Theory

[Froge]

Nothing in AAMFP ever happened.

Unlike ATDD, the story of this game is a bit more vague and thus more open to interpretation. A few clues in AAMFP indicate that everything may have all been in Oswald's head.

Firstly, a lot of the events that occur throughout the game are simply too surreal. Most importantly, there is the sequence where the machine unleashes manpigs all over London to cause chaos and destruction. During this event, not once does the player actually get to see a pig murder a human being. In fact, the only humans that Oswald sees out in the streets are dead bodies (as well as some pigs eating those bodies). This is insufficient evidence to prove that there were actually pigs going around killing people.

All the things that we think are happening are only indicated to us through the screaming as well as the visual carnage. But, knowing Oswald's unstable state of mind, the screams could all very well just be in his head. The dead bodies could also be in Oswald's head, as a sort of confirmation bias to reassure himself that the pigs are going around killing people when in reality, he's just experiencing an immense episode of guilt.

Secondly, we should also note how the last portion of the game, when Oswald descends into the heart of the machine, is filled with bizarre imagery as well as erratic shifts in environment. I recall several moments when you open a door and hear a sound like static, before being teleported to a totally different location. Many things that Oswald sees in this part of the game are also quite surreal, such as the giant and dark hallway full of blood as well as the almost temple-like setting at the very bottom of the machine. Not only is this highly improbable to construct, but Oswald couldn't possibly have created all of that in the months that he got back from vacation.

What I believe is that Oswald is perhaps going backwards through his mind at this moment in time. He's returning to that temple in Mexico where he killed his children and walking up those steps where he had ripped their hearts out in mock imitation of the Aztec sacrifices. The chair at the top of the stairs where Oswald sits in to commit suicide is then a metaphorical representation of his mind accepting death as the only way he can repent of his sins of filicide. The chair is, after all, very reminiscent of the electrocution chairs people sit in when they are about to executed, as if "justice is now being served to Oswald."

It's important to note that Oswald's narrative continues after he dies. The screen zooms out and I believe you hear Oswald's voice saying that the church bell strikes twelve, signalling the start of the new century. Down at the bottom of that machine, Oswald couldn't possibly have heard such a bell. What probably happened is that after Oswald committed "mental suicide," he must've climbed to the top of a building or something and waited until the new century came. When he heard the bell, he then jumped down. Or maybe he was in his room and he heard the bell, and afterwards he hung himself. It doesn't matter - the important thing is, Oswald must have heard the bell in some way.

Third, unlike ATDD, we never have any flashbacks in the game towards scenes where people are tortured, killed, and turned into pigs. All we really get to learn of the process are a bunch of notes written by either the machine's prisoners or Oswald himself. This leads me to believe that Oswald was indeed planning to create the machine and wrote down all the instructions to do so, but never embarked upon the task.

The whole premise of "a machine for pigs" is so ridiculously that I don't think it fits in the Amnesiaverse at all. We know that the history of the Amnesiaverse closely resembles our own, as they make mention of the coming genocides and world wars of the 20th century. But something as large scale as Oswald's plans must have been well documented, especially since he explicitly mentions that there was a time when a whole community of people fell into the machine when the floor below them opened up. These documents, which must have been made public sooner or later, would've drastically altered the course of the 20th century. I'm not saying that things like the holocaust or the world wars wouldn't have happened, but still, the very knowledge that a world genocide had been planned by Mandus should've affected history and countries' leaders' actions in some way.

One more point to make: Mandus couldn't possibly have believed that an army of man pigs could take over the entire world. Military power at the start of the 20th century was already quite impressive. During world war 1, fighter planes, submarines, and non-portable machine guns had already been invented, soon followed up by tanks. Not to mention humanity's advances in the sciences made the possibility of chemical and biological warfare very possible, which could've instantly wiped out most of the brainless pigs.

