Everything you experience in the game once you start playing is not real, except the very end. You, the player, are playing as Commander Rimanah, who is hallucinating while re-living the events of his own life, but sees a different version of it every time, representing different possible decisions he could have made. In other words, the protagonist has gone insane, and you're experiencing a dream, not reality. The Rimanah you see is not real. The Mentor you see is not real. They are projections of the protagonist's mind who is under the effects of a Hypnotic Gate, which he possibly cast on himself by accident.


HERE IS WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING IN THE GAME.

Rimanah was a talented psychic soldier in EYE who craved power. He killed many Federals, Looters, and innocent people to become more powerful, and rise in the ranks of EYE. He killed his own Mentor in order to gain his powers and cover up his crimes (Mentor had become aware of Rimanah's crimes somehow).

Rimanah was married to a woman named Circe who wore white priestess robes. He sent her to explore the forbidden tunnel area underneath the Temple HQ (the one you explore in the final mission). She was caught while doing this illegal activity, and to prevent her from telling anyone that it was him to ordered her to do it, he ordered her to be executed to cover up his crime. He also may have used Hypnotic Gate to alter people's minds to make them not question his decisions as commander. Circe became a part of the Metastreumonic Force after that and that is why the player is attacked by Synicles who wear white robes. Those Synicle monsters with guns look like Circe because they are taking the form of his inner guilt. Metastreum creatures are monsters created from the human psyche - the MetaStreum is basically the dimension of thoughts and feelings.

After this, Rimanah continues his quest for power, and looks for the Artifact, a bizarre device that acts as a sort of connection between "real space" and the Metastreumonic Force. He finds it underneath Mars and brings it back to the Temple. However, he is unable to actually use the Artifact for his own purposes, since the power it has can't be controlled by him, or anyone. The Artifact's nature is that it cannot be controlled - it simply exists.

What Rimanah tries to do is increase his own Psychic powers using the Artifact. However, this fails, and instead the Artifact traps him in a hallucination where he is forced to relive the events of his life over and over again, as well as different versions of what might have happened, so he can reflect on his failures. This is the Cycle of Guilt that the characters are talking about. This is where the game begins. You are playing as Rimanah trapped in this hallucination reflecting on his bad decisions. That is why the game ends/restarts when you go inside the Artifact's glowing light portal thing at the end of your first playthrough. The Artifact is the thing causing the time loop - the artifact was the last thing Rimanah experienced before the Cycles of Guilt began, so touching it restarts the loop.

The True Ending happens when you complete all three endings with one character in three or more loops. After completing three endings you can go to Minos and speak to the ghost of Circe. Circe calls the player "My Love", confirming that the player is Rimanah. She asks Rimanah if he wants to repent and end the Cycles of Guilt. He agrees, and is sent to Purgatory, a boring rock in the Metastreumonic Force where he will spend the rest of eternity being punished for his horrible crimes.

That is the plot of EYE Divine Cybermancy summarized. Believe it or not, that is actually the short version, since there is a lot of stuff I didn't mention for the sake of brevity. If you still have questions then read the Long Explanation.

What you, the player, experienced in this game was essentially a retelling of the life of Commander Rimanah, distorted by mental illness and Guilt. It is hard to determine what actually happened since we only see this world through the Eyes of a crazy person. Here is the explanation of the plot on a larger scale.

The story of EYE is set thousands of years in the future from when the game was released (2011). Humans rule over many planets and have really advanced technology. The lore is kind of hard to understand because the writing is frankly not good, but in the Library it says that humanity created cyborg technology itself and discovered the secret to giving people psychic powers in a mysterious place in a forest that has a portal to the Metastreumonic Force. What ended up happening was that the government created an army of Psychic Cyborg soldiers which was stronger than any human army. This is how EYE was created. However, for political reasons EYE split off from the government and became an independent faction, and now humanity is basically in a three-way civil war between the Federal Government (Federals), EYE (Secreta Secretorum, Culter Dei, Jian Shang Di), and the Looters (who are basically random criminals and space pirates). This is the state of affairs in this universe. Humanity is split in a massive civil war that doesn't make much logical sense.

This is where the Metastreumonic Force (MSF) comes in. The MSF is basically an alternate universe that is made out of thoughts and feelings and not matter and energy. It is like the Twilight Zone or the Warp from warhammer 40k. The MSF is basically a universe of mind.

