The Ending (Spoilers) Curious...

pennypincher · Post by **pennypincher** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 5:42 pm

[QUOTE=twister_nt]You're being real nieve, Faust. Clearly the cab driver is intended to be Caine; as you can see from his sound files. Furthermore, the Malikavian's ramblings further consolidate the theory.
And remember what he says at the end of the game... "Wherever we go, it is the blood of Caine which makes our fate". The manipulation is obvious, Gihad is taking place.
Please excuse the spelling mistakes as I'm not sure how to spell the vampire terms

Great game, shame LeCriox dies in all the endings![/QUOTE]

It's not Naieve, it's the sounds of a person with a mote of respect and love for the game and it's setting and the legende of Caine screaming in denial at the stupidity of the concept of Caine wandering around, helping neonates and driving taxis. It's the sound of a man/woman/strange other creature dying an agonising emotoinal death as something he/she/it enjoys very much is stabbed in the eye again and again with a pen.

Confuzzled · Post by **Confuzzled** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 6:23 pm

Alternatively, it's simply an application of logic. The identity of the taxi driver is an issue relating to the (internal) world of the game, and the only relevant information is contained within the game and its background. The names of the sound files are things that exist in the real (external) world and are not directly linked to the internal world.

The very best that can be argued from the sound files without a flaw in logic (in a strict sense) is that the developers identified the files for the taxi driver in the external world with the word "Caine", a word that has some significance in the internal world. That does not mean, and there is no evidence that it means, that the developers intended the taxi driver to be Caine in the game. To move further is a fallacy.

One therefore enters the realm of supposition, and if one is only discussing the internal world then Faust's arguments would seem to have more force.

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 8:38 pm

Fascinating train of thought, and a spectacularly good point. The developers need not have been intimately associated with the WoD, and they may have simply pulled Caine's name out of a hat, having heard it in conversation or a meeting and come to understand that the name had some significance in the WoD. They may have simply given the name to the cabbie out of the understanding that A) the cabbie was in some way important in the game, and B) Caine was in some way important in the WoD. As there is no logical basis to draw a relationship between the two, supposition it must be.

Having been a developer for in excess of 25 years, I can tell you with a straight face that developers frequently write programs that serve a purpose or function that the developer is woefully ill-acquainted with. Analysis isn't about understanding purpose or function - it's about understanding process. I don't need any understanding of the WoD to write a game like this. I just need to know what happens next. I wrote my first Pharmaceutical management program not by having a degree in Pharmaceuticals, but simply by spending a lot of time asking, "And then what?"

ennoia · Post by **ennoia** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 9:36 pm

Umm,hi.Although i can see nobody's been posting
for some months now,but i decided to post anyway.
and its kind of a *spoiler* too..
I'm not going to post anything really new cause i'm
sure i've seen other people on the net saying about
the same thing i'm going to,so its no huge news but
after some close observation of the in-game hints u
can figure out what happened..(i'll try puting it shortly)

1.either jack or the kue-jin got on the Dane,and then
the other one arrived,

2.there was a fight between them,as all that blood
indicates,with jack either winning and after that opening
the sarcophagus,filling it with explosives and stageing
the whole thing so i would look as though mr.antediluvian
got out for a stroll on the main deck,or was the first one
to arrive,and had fixed most of it before the "meeting"
with the kue-jin.

3.we know there was a fight because the news report
that a thing similar to a squid was found on the beach
(obviously a kue-jin in its war-form)near the dane

4.now concerning caine,throughout the game there are
lots of hints that suggest that the cab driver is the"dark
father"himself,like if you take a look at him using auspex,
he has a powerful vamp aura,and the ramblings of the
thin-blood kook indicate that the person standing behind
jack in the ending is him,and again there is the sound files
and the name their folder has been given..

5.anyway,on that i cant really convince you because thats
the whole point White Wolf's been trying to pass onto us,
that everyone should decide for him\herself if that is caine
or not,and if he is what he could be planning...

Lady_Lithium · Post by **Lady_Lithium** » Fri Jun 03, 2005 8:15 pm

My two-cents...

While I'm not very familiar with the WoD, I'd like to put forth my ideas on the Cain/Cabbie discusion. There will be spoilers.

