Black Wolf

I think the simplest answer here is simply that Treyarch hadn't planned the story out enough... Kino marks a pretty interesting shift in Richtofen's understanding of what's going on. This seems to be the map where he fully grasps that Sam is control. Consider prior quotes regarding power-ups "You are too generous, my lord!" and those in Kino "A gift from Sam... but why!?" Likewise with the mystery box "Why do you tease me, master?" versus "Samantha, I talked to you about this." The idea that Richtofen forgot is interesting considering a side effect of the 115 "super soldier" experiments on the others, and some quotes on Shangri-La suggest that Richtofen also has some memory loss. Still, this seems a really big thing to forget. I believe a possible solution is that Richtofen knew Sam had been inside the machine, but didn't know about the incidents of the final audio reel from moon. That is to say, he knows she physically entered the machine, but does not realize that she became "trapped" in the aether and is controlling the zombies. Having never heard back from Groph and Schuster, Richtofen may have assumed they took care of Sam and Dr. Maxis. However, after hearing her voice on Der Riese "No treat for you!" "Having fun!?" he may have started to put things together. According to the moon audio reels, Groph and Schuster contacted Richtofen and told him when Samantha entered the machine. He instructed them to find Dr. Maxis to talk to her since if Sam had survived, Maxis must have as well.

Part of the easter egg involves charging up a focusing crystal by resonating the sounds of the gongs. Presumably, filtering the Fractalizer's power through the focusing crystal gave it a significant boost. There's also a different between undead (pseudo-living), animate matter and a meteor. Nevertheless, as of the end of the moon easter egg, even if it broke it wouldn't matter. The power of the Vril generator seems to be used up during the switch, but it certainly doesn't seem to be sustaining it.

The audio reels on moon confirm that Samantha's mother is dead, or at least Dr. Maxis says she is. Samantha only makes one mention of her mother, that I've heard, and it's when she's running out of air. She mentions that it hurts and asks "where... where is mommy?" This is kind of weird, because if her mother has been dead for a while, as Maxis implies, it hardly makes sense for Sam to be asking for her. On a somewhat random note, I have 2 middle names, and it's not that uncommon. I always figured it was Samantha Emilia Abigail Maxis, but I could be wrong.

The songs are analyzed a lot, but it's always worth looking at it again. When analyzing songs, generally what you're doing is the same thing you do when you interpret and analyze poetry. A good first step is to determine who the active parties are, but in the case of "115," there is no for sure answer, so you're going to end up with a bunch of different interpretations (which is fine awesome). The speaker of the poem uses first-person singular, and the most commonly believed speakers are Samantha and, sometimes, Richtofen, but one could make a good argument for Maxis as well. The other important point in "115" is the addressee, the "you." Most likely, it is the same "you" throughout the whole text, since there isn't any hard perspective shift. Although the lyric "You stand for nothing and overlook something," may be a nod at the players, it doesn't fit with the rest of the usages of "you" very well. For example: - "I'll stop you from breathing and all your deceiving" - "I'll bring you death and pestilence" - "I'll bring you down on my own" - "I'll bring you doom that you can see and bring you down and see you bleed" From these lines, we can probably conclude that the addressee is antagonistic to the speaker, but his/her/their identity is a mystery without first deciding who the speaker is. Of course, you could interpret the song multiple times from different perspectives before deciding which one you think is best. In regards to "they're waiting for the second coming again," the Second Coming is often a term for the return of the Christ figure in the Christian belief system. However, it is a term which denotes the apocalypse, which I believe is likely an appropriate usage here. It is Christian imagery, but that does not lock it into actual Christian belief system. You find a plethora of classical "pagan" imagery in Christian texts, for example. An excellent (and very short) read here is "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats. It's in public domain now and widely available online. Of course, modern culture has also adopted the phrase to simply mean 'the return of an important figure.' It gets used in movies and television in this manner pretty frequently. What's interesting is that "they are waiting for the second coming again" (emphasis mine). Are they waiting again because it didn't happen the first time they waited, or are they waiting for it to happen again? Depends on how you interpret the rest of the song, I think. Personally, I love this song, and I've analyzed it multiple times. (I just keep my analyses tucked away and try not to bother people like a nerd orz). I often see people interpreting the "end of all creation" line as a reference to the end of the Moon easter egg, and this is a valid and wonderful interpretation. However, I do like to point out that we are analyzing this in hindsight, and the original map was in Paris, which may indicate that the original intent of this line was not the literal destruction of the Earth as it occurs. Again, this does not undercut that interpretation of the line, but it does help keep one from being limited to it. I'll ..stop now. Maybe I said something helpful in my nerd rambling.

Oh, God. Lag. There's really not much you can do about lag, but I think it's a good practice to tell your team it's an issue so somebody knows you might need a hand and can be prepared to get you if you happen to go down. But seriously, lag isn't anybody's fault. It just happens. :| As for reviving, it's one of those things that depends on the map. If, for instance, people are playing Moon, and one person is in the spawn and another goes down in the biodome.. that's probably just not happening under most circumstances. One solution is to have a dedicated reviver hanging out near the middle of the map; the other is to operate on the buddy system. I always try to revive. Always. I've had some randoms leave me to die so they could hit the box. That game didn't go very far. :?