During the civil war between the humans, monsters from the MSF start invading reality and destroying humans and their civilization. At the end of one of the game's routes a Carnophage explains that the reason the MSF monsters are attacking humanity is because we are an evil influence on the universe and humans have to be destroyed to restore balance to the universe. The evil actions of the humans, like looting, killing, stealing, and betraying other humans, and destroying nature, has screwed up the balance of nature. So the MSF is trying to destroy humanity by sending monsters through interdimensional portals to kill humans and save nature from us. In other words, the humans are actually the bad guys, and the player is one of the bad guys. The demons are actually the good guys.

A theme and motif of EYE is that the humans are not the good guys and the protagonist is not the hero. The protagonist is actually the villain, not the hero, which makes EYE very different from most video games. Rimanah is the source of much of the problems in this universe. The reason everything is so messed up in this setting is because greedy people like Rimanah and the Corporations who rule the Federation are fighting for personal gain and causing a lot of suffering in the process. The negative psychic energy caused by all this war and suffering summons monsters from the Metastreumonic force. HOW MANY MONSTERS APPEAR IN THE GAME ARE DETERMINED BY KARMA AND YOUR OWN VIOLENT ACTIONS. The funny thing is, the game does not ever explicitly tell you this, but the game's coding has a feature that spawns more monsters to attack you the more people that you kill. In other words, the protagonist is literally causing the conflict in the game to occur, in a sort of infinite cycle of self-perpetuating violence. That is just one more aspect of the Cycle of Guilt.

The name Rimanah is an anagram of the name Ahriman, who was the Devil in the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism. In Zoroastrian mythos, Ahriman, also known as Angra Mainyu, was the evil god who causes chaos and destruction in the world out of spite, and is the enemy of the god Ahura Mazda, who is the god of light, wisdom, and justice. Ahriman is basically the Devil and Ahura Mazda is God in Zoroastrianism (which is a real religion, not something made up by the game devs). Rimanah plays the role of the Devil (ahriman) in the plot of EYE in the sense that he hurts people for selfish reasons and causes chaos while doing this.

Much of what happens in this game bears a similarity to the philosophical/religious concept of Samsara, which originates in India. In Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism, Samsara is the cycle of violent, death, rebirth, guilt, and suffering, that all living things are trapped in. The purpose of life, according to many Indian philosophers, is to escape the Cycle of Suffering, and to become enlightened so that when you die your soul will to heaven and be at peace with the gods. The events of EYE are very similar to this. In EYE you kill a lot of enemies and experience a lot of strife, but it doesn't really lead to anything. You just kill a bunch of people without really knowing why and then you start all over. The purpose of the game is to escape the cycle of suffering, to escape your Cycles of Guilt, and achieve peace by ending the cycle, and thereby ending the conflict.

Once you know the twist that the player is actually Rimanah, this raises a lot of questions about what actually happened in the plot. I will now attempt to explain the events of the game from the player's persepective.

When the player character wakes up in the cave, you are already in the Cycle of Guilt. You start the game in a dream and not reality. That's why nothing makes any sense - it's literally not real. All that is certain is that Rimanah was up to no good and got in trouble. The first few missions of the game are not super plot relevant. You are essentially learning more about the setting and searching for the Artifact. The important stuff doesn't begin until the mission on Vindico mines. What happened is that Vindico, while digging into the ground, discovered a relic from a dead alien civilization which contained information on the location of the Artifact. This relic also created a portal to the Metastreumonic Force which summoned hordes of monsters into the Vindico facility which killed or psychically hypnotized everyone inside. After you and Dutch obtain this information you blow up the facility to stop the Metastreum forces from becoming stronger there. It is also worth noting that there are two hidden encounters in this level you may have missed which contain vital information to the plot. There are three Synicles hidden in a room in the tunnels near the generator room. If you talk to them they will tell you stories that give you hints as to what is actually happening. There is also a Culter Dei soldier in the deepest tunnel that has gone insane. If you talk to him, he will say that he feels guilty, that he doubts his own organization, and refuses to go back to EYE headquarters with you. He will stay in the tunnel no matter what you say and presumably dies when the bomb goes off later. This conversation is short but significant because it reveals that A.) the MetaStreumonic Force can influence the minds of humans and B.) the protagonist might not actually be on the right side of this conflict. These hidden NPCs are the source of much of the information in this guide you are now reading.

