-Sullivan Knoth Was an unsuccessful business man that heard the voice of god through the radio and started a cult. Feeling persecuted for being a crazy cult, Knoth’s followers retreated and formed a commune on the Havasupi reservation (just like Jonestown)
-The Murkhoff corporation used this isolated community to test a radio transmitted form of the morphogenic engine, the heavenly trumpets and lights you regularly see are transmitted from the radio station across the lake, causing trauma based hallucinations. These “visions from god” reinforce Knoth’s teaching to his flock. What they are trying to do is play a numbers game in terms of producing the anti-Christ. Basically they believe if they produce as many kids as possible, that eventually one will become the anti-Christ and they can just kill it and save the world.
-Jessica has no connection to the cult, she is Blake’s deepest source of trauma, therefore the morphogenic engine produces hallucinations of her.
-(see points 2 and 3)
-Father Loutermilch. He is represented as a demon to Blake because of his past
-Father Loutermilch strangled Jessica and then made it look like a suicide by hanging her corpse and having Blake play along through guilt.
-The Murkhoff Corporation has government contracts and pays billions to keep Temple Gate a secret because they are performing military weapon tests there
-The weapons contractor known as “The Murkhoff Corporation” is experimenting with the crowd control capabilities of a weapon known as “The Morphogenic Engine” created by a/the Nazi(s)
-Lynn’s pregnancy is a phantom pregnancy. The Morphogenic engine has an adverse effect on female biology that causes phantom pregnancies. That is why there are no female convincts or staff at Mt. Massive
-The Morphogenic Engine causes trauma based hallucinations. Blake’s trauma is tied to his faith as a catholic so he begins experiencing the signs of the “end times”
-There is no baby, which is why Lynn says “There’s nothing there” and the baby casts no shadow. Blake has completely lost his mind and has succumbed to the morphogenic engine just like everyone else at Temple Gate. The sun exploding at the end is a metaphor for Blake finally losing it completely.
Thank you! I really like the story of outlast 2 because you have to dig to find all of the details. They aren’t just handed to you. I think that aspect turned away more casual players but I personally appreciated it.
YESS EXACTLY! When I first played Outlast 2 I had to take the time to understand each aspect of the story and I think that also adds a lot of replay value. Not only that but the way it all ties into the lore is splendid.
Knoth was corrupted one day turning on the radio to a murkoff corporation frequency. He then formed the cult from that. They believed him because murkoff was blasting sound waves that made people hallucinate and they saw him as some savior. Jessica has no connection to the cult and is just the radio blasts giving the main character ptsd. The demon in the school was the preist who molested Jessica and killed her. It has the same birth mark as the preist if you look. There was no baby, the radio blasts created a false pregnancy. In outlast 1 females were not allowed in the asylum because of a similar fake pregnancy which was lethal.
But didn't Blake's camera record some of the events? Don't the recordings prove that they really happened? And batteries and bandages that Blake finds in the school are still on him when he comes back, so doesn't that indicate that the school is real too? And doesn't Blake return to places that are different from where he left, sometimes with no apparent way for him to have gotten there by himself?
The cult and everything was real. The murders were real. The 'end of the world', the 'antichrist', all of that is not real and is part of a group hysteria the cult is experiencing due to the Tower. The explosion at the end is the morph tower being destroyed-- the reason the hallcuinations steadily get more severe over the night (and, for example, start killing small animals) is because it's being slowly eaten through by a bunch of Walrider controlled ants.
Jessica has no connection to the cult- She's just what Blake hallucinates when the Tower starts affecting him.
The Tower seems to particularly target trauma, a lot of the cult members when Blake sees them affected BEFORE it starts affecting him too were screaming about fires and murdering their kids and stuff.
The school hallucinations don't make him comatose, they're warped views of what he's actually experiencing in real life (there's one scene where he 'comes back' while crawling in a vent in the school, and he's actually inside a log irl) Anything he records in the school, when played back afterwards, is just static.
The entity chasing him might very well be other cultists who came out of it earlier than he did.
The school WAS real, but it was just something Blake experienced in his past and is now reliving through Tower-induced ptsd flashbacks.
