Submachine 10 and beyond Theories and Suggestions

[Anteroinen]

Not impossible, though, honestly, why would Mateusz keep holding back at this point like that? (Though I almost feel like he did.) Why not show actual subbots? Also, maybe I remember wrong, but weren't subbots something Submachine created itself?

[ENIHCAMBUS]

Yeah, but these seem scatered in where appear to be locations with human settlement, maybe they are not Subbots, but something the late S.H.I.V.A. got inspiration to create them.

[Anonymous1]

What I find interesting about these sub-bots is how they are frequently shown throughout the game, but nothing about them is mentioned in the notes. Did people who worked and studied Submachine know about them, or were they some secret maintenance/defense drones used by Shiva?

[Anteroinen]

What I find interesting about these sub-bots is how they are frequently shown throughout the game, but nothing about them is mentioned in the notes. Did people who worked and studied Submachine know about them, or were they some secret maintenance/defense drones used by Shiva?

The latter seems unlikely, I mean, launching a whole giant bunch of huge (storage?) cells EVERYWHERE isn't very... secret. Most likely people knew what they were. But that being said, I find it has been a bit of a peeve in the most recent games in general, that notes do not talk about the location they are in, so they seem kind of separate from the surroundings and, indeed, their whole narrative seems kind of separate from what the player is doing.

[Vortex]

I don't find it a problem that subbots appear only in this game and that they're all off. I'd guess sub-bots are invisible (or actively hiding from us) when they're active, and in Sub10 we have time travelled to a point where they're inactive because the defense systems are off, or whatever.

Also, why do they need legs? can't they just float, and use the ladders with their hands? XD

I find it pretty clear that they are the true subbots, created by the defense system.

that notes do not talk about the location they are in, so they seem kind of separate from the surroundings and, indeed, their whole narrative seems kind of separate from what the player is doing.

Well... we have the "five karmic veins" note for the room we find Tile D in, the "focused karma" note for IIO's laboratory, and both the "shrine note" and the "steel curtains" note for the ending. We have appearances of SHIVA/The Computer, also mentioned in the notes. I think that's quite a lot.

Mateusz wanted to answer many questions about Submachine in this game (remember the list of questions?) so that's why some of the notes can be unrelated to this game in particular.

[Anteroinen]

that notes do not talk about the location they are in, so they seem kind of separate from the surroundings and, indeed, their whole narrative seems kind of separate from what the player is doing.

Well... we have the "five karmic veins" note for the room we find Tile D in, the "focused karma" note for IIO's laboratory, and both the "shrine note" and the "steel curtains" note for the ending. We have appearances of SHIVA/The Computer, also mentioned in the notes. I think that's quite a lot.

Mateusz wanted to answer many questions about Submachine in this game (remember the list of questions?) so that's why some of the notes can be unrelated to this game in particular.

I think that is not quite a lot, actually. If there is no reason for a note to be there, then it just doesn't. First of all, not all of those notes are correlated with their subject matter spatially, second of all, they are almost all in dialogue format. For instance, we are to assume a scientist has taped a note into the wall about his work. Is it scrambled notes or something? No, it is a rhetorical conversation about the current location being a vertical loop.

- We're in a loop.

- Yes, I know, there are time anomaly leaks everywhere, but we're not in one right now. Are we?

- No, not horizontal loop. Vertical one.

- What do you mean?

- Look through my microscope. And then through my telescope. You'll see.

Wouldn't it have made more sense if it looked like this:

We're in a loop. No, not horizontal loop. Vertical one.
Look through a microscope. And then through a telescope.

The only lost information is of loops as temporal phenomena, not spatial ones, but that was already brought up elsewhere.

The only explanation for these notes I can think of, is that they were set there for the player as sort of a pilgrimage thing, which is sort of implied by the whole holy usher thing, but... otherwise it just seems so weird.

[Vortex]

- We're in a loop.

- Yes, I know, there are time anomaly leaks everywhere, but we're not in one right now. Are we?

- No, not horizontal loop. Vertical one.

- What do you mean?

- Look through my microscope. And then through my telescope. You'll see.

Wouldn't it have made more sense if it looked like this:

We're in a loop. No, not horizontal loop. Vertical one.
Look through a microscope. And then through a telescope.

But there's a microscope just where the note is found, and a telescope in the next scene. And you can look through both of them, seeing the same image of green dots. Did you miss it?

About the dialogue format, yeah it doesn't make much sense for it to be written in a note. But that doesn't bother me so much. I think of it as a stylistic choice of showing information.

[Jatsko]

I think of it as a stylistic choice of showing information.

That's what I thought. It's what we've seen the whole series, why not continue it

Also, you could make the argument that a machine with voice-distinguishing technology was able to discern which person said what, as far as presenting the dialogue in different lines rather than as one whole paragraph. How that dialogue ended up onto a wall, I'm not sure. Possibly Murtaugh had it rigged so he could remember conversations and post them where he most needed to be reminded of them, since he had so many other thoughts flying around in his mind.

[Anteroinen]

But there's a microscope just where the note is found, and a telescope in the next scene. And you can look through both of them, seeing the same image of green dots. Did you miss it?

About the dialogue format, yeah it doesn't make much sense for it to be written in a note. But that doesn't bother me so much. I think of it as a stylistic choice of showing information.

No, I did not. That is an example of a note that does actually relate to the surroundings, yet at the same time, it was a dialogue so its whole existence makes no sense at the same time. There are myriad ways to phrase the same information to seem like scientific notes or something like that. I'm sorry that I am bit salty about it, but it totally broke my immersion this time over, and I was not a happy potato about that. I got a bit too nitpicky, perhaps. It's just...

Submachine 1, I admit, that made little sense, but back then the whole game was different. In Sub2 there were Murtaugh's diary notes, that made sense (with the exception of the letter in the sewer perhaps). In Sub3, there was only one note that was explained. In Sub4, we were told that Murtaugh told people to leave notes about their progress. In Sub5, we made the notes and the rest was information given by the Lab. In Sub6 there were desperate writings of abandoned dying people who had nothing better to do. In Sub7, even, the same the continued, with the addition of Liz's own notes scattered about. Then in Submachine 8... Something happened. I do not what, but it must have some explanation. (Sub9 had some texts by cultists, so that was nice.)

Agh, sorry about being so annoyed about a small detail.

[Vortex]

It's okay. It didn't bother me as much, but I can see what you mean.

What I think is that Mateusz got a little overwhelmed at the fact that it was the ending and so many questions had to be closed, so he tried to compress everything in a few notes, and the result was that he couldn't tell us everything he wanted to tell, at least as much as he could do with earlier games. The things Mateusz couldn't show us as notes, he showed us in the game itself (sub-bots, Shiva, etc.). And everything got a bit messy.

I like Jatsko's explanation of the appearance of dialogues in notes