How does the Shangri-La loop work?

[RadZakpak]

I was going to pose this as a Discord question, but there's a lot more that goes into it that I think should be documented.

 

So when Shangri-La is undergoing the eclipse, it is verifiably in 1956, in an infinite cycle as Brock and Gary arrive and get killed, only to restart again and again ad nauseum with seemingly no awareness that they are in a cycle. It is also on Mars.

 

But what about outside the eclipse, when it is daylight? This seems to be outside the cycle, which allows Ultimis to drop in and out as they please to assist Brock and Gary, and have real time effects on the "present" such as the radios and the focusing stone being available. This could be in 2011, right after Call of the Dead, on Earth, but that begs some questions:

 

In 1963, the Pentagon is aware of an outbreak at in the Himalayas in 1956, presumably the same one affecting Brock and Gary. They even recognize it as a "Time Paradox Site" on Alpha Omega's map. But how can they be aware of it if it is "in the cycle" so to speak? Could the actions of Ultimis within the cycle be affecting the "real" world of 1956 as well? Or, maybe the daylight version of the map in the "real" world is also in 1956, adjacent to the pocket dimension that Brock and Gary are contained in? Ultimis seem to only be able to enter it by pressing the four buttons at the temple, and even then it is only temporary. But that does butt heads with the idea that the MTD cannot traditionally take you back in time, only forward, as that would mean that Ultimis teleports from 2011 to 1956.

 

So to make it a more basic question, is the daylight version of Shangri-La in 1956 or 2011? Or sometime else?

 

[RichKiller]

11 minutes ago, RadZakpak said:

 

So when Shangri-La is undergoing the eclipse, it is verifiably in 1956, in an infinite cycle as Brock and Gary arrive and get killed, only to restart again and again ad nauseum with seemingly no awareness that they are in a cycle. It is also on Mars.

This is an important takeaway from Shang and MoTD cycles that carries into Primis's cycle. Death resets cycles. 
Brock and Gary are such a mystery today, especially when they make it out of Shangri La in the Agonia (GK) fracture:

Quote

Urgent Telegram. We have just received word that the private plane carrying the expedition crew encountered freak atmospheric event which caused it to crash,
killing all on board including the famous explorers Brock and Gary. This comes weeks after their announcement about the location of Shangri-La.

We never really saw Brock and Gary break the cycle. Perhaps they break it into the Agonia fracture? 

[RadZakpak]

2 minutes ago, RichKiller said:

 

We never really saw Brock and Gary break the cycle. Perhaps they break it into the Agonia fracture? 

The timeline says this in the Agonia fracture:

 

APRIL 25th, 1956

While travelling to Shangri-La, Brock and Gary’s plane crashes in the mountains as a result of a “freak atmospheric event” – another side effect of the Temporal Rifts created by Primis while travelling to Gorod Krovi.

 

This is the same day as their expedition to Shangri-La. I think what the cipher means is, they announced what they believe to be the location of Shangri-La, and as they were travelling there, they were killed by the accident. So they never get trapped in the cycle in the first place. Brock and Gary being at Shangri-la, and the outbreak that ensues, is part of what leads to the creation of Broken Arrow, as in Classified McNamara looks back at all the past outbreaks, including that one. Maybe this somehow leads to the last entry in the Agonia fracture:

 

NOVEMBER 6th, 1963

Hiding in a closet at the Pentagon, McNamara records a message confirming that John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Fidel Castro have died as a result of a zombie outbreak. He dies moments later.

[ProjectKMR]

To answer your question,

Consult the Kronorium.

[NaBrZHunter]

30 minutes ago, ProjectKMR said:

To answer your question,

Consult the Kronorium.

Haha nawwwww, it's never that simple, my friend. That's where the YT community stops.

_______________________________________________

 

...this is codz...

[ProjectKMR]

9 minutes ago, NaBrZHunter said:

Haha nawwwww, it's never that simple, my friend. That's where the YT community stops.

_______________________________________________

 

...this is codz...

Damn you're right,

 

I somehow forgot we are on the GOOD side of the Zombies Community

[clueless]

23 minutes ago, ProjectKMR said:

Damn you're right,

 

I somehow forgot we are on the GOOD side of the Zombies Community

What we do, we do only to secure a better continuity 

[clueless]

If I remember correctly, Time Travel Will Tell can only be done four times per game (until each player has a Focusing Stone). I've only had barely enough sanity to do the Easter Egg once per game, and even then only twice in my life, but I remember hearing that the radios change for good after all four players have obtained a Stone. Is it possible the concentrated amounts of 115 of having 4 Focusing Stones in an area managed to somehow break Brock and Gary from their time loop through temporal disruption? I know that kind of shenanigans with 115 doesn't truly begin until Origins, but that's a LOT of 115 those 4 are holding by the end of Shangri-la. 

