Human Resource Machine - Story Theory (SPOILERS)

[Looks Like I've Lost]

EDIT: Looking back, a lot of points may have just been for comedic purposes and are not tied with important events in the story, so take this with a grain of salt.

I now believe that the game is all about robots slowly taking the jobs of people around the world, and at the end of the game the player having their job taken by a robot created by their own company, which was being created throughout the game as shown by the researchers and failed robots.

END EDIT

For a long time before and after I played Human Resource Machine, I was wondering about the story behind the game. The cutscenes don't show much other than what is happening to the HRM building the moment your hired, and what's on the news during breaks. I scowered the internet for an answer, but my efforts were fruitless, so I decided to create my own theory. Just a disclaimer, none of this is in any way 100% true, and this is just my take on the story after some careful thought and lots of playthroughs.

To start, let's cover the detais of the HRM building. The HRM building is the building in which the game takes place. The first few floors (specifically the orange-colored ones) are designed fo training employees. This is proven by the boss lady mentioning on year 12 that the output of your work is just going into a wastebin in the next room. Once you enter blue-colored years, the boss man begins mentioning other groups being involved in your work, such as the "zero advocacy community". Since no real work happens in the first few floors, I believe that is where work surrounding news is located, which is also how Carol (AKA the news lady) is able to fall from the building without dying.

The HRM building's other levels are mainly focused on encrypting/decrypting messages. In the last few years, most of the outputs are words if not entire messages, and there are even a few words in earlier years. This doesn't mean that floors that don't deal with words aren't dealing with decrypting/encrypting messages.


Now is time for the really important part, the history of the robots. I'm going to go through the robot's history chronologically, and I will try to explain everything the best I can.

First, there is a company elsewhere that is creating the robots. The HRM building couldn't have created the robots for two reasons: 1. Because the robots are too big to find space for in/nearby the HRM building, and 2. Because if the robots were created by the HRM building, then the HRM building would have had access to computers way sooner.

This outside company's main focus was to create robots that could replace anyone's job. These robots would come in large sizes, such as the ones seen surrounding the city, and small sizes, such as the one seen taking over the news broadcast. Many companies purchased these robots, including the HRM building.

During or after the robots were created and distributed, the robots went haywire and began forcefully removing people from their job in order to replace them. This led to the people destroying some hostile robots and discarding others. This is why there are robot arms in some of the levels. Once the robots are discarded, they are found by a man who recharges them using the city's power, which causes power shortages. This man will appear later in the theory, so don't forget him.

Around this time is when you are hired. You go through your work and see robots slowly approach the city and take over jobs, including Carol's job on the news. After 40 years, the bosses (or management) finally decide to buy a computer. It may have taken this long because of hesitation from the last incident. Once you leave, you see the robots and people warring. After a lot of taking over, the robots eventually win the war and successfully replace every job in existence. This leads us to 7 Billion Humans.

In the 7 Billion Humans trailer, there is a man advertising the robots efforts to replace every job, and the freedom that the people now have. I believe this man is the same man that brought back the robots by recharging them, as he is the only person that sees the robots as a good thing rather than a job-stealer. I no longer believe this carries any relevance in the story.

This pretty much concludes the theory. During my time creating this I have also come up with a few loopholes:

1. In the HRM building's breakroom, there is a modern TV, microwave, dishwasher, and refrigerator, which suggests the presence of computers in the HRM building before the final year. These likely have also been purchased from an outside source.
   
   
2. The man advertising the robots in the 7 Billion Humans trailer may just be another robot, or hired by the robots.

If you find any more loopholes, or you find solutions for some, or both, you can respond to this discussion. I'd love to see everone's take on this.

[Giraffe]

This theory seems widely consistent. I suggest that the puzzles you solve are placeholder for more complex tasks which wouldn't make for a good game (for example, the decoding puzzle might stand for more complex cryptography work).
Even though microwaves, dishwashers, refrigerators (and many more household appliances) are made of computers now, they weren't always (and were in fact invented before computers). The modern TV is the exception from this. Maybe one can accept the fact that there were some TVs before computers (even though they were quite bulky).
I expect robots that are capable of executing any kind of work efficiently to have mastered speech synthesis. So the manly voice in the 7BH-Trailer is most likely just a robot. Him being hired is unlikely since the robots seem very keen to leave no actual work to humans.

I really like the idea of a conflict between some groups of human workers and robots regarding jobs and fighting for something you are used to but not need seems just the human way of doing things.

[Hypertext Eye]

I have two comments.

1. Carol isn't the newscaster, she is one of the three office ladies we are introduced to in "Coffee Time". She is the one in yellow. The newscaster isn't yellow. Carol is also the one who sees the giant robot eye through the window in "Midnight Petroleum". Notice in the scene right after that ("Where's Carol?") she is missing from the coffee room; we see her falling outside the window. The fact that she saw the eye might explain why she fell (or jumped?) out/off of the building.

2. It's pretty clear to me that both bossman and bosslady are robots. They never age, even though the player character does, and in the final scene their speech is very obvious text-to-speech.

[Looks Like I've Lost]

Originally posted by Hypertext Eye:

I have two comments.

1. Carol isn't the newscaster, she is one of the three office ladies we are introduced to in "Coffee Time". She is the one in yellow. The newscaster isn't yellow. Carol is also the one who sees the giant robot eye through the window in "Midnight Petroleum". Notice in the scene right after that ("Where's Carol?") she is missing from the coffee room; we see her falling outside the window. The fact that she saw the eye might explain why she fell (or jumped?) out/off of the building.

2. It's pretty clear to me that both bossman and bosslady are robots. They never age, even though the player character does, and in the final scene their speech is very obvious text-to-speech.

Come to think of it... the boss man and boss lady being robots would make a lot of sense.

[Hypertext Eye]

I started playing 7BH yesterday. Now it seems like Alice, Betty, and Carol are all robots. Alice has a cog attached to her back, Betty has four arms, and they all have weird knees. If that's true, it explains why Carol didn't die. It doesn't explain why she fell off the building, though. Or why she was in bandages in the end credits.

[phadin]

Originally posted by Hypertext Eye:

I started playing 7BH yesterday. Now it seems like Alice, Betty, and Carol are all robots. Alice has a cog attached to her back, Betty has four arms, and they all have weird knees. If that's true, it explains why Carol didn't die. It doesn't explain why she fell off the building, though. Or why she was in bandages in the end credits.

Perhaps she did die and that is just the robot replacement of Carol. I think it entirely possible the robots, in that they are replacing all the workers and taking over the job, are also mimicing the workers they are replacing. Perhaps even bossman/lady were human before but got replaced by robots, rather than being robots from the beginning.

[Hypertext Eye]

Originally posted by phadin:

Perhaps she did die and that is just the robot replacement of Carol.

Why would a robot Carol need bandages?