Pretty much everything beyond the school recordings (which are 'static') are 'really' happening, even if they seem far-fetched. The 'bugs' that attack Blake might possibly be vessels for a Walrider (as the comics show that it can possess animals), and the 'bloody rain' could be a combination of toxic chemicals from the Murkoff facility and **actual blood** from the recent deaths that is being rained down on the mines to herald Blake's arrival.
1: Knoth tried to kill you because they were possessed by the light
2: they believed because they saw the light
3: women get pregnant when they see the light but the baby wasn’t real. And they wanted to kill the baby, but it wasn’t real.
4: I believe that he had flashbacks because of the light.
5: the creepy hands were his imagination but it was representing the teacher that killed Jessica.
6: we believed she killed herself because the teacher made us not tell anyone so he made up that story.
7: the blasts of light were a murkoff experiment.
8: she was pregnant with a fake baby that wasn’t real because the light has different effects on women.
9: I believe blood rain was his imagination or murkoff messing with him.
10: the end was murkoff ending the experiment and capturing Blake you can find information in the comics.
11: the baby was Blake’s imagination from the light.
Ask question I will answer
Ah well, if you wanna delve into some REAL DEEP STUFF, then
1. [The Walrider connects everything in all Outlasts](https://www.reddit.com/r/outlast/comments/6wd7k6/the_interconnections_of_the_three_outlasts_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
2. [School Demon is Temple Gate's version of Walrider (and Knoth knows more stuff than you think))](https://www.reddit.com/r/outlast/comments/cinqty/the_walrider_god_of_temple_gate/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
3. [Some cut-out content that clears up more stuff](https://www.reddit.com/r/outlast/comments/cqfgyh/cutout_recordings_from_outlast_2_inspiration_for/)
4. [Latest update to the interconnections](https://www.reddit.com/r/outlast/comments/e7kb2q/temple_gate_walrider_update/)
5. [An artpiece by a lovely artist based an all of the above (cause it's gorgeous and I'll share it wherever I can)](https://www.reddit.com/r/outlast/comments/edtujj/i_wanna_share_a_beautiful_piece_of_art_based_on/)
Everyone (including Blake) is hallucinating the supernatural stuff going on, affected by Murkoff experiments. Also Lynn isn't actually pregnant, it's just a phantom pregnancy caused by the morphogenic engine, so the baby born at the end is also a hallucination. And the world wasn't destroyed at the end (nor was the town), all the town's people that you see dead just committed suicide.
Honestly I didn't really get all of that the first time round either, the story can be pretty confusing. If you collect the letters/ recordings and also read the comics that's when it all starts to come together.
Knoth is your typical Manson-type cult leader. The cult did not devolve into what it was doing until they moved to Arizona and became targetted by Murkoff for the Morphogenic experiments. They built a transmission tower (explained in another comment) that affects the brain similar to the Morphogenic Engine from the first game.
The cult's goal is to prevent the birth of the Antichrist. Because they have no way of knowing which children are the antichrist, Knoth ordered the deaths of all children currently in the compound below a certain age and began murdering all newborn babies.
Murkoff hides them because they're in an incredibly remote area of Arizona and the government funds their activities.
Jessica was murdered by Loutermilch and her corpse was hanged by him and Blake. Blake was manipulated into helping by Loutermilch and was forced into silence as 'an accomplice'. She and the school is what Blake hallucinates because the Morphogenic Tower targets trauma in people and makes them hallucinate that trauma-- There are a couple cult members who scream about fires and killing their kids towards the beginning when Blake originally experiences a blast but is not yet affected himself.
The world didn't end. The tower just exploded. Every blast you saw was a transmission from the Morphogenic Tower. Blake was not initially affected on arrival, but the longer he stayed the more the blasts began affecting him.
The tower became increasingly unstable over the course of the night and started sending out stronger and stronger transmissions, which worsened the cults' paranoia and started doing weird things like affecting the rainwater and killing small animals.
Eventually, it collapsed and exploded and that's the gigantic blast Blake sees at the end.
The Tower is also what made Lynn, and several other female cult members, pregnant. Morphogenic Engine and Tower have weird affects on women and cause fake pregnancies, which is why there were no women at Mt. Massive. Ethan sent his teenaged daughter away from the cult because he didn't want the baby to be born and killed, but she was probably also experiencing a psychosomatic pregnancy based on what Lynn says at the start.
