Scorn is a video game I have not played, but I believe that this 2 hour long video about it has given me more than enough to have an informed opinion about it, considering the game is about 5 hours long if you play at a normal pace. I found the game, its aesthetics and its themes to be interesting enough that I would want to write about it, and I believe its flaws are also endemic of a large section of modern media.
What is Scorn about? Everyone who has experienced a book or movie they enjoy knows that answering this question makes you die on the inside, like having to explain a joke to someone who doesn't get it, because the process of summarizing inherently produces something which is not the original experience. But still, Scorn isn't so alien or unique that it cannot be put into literal words.
The plot isn't explicitly told, rather we are guided by the game through its world, and are offered no dialogue or text whatsoever, and must piece together the story if we wish to make sense of it. So here are the main themes and bits of the story I got from the video, as well as some comments posted underneath it 1 2, to give context to what I think of it.
§1. The aesthetics is by far its main appeal. We get a world in ruin and decay, where the walls seem like the remains of some giant arthropod we are navigating through. Technology is fused with flesh, intestinal tubes and organic fluids, giving us a sense of deep visceral discomfort, especially when we see our character interact with the bio-mechanical contraptions needed to progress through the game, or has to carry the corpses of the creatures we encounter.
§2. What I have pieced from the story (again, laid out in the video) is that we have 2 main factions of people: the inhabitants of Polis, the sort of upper class which seeks to transcend their condition through technology and raising their consciousness, and the Humanoids, the other beings (who are probably from the same race as the Polis), who end up being grown in specific environments for the resources gathered from their body, or artifically created altogether.
Within the Humanoids, we have the Moldmen, the Homunculi, the Wallborn and the Shells. The Moldmen are clearly the lower class, as they are not only treated as slaves by the Polis to run factories and other mechanisms, but are directly used as resources in the bio-mechanical world of Scorn, where flesh, organs and fluids are treated as materials to create artificial bodies and other structures. Then we have the Homunculi, which are fetus-like creatures grown in small containers, and which the Polis people use to extract a red fluid used as a powerful psychedelic. The wallborns are not super explored, but they are probably another worker class, or perhaps a result of an abandoned project to create humanoids. And finally, the Shells are the artificial humanoids which the Polis eventually build to transcend their own body.
§3. The world of Polis then is one of deep scorn towards anyone living outside of that city. The hierarchy is not only incredibly brutal and fixed, it is also perhaps their only source of pleasure. There is nothing that indicates any form of culture or entertainment in the remains of Polis, only statues that showcase incredibly crude displays of sex, with no intimacy or love shown whatsoever. We can imagine that over time, they developped a deep apathy towards life itself and being limited by the confines of their own body, and that in order to prevent themselves from dying out due to not enough people reproducing, they had to create a cargo cult around reproduction just to keep their population afloat, turning it into a purely utilitarian endeavor, hence the statues which would remind the citizens of their duty to carry.
§4. I suspect that this attempt to maintain their population wasn't enough, and even if it was, they started to hate life so much that they would want to transcend it in some fashion. This is why we see attempts at building artificial humanoids throughout the game. Not just the Shells mentioned above, but also the crater queen we encounter in the middle of the game, and the genesis wall in the beginning. They become obsessed with trying to understand birth because they want to hack the process for themselves so that they can escape the life they hate.
§5. In an interesting twist of event, our first protagonist, a humanoid, ends up dying and reborn as a parasite, which we can infer from the artbook and the game is one of the key components for the transcendence that the Polis people seeked. This is because whenever a Shell is infused with the Homunculi-fluid, a red flower blooms from its third eye, and this flower bears a striking resemblance with the parasite we meet throughout the game. Our second protagonist then is also a humanoid, but born from the genesis wall. Eventually, the parasite catches up to him and uses the second protagonist as a host, gradually taking over his body, until the end where our protagonist gets rid of the parasite, thinking it can now reach some form of awakening or transcendence, until finally the parasite comes back for a last time, and kills the protagonist for good, birthing a fleshy statue, where the game prompty ends.
§6. My interpretation of the whole game is that the scorn of the inhabitants of Polis was against flesh, not just of their own body, but also in the way they treated the humanoids for resources. This flesh then manifested into the parasite, a being with no care for its host whatever, because it was initially made for Shells which felt little to no pain 3, but which ends up attaching itself to another kind of humanoid by accident, and eventually causes the death of both of them.
The tragedy at the end occurs because the parasite was merely following its instinctual drives to attach itself to a host, not knowing it would kill anything which isn't a Shell, and our second protagonist's journey is cut short just before experiencing the transcendence which the Polis built for themselves (and seemingly succeeded a few times? It is unclear, but at least there are lines of statues at the end).
