Hell Is Us takes many bold choices, such as its explicit portrayal of the harsh and unforgiving nature of war, and one of the most notable from a gameplay perspective is its decision to leave almost all matters of discovery and exploration in your hands. No quest markers or maps to guide you, just notes and intuition.
One such mission you will encounter early on is the Forlorn Fate Good Deed. Here, a pair are locked away with no way out, and seemingly no obvious way for you to save them, either. And people can’t survive being locked away forever, so you better get to finding that key, fast. And it’s going to require a lot of traveling.
How To Start The Forlorn Fate Good Deed
After you enter the trenches in Senedra Forest, you’re given a variety of locations you can spread out in, including back towards the entrance of the cave from which you initially entered. However, instead follow the trenches until you are walking on the land above them, and make your way to the east. Defeat the Lymbic Entities along the way here, and you will come across another small sections of trenches detached from the rest. Proceed down them to found a small room and a locked door not until the one in the earlier ruins from the Secrets of the Ram Mystery.
Approach these doors and you will see that they are locked. Inside you will hear the voice of someone calling out, asking for your help to free them. You cannot talk back, but they offer you plenty of information anyway. They were locked in there by someone who was meant to be helping them, but they brought the key to the door with them.
They fled all the way back to Talju to find the map they had forgotten, and they were part of the Vanderlyn group. That’s all the info you have to go off right now, which admittedly means very little at the beginning of the game. And it’s going to be quite a while until you can do anything about it. So let them sit tight for now.
Where To Find The Map For The Locked Door
To open this door, you’ll first need to make your way to Talju. However, this is not accessible until much later in the game. After you’ve made your way beneath Lake Cynon to the Lymbic Forge and placed the Keystone of Grief in its pedestal, you start Act Two of the game. This gives you free rein to explore Hadea in search of the three remaining Keystones.
And one of those areas you can now head to is Talju, so head to there now. Once you arrive, make sure to head further back towards the garage to get a map from the mechanic, Boru Joven, inside. This will make it much easier to work your way around the town. Equip this map to your quick slots, and you will very clearly see the Vanderlyn Trust offices marked on the south-west corner of the map. This is where we need to go.
Make your way there, defeating the many enemies along the way and opening any shortcuts you haven’t already. Inside this building, you will find the Symbol – Flame, which is used to open the locked door back in Senedra Forest, and the Map – Senedra Forest. Both of these are found in the same spot, so you won’t need to do any extra searching to find it.
With both of those found, you can now leave Talju and return to the locked door beneath the trenches in Senedra Forest.
There is also a woman in the Vanderlyn Trust building who you can give a Signal Flare to as part of the Light In The Dark Good Deed.
Returning The Map And Key
With the key and map in hand, make your way back to the door and insert the Symbol – Flame into the locked door to (hopefully) meet the two survivors inside. They will be delighted to finally be freed, but claim that they’re not from here, and without their guide have no idea how to actually navigate the Senedra Mountains south out of Hadea.
Lucky for you, you picked up the map that their previous guide was looking for while in the Vanderlyn Trust building alongside the key. Offer this to either of the two survivors now to earn their thanks, the Cufflinks Research Item, and complete the Forlorn Fate Good Deed.
In this room there is also another locked door, this time which requires Rage Lymbic Keys to open. This is part of the Lymbic Door – Senedra, Underground Mystery, so open this one if you have the Lymbic Rods for it now. If not, take your time finding them. This one doesn’t have a time limit.
Changes Based On Story Progress
If you were trapped behind a door underground with no food or water, it’s fair to assume you might not last very long, but also that a game might not actually take that into account. Well, Hell Is Us does. The further you advance through the story, the more desperate the survivors in Senedra Forest become. This is specifically marked by how many Keystones you have collected and placed.
With each new one acquired, they will become more desperate, crying even more for help each time you approach the door. And if you’ve gathered up all of the Keystones before you free them, then they will have died, and the Forlorn Fate Good Deed will fail. So make sure you open the door before that. And unfortunately, failed Good Deeds do not count as completed for the sake of the Trophy/Achievement.
We had found all of the Keystones except for Terror before completing Forlorn Fate, but had not placed any but Grief. So hold off on placing them, too, to give yourself a bit more safety during this Good Deed.
However, the changes don’t stop there. When the survivors state that they wouldn’t know where to go through the mountains themselves, you are expected to give them the map you found alongside the Symbol – Flame. If you don’t, and you choose to advance the story, then they will simply leave. You will get no reward, no closure, and the Good Deed will once again fail. So make sure to give them that map immediately to avoid them heading off on their own without guidance.
Once you do complete this Good Deed, like with all others, you can return to Gildas back in the Watcher’s Nest in Vyssa Hills to get additional rewards.
The rewards you receive are set for each Good Deed, though it can be difficult to tell if you are handing in multiple Good Deeds at once.
