an automaton; Hans has become an old man as well. The sequel makes it clear why Hans is travelling westwards to Aralbad, as he needs the train and Oscar to complete his journey.
Not only Helena needs an automaton; Hans has become an old man as well. The sequel makes it clear why Hans is travelling westwards to Aralbad, as he needs the train and Oscar to complete his journey.
Perhaps, at the point I have reached in the sequel, it still hasn’t been revealed yet, and I can’t remember this from my previous playthrough. But even if it is true, then Hans is a resourceful man, and he has spend a lot of time and resources preparing the train ride, just think of all the winding mechanisms he has made along the way. If it was only because he needed Oscar and the train for the last leg of the journey, then I think he could have found another way, so I believe wanting to have his sister by his side when he reaches the end of his journey, is also an important part of his motive.
You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ
I’ve finished the game, but I’m still thinking about the previous chapter. The game has used a subtle color palette up to this point, when suddenly, during the performance in the factory, everything is highlighted in red. Why?
Here’s a shot of the factory before the performance, showing the complex web of pipes, all in black and gray. You can see the organ pipes in the background.
Here’s the factory during the performance.
And after.
Does the red highlighting represent Borodine’s anger or his madness or his romantic feelings for Helena? And what’s the physical source of the red lighting?
Here Borodine is, standing behind Kate—Phantom-of-the-Opera-like—rubbing his hands together in delight as Helena sings.
Here’s a metrical translation of “Dark Eyes,” the song Helena sings (if you replay the song, you can match the words to the tune)—it’s taken from Wikipedia.
Oh, these gorgeous eyes, dark and glorious eyes,
Burn-with-passion eyes, how you hypnotise!
How I_ adore you so, how I fear you though,
Since I saw you glow! Now my spirit’s low!Darkness yours conceal mighty fires real;
They my fate will seal: burn my soul with zeal!
But my love for you, when the time is due,
Will refresh anew like the morning dew!No, not sad am I, nor so mad am I;
All my comforts lie in my destiny.
Just to realise my life’s worthiest prize
Did I sacrifice for those ardent eyes!
Re: the contract. Kate doesn’t have time to put it on the plane. Just telling the pilot what it’s for and who it should be sent to would have made her too late for the train. Her boss thinks she can get back from Aralbad in the middle of Russia to New York in one day with the contract? Even if she did hop a ride on that small plane—no way! Kate’s boss seems to be the sort who thinks he gets more done by demanding the impossible and shouting at everyone. (And, undoubtedly he wonders why all the attorneys under him only last a couple of years before they move on to another firm or another branch of the law.)
Taking the train to the destination Hans had arranged for Anna made sense for Kate. Hans is a real mystery, but it was solidly within the realm of possibility that he would arrange to be at one of the stops on the train route. I think Hans severely underestimated the difficulty of the journey though—I doubt Anna would have been able to accomplish everything Kate did to make it as far as Aralbad.
I’ve heard this game described as “easy,” and for me it wasn’t. Taking the puzzles and inventory item/hotspot “matching” in isolation, they weren’t difficult in themselves (except for the Blue Helena sequence). But the hotspots were hard to find. Just an example—finding the mammoth toy after the professor’s lecture. It was an item I had a pretty good idea I needed to find. It could have been left in a couple of different rooms, but one room was more likely. I scoured that room with no result. I finally looked at a walkthrough, and even when I knew the specific surface it was resting on, it took me a while to find it.
The navigational pace in Syberia made the environments feel huge. But it made back-and-forthing to scour the locations for a missed hotspot very challenging.
@Iznogood: It’s true. But it is also true - as one of the previous remarks about the contract - that it makes perfectly sense to ask at the end of this game “WHY does Hans return to Aralbad?” For at this stage it doesn’t make sense. Principles of cost effectiveness and resource allocation would probably indicate that there’s another, easier way to reach Syberia, but Hans as a genius has “his own way” of course. You are quite right that it must have important to him that Anna would have been by his side (if only to show that his vision is real), and in this respect it is strange that he reacts almost indifferently when he learns Anna is dead. (“Otherwise, it’s Anna who would have come, isn’t it? Not you?”). But I guess there are sound explanations too for his reaction (e.g. his age, his childish, carefree nature - Helena’s words).