Alright. I think that it's possible that the cabbie might be a Malkavian(or other clan, possibly) suffering from delusions of being Cain. Reasons:

1. The malkavian player's general confusion. We've already seen with Tourette that although the malk may have some sense of the 'truth', they still often believe (or at least recognize) appearances. While the PC uses "the daughters of Janus", she's still confused when she discovers Tourette. This might explain all of the "Is it? It couldn't be" statements.

2. At the end of the game Jack seems (to me, at least) to be a little...off. He just seems to be acting wierdly. This, off course, might just be that I never got a clear sense of Jack to begin with. A malk could have been using dementation to control/influence Jack.

3. This one isn't so much a proof as it is an observation, but with the exception of the black fog right before the credits, we never see any hint of the cabbie's power. As we never really see this power used before (maybe the sherrif?), we can't really pin it on a clan. Since we never see him do anything, the cabbie could really be from any clan, and from any generation (high or low).

I realize that this 'proof' is just as circumstantial as all of the other theories, but I thought I'd just put it out there to hear other's opinions on it.

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 1:45 am

[QUOTE=ennoia]3.we know there was a fight because the news report
that a thing similar to a squid was found on the beach
(obviously a kue-jin in its war-form)near the dane
[/QUOTE]

The news report is of a gelatinous creature washing up on the beaches off Rhode Island, which is, as we know, just north of New York, and no where near Los Angeles.

STRONCIY · Post by **STRONCIY** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 2:54 am

playing malk or tremere, you have AUSPEX, so look at cab driver/sheriff and that super wamp at hollybrook who cast "white fire bolts" on you. they got purple aura!!! it means that cab driver is vampire too + he is old + if you play malk, then when you go to Ventrue tower, he says:" Remember, Kindred, it is blood of Caine who leads you"
and then the Last phraze of Malk is
-??? Oh MY GOD, IT can't be ...

so Malk recognized Caine ~_~

Bern · Post by **Bern** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 8:28 am

[QUOTE=Lady_Lithium]
3. This one isn't so much a proof as it is an observation, but with the exception of the black fog right before the credits, we never see any hint of the cabbie's power. As we never really see this power used before (maybe the sherrif?), we can't really pin it on a clan. Since we never see him do anything, the cabbie could really be from any clan, and from any generation (high or low).
[/QUOTE]

It has been a while since I have seen the ening movies of the game, but it strkies me as possible that the fog is obtenebration (the Lasombra discipline). This indicates that the vampire in question (the cabbie) is powerful. This also lends to the dark part of "dark father".

[QUOTE=yrthwyndandfyre]
"Trust the man on the couch and the Lone Wolf - all others are suspect"
[/QUOTE]

Everyone I know took the man of the couch to be the cab driver, not Mercurio. This is simply because he is always sitting down as opposed to bleeding all over the furniture (although now that I have more time to think about it i begin to think that you are probably right).

On other things in this thread that I can think of:
1) Jack was manipulating most things from the start, almost without a doubt. Why else would he choose to help a nothing of a vampire? Almost everone else wants somthing for anything they do, and as the player character is always in the asking position you generally get given the short end of the stick, but not with Smilin' Jack.

2) All of the caitif prophet's (the chick with insight) prophecies come true. (bit of redundency in that sentence)
3) If the supposed antedeluvian broke out of the sarcophagus then why did it put the thing back together and lock the lid. Why did no-one in game think of this.
4) Why in one of the endings (I havn't seen it) did the Kuei-Jin throw the sarcophagus and the player charecter over the side of the boat. They obviously wanted the sarcophagus, they sent 2 agents to get it from the Giovanni mansion.

That is all I can think of at this time.

ennoia · Post by **ennoia** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 9:55 am

OK,my mistake about the gel,but im from greece,and i didnt even remember where it was washed up,but maybe the dane passed near that location...?neway,the news report,and everything else in the game,are not just irrelevant things,and they wouldnt put it on the tv if it wasnt important..so maybe it was just to give us something to wonder about till the end of the game...

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 5:24 am

OK, being from the old country, you can be forgiven. The problems of scale are pretty profound. In Greece, you can drive from one sea to the other in less than a day, and make it to anyplace in the country in a day. Over here, we have a slightly different problem of scale. To make it from St. John's Newfoundland (one of the most eastern-most points in Canada) to Victoria, BC (one of the most western-most points in Canada) is a four-day drive, assuming that you can get by without sleeping. Rhode Island is easily three and a half day's drive from Los Angeles with no sleep factored in. The only way the Dane could have been anywhere in the vicinity of Rhode Island is to have gone through: A) The Panama Canal (through Central America), B) The Northwest Passage (through the Canadian High Arctic), or C) the Straits of Magellan (at the southern tip of South America).

