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	Message: : Chapter 2: Rage (Part 2/2) : Thing What Kicks…: : With the information and technical access to the water treatment plant, the : main character is sent to destroy the dam system “opening the way for : [Durandal’s] commandos infiltrating the Pfhor defensive perimeter”. : The main character disables the pumps of the water treatment facility and : successfully floods Lh’owon command and other Pfhor facilities. : Durandal’s teams have activated the S’pht AI, and Durandal is “…learning much : about the final days of the S'pht, but the intelligence is reticent and : inscrutable. It expects something, that is clear enough, but what is a : mystery”. : As Durandal tries to communicate with the uncooperative AI further, “the : S'pht AI... keeps acting confused and disoriented.” It is unclear whether : Thoth(?) is malfunctioning or just being its cryptic self. : At the same time, Durandal sends some of his humans to an ancient S’pht : citadel to “search for clues” and plans to send the main character to help : them. Durandal also bombards the “Pfhor’s electronic approval system” from : orbit to cause even more chaos for them. : In orbit, Durandal is losing his battle against Tycho’s scoutship as : Durandal’s S’pht begin “behaving strangely”. The Western Arm of Battle : Group Seven approaches quickly in command of Admiral Tfear. : Durandal changes his plans and decides he needs immediate access to the Pfhor : network. Instead of sending the main character to the ancient S’pht : citadel, Durandal sends him to a command complex to help infiltrate the : network. : Location: : Perimeter Station 7AF, water treatment/maintenance facility for Planetary : Command, and all of the Eastern Emplacements : Success status: : Tycho has disabled Durandal’s ship. Thoth is activated, but is not : communicating with Durandal. S’pht’kr have not arrived. Tfear is : approaching Lh’owon. : Comments: : Presumably the S’pht Citadel mentioned here is the Citadel of Antiquity from : Marathon 2. : Also, the command complex Durandal is about to send the main character to is : clearly Warerloo Waterpark, the first level of Marathon 2. : It is genuinely unclear what is going on with Thoth. It’s hard to make : guesses, as well, since this is the first time we’ve seen the two of them : interacting with each other. Thoth may be behaving coy, or there may be : something wrong with him. : THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PLAYER AND MAIN CHARACTER SPLIT: : The main character presumably continues living out this timeline until the : W’rkncacnter is unleashed since that’s what seems to motivate the timeline : shifts. There is nothing about the end of Thing What Kicks that would : obviously motivate the main character (or anyone else) to change timelines : at this point. : We, the players, however skip those intervening events and are shown the : stories in the dream levels (“Electric Sheep Two” and “Whatever You : Please”), with the option of seeing the end of a failed timeline. : Carrol Street Station: : (failure) : : What happens: : Unclear. : There is so little information here that my initial impression was that this : level may be completely unconnected to the previous timeline and may : portray an ending to a timeline we never actually play through. : However, as Hamish has pointed out, there is an interview with Greg K. and : Chris G. where they confirm that these failure levels are canonically : meant to be the endings of their corresponding timelines. : Analysis: : This is a copy-paste duplicate of the previous Ai Mak Sicur level from : before, except there’s no oxygen. Other than that, it is identical in : every way including a teleporter that takes you to the start of “Rage” : again. : There is no explicit mention of the W’rkncacnter, the tri xeem, Thoth, : Durandal, or the nova. : Nothing in the previous levels suggests what could have led to a failed : timeline or whether the S’pht’kr were even summoned. Even though S’pht’kr : do appear in this level, this may just be an artifact of being an exact : copy-paste of a different failure level. : Location: : Aye Mak Sicur station : Success status: : Everything is unclear. It is even unclear as to whether the tri xeem has been : used or whether the W’rkncacnter has been unleashed. : Comments: : The only terminal here starts with the login “haga.kure” which is the name of : the volcano crater base that the humans occupy in Chapter 4: Envy. : The exit terminal contains green text which looks similar in style to the : text associated with the Durandal-S’pht entity at the end of the game. : Does this mean they merged together in this timeline? This green text is : the only thing that could possibly give us clues as to what is going on, : and is probably the only cryptic-style terminal I’ll bother analyzing. : Just for fun, let’s try and force some meaning out of all this. We know that : in the preceding Chapter, Durandal and Thoth are both active at the same : time (in M2, Thoth doesn’t become active until after Durandal’s fake : death); how this changes things, I don’t know. Durandal seems to be losing : his battle in the same way he was losing in M2 and Chapter 1: Despair. But : even when Durandal loses these battles and “dies”, he is still capable of : winning the war as he does in M2 and Chapter 4: Envy. : What obscures things even more is that characters in Infinity will be in the : same situation in different timelines, but will act differently for no : discernible reason (Durandal choosing to either explore or not explore : Lh’owon with the main character, or Tycho warning against or being willing : to use the tri’xeem). : In this failure level, the green text seems like S’pht-Durandal, so for sake : of argument let’s assume it is. : Following this assumption, Rage leads to Durandal being destroyed, but : retaining some copy of himself which then merges with the S’pht AI and : manages to make it to the Aye Mak Sicur station (like in Chapt 4), which : brings us to Carroll Street Station. We don’t know what’s up with the : Pfhor, Tfear, Tycho, the S’pht’kr, the trih xeem, or anything else. : The poetic terminal text does contain the words “fair k’lia dust/ lost home : anew lost and lost/ my wriggling children’s/ children children/ gone from : the plan”. : My initial interpratation was that since Durandal mentioned Thoth seems : confused earlier, that maybe 1) Thoth has lost the coordinates of K’lia : and can’t remember how to summon the S’pht’kr, so they are “lost” to him? : The vagueness of this level and its disconnectedness from the preceding : Chapter pretty much leave any possibilities open. : 2) Perhaps K’lia and the S’pht’kr were summoned, but then both were destroyed : by the nova from the tri xeem? Why this would be different in this : timeline, I don’t know. : 3) Perhaps this failure level represents a timeline where the S’pht’kr : civilization collapsed and they died out centuries ago, so when they’re : summoned they don’t arrive. : 4) Perhaps S’pht-Durandal summon K’lia, but the main character isn’t present : (though the player is) on the station and they can’t activate it without : him, so K’lia is destroyed by the W’rkncacnter? : I’m just tossing up any random ideas I can think of because this level is so : vague. : Honestly, anything could be true including the W’rkncacnter not being : summoned, maybe. : Conclusion: : Ultimately, maybe there isn’t meant to be an answer here. Maybe things are : deliberately meant to feel uncertain and chaotic, almost as if you’re : fighting Doubt itself. That’s the best I’ve got.
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