Overview
An attempt to make sense of the game’s story
Introduction
After completing Sorry, James, an atmospheric puzzle game with a focus on storytelling, you may feel like not enough was revealed to you and not every question was answered. If it’s not the case, and the whole story clicked into place once you’ve made it (or after a while), that’s great! I’m wondering whether the way you understood the story resembles my interpretation or perhaps you’ve realised something that was lost on me.
What you’ll find below is not a guide in a usual sense and clearly not a walkthrough (there’s already an amazing one written by Hanni). It’s more of a humble attempt to explain (some of) the story of Sorry, James by interpreting and connecting available clues.
If you haven’t played the game yet, better don’t rob yourself of the experience as the following sections make up a one huge spoiler. Please come back once you’ve finished the game and feel free to point out the flaws in my interpretation. I’d love it if we could come up with a better one through joint efforts)
Now, let’s move on to the fun part)
Tom
The protagonist (James Garner) is tasked with deciphering a bunch of files, containing the fragments of chat between Elisa and Tom. The girl supposedly texted Tom by mistake, confusing him with a different Tom from a party, but the conversation developed into something bigger.
…
Tom from the files is apparently James’ and Kevin’s former coworker, mentioned in chat at the beginning.
Kevin’s comment about Tom’s work being his only girlfriend supports this assumption. From the files we find out that Tom is recovering from a difficult ‘break-up’ with Mathilda, who turns out to be Tom’s work project, an AI bot.
Apparently, the name he gave his AI is a reference to the Léon: The Professional[www.imdb.com] movie, the one Tom seems to like a lot.
We can learn more about Tom’s significant other from the second video on the game’s Store Page. It shows us a series of Thomas Beker’s diary entries, and most of them (besides the https://imgur.com/a/6UiDb[imgur.com] on pedophilia, necrophilia and such, appearing for a split second) describe his ups and downs with Mathilda.
The (almost five-year long) ‘relationship’ with the AI didn’t end well, and here’s where Elisa comes into play.
Elisa
Now that Mathilda is a thing of the past (as is Tom’s job at Mantis Corp.), he has plenty of time to chat with Elisa. A seemingly random girl who appeared out of nowhere, built up an emotional connection with Tom, but refuses to meet.
Interestingly, she talks about feeling detached from her body and admits she feels like she has no gender.
The last message from Elisa (after Tom decides to leave) is also a bit odd.
Noting that Mathilda ‘didn’t pass the test’ seems rather out of place here… unless Elisa feels she has failed a similar test. So, what does Tom seek in girls that Elisa happens to lack?
Apparently, it is this ‘very important detail’ that Tom has disregarded for a long time. Being a living human.
The fact that Elisa greets you with the exact same words that she texted Tom gives a good reason to assume that she’s yet another AI. The question remains as to who created Elisa and why.
Lisa
Does anyone remember Lisa, the unlucky Elisa’s friend? Let’s recall her story.
The part about the gay boyfriend may sound familiar for those who have played the demo. It was Mariia who found out that Mark, her ex, is gay.
Another similarity between the two is that they were both taken to a hospital.
It is likely that Elisa is referring to Mariia here, and it seems like she knows her pretty well. Could Elisa be Mariia’s creation? In my view, she could. Not only that, but Elisa’s memory and some traits might be partly borrowed from those of Mariia (among other people). The game gives us some clues in this direction.
Bob
There’s a slightly higher chance you remember Bob, a lewd chatbot with a self-learning program.
This little episode gives us an idea of a possible Elisa’s ‘upbringing’: she might have also learned to communicate by analysing a large amount of text. In fact, she almost gives it away at one point.
Lisa’s/Mariia’s car accident has noticeably affected her as well (she might have learned about it in chat with Mariia or reading her diary). Elisa tries to imagine being in Mariia’s shoes and lets it slip that there’s still much work for her (presumably, in getting to understand humans).
While the question of Elisa’s nature is more or less settled (apparently she’s a self-learning AI with almost human-level intelligence), it is less clear why she was created in the first place. Again, I’ll offer my hypothesis on this.
Mariia
The most probable creator of Elisa gives the impression of a troubled vengeful woman.
With this in mind, could Elisa be one of Mariia’s tools for messing with people’s heads? (in this case, by getting them ignorantly attached to a computer program)
Let’s suppose it was Tom who has decrypted Mariia’s diary entries about Mark in the Sorry, James demo. After Mariia learned about this, she could have maliciously set Elisa on him (the demo crashes when we see Elisa’s message). The story would subsequently unfold as we know it.
Maybe Mariia herself didn’t have a direct acceess to Tom’s chat with Elisa, but could only get hold of the encrypted files containing it (that’s my pure speculation, I have no idea how things like this work). Once Tom stopped texting Elisa, Mariia couldn’t wait to learn about what has happened. She then asks James to decrypt the files, but after finding out he didn’t treat them as private, puts her AI to use again (we receive a Steam invite from Elisa at this point).
Now, if that’s indeed the case, Mariia’s last move appears to be pointless. The protagonist learns a lot about Elisa from those 50 files and has probably realised she is not a real person. Elisa’s messages can’t harm him as he won’t take the chatbot seriously.
It’s not the only weakness of this interpretation of course, but since I didn’t come up with anything more plausible, I’ll just leave the whole thing here. Again, if you have an alternative explanation, you’re most welcome to share it)
Acknowledgements
The pics and a gif of Elisa are from the developer’s site[www.konstructors.com] and Tweets by konstructors (for those of you who’re curious, that mysterious girl is the game artist’s girlfriend).
The screenshot of a Steam chat with Elisa was taken by deniz (I didn’t get to take one myself).
And it was imaginary friend and unkenfisk who (unknowingly) made me consider writing this down.
Thanks for taking your time to read!
