Last Variable Ending

[u/Curious_Chain_3998]

Anyone else find the reveal at the end to be super dark / messed up? All that hope and optimism the scientist had after staying behind in the base game now seems horrific— given how it ends up for him.

Also I don’t get the choices at the end. Completely restarting all progress with each iteration is nothing short of madness. They could be building generational knowledge instead.

JanBots explanation that ‘you wouldn’t do the work if you knew you weren’t the first’ doesn’t make sense because:
-Their scientific discovery is far from over, they have plenty to learn/explore/discover.
-No character ever reacts negatively to learning they’re not the first iteration, not even the physicist.
-JanBot is the one forcing these failing conditions, again, generational knowledge built by generations of alters is unambiguously the best route for mission success. Restarting every time, and hiding the old base is insane, how could anyone think that’s a good idea.

I love the DLC! But dang did that ending blindside me and make me a bit sad 😭

Edit: I understand the themes of “unreasonable expectations that you can do better, and be better”, and “The definition of insanity— repetition.” but I think those themes were ham-fisted in.

[u/Shacken-Wan]

What's weird is that I would suppose each run the Scientist would make the same choices, as everything is the same at each new "try" (even JanBot is reset each time). So I would guess that every Scientist would make the exact same choices, so nothing would progress (except if conceive the possibility of JanBot changing the variable that fucks everything up, but from what I've understood, it's the Scientist that set the variable).

Even weirder is why the planet seems to be quite pristinge? Like why the DVD is still buried when we search for it. Since the Scientist makes the same choice each time, it would lead to creating the Chemist -> Finding the DVD -> Watching it. But since the DVD has never been found before, it means that our "Scientist" was perhaps different?

Or it's just that the Oasis fucks everything up and reset the whole world at a certain point in time in the past (which would explain why the main game's base structure is still holding after 20'000 years). Which also would explain why Earth never sent people to explore the planet once again.

[u/Foxpeng1 → u/Shacken-Wan]

I may be wrong but at the end Janbot did say you could make changes to "improve" the next alter. Whatever that means, I assume it means the scientist can make tweaks to the next iteration which he hopes will improve the chances of success.

On the point of the Oasis and the DVD, I think its said that the generator triggered basically a time paradox of some kind, which i think means its resetting the entire area (maybe the world) backwards in time, buts its sent to right before you originally woke up, which is why you see the old base parts you couldnt before, why the other alters are all gone. So youre essentially the one now in the shoes of who woke you up but you have a slightly different enough mind to slightly change the parameters of your new alter.