[SPOILER] Plot Discussion Thread *Spoiler Alert*

[Alardem]

Yes to both. The logic is indisputably flawed, and I don't have a problem while we consider Mandus to be totally irrational. But the narrative doesn't set it up that way.

The narrative sets up the Machine to be a sacrificial device. It in itself is too limited to destroy the world - only murder enough people and gather enough workers to fulfill an ill-defined apocalyptic ritual that involves the detonation of its nuclear reactor. It's important to stress this point: all this murder paves the path for a supernatural cataclysm, rather than be the actual agent of destruction. Mandus, the Engineer and the Machine itself are all conduits for some greater evil.

An analogy to Mandus' motivation would be the use of religious ideology to wipe out an undesirable class, as was/is the case in Rwanda and Sudan. Or, alternately, using the ideology of "purging" to justify the murder of the intelligentsia as the communists gleefully did.

I think it's similar to the reason why people flipped out over the logic (or lack thereof) of the Reapers in Mass Effect 3. It makes perfect sense to consider their motivation irrational because, after all, they were villains and utterly broken AI - yet somehow the fact that they didn't have a reasonable explanation for their inexcusable evil is something many people complained about.

EDIT: Another parallel would be the nuclear bombings of Japan. To this day, many people are under the impression that utterly mortifying the Japanese public with atomic slaughter ("a child's shadow burnt into the brickwork") was preferable to a far bloodier alternative of actually invading the country. Simply put, they say it was a lesser evil that avoided a far greater death toll. I somehow doubt the writer intended this, but I can't help but link the Machine's goal of nuking London to that of Fat Man and Little Boy.

[rotten]

The Aztec god contained inside the egg Mandus finds in Mexico needs blood to break into our world.
He tricks Mandus to kill all those people. First, Mandus needs money, that's why he makes pies. Second, manpigs are needed to kill more people, which means more blood. The Machine only needs blood. It's its only motivation. Everything else is to trick Mandus.
That's my vision for now.

[Potato]

Did anyone else notice that if you hadn't known anything about the game or its plot beforehand, you wouldn't have known who the hell Oswald was?

Seriously, it wasn't that much of an issue to me, until I watched some let's players who all got extremely puzzled at the very last loading screen. "Who's Oswald? Oswald is a new one." is the most common one I've heard. I just looked through the game files, and I found 1 Journal entry that mentions the name Oswald. Then I realized, Oswald was never mentioned by his first name, it was always Mandus, no notes with his name either. That's kind of an issue. I guess you could say it goes with both ways, that Daniel's last name isn't mentioned in TDD, or ever, though it's more of a problem if the first name of the main character isn't mentioned imo.

[rotten]

Did anyone else notice that if you hadn't known anything about the game or its plot beforehand, you wouldn't have known who the hell Oswald was?

Seriously, it wasn't that much of an issue to me, until I watched some let's players who all got extremely puzzled at the very last loading screen. "Who's Oswald? Oswald is a new one." is the most common one I've heard. I just looked through the game files, and I found 1 Journal entry that mentions the name Oswald. Then I realized, Oswald was never mentioned by his first name, it was always Mandus, no notes with his name either. That's kind of an issue. I guess you could say it goes with both ways, that Daniel's last name isn't mentioned in TDD, or ever, though it's more of a problem if the first name of the main character isn't mentioned imo.

It's not an issue game-wise, it's an issue for those stupid-ass lets-players, who don't bother themselves reading any background info about the game. Oswald's name is mentioned:

The year is 1899. Wealthy industrialist Oswald Mandus has returned home from a disastrous expedition...

I don't know how dumb can one get (I'm not mentioning you, of course) to miss this from the website, from the steam or any other source, where the game is present.

[Alardem]

It could be that 'Oswald' is the Engineer and Mandus is the person we're playing as. Referring to the protagonist by one half of his name would further the implication that his very identity is halved. (Although we never hear the Engineer referred to as Oswald...)

Also, why is it that the last chronologically-dated note we get is from the 29th of December? Because it took Jesus 3 days to rise from the dead, and if Mandus attempted suicide on the 29th it's technically been 3 days. :p

[Paddy™]

If this has been covered before, I apologise, but only in a half-assed, insincere kinda way.

The "Machine" appears to be a walking, talking human being before becoming the machine. When you enter the sewer section, a flashback of an old conversation between Mandus and the Machine occurs. It's the part where the Machine explains that the turd-water can be used to drive turbines, or something. Here's the conversation:

Spoiler below!

\Amnesia - A Machine For Pigs\redist\sounds\vo\09_sewer\vo_sewer_trigger_01_flashback.ogg

sewer_trigger_01_flashback Mandus

---

Isn't it dangerous allowing this filthy discharge to collect so close to the core?

The Machine
We can use the flow to drive the turbines.

There will always be a torrent of excreta flooding through these tunnels.

We can use this to supplement the steam production and ensure constancy.

Mandus
Dear God, the stench. This faecal matter is the true product of the age.

This conversation sounds like a real-time conversation between two people, rather than Oswald talking to The Machine. I find this confusing. Was the Machine someone who melded with the actual machine after it was built? Was that him in the life support pod thing at the end? Is he a separate person from Mandus, rather than a manifestation of some internal demon? If so, who was he? If not, how did this conversation take place?

