unforum

[SilentObjector]

ACT

[Mean Dr. Lily]

Yup, we covered that in the big 90-page thread somewhere. We're currently (presumably) in ACT 11.

DOR is kinda like our BC
ACT would be AD

But there's some overlap.

[samspade]

I'm not confident that this is related, but I would be so honored to be a part of something that was leading up to a new Wild Arms game. The original was wonderful.

Incidentally, when I watched the trailer for Shut Up and Jam Gaiden I thought I recognized a few of the environments from Wild Arms. I think it's pretty unlikely the two are connected other than through simple inspiration, but I thought it was interesting that someone else mentioned Wild Arms.

[Skkorling]

Hey all, I just posted this in the main forum (mainly because I'm an idiot and forgot there was a speculation thread,) but there seems to have been a lot of talk about Dante Alighieri. I remember hearing about a video game based off "Dante's Inferno" coming out next year, possibly around summertime. Coincidence? Speculation? Sleep deprivation? You decide!

[areyoudeadyet]

I was originally thinking that was a big possibility. I just now looked up the trailer for the game (www.dantesinferno.com) though, and the aesthetics of it don't seem to match any info in the ARG other than the references to the color red, and the fact the site is red. That seems like it would kind of be a waste of all the lore of TIMM... I watched the video a few times looking for any possible connections, but it just looks like "hey, I'm a guy with a big scythe and a cross and I'm gonna go kick some monster butt in hell!" to me. Darn, because that could be a pretty neet game if they combined the TIMM world and the Dante's lore.

[dposse]

"an emerald casket"

i havent watched the video in over a month and i was recently reading the ARGN article on TIMM, a\nd they mentioned that GodSEED was buried in "an emerald casket".

didnt the part of NYC we were looking in before have a museum in it? Well, are there any "emerald caskets" worth noting? what about in other places?

Why did they choose a "emerald casket"?

[bjaardker]

[SubGothius]

I was at a friend's annual Xmas party the other day, and they were playing Rockband with the song "Still Alive", the closing theme to Portal, as sung by GLaDOS. The lyrics are pretty wryly funny (written by the ever-amusing and clever Jonathan Coulton), so I was looking them up today when I found this blog article:

http://www.game-ism.com/2008/04/04/still-alive-shes-free/

The screenshot of GLaDOS there reminded me an awful lot of that shot of GoDSEED from the original TIMM video, not to mention the similarity in the acronyms themselves. Okay, so maybe that's just kinda interesting, and I think the likeness had already been mentioned in the ginormous TIMM trailhead thread here ages ago. However, I was struck by some of the ideas I saw proposed in that blog article, its reader comments, and the Updates posted as followups to that article, especially this:

http://www.game-ism.com/2008/04/06/wherein-i-overanalyze-song-lyrics/

Quite a lot of things about the world of Portal and Half-Life seemed to resonate with the world of TIMM, leading me to suspect that the TIMM ARG will eventually tie into some sort of derivative of those games. Here's my conjecture of the backstory:

The "Blackstar merger" was the merger of Black Mesa with Apterture Science, bringing the trade secrets of Black Mesa's transdimensional technology together with those of Aperture's teleportation and genetic-AI technology. An "improved" evolution of GLaDOS, dubbed as GoDSEED, was devised to oversee and administer a new transdimensional energy source to solve our energy crisis, perhaps also powering a portal-based transportation system as well.

When the GoDSEED started going awry (perhaps "doing Science" with the planet and population just as GLaDOS did with Chelle in Portal), it had to be "killed" just as GLaDOS was killed... at least to whatever extent an AI software construct ever truly can be killed. Towards the end of these Troubles before it was finally deactivated, GoDSEED's senseless and rampant portal-mongering led to portals popping up all over the place, perhaps even freestanding or roaming without attachment to any surface, and sometimes dropping transdimensional or teleported mutant creatures wherever they appear. These dimensional anomalies persisted and continued to cause problems even after the GoDSEED was put to rest, but modified flares can collapse these rogue portals or disrupt the transdimensional creatures' stability to phase them back to whence they came.

Blackstar thinks they are doing the right thing to recover from (and make up for!) their disaster, but they have failed to realize that merely deactivating and burying the GoDSEED CPU did not eliminate every trace of its AI constructs from their IT systems, which are still directing and distorting their strategies, communications and decisions to this day, unbeknownst to the embattled and memory-challenged humans (or their android-clone replacements!) working there.

I don't suppose that ALL of this will turn out to be true, but y'know... I'm just sayin'.

[riquardo]

I like this theory a lot!


-please let it be true-

[bjaardker]

I like the thought that this is part of some sort of release from Valve, but I just don't see this being the case for a couple of reasons.

1) Valve is notorious for missing delivery dates on their games. So to have an ARG with hard and fast dates associated doesn't jive.

2) They are going to want to create some serious buzz before releasing this.

On the flip side, CES is 8-11 of January, just a few days before the TIMM countdown ends.

[SilentObjector]

Genius, SubGoth. Pure genius.

[BlessedBlogger]

[Giff Hoyt]

Haven't played Half Life, but I played Portal and thought it was brilliant. GoDSEED, in abbreviation and appearance reminded me of GLaDOS a lot. It would be cool if this was tied in with that. And I suggest anyone that has never played Portal before to go rent it right now, it's one of the more unique video game experiences out there.

[dczyz]

While I would really like this to be a portal sequel, the only thing that doesn't really make sense to me is... would they be more concerned about the Combine than rouge Go.d.s.e.e.d. fragments? Like, a whole lot more concerned?
Unless this is like, post-Combine invasion, and they have been more or less suppressed by the works of gordan freeman, and the combine have become these 'rebel' factions we keep hearing about.
Well, anyways... things to think about I guess.

[BlessedBlogger]

I was thinking about the red/blue connection again and realized in The Matrix the red pill shows you the truth of reality and the blue pill lets you continue to live the lie blissfully ignorant. I don't know that it means much but I just really feel that all the red/blue references aren't just a coincidence.