Why is hell letting machines completely clear his layers? Gabriel says by the time v1 reached layer 6 other machines completely cleared out limbo lust and gluttony without a single person left.
Sure he must be having a lot of fun from all this but going like this there wont be a single person left on hell to torture and he will be out of entertainment.
And since humanity died there wont be anymore coming, and angels may also decide hell is basicly useless now.
Maybe he has some addiction to all this so he knows it will end up bad but cant stop himself from fun and allows machines to completely clear everything?
The best we can hope to say is that dragging things out is not fun for Hell. The stage must conclude, and I guess Hell wanted it to end that way.
IT'S THE ONLY WAY IT SHOULD'VE ENDED.
That or with how violence works, it seems that he'll can re -manifest the dead. It MIGHT be hell "reseting" the stage instead of death. After all they rebuild v1 after death, why not others?
respawning is not canon, the themes of the game are about finality, hence Gabriel accepting his impending death in the act 2 intermission
it would be pretty silly to have canon respawning in a game about death being the end
my headcannon is that we don't even play as V1 clearing hell in real time.
the layers V1 (and other machines) go through are recorded and given to the terminals as entertainment for weapons and supplies.
the terminals use that footage to make the levels we play, hiding secrets, making discrete rooms and enemy spawns, etc. all that game-y stuff.
that's how you can replay levels infinitely, especially onces with one-time bosses like gabriel or the earthmover, they are all just simulated recreations of the actual hell V1 went through, similar to the cybergrind. V1 just sits down at a terminal, plugs in, and can refight gabriel hundreds of times without being in actual danger
What about "Useless" from Minos and "Keep em coming" from Sisyphus? Normally I'd agree but those are 2 glaring exceptions
imo those actually imply the opposite, the prime souls are canon but not canonically fought, just as player challenges
remember, you cannot actually ever enter the prime sanctum in one complete run of the game without unlocking them prior, and V1 does not have access to the main menu or the level select screen, so V1 would have to be capable of literal time travel to be able to meet the prime souls
plus, Archangel Gabriel right hand man of God himself doesn't comment on respawning, but Mysterious Druid Knight (& Owl) does, including one saying "why are we in the past"
The primes are deutorocanon, V1 could fight and kill them but the respawns aren’t canon and V1 doesn’t HAVE to visit them
Probably just flavor text that's not meant to be taken seriously
They're also the hardest fights in the game and the places you're most likely to die a lot. It's less obvious but Gabriel does something similar, if you die and then reenter the fight from a checkpoint he'll fire off one of his taunts. Minos and Sisyphus' voicelines are connected to their attacks, so they can't give one of their usual lines at the start of the fight. It would be awkward to make them repeat their entire monologues or start the fight in silence, so they have to get new lines.
It's a little convoluted, yes, but I would argue it's more likely than V1 respawning which directly contradicts the game's themes.
Its flavor text; you need to know they are powerful foes and that does the job
They’re not really canon fights per se. They don’t fit in anywhere in the progression of the story, so you might as well chalk it up to them still being trapped in their prisons during the game and the Prime sanctums only happening in alternate timelines
As of now we don’t actually know the lore reason for V1 respawning, assuming there’s going to be one at all. It’s a safe bet to assume Hell is involved somehow, but we don’t know if it’s V1 being literally rebuilt or if it’s time manipulation or something. I personally don’t think it’s literal rebuilding on account of the enemies respawning.
Im not sure if V1 even dies until this point
It does die, and does respawn somehow. Sisyphus and Minos both say unique lines when you respawn, and Sisyphus's in particular implies very heavily that you do die. He says "KEEP 'EM COMING!" which would be a very odd choice of words if you weren't actually dying.
the unique lines i don't rlly think should count since there's an equal chance they're just there because your respawn being met with dead silence would feel weird
thing is, canonically V1 NEVER fought Minos or Sisyphus, they exist sure but he couldnt possibly have fought them
Hakita said that V1 both did and didn't fight them canonically, it's up to the player to decide what happens
Respawns are not canon, they go against the story entire themes
As far as I remember, some info about the terminals hints that every time you die or fuck up in a level, it's just the pre-level battle simulation the terminal offers you. I guess whichever is your best run of the level is the "canon" one since it's stored in the level screen.
