Identity V Wiki
Story Overview
Prologue
Time of Reunion
Ashes of Memory
Cage of Yesteryear
Character Letters
Character Diaries
Main Story
Central Character
Orpheus
Location(s)
Oletus Manor
General InformationCutscenes
Yes
Obtained by
The main story for the game Identity V is told through the perspective of the ex-novelist Detective Orpheus, who has been commissioned to find Mr. Reichenbach's missing daughter.
However, the mystery deepens as he finds and reads a series of mysterious diaries within Oletus Manor. It soon becomes apparent that a strange game was held within the manor, where people risk their lives in order to obtain a wish or reward of their deepest desire. It also becomes clear that Orpheus has his own secrets...
Contents
Overview[]
The following is a summary of the story of Identity V, gathered from various contextual evidence found in-game as well as official trailers and posts.
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The below article or section(s) contains speculation, analysis, or theories which may include unconfirmed information.
When adding content, use references to link or explain legitimate/official supportive evidence for specific theories, otherwise it may be removed.

Main story diagram.
The main story of Identity V revolves around the tragic and mysterious events surrounding Oletus Manor. The story unravels from the amnesic protagonist, Orpheus's perspective, who has deep ties to the manor. However, Orpheus is an unreliable narrator due the combination of drugs and fractured memories distorting his perception of certain details and events.
In Version 2.0, a second protagonist was introduced - the Reporter Alice DeRoss, who is the daughter of the manor's previous owner and Orpheus's childhood friend. Alice's perspective is reliable and close to reality, unlike Orpheus.
Story Summaries (Version 1.0)[] Prologue (Scenes 1 - 4) Orpheus is a private detective and a washed-out mystery novelist who lost his memories in a fire a few years before the start of the game. He is commissioned by James Reichenbach who is "a fan" of his novels and knows he is a detective. Orpheus accepts the commission to find Reichenbach's daughter in an abandoned mansion because not only does he need the money, but Mr. Reichenbach knows a secret alias belonging to Orpheus.After arriving at the abandoned Oletus Manor in his search of the missing girl, he finds a hidden bookcase containing diaries, each written by someone different. These diaries hold written accounts of people who were invited to the manor to play a certain game, and if they won the game, they would be awarded their desire. Orpheus begins to read these diaries, and learn more about the participants and why they came to the manor. For some participants, they came for the money, some came to hide from their past, while others came at the promise by the manor owner that they would meet someone they wanted to see. However, not all left the manor alive, as it turns out it was a death game where they would put their lives on the line against a "Hunter" and the only way to win was to survive by any means necessary.
Upon learning about Hunters, Orpheus gets a flashback, and attention is drawn to the scar on his hand. He specifically mentions that Hunters would have to be wearing gloves to not cut themselves on the "thorns" (or barbed wire) which they would put around things they wanted to protect. The scar on Orpheus' hand has some similarities to barbed wire, hinting that he participated in a manor game himself in the past but does not remember it.
Orpheus continues to read through the diaries, trying to figure out if the little girl was involved in the Manor Games, as well as feeding his own curiosity as the manor seems to hold some clues to his own past.
Time of Reunion (Scenes 6 - 10) After familiarizing himself with the diaries and the participants of the strange "game" who wrote them, Orpheus decides to investigate the parlor once more to see if he missed anything. Stepping on the far end of the rug, he hears an odd sound, and finds a hidden trapdoor underneath the carpet. Descending the ladder within the trapdoor, Orpheus finds himself in secret cellar, where he sees a stained operating table, a chair with well-used leather straps, and a medicine cabinet filled with strange chemicals. It is obvious that some experiments were held within this room. Before he can scrutinize the chemicals however, someone suddenly dashes behind him and startles him.
Trying to figure out who it is, he sees a glimse of a little blonde girl in a white dress as she leaves the cellar from the trapdoor, and he swiftly chases after her as she seems to be the girl he was commission to find by James Reichenbach. Although he calls out to her to "Wait" and that he's "here to help" she still flees from him out the door and closes it behind her. Orpheus finds that the door had been barricaded, and someone had helped the girl to do so, which traps Orpheus in the parlor. Tired, Orpheus sits down to rest.
After falling asleep, Orpheus has strange and troubling nightmares that seem to be based from his lost memories. He sees the little girl again, running from him in the manor. He chases her out the manor's front door, and it explodes into flame behind him. Looking back he sees the little girl in the inferno, held in a woman's arms, and when she makes eye contact with him Orpheus cries. Orpheus startles "awake" to find the barricaded door open, and the little girl is in an endless hallway, but appears more ghostly this time. Orpheus once again runs after her, with unfamiliar voices speaking in his ears, but he is unable to catch up. The girl, and then Orpheus are enveloped by a cloud of darkness, and with his hands trembling in pain, Orpheus is abruptly woken up with the words "Wake up" carved on his right wrist.
Realizing he needs to figure out what is happening, he confirms the door is still closed and returns to the cellar to resume his investigation of the medicine cabinet. Within it he finds a list of ingredients, and three sets of unknown chemicals each with only a symbol on their yellowed label. He tests each chemical by letting the cellar rat drink some, then smelling the fumes of each type himself. The first chemical causes the consumer to fall unconscious (labelled with the symbol of Orpheus' Lyre), the second enhances paranoia and fears, causing nightmares and hallucinations, and the third causes memory loss dependent on dosage. As Orpheus forgets he smelled the chemical, he ends up smelling it multiple times until a warning is written on his wrist and he figures out what it does.
