MAX MCGEE'S PROFILE

The first 95% of the game happens only in Alfred's imagination. He is completely disconnected from reality. He has had a psychotic break. You get a lot of the reasoning for the psychotic break, the family's bleak, joyless existence, their severe economic woes, the loveless marriage, his feeling that he's failed as a husband and father. For what it's worth my dad was an awesome and loving father and also was a postal worker and we were poor so I was a little offended by this part. Anyway, what you DON'T see is any of the "action" of his psychotic break.

Every action he takes in his family murder suicide is camouflaged as something else in Alfred's shattered mind and to the player.

* Remember when you gingerly plucked the hair ribbon from your wife's head and then put it back in the back of her head? Well that was you putting a bullet in the back of her skull.
* Remember when you gently and lovingly tucked your young son in under the comforters? That's probably when you smothered him to death, you sick fuck.
* Remember when you used a shard of glass to slash open the orange "pillow" that you conspicuously "never liked" for the white fluffy cotton inside? Well that was the moment you disemboweled the orange CAT that you "never wanted".
* And then lastly and most obviously, the entire attic sequence represents your suicide by hanging, the cherry on top of this deliciously cheerful Christmas confection.

There are some not so subtle hints that shit is going wrong along the way. The scene with the spilled nail polish is pretty heavy foreshadowing, for one thing. First you spill blood-colored liquid on the floor after vomiting for no reason, then you cut yourself mixing your blood with the nail polish which is described as 'hemic', then in a Shakespearian nod all your efforts to clean up the nail polish ("blood") fail, and those failed attempts to clean it are all necessary to progress the game.

The point where an astute player should realize that things have gone horribly, horribly wrong is when you exit the boy's room after lighting the candle and placing the repaired figurine. For starters, the Christmas tree is now bedecked with lights--all RED lights. Instantaneously. Your wife is wearing a blood red dress--the exact color of fresh blood--but when you right clicked and examined the package before, you should have noticed that the dress you got your wife as a present was WHITE, not red. White dress = reality, Red Dress = Fantasy.