The best way to get from Turkey (where the Ankaran sarcophagus was found) to Los Angeles would be to take the Suez Canal from the Med to the Red Sea and head east past India and the Phillipines and then cut north-east across the Pacific. The Gelatinous creature off Rhode Island is almost certainly a warform Kuei-Jin, but it is as certainly unrelated to the game.

pennypincher · Post by **pennypincher** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 5:48 pm

You can add to that:

Caine prolly would have given you a confused look as he plucked your head off with his fingers after you said "Take me downtown, and if I get there before midnight therse an extra 20 bucks in it for you"

twister_nt · Post by **twister_nt** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 2:39 pm

[QUOTE=Confuzzled]Alternatively, it's simply an application of logic. The identity of the taxi driver is an issue relating to the (internal) world of the game, and the only relevant information is contained within the game and its background. The names of the sound files are things that exist in the real (external) world and are not directly linked to the internal world.

The very best that can be argued from the sound files without a flaw in logic (in a strict sense) is that the developers identified the files for the taxi driver in the external world with the word "Caine", a word that has some significance in the internal world. That does not mean, and there is no evidence that it means, that the developers intended the taxi driver to be Caine in the game. To move further is a fallacy.

One therefore enters the realm of supposition, and if one is only discussing the internal world then Faust's arguments would seem to have more force.[/QUOTE]

Internal External world? what rubbish. The game "world" was designed by the external game developers. What they say happens is what happens, what they name is the actual name and what they have already programmed is exactly what the game world is.
Furthermore, I just replayed the begining. The psychic woman says something like "why is he laughing" (jack) and "who's that behind him... The Father!" (cain/taxi guy).
Personally I don't care if the real cain wouldn't stoop to such things like driving a "pawn" around the city. The programmers intentions are clear.

Confuzzled · Post by **Confuzzled** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 2:01 am

Internal External world? what rubbish.

That's the response lots of my students give when they first encounter strict logic (it was mine as well!). It takes a while to get used to, but then it works.

The problem with your response twister_nt is that you are arguing that the name of the sound file is "what happens" in the game. Evidently it is not. The name of a file has no necessary connection with its purpose in the game (the suffix [such as .exe] evidently does, but that is not what we are discussing). That does not mean the name does not have a connection with the purpose of the file, but that cannot be proved, it can only be suggested or inferred.

Johnny · Post by **Johnny** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 7:07 am

Vampires in VTM don't show up well in cameras; they're always just a blur. Therefore, no police force on Earth would have a mug-shot of Jack (a portrait maybe).

I figured Caine helped Jack because he felt LaCroix and Ming Xiao were bad for Kindred society. In the cab ride he remarked that powermongers like LaCroix prevented the Camarilla from providing a safe and stable society for Kindred. This seems like a worthy endeavour for the Father of All Kindred. And disguising himself as a cabbie is convenient for him - does he really care about image anymore, being who he is?

However, White Wolf released a Gehenna supplement just before closing down the Masquerade line. It suggested that Caine and the Antedeluvians had actually withdrawn from worldly affairs, lost in melancholy or whatnot.

twister_nt · Post by **twister_nt** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 9:24 am

[QUOTE=Johnny]Vampires in VTM don't show up well in cameras; they're always just a blur. Therefore, no police force on Earth would have a mug-shot of Jack (a portrait maybe).

I figured Caine helped Jack because he felt LaCroix and Ming Xiao were bad for Kindred society. In the cab ride he remarked that powermongers like LaCroix prevented the Camarilla from providing a safe and stable society for Kindred. This seems like a worthy endeavour for the Father of All Kindred. And disguising himself as a cabbie is convenient for him - does he really care about image anymore, being who he is?

