unforum

[djspankypants]

Hey there, i havent really been with this ARG, I have been doing the Cloverfield ARE But i accidently clicked onto this one and was interested in the what was happening (at least you all get a steady stream of updates and puzzles) but i was watching the video this thread was about ad something caught my eye. here is the screencap of it. It was hidden between two of the pics of Eric, I believe, as a child. Maybe this is something that will help. Do you all have a timeline of events so that people like myself can catch up? Thank you.

[two-eyes-and-a-nose]

Hey DJ (or Spanky, or DSP, or whatever ),

There isn't a really coherent timeline right now. I'm pretty new myself and just over a week ago I spent a good couple days reading the trailhead, and several other posts (it was about 2.5k posts), and the problem here is that this thing spans over a year. It began in October '06, and while the updates aren't consistent, appears to get significant new content a couple time a month on average.

There have been some attempts at recaps and they vary in their completeness, but as of yet this isn't terribly friendly to the new participant. Overall, having just gotten myself up to speed recently, you wouldn't be too poorly served, if you were to simply watch all the videos, read up on the pedigree puzzle and then the current events, as these seem to be the biggest outstanding issues. In fact, (and note, I'm new too) I think I almost wish I had taken this advice instead of the exhaustive read I went through.

Some links:
http://www.youtube.com/user/thehumanpet1 - The Codemaster's YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/user/finderictaylor - The Taylor Family's YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/user/tomdcesear13 - Tom D Cesear's YouTube
http://www.finderictaylor.com/ - The Find Eric Taylor website and forums.

Also, you may want to read up on some of the Tom D Cesear threads and get a picture of some of the information and theories about this unknown anti-hero (especially about his addiction to mixing anti-depressants and alcohol). And finally, if you want to get to know the people who've been playing it, you'll really have to read everything. It's time consuming, but I found it worth it.

Edit: Glad, I could help Nicole! I now officially feel like I've contributed.

Oh yeah, and to everyone else already playing, can I trout him for the image? Can I, can I, can I?

[djspankypants]

feel free to trout me. i feel like a dummy...
thanks for the welcome, you can call me Ben). One day when i have enough time, likw when i am work, i will look through everything and hopefully get involved.

[two-eyes-and-a-nose]

I was seriously teasing. No worries. We need all the help we can get.

Looking forward to your company,
-twoeyes (aka Haji)

[Deadfish]

Two Eyes essentially summed up where everything is. I haven't been playing for too awful long myself and had to do a lot of catch-up as well. Here is my break down.

Eric has been known to have an amorous relationship with one Sue Hart.

Sue is/was married to a movie director whom Eric was cast in his movie.

The director and Sue have a child named Russ. It has been eluded to that Russ might have some weird powers or he might be emotionally disturbed in some way. Russ has said, "My daddy says I'm special" and Sue has stated she doesn't feel safe in the house with Russ.

It hasn't been revealed to us the exact relationship between the CM and Eric. It seems the CM has huge problems with Eric sleeping with Sue so it would be a reasonable assumption that the CM is Sue's husband. That is purely speculation.

There have been 3 family members speak out on Eric's behalf. His sister Mary, father Michael, and his half sister Kimberely. It is looking like Michael may have some skeletons in his closet. I only say this because recentley the CM and Kimberely have both stated Michael knows more than is willing to say.

Our anti-hero Tom D. Cesear is still popping up. He initially sent on a puzzle trail that near as I can tell was only to show off that he could hack into Michael's computer. He claims to be a somewhat goodguy. (I say this because he has stated that he doesn't care about Eric yet he still wants to bring the CM down)

Our most recent exploits on behalf of the CM against Cesear was to root out a mole. Apparently Tom had a mole working along side us. The CM charged us with rooting him out. Tom has since told us that we have screwed up majorly but we haven't heard from him in awhile.

That's my story in a nutshell. If I think of anything else I will add it.

Nice metting all the new people

[jabroni]

Most of the story has been covered but I figured I'd just add my 2 cents if it will save you from reading a million posts.

I started following the game the day the Sins video came out. It's hard to explain what is really going on because we haven't been given a ton of information. It's kind of like feeding squirrels with tiny breadcrumbs. He gives out a tiny crumb maybe once a month if you're lucky. And as a result a lot of the squirrels have died off. I have been frustrated with the slow pace but I understand how hard it must be making something like this. I would suggest setting this topic up so it will send you an email when there is a reply, or just checking it every few days for updates. The game is pretty slow paced so if you keep checking it constantly and waiting for something to happen you will drive yourself crazy.

We know that Eric was having an affair with Sue. We know the CM is very unhappy about this. We are fairly sure the CM is her husband. But, there are things that seem to contradict themselves.

1. If this is just about Eric cheating with the CM's wife, why does he have a "resume" of other victims? I thought maybe they decided to change the story line, but there were clips of Eric with Sue/ talking to Sue from the beginning videos. So I don't get how they tie together.

2. TDC is also a mystery. When he first showed up players assumed it was the CM, since its just a different anagram of his name. Also it was inside of the CM's own video, the message "find tom cesear". So if this is some outsider, how could he edit a video? For a while I thought it was Eric somehow sneaking out and getting on the CMs computer. But that doesn't really make sense because he could just escape. And in TDC's video it's not Eric shaving or putting on the suit. So how does he tie in to an affair/jealous husband?
TDC also supposedly had a mole in the group, who I am sure was dojo79. I guess we will find out what happened to him in the next video?

