Possible explanation for the timeline discrepency

[infranscia]

Okay, so the starting date of the original Beholder is listed as September 1st of 1984 (or August 18th if you count the Blissful Sleep DLC). Beholder 2 is clearly a sequel, referencing the the Blissful Sleep Initiative that was started "last year," and referencing one of the possible events that can happen in the ending, namely the Carl clones. And yet, in Beholder 2, the starting date is listed as May 7th, 1984.

The fact that the sequel takes place in both the same year and a year later has confused a lot of people, including myself. But you know what these dates have in common?

1984

It was the themes of "Everyone is always watched" that pushed me to finally start reading the book 1984, but it wasn't until I started reading that I realized how important that year was, or just how heavily the Beholder games reference that book.

For example, very early on, the protagonist of 1984 marks down the year as (of course) 1984, but he's not sure that it's actually 1984 - he's just making a guess based on his age and the year that he thinks he was born in, but for whatever reason (I'm not very far yet), it's impossible to know the actual year anymore. I think that the same basic idea might be true in both Beholder games: in both the original, and the sequel, the year listed is just a guess.

There are a lot of other (possible) similarities: the world is portrayed as very lacking in color. The country is governed by the Party, which is divided into a number of Ministries. In the book 1984, there are no laws; in Beholder, you instead have directives. The leader in each nation is (apparently) a mustachioed man. The main characters work for the Ministry. The Ministry buildings are said to reach just as far below ground as above it. In the book 1984, the Ministry buildings (or the part that's visible) look like pyramids, and the national emblem in Beholder 2 looks like a small pyramid above a larger, upside-down pyramid - I think the size difference and some of the markings are to keep it close to the emblem of Obristan from the game Papers, Please, which seems to canonically be the same universe as Beholder. The book 1984 also has something called the "Two Minutes of Hate," which Beholder 2 references with the suggested name "Five Minutes of Hatred."

I think some of the character names might also be references: the original Beholder features the Stein family, and 1984 has a character with the surname Goldstein. Beholder 2 also has a George Hemnitz, possibly named after the author George Orwell.

And like I said, I've only just started reading 1984 - in fact, I've only read the Amazon preview so far. (I ordered a physical copy, which hasn't arrived yet.) I suspect that as I get farther into both the book and the games, I'll notice a lot more similarities.

TL;DR: I suspect that the dates in the games don't make sense because it's not actually about the chronology - it's about 1984.

[Turbobounce]

Never thought of that, what an interesting explanation, I like it, I should probably get to reading 1984.