[Alardem]

Is the Machine's voice already distorted/tinny in that conversation? If I recall correctly, the Engineer was still an alternate personality of Mandus at that point. In other words, Mandus is having the conversation with himself.

I'm not sure if we should take the fact that he has the same voice as the Professor into consideration.

[MyRedNeptune]

Mandus' logic is flawed and unsound. Why is this a problem?

Because it renders him pointless as a character.

Insanity is a universal foolproof hand wave device that can be used to justify any action the character commits, ever. It also has zero basis in reality, because there is no such thing in real life.

A direct consequence of this is the utter elimination of any sort of structure that your character may have otherwise had. Madness means anything is possible, right?

If you want your characters to be meaningful, their thoughts and actions must form an interwoven pattern of cause and consequence. Otherwise they will come across as inconsistent and shallow. Our ability to see this pattern is dependent on our perception of the limitations and rules that govern the actions of the character and form their personality - limitations that insanity effectively gets rid of.

If at any point you have to resort to lunacy as an explanation, you're dealing with a poorly written character. Same thing goes for being an alien, too (I'm looking at you, Alexander of Brennenburg >.>).

From what I've seen, AAMFP gives little to no material to connect the glaring gaps between death of wife and mass murder. This is why, in my opinion, AAMFP's plot sucks.

[Paddy™]

Is the Machine's voice already distorted/tinny in that conversation? If I recall correctly, the Engineer was still an alternate personality of Mandus at that point. In other words, Mandus is having the conversation with himself.

The voice isn't tinny in this instance, so it's not a phone call. You can find the audio file here:

\Amnesia - A Machine For Pigs\redist\sounds\vo\09_sewer\vo_sewer_trigger_01_flashback.ogg

It's also worth noting that it's a flashback to a time when Mandus is clearly in his pre-amnesia mode, and before he had sabotaged the machine.

I'm not sure if we should take the fact that he has the same voice as the Professor into consideration.

It's not the professor, though. The game files label the speaker as "The Machine", and the professor wouldn't be answering Mandus' questions about his own facility. The professor also speaks in a much less sinister tone haha.

That Mandus is asking the Machine about the safety of having poop near the core, and the Machine's response that the poop is useful, says to me that Mandus isn't the one designing the machine or is at least in cahoots with someone who has more knowledge of the machine's design than he does.

It could mean that Mandus and the Machine are separate people, instead of two sides of the same crazy coin, or that it's just a little bit of a cock-up in the logic of the story.

[Alardem]

I think that's a red herring. The conversation between Mandus and the Professor would lead one to believe the Engineer is a separate entity from Oswald. However, the payoff arrives when the Professor gets to 'meet' the Engineer - as it turns out, that means he gets attacked by Mandus.

The interview with Pinchbeck linked back a page ago says that extra notes were provided to emphasize Mandus' split personality in order to make him more sympathetic to play-testers. Most memorably for me, that leads to the note of Mandus masturbating to the image of his dark twin - the Engineer - in his mirror

Therefore, the Engineer WAS part of Mandus: the brilliant, murderous and inhuman side of him. It's also possible that the Engineer is the engine through which the Stone Egg works its dark magic on Oswald. The Engiener's relationship to Mandus is similar to Clarence's symbiosis with Philip, in that they are both darker portions of the protagonist's personality who are born through supernatural catalysts, corrupt their hosts, and eventually take on lives of their own.

Therefore, the flashbacks between Mandus and the Engineer exist in Mandus' head - a mental conversation between him and his darker personality. The reason for having different voices is artistic license. It'd be even more confusing if Mandus and the Engineer's voices were the same, just as how Clarence's voice is quite clearly not the same as Philip's.

@MyRedNeptune

I disagree quite severely about the characterization being implausible. Mandus' actions boil down to a mixture of obsession, repressed hatred and class warfare, all bound together by the cultural context of the industrialized Victorian period. He's certainly insane, but it is an insanity that can be understood much more than, say, the Joker from The Dark Knight. He's not to be dismissed as generically crazy, given that a significant portion of the story is about understanding his motivations.

Also, Alexander was driven by desperation and lost love, not because he was an inscrutable Cyclopaean horror.

It all boils down to how much thought you're willing to invest into the story. If you didn't enjoy it, then you won't spend much time trying to make sense of the information you were provided. You may call it over-analysis, I just call it part of the fun. Making logical sense of gaps in a horror story can make it more enjoyable. If I apply your surface-level reading to Daniel, I can say that there's no logical reason why he jumps from 'scared archaeologist' to 'gleeful torturer/child-murderer' when given little evidence for the value of his crimes other than the word of his friend.

Not to defend poorly-written stories, of course. I recall FEAR 3 as an example of a story where in-universe consistency is nonexistent, making trying to understand the story a futile gesture because it was evident the writer himself didn't put much effort. And Bioshock Infinite? I can go on about how it tries to throw all manner of interesting ideas to make itself appear deep on a surface level, only to discard them before any further analysis can be made in favor of a thoroughly inane ending that tries to amaze through confusion. My point is that there's a difference between being deliberately inscrutable and just plain bad writing, and Pinchbeck's is the former as far as I'm concerned.