Scornis an atmospheric first-person puzzler, shooter, and exploration game. It’s a walking sim that untangles the typical twee image of that genre like entrails spilling from some tormented humanoid on an alien planet… which is precisely what you are in this game.
As many expected based on those enigmatic trailers that trickled through in the years leading to the game’s release, Scorn doesn’t follow a conventional narrative. There is no written or voiced dialogue in the game, and the only way you find out what’s going on is by looking closely at details in the environment (there’s a lot to take in there), and of course what happens to your character throughout the game - including that jaw-dropping ending…
While there are a lot of hints as to the nature of what’s going on in Scorn, there is no concrete answer to Scorn’s story and ending. This means that a lot is left to interpretation, though we’ve tried to make clear when we’re explaining the events of the game and when we’re giving our own interpretations as to possibly meaning.
Naturally, there are spoilers aplenty here.
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Scorn Story, Explained
Throughout Scorn, you controltwo humanoid beings, both of which seem to belong in the lower or even slave class of whatever society they were part of. This society - which was likely run either by a far superior version of your species or an altogether different species - has been pretty much wiped out by the start of the game.
The main area inAct Iseems to be a kind of birthing and processing plant. There are hundreds of discarded eggs here containing remnants of humanoid creatures, and you’ll be interacting with the last living one of these (affectionately known asEggmundin the community) to help you escape the area. It seems that this society was in some way fuelled by your kind as well, because at one point you come across a giant biomechanical heart that has an opening with dozens of dried up dead bodies pouring out of it.
A crucial event happens at the end of Act I. Your character overloads a machine, spilling a mystery goo everywhere that instantly starts mutating your character. The game fades to black, and Act II begins.
Act IIbegins with you emerging from a pod attached to the cliff wall of a rather hostile-looking planet. You pull your umbilical cord off, and begin walking across the dusty land. This is where we first start seeing more and more of thisunpleasant red biological matter(notably referred to as a“malignancy”by the developers), which has seemingly started to take over the land and buildings in the time between Acts I and II.
Even more importantly, this is where theParasitebecomes a crucial part of our journey. The Parasite latches onto the player partway through Act II, and there’s a lot to suggest thatthe Parasite is in fact the humanoid you control in Act I; later in the game, we see that the parasite has a face much like your first character (the one you see in the main menu), it drops the ‘hole puncher’ weapon that the first character used, and it even has the key implant on its hand. Even though the parasite is clearly causing our character great pain and taking over their body with tree-like tendrils, it’s also holding weapons and items, and opening doors for the new character.
In a particularly horrid way, the relationship seems symbiotic, as both Parasite and humanoid are relying on each other to reach the same goal. We as the player are controlling not just the new humanoid, but also the parasite, and together they are progressing through the game in a kind of uneasy (and unbidden) alliance towards a goal that at this point remains a mystery.
The next notable story event happens inAct IV- probably the most grotesque and visually striking part of the game. In this area, the red matter that’s been encroaching into the world since Act II is at its thickest, and there are more enemies here than at any other point in the game. In the midst of it all is a colossal yet non-hostile creature (calledThe Queenin the game files) that seems to have ‘grown’ around the area you’re trying to access, which is an elevator that shoots you high into the sky for the final act.
The Queen’s name and giant static mass are similar to the breeding role of a queen in a hive, and it looks like it’s giving birth to little wriggling creatures from holes on its back (nightmare fuel, we know). It seems that the Queen is creating the malformed enemies you fight in the game, and likely hassomeconnection to the red fleshy corruption - whether she’s a symptom or cause is up to interpretation.
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The Queen also bears a striking visual resemblance to the creature that Ted gets turned into at the end of Harlan Ellison’s short story, I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream. The forlorn expression, the swollen formless body, the milky eyes, even the fact that neither creature indeed has a mouth - there are alotof similarities. But while there’s some thematic crossover between Scorn and Ellison’s short story, we’re not sure there’s a ‘deeper’ reason for this visual resemblance.
Scorn Ending, Explained
Once you shoot yourself and the poor Queen high into the sky, a railcar will take you to the final area of the game - the pristine stone halls of a temple or palace, where it seems that humanoids are connected to some sort ofhive mind. Here, you complete various puzzles and a boss fight so that you too can connect yourself to this hive mind.
