R.E.P.O. lore – A complete history

In R.E.P.O, you and a group of robot friends are sent on assignments to collect valuable items for a mysterious overseer. The seemingly random treasures you must collect are remnants of a once-thriving human world. But what happened to all the humans, who exactly is sending you out on these dangerous missions, and where did all these monsters come from?

A history of the strange world of R.E.P.O

As one of up to six cute, hardworking robots, your job is simple enough: collect artifacts and items from the deserted human world and bring them back to sell for cash. Any cash you gain, you can use to purchase power-ups, weapons, and healing items in the shop. This sounds simple enough, but what your boss, the heartless and cruel artificial intelligence who speaks only in emoji, doesn’t tell you is that there will be a number of weird and often dangerous creatures ready to stop you.

There is no obvious reason why humanity has died out in R.E.P.O, but the lack of rotting or canned food in the fridges and cupboards offers a clue. Perhaps resources became so scarce that food was eventually depleted entirely, and humanity ended up starving to death, or worse. What could be worse than dying from hunger?

Around the maps are mutated monsters, haunted and otherworldly beings, and other dangerous and strange creatures. The only vaguely human presence is the Huntsman, a blind man with impeccable hearing who uses his shotgun as a cane and can blast your little robot head off in a second. Some say he is the caretaker at Swiftbroom Academy, but he is also seen in other worlds, so who knows where he truly belongs?

Is the giant head, who can destroy you in two bites, really the owner of Headman Manor? Was he human before and mutated into the freakish disembodied head we see today? The manor is full of regular human items like a double bed, kitchen, chairs, and tables, which all seem impractical for a floating head.

The most likely scenario we can uncover is that something went terribly wrong at the McJannek Station or Swiftbroom Academy. The science station is littered with skeletal remains, so perhaps there was a massive disaster involving chemicals there. Or perhaps someone touched a forbidden, cursed artifact and brought an apocalyptic magical disaster down upon humanity.

We know that humans once lived in these worlds, but there is no sign of them now. Many of the monsters you encounter as you explore (and scream and run) could easily be deformed and mutated remains of human beings who weren’t lucky enough to die. As the humanity we recognize is no longer, what is left are these dangerous creatures, and artificial intelligence is most likely created initially by people. Since humanity is dead and gone, so are spoken and written language, leaving the artificial intelligence to communicate with the sentient robot workers.

As R.E.P.O is updated and we explore more of this world they created, it will be interesting to see what other theories and stories we can uncover.