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.
(This post was last modified: 09-12-2013, 11:40 PM by rotten.)
(09-12-2013, 11:23 PM)rotten Wrote: 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.
(09-12-2013, 11:23 PM)rotten Wrote: 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?
The egg is almost certainly an Orb, and the whole twin candles thing is just about the puzzle in the church to open the altar.
(09-12-2013, 11:44 PM)DarkLite Wrote: The egg is almost certainly an Orb, and the whole twin candles thing is just about the puzzle in the church to open the altar.
Yeah, I forgot that puzzle, my bad.
I agree that this Egg is most certainly the Orb, but my point is that Mandus is hearing its voice and it's the voice of the machine.
Here's a couple of quotes:
- "I can only hear the voice from within that gentlest of stones. It sings to me and I dream of a great machine"
- "And then we came to London and I set it upon the mantelpiece"
If I'm not mistaken by the end of the game the Machine says "and you set me upon a mantelpiece". Not to mention that in the second ending the Egg/Orb said that now it was gonna hatch thanks to Mandus.
One could actually argue that Alexander may be indirectly responsible for the events in this game. If you go by one of the earliest dated notes:
"Of the few books to survive after those degenerate peasants fired my
Great Uncle's castle were his travel diaries. He talks of archaeological
digs in Siam, Arabia, which yielded treasures of quite extraordinary
worth. And, most interestingly, he hints at those yet to be found, in
the Americas where civilisations were consumed by the jungles. Of
course, it all makes sense - those conquistadors were only driven so far
by their faith - El Dorado did the rest. And yet, there is more. "Find
the Temple of the Stone Moon", he writes, "and the world will never
more be hungry, and neither shall you."My mind is made up. Damn the
creditors. I shall leave my work unfinished and I shall take to the
Americas, and I will return with my soul richer and my pockets bulging."
Of course Mandus was already in a bad mental state at this point writing about killing his creditors and bankers who were after him. But it sounds like he was "inspired" by these writings to take that fated Mexico trip which changed him completely and set the whole wave of events into motion.
Hey guys I've been looking over this thread now for the passed few days and decided to make an account because it's annoying me that none of you are talking about how the levels change when running around
Sometimes when you're doing a puzzle the entire environment shifts and changes to what it was before. You enter one hallway and coming back through it leads you somewhere else (centrifuge puzzle)
Why does this happen? Is your mind playing tricks on you trying tos top you or what? None of the theories I'm reading seem to really explain this part
I asked this before, but has anybody translated the note that seems to be in German by the musical instruments in Oswald's house? I think it's German, but I'm not really sure.
(This post was last modified: 09-13-2013, 12:26 AM by pikmintaro.)
(09-13-2013, 12:21 AM)pikmintaro Wrote: I asked this before, but has anybody translated the note that seems to be in German by the musical instruments in Oswald's house? I think it's German, but I'm not really sure.
I think it's really worth knowing why it happens. It's a pretty big thing that happens more than once in the game
Hi guys! I finished reading the 22 pages of this thread and I just wanted to take part in the discussion.
(09-11-2013, 02:36 AM)bluel0bster Wrote: Also, I may have found the Brennenburg coat of arms. Probably wishful thinking, but this just seemed a little too out of place. I'm curious if anybody can confirm this to actually be a connection to Brennenburg:
There's also a second coat of arms we can see in Mandus' mansion but I don't know where it comes from. I first thought there was some kind of relation to the city of London but I havent't found anything so far.
Spoiler below!
(09-12-2013, 08:18 PM)Vertical Wrote: We don’t know, when Lilibeth actually died. Well, we know it was during Enoch’s birth, but the exact date of the twins’ birthday is and will probably remain an unknown
Actually, it's mentioned in a loading screen. Am I the only one who saw it?
Spoiler below!
The text is in French but here's the first sentence: Lilibeth "Lily" Mandus. Buried here on 26th September 1890.
So that means Edwin and Enoch were 9 years old when the game occurs. It also seems that the loading screens are a bit random as in The Dark Descent. I finished the game two times now and I saw some new screens during my second playthrough. I guess there might be other interesting infor there...
EDIT: well, we know when she was buried but not exactly when she died. Sorry, I answered too quickly.
(09-13-2013, 12:21 AM)pikmintaro Wrote: I asked this before, but has anybody translated the note that seems to be in German by the musical instruments in Oswald's house? I think it's German, but I'm not really sure.
You're right, the lyrics are written in German. "Dieses Herz" means "This heart" but I don't have the time to translate it. I'm sure somebody else could help us with it.
...by the way, does anyone know where are the text files in the game's folder? I can't find them...
(This post was last modified: 09-13-2013, 01:10 AM by cryptoshadow.)
(09-11-2013, 10:41 AM)Paddy Wrote: During the final part of the game The Machine is recounting all of the horrors that await Oswald's kids in the coming century, including something about seeing "two brothers fall". Is this a reference to 9/11?
Nope, I think the machine was talking about Oswald's sons dying in WWI. Also 9/11 was a another century later and the Machine was strictly only talking about the 20th century.
(This post was last modified: 09-13-2013, 01:08 AM by Jrolk.)