@Becky: good point! Anger, romantic feelings (“Romanski,” and “Burn-with-passion eyes.”). That’s a much better interpretation than just the spotlights for a stage show, which aren’t shown, and moreover, that would be a trivial and too realistic interpretation.
My two favorite screenshots from the final chapter in the game.
The aftermath of the explosion in Izno’s earlier screenshot, shown as the train leaves the area.
Another moment from the race through the hotel. This one seems to have caught a transition between two frames, and is refreshingly odd. Like the screenshot that mart posted earlier, it shows Kate’s all-out attempt once she made her decision.
Question—who sent the automaton mammoth toy to Kate?
In Kate’s last conversation with Olivia, Olivia accuses Kate of becoming “an automaton” because she didn’t immediately react to Olivia’s startling news. This raises a couple of questions. How much are you influenced by the company you keep? Since Kate has been spending a lot of time with automatons, is she becoming like one? And what exactly does that mean?
Another question—since Hans created Oscar and James, did he also give them personalities similar to his own? When Hans doesn’t react as expected to the news of Anna’s death is he, too, acting like an automaton? Or are the automatons acting as Hans would?
After reading Izno’s fascinating post on the Aral Sea, I saw an update on Slate with a time-lapse video that shows the lake shrinking over time.
Kate’s boss seems to be the sort who thinks he gets more done by demanding the impossible and shouting at everyone. (And, undoubtedly he wonders why all the attorneys under him only last a couple of years before they move on to another firm or another branch of the law.)
This simply goes to point out that she has nothing to lose by going on Han’s journey to Syberia - she’s been probably thinking about quitting for sometime.
I’d love to see the look on her bosses face when only the signed contract comes back - it would be priceless!
I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.
The game has used a subtle color palette up to this point, when suddenly, during the performance in the factory, everything is highlighted in red. Why?
...
Does the red highlighting represent Borodine’s anger or his madness or his romantic feelings for Helena? And what’s the physical source of the red lighting?
The thing about Sokal is that he is a very visual storyteller, not everything is verbalized or told directly in the plot, instead the pictures tell a story on their own. In this case red is traditionally seen as the colour of passion and danger, so naturally he turns the colour scheme red, simply to emphasize the passion and sense of danger in this scene.
Question—who sent the automaton mammoth toy to Kate?
The package left in the reception for Kate I assume, I can’t remember what was actually in it!? That can only have been left to her by Hans, why he didn’t just give it to her, as he obviously intended to take the train is another question, but… game mechanics!
In Kate’s last conversation with Olivia, Olivia accuses Kate of becoming “an automaton” because she didn’t immediately react to Olivia’s startling news. This raises a couple of questions. How much are you influenced by the company you keep? Since Kate has been spending a lot of time with automatons, is she becoming like one? And what exactly does that mean?
I think that was just meant as a joke, but both Kate and Hans does share some character traits in that they respond less passionate to things than you would expect. In Hans’s case because that is simply how he is, and as for Kate, then I see it mainly as a lack of interest in her old life, but perhaps there is a bit more to it? Perhaps it was also meant to symbolise that Kate and Hans are similar types of persons.
Another question—since Hans created Oscar and James, did he also give them personalities similar to his own?
Oscar and James has similar personalities, but I don’t really see them as similar to neither Hans or Kate. The automatons are rigid and inflexible in their thinking but also passionate about the purpose for which they were build, whereas both Kate and Hans seems to be dispassionate persons at least on the surface, but instead has a much more flexible way of thinking and much better at adapting to changing circumstances.
