AN EMPIRE OF FRIGID NOTHING (SPECTRE)

AN EMPIRE OF FRIGID NOTHING (SPECTRE)

"Which came first, the Chicken or the Egg?"

There are two major ways to interpret how Voice Hatching works:

The Voices Spawn. The manner in which the Decider behaves, the things they experience, and the trauma they endure influence the Voice hatched upon their death. Their personality, philosophy, and perspective are informed by what Quiet collectively has gone through. The Egg (previous iterations of the Decider) hatches into The Chicken (Voice).

The Voices Always Existed. The options provided to a player are reactions to their environment and circumstances, adulterated with the impulses and personality of nascent Voices waiting to hatch. The Chicken (Voice) lays The Egg (options the Decider picked in the previous Chapter).

There are more than two ways to interpret how Voices operate, and most you ask this question to will say something in-between these two black and white options. Ultimately, it's inarguable that a Voice is always influenced in some manner by events preceding their hatching. It is not that fact of influence the debate is centered on, but the interpretable extent. The fact is openly supported by the text.

Certain Voices will take credit for actions taken in the previous Chapter (ex: Cold claiming to have killed Damsel in Burned!Grey) or the previous life (ex: every Voice, bar Hero & Cheated, in Razor's Chapter IIIs), and many others will remember events long before they hatch (ex: Smitten recalling the entire narrative up to Chapter III - The Thorn, Cheated recalling everything that happens before Chapter III - The Wraith).

With this background information in mind, we can examine the events in Chapter I - The Hero and The Princess leading into Chapter II - The Spectre mindful of how specific choices made by the Decider or certain events they encounter may influence Voice of the Cold moving forward.

[FOR CONTEXT: [Take the blade] once at the cabin, hereby accepting the Narrator's premise and following His word.] Voice of the Hero - She’s so coldly beautiful… is she really a threat to the world?

The Narrator - You step forward, your grip tightening as you steel your resolve. The Narrator - You lunge forward without a moment’s hesitation. The Narrator - You feel flesh easily give way and look down to see your blade already sinking deep into her heart. Voice of the Hero - But is it over? Really over? - Of course it is. She’s dead.

The Narrator - You did kill someone. Greater good or not, something would be very wrong with you if you didn’t feel at least a little bad. But it was for the greater good. One of these days, that will sink in and help ease your guilty conscience.

The Narrator - You open the cabin door, ready to return to a world saved from certain doom.

The Narrator - Only, a world saved from certain doom isn’t what you find. Instead, what you find is nothing at all. Where a lush forest stood mere minutes ago, the only thing in front of you now is the vast emptiness of some place far away. Voice of the Hero - What… happened? The Narrator - Everyone is fine, it’s just that you and the cabin are now far away from them. Don’t worry. You’ll be safe here. This is good. Everyone is happy. You’ll be happy.

- I was kind of hoping I’d get a better ending for saving the world. The Narrator - This isn’t an ending. In fact, now that the Princess has been slain, endings are a thing of the past. No… this is the beginning of eternity. Your reward. The Narrator - This is what’s best for everyone. Trust me. The Narrator - Time passes. You can’t be sure if it’s days, or months, or years or even decades. It’s all a wonderful, boring blur. You’ve never been happier.

Voice of the Hero - Pst! Hey! We’re not just going to stay here forever right? Voice of the Hero - Are we really happy, or is He just telling us that we are? - Hmm, okay maybe I’m not happy. And I’m not just saying that because you’re the last person I talked to. Voice of the Hero - Good, because I have an idea to get us out of here. Though you’re probably not going to like it. Voice of the Hero - The blade. We can use the blade to get out of this.