Hell cannot remanifest the dead, once a husk or demon died they’re gone forever unless a husk becomes a prime soul
The lore implications of the Deathcatcherwill be interesting indeed.
Is the best form of entertainment it knows, it probably can torture V1 by making it fight itself and reconstructing it again and again, but we haven't reached that point yet.
https://preview.redd.it/6uw7zlisvw6g1.jpeg?width=1103&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5aa710a1b2fcf91e2c9aa3fc5d1ae0b7ffff5a01
it doesn't seem to want to impede the machines for some reason, nor does it punish going slower, but also it doesn't care that V1 is going faster
V1 isn't the only machine going faster, most machines in Violence were already there, same with V2, lots of streetcleaners, and maybe others
it seems to me that mostly, hell is letting it play out naturally. All it does is summon enemies along the way for more combat, it doesn't care if you take a day or a week to cut through
This is the only way it should have ended
there are husks, which are manifestations of people after they die kinda, in the prelude, which is outside of hell. you can't leave hell, and it'd make sense to only have them form in hell. why does that happen?
The prelude facility is now part of hell as we see the litle rivers of blood in that room
The mouth of hell is part of hell itself. There's also demons inside, those being maurice and cerberus.
The other reason is that in Dante's inferno there's a "layer 0" of hell, called "antehell" (antinferno) where the people who were too meaningless to be good or evil are punished.
Hell is simply creating the ultimate high, the climax-est climax ever. What is violence, what is suffering, without its bride: death?
Reminder that ultrakill is an unfinished game and we don't have much beyond fan theories
I like to think it's like addiction.
Yes, it's bad for hell. Yes, if it doesn't do something it'll probably die. But the machines' onslaught fuel its desire for pain and suffering so much that it can't help but let them tear through its layers for entertainment
so hell is a masochist?
Because carnage taste better than torture
TLDR: Hell is probably not as strong as people make it out to be because that kinda goes against the narrative Ultrakill is trying to tell.
SO...
You know, people like to turn Hell into this all-powerful being that is literally in control of everything and it's the scapegoat for all lore uncertainties and the whole game happens because it allows it to happen.
But I really don't think that's the case.
Hell is sure powerful, but, if one of the main messages of the game is "all living things are fundumentally not so different", do you really think there would be a character that goes against this (not challenges the idea, but simply doesn't fit)? That's like writing a story about how killing is bad and then concluding it with "a guy kills everyone, that's totally fine though because he's good"
So, what if Hell simply can't prevent machines from killing all life? What if that's just something it can't do even if it wants to (and I think it does, assuming Encores are canon, 1-E has secret "enough is never enough is never..." message)?
Remember, Hell very rarely actually enforces torture on sinners. Like, that's why Angels are in Hell, because without them husks are just... free to roam, within their layer at least (and Lust's husks managed to travel deeper and back up, so...). Sure, Hell is a very hostile environment, both in terms of physical dangers and in terms of its physics-defiance, but the two revolutions in Lust and Greed prove that it's managable. Unless we try to stretch the story with "oh, you see, Hell knew these revolts would fail so it didn't act" (which for me sounds like copium), then it's an evidence that Hell's forces can be countered to some degree by "simple mortals".
So, I personally believe that Hell is not as strong as people make it out to be. Ultrakill is not cosmic horror after all, where the reader is meant to get dread from the implications of cosmic insignificance and meaninglessness; quite the opposite: it's a story about existentialism and absurdism. So, using a somewhat lovecraftian idea for Hell, and then deconstructing it to show that it can be overcome, feels fitting.
I like this interpretation.