So what I think did happen was Mandus' trip to Mexico and him discovering the orb, which gave him visions of the future, and then he subsequently killed his children on the altar steps. This drove him mad, and when he came home he began planning out everything about the construction of the machine, writing a ton of notes, importing compound X from Brennenburg, and doing perhaps a few of the experiments he mentioned (like the one where he poisoned the dog). But he never truly got to work on building the machine, and he also never told many people about it except for maybe the professor. He imagined the deaths of all the rich and poor that he supposedly killed with his machine and becomes more and more insane doing so. Then he comes down with his fever and subsequent Amnesia, and the whole game is a journey through Mandus' head as he explores his "imagined" machine and finds out everything he had planned to do with it. The pigapocalypse is the revelation that he was truly wrong, and that the only way for Mandus to redeem himself is by ending his life. Thus, his journey to the depths of the machine, as I mentioned before, is him revisiting the temple where he had killed his children and accepting that it was time to die.

This brings me to a note on ATDD. I believe that everything in that game truly did happen in the Amnesiaverse because nothing really occurred on a large scale, and with the exception of Wilhelm's kidnapping, nothing of Daniel or Alexander's doings would've been documented. And no one else will know of what went down in Brennenburg because the shadow destroyed the entire castle.

tl;dr - AAMFP is a journey through Mandus' mind, the machine never existed, Mandus did kill his children, and eventually he committed suicide when he heard the church bell signal the new century.

[Cuyir]

The ''IT WAS ALL A DREAM'' scenario is way too cheap, I wouldn't expect that from TCR.

If i'm wrong and they go ''YUP, THAT'S RIGHT'' it would completely make the game an unnecessary experience and cheapen the shit out of the whole game.

I'd then have to post walls of text as to how shitty AMFP is.

[Shambles]

I really, really doubt it. Just because the manpigs disappeared, doesn't mean it all didn't happen. It summarizes at the end, but that doesn't mean they just poofed away. I think it's meant to say that things slowly went back to normal, perhaps the manpigs did get confused when The Machine was turned off, maybe they slowly retreated.

Either way, if it was an "this was a dream" thing, I agree with Nuit's Grace, it has no point.

[Alardem]

Who's to say that Mandus DIDN'T drastically change the course of history? The universe of Amnesia diverges from ours from the point Mandus had his vision of our 20th century, because of all his attempts to avert it lead to something even worse. Also, the Man-Pigs have one advantage of being nigh-invincible - the chemical that fuels their body is apparently potent enough to make severed heads come back to life. Finally, I got the impression that, in his dying moments, Mandus' link to the Machine allowed him to glimpse the surface.

It's a weird, vague story, and I do agree that the areas at the end are pretty abstract. But I don't think Pinchbeck is enough of a hack to cop out and say 'nothing happened'.

Spoiler below!

Or do what Ken Levine does and literally undo everything via killing Hitler.

[Froge]

Also, the Man-Pigs have one advantage of being nigh-invincible - the chemical that fuels their body is apparently potent enough to make severed heads come back to life.

They still wouldn't have stood a chance against 20th century warfare. It doesn't matter if the chemical keeps bringing them back to life, they wouldn't be able to do much better if they get cannon shelled 20 times.

The ''IT WAS ALL A DREAM'' scenario is way too cheap, I wouldn't expect that from TCR.

On the contrary, I think TCR is more the company that supports divergent theories about their games.

[Cuyir]

Who's to say that Mandus DIDN'T drastically change the course of history? The universe of Amnesia diverges from ours from the point Mandus had his vision of our 20th century, because of all his attempts to avert it lead to something even worse. Also, the Man-Pigs have one advantage of being nigh-invincible - the chemical that fuels their body is apparently potent enough to make severed heads come back to life. Finally, I got the impression that, in his dying moments, Mandus' link to the Machine allowed him to glimpse the surface.