[NaBrZHunter]

25 minutes ago, clueless said:

If I remember correctly, Time Travel Will Tell can only be done four times per game (until each player has a Focusing Stone). I've only had barely enough sanity to do the Easter Egg once per game, and even then only twice in my life, but I remember hearing that the radios change for good after all four players have obtained a Stone. Is it possible the concentrated amounts of 115 of having 4 Focusing Stones in an area managed to somehow break Brock and Gary from their time loop through temporal disruption? I know that kind of shenanigans with 115 doesn't truly begin until Origins, but that's a LOT of 115 those 4 are holding by the end of Shangri-la. 

Hm....I would argue that that falls into the ludonarrative - if I'm understanding correctly. 'Cause by the time we get to moon, no matter who picked up the stone or how many, Richtofen always has the one, both in terms of gameplay and in terms of character quotes.

[ProjectKMR]

54 minutes ago, clueless said:

If I remember correctly, Time Travel Will Tell can only be done four times per game (until each player has a Focusing Stone). I've only had barely enough sanity to do the Easter Egg once per game, and even then only twice in my life, but I remember hearing that the radios change for good after all four players have obtained a Stone. Is it possible the concentrated amounts of 115 of having 4 Focusing Stones in an area managed to somehow break Brock and Gary from their time loop through temporal disruption? I know that kind of shenanigans with 115 doesn't truly begin until Origins, but that's a LOT of 115 those 4 are holding by the end of Shangri-la. 

That's a myth in BO1, not sure about BO3 though

[RadZakpak]

2 minutes ago, ProjectKMR said:

That's a myth in BO1, not sure about BO3 though

No, you can definitely do it more than once in BO1. I was in a lobby that did it four times, I don't think we tried to do another but I don't see why it wouldn't let you keep doing it, I just don't think you could pick up the stone.

[clueless]

19 minutes ago, RadZakpak said:

No, you can definitely do it more than once in BO1. I was in a lobby that did it four times, I don't think we tried to do another but I don't see why it wouldn't let you keep doing it, I just don't think you could pick up the stone.

My memory is very fuzzy on Shangri-la lore simply due to bad experiences with the map making me actively avoid it as much as possible, but don't the four buttons push in on their own after all 4 have Focusing Stones, preventing players from starting again? Feels like a pretty big "cycle is broken" moment but it's more likely a moment that prioritizes gameplay over lore (if any of this is even true, again my knowledge of Shangri-la is fuzzy at best)

[RadZakpak]

Just now, clueless said:

My memory is very fuzzy on Shangri-la lore simply due to bad experiences with the map making me actively avoid it as much as possible, but don't the four buttons push in on their own after all 4 have Focusing Stones, preventing players from starting again? Feels like a pretty big "cycle is broken" moment but it's more likely a moment that prioritizes gameplay over lore (if any of this is even true, again my knowledge of Shangri-la is fuzzy at best)

Just looked it up, and you are right! There's a limit of four times, and it is the same on the BO3 version. See the end of this video, where the buttons stay pressed in: 

 

[clueless]

So the cycle breaks when 4 Focusing Stones are in the same point in time, at which point Brock and Gary are "freed" to put it loosely. More than likely they get overwhelmed by zombies but at least at that point they die outside the cycle they've been stuck it and don't have to suffer it any more

[clueless]

But then we have the other issue @NaBrZHunter brought up, there's only one Focusing Stone in Moon. Maybe because the four Focusing Stones are all from the same point within a broken cycle, they coalesce back into a singular stone that Richtofen reclaims if it's not already in his possession? In Black Ops 1 a quote played during the game over screen, not sure if it does in BO3 as well but it's along the lines of "now that you're done using the Stone, I'll be taking that" implying he takes the singular stone that remains when he's not the one holding it when the game ends.

[NaBrZHunter]

I don’t remember that, but that would be amazing! And you really should give it another chance. It’s a walk in the park if you make the most of the fire zombie. 

[anonymous]

7 hours ago, clueless said:

In Black Ops 1 a quote played during the game over screen, not sure if it does in BO3 as well but it's along the lines of "now that you're done using the Stone, I'll be taking that" implying he takes the singular stone that remains when he's not the one holding it when the game ends.

That's actually very cool, didn't knew about that! Also not about the max 4 times thing. 

 

In the Classified intro, we see that Ultimis travels from 1956 (Shangri La) to 1963 (Classified). If only that weird jazzy cartoon would show us if the Ultimis teleportation occured during the Eclipse or during daylight, that'd solve the mystery . 