The parasite has no empathy for any other being, because it is a reflection of the scorn of Polis, and interestingly enough, and before our first protagonist is turned into it, he doesn't seem to have much empathy either, himself using a moldman for his own quest.
Overall, I view Scorn as a story about the cycle of abuse, as well as how egoic men wish to hack together the process of Creation, in a general attempt to mimic Heaven, but in doing so end up creating a Hell on Earth.
Egoic creation is heavily distorted in all kinds of manners: it is asymmetric, as can be seen by our first protagonist who loses half of his face and becomes the parasite, hacked together as opposed to harmonious, and viscerally selfish, or you could simply say parasitical.
I do respect any game for tackling these types of subjects, especially because it does so without any dialogue or text whatsoever, and even my experience of watching someone else talk about Scorn gave me a good taste of the Hell depicted there, but there is still something empty about the whole thing.
Even if some of the details of what I understood were wrong or inconsistent, even if I missed some "deep" connection, for instance that it could be an allegory for spiritual enlightenment, 4 the core of the game is still the same: utterly bleak, with no glimpse of the Divine or the profundity of Life whatsoever.
People tend to enjoy this type of game because they love discussing about what the story could mean exactly, but while plot and references are clever addons onto a story, things which are delightful to find and talk about, if the core of the story doesn't have any meaningful quality, then these are merely additives to a poor base, like adding excessive salt and fat to mask low quality ingredients.
The game highlights the bleakness of a world dominated by ego, what happens when human society is out of touch with something higher, in that it becomes like the parasite: merely focused on reproducing itself, monstrous and ultimately, self-defeating. But at no point do you get a sense of why exactly the Polis people were so wrong, a sense that they turned away from the Divine or simply something good about their existence. We see their scorn, but not the light they turned away from.
Even in incredibly bleak stories, like those of Dostoevsky or Kafka, even in the cheerless 1984 of Orwell, or even the manga Berserk to summon more popular media, we do get glimpses of beauty, love, redemption, serenity, peace, even if those are ultimately crushed in the tragic finale.
This is not some arbitrary standard I am appealing to, something like "every story needs to have some light and some darkness", or "every story needs to be moralizing in some sense". No, the lack I am pointing to is deeply revealing of the type of people who enjoy this type of media, as well as those who create it.
Cynicism is perhaps the easiest way to seem "deep" or "smart" to normies, which is why shows like Black Mirror get made. If you create an utterly cynical work, but then add complication so that the "meaning" isn't obvious, you have a recipe for seeming like a genius without communicating any genuine quality whatsoever, and deeper than that, the people who create it can conceal their empty life.
It is not a coincidence that Scorn is a game where you must piece together the plot, the same way that many Black Mirror episodes and modern movies do, through having an amnesiac character usually, because if the story was told linearly and in a simple fashion, people would quickly feel like the writers are just trying to throw as many shocking scenes as they can to the spectator, without rhyme or reason.
It is depressing how many people relate to media in the frame of "figuring out the true meaning". I do not say this because it isn't worthwhile to do, or because I do not believe that we can arrive to the meaning intended by the author, but because great stories are much more than mere puzzles, for the simple reason that life is much more than about connecting pieces together. 5
Meaningfulness comes from present experiences felt in great depth. In a sense Scorn does that through its atmosphere and its intricate details, you feel immediately that you are in a deeply disturbed world, and I have walked away from the video with more appreciation for my own life, because evidently I do not live in such an awful nightmare.
But all of this remains largely a background to what happens, which is what exactly? Our main character waddles through a world which has essentially only one path, seemingly progressing through some type of scheme that, we assume, must go somewhere. There is very little about the environment that I have found interesting in an of itself in that game, besides the aesthetic mentioned above which, to repeat again, is well executed and quite central to the game.
But we navigate from buildings which conveniently house the machines that our main character needs, find the right items and upgrades, and this series of getting to the next step, or understanding what is going on, is what keeps the person engaged, not anything to do with what they are doing or experiencing currently.
Which leads me to perhaps another problem with the game, which is simply: what in the world is our main character doing anyway? At the end we get to the point which the Polis inhabitants tried to reach, which is the transcendence of their condition. But how do our protagonists know how to navigate this immense wasteland we are in?
Supposedly, the parasite is programmed to do the task of transcendence, again on the Shells, not the humanoids that we are, so we could reasonably justify that it has an instinct to find the right place. But why does our second protagonist go in this or that direction then? What are his motivations?
Here I must emphasize that I am not poking specifically at a plot hole. Some stories get a few details wrong, but their core can still be prodigiously well written, because the story is both determined, in that the fate of the characters makes sense given what we know about them, but the ending is still surprising, unique, brilliant, as opposed to a cliché we forget after a few weeks.