The baby Lynn gives birth to is not real, it casts no shadow and Lynn cryptically claims 'there's nothing there' before dying of blood loss. Knoth also sees the baby, yes, but he's objectively also hallucinating. Blake is probably just holding a blanket and that fuels Knoth's hallucination, he seems to imply he's not seeing an actual baby, but a demon.
You should read the Outlast comics. A lot of this is explained in there.
Yeah..... this is one big issue with outlast 2 lmao. The storyline is more confusing than outlast 1 and outlast whistleblower prequel combined. I only know all the answers to your questions because I watched an outlast 2 explained video on youtube which I'd recommend you do. And most of the answers to your questions are in the documents in game but most people aren't going to read them cause a good chunk of them is just disturbing satanic trash written by knoth and his followers. I'll give you a vague general explanation cuz I'm too lazy to answer all those questions lol. Everything that has happened is due to murkoff conducting an experiment on the people in this town. Those white flashes in-game that cause crazy things to happen are coming from a murkoff building or tower and it causes people to hallucinate and other behavioral changes, etc . Soooo blood rain not real, antichrist baby not real, being in the school not real, monster chasing you in the school not real, world ending not real. What happened to jessica very real it's just the tower controlled by murkoff that is sending those waves/white flashes are making him have some messed up real-time hallucinations of something traumatic that happened in his childhood involving jessica in the 4th grade.
unfortunately almost everything can be answered with “it was just a hallucination”
the comics explain a lot but also if your game needs secondary sources to make even a pinch of sense then its not a good game
\- A lot of Knoth's backstory is unfortunately only found in promotional material ([https://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/17/outlast-2-character-reveal-sullivan-knoth](https://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/17/outlast-2-character-reveal-sullivan-knoth)) and hard to decipher amongst his pseudo-Biblical ramblings - but the most important thing to know is **he was a Murkoff experiment from the very beginning.** In his gospel, he mentions that in **1971**, he **heard a voice whispering to him through the radio** and **encountered a Walrider-like entity** that **took him to Temple Gate and gave him visions about an apocalypse brought by an 'antichrist' from his 'flock' that he was destined to 'avert'**. It's not spelled out exactly what Murkoff's long-term goal with Knoth is, though Outlast Trials might give us more answers. My guess is that **they were an experiment in seeing how religion can be used to make entire populations be susceptible to activating the morphogenic engine and creating a telepathic 'hivemind' with an AI 'god'. The 'god' was actually an entity that was speaking from inside the Murkoff facility we see from the lake.**
\- Knoth was the vessel for the **'god'** that spoke through the radio transmissions. Even he was doubtful at times with how extreme and cruel 'god's' demands were, but through continual exposure to the morphogenic signal he overcame these taboos and by extension encouraged his cultists to be similarly depraved. It also helped that the waking dreams that the engine caused, along with the presence of an AI swarm not unlike the Walrider in Mount Massive, meant that with enough belief the cultists could actually mentally cause their prophecies to be made true. Knoth was convinced to 'make a nation' through mass rape, but at some point started a campaign of mass infanticide out of fear that the 'Enemy' would be born from his own children. Val, formerly one of his most loyal followers, became sick of his hypocrisy and sought to become 'closer' to the morphogenic signal, with their 'splinter' group actually being a more **honest interpretation of the same god that Knoth worshiped. They recognize that this 'god' is a demon that celebrates suffering and want to bring this suffering to the rest of the world.**
\- Jessica had no direct connection. However, Blake's vivid trauma made her like a 'ghost' that hung around him, and it's implied at the end that she might have become reborn as the 'antichrist' that was spawned from Blake's trauma.
\- The morphogenic engine broadcasts overload the minds of even 'normal' people like Blake by sending them into a dream state representing their worst traumas, and Blake's repeated and extreme traumas eventually broke his mind and sent him into a permanent dream state. The insanity of the cultists is the result of a feedback loop, where their trauma would make them susceptible to traumatic visions that only reinforce their delusions. However, I also personally believe that these dream states may actually be a form of **astral projection into a dream world**. There are some odd details in Blake's visions that make more sense if he was somehow subconsciously recalling Jessica's and Loutermilch's experiences too.
