[Spoiler] Vases in the glass workshop clearly explain something

[♥]

Okay, I was staring at these vases multiple times while playing the game. And now I can say for sure they're here on purpose. Look at this screenshot closely for a couple of minutes before reading further. Do you see it?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=613680233

Turquoise vase is the only one that is brightly lit. It is in fact lit so brightly that it almost looks glowing. Do you see something else here that's turquoise and is glowing? The cord. Which has the same color as the line of the panes it connects. Also, have you noticed that two vases in this house have similar color? Turquoise and cyan are really easy to mix up. So cyan vase is literally crossed out. You know how important and deliberate lighting and shadows are in this game. Once you see it you have no doubt that it's too clear and obvious to be coincidental. Game basically says in clear words: "Vase colors correspond to the puzzle colors, and this zone has a turquoise color. Notice the difference in turquoise and cyan!"

But that's not all. If you turn around, you'll see the door you opened to get into this house, and it has a panel. Which has eight possible solutions. When you enter another solution, you hear loud sound, and the vase with matching silhouette raises on its pedestal. Which probably signifies that vases represent either puzzles in general or particular line shapes.

But this is not all either. You can notice that vase pedestals are connected in pairs. Exactly the same way as the last series of puzzles leading to the yellow cube on sandstone peninsula nearby. And these puzzles have both different colors and matching but mirrored solutions. Where you first solve puzzle on the right, and enter it in mirrored shape into connected panel. You may also notice that vases which stand on a connected pedestals correspond to the same solutions of the door puzzle, but inverted.

Now we need to put all these little ideas together. And I'm not yet sure what exactly does this all mean, but it certainly means something.

Any thoughts?

EDIT: Cut out the nonsense I overspeculated at first, left only things that are immediately visible.

[The Renderer]

Uhm... you are definitely overanalyzing. Yes, the vases have a purpose but you're way off.

Edit: Well, as far as I know. Of course there might always be more to it.

[♥]

You might be right. The part about entering solutions of puzzles from one zone into another zone feels too far fetched now that I think about it. I'm sure about the first part about colors and shadows, second and third seem logical but allow slightly different interpretations. And "interpretation" often means "incorrect".

[♥]

Uhm... you are definitely overanalyzing.

It's funny how the only times I was stuck at the puzzles were the times when I started overthinking about their solutions. As soon as I realized that and erased all the unnecessary ideas and concepts about how this particular puzzle should probably be solved, and started over in a most simple and obvious way, puzzle was getting solved naturally and effortlessly, no matter how scary it looked at the beginning.

[Ian]

There's a thing that only works when a specific vase is raised up. That's it.

[em]

here are some good areas of inquiry:
1. filtering the image through a CMY/RGB filter. I think CMY would provide better results since it's subtractive and all, and the bunker made more use of CMY than RGB (which got use in the town, and you might understand that it did more to obfuscate than illuminate). see if that provides anything interesting

2. the vases make noises at different pitches. maybe try listening for relative pitch, be aware that the glass factory is going to creep the ♥♥♥♥ out of you with brick scraping sounds and other things that indicate a presence nearby. this is normal for just about every area

3. on a separate note, something else that's confusing is how the lasers all pulse (or don't pulse) differently depending on location. I thought at first that it would indicate puzzle complete areas or something, but it doesn't afaik. idk, just worth mentioning. :)

4. are there any areas with matching colors, and can they maybe give any clues as to the vase problem?

5.. try not to go off the deep end with crazy solutions, I think the secret of psalm 46 was a theater code for a reason :P

[Alcator]

Well the "gate" just behind the vases is an obvious line, the same color as the closest vase. If you could look at the vase from a more elevated position, through the hole in the ceiling, the bottom of the vase would make a perfect circle and connect to the line. The line even has the perfect end on the left side.

Edit:
It is possible to get on the roof of the barn. If the vase is elevated, then it matches with the line and creates a shape through the ceiling hole.

