The story is FAR DEEPER than you may realize. MINOR SPOILERS!!!

[Nerd.Gamer.Dave]

Okay, so first off, the game is 5-6 hours long if you run around somewhat casually, look at a few things, then move on with a task at hand.

That's find and dandy, but then you missed at least 50% of the games content and world building.

No MAJOR spoilers here, but here are a few things you can do in game to help flesh out the story:

1- Pay attention to the very first apartment you come in. It's boarded up from the INSIDE. The owner (a human male) packed up all his belongings. He left at some point, with no sign of violence and did not return.

2- Read everything. Even grafitti.

3- Calendars have a day and a month. Note this

4- A clue tells you how many YEARS have passed. The game absolutely DOES NOT take place in the near future.

5- Another clue gives you an approximate year when the last humans were doing their thing.

6- Piecing clues 1 to 5 together, you can determine approx. what year the humans took up residence in City 99, then what year it all started going to hell, then the year, month and day which was their last day.

7- When clue 6 is solved, you can piece together how many years have passed since that moment in time. You absolutely need a calculator to do this math, but the answer DOES EXIST.

8- If you pay attention to dialogue and link the very obvious clues into the obscure ones, you can learn exactly what the Network is, when it was constructed, why it was constructed, and whether or not it succeeded in a good way or bad way.


So:

Just like Portal, you can breeze through the game and have an enjoyable experience.

-OR-

You can dive down the rabbit hole, look in every nook and cranny in the game space, read every book cover, look at every clock face, and zoom in on post-it notes and computer screens and learn details about the world, it's history, and the events and experience a multi-layered, extremely deep story about time, trans-humanism, re-incarnation, immortality, class warfare, global catastrophe, evolution, re-birth, and have a good 15-20 hour experience.

So do all the cat stuff. Scratch things. Sniff things, and get curious.

MEOW!

[The X Makes It Sound Cool]

Can you do a full detailed with explainations. I also noticed some of those clues you mentioned, but now i’m craving for the full picture, please. No one on Youtube or this forum has anything to say worthy yet except you.

[The X Makes It Sound Cool]

Pleaseeee, be the mossbag of this game. Youtube is filled with garbage videos thats just recapping the whole ending just for the ad money. This game lore building is really good, been a while since I saw game’s lore this good since Hollow Knight

[hohlagh]

May I suggest possibly writing a guide or something of the sort to help others find the deep lore that's behind this "simple" game?

[MinDAuGEr]

9- The memory fragment inside of one of the outsiders apartment mentions earth

10- Clocks have 16 hours instead of 12 like earth keep in mind for every century the day grows by .001 sec

11- The time for single cell bacteria to evolve into hive intelligence (although this is from the cut zurk boss which was replaced by a cutscene) lets just say they got to animalistic intelligence in the release.

12- The "enjoy the worlds safest city" advert and where they placed walled city 99

13- There is a yearmark on the manhole cover that would document that areas est. date also the ethernet cable box has one as well, but i'm guessing that tech is a bit antiquated explaining the discrepancy

14- Look at the time on the desktop screen

[tikiman572]

Here's something to ponder on. There's Walled City 99. What, then, about Walled Cities 1 - 98? Logically speaking, they should also exist. In which case, is humanity well and truly doomed or are there holdouts in there blissfully unaware that it's ok to step outside now? Or have those Walled Cities also fallen to some degree?

There's a lot more to dive into with this world that's been presented. Hopefully, we will see more.

[Illusion of Progress]

I just finished the game and it took me almost 10 hours. I missed 3 memories.

This is well worth half the price of a modern triple A game, even if you go by an average of 5 or 6 hours (since my time is probably more on the slow side).

Originally posted by MinDAuGEr:

9- Clocks have 16 hours instead of 12 like earth keep in mind for every century the day grows by .001 sec

This particular point caught my attention. If I'm doing my "napkin math" approximately correctly, this suggests 1.44 billion years have passed if there's now four extra hours in a day?