I actually see the automatons as more of an antipode to Hans and Kate, with a cleaver little role change build in, as automatons or robots are normally seen as dispassionate cold logic, whereas passion and feelings are normally seen as something human. Perhaps by combining these two antipodes you get a “complete” person? Which brings me back to the statue In Valadine with half its head missing…
So perhaps Kate is becoming more like in a automaton, but in a good way, as she is becoming more complete and finding the passion that she has been missing in her life.
(continued in next post)
You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ
@Iznogood: It’s true. But it is also true - as one of the previous remarks about the contract - that it makes perfectly sense to ask at the end of this game “WHY does Hans return to Aralbad?” For at this stage it doesn’t make sense. Principles of cost effectiveness and resource allocation would probably indicate that there’s another, easier way to reach Syberia, but Hans as a genius has “his own way” of course. You are quite right that it must have important to him that Anna would have been by his side (if only to show that his vision is real), and in this respect it is strange that he reacts almost indifferently when he learns Anna is dead. (“Otherwise, it’s Anna who would have come, isn’t it? Not you?”). But I guess there are sound explanations too for his reaction (e.g. his age, his childish, carefree nature - Helena’s words).
Hans is a very dispassionate person at least on the surface, we learn this very early in the game by reading Anna’s diary, so there is nothing surprising about his reaction to Anna’s dead, though there might be more going on inside his head than on the surface.
I have also in the mean time given the whole Hans and Anna part of the story some more thought. The thing is if we look at the story only as the plot that is being told then it really doesn’t make much sense! We all know mammoths don’t exist and that there isn’t some mysterious hidden island of the cost of Siberia, and that of all the means of transport you could have chosen a private train is by far the most impracticable and unrealistic. So there has to been more to this than told in the plot.
I also can’t help but to wonder about the whole timing in the game. Hans has been searching for Syberia and the mammoths his whole life, but it is only now when he is old and dying, “at the end of his journey” you could say, the he can actually finish the journey that he started so many years ago. So I can’t help wonder if perhaps the whole thing with the mammoths and the train journey, is an allegory for dying!
That the mysterious island of Syberia is an allegory for the afterlife or paradise, that the train ride represent the journey through life that we must all take, and the mammoths… well I haven’t quite figured out exactly what the mammoths themselves represents in this allegory, apart from some intangible dream or concept of happiness that we are all chasing in our life.
If this is the case, then it also makes even more sense that he wants to have his sister with him when he reaches his destination. That he would make all these preparations to make sure he was reunited with her in the afterlife.
For Kate things are of course different, she is not old and dying, so instead the journey would in her case be more of an allegory of metamorphosis. That the end destination is where her old self dies, and she rises like a phoenix from the ashes of her old life even stronger and more beautiful than before.
In her case it is however more the journey that matters and not so much the destination. You could even say the she already reached her destination and completed her metamorphosis in Aralbad when she found Hans and made her decision to follow him. Which is also why I believe that Syberia 2 is more about Hans than it is about Kate, even though Kate is still the protagonist.
Perhaps I am reading too much into this, but it is very clear to me that there is more to the story then simply the plot being told.
You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ
Mammoth automaton. Hans gave such dolls to Anna, and it may have been intended for her when she should arrive at Aralbad. It’s strange though that the package is addressed to Kate (“A package? For me? But that’s impossible!”). Helena might have informed him about Kate (though that doesn’t seem very likely). It may also have been a gift from Hans to Helena, and her gift to Kate, as she said she was very grateful, despite the mishap in Komkolzgrad. Like many things, the player can interpret it in his/hers own way.
Syberia and mammoths. There’s indeed no need to compare the gameworld of Syberia to the real world (or to reduce the story to a story about one or more characters). In that case - as said - one could point out many inconsistencies. When the game was released, I interpreted the mammoths (with the visual build up in the first environments) as a symbol of a lost world (e.g. a world of innocence, a better world, a spiritual world).
