A mystery slowly unravelling with each Essence you extract, every note you read, and question answered; understanding what exactly happened in Cronos: The New Dawn is a winding path that might leave you confused by the end of it.
Here's our full explainer of the trippy and confusing Cronos. We didn't analyze cutscenes because most speak for themselves.
Spoiler warning throughout.
Table of contents
Cronos: The New Dawn story breakdown
Crash-landed on a desolate Poland, Traveler ND-3576 woke to the Collective’s automated system. Born to pave the path forward and to bring “them” back, the Traveler’s existence follows on from the Predecessor who's ceased functioning. With new targets to find and extract, the Traveler must figure out what came before her to understand where she's going.
What started as the simple goal to locate Predecessor ND-3500's location quickly transformed into a complex mystery. There’s a lot to learn about who we are, what the Collective is, and how the Change came to happen. The present is plagued with Orphans, merged humans, a result of the Change that wiped out humanity as we know it. Wearing a futuristic submarine diving suit, the Traveler wields the Anchor and jumps back in time to 1980s Poland to extract targets when they were last alive. This is the New Dawn.
Steelworks
The Change stemmed from the New Dawn underground station. Here is where our journey began as we can see sculptor Antoni Surma’s work standing tall above the station’s entrance, being one of the few structures intact today.
The Change emerged from the Steelworks, a mining company that played a crucial role in erecting the station. Zybert viewed the Change as something that was always there but unleashed because of a mining operation led by Mr. Azakov. An explosion killed most of the crew when the drill reached 14 kilometers—a “well to hell.”
What is the Change?
The Change was a global pandemic where a highly infectious disease spread at a rapid rate in December, 1981. Humans who exhibited symptoms became erratic, delirious, and highly aggressive. If a human was to survive the first stage of the disease, they'd then require symbiosis with another to survive, creating an amalgamation of humans called Orphans. Even surgery couldn’t separate humans once combined.
The Change started inside the furnace of the Steelworks. Those who survived the blast developed high fever, cold shivers, fainting, loss of appetite, limb numbness, hallucinations, and severe eyesight deterioration.
The Change began to spread with the transfer of Steelwork employees such as Gabriel Baryka by the order of Dr. Dawid Zybert. These patients were initially questioned, tortured, and experimented on by the military, resulting in the fall of Steelworks. His brother, Artur, a man struggling from alcoholism and dismissed from Steelworks because of it, tried to save his brother but accidentally shot him instead.
Humans became Orphans because they were separated from the source: the Steelwork furnace. Unable to get back to the starting merge, Orphans would roam parentless, in pain, searching for others to be with. And so the merging began.
The Outbreak
In mid-December, quarantine began in an apartment building where Edward Wiśniewski and Angela Wozniak lived. Her mother showed symptoms of the Change. A shelter opened, but it didn’t take long until that became overrun. This is where Edward and Angela hid, the same night Angela's mother disappeared. Soldiers began filling the streets, demanding people stayed indoors or would otherwise be moved to temporary medical facilities. Roads closed off to the public, fear and paranoia against the news and army spread amongst the people.
Angela ended up at the hospital and never reunited with her mother. She merged with Dawid and (presumably) Gabriel inside the hospital basement, trying to wait out the Change, only to discover they were infected too.
What's an Essence?
The Essence is what makes a person human. A body dies upon extraction. Most didn't give consent to be extracted. Terrified, alone, and confused, their mind's forced to wander inside a body that’s not theirs. The Traveler’s appear human, but they manipulate their own mass.
If any Traveler dies with an Essence that hasn't ascended, the Essence spends eternity in the body of the deceased Traveler unless replaced by another Essence. The longer they spend inside the Traveler’s phylactery, the less stable they become. Their minds blur into one, making the Traveler (if alive) more human as time goes on, putting the Traveler at risk of losing themselves completely. Outside of your targets, Mother and son, Lidia and Marcel Marzec are Essences trapped inside deceased Travelers, spending eternity slowly unravelling inside a shell.
The first recorded sighting of a Traveler was of the New Dawn apartment block murder of Jozef K in 1954 (27 years before the Change). Jozef’s body had strange markings around his head, indicative of the Essence extraction method Travelers use. In a letter to Comrade Konarski, the homicide case of victims with markings around their heads had grown exponentially that morgues overflowed with bodies. The figure is uncertain, but it shows the devastating contribution of the Collective.
Who are the Collective?
The mystery of the Collective is never plainly explained, but (based on what Pathfinder told us) they seem to be the direct result of of the Change. I believe they're humans that merged inside the Steelworks furnace, a hive mind if you will.
Travelers could extract the human mind temporarily into their phylactery, but a collected Essence required immediate transfer to the Collective via the Terminal. What happens next is unclear, but I believe some kind of time loop would occur where the Essence would relive their life on another timeline. As they have more knowledge on the Change, these select few would use what they've learnt to try and stop it. A grandfather paradox would then exist, for if the Collective is the result of the Change, then stopping it would mean the Collective never existed.