If .001 second is gained every 100 years, that means it takes 100,000 years to gain a single second.

So for a minute, you multiply that by 60 (60 seconds in a minute) and get 6,000,000 (6 million years).

For an hour, you again multiply by 60 (60 minutes in an hour) and get 360,000,000 (360 million years).

Finally, multiply by four (the number of additional hours there are) and you get 1,440,000,000 (1.44 billion years).

Did I even do that correctly?

That's all presuming those clocks aren't a different time measurement altogether, and are the same one we use today, and that enough time has passed for it to require an extra four hours. Oh, and that the .001 second being added every 100 years is a constant, linear change. If it's not, that could change the needed amount of time dramatically. For example, it rotation slows at an increased rate, the time needed to add 4 hours becomes less.

[TheSoupSpecial]

Perhaps the Companions use a different time system and that's why there are more hours? I only consider this because they use a whole new language by the time we arrive there. I assume when humanity was around in the city or even prior to the walled cities they communicated with the Companions using our languages. We learn they develop their own language eventually so they may have also changed a few other things. It is also true however that MANY years have passed since the last human was around so it would also be possible that time has extended.

[MinDAuGEr]

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

Originally posted by MinDAuGEr:

9- Clocks have 16 hours instead of 12 like earth keep in mind for every century the day grows by .001 sec

This particular point caught my attention. If I'm doing my "napkin math" approximately correctly, this suggests 1.44 billion years have passed if there's now four extra hours in a day?

I was thinking It was using a AM/PM system rather than a 24 hour clock which are kinda rare. So a total of eight hours.
The companions are limited in their creations as they use human hand me downs and haven't innovated much relying more on imitations. Would they develop a new time system with a hexadecimal base for the hours with unknown subdivisions? or just use or repair the clocks the humans made?
They seem to admire tradition taking care of the plants solely because "that's what the humans would have wanted" I assume that would carry over to their clocks resembling their internal time keeping systems, i.e. timestamps coded to be read by humans with a standard time

[Nerd.Gamer.Dave]

Originally posted by The X Makes It Sound Cool:

Pleaseeee, be the mossbag of this game. Youtube is filled with garbage videos thats just recapping the whole ending just for the ad money. This game lore building is really good, been a while since I saw game’s lore this good since Hollow Knight

I'm recording all the video tonight and working on a DEEP DIVE reveal to post on youtube :)

[Nerd.Gamer.Dave]

Originally posted by MinDAuGEr:

9- The memory fragment inside of one of the outsiders apartment mentions earth

10- Clocks have 16 hours instead of 12 like earth keep in mind for every century the day grows by .001 sec

11- The time for single cell bacteria to evolve into hive intelligence (although this is from the cut zurk boss which was replaced by a cutscene) lets just say they got to animalistic intelligence in the release.

12- The "enjoy the worlds safest city" advert and where they placed walled city 99

13- There is a yearmark on the manhole cover that would document that areas est. date also the ethernet cable box has one as well, but i'm guessing that tech is a bit antiquated explaining the discrepancy

14- Look at the time on the desktop screen

For point 10- They speak french, spanish and chinese, and have items from those locales. So this takes place on Earth. Humans may have switched over to lunar cycles or base eight math, which would explain a 16 hour clock, but I'd have to look into that.

For point 11- The Zurks were present at the initial outbreak. The total outbreak from start to finish only spans a few months at most, and the last survivors all left behind images of fully formed Zurks.
Engineer notes also show that the zurks were "garbage pets" who skuttled around to eat the food. The goopy stuff and piles of meat are more likely a BYPRODUCT when a Zurk pops and explodes, spreading it's spore/bacteria to grow and multiply.

Point 12- It's human nature to market all walled cities as "safest". No different than Vault-Tec in Fallout Games marketing all their vaults to the residences who live inside.

