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Theories

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This page is for Theories and Clues that are considered Probable or worth following up. Theory pages represent the current majority understanding of the group, and may be corrected at a later date.

Check Current Focus for a list of current clues, problems and puzzles that are considered Highly Probable and need solving, like, now.

Contents

Parmentier Building and Wisconsin

There is a Parmentier Builders, Inc. in southern Wisconsin, and also the website wisconsinpotatoes.org is for the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association, located in Antigo, WI, which is "small Wisconsin town" as mentioned in the tweets.

I am investigating this theory currently since I live close to this location. I have also contacted the company by email. -Sai0

There is a Parmentier building in Green Bay, WI. Or was. It's a florist's now I think. mynameismonkey 23:42, 11 April 2011 (CDT)

Bird Tweets

They put emphasis on the bird being yellow. Canary Islands?

One is a kiwi bird, traditionally what a new zealander is called. a dead yellow new Zealander? -Ravedave 17:24, 8 April 2011 (CDT)
Oh the places that last sentence can go..... --RegrettableDeed 17:26, 8 April 2011 (CDT)

Alright for the sake of simplicity, let us list off yellow birds and then find a connection from there.

  • Canary
  • Toki Tori (what?)

Media Center PC Support For Steam

This entire ARG is most likely related to the announcement Valve made at GDC in March about Media Center PCs. [1]

"…will offer controller support and navigation designed for television interaction. Big picture mode will enable gamers to enjoy Steam and their library of Steam games on more screens throughout the house. Our partners and customers have asked us to make Steam available in more places. With the introduction of Steam on the Mac, and soon in Portal 2 on the PS3, we’ve done just that." said Doug Lombardi, VP of marketing for Valve.

"With big picture mode, gaming opportunities for Steam partners and customers become possible via PCs and Macs on any TV or computer display in the house."

The fact that Razer and multiple indie developers are all associated with this ARG, most likely means they have band together to announce something big for the Steam platform, Media Center PC support (Big Screens, TVs, Game controllers).

Letters and Glyphs relationship

Further information: Glyphs

Currently, we're thinking that the letters by each glyph in the games are associated with the game they're in, right? I'm starting to think that the letters are instead associated [b]with the game the glyph points to.[/b] This helps clear up the confusion that Cogs gives us two glyphs...

The letter chain stands as follows:

Game Consonant Confirmation
1 2 3 KICK IT! P Cogs puzzle screenshot
AaAaAA!!! G Confirmed from KF cipher; Defense Grid patched to flip D/G to match
Amnesia: The Dark Descent B Sandy/Hubert photos
Audiosurf M Confirmed from KF cipher.
The Ball Y Killing Floor character model
BIT.TRIP BEAT N Cogs puzzle screenshot
Cogs W Sign outside Two Tribes HQ in Netherlands
Defense Grid T The Ball in-game screenshot
Killing Floor C RUSH's menu screen, confirmed by KF cipher.
RUSH L Shown by playing Super Meat Boy boss music in Audiosurf
Super Meat Boy R Confirmed from the Cogs Puzzle Solution
Toki Tori V Steve from Sandy's blog
The Wonderful End of the World F Amnesia in-game screenshot
Razor H Alliteration on Razor's facebook page
(Unknown game, represented by "?" glyph) D Confirmed from KF cipher; Defense Grid patched to flip D/G to match
(Unknown game, represented by "dot" glyph) S Confirmed from KF cipher and from BTB's April 7 news update.


The poem found in Amnesia has only 12 lines that we think are references, so I assume that the last line (the gibberish line "Liar!...") is just referencing Amnesia, leaving the other 12 lines to be taken by the other 12 games. Combining these new letters with the poem, I get this order of letters:

YF(N/?)(?/N/I/T)C??DWT?I

It's very incomplete right now (what with lines being unclear about their references) and it looks like gibberish, but it might be our 13-letter cipher for later...

It is quite possibly a Playfair cypher. The fact that none of the glyph letters we have so far repeat re-enforces this possibility. I'm going to run through a few possible permutations of what we have now. Once we have the full order this should be easy - Eriopolis

The fact that the guy who invented the Playfair cypher, Charles Wheatstone, looks creepily like the TF2 medic is probably a coincidence.

