My theory is that the blasts are enormous psionic energy emanating from the blob--occurring at a regular interval, as if they were breaths. My God, it makes my skin crawl.
This is very interesting, especially in terms of how it pairs up with the idea that the boy was from the very beginning being beckoned and controlled by the blob…or at least drawn toward the blob by unseen agents?
The bodies are strapped into chairs, but limbs are flying, etc. People are being conditioned to withstand the blasts. But why? Maybe the next step is being hooked up to the upside down, underwater mind control devices, which are in turn hooked up to the blob, where they are forever exposed to (and possibly help amplify?) the psionic power that it produces.
This idea is more intriguing and novel than my more formulaic inkling that it's all about creating manipulable, hyper-resilient soldiers/workers.
The implications are far more meta, however, almost to the point of being genuinely disturbing. If the blob controls the boy, and the design of the game dictates our actions as we control the boy (run left to right, basically), then it follows that the blob controls us as players of the game.
Yeah, that's a great reading of the linear, left to right trajectory of the game. It also casts a creepier pall over the entire experience if you think of the protagonist as someone who is involuntarily pursuing this mysteriously assigned telos of uniting with the blob. It adds a darker edge to the whole
Legend of Zelda-esque trope (well, it exceeds
Zelda obviously, but I'm just opting to use a notable video game example) of the ordinary boy called to fulfill his destiny.
In my mind the game ends because our goal of wanting to play a game no longer aligns with the blob's goal of wanting to lie on the beach. We are no longer in control because we in fact never were.
This is very interesting, too. The blob used the boy/us to free itself, and, in the process, doomed the boy.
None of these things explain the fact that--despite the construction and mayhem--the blob's escape is obviously planned. If you recall, at one point you fall onto a recreation of the mountainside where the game ends.
I somehow missed this connection when I played it, but I came across a screen shot of that. Yeah, it's like a model of the environment from the final shot of the game. No clue what to make of that right now…? Perhaps whatever we're seeing at the end is just a simulated environment, and there was no actual movement from inside to outside. In other words, the blob is still technically within the facility. In a story where people are turning humans into pliable automatons, the idea of making high-fidelity, manipulable facsimiles of nature seems like a logical extension (plus, we already saw this sort of thing with the suspended water). The militaristic angle covers this again in a convenient way, but there's probably a better angle from which to approach it.
Also, people are clearly assisting you in your escape, and furthermore you are at one point on display for a theater/lecture hall full of people.
I read the assistance as attempts at goading you into getting locked away again. It seemed like desperation to me. However, the calmer observers suggests that the blob's escape may have been a test-run of sorts that was always planned by the upper echelon of this facility. Perhaps they were willing to use their own unwitting employees as guinea pigs/fodder?
Maybe they were testing two advanced ideas/technologies/experiments here?
First, there's the idea of drawing in outsiders toward the facility in a sophisticated game of long-distance mind control. Second, there's the notion of the beckoned subject — the boy — being made to unite with the blob and then enact an escape, by which the blob's mobility and strength can be tested. The simulated outdoor scenario marks the end of the test; its liberation is artificial. It passed the test and is still within their control and under their observation.
Then again, like you suggested, the boy may have been exclusively controlled by the blob itself rather than any other person or group within the facility. The blob may have used the boy to secure its "freedom." It may have sent out a distress signal of sorts that amounted to psychically controlling a stranger and leading him into the facility. That's a really good reading of it that doesn't involve anyone from the facility actually controlling the boy. Although, while the computer under the cornfield could be understood as amplifying the blob's signal, the whole factor of that underground machine complicates things...
Or was it all just a sadistic lark? Some higher-up messing around with their own facility and employees by sending in a programmed "interloper" to create chaos — sort of like someone enacting a destructive romp via their copy of
Grand Theft Auto or whatever?
I think this is somehow related to the secret ending, but I won't go there as to not spoil anything if you were figuring things out for yourself. I just looked it up on youtube.
I checked this out. Interesting. I've seen other comments where people argue that this means the computer was controlling the boy, and that would dovetail with some of what we've been talking about. If that underground machine is what sent out the signal that lured him to the facility, then he effectively liberates himself there? Either that or the boy effectively shut down the power to the facility and destroyed a lot of the work therein, including the blob?
If he's being controlled, I'm not sure why he would be led into unplugging the computer. The only explanations I can come up with are convoluted — like, say, the idea that he's being maneuvered by competing forces, including vestiges of his own volition, which, in that moment, compels him to free himself from the control of his unseen masters.
Quoting Winston* (view post)
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