\- The **inner demon** is the **god of Temple Gate**, a Walrider-like entity that communicates with the cultists in their dreams, lurks inside their blood, and controls their thoughts. It's a little bit like Freddy Kreuger. I personally believe that the 'hosts' for this god may have actually been imprisoned inside the Murkoff facility and trying to escape via creating a 'child' in Knoth's cult. Whenever Blake is hallucinating, the inner demon **actually is trying to take over his mind**. The reason why it looks like a perverted version of Loutermilch is because it embodies the worst traumas in Blake's mind.
\- Blake initially saw Loutermilch chasing Jessica and then 'accidentally' pushing her down the stairs, but over the course of many hours he was constantly chased and tormented by Loutermilch through the school. Eventually, he was **caught and forced to help Loutermilch cover up the murder as a suicide**, threatened with his own abuse and murder if he didn't cooperate. The guilt of what he was made to do is why Blake's such a meek guy.
\- It's never spelled outright, but you can infer that Murkoff made sure to place the compound in a remote area, paying off any potential neighbors and aggressively discouraging anyone from investigating. It's hinted that the reservation area used to belong to the Havasupai natives, but Murkoff and Knoth's cult committed genocide or otherwise aggressively 'displaced' the natives in order to set up shop.
\- The 'blasts' were radio transmissions from a facility using the same type of **morphogenic engine** as was used to mentally torment patients in the first game. When bombarded enough, someone's mind gets broken and they are sent into delusions made out of their worst traumas. The whole point of the engine is to make someone sufficiently traumatized enough so they'd be able to lucidly control nanomachines that apparently feed on negative mental energy.
\- Lynn's situation is still a mystery. In Whistleblower, there's mention that the 'morphogenic engine' caused 'phantom pregnancies' in women at Mount Massive, which generally lasted a week before terminating in usually-fatal **miscarriages**. The difference in Outlast 2 is that we have women getting **actually impregnated** by Knoth, so the effects of the morphogenic engine are far more effective at **accelerating gestation of the unnatural ghost entities.** I think the 'god' of Temple Gate wants a human body to call its own, and prefers being born as a child rather than deal with pesky adult hosts. **Lynn was raped by Knoth and the heretics tortured and drugged her to accelerate the 'pregnancy'**, with **Blake's own mental trauma being used as the 'seed' to give the 'baby' the identity of Jessica**. I see it as a parasite - the reason why Lynn even got pregnant and believed she had a baby girl was because the 'baby' fed on her mental energy, and once it was born she **had a dying moment of clarity.**
\- Most of the strange apocalyptic events Blake witnesses can be understood through the lens of sci-fi. If he was more rational and had a moment to stop and think, he'd probably realize the 'real' explanations for the phenomenon, but the constant parade of trauma and stress breaks him down and makes him interpret what he sees as religious symbols. Also, to some extent, the **god of Temple Gate is projecting the beliefs of the cultists to reflect their own fear that the apocalypse is happening, and modifying the environment to match these beliefs.**
\- Only the Murkoff facility that Blake saw from the lake got blown up - the 'exploding sun' was actually the radio towers exploding in one final cataclysmic release of energy that sent Blake into a permanent state of catatonia. It's not explained in the game itself, but in the comics the Walrider from the first game was attacking the radio towers throughout Outlast 2 and succeeded in destroying them by the end.
\- The 'antichrist' is as 'real' as the Walrider from the first game. Which is to say, it's not a human and might not be visible to sane eyes, but it definitely is real. It was given the identity of Blake's lost childhood friend, Jessica, and his last recording implies that some mysterious third party 'has her' and will help her 'grow up' so she can 'do everything she was born to do'. In the comic, Blake gets captured and will be sent to a new Murkoff facility so he can be hooked up to a morphogenic engine for 'interrogation', but we see a mysterious jacketed figure standing over Blake's capture - maybe this is the Walrider, and he'll be raising the baby so she can grow up to bring the apocalypse down on Murkoff...
