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Everyone and their dog is connected to it one way or the other pretty much by default.
That being said, I don't think Dude knows anything of actual value about Biocorp.
~~~~~~
I'm not putting spoiler tags for the sake of anyone who wants to read, so here's your last warning!
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Yes, Dude is Dr. John Dyson, head of psionics research at Hollow Earth. There are numerous pieces of evidence in the game that demonstrate this.
First, there's the fact that Dr. Dyson was known as Dude by his friends.
Second, there is the fully stocked bar in his room at Caerus. And the groin guards in his wardrobe (which are presumably supposed to be underwear; it's a Big Lebowski reference, like the rest of his character).
Third, there is the fact that Dude knows waaaay more about the world than any normal character should. Go back and read everything he tells you when you ask him if he knows anything interesting. The information he reveals to you concerns everything from Six / Rahm Umbra ("watch out for people with six fingers on their hands; they'll mess you up."), to the Psi Monoliths, to the origins of the Faceless ("part men, part gods, part rock"; yes, that is all true. I'll explain why if you want to know.), and even to the existence of the Oculus (which, if you never met Azif, you don't even know what that is and hoooooo boy are you missing out on like half the lore in the game; that place is a lore goldmine). Seriously, Dude knows everything.
As for why Dude knows so much? Well, all of those things are somehow related back to Biocorp, the Faceless, and Hollow Earth. If Dude is Dr. John Dyson, who worked at Hollow Earth and led their entire psionics dept (let that sink in), he would naturally know a lot more than the average joe. Plus, if he led their psionics dept, that means he probably interacted with all of the Psi Monoliths, and considering what those reveal to the player, it's likely that Dude would be even more enlightened, as you would expect the leader of the psionics department to have strong psionic abilities himself. And, given his "senses," it's likely that Dude does have some strong psionic powers, even though he doesn't actually have any psi points. Perhaps he drinks mushroom brew all the time to suppress his psionic abilities? Maybe he doesn't want to end up like Dr. Wasi Abdul, who peeled his own skin off thanks to whatever the hell those Psi Monoliths did to him.
Regarding his longevity/immortality, if Dude is Dr. John Dyson, he would have been in charge of the operations at the Tithonus Lab, which was entirely focused on maximizing human longevity. Maybe he was his own test subject, and a successful one at that? Or maybe the mushroom brew really is the key to his longevity? Regardless, we know that Ezra was once an Apex Technocrat (Anton 'Wight' Matveev, to be exact) and he's still alive. And that's not all: Eidein, Gunter Vasilica, Wyatt Pear; they all lived passed Biocorp's dissolution. Who is to say Dude didn't discover the secret, too?
Lastly, if none of that convinces you, here's definitive proof: You can actually talk to Dude after escaping from Deep Caverns, and you can ask him if he is Dr. John Dyson. And his response, well... it's indicative of all the horrors he's been through. (Or he's just crying about his beer being empty and the whole thing is a red herring Styg set up to ♥♥♥♥ with us, which I doubt... mostly.) Screenshots of this conversation are provided below.
Conversation with Dude:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1484698135
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1484698324
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1484698459
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1484698604
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1484698780
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1484698996
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1484699164
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1484699351
Let me know if you have any more questions. I could go on about the lore in this game for days. ;)
You can beat the game and sitll barely understand what the ♥♥♥♥ happened. You have to actively take an interesting in the lore and pay attention. Talk to IRIS, be friendly with the Faceless, read the Hollow Earth chat logs, etc. Even then there's as many questions as there are answers.
Yeah, when it comes to maximizing your access to lore, the two most important objectives are definitely 1. joining Oculus, and 2. making sure that you're allied with the Faceless. Since the prerequisites for completing both of those objectives are... unintuitive (i.e. I hope you read the wiki), I can definitely understand why most players fail to complete them. I mean, who would ever think that working for Abram would give you access to the most important faction in the game? And, furthermore, who would think to go out of their way to be BFFs with the Faceless, a group that you're straight-up told is probably bad news not even an hour into the game by Old Jonas. To be fair, Old Jonas does say that they're not exactly threatening, at least as a collective, but that is one of the more forgettable lines in the game, unless you already know that the Faceless are the good guys.
Oh, and waiting to turn in Lora's quest until you have killed the Acid Hunters. Yeah, who would ever think to do that, either?
There is certainly a lot about this game that feels a little arbitrary and Cave Story-esque when it concerns very important lore events and sequence triggers, but that's why we have a wiki and why I have poured 450-something hours into this very big and very complicated game.
But I love this game, so it's all good.
(And if you think that's arbitrary, try going through a whole playthrough just to get the right combination of ending slides, because how was I supposed to know that persuading SGS to help the Eels would literally change half of the ending and transform the entire geo-political landscape of the South Underrail? God help those that chose to help the Scrappers and got left with a boring ending. Also, can there please be a way to kill Gorsky that doesn't ruin my relationship with SGS? I just want to take over the world as Grand Ambassador of the South, that's all. K thx.)
To get to the Oculus I should perfectly complete all Jack Quicksilver's quests? And how much Will should I have to interact with obelisks (i interacted in the first walkthrough, but i don't remember the number)?
Also maybe you could post some screenshots from the Oculus? I can't wait another year to go through the game =))
So it's may or may not be the ONLY alien vessel around.