The next mission is on Mars, or Noctis Labyrinthus, or cc_noctis depending on what you want to call it. On Mars you and Dutch are given the mission to find the Artifact and bring it back to EYE headquarters and to kill anyone who tries to stop you. The interesting thing is that Dutch will be alive at the start of this mission even if he died in the previous one. The developers have stated that this is not a glitch/bug. This happens because this is all a dream, and in the "real" timeline Dutch survives the Vindico mission but dies on Mars trying to recover the Artifact. This is why Dutch dies in every timeline/playthrough/cycle : his death is one of the important events that happened in the original timeline. On Mars the player has the decision to choose what faction they side with. You can side with (fake) Rimanah, side with Mentor, or betray EYE and join the Federals as a double agent. I believe that what happened in the original timeline was the "side with Rimanah ending" where you take the artifact for the Culters and then attack the Jian Temple. I believe this was the original timeline before the time loop happened because this directly leads to Rimanah having the artifact which puts him into the Cycle of Guilt. In other words, the Rimanah route followed by the True ending is the canon ending. The other two routes (siding with mentor and Cyrus) are just dreams that Rimanah had while he was contemplating what might have happened if he made different decisions in his life.

What happened after Mars was that Rimanah defected from EYE high command and attacked the Jian Shang Di at their Temple HQ. He did this because they were an obstacle on his path to supreme godlike power. When Rimanah betrays the player at the end of the Jian HQ mission, this is just Rimanah (player) hallucinating, trying to pretend that he is not guilty by projecting his actions onto a fake version of himself.

The final mission of the game, the attack on the Culter Dei Temple HQ, never happened. It was all a dream. Rimanah dreamed this mission of attacking and killing himself because he feels guilty about what he did. He wants to kill himself because he regrets his actions, so he dreams about killing himself in a fight to cope with his own mistakes. This is why after the player kills Rimanah the player is transported back to the Temple entrance like nothing ever happened, and everybody talks to you as if they don't remember you shooting up the place and taking it over. Nobody remembers you killing them because it never happened.

There is an alternative explanation for what really happened in the final mission. It is explicitly stated in the game by characters that Hypnotic Gate has the ability to control people's minds, make them forget things, or make them know new things. A possible explanation is that the attack on Temple HQ did in fact happen, and then after taking over the Temple Rimanah (the player) cast a Hypnotic Gate on literally everyone in EYE to make them forget that he betrayed them and rewrote their memories so that they will blindly obey him. The Synicles beneath the Vindico facility said it is possible to do this with powerful enough Psychic abilities.

My personal opinion is that the original timeline was that Rimanah took the Artifact back to the Temple HQ after Mars, then he killed the Jian Shang Di, the assault on the Culter Temple HQ never happened, and after the attack on the Jians Rimanah tried to use the power of the Artifact to increase his own psychic abilities. The Artifact instead rejected his control and cast a version of Hypnotic Gate on him which trapped him in the Cycle of Guilt when he touched the Artifact's divine light. The Artifact traps his soul in the Metastreumonic Force where he will spend the rest of eternity dreaming about his horrible evil life over and over again, in an infinite Cycle.

Dutch dies in every timeline unless you go to extreme lengths to save him on the Noctis mission. He almost always gets killed by the Federal Interceptor; the only way I could find to prevent this from happened was by using Triangular Gate to instakill the Interceptor or by double-tapping it with the Bear Killer. However even if you kill the Interceptor Dutch has no more dialogue options and ceases to appear in the plot at all. This leads me to believe that Dutch canonically died there. This is significant because Dutch was the only friend that Rimanah had left at this stage in the story, so when Dutch died Rimanah was all alone with nobody who cared about him. This probably influenced his decision to do what he did later in the story. I personally wonder if Rimanah would still have betrayed EYE if his friends were still alive.

It is important to note that Mentor is always killed by the player no matter what ending route you take. If you side with Rimanah, Mentor attacks you on Noctis and you have to kill him to get the Artifact. If you side with Cyrus/Federals, you have to kill him on the club mission after Noctis, and if you side with Mentor you still have to kill Mentor when he attacks you on Temple HQ and gives you some of his power. In every ending, no matter what you do, you have to kill mentor. This is because Mentor was murdered by Rimanah in the original timeline and Rimanah cannot get over it.