Confused as to what all these clues could be leading to, he writes a question on the mirror to his other personality ("that person") and drinks the first chemical labelled with the lyre symbol which causes him to black out. Upon waking he sees the cryptic message "from the memory" had been written on his right wrist. Its vagueness enrages Orpheus, before he realizes "that person" could have easily ignored him or mocked him, and this phrase was a clue -- that his other personality was hiding for some reason, and that he needed to search for a place that was "from the memory", a place he knew. He realizes the message is referring to the collection of “memories” found within the very room he was standing in - the bookshelf of diaries - and immediately starts pulling out books from the shelves, where he finds an incomplete twisting symbol. Completing this symbol causes the entire wall and floor to spin, this time taking Orpheus with it to the room on the other side.
In the study, Orpheus finds a painting of Orpheus and Eurydice from Greek mythology, a white dress identical to the one worn by the little girl, a suit case, and bookshelves full of more diaries. He also finds a fourth glass bottle of an unknown chemical, with a multi-tentacle symbol on the yellowed label. Beside it is the ingredient list once again, but it is more complete this time, and includes the four notable chemicals on the bottom:
Label symbol Name DescriptionOrpheus' Lyre Orpheus "Avoid overdose, coma"
Three spiralling tentacles Siren Song "Terror awake, psychedelic"
A circle with a dot in the center Mnemosyne
Dionysus "Shell of Memory"
Nine spiralling tentacles "Hydra "rebuild Memory"
Determining that this chemical would return his memories to him, Orpheus drinks the liquid from the bottle, and immediately begins to remember the time he participated in the manor games. He remembers that he had been thrown into the "game" over and over again, with his memories wiped at the end of each round, whether he "succeeded" or "failed". The repeated amnesia caused him to forget completely why he had come to manor in the first place, and cause multiple personalities to be created within him. However, although the multiple personas eroded his original personality, it also allowed him to remember things despite the memory wipes, and he slowly approached the truth of the manor and the game. After finding the "Orpheus" drug, he was able to fake his death and fully escape the manor.
There is a final scene of Orpheus ten years from the past investigating the same study room, where the only change is in his own appearance, and the painting on the wall which is a family portrait with two forest rangers, but the faces of the rangers and the son are scratched out.
Story Summaries (Version 2.0)[] Ashes of Memory Part I (Scene 1 - 4) ;[Beginning Scene]
During the manor game in Darkwoods, Alice was trying to escape from the exit gate. But after opening the gate, she looked back and discovered again the "Nightmare" approaching. She was shocked and dropped her daily then.
[Scene 1-4]Miss Alice DeRoss, a reporter, plans a trip to Oletus Manor where contained a lot of mystery things and rumors, and she must make some preparations before her departure. She has been collecting clues on cold cases, and the commonality she found between them was a subtle connection to the manor. Among these clues, a Novelist, Orpheus, caught her attention. She collected all of his novels and plans to take one of them along to continue her research. In addition to the collection of clues on "the manor", within the her family's safe lies the "exclusive clues" that belonged to her father. When the time came to depart for the manor, she planned to disguise herself, but the memories from her past changed her mind.
Alice drives down the forest road to the manor, as she explains how she obtained an invitation to the manor. Back in the manor at last, but nothing is as she remembers it. What awaits Miss DeRoss in the main hall full of beautiful memories and nightmares? As the first guest to arrive in the manor, Frederick Kreiburg, a composer known as a rising star in the music scene, didn't seem like an ordinary person to her. The familiar furniture and collection in the living room feel familiar yet unfamiliar her. She learns about the manor and the other guests from the butler. Perhaps it is a coincidence, or maybe an intentional arrangement. The assigned guest room was her childhood bedroom.
In the dead of night, Alice plans to investigate the main hall before the other guests arrive. The main building seems normal, yet there's something strange about it. And deep within the main hall lies a door opened by the "Song of the Nightingale". In the secret study room known only to the DeRoss family, she finds many strange diaries. In one of them, Emma Woods is mentioned, and in another, the Hunters are mentioned. She says that they seem linked to the cold case she was investigating. Alice returns to her room after noting the time.
Alice's investigation into the secret study keeps her awake all night... At the dining table, the guests who are arrive in succession... The game has not even started yet, but just the conversation revolving around "Kreiburg" allows her to sense the tension between the other guests. After everyone else leaves, Alice notes that their relationships are deeper than it seems, and that she should get a better understanding of them, starting with Orpheus. Alice approaches Orpheus in the Living Room, and offers to play the piano at his request, and in exchange, he says that he will tell her about his new book.
Ashes of Memory Part II (TBA)
Video[]
Identity V - Main storyline
Summary of main story before Time of Reunion update
Manor Games[] Main Article: Main Story/Manor GamesManor Games refer to the actual canon games that have been held in Oletus Manor before Orpheus arrived at it. The matches played by players are potential outcomes, but are not canon games. Due to Orpheus' ability to actually see past events by "deducing" them from written accounts, he is able to retro-actively 'participate' in the previous Manor Games. It can be noted that lore-wise, the games we play as players are potential outcomes, but are not "canon" Manor Games.
Other Details[]Most of the lore and backstory about Identity V are obtained about the survivors who have written a diary in the manor, and which we assume we learn about because Orpheus finds their diaries.
Orpheus and his deductions learning about each character are discovered by the player through completing "Deduction Quests" and obtaining Birthday Letters.
References[]
In the game, the "Thorns" refers to a previous version of the Rocket Chair, where survivors would be wrapped in barbed wire that they would need to be rescued from. Due to censorship laws, Rocket Chairs no longer have this feature, and captured survivors are instead strapped in with a safety bar.