So what was the Vivarium trailer all about? *spoiler discussion*

[Mostly Harmless]

Most of the "mysterious" live action trailers make 100% sense once you play through the game and learn the details of what's going on. However, I'm still not clear on what's happening in the "Vivarium" trailer (the one where a woman working on a computer suddenly sees an image of herself in the exact same room she's currently in, and freaks out.).

So, how does this trailer tie in to the game's plot? Does seeing herself inside the computer make her realize that the room she's currently in is a simulation room, and therefore she herself is a simulation too?

[Donitsi]

Didn't she get spooked because she was dead on the screen but all the sudden she started to move? Computer started to animate her

[Arsenic13]

All those clips are prequel stuff. It may be from the rumored live action film.

[Zoogleplex]

Watching the trailer again, I think the simulation worked. It wasn't clear what the woman was trying to actually accomplish, probably some sort of test or diagnostic. But we do see on the screen that the table suddenly appears, then the chair, then the lifeless body and then the body starts moving. This leads me to believe that the computer copied the woman's consciousness into the simulation last.

My guess is that this last part, copying the consciousness, was unexpected and freaked out the woman causing her to shut it down.


There are audio logs about this specific event in the game.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Do the characters from the short films make an appearance in the game?

[bloodboil]

I believe it's in the Theta Labs that you find a Journal Entry regarding the Vivarium. It's mentioned that it was designed simply, as if created specifically for the intent of being absorbed by and controlled by WAU. This was back when Catherine was in the very early stages of ARK. WAU created a contained virtual space within the Vivarium, replicating the room and then creating a simulation of the woman inside because it already has a copy of her brain scan, since it's been lifting them from the pilot seats as they're being taken. It is from WAU's own experiment with virtual spaces that Catherine learns and is able to eventually complete the virtual spaces for ARK.

At the time of the trailer, a lot of people assumed that the Vivarium had spawned a duplicate of the woman in the room and then killed her. I take it differently now, though. When the "real" woman sees her copy and stands to yell for them to kill power to the Vivarium, we see her copy shouting, "No! No!" and then some indistinguishable words. I know believe that the woman within the Vivarium was just as much a person as the woman in reality (much as Wan was a 'real person' in the simulations you do), and was trying to convince her true self not to in essence kill her. The original woman's cries for them to "contain it," was probably because she realized that WAU was hooked into the Vivarium and doing some weird ♥♥♥♥.

All hypothesis, though; but I found it's what makes sense. Also we know Reed makes an appearance - and Galowsky or whatever his name is is mentioned, but we never learned specifically what happens to him as far as I know.

[Kain]

How did he die?

[OhioYankee]

Originally posted by JohnnyTheWolf - Qc:

Do the characters from the short films make an appearance in the game?

The first body Simon is controlling is the body of the woman in the videos. Imogen Reed was her name.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

So you essentially play as a transgender for the first half of the game? Interesting!