Jatsko's theories, etc

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Augustus
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Re: Apocrypha's Theories and Thoughts

Post by Augustus »

No way that is possible. The chalk guy was mental insane. The junper was someone who gave in to the screecing demands of life
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Jatsko
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Re: Apocrypha's Theories and Thoughts

Post by Jatsko »

Maybe they became insane due to said demands.

I believe I am correct, and there's no use saying I'm wrong.

BTM 7 tomorrow
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reed
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Re: Apocrypha's Theories and Thoughts

Post by reed »

why don't we go further and say it was Murtaugh, who went insane due to his guilt. </rant>
looking forward for the BTM.
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Anteroinen
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Re: Apocrypha's Theories and Thoughts

Post by Anteroinen »

reed wrote:why don't we go further and say it was Murtaugh, who went insane due to his guilt. </rant>
looking forward for the BTM.
I think we all are waiting.

I still think - hope at the very least - that WIQ's location had its own crazy person. I would hate to think someone so uniquely crazy went down so... sober?
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Sundex
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Re: Apocrypha's Theories and Thoughts

Post by Sundex »

Apocrypha wrote:BTM 7 tomorrow
You had me at B
BACK TO THEORIES
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Sundex
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Re: Apocrypha's Theories and Thoughts

Post by Sundex »

Since you practically said you were done with Submachine theorizing in BTM 7, should this thread be locked?
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Anteroinen
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Re: Apocrypha's Theories and Thoughts

Post by Anteroinen »

I don't see why? What if people want to comment on his stuff.
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Sundex
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Re: Apocrypha's Theories and Thoughts

Post by Sundex »

Oh yeah
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Jatsko
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Re: Jatsko's theories, etc

Post by Jatsko »

A thought regarding the transition between Sub1 and Sub2. I don't know if I've mentioned this before but I've definitely thought of it in the past.

Note: This assumes that there is a plausible and reasonable explanation for what exactly happens between Sub1 and Sub2 that "fits" with the rest of the universe. Keep in mind that this series wasn't entirely laid out beforehand, so one naturally has to apply things that make sense that weren't in Mat's mind at the time of making the games or knowing where they would end up.

For a while a lot of people thought that Sub1 was effectively being played inside Submachine 2's location, and the player was simply so absorbed in playing the arcade that they had to effectively "wake back up" to the game world. The transition out of the arcade machine seems to simulate them backing up from the screen, so it would support that idea.

What this doesn't address is why they were playing the game in the first place, in the lighthouse dungeon, and where they came from before that. Because even if your protagonist isn't going to be too developed by themselves, there has to be some sort of exposition for their role to work, and the above explanation doesn't provide anything that's substantial enough. In a lot of games, you'll be assigned a role, like being a knight in a village, a school student going about their day, a PhD that accidentally opens up a multidimensional portal during work, something. "Person playing video game in dungeon" without really knowing anything about them isn't an exposition or worthy character profile. I never thought so, at least, which is always why I wanted more information about the player themselves. Why should we care about them? What do they bring to the table? These questions lasted throughout most of the series for me, and I refuse to let them go unanswered because I don't want to play a husk of nothing.

However, I think a lot of that changed with the release of Sub10. It firstly appeared to crumble the narrative that we were actually playing the arcade game from Sub2 in Sub1, given the fact that the basement(s) and the ending area were actually places that we could visit in the games. So that gave rise to the possibility that perhaps those physical locations were where we actually started our journey.

The problem with that, though, is that it still doesn't solve the problem that the first mode of thinking had, with where the player "came from" or who they are. Because there's no reason to accept the player's journey starting in some unknown reason in the basement, without any prior context, either. It's no better than playing the arcade in the dungeon, in my view.

Later down the line after the completion of SubVerse HD, Mat held a Q and A in which he answered a much-longed-for question about the player and their purpose or significance:
Mateusz Skutnik Q36/50 wrote:The purpose is 32. The player is what you want him/her to be. It’s kind of a role-playing element of the Submachine. That person can be just another cog in the machine. Just another explorer of the vast net of Submachine. Or the savior of the world and all structures in it. Depends on you really.
This was initially incredibly frustrating for me, because if I can be a stand-in for the player, then it just basically becomes me inside the Submachine, dropped in at a random location and just going through and escaping like the good little escapist that I guess I was meant to be. No real backstory or anything. I basically turn into that "husk of nothing".