[♥]

I've already got the yellow tracing puzzle but it has nothing to do with weird lighting in this room that highlights turquoise vase (that apparently rhymes with the cord) and crosses out cyan. Don't tell me it's accidental. It also has nothing to do with connectors between pairs of vases. If you designed this building and you simply needed to put vases on pedestals, you wouldn't put these things on the floor, they carry no purpose for the structure of the building and give no flavor to the environment.

[Alcator]

Originally posted by ♥:

I've already got the yellow tracing puzzle but it has nothing to do with weird lighting in this room that highlights turquoise vase (that apparently rhymes with the cord) and crosses out cyan. Don't tell me it's accidental. It also has nothing to do with connectors between pairs of vases. If you designed this building and you simply needed to put vases on pedestals, you wouldn't put these things on the floor, they carry no purpose for the structure of the building and give no flavor to the environment.

You're looking at it backwards - from a position of someone who already solved everything in that space and KNOWS about tracing lines in the environment.

THINK about it from the perspective of someone who:
a) just left the introductory keep
b) MAYBE visited the tutorials for white and black dots
c) and just opened the door into this warehouse.

The moment they open the door, they enter a room where they see 8 vases, ONE of them elevated. If they've learned anything, and because the puzzle opening the door was super easy, they _may_ try changing their solution, in which case they will notice another vase going up, and the first one going down. This will teach them a super important lesson that solving a puzzle MAY change something else / affect how the world around them looks like, AND that RE-SOLVING a puzzle in a different way may change something in the world to a different position/behavior. This is then repeated with things like the windmill spinning/not spinning, the sawmill ramp going up/down left/right, hooks moving in all direction.

The final lesson with the vases is the world tracing line - positioning the orange vase exactly right so that, from the roof, you may trace the orange line.

See? The vases DO serve a purpose, but it's not so much a "component of a puzzle", as it is "Look, newbie player! Your actions can be repeated, modified, and they do affect the world around you."

[♥]

You have the point. But again, it doesn't explain the thing with lighting where the turquoise vase is being apparently highlighted rhyming with the turquoise cord and cyan being... I accentuate this again and again and nobody in this thread seems to pay attention to it.

[Alcator]

Originally posted by ♥:

You have the point. But again, it doesn't explain the thing with lighting where the turquoise vase is being apparently highlighted rhyming with the turquoise cord and cyan being... I accentuate this again and again and nobody in this thread seems to pay attention to it.

Sun can highlight things. There are thousands of objects on the island that have sun highlighting them. Deal with it :-)

[♥]

There are also a dozens of puzzles on the island that use sun and shadows in deliberate ways, as well as non-puzzle related imagery.

[Alcator]

Then maybe this explanation:

You entered the warehouse, but a light is shining on the vases. Curious, you look up to see where the light is coming from, and see the hole in the ceiling. thus, you learn that looking up is important.

The "strike" through the vase is just a shadow of the metal beam above, no?

[♥]

Originally posted by Alcator:

The "strike" through the vase is just a shadow of the metal beam above, no?

It indeed is! Just like shapes on panels near autumn forest are only shadows of tree branches.

This thing about vases looks symbolic no matter how I look at it. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Now there are only two possibilites here. Either it's a coincidence. Or it is not.

It may be possible that game designer placed vases here and didn't notice how symbolic it looks under this roof. Architects built this house and didn't notice how shadows fall from the ceiling. Playtesters have gone through the game many times and didn't notice the coincidence even after the game taught them about the meaning of sunlight and shadows and required them to use these observations in many other places. It's a little hard to believe since this game is all about attention to details, but this might just be a sloppiness on their part.

Or this might be an intentional hint.

I don't know!

[trevormobbs]

Originally posted by ♥:

You have the point. But again, it doesn't explain the thing with lighting where the turquoise vase is being apparently highlighted rhyming with the turquoise cord and cyan being... I accentuate this again and again and nobody in this thread seems to pay attention to it.

People seem perfectly happy to accept the notion that matching colours are important. It's the bit where you think the cyan vase having a shadow across it makes it more important than all the other non-turquoise vases that you're losing people.

[TurnLeft25]

Just Set Up A Bot That Tries Every Combonation