However, White Wolf released a Gehenna supplement just before closing down the Masquerade line. It suggested that Caine and the Antedeluvians had actually withdrawn from worldly affairs, lost in melancholy or whatnot.[/QUOTE]

Excellent contribution, I agree entirely

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 6:01 pm

[QUOTE=Johnny]This seems like a worthy endeavour for the Father of All Kindred. And disguising himself as a cabbie is convenient for him - does he really care about image anymore, being who he is?[/QUOTE]

An intriguing theory. If Caine were actually Caine, would it care what face it wore, what name it was called, or for that matter if it were a he/she/it? Presuming that it was actually Caine, who would *anybody* else be to presume to understand what it's motives or methods were? If Caine happened to be the local bag lady fishing trash out of a dumpster, there would undoubtely be a good reason for it, and it would be as likely that nobody in the world could figure it out.

Johnny · Post by **Johnny** » Tue Jun 14, 2005 12:43 am

Being a cabbie means he can drive all over town without arousing suspicion.

Doc Fearsome · Post by **Doc Fearsome** » Tue Jun 14, 2005 4:17 am

Intrigued by "Caine" discussion

Hello folks. This Caine-as-the-cabbie discussion, i found interesting...

Personally, the cabbie initially made me think of the Inconnu, the 3rd largest Kindred sect in the Wod... That's a good position for a moniter, though, admitedly, the game dialogue says nothing about the Inconnu. However, before reading these posts, I didn't know about the audio files. This, I agree, can support the assumption, but there is a little more "RPG Lore" I'd like to point out...

Throughout kindred history, many vampires have claimed to BE Caine, but ultimately, there was no proof, and these "Caine Sighting" occurances happened so long ago as to be lost in the annals of history.
...come to think of it, in Bloodlines, they even have a loading screen message that states that very fact! I'm not interjecting anything new, here...

I think my initial impression, cabbie-as-an-Iconnu, was wrong. I submit that the cabbie was at best an Elder, probably an old friend of Jack (who IS over 300 yrs old and could himself be considered an "Elder"). The cabbie is there, in the literary sense of the games storyline, to provide the player with the question, "is that guy Caine," an abstract story component meant to provide mystery and , by extension, atmosphere. The developers probably paraphrased this concept to the word "Caine" for the file for the sake of brevity.

What do ya'll think...?

pennypincher · Post by **pennypincher** » Tue Jun 14, 2005 5:22 pm

[QUOTE=Johnny]Vampires in VTM don't show up well in cameras; they're always just a blur. Therefore, no police force on Earth would have a mug-shot of Jack (a portrait maybe).

I figured Caine helped Jack because he felt LaCroix and Ming Xiao were bad for Kindred society. In the cab ride he remarked that powermongers like LaCroix prevented the Camarilla from providing a safe and stable society for Kindred. This seems like a worthy endeavour for the Father of All Kindred. And disguising himself as a cabbie is convenient for him - does he really care about image anymore, being who he is?

However, White Wolf released a Gehenna supplement just before closing down the Masquerade line. It suggested that Caine and the Antedeluvians had actually withdrawn from worldly affairs, lost in melancholy or whatnot.[/QUOTE]

Just so your clear, cameras show Kindred perfectly with the exception of Clan Lasombra, who don't show up at all. Only the stupid New World Of Darkness that has that... Totaly unexplained non-reality field type thing that makes vampires blurry on camera, and on the expenditure of a willpower, the photo itself will break down after a few days.

As for caine giving two hoots about the Cammerilla and not caring about what he looked like... Caine was the same man who refused to say sorry to GOD for commit the first ever murder because he didn't want to look like he was wrong... So yes, apperances have always been an important thing too him. In fact, he chose his first children only from the most intelligent, well dressed, beautiful people to make his court a place he liked to be in. Arrogance, self importance and image are all that keep him from falling to the beast and becoming a rampaging shell of his former self.

As for him giving a whoot about what the Cammerilla does, in the end of the book you mentioned, God destorys all vampires because Caine refuses to take any kind of responsability for them in any way, to the point where he doesn't even stop his own childes child "Ravnos" from erradicating most of India in a single day. Caine consistantly shows a deep seated hatred for all Kindred and a relative indifference to mortals.

However, obviously there are people on here who aren't interested in all that. Thats cool, to each their own.

Raa · Post by **Raa** » Mon Jul 04, 2005 5:28 am

But, the question remains: Who is the "Dark Father" then? And every now and then someone in the game feels some powerful presence, some great evil and such...

If there was no Antediluvian in the sarcophagus, and the Cabbie is not Caine, then who was it all about?