Point 13- All the tech, from 1990's 3.5 disc drives to 250 MB hard drives and 2 GB RAM sticks is grossly out-dated tech. But I don't see that as a discrepancy. I see it more of part of the class system the hoomans have. Poor people get 100 year old computers. Rich people get quantum powered CPU's.

[Nerd.Gamer.Dave]

Originally posted by TheSoupSpecial:

Perhaps the Companions use a different time system and that's why there are more hours? I only consider this because they use a whole new language by the time we arrive there. I assume when humanity was around in the city or even prior to the walled cities they communicated with the Companions using our languages. We learn they develop their own language eventually so they may have also changed a few other things. It is also true however that MANY years have passed since the last human was around so it would also be possible that time has extended.

Good Point. Which is why the RUG in the scientists room is an important clue.

Robots already achieved some level of sentience BEFORE they entered Walled City 99. Humans recognized this so they made art in the form of rugs depicting a Robot with consciousness and a soul.

The various robot check points, "no robots allowed!" signs, and other things also clearly show that segments of society were prejudiced against the companions. Robots are even forbidden to enter some bars.

Guessing for now, but gonna research it more, it looks like the first generation of companion robots popped up around the late 2050's, when walled cities were just barely being planned.

So we can ball-park the robots "awakening" some time after that and go from there.

[jack_of_tears]

Originally posted by NerdgamerDave:

For point 10- They speak french, spanish and chinese, and have items from those locales. So this takes place on Earth. Humans may have switched over to lunar cycles or base eight math, which would explain a 16 hour clock, but I'd have to look into that.

The 24 hour day is broken into three 8-hour pieces: Daytime, Afternoon, Evening.

In the walled city, where they have never seen the sun and only speak about the concept in myth, they do not have a 'daytime' but only an 'Afternoon' and 'Evening' - two 8 hour periods that make up a 16 hour day.

[Nerd.Gamer.Dave]

Originally posted by jack_of_tears:

Originally posted by NerdgamerDave:

For point 10- They speak french, spanish and chinese, and have items from those locales. So this takes place on Earth. Humans may have switched over to lunar cycles or base eight math, which would explain a 16 hour clock, but I'd have to look into that.

The 24 hour day is broken into three 8-hour pieces: Morning/Day, Afternoon, Evening.

In the walled city, where they have never seen the sun and only speak about the concept in myth, they do not have a 'morning/daytime' but only an 'Afternoon' and 'Evening' - two 8 hour periods that make up a 16 hour day.

Clever! That would also mean that when the robots speak of "days" we have to account for that 1/3 difference.

Gonna look into this....

[Nerd.Gamer.Dave]

Originally posted by jack_of_tears:

Originally posted by NerdgamerDave:

For point 10- They speak french, spanish and chinese, and have items from those locales. So this takes place on Earth. Humans may have switched over to lunar cycles or base eight math, which would explain a 16 hour clock, but I'd have to look into that.

The 24 hour day is broken into three 8-hour pieces: Daytime, Afternoon, Evening.

In the walled city, where they have never seen the sun and only speak about the concept in myth, they do not have a 'daytime' but only an 'Afternoon' and 'Evening' - two 8 hour periods that make up a 16 hour day.

However.....

the humans 100% remember the sun, grass and animals.

Walled City 99 operated for under 50 years before the outbreak wiped it out. The sun is only a myth to the surviving Companions. The humans hardly went 2 generations before the city fell

[jack_of_tears]

Originally posted by NerdgamerDave:

However.....

the humans 100% remember the sun, grass and animals.

Walled City 99 operated for under 50 years before the outbreak wiped it out. The sun is only a myth to the surviving Companions. The humans hardly went 2 generations before the city fell

I didn't want to get into spoilers, here, so I didn't go into it further - but we can assume that the way they kept time was originally based on those three periods and, when the city was put into lockdown and the roof closed, they cut out 'daytime' because it no longer mattered. They left the other two because the thought was that 'daytime' would always come back and return those lost 8 hours. Considering the end of the game ...