There is one piece of the puzzle here that is hard to explain because there's so little information: Who exactly is Akmal and why did he leave EYE? It is not entirely clear who Akmal is or why he left EYE despite being so prominent in the organization. The only hard facts he states are that he was Mentor's teacher, that he had a bad relationship with Mentor because he didn't like how he raised Rimanah, and that he left EYE and was hiding for personal reasons. My theory is that Akmal discovered that EYE and the humans are actually the bad guys causing the Metastreum to become violent, and this discovery made his disillusioned to the point where he felt there was no longer any point in fighting. This could explain why he doesn't get along with Mentor anymore. Mentor still believes in the cause and Akmal does not. Also, Akmal recognizes the inherent dangers of using Psychic abilities, and Mentor does not realize the danger and takes too many risks. Akmal probably recognized how evil Rimanah was before anyone else.

My theory is that Mentor was real at some point but as of the part when the game begins he has already been murdered by Rimanah. This is because at the beginning of the Vindico level you have the option to talk to Dutch and two other EYE soldiers on the landing pad. If you talk to one of them he tells you that your mentor died years ago on a mission, and he expresses confusion when you say that you had a conversation with a dead man. This is one of the earliest indications that what you are seeing is not completely real. Mentor was real before the events of the game start, but the Mentor the player interacts with is not real, he's a hallucination caused by Rimanah's guilt. Mentor was already dead long before you meet the fake 'dream-Mentor' at the start of the game.

Something I found interesting is that all of the available routes lead to the Artifact in the end. The Artifact is the central figure that the plot of EYE Divine Cybermancy revolves around, yet so little is clearly explained about it. What it even is, who created it, or how it was created are not fully explained. My theory is that it was created by the Orus, the more advanced alien race that lived before humans, and their undead King stored it in their underground tomb on Mars to protect it from being used for evil purposes. I think that the Orus had psychic powers and created the Artifact to be a gateway to the Metastreumonic Force. It is kind of like a Stargate that leads to the Twilight Zone. However after creating it they realized they could not effectively control it because the Metastreumonic Force has a will of it's own. It acts according to the rules of nature, not the desires of the living, and so the Artifact is ironically a useless object despite having such incredible psychic power. It is worth noting that the Artifact has never actually benefited anybody who ever owned it. The Orus owned the Artifact but it did not prevent their species from going extinct. The humans tampered with it but couldn't make it do what they wanted. Rimanah tried to interface with it but instead of gaining the power he wanted he got trapped in a Cycle of Guilt. With this in mind, the Artifact seems to me like a curse, since everyone who owns the Artifact comes to a bad end. I wonder if the real purpose of the Artifact is to punish people who try to misuse power.

What exactly is the goal of many characters was never fully explained. EYE is, on paper, supposed to protect humanity from the MSF and Corporations, but Rimanah's goal is not entirely clear.
Based on the conversation with the Synicles in the Vindico facility Rimanah was trying to use "Necro_Cybermancy" to become and immortal Psychic God with limitless power. He was trying to tame the power of the Metastreum for his own personal gain to transcend death. However it backfired tremendously. The ironic thing is, Rimanah technically did achieve immortality because he cannot die - whenever he dies in the game the time loop resets and he starts all over again. It's just that this is the worst immortality possible because he is immortal and living the same horrible events on repeat forever. The Artifact pulled a 'Monkey's Paw' and gave him what he wanted while also giving him the worst possible version of what he asked for. It's a fitting end for a guy who betrayed his teacher, in my opinion.

The motivations of Akmal were never fully explained. It's implied that he discovered how corrupt EYE is and was disgusted by it so he just gave up on fighting. He realizes that humanity is evil and deserves to be attacked by the Metastreum. That is why his house is full of empty bottles - he is trying to drink himself to death so he doesn't have to face the horrible reality that everything he ever fought for was a lie. The screenshot I included above suggests that Akmal left EYE because he recognized that Rimanah was evil.

The lore is extremely weird and hard to decipher. I tried reading all of the logs in the library but the english translation is so bad that I can barely understand what the french authors are trying to say. An interesting bit of lore that's relevant to the plot is that apparently Psychic humans are caused by humans and the Metastreumonic force "merging" with each other, and this is a two way street, meaning that human minds are affected by the MSF more than they probably realize.

I have been playing this game for four years, and this story analysis is the culmination of four years of deep-diving and schizo-posting on 4chan. I hope that this guide is helpful to people who played this game and didn't understand what the heck was going on (which was everyone who played this game lol). I hope that this guide helps give some closure to people who have played this game and felt unsatisfied by the lack of a proper ending. Thank you for reading!