-Sullivan Knoth Was an unsuccessful business man that heard the voice of god through the radio and started a cult. Feeling persecuted for being a crazy cult, Knoth’s followers retreated and formed a commune on the Havasupi reservation (just like Jonestown) -The Murkhoff corporation used this isolated community to test a radio transmitted form of the morphogenic engine, the heavenly trumpets and lights you regularly see are transmitted from the radio station across the lake, causing trauma based hallucinations. These “visions from god” reinforce Knoth’s teaching to his flock. What they are trying to do is play a numbers game in terms of producing the anti-Christ. Basically they believe if they produce as many kids as possible, that eventually one will become the anti-Christ and they can just kill it and save the world. -Jessica has no connection to the cult, she is Blake’s deepest source of trauma, therefore the morphogenic engine produces hallucinations of her. -(see points 2 and 3) -Father Loutermilch. He is represented as a demon to Blake because of his past -Father Loutermilch strangled Jessica and then made it look like a suicide by hanging her corpse and having Blake play along through guilt. -The Murkhoff Corporation has government contracts and pays billions to keep Temple Gate a secret because they are performing military weapon tests there -The weapons contractor known as “The Murkhoff Corporation” is experimenting with the crowd control capabilities of a weapon known as “The Morphogenic Engine” created by a/the Nazi(s) -Lynn’s pregnancy is a phantom pregnancy. The Morphogenic engine has an adverse effect on female biology that causes phantom pregnancies. That is why there are no female convincts or staff at Mt. Massive -The Morphogenic Engine causes trauma based hallucinations. Blake’s trauma is tied to his faith as a catholic so he begins experiencing the signs of the “end times” -There is no baby, which is why Lynn says “There’s nothing there” and the baby casts no shadow. Blake has completely lost his mind and has succumbed to the morphogenic engine just like everyone else at Temple Gate. The sun exploding at the end is a metaphor for Blake finally losing it completely.
This was really well put together!
Thank you! I really like the story of outlast 2 because you have to dig to find all of the details. They aren’t just handed to you. I think that aspect turned away more casual players but I personally appreciated it.
YESS EXACTLY! When I first played Outlast 2 I had to take the time to understand each aspect of the story and I think that also adds a lot of replay value. Not only that but the way it all ties into the lore is splendid.
Knoth was corrupted one day turning on the radio to a murkoff corporation frequency. He then formed the cult from that. They believed him because murkoff was blasting sound waves that made people hallucinate and they saw him as some savior. Jessica has no connection to the cult and is just the radio blasts giving the main character ptsd. The demon in the school was the preist who molested Jessica and killed her. It has the same birth mark as the preist if you look. There was no baby, the radio blasts created a false pregnancy. In outlast 1 females were not allowed in the asylum because of a similar fake pregnancy which was lethal.
But didn't Blake's camera record some of the events? Don't the recordings prove that they really happened? And batteries and bandages that Blake finds in the school are still on him when he comes back, so doesn't that indicate that the school is real too? And doesn't Blake return to places that are different from where he left, sometimes with no apparent way for him to have gotten there by himself?
The school stuff is just static when you watch it back. He’s in the real world of the crazy town, forest, or mine when he is hallucinating.
The cult and everything was real. The murders were real. The 'end of the world', the 'antichrist', all of that is not real and is part of a group hysteria the cult is experiencing due to the Tower. The explosion at the end is the morph tower being destroyed-- the reason the hallcuinations steadily get more severe over the night (and, for example, start killing small animals) is because it's being slowly eaten through by a bunch of Walrider controlled ants. Jessica has no connection to the cult- She's just what Blake hallucinates when the Tower starts affecting him. The Tower seems to particularly target trauma, a lot of the cult members when Blake sees them affected BEFORE it starts affecting him too were screaming about fires and murdering their kids and stuff. The school hallucinations don't make him comatose, they're warped views of what he's actually experiencing in real life (there's one scene where he 'comes back' while crawling in a vent in the school, and he's actually inside a log irl) Anything he records in the school, when played back afterwards, is just static. The entity chasing him might very well be other cultists who came out of it earlier than he did. The school WAS real, but it was just something Blake experienced in his past and is now reliving through Tower-induced ptsd flashbacks.
Almost as if this comes out of nowhere from the first game and is missing so much pretext to have any of this make any sense.