The problem with Scorn is that our main characters are utterly blank. We do not know anything about them, besides the fact that they are part of a cruel world, and are also as we can imagine, cruel themselves. Contrast this with Kafka's characters, who are often involved in their tragic fate. Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis is initially more concerned about not getting to his job on time, than about how he will be able to live as the massive insect he has become. His alienation we might say began far before the beginning of the story. The same thing is true with Dostoevsky's characters, brilliantly presented in Crime and Punishment, where Raskolnikov thinks of himself as a great man capable of shaping his own life, but ultimately only digs himself deeper, and deeper, in the hole he has made for himself, through the murder of his land lord.
Tragedy works when a character's virtues and vices form one whole, and shape their fate in a way which is both predictable, coherent, but also intriguing in that we wish to see how they address their own faults, their own inner conflict, which incidentally can only exist if there is even a Truth to betray.
Cynicism porn on the other hand blames phantom causes: society, capitalism, patriarchy, etc. This is because ultimately, it is very nice for the spectator to feel smart while never taking any responsibility whatsoever.
The way Scorn portrays Death is also rather telling. Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich depicts the life of an utterly selfish man, only interested in climbing the social ladder. His marriage holds no love, his children are just kind of there, with little to show that he cares about them. At the end however, he starts to question his own life and whether he lived well, and finds his humble servant, Gerasim, to be the only source of warmth in his last days. He, as opposed to Ivan Ilyich, does not fear Death, and is willing to live for someone else, showing gentle compassion. And that is when Ilyich realizes just how much he couldn't honor in own life, starts letting go of the hatred he holds for his family, and lets himself slip into Death, unafraid of it.
Scorn does not portray Death in any such way. There is no change in our characters throughout the game, besides the fact that the parasite is taking over our second protagonist, and even in Death, all we witness is struggle for survival, but nothing more. Our characters start out as empty shells victims of their own circumstances, and die the same way.
You could argue that Scorn is simply not a tragedy, it's a dystopia, a glimpse into the hopeless world we could slip by as a society. Fair enough, but even in a hopeless story like 1984, we see the people who wish to rise above their condition. We see Winston's desire to stand by the Truth no matter what, we see Julia's utter disinterest in the system and her desire to live for herself, and we see how ultimately, Winston betrays Julia due to his own weaknesses and the fact that the weight of the world he lives in is far too much.
Defenders of Scorn will say that there is no recognizable character in Scorn because the world is so dehumanizing that there is no individuality left. Just exploitation, survival, and deep egotism. They will say that there is no choice, no agency, because the hierarchy of Polis was so rigid and fixed that the world it led to is now devoid of free will. That the cycle of abuse has become so strong that no one can escape it, and only mindless killing happens over and over.
This is a nice justification. Except that it doesn't make for a good story. Intended doesn't mean good. Clever doesn't mean good. When one witnesses or plays through Scorn, one is supposed to weep at all the awful, awful things which are happening. And indeed awful they are. But by itself, this is utterly empty.
The 2 hour long video I watched is titled "Why Scorn is the Most Disturbing Game Ever Made". Note the use of "disturbing", as opposed to let's say, "life-changing", "confronting", or "clarifying". What gamers want is to be disturbed, which is to say titillated, whether positively or in this case negatively. They do not want to be confronted with something which could resemble their own life, because that would require honesty, and more importantly, responsibility.
At some point it becomes clear that how people relate to media has severely shifted in the modern world. Before people could spend all their time in mediated environments, real life was the center from which they operated, and then sometimes departed through literature, music, or other forms of art, to then return back with more perspective, a deeper appreciation of what they have taken for granted.
Nowadays, people can spend their entire life in digital environments, utterly untethered from anything real whatsoever. Games like Scorn are thus appealing because they provide a world which they can figure out, dissect and justify, all as a distraction from living life. Yes, someone who plays Scorn instead of let's say Candy Crush might ask themselves more interesting questions, ones related to the direction of our society and where humans fit in that. This is valuable.
But it doesn't matter how smart you make an alienated and apathetic person, how many books they read or many debates they partake in, they will largely remain that way unless they take an interest in real life and real people.
The reason why people might feel inclined to defend the utterly bleak worldview underneath Scorn is not out of a desire to defend Truth, Beauty or any sort of artistic integrity. It's because deep down, they can relate with the alienation, the meaninglessness, the utter despair presented in the story, which is why they think it is so deep. A culture of domesticated people does not want to know or experience the wilderness. It is too strange and unpredictable. Rather what they want is some variation on the zoo they are in. That is not only reassuring but also exciting to their endless desire for novelty. But they do not want anything genuine or true, despite what they might say.