As for "aliens", I'm not sure what they are exactly — actual representatives of the said aliens or just some kind of maintenance drones from oculus (that maybe went rogue-ish over time).
The thing is, creators of oculus seem to be on a technological level of "making stars into batteries" , while Tanner or Ranm-Umbra are still pretty constrained in what they can actually do.
Ironically it's AFTER you go rogue on protectorate and get the info from oculus you can appreciate how shady protectorate actually is.
Yes, if you get the quest to Meet Azif, then you should be able to join Oculus, assuming you choose to do so. (To clarify, Oculus is both the name of a giant alien surveillance structure next to the Hanging Rat, and the name of the organization that currently runs it.)
If you were unable to meet Azif because of a bug that was previously in the game, then you should know that this was fixed in patch 1.3.20b. So you should be able to join Oculus if that quest is still active and if Azif is still waiting for you at the Hanging Rat. But I digress.
To get the most lore out of Oculus, you really need to join it before the Tchortists steal the Cube from the Coretech Research Facility. Joining the Oculus before the Cube is stolen will allow you to meet Six/Rahm Umbra earlier in the story, as he will be in the Oculus trying to find out Tanner's whereabouts (though you are not told that this is what he was doing until after defeating Tchort).
Six will not actually want to converse with you, and if you bother him too many times he will turn hostile and promptly cut you in half, so you should talk with him once (and only once) and then leave him alone. This gives you just enough of an interaction with him that you can ask the other Oculites about him, without pissing Six off. Then, when you meet him again in the West Wing, he will recognize you from the Oculus and you'll have some new dialogue.
Oculus also gets you access to a ton of geo-political info about the world, as you'll be able to talk to Abram, who can fill you in on the backstory and current political landscape of every single station in Underrail.
To get the most out of Oculus (and Underrail lore in general) you are going to want to build up 135 effective Hacking skill and 7 Will. To my knowledge, 7 Will is enough to allow you to understand all of the Psi Monoliths in the game. However, there is a transcript of all the monolith encounters over on the official forums ( http://underrail.com/forums/index.php?topic=2260.msg14806#msg14806 ), so you don't really need to invest in Will if you're afraid of screwing up your build. The 135 Hacking skill is very important, though, as this will allow you to gain access to all of the documents in the Oculus, including a bunch of stuff on Ezra, Tanner, all the faction leaders, all the station leaders, et cetera. It also gives you a bunch of insight into what Biocorp was working on before it collapsed.
Most of all, having 135 Hacking allows you to restore IRIS to a previous back-up, and she fills you in on a lot of details about how the collapse at Hollow Earth went down. Although, honestly, you can fill in most of the blanks yourself if you read all of the Caerus logs and befriend the Faceless, at which point you'll recognize that 1. Otis is the leader of the Faceless, and 2. Hollow Earth collapsed when Otis freed all of the other captive Faceless, at which point the Faceless promptly revolted and threw their captors into the Mutagen vats, creating Tchort. As for which Biocorp staff were thrown in, it's safe to say that Dr. Austein and Dr. Hope were definitely thrown in (given that they ran the Mutagen Projects). It's also likely that Apex Technocrat, and Ezra's equal, Kirill 'Vovin' Gavrilyuk, was thrown into the mutagen vats, too. Vovin was known to have incredible psionic abilities, so it's likely that his powers contributed greatly in making Tchort as powerful as it was. Obviously, the Faceless didn't get all of the Apex Technocrats, as Ezra is still alive today and living in SGS. They also didn't get Dude, as we know, nor Gunter Vasilica.
Regarding Tchort itself, if you join Oculus before the Cube is stolen by the Tchortists and you talk to Six, and if you return the Cube to the Faceless after defeating Tchort, then not only will Six give you a ton of information about himself and Tanner, but you can also go back to the Oculus and talk to Azif, who will reveal to you that Hadrian Tanner was actually one of his clients, and that Six used Azif to get Tanner to come out of hiding so Six could track him down. Furthermore, he will reveal that Tchort was likely composed not only of mutagen, Biocorp personnel, some Faceless, the Psi Monoliths, and whatever else was down there in Hollow Earth for it to assimilate, buuuut he was also probably composed of (or capable of becoming) something called a Laeviathan, which is the ancient enemy of Rahm Umbra's people (known as the High Ones or the Godmen).
So, basically, Tchort was both a monster and a god. As for the Faceless, they are almost certainly composed of alien/High Ones material themselves. They also have chunks of the Psi Monoliths in them, no doubt. Hence Dude's expression, "part men, part gods, part rock."
Dude also says that the Faceless worship a really big shiny diamond that they like to look at all the time because it's really pretty. You may have already figured it out, but this is basically the Cube.
So, yeah, Underrail lore is pretty great if you are 1. an Oculite, 2. allied with the Faceless, and 3. an expert hacker.
EDIT: Fixed an issue with the forums link. And if you do decide to read the monolith excerpts on the official forums, I would encourage you to go through that entire thread, as well. Much of what is stated there is just a recap of what I've already stated here in this thread, but it helps to confirm that I'm not just making all this ♥♥♥♥ up, lol.
I adore your encyclopedic knowledge and I am very grateful for your time to post this! this is very interesting and now i love underrail even more :-)