Hell may be extremely powerful but it's not all-powerful just like God wasn't all-powerful either, there are some things that neither of them can do
Hell might be able to teleport some stuff around and mess with the layout of certain places but maybe that's just about the extent of what it can do?
Honestly I don't think it's a matter of power levels at all.
Say it DOES kill all the machines and save itself. What then? Heaven's not going to do anything against one of God's "Most important" creations. There's going to be fuck-all for hell to do that matters to it, so I imagine that it simply wants to go out in as big a blaze of glory as it can manage before the monotony of eternity sets in.
Everything has its end, even hell. At the end there will be no one left and machines will die too, because there be no blood. Hell will become empty. Heaven will probably die too somehow.
It finds it entertaining.
That's the only reason why, it's only real motive is to be entertained, and it can just create new demons with its hell energy if it needs to.
Hell is bored and wants it all to end. That's part of what "godfist suicide" means
Just like the Sysiphean insurection, this is also a desparate way to end itself with everything else, while having fun.
Wait chat what if hakita is hell
I think hell fundamentally doesn't care.
They're an entity far beyond angels and humanity, which will continue to exist far beyond their complete metaphysical extinction. An entity to which concepts like eternity and time are meaningless things, and thus doesn't really care about being bored for eternity, as eternity is a non-issue to them.
I'm not saying hell is god, I think that the ultrakill god is a separate thing, but I think that hell is somewhere between god and angels, and far below both in terms of care for living entities
Because it's causing suffering to the sinners. And eventually to the machines.
Suffering is hell's only motivation.
hell really really likes the machine, and im guessing it kinda thinks its the perfect ending for its story?
To Hell, seeing something that can in fact, kill it, is like it's wet dream
Im pretty sure no one can die in hell they come back as pulled together red hazes
No hakita cleared that, machines angels and demons dont come back when they die and humans comes back only once in heaven or hell then theyr gone too
"death is a rare privilege in hell" - mannequin terminal entry.
So from what I can tell, when the sinners "die" they don't lose consciousness, and so they live as body parts on the floor. That in itself is torture, and he'll really likes human suffering, so it's a win win situation.
When they die again they experience nothingness
Again? How exactly?, like, shooting the corpses?
when they die in life they go to hell/heaven and when they die again in either of those places then they experience nothing
That's weird since in-game it's stated that death is a rare privilege so that would kind of remove the point of the mannequin entry
The sinners inside the mannequins are still alive.
Death is a rare privilege because usually you aren't allowed to die again to escape it all, doesn't mean that you can't die
Yes, but you said that once they die they experience nothing, and being torn apart joint by joint is bound to kill you, but they aren't dead.
Yeah but they're also husks so they can probably survive more than living people or they tear them apart in a way that won't kill them
In what way would being torn apart not kill you though?
People have survived some crazy stuff and it would make sense that people in hell could survive even more
to put it simply, hell is bored to the point of being suicidal. This is hells final grand act, its masterpiece, and then when hell is finally empty it can die in peace knowing that it took all of creation down with it.
Think about it. All the humans are dead, so there’s no more fresh meat. It knows it’s gonna get bored eventually. If the machines don’t put it out of its misery nothing else ever will
My headcannon is that machines are way more fun to watch because they fight like their survival is on the line ( it literally is ) and then do a battle royale type thingy which we saw in 7-3 Again I'd believe that the machines you come across in that stage were the last man made machines
Compare it to something like let's say a simple husk, they won't fight They don't have the survival instinct of a bloodthirsty man made machine and it would get bored after the chaos even after machines died out of starvation
And you're saying that the council will consider hell useless
The thing is hell is it's an entirely different entity and does not require council to function which can be deducted by the fact that one of the levels has a secret that says God created hell, regretted it, but it was already out of control and even he couldn't undo the making of hell
So it doesn't really matter whether council gives a fuck about the hell. That thing can survive and thrive without their permission
Simply put, there's basically fuck-all left for hell to do with humanity gone, and torturing the same husks forever is mind-numbing. It probably just wants to go out on its own terms before things get too boring.