Zombies are scientist?!?!

[hollowleviathan]

Because in the fictionClarence is a proper part of your conscious. He cannot hit you, as the creature appears to do

That's not satisfactory. He can alter your perceptions and vision, it seems simple enough to also assume he can make you feel pain, and to such a degree you pass out or go into shock.

[Bek]

Nah - if so he would just 'cripple' you in that way when the other infected is chasing you, or the worm is after you etc etc etc.

[Nycticorax]

Nah - if so he would just 'cripple' you in that way when the other infected is chasing you, or the worm is after you etc etc etc.

I second that. More precisely, making the assumption that Clarence is the only cause of your death when hit by the creature in the Lab would imply that the creature's blows and your death are mere coincidence. But that's absurd. So the best of way of answering this post is:
- Swanson is not the creature in the Lab (she's dead then)
- Therefore the creature in the Lab is really an Infected
- If 'Zombies are scientists?!?!' means 'Are Zombies in fact non-infected scientists', the correct anser is 'No'
- If 'Zombies are scientists?!?!' means 'Are Zombies in fact Infected, such that those Infected 'were' scientists prior to their infection', the correct answer is "it's ultimately undeterminated, since nothing could prevent an Infected to be a pub landlord and not a scientist prior to the infection."

[Bek]

Hm, it COULD still be swanson in the lab though? She's been infected the entire time like red. It doesn't have to be, but it could be.

[house]

I think Swanson was no Zombie for one reason:

I got hit many times by her (in zombie form) and didn't lose any health, I think it should have killed me if she was a real zombie

This "normal talk" of swanson is no proof imo, because the zombie-Professor who you give the saw to, also talks normally to you and then turns out to be a zombie. Man, that freaked me out *shudder*

What is she trying to do then? Hug you to death?

[alfie]

Okay, this is a really far out theory:

Perhaps the game isn't perfect?

[hollowleviathan]

That's functionally an assumption of my theory, in that there is something you can do in the game that canonically could not happen, EG die from Clarence projecting an uninfected Swanson as an infected attacker. If you reject the possibility that the game doesn't have some minor flaws and attempt to wrap the story around all aspects of gameplay, you start to resemble Ptolemaic astronomy, insisting on perfect circles.

What's the simplest answer?

[Nycticorax]

If you reject the possibility that the game doesn't have some minor flaws and attempt to wrap the story around all aspects of gameplay, you start to resemble Ptolemaic astronomy, insisting on perfect circles.

What's the simplest answer?

1. The simplest answer can never be an answer assuming a particular flaw. For what would be the criteria for construing any fact as a flaw? Any criteria could make any (fictional) fact a flaw. It follows that from the assumption the game is somehow flawed, you can never conclude that such or such fact is flawed.
2. Ptolemaic astronomy is surely flawed, and therefore relies on defeasible assumptions. But fiction is no science: if the fictional world contains any flaw, the the fictional world is inconsistent. If so, then anything can be true in the fictional world, as said previously. But then what is the point of trying out to find a correct interpretation? If you want to give an interpretation, it is just silly to ignore facts because your theory cannot account for them. Since you cannot account for the Player's death when hit by the creature in the Lab, or more precisely since your account cannot explain the relationship between blows and death, namely, makes it merely coincidence, your account is neither correct in my sense, nor "simple" in your sense. I conclude you'd better adopt my view in post #23.
3. Maybe you're balking at the conclusion I reach in #23. You might think: "Well, he says it's indeterminate, I say it's flawed. It's all the same." Well, it's not. My indeterminacy concerns a precise point of the game, whereas your theory of flaws concern the game on the whole. My theory is better, because although both of us are committed to give to specify what's is indeterminate/flawed, I only can meet this commitment; your are doomed to see flaws everywhere, and hence cannot meet this commitment. So once again, you'd better accept my view in post #23.

Having sad that, I must add I'm not interested in being right. Of course like anybody I'd like to be right, but what I'm aiming at is (fictional) truth. So if you still disagree, I'd be glad to read your argument.

[hollowleviathan]

You seem to claim that I'm ignoring any fact at will as I please to better manufacture the opinion I want it to fit, which is a pretty harsh judgment. I don't think it's an accidental oversight of the game/development to allow the perceived Infected in Swanson's lab kill you, I think it's a gameplay decision to make the assumption that the player will not allow death to occur while playing normally, EG immersed. They may check to see if they're being hurt, and when they are, realize or think they realize they must defend themselves. It's makes as much of a paradox as dying in any other part of the game does, since you 'need' to survive to the end to write the letter that you see at the beginning of the game.

I'm not "doomed to see flaws everywhere", I'm trying to include design intent in story-interpretation.

[Nycticorax]

I am glad to see you give up the 'minor flows' language you were skating on in post #27. What you still have to concede is that 'the gameplay decision', if any, is responsible for an indeterminacy along the line I developed in post #28, and not a so-called 'paradox'. It's very different. In brief, a paradox holds when some individually plausible assumptions joinly form an inconsistent set, namely, a set containing some contradiction; whereas a indeterminacy emerges when some assumption A or some assumption B has to be the case, but neither A, nor B can be the case. Bearing this distinction in mind, the reason why it's not a paradox should be clear: fiction admits of no contradiction, but is often indeterminate. Another reason for that is merely heuristic: better be indeterminate than contradictory, because anything can follow from any contradiction, whereas it's indeterminate what could follow from an indeterminacy.