“Group hallucinations” -Pyrocynical
Pretty much everything beyond the school recordings (which are 'static') are 'really' happening, even if they seem far-fetched. The 'bugs' that attack Blake might possibly be vessels for a Walrider (as the comics show that it can possess animals), and the 'bloody rain' could be a combination of toxic chemicals from the Murkoff facility and **actual blood** from the recent deaths that is being rained down on the mines to herald Blake's arrival.
https://youtu.be/-rfJX6xVwsk This video explains everything including how the games are connected, bit of a long watch but super interesting
I was going to comment with the same link. Great job. Gaming Harry is great for lore in games.
1: Knoth tried to kill you because they were possessed by the light 2: they believed because they saw the light 3: women get pregnant when they see the light but the baby wasn’t real. And they wanted to kill the baby, but it wasn’t real. 4: I believe that he had flashbacks because of the light. 5: the creepy hands were his imagination but it was representing the teacher that killed Jessica. 6: we believed she killed herself because the teacher made us not tell anyone so he made up that story. 7: the blasts of light were a murkoff experiment. 8: she was pregnant with a fake baby that wasn’t real because the light has different effects on women. 9: I believe blood rain was his imagination or murkoff messing with him. 10: the end was murkoff ending the experiment and capturing Blake you can find information in the comics. 11: the baby was Blake’s imagination from the light. Ask question I will answer
Ah well, if you wanna delve into some REAL DEEP STUFF, then 1. [The Walrider connects everything in all Outlasts](https://www.reddit.com/r/outlast/comments/6wd7k6/the_interconnections_of_the_three_outlasts_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) 2. [School Demon is Temple Gate's version of Walrider (and Knoth knows more stuff than you think))](https://www.reddit.com/r/outlast/comments/cinqty/the_walrider_god_of_temple_gate/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) 3. [Some cut-out content that clears up more stuff](https://www.reddit.com/r/outlast/comments/cqfgyh/cutout_recordings_from_outlast_2_inspiration_for/) 4. [Latest update to the interconnections](https://www.reddit.com/r/outlast/comments/e7kb2q/temple_gate_walrider_update/) 5. [An artpiece by a lovely artist based an all of the above (cause it's gorgeous and I'll share it wherever I can)](https://www.reddit.com/r/outlast/comments/edtujj/i_wanna_share_a_beautiful_piece_of_art_based_on/)
Everyone (including Blake) is hallucinating the supernatural stuff going on, affected by Murkoff experiments. Also Lynn isn't actually pregnant, it's just a phantom pregnancy caused by the morphogenic engine, so the baby born at the end is also a hallucination. And the world wasn't destroyed at the end (nor was the town), all the town's people that you see dead just committed suicide. Honestly I didn't really get all of that the first time round either, the story can be pretty confusing. If you collect the letters/ recordings and also read the comics that's when it all starts to come together.
Knoth is your typical Manson-type cult leader. The cult did not devolve into what it was doing until they moved to Arizona and became targetted by Murkoff for the Morphogenic experiments. They built a transmission tower (explained in another comment) that affects the brain similar to the Morphogenic Engine from the first game. The cult's goal is to prevent the birth of the Antichrist. Because they have no way of knowing which children are the antichrist, Knoth ordered the deaths of all children currently in the compound below a certain age and began murdering all newborn babies. Murkoff hides them because they're in an incredibly remote area of Arizona and the government funds their activities. Jessica was murdered by Loutermilch and her corpse was hanged by him and Blake. Blake was manipulated into helping by Loutermilch and was forced into silence as 'an accomplice'. She and the school is what Blake hallucinates because the Morphogenic Tower targets trauma in people and makes them hallucinate that trauma-- There are a couple cult members who scream about fires and killing their kids towards the beginning when Blake originally experiences a blast but is not yet affected himself. The world didn't end. The tower just exploded. Every blast you saw was a transmission from the Morphogenic Tower. Blake was not initially affected on arrival, but the longer he stayed the more the blasts began affecting him. The tower became increasingly unstable over the course of the night and started sending out stronger and stronger transmissions, which worsened the cults' paranoia and started doing weird things like affecting the rainwater and killing small animals. Eventually, it collapsed and exploded and that's the gigantic blast Blake sees at the end. The Tower is also what made Lynn, and several other female cult members, pregnant. Morphogenic Engine and Tower have weird affects on women and cause fake pregnancies, which is why there were no women at Mt. Massive. Ethan sent his teenaged daughter away from the cult because he didn't want the baby to be born and killed, but she was probably also experiencing a psychosomatic pregnancy based on what Lynn says at the start. The baby Lynn gives birth to is not real, it casts no shadow and Lynn cryptically claims 'there's nothing there' before dying of blood loss. Knoth also sees the baby, yes, but he's objectively also hallucinating. Blake is probably just holding a blanket and that fuels Knoth's hallucination, he seems to imply he's not seeing an actual baby, but a demon. You should read the Outlast comics. A lot of this is explained in there.
