With the elusive story of Lethal Company only being fully understood through various data logs, this co-op horror game’s lore is mysterious and enticing.
If you’re also interested in figuring out the lore behind Lethal Company and what this strange company is all about, here is a story explanation.
The complete lore and story of Lethal Company, explained
While you can somewhat piece together the basics of this game’s story from context clues, everything makes a lot more sense after collecting and reading the data logs. These diary entries are by someone named Sigurd, who was on a crew with his brother Desmond, as well as Jess and Richard. These were apparently written in 1968, a year before the real moon landing.
Sounds being the walls and a golden planet
The logs start out pretty tame. Sigurd and the rest of the crew signed season-long contracts with this company. Being the most frightened in the group, Sigurd sticks to camera duty on the ship.
But things start to get weird once Sigurd hears strange sounds coming from behind the counter at the company building. No one else believes Sigurd, or cares to even attempt to believe. Even putting his flashlight through the delivery chute shows nothing but infinite pitch-blackness.
Sigurd then chats with a random voice on his walkie-talkie who speaks about a golden planet. This is just a legend, but to this person it’s real. The planet was apparently swallowed by a beast, and the planet is still being digested. But this voice mentions that they’re trapped behind the company wall. Sigurd tells this all to the group, but Jess dismisses him. No one believes Sigurd.
Sigurd is now talking about how this job is pretty shady. The pay is really good, but he doesn’t want to crawl back home. His ego is keeping him at this strange job. He even talks about taking an assessment exam, not remembering how he got on the ship, and how the voice on the phone didn’t sound real.
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The accident
Sigurd’s now losing sleep because he’s continuing to hear strange voices behind the company building. To Sigurd, they sound like “crying red faces all churned up and swept away by concrete.” Still, no one believes him.
Things take a turn once an entry says they had to leave Richard behind. They only had one more room to check, but somehow Richard disappeared. They only heard a neck-snapping, and suddenly saw a “wrinkly skin flower head man,” If you’ve played Lethal Company, you should know this shadow man to be the Bracken.
Once they got back to the ship, Desmond and Jess convinced Sigurd to be the one to call the company about the accident. But upon calling them, the same strange voice responded saying they’d contact his family and find a replacement soon.
Now every time they go to the company building, everyone can hear the voices and screams with the walkie-talkie. The crew is believing everything Sigurd is saying now. With each trip, they’re now taking less risks and playing it safe.
The replacement and phone traces
Their new crew member arrives soon after. Lucas is now the most nervous and scared of the lot, so he’s on camera duty. Desmond, being the more tech-savvy crew member, traced the call that Sigurd made to the company. Somehow, this group wasn’t calling from the company building, but from across the solar system.
Sigurd is now fully convinced that this company trapped a beast behind the wall and is hiring people to feed it and keep it tamed. This leads him to have nightmares about the beast breaking out. He also wants to autopilot the ship to the location where the company call originates.
The final data log is from Desmond, who says that he’s encrypting the logs to keep them hidden from the company. We have no idea whether this crew ended up finishing their contract and surviving, or if they ended up heading towards the phone call’s destination.
It seems to probably be true that this company is holding a large beast behind these walls and making employees keep it fed and tamed. Since Lethal Company is still in Early Access, more stories and data logs could unfold.
Lethal Company is available on Steam.