The Narrator - Do you hear that? It wants to take this happiness away from you. It wants this wonderful place to end. Voice of the Hero - Do you not? There’s more for us to do, and the only way for us to do it is to take that blade and use it. The Narrator - Don’t you dare. - Anything to get out of this hell. Voice of the Hero - Thank you. The Narrator - I made this happy little place for you! Is this not a good enough reward for saving the world? An eternity of bliss? You… you ingrate! The Narrator - Fine. Whatever. For the first time since time stopped meaning anything, you throw open the door to the basement and walk down the stairs. The Narrator - You pick up the blade, you stab yourself, and you die. The Narrator - The end. Nice knowing you.

a set of directions from the Narrator, dutifully carried out by the Decider without the slightest hint of doubt, ignoring their conscience until faced with an utterly detestable "reward" for their compliance. critically, the timelessness perceived in that moment between opening the door to stare into the abyss and slaying oneself to be rid of the stagnation is so dilated in Quiet's perception that the Princess's corpse is reduced to a skeleton by the time the Decider plucks the Pristine Blade from its ribcage.

i could commentate further on this, or i could include one particularly noteworthy dialogue screenshot ---

- (Explore) Wouldn’t ‘using’ the blade… you know, kill us? Wouldn’t we be dead? The Narrator - How astute. You’re absolutely correct. Using the blade to kill yourself would kill you and you shouldn’t do it. Voice of the Hero - In a sense, we’d die, but looking at things from another angle, are we even really alive anymore? This place… it’s nothing! It’s absolutely nothing. It’s just the same thing, constantly, forever. Voice of the Hero - I know this is out there, but trust me. I know using the blade will work.

--- and let Cold speak for himself on the matter:

[FOR CONTEXT: in response to the Narrator saying we're only here because we died, which probably only happened because we didn't listen to Him] Voice of the Cold - Oh, we listened to you plenty. We slew the Princess, just like you asked us to. And then you locked us away in an empty void for eternity. So we slew ourselves, too.

[FOR CONTEXT: in response to the Narrator asking what would've happened to the world we left behind had we failed to slay the Princess] Voice of the Cold - It doesn’t matter, because we didn’t fail to slay her, and if she’s really back, which I doubt, it’ll be just as easy to do it again. But after that nasty trick you pulled on us, maybe she’s not the only one around here in need of slaying.

[FOR CONTEXT: in the cabin with Spectre, talking to the Narrator about the ghost-Princess after having talked to Him previously in the woods about the looping] The Narrator - What do you mean, ‘after’? Voice of the Cold - You already know what we mean, don’t you? So why don’t you go ahead and tell us? Are you going to try and lock us away in a timeless void again? Because I didn’t much care for that. The Narrator - I’m not going to lock you anywhere. Voice of the Cold - What an interesting choice of emphasis.

- (Explore) If anything, the world ended after I slew her. When I tried to leave, everything was gone. Voice of the Hero - That’s a good point. How do we know we didn’t have things backwards? Maybe slaying the Princess was what ended the world, not the other way around. Voice of the Cold - Yes, maybe this whole thing was a trick to get us to end the world. And now we get to go through the whole charade again wholly aware of what’s waiting for us at the end. Voice of the Cold - But that’s assuming she’s alive in that cabin. We did kill her, after all.

Voice of the Cold - This is boring. He’s clearly not interested in talking, so let’s just do as He says and maybe He’ll stop bothering us.

Cold is interesting because, as I'll point out later (both in this analysis and whenever i seek out Cold's other appearances), you need to read between the lines and in the negative spaces quite often to gauge what he's thinking. here, though, back in the woods again, Cold's an open book. "we listened to you and you locked us in an empty void for eternity. i really didn't care for that. it was a 'nasty trick.' we slew ourselves." note that Cold isn't expressing regret or remorse for anything that happened. he doesn't feel guilty about [Slaying the Princess], and he's outright convinced we're capable of doing it again. note twice, though, that Cold doesn't think we need to. he's fully convinced that her death sticks, even if ours didn't. he isn't readying up, either. it's just a job to him. (Something he was asked to do. a task, some dirty work. he holds no real opinion on the act of [Slaying the Princess], not here, and not now.) A job that, as he's seen, has no good rewards. In fact, the end result of completing this task is not something he wants at all. But he also really, really, really wants the Narrator to shut up, and trying to talk to Him isn't getting anything done.