[SPOILER] Plot Discussion Thread *Spoiler Alert*

[Ashtoreth]

Amazing find, you're a pro!

I wonder if this actually means something within the context of the story or if it's just The Chinese Room's "calling card" haha.

Ooooh, hold on a second... The Chinese Room's logo represents an origami bird, right?... Bird brand!


(I wonder, why did they choose an origami symbol? It's Japanese!!!)

[Paddy™]

Ooooh, hold on a second... The Chinese Room's logo represents an origami bird, right?... Bird brand!


(I wonder, why did they choose an origami symbol? It's Japanese!!!)

Just another example of the cultural ignorance of the lazy roundeye

[kojack]

Amazing find, you're a pro!

I wonder if this actually means something within the context of the story or if it's just The Chinese Room's "calling card" haha.

Ooooh, hold on a second... The Chinese Room's logo represents an origami bird, right?... Bird brand!


(I wonder, why did they choose an origami symbol? It's Japanese!!!)

It could be zhezhi (chinese paper folding).

[zico]

Actually I was reading for hours as it seems with the most interest about all the story theories. And I am still not sure IF there is an actual way the story is supposed to be. I am sure Chinese Room had their outline but they want to leave it up for interpretation.

For all we know Mandus - at least a part of him is the machine. His evil part? Now who is it that we play? Just a memory? Who is the man in the iron lung? Is Mandus sitting in the chair the whole time while he's fighting the machine in a very surreal manner? That seems almost logical but I still ponder on certain aspects. We DO witness the Pig attack on London. If all is just happening in a matter of moments - why do we witness this scene in realtime?

I haven't grasped the concept to the fullest and I am sure I missed on many details in my first playthrough. However I want to share my own theory.

I base this on two things I have not seen any satisfactory answer in the thread:
a) Where exactly is the orb?
b) Why doesn't it cast a shadow?

I think the theory about two parts of Mandus' soul may be right. He split already when he touched the orb and realized the terrible fate of the world. But it still doesn't explain WHAT EXACTLY we live through in the game. And if Mandus' heart or the hearts of his children power the machine - not the orb - where IS the orb?

My theory upon this isn't 100% water proof but I think - IF Chinese Room didn't IGNORE the Orb Shadow - after all it was never stated that EVERY Orb HAS to cast one, the Mandus we play in the game might BE the Shadow itself/himself. Think about it. He got the Orb in Mexico which made him into the man designing the machine. This was the moment when he was already consumed by the Orbs shadow. I know it's far fetched but while the good half of Mandus soul seeks redemption, the destruction of the machine, it goes along with the goals of the Shadow - to sabotage the work done with the help of the Orb. So maybe the Shadow is providing the vessel for Mandus soul. And probably in the end when Mandus heart is ripped from his chest - if we would have stayed a little longer, we might have seen it wasn't his heart but the Orb.

Like I said this theory isn't 100% perfect and probably has lotsa holes you guys will rip through. Heck I admit it's VERY far fetched.

But like the Shadow was "hindering" the efforts of Daniel and later Alexander, too, it might be so fitting the Shadow in AMFP might have an interest in tearing down the machine as well.

[Ideka]

I did some research and looky what I found

Spoiler below!

Source: http://glimpsejournal.com/index.php/Glim.../2.1-Cahan

Amazing find, you're a pro!

I wonder if this actually means something within the context of the story or if it's just The Chinese Room's "calling card" haha.

The characters are these: 新萬利. Their individual meanings in both chinese and japanese are new, ten thousand and profit.
Don't seem to mean anything together that I could find, but when followed by 肉, 骨, and 茶 (meat, bone and tea in japanese, probably roughly the same thing in chinese), they make up the name of some chinese restaurant or something.

[FromTheSidelines]

I just realized something. Isn't it downright impossible for someone to have managed the initial sabotage while they descended downwards?

Intriguing. The gates are far too heavy for a man to lift and are
instead hoisted aloft by a chain coiled about a tube that appears to be
spun by motors connected to these electrical switches. Whilst the fuse
is blown, the motor cannot be spun, and the gates will remain an
impenetrable barrier to progress.


Indeed, I remember that part. You fix each fusebox in turn, and each opens up the path onwards. If one were to break each in sequence, it'd have to be while backtracking through the complex. Consequently I'd make the assumption that the saboteur had to be coming from below.

