Chapter 1: What got us to this point?

Before we get to choose an ending, we have to look at what we were told our choices actually were. This whole section of the game is about giving our character the right to choose because he never consented to this experience. 

Before we go further, we have to examine what actually happened to get us to this point. So what I’m going to do is play one of the most important moments in RetroSpace in terms of the story. After that, I’ll rewind, and we can discuss. 

So this is the first time that we’re technically meeting Dr. Nebula, and it’s a pretty big moment in the game because, up until this point, his entire silhouette has only just been a headshot in the corner of the screen, which has been blacked out. At this point, we are getting acquainted with him as a character, his butler, and he’s going to give us all the reasons as to why what’s happening is happening.

Putting together the information 

So the first bit of information that he gives us is that he has been a worker on Aurora 5. He’s a scientist, and he knows the system better than anyone. At this point, we don’t know this is a lie, so he’s just lying to our face again. This is going to play into why I think that the bad ending is not the canon ending, but we’re going to get to that. He also explains that he was in the right place at the right time, which is a direct contradiction to what actually happened. So now we continue with the dialogue options, and we don’t really get much here, but what we can gather is pretty significant.

So now we get to learn about Herb, and there is so much that I want to talk about with this

character. This is not the video for it, but we are told that it’s been 37 years, and that’s

 a point that we’re going to keep coming back to, and that Herb basically just helps Dr. Nebula do all of the getting around that he needs to do. Again, at this point, we don’t know what actually

is going to happen, but Herb is an Android and a pretty special one at that. We don’t see another one with this design in the entire game, which is pretty interesting. 

The next little bit I want to call attention to is that Dr. Nebula says that we can’t return back to the fleet because we could spread whatever’s happening here. If you were not familiar, the Aurora 5  is part of a fleet. We’ll talk about this in a different video, but his saying here that if we returned, it would infect the other fleet members. As far as we know right now, that could be true.

However, when we examine the good ending, I have reason to believe that he was really far

off base here, even if his intentions here are to lie to us and get us to the point where we

will make the decision. I am almost positive that he has no idea what’s actually going on with the rest of the fleet, which I’ll explain later in the video. The last little bit that we get here in terms of information from him is basically vague hints about who he really is and where he really comes from. We do end up having to take down the three super mutants, and to say that they perfected anything is honestly super weird because not a single one of them, except for maybe Rose. I’ll take that back because Rose is very intelligent, but the other two don’t seem to have perfected anything. Regardless, we take those mutants down, and then we take their DNA, and we feed it into the computer, and from there we’re able to move on to our endings.

Chapter 2: Looking at what the truth is from Dr. Nebula

So after we take down the three bosses, which we’re not going to discuss here. But after we take them down, then we have to go back to Dr. Nebula, and this is where the truth of it all starts to come to light.

So the first piece of information that we get here is that Dr. Nebula is not Dr. Nebula. He also combined his body. Well, he didn’t combine his body. He put his mind into Herb… So that’s great. But we get a sense of what exactly his motivations were. He was tricked by the Void Child, and he feels guilty about leaving his child to die back on Earth. An interesting part of the game is how many people believe that Earth wasn’t actually dying, which we will discuss in another video.

But regardless, everything that’s going on right now in Retrospace is a result of Dr. Nebula feeling guilty for leaving his child behind. Then getting tricked. And now we arrive at the circumstances that we see in-game. We also learn about how this was possible. So apparently the Void Child poisoned Dr. Nebula’s mind and made him believe that if he went into the black hole, he would be able to return home.

Which obviously wasn’t the case. There’s also an interesting bit about whether the Void Child really just wants to be. Like us, I do think to some degree that is the case. That’s exactly what we’re looking at with this cosmic entity, and it’s stressed that the Void Child is neither good nor bad. It just is, at least by the human idea of what good and bad are.

There is no definition to fit this entity at this time. Which is pretty much what lines up with what we see when we actually speak to the Void Child for the first time. So in this way, I would think that Dr. Nebula is correct.

As his dialogue continues, we get a lot more to unpack. Obviously, he’s been trying to do this for a while. He said it took him 16 attempts to get the cloning process right. That is why, when you go through the game, you’ll find writing that says, “Who is Dr. Nebula?” You’ll also be able to find and recover corpses that weren’t yours, that were there before the game even started. What I want to draw attention to, though, and what I found to be the most interesting, is when Dr. Nebula starts going off about how we are a failed and inept scientist. And we would have chosen the crew and the passengers over our own family back home.

Dr. Nebula destroys a Heal O’ Dome chamber, forces us to have no memories, and then sets us out on this mission, all without our character knowing anything about what’s going on, at least in truth. His actions affect everybody on the ship, every NPC that we speak to, and I think that the character that we play as this version of Dr. Nebula was correct in that making this decision for thousands of people was insane to begin with.

However, I can also see where you know Dr. Nebula is coming from in wanting to go home, but what’s very interesting is that when we look at the bad ending, Earth is already gone, right? So there was nothing to return to regardless. So his entire mission is in vain if you take the bad ending into account. Never mind the fact that he technically participated in torturing himself repeatedly…

Discussing the Bad Ending

So why do I think that this ending isn’t canon? Well, for starters, we have a lot of evidence throughout the game in the form of audio logs, and by a lot, I mean, like there’s one, but it is said by a character that they were lied to, and you know, Earth was fine. Now, if there’s any truth to that, I have no idea. But it was brought up in the game, and it’s something that I want to take note of as we continue forward.

Clarifying my point 

Before we talk about the good ending, I just want to clarify my point, especially after playing that audio clip for you. I do think that Earth was doomed. I also think that the board, in some way, exists. And I don’t think this ending can be canon, strictly because we would be bringing the Void Child back to nothing. There are no humans left. I would assume that, by the state of the world, he would never be able to learn anything, which would be the entire purpose. I also think that this ending defeats the purpose of knowing about our character and going through everything that we went through. 

We know our character didn’t want to do this. We know that he would have chosen the passengers on the ship. We also know that he’s made friends along the way and they’ve all grown quite close. There is no good way to cap off that story by bringing the Aurora 5 to Earth. If you go by the good ending, however, then that’s where things start getting interesting, and that’s where we can talk about why this ending must be canon.

Discussing the Good Ending

So our character makes his choice. We do what we’ve wanted to do when we had the free will to choose, and now we’re back at the fleet. We’ve got thousands of people still asleep and in cryo, right?  What are we gonna do? We couldn’t go back to Earth. We already saw what would happen if we did; they’re dead anyway. 

We might be able to fix the Aurora 5 and make it suitable to sustain life, but that isn’t a long-term solution. Remember, we’re all in space because we’re searching for a new home. So…we get back to the fleet, and we see that we have no signal and multiple Aurora stations have been destroyed. This all got me thinking about one of the biggest themes in RetroSpace, which is “choice,” at least to me. Another theme is truth. We didn’t know the truth going into this; we don’t know the truth about what really happened, and multiple NPCs constantly stress that they don’t know the truth either.

I think that the Good Ending is really driving home that we don’t know what happened. We don’t know anything about the board, and we know just as much as when we started, really. Everything we’re getting is second or third accounts of what really happened. 

So I think that the Good Ending is really just about giving our character the right to choose. We did what he originally wanted. He was considerate of everyone else on the ship who couldn’t choose. This makes this ending thematically appropriate.