3. And why is the CM making Michael out to be such a bad guy? How could he be involved with what Eric did? This has led to some speculation that maybe the CM was hired by Michael , or maybe is related to the Taylors. But this doesnt fit with the affair stuff.

4. Kimberly Miller (Eric's half sister, same mom different dad) seems to have come out of nowhere. It's obvious Mary is Eric's real sister from the old photos. But I don't get why Kim is being brought in now. I'm guessing Eric is just begging his relatives to do this to buy him time. But they definitely seem to be playing up the marriage between Michael & Eric's mom, and I guess trying to parallel it to Eric and Sue?

5. What is with the old lady and the pills? What is with the hinting that either Sue or Russ is dead? What is with that conversation TDC gave us with two people talking about releasing information about P.T. (phase two?). How/why would there be a group of people working on this kidnapping?? Why would Russ be in danger if his dad was suspicious she was cheating? I mean why would a father be a threat to the kid? And if Eric and the CM (and/or her Husband) get into some fight (the clip where Eric is walking up to Sue with a towel to his head and it looks like he is bleeding) how could Russ have gotten hurt from that? Or if it was Sue that got killed (we keep seeing a bloody nightgown) why would she be standing there watching him walk up already injured? Wouldn't she have been there, or why/how would she get killed after the fight or whatever happened? And if it is Eric digging a grave for Sue, how would we have video clips of her clothes being tossed in (are we supposed to assume this is a camera within the story-world??) ???? Ahhh nothing makes sense! [head explodes]

Basically there are a whole bunch of different possibilities of what could be going on. It seems to be a very convoluted story with a bunch of different sub-plots. The problem is I don't see how any of this will fit together and make sense. If TDC is some government agent, I don't get how he could edit the CM's video. If Eric was cheating with the CM's wife, then why would he have a resume like he was some serial killer rather than a crazed husband?

I probably just confused you more. But it should be interesting to see how they tie all this together. I will be very surprised if it all makes sense and there aren't any plot holes (sorry but to me it does seem like the script has been changed as you went along, or you just like messing with us). I'm sure he is reading this so I hope you aren't offended. It actually makes it more interesting.

[booba]

Code

gqrctmm wzclm odoi ieoh pd vfz yvm
thousha llnot bowd ownt hy sel fun
michael knows more than he can say


This also seems to work:
A=1 B=2 ,so on to Z=26

Code letter, add 26, subtract key letter, if over 26, subtract 26.

G=7, +26 = 33, subtract t=20, =13 (m)
q=17, +26 =43, subtract h=8, =35, subtract 26 =9 (i)

[DerKork]

I think the action behind the curtain went off something like that:
They only had a treatment - a rough layout of what was planned to happen. Then their plans met you guys (and girls) and they went haphazard due to the fact you were faster than they imagined...
Now they try to tie all the loose ends together... with obviously mixed results, as it appears to be their first interactive fiction project.

Oh, and jabroni, that's what I think about what you pointed out:

1. Originally Sue may have been planned as an extra - due to that there's a bit of inconsistencies in the beginning videos like the different haircut in the early videos. And while the CM originally was planned as a criminal mastermind they were forced due to our suggestions and thoughts to flesh him out.

2. TDC originally was planned as another entity of the CM. Then they introduced his character to buy the PMs more time. That's the main reason he ever came into existance. They didn't expect the audience to be that fast.

3. We may be seeing right into the face of a wide gap in the story. Affairs and hiring hardly ever fit together (unless of course, it was planned that way).

4. Yep - she's a last minute addition. Only to buy some time - no clues, nothing really useful for us, it seems. (Unless you consider senseless drooling by some guys useful.) If the parallel is really intentional, okay - but it seems like something that originally happened by accident.(The parallel, not the marriage.)

5. More enigmas.... just to make us think "What is meant by that?"

Actually this is a conglomerate of multiple stories that seem to go in all directions at once... It may be the death of a character (TDC, I suppose) that may reduce the complexity of this story to something the creators can handle...

[jabroni]

Heh this cracks me up, this is what I wrote a while ago:

[Deadfish]

[jabroni]

Heh, he probably will say that. I feel bad because he's always very nice to me and here I am constantly complaining and whining.

I was getting annoyed using crypTool because it's kind of a pain trying to guess a bunch of different keywords one after the other. So I wrote a program to do it. It's a little faster because you can just keep typing in guesses. I figured I would post it in case anyone wanted to try stuff.

And this proves my programming class wasn't a complete waste. Yippe!
Well I guess it's pretty ironic because in the time it took me to write the program I could have been trying to decode it the slow way... oh well.

(If you want to try out the program, don't enter any spaces in when you type the key. Capitalization doesn't matter though, it will work either way)

[jabroni]

The CM told me one of the two remaining codes is done exactly the same as the first one. So after staring at the answer for a minute I finally realized, it is actually not gibberish. You have to keep going after the first 4 letters.

[two-eyes-and-a-nose]

[booba]

At first, art imitates life. Then life will imitate art.

Nice work people!

Definite misspelling, wonder if its intentional somehow, a c for an e or something.

[youthpastor247]

Well done, you guys. You're awesome.

Anyone else think that the last clue is related to the Prodigal Son painting?