There is a term to all of this, the implicit pandering to the audience, the bedrock of reassuring emotions, whether positive or negative, underneath a layer of eye-catching visuals which pulls most of the attention of the viewer. It's called pornography, and Scorn is part of a large genre of media which can be described as cynicism porn.
The game is intelligent enough to perceive large-scale problems, not deep enough to point to the root of said problems, and definitely not human or loving enough to guide the way, which forces it to double down on its cynicism because it has nothing else to provide. Scorn is ultimately the video game equivalent of Black Mirror, which people watch because again, it presents them with a reassuring image, that of their own alienation.
1 First comment:
I think the whole game might be a metaphor for birth. I feel like maybe they desired to become the original humans. The ones that could procreate and give birth naturally. They idolized them so much they basically created a metropolis fetishizing the idea of natural birth and their concept of it. Thats why there so many murals and reliefs depicting procreation but none really about the actual process of being born, they dont know what a natural birth looks like. it has been so long since humanity was able to do something as basic as give birth, its been twisted to what they believe is birth. The crater queen and the genesis wall could have been horrific and misunderstood attempts at creating creatures that can do live births, but as we see it becomes twisted and horrific because the things that made them dont understand the processes behind birth. They just think something had to be ALIVE to give birth and that its good enough. As time passes and they become more and more obsessed with the idea of birth and the humanity of it. They build temples to try and replicate it. They themselves went through the rituals of being torn apart and placed into a pregnant "human" bodies to try and replicate the feeling of being pregnant. The giant portal at the end could be a giant birthing canal to simulate what a birth could be for those that have "ascended". A giant portal to an unknown or a better realm that they believe they can be "born" into. To sum up my feelings, these creatures become obsessed with humanity and the concept of birth so much they create a whole civilization around it and play pregnancy simulator.
2 Second comment:
There is a lot to unpack here.
First, the key dispensers. Any being with a hand can get a wrist key and there are dispensers all over the factory. Why not just install levers? You would use less material and it would have the same function. My guess would be a practical, visual indication of status. No one seems to wear clothes or jewelry. The society is obviously obsessed with status. My guess is that forcing wall humanoids to be marked with a wrist key is the same as wearing a slave collar in Fallout New Vegas; a constant reminder of one's place in the grand scheme of things and that one is entirely replaceable (which is why there are so many dispensers).
This, then, brings me to the conclusion that this society is inherently cruel, not just maliciously efficient. An important distinction. The higher castes are not blind to the pain and suffering they cause; they relish it. There seems to be no music, no art (the wall sculptures are more akin to instruction manuals than expressions of emotion, save possibly the wall sculptures created by the hive mind) no leisure activities on display. Everything seems to be "born" an adult with an inherent sense of their place in the hierarchy. Perhaps, the only freedom of expression allowed in this sterile, ordered society is cruelty. Each being is "born" an adult and seems to have some understanding of their place in the hierarchy (further making the wrist key a callous invention).
So finally, the themes of "life, death and rebirth". The problem is, this society skips a couple of steps. Youth, adolescence and the naivety accompanying it are absent. As is old age which we commonly associate with wisdom. This makes me look at the parasite in a new light. You have a creature that has only some of the memories of it's old life (it is missing a portion of it's brain), and has an inherent desire for cruelty, yet it is an unplanned and new creation. It is, at least partly, a scared child. It could be that this unplanned "child" is simply wanting companionship in a world of endless cruelty. It is afraid, burdened with the half-remembered traumas of a past life and clings to the second protagonist purely out of a need for comfort and familiarity. How much time passed since the this new creature awakened and your second protagonist was "born"? How long was it wandering, alone? It is a traumatized child in a childless world of cruelty. When the second protagonist is about to go through the gate, the parasite desperately grabs onto it, not wanting to be left alone. It lashes out in fear. The final scene shows the two beings are one, trapped by the shared trauma of a cruel existence, unable to move on. And yet, they have each other. They are not alone. A metaphor for unhealthy relationships, but if you see one of them as a child, it makes it more complicated. It more closely resembles a metaphor for unplanned pregnancy, which I think, fits the themes of the game a little better. How does one fit unplanned birth in a world where every birth is controlled, the fate of every being is predestined before "conception"?"
3 In the beginning, the protagonist has a key implanted in his left hand, which causes excrutiating pain, but the Shells do not feel any pain doing the same procedure.
4 The parasite is the ego, which at first we do not have in our life, then it latches onto us and we start adapting to it, but then eventually we must get rid of it if we do not want it to take over completely, and if we don't, our consciousness dies under it.
5 Other games with "deep lore" which I have played until the end: Inscryption and Void Stranger. I did find them enjoyable to some extent, but I would not call them great on an artistic level. Their lore might be complicated and full of non-obvious references, but this does not make great art by itself.
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2025-09-18