Headscratchers / Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

• So was the Pattern malevolent, unaware that it was hurting people, or aware that it was hurting them but still made them ascend because it thought they would be happier that way?
• Did the bombs kill people instantly or did the Pattern take them before the gas got to them to save them from suffering?
  • The Pattern probably took them first, because you can find the corpses of animals, but not of people.
• How did Steven stay alive so long if he was affected?
• Why does the main page claim that the player character is actually Kate? I found no evidence for this. If the player character is Kate, then why is she wandering around and listening to recordings of herself? And didn't Kate die from the nerve gas? She was expecting to die soon, as of her final recordings. Is the player character supposed to be Kate's ghost or something?
  • In his last scene, Stephen calls you by Kate's name and starts to walk towards you. Given that he didn't see you/Kate for most of his conversation, and we hear a bit of the Pattern's sound just before he spots Kate, and that the Pattern breaks the laws of physics, this troper thought that Stephen was looking forward through time to see Kate. Having said that, it doesn't explain why Kate claims to have seen his face, but this troper can't think of another explanation as to how Kate could have been in the room and survived.
    • Sure, Stephen saw a vision of Kate. Maybe he was looking forward through time, or just through space, or maybe he didn't "see" her at all but instead he saw some kind of simulation!Kate that the Pattern cooked up. But in any of those cases, why would it mean that the player is Kate? Whenever you see golden-light visions of people, it's accepted that you aren't part of the scene. You're just watching a "recording", as it were. So this is just a recording of Stephen seeing a vision of Kate. It doesn't mean that the player is Kate herself.
  • Being affected cognitively is one of the symptoms of the Pattern's infection. It could be Kate realized she was gradually forgetting who she was and left the recordings for her future self to find.
  • You will also note that in one of her recordings, she mentions that the Pattern is beginning to see and hear through her- and that when she's records and listens to her own notes again, she feels like she's hearing it for the first time. The player may very well be the Pattern itself, and our playthrough is but us hearing and seeing events for the first time, piggy backing on Kate.
  • The player begins outside the Gatehouse of the observatory; for all we know, the Player Character may well just be the Security Guard.
• What is the meaning of all the numbers? In particular, why is there a big chunk of numbers at the end of the credits? Is there a mystery waiting to be solved here?
  • The numbers at the end of the credits are a cipher code.
• If the Pattern was killing birds, why can you hear them everywhere you go even when the light isn't around?
  • It didn't kill all the birds in the world so new birds moved back into the area after everything went down?
• Why has Wendy got a different last name to both her brother and her son?
  • She took her husband's last name. Obviously Frank wouldn't take that, and Stephen chooses to go by Appleton as he never knew his father. In his house, you can find a diploma with his full name, Stephen Edward Appleton Boyle, written on it.

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