But after a while, my thinking started to change when I thought about how Submachine started out as a single game with no planned series behind it, and how, in that context, and in the context of so many other room escape games, that was all that was expected of you to be. In a lot of room escape games, you are basically yourself, but you just find yourself trapped somewhere that you just need to get out of. This is set up merely for the sake of playing the game. In the game universe, it's okay for this bare-bones explanation to be all that is needed, because that's one of the rules used to make the universe itself.

in conjunction with that I also thought about how it always nagged me that Mat would (and does?) constantly speak to fans in ways that makes it seem like everything he says is said almost "on behalf of" the game worlds he's created. Like speculating about the game as though he's another explorer that knows slightly more than us but still ponders the mystery, or communicating via the titles "Mur" or "Mat". People that really know me know that I've always kind of criticized Mat for doing that, mostly seeing it as cringy or just another gimmick, more or less.

But a lot of that probably comes from my natural tendency to want to put things in nice little boxes (I have a spreadsheet obsession, to an extent, and there's also the Wiki, enough said) so that means to me that the game universe does its thing and our world does its own thing, and melding the boundaries between those two things and introducing that type of gray area is something I don't like, for the reason that it just makes things more complicated. However, my tone on that has changed over time, in part I think due to me having played another game on Steam since the release of the Q and A, that featured a similar sort of metaphysical bridge between the game world and our world, and which really caused me to think about the "validity" of doing such things. (I won't name the game here because it'll effectively immediately spoil it.)

So tying this back to the Sub1/2 transition, my thoughts are instead that Sub1 in fact doesn't really take place in the basements and whatnot that we see in Sub10 either (which would also call into question why so much crap got broken and moss grown in a time frame that I doubt we experienced, unless you want to do time travel theory, which I don't want to do). My current working model is that, given the historical context of Sub1 and how Mat acts, is that it's meant to be a bridge between our world and the game world in a much more meaningful sense than most games would bother to think about. I think, all things considered, it's fine having the first installment be a intentionally murky transition that we experience between our world and the immersion of the game world. Perhaps even though the basement really does exist in the game world, we play through a version of it that slowly transitions us from just playing the escape game to more fully participating in the game universe. There's not a very explainable concrete process behind it, but maybe there doesn't need to be, because this is how Mat is choosing to have the series develop. He wants this bridge to really be strong between the two worlds, because it's what really makes the games special. There's a fine line between role playing and actually having the role-playing underlined and brought into the spotlight, and I think that this second trope is part of Mat's overall gameplan, and I think it ultimately fits.

As far as the actual transition between Sub1 and Sub2, the film that plays at the beginning of Sub2 would then be our thoughts that we are forming right as we're transitioning from our world to assuming the role of the player in the game world. Again, this transition being focused on is what's important. It actually might be one of the best examples of surreal elements found in the Submachine games, especially when coupled with Mat's communication tactics. For me I think I just had to embrace it a bit more to fully appreciate it.

I don't think this explanation is going to make things fully fall in line, but I also don't expect Mat to have crafted a perfect puzzle to put together with the games either, so I'm content with it for now. Hopefully this insight made some sort of sense to people that take the time to read it.

TLDR
Sub1, at the end of the day and given everything we've experienced in Submachine's universe, is best explained as a bridge between our reality and the game reality, and highlights the transition or bridging of these two worlds in a more pointed way that most games that want to immerse you don't really do. Keeping in mind its previous history as an originally standalone game, I think that it's acceptable to see it as a physical manifestation of our transition to being immersed in the game world, which helps explain some discrepancies and questions raised during Sub10 and the bridge between Sub1 and Sub 2.

Edited for grammar and spelling
Last edited by Jatsko on 25 Oct 2023 17:33, edited 1 time in total.
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Jatsko
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Re: Jatsko's theories, etc

Post by Jatsko »

Add-on to above:

While writing this I was reminded of the text of question 50:
Mateusz Skunik Q50/50 wrote:At the beginning of the first game the player is transported into the heart of the subnet via a karma portal from outside of the structure.
I don't have a good way to show that this either supports or takes away from what I said above, or if it can even apply in either of those two scenarios. Though, if I were to force the data to fit my theory (and you should NOT do this, but having fun is also allowed every so often), I could argue that

a. The karma portal could reference the entirety of Sub1 itself (after all, there have been a few instances of entire games effectively taking place inside a karma portal before) though it's probably not that literal, as you could extend "portal" to just mean "device that transports you from one spot to another" if you stretch the word enough. The spots in this instance would be our world and the game world. So you transport in that sense, idk. The thing to take away from here is that language is really great at making anything a fact as long as you keep redefining things until they don't have an agreed-upon consistent definition.

b. The karma portal could actually reference the portal that connects from the basement to the arcade machine, which would imply that the basement on the other end is actually "outside the structure". I don't know what this means for locations like the basement exist and whatnot and how you would go about telling which is inside the structure and which is outside, assuming that locations exist in both groups to start with.

Clearly I'm not currently able to ram together any two thoughts with the addition of this information to make something solid to think about, but the important thing is to bring that note back into light so people considering all this can maybe make their own thing out of it.
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