For the first post, my Original Arcade/World War Theory (written before Sub9 came out), taken from Submachine Wiki:
Error_3113 wrote:There have been a couple of theories floating around that the original "Submachines" may have been built as part of an underground quarantine or a shelter of some sort. If it was a shelter, due to its complexity, it may have first have been installed as a conceptual Shelter, just in case there was a world war. This would have happened in 1906. It most likely would be a war on the controversy of Science vs. Religion. Then the war finally happened, years after the Shelter's first construction, but too soon for most to immediately seek the shelter (or the shelter wasn't ready to house a good chunk of the human population). AI was originally implemented to oversee all activities of the Submachine Shelter.
However, the Scientists, knowing that in the event of an apocalyptic war, everyone would be crowded together and not have very many means of dealing with the situation, tried to find a way to distract people from the end of the world. So they implemented a series of Arcades, consisting of upright games, in the Subnet to relieve stress. This was one of their first priorities because they had studied human nature and knew that humans, packed together, would not stay content for long.
Each upright station could house multiple games, most of which centered on the idea that everyone would find a way back into the world someday (boosted morale too). The games included puzzles, relating to the idea that the world would need to work together and try to use all the pieces to find a solution for peace. It is also possible that by playing these games, integrated technology made the players' memories fade, to keep them from remembering the conflicts of the past. But it wiped their other memories too, unfortunately.
This is the basis for the arcade appearance in Sub1 and Sub2. The game is distracting the Player from the circumstances of the real world.
However, while all this was going on, Murtaugh was busy concocting a scheme to destroy the foundation, the shelter which would save the people. Maybe Murtaugh is a powerful Scientist radical, opponent to those Scientists who built the Shelter. He utilized the Lighthouse to make his plans to destroy the Shelter and everyone inside after he lost his arm in a freak accident.
Then, after some people figured out what he was doing, they buried him inside and left him to die. However, thanks to his karma arm, he escaped, now even more full of hate and resentment. He recruited some scientists who managed to escape into the Shelter at the advent of the war and manipulated them into trying to shut down the entire facility. He didn't tell them how perilous it would be for them. From then on, after disturbing the technologically superior Subnet, it went berserk and started replicating rapidly, pulling images from places in the real world (like Versailles for the Winter Palace) and jumbling them together to make each Location.
Murtaugh used this replication to his advantage, however. After some of the research teams died, he looked for more recruits, but this time he put them through tests first. He used generated parts of the Subnet, like the Loop and other original parts, like the Lab, for testing sites. Sub-Bots originally built and maintained the original locations, only recognizing humans as a threat after Murtaugh started to meddle with the overall System. This is how the player came into Murtaugh's sight.
Murtaugh confiscated all the arcade games to keep his teams on task to destroy the Subnet; otherwise, they might forget their assignments. However he forgot about the one in the Lighthouse, or he didn't personally want to go back there after being buried alive (who would?). Sub2 starts out with the Player being sidetracked from Murtaugh's mission, and void of memories past from too much game play. (The Player is proven to be bored easily, hence why the Player likes to play arcade games and also is eager to solve Murtaugh's mission for him).
But the AI figured out what Murtaugh was doing as well. It didn't want to kill him right out, as the original programmers instructed the computers not to kill the people it was trying to save. So when the Player was playing the arcade game, the AI inserted a note from Murtaugh into the arcade game AND the player's possession. The Player had transported to the Lighthouse from possibly another test by Murtaugh. After all who is to say that there weren't other tests before then?
As for Liz, she was another Scientist, and a close colleague of Murtaugh. However she slowly realized his radical ideas and began to distant herself from him. As a safety measure she built her own ship in the Shelter to prevent herself from any underground attacks. Maybe Murtaugh didn't like the grand Shelter idea for hiding people. He might have thought that Scientists must risk their lives in the open air fighting for their beliefs. Maybe he hated the fact that some Scientists chose to be "cowards". So he tried to reprimand them by ruining their Shelter.
In Sub 6, Murtaugh tries to get rid of the Player so that the Player wouldn't tell the world if he/she escaped about how Murtaugh turned on the other Scientists who built to Subnet to protect them.
In summary, the Subnet was built as a result of a large war (WWIII?), Science vs. Religion. The Scientists were concerned about making people safe and happy, so they, including Liz, used the arcades to slowly wipe their minds of any conflict in the world. However Murtaugh, a radical Scientist, hated the other Scientists for hiding, refusing to be above ground to defend themselves against religion. And so he sought to destroy their creation as a lesson that they shouldn't hide in the face of conflict.
Error 3113 (talk) 22:53, March 8, 2014 (UTC). Originally posted in Blog Posts.
) but why would the other one be missing too? Speculations?
