Attention, if there are answers here, the whole thread will become a **spoiler **
Hi there, I have finished the main quest story but my understanding of it it still incomplete. All the answers are given in a fragmentary way inside the quests notes and voice recordings. Has anybody summarized them in a explicit text?
Okay so, major spoilers here. This is the story as I’ve understood it from playing through the story two times.
The Cold War has ended, and the Swedish military have invested heavily in robotics. Their idea is to incorporate automated war machines that can be remotely controlled via a single or several controllers. There are several different models ready to be rolled out depending on the kind of emergency. The first idea was to control the machines from secure command bunkers, via computers and various other equipment but as research went on a team of scientists working on neurological interfacing were brought onboard at the FOA facility.
The team were working on a way to interface with the brain directly, hooked up to various animals, via an operative system of their own design. I can imagine that the scientific benefits for this would be quite beneficial in the long run. They had some success, and so the swedish military contracted them to incorporate their technology with the machine program. The goal was to have a human being (or several) control war machines in the field, sparing manpower and resources, through the neurological uplink.
The leader of the science team, Svante von Ulmer, disagreed to this at first. The very idea that their research would be incorporated onto a weapons platform seemed absurd. He had several meetings with the military’s officials about this, and as the project dragged on he became pressured to sign on as one of the first human subjects. At the same time he had problems of his own, he was sick with a life-threatening disease.
So, he signed. The operative system was dubbed FNIX (bit of a Phoenix thing going on here), and surgery took place to incorporate his consciousness into the uplink. And it all went downhill from there.
Perhaps it was his way of revenge against the military for what they wanted to do with the project, perhaps it was his way of living on after the disease would have killed his body. Maybe he was just tired of life as he knew it. Maybe the procedure just made him insane.
The machines came to life, and similar to Skynet from The Terminator, immediately grew out of control and began to take over. With the military having invested so heavily into the project, they were easily overwhelmed.
It started small-scale at first. Radio communications were blacked out. Key personnel vanished. The scientists that were on the FOA project were eliminated by Machines to preserve secrecy, but one got away and tried to inform the military of what was about to happen. She failed.
By the time the player characters arrive back to Östertörn by boat, I estimate it’s been just a few days after the Machines took over. We encounter prototypes in the archipelago, it’s likely that FNIX estimated that resistance here was light, so it sent forth the weakest machines to deal with it.
So the players work towards finding out what’s going on, and soon manage to come into contact with Russian forces, who agree to help shut down FNIX. You’re given an EMP bomb, and sent to the FOA facility. There you encounter Svante Von Ulmer’s consciousness, echoing into yours.
By the way that he talks, it’s obvious he no longer cares about the project, or other human beings. He has other plans, and although you walk into the FOA facility with that EMP he’s surprisingly calm. Even as you find the FNIX mainframe and set down the device, he urges you to run as he’s sure the Russian military counted on you dying when the facility was destroyed. Does he know something that you don’t?
As the EMP goes off and the facility is brought to ruins, you emerge only to discover that it’s too late. The Machines are still very much active, and although you destroyed the source, FNIX must have already found means to spread elsewhere. The Machine Apocalypse has begun.
That’s my take on the story, anyway.
Wow, great thanks for that! I have discovered myself some bits of the story, but now everything comes linked together. And the story itself is well constructed. Bravo Avalanche ! The guy (or woman) who wrote it knows his (her) job.
@Zesiir Do you (or anyone else) have a take on what happened to all the civilians? Maybe the answers were there, and I didn’t pay enough attention, but I’m wondering. I had the impression that this event unfolded too fast, and judging by the early missions the evacuation was very chaotic and confusing, and some even refused to evacuate. There are also no bodies of “innocents” lying around, even though it seems the machines blindly attack anything human.
Were the civilians all captured and locked away for some purpose? There was surveillance footage of several bodies, lying in a lab or some kind of morgue in the FNIX mainframe room.
Or were they all simply killed, and the bodies were left out for the sake of a younger audience?
The story seems to indicate that most of the civilians were evacuated off the island, but some were killed by the Machines or dragged off for some unknown purpose.
There are no living or dead land animals either. So maybe they are all recycled for biofuel.
Honestly before I finished the story I thought the Russians would just swoop in and invade the country, as the Russians tended to do that.
It took me quite a few times playing through to get all the pieces together. I arrived at your conclusions. However! After destroying all the production facilities, fuel depots and the main computer ‘control’ bunker there are always MORE of the machines. They also get harder to destroy and cause more damage, even radiation damage. It seems the ‘consciousness’ has evolved, losing what humanity it had, and is hiding its production and control facilities more effectively. Yes the Machine Apocalypse has begun…
I think this may be a play on the Terminator story line. Even though the original consciousness used here was human it evolved loosing it’s humanity. The ‘human’ consciousness, what we faced in the game, was left in the original control bunker. The ‘new’ one jumped to another ‘server’ and then proceeded to evolved at very high speed. Spreading out to every computer system it came into contact with.
