"The Paradox Must be Resolved. The Loop Must be Closed."

[AetherialVoices]

"The Paradox Must be Resolved. The Loop Must be Closed."

 

This quote has surfaced three times now. Three times under very different circumstances. The first is towards the end of the Origins Easter Egg Maxis will say "I must go to her. The paradox must be resolved. The loop must be closed". He says this right before he enters the portal that presumably takes him to Samantha. The second time we see this quote surface is in one of Der Eisendrache's radio messages,"Several individuals reported hearing the same exact words: I must go to her; the loop must be closed.  While most accounts claim that the words were spoken by an unidentified individual, several seem to believe that the quotation came from Dr. Maxis". The third is in Gorod Krovi as S.O.P.H.I.A. ascends into the sky saying "I must go to him. The paradox must be resolved. The loop must be closed".

 

Now that we are all on the same page with knowledge of this quotation, lets get into the more theoretical side of this. There have frequently been hints through quotes, radios, character models, etc. that our characters are in a loop. This loop begins before Origins and goes at least to the end of Gorod Krovi. Although proving this is not my primary intention with this post, I will give some evidence to support the idea of a loop. Evidence #1: Richtofen already has the blood vials at the beginning of Origins. Evidence #2: The massive amount of dialogue stating that they have done this time and time again. Evidence #3: Nikolai has the dent in his bulletproof chest-plate all the way back in Origins that originated from Nikolai "1.0" shooting him with an MR-6.

 

Moving on, what of the paradox? What paradox is so important that it is relevant from back in Origins and is still relevant now? Most people do not classify time loops as paradoxes themselves. They can be a theoretically natural occurrence and explainable, thus non-paradoxical. But breaking these loops are a different story. But how do they break the cycle? They have to change something drastically. There was one map were our four characters started out understanding what was going on quite clearly. The Giant. If you watch the cutscene, they are all quite aware of what will happen. As Richtofen comes out and kills his other self Dempsey exclaims "Dammit Richtofen, I thought we were done with this!". Although Richtofen killing himself is part of the loop, something else occurred that was not. Richtofen collected the soul of his other self. Although there is evidence towards Richtofen not taking his own soul, this simply has to be the case because of the gateworm symbol on The Giant. Each gateworm is representative of a soul. Even if that soul is not needed for Monty's plan, it was necessary to take it to break the cycle. When he did this, the integrity and continuity of the timelines, and therefore the loop itself, was disrupted. That is how "temporal disruption" was achieved and the future was changed. The future of the timelines was irrelevant. It was the future of the Origins characters that was changed. This was step one in breaking the cycle. This is their "Paradoxical Prologue" of breaking the cycle, closing the loop, and resolving the paradox.

 

Thanks for reading and let me know what you make of all this!

[Monopoly Mac]

This thread is mad old but I'll comment anyways. This is a really cool theory.

[Doppelgänger]

Athereal, buddy! I hadn't seen this until now. Brilliant work. Brains for you.

 

One thing I'd have liked to be in the Gorod Krovi end cutscene was for Nikolai to have actually been shot, as the bullet would have hit the exact spot that hole is in. It would have clarified that they definitely are in a loop and been a very nice touch. 

 

Just a little nitpick I'd have liked to see. 

[Cameron]

On 30/07/2016 at 11:06 AM, AetherialVoices said:

"The Paradox Must be Resolved. The Loop Must be Closed."

 

This quote has surfaced three times now. Three times under very different circumstances. The first is towards the end of the Origins Easter Egg Maxis will say "I must go to her. The paradox must be resolved. The loop must be closed". He says this right before he enters the portal that presumably takes him to Samantha. The second time we see this quote surface is in one of Der Eisendrache's radio messages,"Several individuals reported hearing the same exact words: I must go to her; the loop must be closed.  While most accounts claim that the words were spoken by an unidentified individual, several seem to believe that the quotation came from Dr. Maxis". The third is in Gorod Krovi as S.O.P.H.I.A. ascends into the sky saying "I must go to him. The paradox must be resolved. The loop must be closed".