My impression was that Mandus sabotaged his own machine before his amnesia and complete split from his other personality. After, said other personality took advantage of his memory loss and got him to turn everything back on. So throughout the game you're basically retracing your steps and undoing your own work as the saboteur.

In all these scenario the "Professor" seems to be real (we hear the conversations like bits of memory), and the moment he's killed would indicates he's definitely cut-off from reality.
all of this doesn't mean there couldn't be some kind of coherence inside his mental construction.

I think the Professor is definitely a symbol of objective reality or the world outside the machine. Maybe his death is a signifier of Mandus feeling there's no more need to play nice and hide what he's doing. That things have gone too far to be stopped. Or maybe that was the Engineer and it turned out that overconfidence cost him...

[Kein]

Btw, Professor was named as just Professor A. Any idea who could it be? Any GB professors that live in these years come in mind?

[Ashtoreth]

(I wonder, why did they choose an origami symbol? It's Japanese!!!)

It could be zhezhi (chinese paper folding).

Oh, I had no idea about that. Thank you for the information!

[mjbmitch]

This is my opinion on the whole "why isn't the Shadow following Mandus even though he touched the orb" situation.

The Shadow seeks out any person who touches an Orb, as we all know. In addition, we know from the previous game that blood warding is a legitimate technique to curb the Shadow's advancement. One specific journal entry struck me as intriguing in that it detailed the Aztec blood rituals, something very similar to the blood warding Daniel did prior to Amnesia: The Dark Descent:

And I said, look, my darlings, can you see it? And they said Yes, Daddy, Yes, we can see it. A tall, weathered cap of a steep sided pyramid, so like those of Egypt. Stone falling away from the summit, vines crawling about intertwining the stucco serpents that thrive about the steps. A palpable sense of stillness, a weight of forgotten. And this, here, this is where the king sat. And this is where the priests lived. This house, this is the house of the dead. And here, where the sun strikes, this is where they threw the hearts that were not consumed.

No, my darlings, they most certainly were not savages. You see, they believed that the sky could fall on their heads and they truly, truly believed that offering blood was the only way of stopping this from happening.

Perhaps, my darling. Perhaps they were mistaken altogether. Or perhaps their tragedy was they could simply not spill blood enough to prevent the sky from falling upon them.

Most of us have come to the consensus that Mandus killed his children in Mexico following the Orb's revelation. I believe that the Orb's revelation was the catalyst for his bloodthirsty crusade to "cleanse the world". By killing his two sons on the steps of an Aztec temple he basically followed in the Aztec's footsteps of blood sacrifice (which can possibly be interpreted as blood warding). In this case, killing his children in Mexico set him forward, per say, and allowed him to have leeway from the Shadow for some time.

This time was then extended upon his arrival in London when he almost immediately began work on his grotesque, blood-spilling factory. The entire machine could have been continuously warding the Shadow from ever setting foot near Mandus due to the immense amount of bodies it seemed to have been discarding.

[Lazoriss]

Ok you guys. I've spent the last two nights going through this thread (and I still feel I haven't been thorough enough), and two days thinking about the your theories and such. I have a lot of thoughts, but for right now I think I'll stick to one plot device/point... for now, at least, haha.

So who wants to talk about orbs? c8

Orbs appear in both TDD and Justine. They play a major role in the story of the game as well as act as the main source of motivation for the character you play as. There's also a nice little short story about Weyer collecting an orb in France, which is also very interesting in itself.

So wtf is an orb and what does it do? Also what is THE GUARDIAN exactly? Remember that what follows is my own opinion and interpretation base on the story.

1. The essence/god/deity inside an orb is not the same being as the guardian. The guardian is part of the orb, yes, but is a supernatural creature that protects it and, at the very most, might be an extension of the orbs consciousness itself. When an orb is misused or is taken by someone it deems unworthy, the guardian is awoken and it effectively punishes the wrongdoer.

2. There's a reason a star shape is the call sign of an orb. The sun itself is a common symbol that represents God. it makes sense that a star symbol would often appear to mark the location of an orb. The orb holds inside it a massively powerful -something- that can be described as a god of sorts. I was kind of surprised not to see the star or hear it mentioned in AMFP. Unless I missed it.

