[SPOILER] Plot Discussion Thread *Spoiler Alert*

[rotten]

Been monitoring this thread for some time now and just felt I had to take part in the discussion.
Kein, thx for posting all the notes. I'm just gonna share some thoughts, which as I recall, haven't been posted here yet.

Spoiler below!

1) the Temple under the Machine wasn't build by Oswald, but after he had found it, he decided to turn it into "his own Mexico".

2) It may well be that in order to do that he had to sacrifice his children (he sees himself as the man in the jaguar skin).

3) Judging by the diary entries, I suppose he killed his children somewhere between November 23 and December the 1st.

4) Soon after that he looked back and realized what he has done. Here he decides to destroy the machine.

5) In Mexico he found this "gentle stone" which he perceives as an egg. This Egg is talking to him ("I can only hear the voice from within that gentlest of stones") and on the phone during the game it's also the Egg who speaks.

Then, some question for further discussion:
>Twin candles, bent to the will of the central saint, casting their light to the corners of the chapel.
May it be that he's talking about his children here?
>Is the only path to redemption to join us together again, to make myself whole, to close the great circle and take that madman into my heart once more
So maybe at the end of the game he didn't pull of his heart but inserted something back inside himself which was the source of life of the machine?

>About this Professor
It seems to me, though I don't really like the thought, he was just killed by Oswald and that's all. I mean, he's not involved with the machine.

And of course this:
> the very reason, my dear friend, that we can sit here in shirts and waistcoats but no jackets, on a freezing winter's night, without a fire in the grate, and discuss our great enterprise.

Who is his dear friend? It was more than a month before Professor A. gave him a visit.

Yeah, and I don't think we're playing as a manpig, because the lights don't flicker, which they do when wretches are around.
For some time I was thinking that the protagonist will eventually be the Professor or some kind of being which is a combination of Oswald and a machine, but there's just not enough evidence to these versions, so I don't think I was right there.