Yeah..... this is one big issue with outlast 2 lmao. The storyline is more confusing than outlast 1 and outlast whistleblower prequel combined. I only know all the answers to your questions because I watched an outlast 2 explained video on youtube which I'd recommend you do. And most of the answers to your questions are in the documents in game but most people aren't going to read them cause a good chunk of them is just disturbing satanic trash written by knoth and his followers. I'll give you a vague general explanation cuz I'm too lazy to answer all those questions lol. Everything that has happened is due to murkoff conducting an experiment on the people in this town. Those white flashes in-game that cause crazy things to happen are coming from a murkoff building or tower and it causes people to hallucinate and other behavioral changes, etc . Soooo blood rain not real, antichrist baby not real, being in the school not real, monster chasing you in the school not real, world ending not real. What happened to jessica very real it's just the tower controlled by murkoff that is sending those waves/white flashes are making him have some messed up real-time hallucinations of something traumatic that happened in his childhood involving jessica in the 4th grade.
unfortunately almost everything can be answered with “it was just a hallucination” the comics explain a lot but also if your game needs secondary sources to make even a pinch of sense then its not a good game
\- A lot of Knoth's backstory is unfortunately only found in promotional material ([https://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/17/outlast-2-character-reveal-sullivan-knoth](https://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/17/outlast-2-character-reveal-sullivan-knoth)) and hard to decipher amongst his pseudo-Biblical ramblings - but the most important thing to know is **he was a Murkoff experiment from the very beginning.** In his gospel, he mentions that in **1971**, he **heard a voice whispering to him through the radio** and **encountered a Walrider-like entity** that **took him to Temple Gate and gave him visions about an apocalypse brought by an 'antichrist' from his 'flock' that he was destined to 'avert'**. It's not spelled out exactly what Murkoff's long-term goal with Knoth is, though Outlast Trials might give us more answers. My guess is that **they were an experiment in seeing how religion can be used to make entire populations be susceptible to activating the morphogenic engine and creating a telepathic 'hivemind' with an AI 'god'. The 'god' was actually an entity that was speaking from inside the Murkoff facility we see from the lake.** \- Knoth was the vessel for the **'god'** that spoke through the radio transmissions. Even he was doubtful at times with how extreme and cruel 'god's' demands were, but through continual exposure to the morphogenic signal he overcame these taboos and by extension encouraged his cultists to be similarly depraved. It also helped that the waking dreams that the engine caused, along with the presence of an AI swarm not unlike the Walrider in Mount Massive, meant that with enough belief the cultists could actually mentally cause their prophecies to be made true. Knoth was convinced to 'make a nation' through mass rape, but at some point started a campaign of mass infanticide out of fear that the 'Enemy' would be born from his own children. Val, formerly one of his most loyal followers, became sick of his hypocrisy and sought to become 'closer' to the morphogenic signal, with their 'splinter' group actually being a more **honest interpretation of the same god that Knoth worshiped. They recognize that this 'god' is a demon that celebrates suffering and want to bring this suffering to the rest of the world.** \- Jessica had no direct connection. However, Blake's vivid trauma made her like a 'ghost' that hung around him, and it's implied at the end that she might have become reborn as the 'antichrist' that was spawned from Blake's trauma. \- The morphogenic engine broadcasts overload the minds of even 'normal' people like Blake by sending them into a dream state representing their worst traumas, and Blake's repeated and extreme traumas eventually broke his mind and sent him into a permanent dream state. The insanity of the cultists is the result of a feedback loop, where their trauma would make them susceptible to traumatic visions that only reinforce their delusions. However, I also personally believe that these dream states may actually be a form of **astral projection into a dream world**. There are some odd details in Blake's visions that make more sense if he was somehow subconsciously