3. Orbs all hold a separate deity. This is mooooostly speculation. There might be some overarching power or upper God with some control over each orb, but I like to believe each orb contains its own deity with its own desires and ambitions.

4. Orbs see people as tools and will use them to their advantage. Although orbs can grant a user power, they will usually try to manipulate a potential and worthy user to get what it wants. They will often manipulate via visions and "whispers". Most mortals (even those selected worthy by an orb) are often overpowered by an orb. The orb's visions and speech brink upon or are simply beyond human comprehension, causing a user to often become ill or delusional. I'm not sure what Daniel's orb wanted its user to do. Daniel actively resists the orb and eventually passes it on to Alexander. But Mandus falls under the sway of the orb and ends up building the machine he dreams about, exactly as the orb wanted.

5. Mandus' orb wanted to "hatch". Basically the deity within the orb wanted to be unleashed. What this means exactly, I can't be sure. I would guess that the machine would double as both a gatherer of vitae and the new vessel for the orb's deity. However, it's also possible that the the machine would gather enough vitae and ultimately bring whatever was in the orb completely into our mortal plane. The orb was always manipulating Mandus. The visions it showed him were deliberate, and threw the man onto the path to building the machine and unearthing the temple under London. The orb may very well have intended Mandus to kill his children, perhaps seeing his love for the boys a hindrance.

6. Mandus' soul is probably thrown into the mix somewhere. It would seem that when the orb splits in half, the soul of Mandus was also split. This is, uh... where I'm a bit confused still. I didn't pay close enough attention to the overall timeline, whoops! I always guessed that an orb splitting acted as a sort of test for a potential user... or it could just be a result of stress on the orb for some reason idk. But although a split orb can be used to a degree, it still would serve best to be rebuilt. I THINK that the orb Mandus had split right after he killed his sons in Mexico. The emotional turmoil of killing/sacrificing his children might have been what split the orb in two, and through paranormal shenanigans, also split Mandus' soul. He might have even killed the children while still actively and heavily connected to the orb and the visions it was feeding him, which could further explain such a volatile rebound. Mandus returns to London with a new-found disgust and pity for mankind. He begins turning the servants and degenerates into man-pigs (an attempt to create a more perfected "human" race), builds the machine (as the orb was instructing him to do in his dreams), finds a temple under what existed of the machine (woah), and is also putting people through the pig-line and feeding the meat to other people (ew). I'm guessing that he hooked the orb halves up to the machine and fed it his own blood to give it sentience. The Machine itself is a kind of hybrid between himself and the orb deity. Its goal also a blend of the two. It wants to cleanse the world by eradicating the human population. it seems to do this out of pity and to prevent mankind from eventually destroying itself in an agonizing down-world spiral, as suggested by the visions of the Great War and WW2. But it is doing this by consuming them, and therefore taking in their blood and vitae. If it takes in enough the orb will "hatch".

7. The two glowing objects you see hooked to the machine at the end of the game are the orb halves. I'm totally convinced of this. Although the orbs appear in the shape of hearts, remember that orb shards change their shape, color, and texture. They also might just appear as hearts to Mandus' deranged mind. Likewise, I don't think the bodies of his children are literally there. It does provide a nice correlation to the halves thing, though. A note had described the twins as akin to one soul in two bodies. Two parts of a whole being. Mandus lost his sons and gained the orb. The orb is the heart of the machine, split and deranged. It desires peace through destruction. You have to sacrifice to get back. the heart is such a prevalent symbol in the game, and I suppose it does replace the star symbol. The Machine is in between the mortal world and the Temple. It is one part God and one part human. The orb is halved and appears as the hearts of twins that almost seem to share a soul. It sees Mandus as its father, too. It isn't a God, or a person, but something in between. The Machine is terrible and cruel, yet still seems to show some level of compassion and sympathy for the people.


Things this theory does NOT explain.
-Who da heck is in the Lung.
-Whether Mandus was split physically as well as spiritually. (As well as who you play as)
-Why there are notes written by the twins after they've died. (no srsly this really bothers me)
-How there are water monsters in this game (although they might have been dwelling in the Temple and migrated into the Machine once it reached that far down)
-How the Machine intended to consume the entire Earth's population with only a bunch of pig-men. Good luck there, buddy. XD

It's hard to pin down a lot of the story since you can't easily tell what in the game is literally happening, and how much is delusion or just symbolic. 9_6