 

Now that we are all on the same page with knowledge of this quotation, lets get into the more theoretical side of this. There have frequently been hints through quotes, radios, character models, etc. that our characters are in a loop. This loop begins before Origins and goes at least to the end of Gorod Krovi. Although proving this is not my primary intention with this post, I will give some evidence to support the idea of a loop. Evidence #1: Richtofen already has the blood vials at the beginning of Origins. Evidence #2: The massive amount of dialogue stating that they have done this time and time again. Evidence #3: Nikolai has the dent in his bulletproof chest-plate all the way back in Origins that originated from Nikolai "1.0" shooting him with an MR-6.

 

Moving on, what of the paradox? What paradox is so important that it is relevant from back in Origins and is still relevant now? Most people do not classify time loops as paradoxes themselves. They can be a theoretically natural occurrence and explainable, thus non-paradoxical. But breaking these loops are a different story. But how do they break the cycle? They have to change something drastically. There was one map were our four characters started out understanding what was going on quite clearly. The Giant. If you watch the cutscene, they are all quite aware of what will happen. As Richtofen comes out and kills his other self Dempsey exclaims "Dammit Richtofen, I thought we were done with this!". Although Richtofen killing himself is part of the loop, something else occurred that was not. Richtofen collected the soul of his other self. Although there is evidence towards Richtofen not taking his own soul, this simply has to be the case because of the gateworm symbol on The Giant. Each gateworm is representative of a soul. Even if that soul is not needed for Monty's plan, it was necessary to take it to break the cycle. When he did this, the integrity and continuity of the timelines, and therefore the loop itself, was disrupted. That is how "temporal disruption" was achieved and the future was changed. The future of the timelines was irrelevant. It was the future of the Origins characters that was changed. This was step one in breaking the cycle. This is their "Paradoxical Prologue" of breaking the cycle, closing the loop, and resolving the paradox.

 

Thanks for reading and let me know what you make of all this!

Brilliant. That makes more sense than my one.?

[Dr. Monty]

Now we can take this into consideration with Revelations The loop must be closed the cycle must be broken. I know most of you probably heard this millions of times in videos or whatever but We Failed PRIMIS Failed if you look at the ending a different way then when it said "The End" it was the end of that storyline and that cycle, and the cycle starts a new i know you all remember that a cycle was in the storyline once before with Mob of the Dead. In fact Monty is evil he restarted the loop as much as i would love to keep going i don't want to repeat things others have said.

[NaBrZHunter]

3 hours ago, Dr. Monty said:

Now we can take this into consideration with Revelations The loop must be closed the cycle must be broken. I know most of you probably heard this millions of times in videos or whatever but We Failed PRIMIS Failed if you look at the ending a different way then when it said "The End" it was the end of that storyline and that cycle, and the cycle starts a new i know you all remember that a cycle was in the storyline once before with Mob of the Dead. In fact Monty is evil he restarted the loop as much as i would love to keep going i don't want to repeat things others have said.

You could keep going, no one would mind. Share your thoughts, by all means. But, if you do, please avoid run-on sentences. ;) hehe. Punctuation makes all the difference. 

[RadZakpak]

Good thoughts all around. I think there is some parallel to the way the Mob of the Dead cycle works. Each time the cycle is started over, Primis in the Origins point in the loop has pretty much no recollection of past events of the cycle. Except, Richtofen has those vials, and it seems very possible to me that Richtofen, shortly after the Great War, left some collection of information for his future self to try and break the cycle this time around, and only through Origins Richtofen's travels finding the Kronorium can he put the information he has been given into context, and try to figure out how to use it to break the cycle.

 

So basically, everyone else wants to close the loop, complete the cycle. Richtofen is the man with the plan to break it. The way he tells Monty he should send them somewhere, gives a certain vibe of him knowing exactly what Monty would do, because he does it every time.

 

There's also the theory I've heard that somehow Primis Richtofen took the place of his Origins self after each cycle ends, right at the moment Dempsey, Takeo, and Nikolai show up in the intro cutscene to Origins. Evidence for this being that he seems awful confused about the blood on his hands and he knows the robot is about to step on top of them before it even lights up.