 

We also have the Shangri-La loading screen with the ascending pyramids/vimañas, stating that it happened at the same time ("Meanwhile...") as whatever event we see in the Moon loading screen: three astronauts wandering the Moon's surface and discovering such pyramid, which I've always assumed to be Neil Armstrong & co in 1969. Though of course this, the pyramids ascending in Shangri La, doesn't have to tie with the time Ultimis were around there.

 

Let's see, due to the pressence of the Soviet, Chinese and Vietnamese boxes I'm fairly convinced that daylight Shang takes place in or after the Cold War.

11 hours ago, RadZakpak said:

But that does butt heads with the idea that the MTD cannot traditionally take you back in time, only forward, as that would mean that Ultimis teleports from 2011 to 1956.

And exactly for that reason I'll go for post-Cold War, 2011. That would mean that Ultimis teleporting to the Pentagon happened during Eclipse Shang, in 1956, and perhaps even due to the Eclipse.

 

At the same time, though, it is very appealing to say Brock & Gary are trapped in a pocket realm similar to Alcatraz, where the cycle resets itself every time they die. But Mob of the Dead also takes place at a certain point in the 40s, right? Even while it takes place in a seperate pocketrealm? So maybe the Eclipse pocketrealm takes place in 1956, though no normal linear time but a circular cycle controls the site's time?

 

EDIT: To contradict myself: We also see a Soviet lunar lander as debris in Shang. Now we hear this in an Ascension radio:

 

"Dr. Gersh: "I can assure you that our craft will be far superior to whatever the Americans, or should I say, Canadians, are developing. Finally, Project Thunder is nearing completion."

 

The craft likely refers to the Lunar Lander. In the Timeline, we learn that Project Thunder, the Thundergun, was created in 1962. So I assume the Ascension Group worked on the lunar lander in 1962 as well. How can there be a lunar lander in Shang, both daylight and eclipse, if the eclipse is in 1956?

[RichKiller]

10 hours ago, RadZakpak said:

The timeline says this in the Agonia fracture:

 

APRIL 25th, 1956

While travelling to Shangri-La, Brock and Gary’s plane crashes in the mountains as a result of a “freak atmospheric event” – another side effect of the Temporal Rifts created by Primis while travelling to Gorod Krovi.

 

This is the same day as their expedition to Shangri-La. I think what the cipher means is, they announced what they believe to be the location of Shangri-La, and as they were travelling there, they were killed by the accident. So they never get trapped in the cycle in the first place.

This is correct, though I don't know if the Brock and Gary loop lasts forever. 

 

17 minutes ago, anonymous said:

Let's see, due to the pressence of the Soviet, Chinese and Vietnamese boxes I'm fairly convinced that daylight Shang takes place in or after the Cold War.

Take in mind the temple is time traveling. So it is possible that the soviets got there in the future, set up the mining operation, then the temple time traveled to the past (to the Himalayas, Brazil or whatever lol) to the time Ultimis arrives.

[Spotlight]

So, the model of the radio from which you listen to Brock and Gary's recordings seems to be based on a "Zoom H4n Handy Recorder" that was released in February 2009.

 

 

Now, based on this it would make more sense for Brock and Gary, as well as Ultimis to be in 2011, before they "activate" the eclipse.

 

It would also make more sense that Sally to get there too and get trapped in the loop.

 

Regarding the Pentagon knowing about the outbreak, the same situation could apply here as with Pablo Marinus in Tag der Toten, who despite being in his "bubble/pocket dimension" made contact with the Ascension Group.

 

But there is another problem, the timeline and its entry into the Agonia Fracture.

 

APRIL 25th, 1956
"While travelling to Shangri-La, Brock and Gary's plane crashes in the mountains as a result of a "freak atmospheric event" - another side effect of the Temporal Rifts created by Primis while travelling to Gorod Krovi."

 

58 minutes ago, anonymous said:

In the Classified intro, we see that Ultimis travels from 1956 (Shangri La) to 1963 (Classified). If only that weird jazzy cartoon would show us if the Ultimis teleportation occured during the Eclipse or during daylight, that'd solve the mystery . 

In the last step of the Easter Egg, you cannot take the Focusing Stone in the eclipse, only in daylight.
In the intro, Ultimis Richtofen already has the Focusing Stone, the teleporter incident occurs and they travel from 1956 to 1963, but that doesn't make sense if the daylight is supposed to be in 2011.

 

Unless they were "hiding" the year?
Because there's no mention in the timeline that 2011 is the year that Shangri-La occurs as well.