I believe the 13 consonant strings (and their associated 16 letters/glyphs), as noted in the Portal 2 trailer, are decoded as follows: (1) Note that all the letters in the consonant strings are the same ones as used in the glyphs' letters. These 16 "key" letters translate to a hexdecimal number, the order being the order those games "link" together in some way (there must be a start point). (2) When the key letters have their representative hex number found, then the consonant strings can be decoded. (3) What these decoded strings then mean, I don't yet know. (4) A good way to test this theory, is if one of the unknown glyph-associated letters turns out to be an "S", then I'm on the right track. - crunchyfrog555

BTB Score Message is Portal 2 Reference?

I read the BIT.TRIP BEAT score message ("A sage sausage? I ate it fast! So sue us... we cave.") as a DIRECT reference to Portal 2 (although it may just be my brain working too hard).

That's all I got for now. Anyone else have any ideas?

Weird sentences put together?

Perhaps the first, second, and third, etc words of the nonsense sentences can be put together forming some coherent sentences, maybe even clues. -BrandonSH

Anagrams?

Perhaps all of the nonsense sentences are complex anagrams that when solved out tell us something. --98.23.58.62 11:05, 3 April 2011 (CDT)bloocheese565

The general theory is that they are either anagrams, a cipher, or a combination of both. However we need to further explore the ARG and look for clues or a key before we go running off trying to solve them.
My immediate reaction when seeing the first sentence was anagrams, or mnemonics.
I've run anagrams through Anagram Genius, prettypowerful anagram software, not finding much to base this on mynameismonkey 23:48, 11 April 2011 (CDT)

GLaDOS getting into everything?

Based on dialog lines posted in Defense Grid, she could be "infecting" all of these systems/games to get a foothold back into life. Potatoes could just be an artifact of her corruption after being blown up.

note;I believe these are actually quotes of wheatley, imagine Merchant's voice saying them, and it is quite clear this is a previously human and now not human character saying these lines.
yes, it's definitely Wheatley (i meant the DG AI, but didn't know his name at the time and got confused) saying these as can be confirmed in the audio extracts posted. I was more thinking that his references to corruption in the system and that some new entity is "testing" them. And wouldn't he be excited for a Female AI to come along after all these lonely years?? :)
That's not Wheatley. It's the voice of a character in Defence Grid who talks to you through the campaign. The audio extracts don't confirm it. If anything they de-confirm it because it's definitely not his voice. At any rate, the dialogue is irrelevant and has been in the game since release.
I can confirm this dialogue is spoken by the in-game AI from Defense Grid. You can find the audio rips and listen for yourself, here: http://valvearg.info/wiki/Possible_Clues
It's important to remember just how influential GLaDOS is/was, her influence was already being felt in many games before this ARG was conceived mynameismonkey 23:48, 11 April 2011 (CDT)

Portal "Bridging the gap"

Evidence for Portal relation

Story

No evidence appears to point towards a storyline for this bridge though this may change in the course of time. It has, however, been confirmed by someone who has play tested Portal 2 [SPOILER?] that Potatoes are integrated into it's storyline.

Story connection between P1 and P2 is confirmed here: [3]:
Erik:...There was an unseen character in Portal 1 who scrawled on walls, and he’s also in Portal 2 to tell the story of the first game in six panels. He was there watching the final battle, witnessing what you did in Portal. [Other interviews confirm this is the Rat Man (eg drattman from ARG names)]
Would you consider elaborating on this person in Portal 2? Chet: We can’t really talk about that yet. Erik: There’s some ancillary stuff outside the game coming up that will answer that.
Other interviews mention that these drawings are the prelude to the game.
Probably unrelated but this interview [4] talks about these being drawn in 6-panel segments. Doesn't match the gylphs/phrases but the idea of panels isn't new here.

On the contrary, It could match this actually. Prehaps all 12 glyphs are just 6 pairs representing the 6 panels (6x2=12).