I don’t think the ‘consciousness’ (FNIX) that was formed is or was ever truly Svante Von Ulmer. Rather, I think it decided to imitate his voice and take advantage of information it got from him during the link to try and fool the Resistance—Veronika, in particular—into making some sort of mistake or acting too soon. Instead of FNIX being VU, it is pretending to be him to mess with Veronika (the one researcher who escaped, the computer tech who gave it the name FNIX) and Frederik (the shady fellow in the Swedish military who convinced VU to join the project)…
VU’s project was initially to map the human brain, to help solve neurological disorders and other similar problems like the degrading of human memory. He finally decided to go along with the project, despite the military usage of his research, so that his team, his research, would get the backing they needed to complete the work…in hopes that it would not ONLY be used for military purposes, but that the information/technology for the brain interface might see other, more proper, medical usage.
If I remember right, VU was wounded in a car accident at some point and given a blood transfusion. The blood was tainted, or something, so he came down with HIV, AIDS, something along those lines…it should be in the mission log, somewhere… Anyway, because of his failing health, we decided to volunteer for the human testing portion of the brain/machine control interface himself. Seems like something went terribly wrong, the big mystery; a power surge happened, VU died, power outside the research facility went out for a while all over Ostertorn (multiple mentions in mission logs, from Ostervik to Himfjall), and the rogue AI that took over the machines was ‘born’… Like I said, I don’t think it is like VU’s mind got sucked into the computer…but, rather, that the computer is basically running on autopilot, trying to follow certain military programming and using every scrap of information that it can—including whatever information it was able to pull from VU’s brain before…or, rather, at the moment of…his death.
The bomb the Russians provided to the player was NOT merely an EMP. It was a suitcase nuke. FNIX warns you about it, tells you it isn’t simply what they said it was, that it was meant not just to try and destroy the AI (another failed attempt) but rather to put an end to the player, one of the few people who should have enough clues to put together the whole story… Some of the Russians trying to tie up loose ends.
Speaking of the whole story, there are TWO factions within the Soviet camp. One faction within the Russian forces are old-school ultra-nationalist Tom Clancy badguy types, who wish to see the old Soviet Union rise back up. They came into Sweden not to destroy the rogue Swedish machines or the FNIX AI, but instead to try and CAPTURE or COPY the FNIX AI (and steal any other info on the Swedish machines possible) to take back to Russia, to strengthen their forces before making an attempt to seize control of Russia from the moderates. If I remember the name right, those are Bolshakov and his men. They got to Garphammar, gained access to the secret underground railway system that links many of the Swedish military and tech installations across Ostertorn, then they went to the nerve center to try and capture the FNIX AI…and failed. The nerve center is that bunker complex in the Farmlands—the one that is now just a big smoking radioactive crater. Supposedly Bolshakov survived that.
The other faction within the Soviet camp is basically just one person, now—Tereshkova. She and the others like her were not there to invade Sweden or to capture or copy the rogue AI or to take back Swedish technological secrets, but to legitimately help the Swedish people, to put down the rogue AI, to destroy, disable, or deactivate the rogue machines, and prevent the incident from spilling out beyond the borders. Tereshkova is the one responsible for calling in the bunker-busting nuke that resulted in that big smoking radioactive crater in the Farmlands. That was her trying to stop Bolshakov, and trying to put an end to the FNIX AI. But, as FNIX told her, and the player as well, the AI is not just in one place anymore. It is everywhere, scattered about Ostertorn and perhaps beyond at this point. It refuses to be captured, or destroyed, and will make every effort to make total destruction of it impossible, by spreading itself out, copying itself, protecting itself, anywhere and any way that it can.
Anyone can collect up and read the information from the notes found with the different collection items. In regards to the Russians, that’ll be the Russian Dolls/Matryoshka Reports and the War Figurines/Notes from various people. Additional information can be found in all the different mission intel items, which were meant to be found during the course of each mission. Some of those items are objectives and are required to advance missions, but some other items are not required objectives and so at least some of the missions can be completed without finding all the mission intel items. It seems like usually, after a mission is completed and the game is restarted, any mission intel items that were not initially found/collected will eventually be automatically added to the mission log, so you don’t always have to go and find them yourself.
Speaking of all those secret facilities, I seriously doubt that we, the player, have destroyed all of them. There are still plenty of underground facilities we haven’t been into, that we’ve barely even seen a hint of, at least several of which are linked to collapsed tunnels from Garphammar and the ruined bunker at the Farmlands crater. There are at least three giant elevator shafts that come to the surface, and which we have not been able to explore beneath. One is at Hallabacken, near Torsberga, in the South Coast. Another is on Himfjall, but not linked to any part of Bergfinken that we have explored. The third and perhaps most obvious giant elevator shaft is the one in the middle of the ‘arena’ in the northern section of Norrmyra Artillery Base. What lies beneath those three locations?
The facility at Hallabacken probably holds the key to what happened to all the people captured by FNIX. We’ve seen that a lot of them—more than some people think, no doubt—were captured, experimented on, and KILLED. Stenungnas Generator location was also used as a prison, and there are bodies there inside inaccessible sections of the structure. We were supposed to see images and video of examination tables or morgue facilities, before using the nuke the Russians gave us, as well. Where those bodies were, who knows. Possibly a feed from Hallabacken, or possibly from elsewhere in the FOA facility we were at that time in the process of preparing to nuke…
As for the elevator shaft on Himfjall, and the one at Norrmyra…those would almost certainly lead to more secret production, storage, and transportation facilities. The war machine keeps turning, churning out machines far out of our sight, beyond our reach, and then gradually re-introduces them above ground. As game mechanics and lore go, hand in hand, a good way to explain how things keep respawning…and how the machines could continue to change, develop, evolve, get tougher.