[clueless]

7 hours ago, NaBrZHunter said:

I don’t remember that, but that would be amazing! And you really should give it another chance. It’s a walk in the park if you make the most of the fire zombie. 

My issues lie in reality, not with the gameplay itself. My first completion of the Easter Egg was on BO1 when Shangri-la broke my tv right after we pressed the 4 buttons for the first time (I believe my friends said I had 42 downs by the time we were done!) And on BO3 I crashed so often on the map when trying to do the Easter Egg I figured it was the maps way of reminding me of that first incident.  My issues are not with the gameplay, my issues are that the map is cursed for me lol

[anonymous]

@Spotlight Completely forgot about Sally! And yes, combining it with those radios I assume Brock & Gary went there in 2011, to get stuck in 1956. 

• 42 minutes ago, Spotlight said:

  In the last step of the Easter Egg, you cannot take the Focusing Stone in the eclipse, only in daylight.
  In the intro, Ultimis Richtofen already has the Focusing Stone, the teleporter incident occurs and they travel from 1956 to 1963, but that doesn't make sense if the daylight is supposed to be in 2011.

  Well I could see the Eclipse being used as the temple teleporter seen in that cutscene. So Ultimis grab the stone in daylight but then go back to Eclipse again to teleporting themselves to Moon, causing them to get stuck in the Pentagon.

[clueless]

1 hour ago, anonymous said:

And exactly for that reason I'll go for post-Cold War, 2011. That would mean that Ultimis teleporting to the Pentagon happened during Eclipse Shang, in 1956, and perhaps even due to the Eclipse.

 

At the same time, though, it is very appealing to say Brock & Gary are trapped in a pocket realm similar to Alcatraz, where the cycle resets itself every time they die. But Mob of the Dead also takes place at a certain point in the 40s, right? Even while it takes place in a seperate pocketrealm? So maybe the Eclipse pocketrealm takes place in 1956, though no normal linear time but a circular cycle controls the site's time?

 

The craft likely refers to the Lunar Lander. In the Timeline, we learn that Project Thunder, the Thundergun, was created in 1962. So I assume the Ascension Group worked on the lunar lander in 1962 as well. How can there be a lunar lander in Shang, both daylight and eclipse, if the eclipse is in 1956?

I'm going to go COMPLETELY speculative here, so take everything I say from here on out as theory without evidence. 

 

What if, if this is even correct or even agreed with, when this cycle breaks after getting the 4 Stones, time STAYS in 1956 instead of going back to 2011? Due to the broken cycle there wouldn't be a proper place for the pocket dimension to go, so it just stays where it is outside of the eclipse (which I remember reading from an older post is a symbol of locked time/repeating cycle) and continues on as normal. Now with a broken cycle, the continuity dissolves and causes the 4 Stones (which only existed due to a repeating cycle in the first place) to revert to a singular form which Richtofen takes if he doesn'talready hold it. This could resolve the issue of starting in 2011 yet ending in 1956 to go to Classified in 1961 (forward in time, which the MTD only seems capable of doing which I never noticed before)

 

The only question unresolved at this point would be the Agonia Fracture, but that has a much simpler answer. Technology was far more advanced at such an earlier point that Brock and Gary, among other scientists, definitely could have located the mysterious temple far sooner than our relatively inept original dimension (935 had begun far sooner in the fractures and had much more collaborative efforts than we've ever seen in Ultimis' timeline, leading to giant mech robots in 1918 compared to Ultimis Richtofen making the Wunderwaffe in 1942)

[anonymous]

51 minutes ago, clueless said:

What if, if this is even correct or even agreed with, when this cycle breaks after getting the 4 Stones, time STAYS in 1956 instead of going back to 2011? Due to the broken cycle there wouldn't be a proper place for the pocket dimension to go, so it just stays where it is outside of the eclipse (which I remember reading from an older post is a symbol of locked time/repeating cycle) and continues on as normal. Now with a broken cycle, the continuity dissolves and causes the 4 Stones (which only existed due to a repeating cycle in the first place) to revert to a singular form which Richtofen takes if he doesn'talready hold it. This could resolve the issue of starting in 2011 yet ending in 1956 to go to Classified in 1961 (forward in time, which the MTD only seems capable of doing which I never noticed before)

So you mean the Focussing Stones would solve the paradox of their existence by merging into one original one? I could see the possibility.

 

I never did the Shangri-La quest in the first place, but it is true that Brock and Gary can only be heard in the Eclipse pocketdimension right? When they finally escape, and the Eclipse ends, they might just be transferred back to the future again, to 2011.