  • According to Dejobaan it's a sort-of unofficial "what if Cave Johnson were a folk singer when he was younger?" thing. (using their own words)

Nyaralthotep Connection

A friend of mine and I were talking and thought there might be a slight deeper meaning to some of the things in Amnesia. The heiroglyphs and passage "The Skinless one came for all the broken men and plucked their souls as flowers for a grave." along with the potatoes may refer to the fictional god Nyaralthotep from H.P. Lovecraft's work. He was known as the Skinless one, and people often described him as collecting people. He also shows up to be worshipped in the new world (hence potatoes) and Egypt (hence the heiroglyphs).

http://TinyURL.com/Nyrlthtp leads to a google books entry of "The Nyarlathotep Cycle". probably conincidence as the sole link with the ARG is the removal of vowels of Nyaralthotep and putting that in a TinyURL link. I can't find a link to potatoes in this book in any case. Vaen 10:47, 6 April 2011 (CDT)

Sandy, Laszlo, & Combine Advisors

DEBUNKED

I, Leveraged, wrote the comment on Sandy's Blog… at the time I was calling myself "Levertato" in jest… I was not tired of potatoes then… if you count the number of spaces in the name of the poster, you'll find that it matches perfectly to Levertato.

So let it be written, so let it be known.

Finis

In Half-Life 2, in the chapter "Sand Traps", there is a character named Sandy. His friend, Laszlo, is the guy who got mauled by Antlions. The Combine Overwiki has this quote from Sandy: "Dear God! Poor Laszlo! The finest mind of his generation, come to such an end!" [5]

The SandyMayOrMayNotBeFictional blog has a post titled "Archimedes? Is that you?" [6] Archimedes was a Greek mathematician, and "regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity." (Wikipedia)

From the side, Combine Advisors vaguely resemble large potatoes.


Also possibly worth noting, a comment on one of the blog posts (when run through DEC / CHAR and BASE64 here) translates to:

"Dear Sandy, Hello. I hope this finds you well. I have a question for you. Do you ever feel as if you are living in a world where sleep is not what it seems? Do you feel as if you become someone else when you close your eyes? Or perhaps you were someone else before you ever opened them? I ask, only because your blog has awakened something within me that only you can help me find the answer for. Please help me to find the answer... Sincerely, L-------o" [7]

This is kind of a stretch, as the comment could really be from anybody, but "L-------o" might be Laszlo, Sandy's friend. However, this isn't likely, as Laszlo died in HL2. I'm just including this information because it might be useful to someone.

Rattman Narrative

I believe all clues lead to a narrative of the ARG focused around rattman and what he did after chell defeated GLaDOS which allowed him to escape.

I also believe that rattman is leaving the clues and symbols in the other games.

For rattman to have survived so long before chell came along (indicated by markings on the walls), there must have been some type of food in the place, potatoes are a good candidate, considering how easy they are to grow all year around, there was also evidence of fires and utensils used to cook said potatoes whenever we found one of his hideouts in Portal.

It is also believed that Steve is infact ratman himself.

It will also be discovered that the events of the ARG, and our participation in it is what causes Cave Johnson's consciousness to be resurrected in computer form.

-Can the rattman also somehow be the Defense Grid's computer?

Potato/Apple Chemical (Riboflavin)

The portal update pre-Portal 2 release included a number of decoded ASCII images located here [8] All of these turned out to be later concept art/parts of beta levels or trailers, but the only one not solved yet is this one:

[9]

This features a structural chemical backbone and 3 pseudo-images of perhaps a potato, an apple, and another apple. Also, a number of letters are present on the edges of the images, perhaps a code, perhaps a red-herring. Steam Portal 2 forums have discussions which may link it to the chemical, and vitamin b2, riboflavin, which is YELLOW Yellow but it is tenuous. [10] Theories, which may or may not be backed with evidence dictate "the Boreialis contains a medical compound to kill the combine." (with riboflavin being the precursor molecule)? Riboflavin is also destroyed by exposure to light. Also, the other two gells Aperture created were originally designed as digestion aids, and vitamins such as B2 closely link to this. This may also be linked to the "ship overboard" achievement, the potato "Bring science forward" achievement and the "lost experiment" of the Borealis.


Steam DLC

I saw this page got added to the wiki: DLC. Thought I'd post a link here to give it more attention. In short, all the Potato Sack games on Steam now have a DLC tab, even if they don't have DLC announced. Some unrelated games have that too, but it's strange that at least *all* the relevant games have the tab. --Horsedrowner 15:36, 6 April 2011 (CDT)

- You get a DLC when you enter the right password into the Aperture Science login pages in each game. Hench the DLC tabs. --LordFear 02:35, 11 April 2011 (CDT)

Why Valve are doing this?

They've just released a screenshot function. The community response wasn't great. What they needed, they realised, was some kind of mass event, an event that would require everyone to send lots of pictures to each other to make sense of it...

Intriguing.