Before doing this, you use a surgical-type contraption to remove the Parasite from your back (it’s here that it becomes clear this parasite was the first character you controlled). The Parasite, unfortunately, escapes, and you can bet it’s not just going to call it a day and scurry off into some hole forever.
Once you reactivate two pregnant-lookingSentries, you get operated on in the hive-mind chamber by an automaton and get connected to the hive mind. Here’s where things get strange (and a bit interpretive).
It seems, for us, that ‘the process’ at this point should be that you take your place among the other crucified humanoids encircling the hive-mind chamber, and transcend your human form by joining the ‘whole’ of your kind. Once the operating robot completes its procedure, it seems that your charactershoulduse the Two Sentries to carry your body to a place beneath the hive-mind among your fellow humanoids. That’s the form of transcendence meant for your kind.
However, it seems that the protagonist gets greedy. Once you’re connected to the hive mind, you take control of the two Sentries, but instead of doing what you’re meant to do and taking your place beneath the hive-mind, you carry yourself to the gates that lead to… heaven? A better world? The ‘Beyond’?
You carry yourself through the pearly gates, where an impressive void swirls and a path is flanked by what appear to be statues of your fellow humanoids. As the Sentry is carrying you however, it gets attacked by the Parasite. Helpless to defend yourself, you succumb to the Parasite, which merges with you, turning you both into a grotesque two-faced fleshy monument, doomed to be stuck between the hivemind and the ‘Great Beyond’ forever.
A logical reading here is that in your singular quest to attain whatever kind of ascension is available in Act V, you’ve inadvertently infected it by bringing the parasite with you, and ruined what seemed to be the last sanctuary of whatever species or class once ruled over that society. The grim final shot of the game is of you and the parasite fused into a single monument, with some kind of fleshy matter already spreading throughout the previously pristine halls of the temple
Scorn Themes
Childbirth, pregnancy and procreationfeature heavily in Scorn, albeit in a decidedly warped way. The society whose remnants you’re crossing throughout the game seems to only be populated by males, and throughout the game we see all kinds of strange artificial birthing methods in the form of eggs (like Eggmund), plant-like pods, growing from eggs on walls (the 2nd protagonist), those demon-babies in Act V, and so on. With how terribly things have gone in this world of loveless biomechanical procreation, is the whole game an impassioned argument for the necessity of ‘the feminine’ in civilisation.
Crabs in a bucket/human selfishnessis also a popular reading here, especially when it comes to explaining the relationship between the 2nd humanoid and the Parasite. The Parasite latches onto the 2nd character, theyseemto aid each other to get to their goal, but then violently turn on each other at the final hurdle (the 2nd humanoid tears the Parasite off its back, then the Parasite merges with the humanoid, dooming them both). The two characters try clambering over each other (like crabs in a bucket) to get to their goal
Elitism and classismcould play a part here, given that you’re walking through the remnants of a society - however dystopian - with its own hierarchies and structures. One reading of what lies beyond those gates at the end of the game is that it’s a portal to another reality that was escaped to by the ‘elites’ of the extinct society, and simply isn’t meant for a lowly creature like yourself or the Parasite. Your kind, clearly from the lower rungs of society, exists only to quite literally fuel the biomechanical excesses and ambitions of the higher-ups. In some ways, it shares similarities with the Oscar-winning Bong Joon-ho movie Parasite, as the working-classes characters scramble over each other as they reach for that elite lifestyle. It feels particularly apt given that the Parasite has such a key role in Scorn.
Another interesting reading is that the whole game is anallegory for cancer. The different acts of the game can, to some extent, be interpreted as different parts of the body (we literally see a giant heart in Act I, Act IV is the squelchy bowels, Act V is the brain or central nervous system), and throughout the game we see tumorous red ‘malignancy’ spreading through the world.
The 2nd protagonist in particular seems to have been born in the ‘cancerous’ part of the world/body, and by going on their singular journey to the one ‘clean’ part of the body (Act V), they end up spreading the cancer there too. Firstly, by rocketing theQueenup that final area (if you look across before taking the railcar, you’ll see she’s still alive and writhing, and therefore capable of reproducing), and secondly by bringing the Parasite up there with you and ultimately merging with it, becoming your own kind of tumorous monument that seems to be spreading its tendrils in that final shot.
Whichever way you spin it, there’s no happy ending here, folks!
