The Anomaly in Die Maschine

[caljitsu]

If you'd prefer to watch and/or listen, you can find the companion video here.

 

POINT OF CONTACT

Within Die Maschine’s intro cutscene and reveal, we are shown multiple shots of an “anomaly” or “rift”. Whilst we cannot say for 100% certainty, it is more than likely that this is the Dark Aether’s breach into our world. 

 

CORRUPTING FORCE

As discussed in a prior post of mine, The Dark Aether is an eldritch force of chaos and of entropy, and within it lie all the beings formerly existing within the Aether. Just as with the Banished Keepers before them, these beings have likely been driven mad and undergone grotesque mutation at the hands of the Dark Aether’s corruption. It’s difficult to say how many entities reside within, or how radically they’ve been mutated, however given by Tag Der Toten, it’s implied that the entirety of existence was bereft with the influence of the Aether, it’s a safe bet that there is far more within the Darkness than any four man team could deal with.

 

LACK OF PRESENCE?

However, when we reach Morasko in Die Maschine, the bunker itself is still standing, and despite the undead on site, there is no mass destruction, nor grand corruption, nor millions of indescribable lovecraftian horrors spewing out from this anomaly to wreak havoc upon existence, as one would expect from a tear between this reality and the dark mirror.

 

A MINOR THREAT

If we think of the Dark Aether as a giant hot-air-balloon, I believe that the “anomaly” created by the eponymous “maschine” is like that of a tiny pinprick on the surface of it. The air within the balloon is now seeping out, but at such a tiny  volume that it would barely cause an issue. So to exit the metaphor, we would perhaps have a small, minor incursion into our realm by the forces of darkness. However if it’s genuinely that small as to not even be able to destroy a WWII bunker, is it really that much of a threat? Those certainly don’t seem like the life-of-death stakes that we would expect. 

 

APOCALYPSE AVERTED?

Cast your mind back to Shadows of Evil. This is one of the best examples of a main-quest where we, the playable characters, ostensibly lose. Not only do we allow the Shadowman a free-ticket straight to The House, but equally, we doom the entirety of Dimension 63 to destruction by the Apothicons, and equally, play a key role in the perpetuation of The Cycle. This is about as far away from a “good ending” as you can get. I believe that Die Maschine will play out in much a similar way.

 

APOCALYPSE ASCENDANT

During the main quest, I believe it’s likely that we will begin interacting with this tiny rift in such a manner that we inadvertently weaken the divide between our universe and that of The Dark Aether. In effect, we go from one small paranormal incident, to a need for global military action against an enemy which threatens to end all of existence, and can appear anywhere. From a narrative standpoint, this makes perfect sense, as suddenly you have an excuse to put an “anomaly” in any location in the world, as opposed to games such as Black Ops 3 where the characters were largely bound to either their home countries, or places that already existed within the lore.

 

 

In Die Maschine, I believe we will be the ones to break the seals and bring on the apocalypse - not of fire and brimstone, but one far more twisted, and far more terrifying. 
 

[anonymous]

Great thread, beautiful wording also, it was a true pleasure to read. I feel obligated to add a link to @clueless's post about the Machine seen in the trailer and how it connects to the Dark Aether, as it essentially feels like a pt. 2 on this topic. 

 

With Earth's connection to the Aether being vanished, the only entrance left seems to be the one in the oposite direction: the Dark Aether. I just keep wondering in what applications we have encountered this realm in the 'prior' story.

 

Quote

"I cannot thank you enough for releasing me from this horrible place." - Gersch, Ascension

 

And I already possess the power to leave this netherworld, and re-enter the physical realm once more." - Richtofen, Buried's Endgame

 

It seems like in many cases, we were already dealing with the dark variant of the Aether. Notice how in Gersch's case, he was stuck powerless in that realm while Samantha was all-powerful. So within the same realm, a certain hierarchy of power exists?

 

From earlier theories I think we can conclude that our physical universe lays between a positive and negative energy pole. In science, negative energy itself was never really proven until the 1940s, when a scientist named Hendrik Casimir proposed an experiment which could display the effects produced by negative energy. He thought that if the effects of gravity and electromagnetism were nullified between two metal plates, a pure vacuum would be created in which the effects of negative energy would manifest in an observable manner in the form of something known as the Casimir effect. What did he saw: Without the presence of any external energy, spontaneously the two plates moved closer, until the distance between them became zero and they touch each other. Negative energy exists all around us, but its presence cannot be determined since it is balanced out by the positive energy present everywhere. Once the positive energy is removed like in the experimental setup mentioned above, however, we can see the effects of negative energy.

 

That a small application of ‘pure negative energy’ can have large effects is seen at the Gersch device, a weaponized form of the Casimir experiment. In case of a wormhole, it normally would collapse under its own gravity so rapidly that even a beam of light wouldn’t have time enough to go through it. The concept of negative energy comes as a solution to this problem as it is repulsive to gravity, and hence using it, a wormhole can be kept open. A stable gateway could be formed, and a door “from our side” could be opened, a door to that terrible, terrible place.