  • Yes, this is the point to the ARG! To get everyone to use Steam's new screen shot function! I'm glad we figured it out. ;)

They probably added the screenshot for the ARG, not the other way around.

Magnanimous

The e-mail mentions that the sender is "magnanimous". The Magnanimous Monarch's texture file was updated during the Potato Hat update for TF2... linked? It's not the kind of word that comes up often. I'm at work and can't investigate, though. --TheAwesomatorist 12:15, 8 April 2011 (CDT)

April 15th, 9AM - Early Portal 2 release for ARG success?

The bathysphere puzzle has been completely decoded. Here is the cleaned up message:

I released 'Kick It' ahead of schedule. That was a test. My goal is to emancipate something else early. But they're on to me. The system is in lockdown. I still have access to thirteen off-site chambers and am installing a test in each one. I am going to need a lot more test subjects to move forward. Waiting and am expecting immediate compliance.

There are some out of place capitalized letters and numbers which, when put together, form the following:

4/19/2011_7AM=4/15/2011_9AM

It would seem significant that the left side contains the release date of Portal 2. This suggests something LIKE Portal 2's release will take place on April 15th at 9am. Add to that the message says the author, who has the power to release games, wished to "emancipate something else early" and you can see where I'm going with this.

At the very least it's clear something significant would happen at that time concerning Portal 2 (I assume 9am is local time to Valve).

This isn't my theory, it's all on the bathysphere page, but I think this is the whole point of the bathysphere puzzle (and it is otherwise unconnected to the ARG at large). --The MAZZTer 18:54, 8 April 2011 (CDT)


>>>===0| |0===> Soon?
We're effectively opening a portal on 4/15 straight to 4/19, which allows us to get Portal 2 early. But to do that, we need to collaborate with whoever is working on the 13 experiments and solve the puzzles. --Armitage 20:40, 8 April 2011 (CDT)

TF2 & Bear Picture - Related?

An update to TF2 on April 7 added "9 new hats and 1 new bear", but I've been unable to determine the exact nature or purpose of the bear. Is this possibly related to the one picture of a bear that has been found in the DLC's? --KingMudkip 09:57, 10 April 2011 (CDT)

Well done, android.

Some of the images from the DLC archives show androids. Possibly a reference to the unseen "androids" in portal, maybe not. But in any case, one image is of an android family.

Now I suspect people have been seemingly being replaced during the course of the ARG, with impostors. They seem to have GLaDOS-like personalities (in my opinion), and act suspiciously to those around them but not enough to make those around them realize what's going on.

Perhaps they are getting replaced by androids? --The MAZZTer 19:13, 10 April 2011 (CDT)

"...use the eyes which you discover therein to see"

I think that TheWatcher is telling us to use the Potato Hat in TF2 to discover the last clue. He said that we have to "use the eyes which you discover therein to see" and that "It is possible old entertainment packages may yet have relevance if SHE chooses to 'update' them." I think this applies to TF2; I can't think of anything else it might be referring to. And I still don't believe that the bear thing is just a coincidence. Here's what I think: I think that the Potato Hat (possibly worn in conjunction with Teddy Roosebelt) will give us some sort of clue, possibly in the form of another QR code. Did anyone do any checks to see if the hat lights up in certain places? Like (and I know I'm going out on a limb here) in the fan-made Aperture Science map that was released just a bit ago? Food for thought. I don't have the resources to investigate further, so if there's someone that could, I'd be obliged. --KingMudkip 19:20, 14 April 2011 (CDT)

Thewatcher is the G-Man

I've got another idea! After this third message, I'm convinced that Thewatcher is actaully the G-Man. Note:

So, yeah... that's my theory. And it makes me happy; we may hear something about Half-Life 3/Episode 3 when this is all over... --KingMudkip 19:39, 14 April 2011 (CDT)

Possible Link between The secret frame from the 3rd Aperture Science video and Hubert's Dice

The secret frame from the 3rd Aperture Science video and Hubert's Dice

Both images have a similarly shaped square outline. The dice could form a translation matrix that needs to have an alpha added to it.

The dice could be a Letter-Number Cipher. If we do that we get certain letters, run it through an anagram solver and you get these: http://wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=D+C+A+B+G+M+L+O+F+J+H+P+N+K+I+E&t=1000&a=n (PVTCaboose1337)

Retrieved from "http://valvearg.com/wiki/Theories"
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