A cure
The Pathfinder grew close to his extraction target Dr. Weronika Kamiński, but his infatuation turned into obsession. He wanted to understand his purpose and reason for the Vocation. Collective provided no answers so the Pathfinder created his own meaning. Fascinated by humans and later cats, he spent his years learning everything he could about both.
Weronika was able to create a poison, but the disease spread too fast and neither Weronika nor Dawid could create a cure in time. The Pathfinder's target was Weronika, who he searched for inside the Steelworks. This is who Gabriel saw, the very "Visitor" Weronika was brought to question, and why Edward theorized the Travelers caused the Change. The theory was later disproven by Dawid's research on the "Visitor," believing it was the fault of humans that brought the end of us. Moving the Orphans further from the Steelworks only spread the disease and made it so they couldn't merge properly.
The Pathfinder was moved into the church for Dawid’s daughter, Mother Eliza to protect him from experimentation. But she, alongside others of the convent would soon become merged, viewing the Change as something God bestowed upon them, and that the Travelers were the problem.
The Pathfinder learnt hope through studying and questioning the humans. He wanted to preserve Weronika so she could find a cure in the future to change the past, but also ensure that no other Traveler would fulfil their Vocation and extract Weronika's Essence. The Pathfinder pretended his journey ended at the church and used the bodies of dormant Travelers to keep himself alive. This stopped the Travelers' awakenings and hindered the Vocation.
The Lazurus Protocol
The Pathfinder’s travelogs tell us that this isn’t ND-3576's first time on her Vocation, but she doesn't remember and simply continues where she left off. It’s uncertain which Traveler she was before but I'd guess she was the Predecessor holding the Anchor, who gave us our first target.
The Pathfinder and Warden are one and the same, and ND-3576 is Weronika. Or more accurately, ND-3576 has Weronika’s Essence inside her without her knowing. The Pathfinder saved what he could of Weronika and was keeping her alive inside the Lazarus Protocol. Weronika then connect into the awakened Traveler’s mind. The Lazarus Protocol indicates the Pathfinder may have tried to revive Weronika 319 times before ND-3576, but what's special about this Traveler is that she woke without the Pathfinder initiating the next Lazarus trial. Pathfinder likely purposely tampered with the Ascendance Terminal so it couldn't be used, allowing him to assume the role of Warden and control the Vocation.
The first black and white visions we see when ND-3576 awakens are of Weronika’s past. This was our biggest clue that she had an Essence already inside her. I'm certain the black mass creatures we defeat are the Essences we extracted, bleeding into 3576's mind. As the Essences became more connected, the Pathfinder’s hope was that she would live on inside 3576 and continue to search for a cure. He used 3576 to bring Weronika back to life by fixing her memory matrix through extracting the Essences closest to her.
Where did the cats come from?
Now we have no confirmation or evidence to say what the cats are. I've interpreted the cats to be part of Weronika’s memory matrix, a manifestation of every cat she’s had in previous timelines. One of the first black and white images we see is a cat. I believe each cat demonstrates one of the timelines the Pathfinder opened and altered, creating anomalies through his tests and desperation to save Weronika. This would explain why we see different cats and why they stay in the apartment once you find them.
Cronos: The New Dawn endings, explained
There are three endings in Cronos.
Shoot ending
If you shoot the Pathfinder, you’ve basically accepted the fate of humanity and that this acceptance is the ultimate freedom. As the Travelers weren’t the cause for the Change, but rather humans were the consequence of it, no amount of messing with the past would alter the future. Humans simply ran out of time. ND-3576 opens a rift one last time, sending Weronika to the past, bringing the Change to Edward’s doorstep. With the last flicker of hope snuffed out, Weronika decides she doesn’t want to be alone in her final moments for she knows what's coming.
Spare ending
Sparing the Pathfinder means he tries again, but he awakens to find Weronika suffering from the early symtoms of the Change. Pathfinder extracts her because he'll never let her go (but we know she never wanted this). Her fate is worse in this ending as her hope for a better future is destroyed, but at least she gets to live forever, right? We see the clear difference between Pathfinder and humanity in that a want for nothingness over infinity is inherently human, while the Pathfinder sees any fate is better than none.
Weronika succumbs to the Change in the default endings. Neither ending is good for the fate of humanity is sealed, regardless of how much tampering to the past was done or how many lives suffered through the Change and Collective's intervention.
Begin Anew ending
The secret ending is only achieved by completing New Game+ and defeating the Pathfinder for the third and final time. As the timelines keep ending the same way due to Pathfinder's actions, he realizes from ND-3576's words that Weronika may have a better future with her. ND-3576 opens a rift, taking herself and Weronika with her, and leaving the Pathfinder behind. A new Vocation begins where Weronika wakes like any other Traveler, this time with ND-3576's hand reaching out, ready to try again. This is the most hopeful ending for humanity as they've broken the cycle.
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