 

The whole temple mechanism itself remains weird, like do the four buttons generate the Eclipse and causes the timeloop? Or do the four buttons teleport the whole site to a certain place in space and time where an Eclipse occurs, causing it to trap the site in a loop? I would like to share this old Hindu manuscript, discovered by @MixMasterNut, describing what we see in the Shangri-La loading screen.

 

"Strong and durable must the body of the Vimana be made, like a great flying bird of light material. Inside one must put the mercury engine with its iron heating apparatus underneath. By means of the power latent in the mercury which sets the driving whirlwind in motion, a man sitting inside may travel a great distance in the sky."

 

We can see the whirlwind on the loading screen, generated by Mercury. I think this referss to 'Red Mercury', a fictional purple-ish metal said to be used in Nazi wunderweapons such as Die Glocke. Therefore, I'm inclined to say that this 'Mercury' that is said to cause the Temple to "fly" is actually 115, and "flying" is a metaphore for timetravelling. In simpler words: Shangri-La uses an 115-driven engine to timetravel, and could be seen as a giant ancient prototype of the MTD's. This Mercury (read: 115) Vortex Engine required a special type of solar energy from an Eclipse to be activated. Perhaos this is why Der Riese, ground zero of Die Glocke and teleportation experiments, is trapped in an Eclipse?

 

Anyway, this brings us back on my first question again: Does the Shangri-La mechanism generate to Eclipse, causing timetravel? Or does timetravel send the lost city back to a specific point of time where an Eclipse occured, allowing the pyramids to fly as we see on the loading screens? My head hurts

[NaBrZHunter]

1 hour ago, anonymous said:

Anyway, this brings us back on my first question again: Does the Shangri-La mechanism generate to Eclipse, causing timetravel? Or does timetravel send the lost city back to a specific point of time where an Eclipse occured, allowing the pyramids to fly as we see on the loading screens? My head hurts

So does mine. I’m so out of practice. I’m particularly struggling with Rad’s latest post about Broken Arrow and the Agonia fracture. It locks my brain up. 
 

Could the temple have a sort of quantum-location, where pressing the buttons on the Himalayan fracture shift the variables (the unreconciled/paradoxical elements, aka, Ultimis) to an entangled fracture, seemingly on Mars? The blur could be the shift through the tesseract to the fracture.

 

 

Every time the temple wall is blown open, the paradoxically entangled individuals (in this case, 4, are shifted back through The tesseract to their origin point, and the conflict is resolved for each. Thus, when you’ve done it 4 times, the paradox is reconciled and the stone reappears on the altar. Once all four individuals have become fully entangled by interacting with the central catalyst for this flux, then their rightful position is reconciled for each and the fracture collapses back into its primary position (Himalayas).  

[RadZakpak]

4 hours ago, anonymous said:

 

 

The craft likely refers to the Lunar Lander. In the Timeline, we learn that Project Thunder, the Thundergun, was created in 1962. So I assume the Ascension Group worked on the lunar lander in 1962 as well. How can there be a lunar lander in Shang, both daylight and eclipse, if the eclipse is in 1956?

But also consider that Richtofen made the deal with the Soviets and asked for a lander all the way back in 1945. That lander they take to Ascension from Kino is the same model, so it's likely to me that either the Soviets already had a space program, or the more likely explanation is that the landers are Group 935 models repainted to Soviet colors. So the Shang lander could be theirs too. This is made even more likely because in the same sentence that Richtofen asks for a lander at Kino, he also asks for a cosmonaut suit, the one he wears in Ascension BO1, and it's the same type as the one used in Moon by Group 935 staff.

 

39 minutes ago, NaBrZHunter said:

 

Could the temple have a sort of quantum-location, where pressing the buttons on the Himalayan fracture shift the variables (the unreconciled/paradoxical elements, aka, Ultimis) to an entangled fracture, seemingly on Mars? The blur could be the shift 
 

Every time the temple wall is blown open, the paradoxically entangled individuals (in this case, 4, are shifted back through The tesseract to their origin point, and the conflict is resolved for each. Thus, when you’ve done it 4 times, the paradox is reconciled and the stone reappears on the altar. Once all four individuals have become fully entangled by interacting with the central catalyst for this flux, then their rightful position is reconciled for each and the fracture collapses back into its primary position (Himalayas).  

 

An interesting idea. I'm still of the opinion that canonically we collect the stone only once, and in that case, why are there no lingering effects from being entangled? So does changing variables in the eclipse (moving the crystals, shooting them, helping Brock and Gary along) cause variables in the real world to change (radios appearing, crystals staying in place that weren't there before, the wall staying blown up)? It's sort of like how freeing the Apothicons in the sort of pocket dimension that is Shadows of Evil also frees them in Dimension 63.