It's a weird, vague story, and I do agree that the areas at the end are pretty abstract. But I don't think Pinchbeck is enough of a hack to cop out and say 'nothing happened'.

Spoiler below!

Or do what Ken Levine does and literally undo everything via killing Hitler.

Pretty much.

[Kein]

This is not a theory, this is hypothesis.

Theory can be proved by practice/experiment.

[Rodogaar]

Well

I think he made the machine, but it is not impossible that the ending was an illusion. As you pointed out, the static noises and teleporting to new rooms. In addition to the fact that the first time you see the heart, it actually looks like a machine, while the second time it's turned into a huge Aztec (Maya?) tempel.

Another way of interpreting it is the tangent-universe elements that have been a part of both the Amnesia games. In TDD it was said that if you could control the power of the orb you could transcend into other dimensions, however most people in possession of an orb would just be engulfed in its darkness.

In AMFP we're told about creatures in the water who have been exposed to compound X for such a long time, that they flicker in and out of existence and into parallel universes or something like that. Kind of like viritual particles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle). I believe the lightning-pigs work in somewhat the same way. They teleport, don't they?

Oswald did find such an orb in Mexico (i believe?). And maybe it gave him great power to create a huge-ass machine. But as we was exposed to way too much compound x, he suffered the same fate as the water-deamons. That is. He could not "hold onto" reality anymore, and as madness comsumed him, he drifted into his own personal pocket-dimension, in which the tempel symbolized the heart of the machine and the epitome of all his sins.

Nevertheless. The last part. Where he walks into a lake of blood, can not be "real". Why would he build an elevator in the middle of a blood-lake? Same goes for the tempel.

I never quite understood the meaning of the heart that was help up in the air by some mechanical arms. The one you shut down. Was it some kind of metaphore?

_______________________________________

So yeh. My thoughts are a bit cloudy before i get my first dosage of caffeine. Might be just bollocks what I just wrote.

Anyways. We must not forget that TCR made this, and tbh it felt kind of like a stand-alone-game, which wasn't really connected to TDD at all. Except from a few things of course.

Thomas Grip did say that AMFP was TCHs go at the Amnesia concept. I think it happened kind of like this:

Thomas: Okey. You make scary atmospheric games. I make scary atmospheric games. Wouldn't it be cool if you used our engine and themes to tell one of your stories? Great! Then I can work on the super secret project while you guys publish a new game!

[Istrebitel]

Honestly, I'm one who's against unexplained endings or storylines, because I consider it a cheap way to buff up the interest and inspire fans to discuss the game after playing it, but to each their own. I can agree with a well-made uncertainity that really makes you spend several months of collective thought and study to figure it out, something like a good puzzle.

However, with this one, I was truly disappointed after people on the forums (not me) combined all the facts and it seems that the dates of the notes just contradict each other.

Judging from one set of notes/facts, Oswald killed his kids during his trip, and on other notes and facts, he did this after. By some notes, kids are alive just months before the events of the game - and during the time where Oswald was kidnapping people and killing them turning them into pigs, which contradicts the fact that machine(or Oswald's second consciousness) says that Oswald spilled first blood alone (meaning, first kill was the murder of his kids by his hands), and also, such a big machine, spanning so much space (and enterprise covering it and all) could not be constructed in mere several months.

To me this is either a stupid mistake on their part, or a "clever" trick to leave the question open to player's entepretation by saying "here's several contradicting facts, find out which one to remove" - so basically, we have to say "this happened in reality but this only happened in his head" or "this is true but this is a hallucination" in order to have a coherent, non-self-contradicting story. But this is cheap and dumb! I mean,this way we can never actually figure out WTF WAS GOING ON!? We can argue til the end of the world, because there is really no way to prove which of the facts are imaginary and which are real! And if this is a screw up, then it's just such a big blunder, and if this is intended, then this is really really cheap way to keep your game popular...

[Newsman Waterpaper]

Maybe Mandus was in com-(shot)