This is a very touchy subject and I felt the need to address this issue. I recently met someone who I thought I know from the forum. I also had a few old friends in the lobby including forum mate. So during a so called road to round whatever (4 players)- speed run I started discussing what our strategies should be. This person mistakenly thought I was marching orders and he left the lobby as soon as the game ended prematurely because everyone died. It was my friends first game after long long time so I was dictating (in friendly way) everything to him that needs to be done so we don't end up doing separate things, But he is an average player. But things went bad since none of had juggernaut and every one died. My forum mate left the game, really!? He replied to me later saying you guys are such pros and you died at round 8. One think that bothers me the most is when someone is not a team player. Believe me, I have played countless (just messing around) games and I have not spoken a word and just let things go as they come. But when we do a specific challenge or trying to meet a target I make sure everyone is on the same page. I hate when things go south and people repeatedly do same mistakes over and over again. Ex: two people coming to revive the same person is just a disaster and could lead to more downs. All I ask is if you have a plan, lets discuss it and if you don't you better follow mine or get the fcuk out. There is a huge difference between discussing and barking orders. Proposing a strategy, listening to feedback, adjusting, and getting confirmation is teamwork. Telling people what to do at every turn is just rude. Like I said, it's an attitude issue. I've never played with you, so I can't speak to your experience, but you seem nice enough on the forums that it sounds like your friend maybe overreacted. Maybe he just didn't like your plan. For instance, on Shangri-la with randoms, it can be really frustrating to try to pack a punch. At some point, someone is going to have to ask the team to go stand on the switches and, oftentimes, leave a crawler. There's a huge difference between: - Hey guys, please leave a crawler end of this round. I need to upgrade my guns. - Don't kill the last effin' zombie. or - I'd like to pack a punch, can you guys get on the switches? - Hey, dumbass, stand on that thing. This is just one example, but yeah. You can plan and lead and all that good stuff and still be respectful to the other people. Again, I'm sure you are from what I can tell of you, and I'm not trying to imply that anybody here acts like that, but it does happen.

Thank you for that! [brains] EDIT: ...or not. Apparently you help me out too much, so I must wait for someone else to impress me before giving you rep again. Alas.

I understand the appeal of getting high rounds, really I do, but I also think there's something to be said for just having a good time. You can be the most skilled person in the group, but if you're just barking orders and yelling at every little mistake, you're just making everybody miserable. Pft on that. So generally, attitude is more important to me than any level of skill or anything. I'm also a total storyline/characterization person, so anyone willing to put up with my "wait, wait what did he say!?" is also totally awesome in my book. :D

You could argue that the excavators are malfunctioning and breaching areas they aren't supposed to. Considering that Maxis somehow accessed the station's computer system, it's not a far reach that the internal systems would have had data corrupted, leading to digging fiascos. I'm pretty sure the station was built to investigate the pyramid rather than necessarily harvest 115. I don't even recall seeing any 115 around.. unlike Shangri-la. Source?

However, in Shangri-la, Dempsey does specifically mention having been at the other locations, including Ascension. Specifically, he says "Ancient temples, Russian cosmodromes, being stuck in a dark closet with Richtofen," referring to Shangri-la, Ascension, and Call of the Dead. We know that they get to Shangri-la directly after Call of the Dead, so Ascension must occur before Call of the Dead.

Perhaps he was trying to find one that would fit in Ascension when the Zombies started coming after them, so he didn't bother getting out of it until they were in the room in CotD. He then later put it on when he needed to. That could work, but I wonder why he would need it on Moon. The suit available on moon (PES) seems to fit over any kind of clothing, unless everybody is just stripping in the receiving bay... Where am I taking this topic? =X

The problem with Samantha as a playable character in her own body is that she's a little girl. She makes references to not being able to lift heavy guns and such in her real body, so it's potentially problematic. That being said, I don't mind her sticking around for a while, but I already miss Richtofen. The plot and easter egg was really nice, but man... Richtofen was awesome to play as. :(

But he goes back and forth... He goes from the uniform, to the space suit in Ascension, then back to the uniform in Shangri-la, and back to the space suit in Moon. Where does he keep it? Anyway, one could always consider the possibility of dual timelines, by which I mean various, co-existing versions of the universe.

Richtofen specifically mentions a part of the MDT that controls time. "We must have gone too far in the future. Look, the teleporter's completely broken. The time circuits are damaged. We'll have to reboot the..." Even if you don't believe that he has complete control over the destination, this suggests that he has isolated some part of the teleporter (time circuits) which are controlling the time travel aspect of the device. While we're on the topic of crazy time jumps.. why/how does Richtofen keep changing clothes? xD

Originally, Richtofen is surprised when they time travel to Kino der Toten. However, if you listen in Call of the Dead he says they went "too far into the future," to which Dempsey replies "you brought us here on purpose!?" This suggests that, at some point, he has learned to control the time travel aspect of the MDT. However, this does not present an easy solution since Richtofen is the one who knows how to manipulate the MDT, and it's never suggested any of the others know how. Thus, he was the only one who could use the time travel, and I don't think he'll be too keen on helping them undo what he's worked so hard for.