A pleasant surprise in 2021 was The Forgotten City, a mystery adventure game developed by Modern Storyteller. After being pulled onto shore, your character is asked by a mysterious woman named Karen to search ancient ruins for her lost friend, but what you find instead is a portal that sends you back thousands of years into the past to a Roman city.
Your time in the Roman city is dedicated to finding the culprit behind the fatal Golden Rule universal law. Citizens of the city explain that the gods have put in place a law that will supposedly turn every one to gold if just one person commits a sin. However, whenever the law is enacted, the time loop is activated and the cycle starts anew with everyone’s memories erased. Even if you complete all four available endings, there are still a few lingering questions left about The Forgotten City.
The following list contains entries that have major spoilers regarding the game's story. Only continue reading this post if you've finished The Forgotten City.
5 Why Only 1,000 Coins?
The big reveal in The Forgotten City is the fact that everyone in the Roman city is dead. That’s right, instead of being transported to some random city, you’re actually in the Underworld. It’s explained that Karen, the woman who pulled you from the water, is actually Charon, the being who ferries the dead to the Underworld. Pluto, the god of the Underworld, distributed 1,000 unique coins across the world for Charon to ferry those specifically random people to his Roman city to show the human race is capable of living harmoniously under the Golden Rule.
Ultimately, Pluto realizes that his wager against Jupiter was doomed from the start, but why exactly were there only 1,000 coins distributed? Was that meant to limit the number of people flooding his Underworld? Or was it the number of people that Jupiter and Pluto agreed upon for the wager? And where did the non-coin people who died end up?
4 Why Don’t They Realize They’re In The Underworld?
When you arrive in the Roman city, everyone you encounter acts like they’re simply trapped in this mysterious place. Everyone except Livia. While everyone describes her as being this cracked-out loony, she’s the only person to have figured out the truth: everyone’s dead, and they’re in the Underworld.
So, why exactly doesn’t everyone else believe her, or at least, entertain this idea? Nobody has any recollection of how they arrived here, only that the majority of them were fleeing a massive fire. Eventually, you do meet an old man living underneath the city who has also figured out they’re in the Underworld, but he can’t convince everyone else in fear that the gods will strike him down. Equitia does have a suspicion about what’s going on in the city, but she requires you to do some investigating. It could be that if people knew they were in the Underworld, it would impact Pluto’s wager, but it’s surprising that not many other people figured out the truth.
3 How Are Christians In The Same Underworld?
While trying to deduce who’s the culprit behind the Golden Rule, you discover there are a few people among the citizens who are not like the others. Rufius, Octavia, and Malleolus are secretly Christians, worshippers of Jesus Christ, unlike the other people who worship the pantheon of Roman (or Greek) Gods. Although the trio is quite proud of their beliefs, they remain hidden because the others refer to them as cultists.
If the Christians are in the same Underworld as the Romans and Greeks, does this mean that heaven and hell aren’t real places? The afterlife for Christians does not match up with what’s happening in The Forgotten City, so would that have an impact on their belief system moving forward? It was an interesting decision to include them with everyone else, but it does raise the question of why they didn’t end up in the afterlife that they believe in.
2 Is Everyone Reincarnated For The Canonical Ending?
Despite having four different endings, there is one, true canonical ending. In this ending, you retrieve four ancient plaques that open up the Great Temple and you gain an audience with Pluto himself. You convince him that the wager was doomed from the start and human beings aren’t designed to be perfect but have flaws that make them complex and shouldn’t be dismissed. Upon hearing this and realizing his mistakes, Pluto ends the wager, and you’re free to go.
After being transported back to the present time, you find Al Worth and the pair of you meet back with Karen (or Charon). The ferryman agrees to ferry the both of you back to the land of the living, where you find yourself in a museum with practically everyone from the Roman city. It appears they’ve all been reincarnated and are alive once again, but how is that possible, much less, allowed? Wouldn’t there be a time paradox with centuries-old people now walking around among the living? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to have these people alive again, given that you were only able to save them all by the use of a paradox.
1 Where Do All The Dead People Go Now?
With Pluto putting an end to the wager and effectively dismantling the Underworld, where do dead people go now? While we include this lingering question, it does get answered in a sense, but is it a good enough answer? Apparently, Charon is now the ruler of the Underworld, and they’ve begun creating a new world. But is this a universal Underworld or anything VIP-type situation?
People around the world believe in many religions, thus, believe in many versions of the afterlife. Will Charon’s new Underworld hold precedent and be declared the one, true afterlife? And will people still be able to “die again” when they’re already dead in the Underworld? It seems like there are plenty of loose ends to tie up regarding Charon’s new Underworld, but at least there will still be a place for people to congregate after kicking the can.