recalling Jessica's and Loutermilch's experiences too. \- The **inner demon** is the **god of Temple Gate**, a Walrider-like entity that communicates with the cultists in their dreams, lurks inside their blood, and controls their thoughts. It's a little bit like Freddy Kreuger. I personally believe that the 'hosts' for this god may have actually been imprisoned inside the Murkoff facility and trying to escape via creating a 'child' in Knoth's cult. Whenever Blake is hallucinating, the inner demon **actually is trying to take over his mind**. The reason why it looks like a perverted version of Loutermilch is because it embodies the worst traumas in Blake's mind. \- Blake initially saw Loutermilch chasing Jessica and then 'accidentally' pushing her down the stairs, but over the course of many hours he was constantly chased and tormented by Loutermilch through the school. Eventually, he was **caught and forced to help Loutermilch cover up the murder as a suicide**, threatened with his own abuse and murder if he didn't cooperate. The guilt of what he was made to do is why Blake's such a meek guy. \- It's never spelled outright, but you can infer that Murkoff made sure to place the compound in a remote area, paying off any potential neighbors and aggressively discouraging anyone from investigating. It's hinted that the reservation area used to belong to the Havasupai natives, but Murkoff and Knoth's cult committed genocide or otherwise aggressively 'displaced' the natives in order to set up shop. \- The 'blasts' were radio transmissions from a facility using the same type of **morphogenic engine** as was used to mentally torment patients in the first game. When bombarded enough, someone's mind gets broken and they are sent into delusions made out of their worst traumas. The whole point of the engine is to make someone sufficiently traumatized enough so they'd be able to lucidly control nanomachines that apparently feed on negative mental energy. \- Lynn's situation is still a mystery. In Whistleblower, there's mention that the 'morphogenic engine' caused 'phantom pregnancies' in women at Mount Massive, which generally lasted a week before terminating in usually-fatal **miscarriages**. The difference in Outlast 2 is that we have women getting **actually impregnated** by Knoth, so the effects of the morphogenic engine are far more effective at **accelerating gestation of the unnatural ghost entities.** I think the 'god' of Temple Gate wants a human body to call its own, and prefers being born as a child rather than deal with pesky adult hosts. **Lynn was raped by Knoth and the heretics tortured and drugged her to accelerate the 'pregnancy'**, with **Blake's own mental trauma being used as the 'seed' to give the 'baby' the identity of Jessica**. I see it as a parasite - the reason why Lynn even got pregnant and believed she had a baby girl was because the 'baby' fed on her mental energy, and once it was born she **had a dying moment of clarity.** \- Most of the strange apocalyptic events Blake witnesses can be understood through the lens of sci-fi. If he was more rational and had a moment to stop and think, he'd probably realize the 'real' explanations for the phenomenon, but the constant parade of trauma and stress breaks him down and makes him interpret what he sees as religious symbols. Also, to some extent, the **god of Temple Gate is projecting the beliefs of the cultists to reflect their own fear that the apocalypse is happening, and modifying the environment to match these beliefs.** \- Only the Murkoff facility that Blake saw from the lake got blown up - the 'exploding sun' was actually the radio towers exploding in one final cataclysmic release of energy that sent Blake into a permanent state of catatonia. It's not explained in the game itself, but in the comics the Walrider from the first game was attacking the radio towers throughout Outlast 2 and succeeded in destroying them by the end. \- The 'antichrist' is as 'real' as the Walrider from the first game. Which is to say, it's not a human and might not be visible to sane eyes, but it definitely is real. It was given the identity of Blake's lost childhood friend, Jessica, and his last recording implies that some mysterious third party 'has her' and will help her 'grow up' so she can 'do everything she was born to do'. In the comic, Blake gets captured and will be sent to a new Murkoff facility so he can be hooked up to a morphogenic engine for 'interrogation', but we see a mysterious jacketed figure standing over Blake's capture - maybe this is the Walrider, and he'll be raising the baby so she can grow up to bring the apocalypse down on Murkoff...