In an (2008) interview with Adventure Classic Gaming, Sokal answered a question about the mammoth (and leopard in “Paradise”) as a symbol in various - partly excluding - ways: they symbolize nothing at all, they represent a kind of “Paradise Lost,” he just liked to sketch and animate animals.
It’s hard to believe that they symbolize nothing at all, as the mammoths in their various manifestations play such an important part in the story, and I guess “Paradise Lost” comes closest to his original inspiration.
However, the game itself includes another clue (interpretation) about the mammoths and Syberia, that some may have missed (it’s optional). In the palaeontology notes (The Legend of the Ivory Ark) found in the laboratory of Professor Pons, it is said about the Youkols: “It was believed that their souls had found eternal rest on a mythical island that the Shaman named Syberia.”
There’s one thing I think we need to be careful of. There have been some subtle references to Syberia2.
TimovieMan mentioned at one point that we had no right to use prior knowledge of what was coming later in Syberia as a way of explaining what was currently happening. He was absolutely correct.
I’ve played S2, and I know that there are more than a few things that could be used to explain some character motivations in the first game. But it’s probably not appropriate to do so. The first game should stand on its own. And if we ever do an S2 CPT, we can discuss those things then.
FWIW, I loved this playthrough. Lots of great discussion. Plenty of disagreement, but no arguments. Exactly as is should be. Great job Sefir!
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
Finished the game.
Great cutscenes to end the game with.
Kate’s phone call with Dan explained a lot and made several perceived inconsistencies from earlier in the game click together into coherent character development. It was probably the single most important piece of dialogue in the game.
Kate’s boss on the other hand is an idiot. Yelling at his employees without listening to what they have to say, threatening them with anything he can, only to make a U-turn when his employees succeed in their mission, praising them and practically promising promotions? It’s like a brick joke to me. Bi-polar much??? 
A couple of oddities near the end made me wonder whether or not the entire last act was hastily re-written and rushed so they could split the game they originally had in mind in half.
For all the trouble that madman Sergei went through to “capture” Helena, he sure made light work of keeping her captured. It took me less than one minute to free Helena and obtain Oscar’s hands...
Also, it makes absolutely NO sense to get rid of something that’s blocking the tracks by blowing it up so that the tracks should realistically get destroyed and something even bigger should end up blocking the rest of them. Watching the train ride through the flames of the explosion is Hollywood nonsense at its worst.
The final section in Aralbad has its issues as well: there is no reason why Hans Voralberg should suddenly show up there. What, he’s almost completed his journey only to backtrack now? I would have much preferred to [spoiler]find him waiting on the platform of the next train station after Aralbad[/spoiler]. That would at least make more sense. But that would lose the dramatic sprint from the plane to the train, since Kate’s decision would not need to be made “against the clock”. (*)
Also, who [spoiler]sent Kate that package? Nobody knew she was even on this quest, let alone where she could be found, so the only logical explanation would be Helena, but that doesn’t make sense either. Why would she send a package from her home address TO her home address instead of giving it personally?[/spoiler] I think this was just a mechanism to keep Kate at Aralbad for a bit longer so the game could conclude. Like I said before: this feels like a quick rewrite to justify cutting the original game in half…
Having said that, however, the game ends at a perfect moment. While it still feels like we’re only halfway through the entire story, at least the game ends with the conclusion of the most important arc, Kate’s character development (her leaving her old life behind to continue with her newfound love for adventure), making this a finished (albeit extremely open-ended) story. Completing the actual journey to Syberia can be seen as a different story altogether, so if you were planning on making a complete game, but had to cut it in two halfway, this is where you’d end the first half…
(*) Actually, it still could. The next location could be next to an airfield with a similar “I’m continuing on the train, that plane over there can take you back to New York” statement from Hans that sees Kate sprinting from the plane door to the platform where the train is departing. It would be completely similar save for the fact that we wouldn’t see Kate running through locations we’ve been at before…
The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka
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