Played through TR-49 with Delade, and what a short but incredibly excellent game. It’s on sale on humble right now, but I think it’s pretty cheap most of the time anyway.
It’s basically research: the game. If you like digging around on wikis trying to find stuff, you’ll probably enjoy this one, too.
Reminded me of why I love interactive fiction so much. I love how this story was told. I’m glad I went to the trouble of getting the good ending but I wish it was just a bit longer, though things would get unwieldy at some point if it were.
I have got to get a little better so I can work on the game idea I’ve had for ages. It is breaking my heart to not have the energy.
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Sometimes I really want to read a short summary of what to expect from a game with a very particular description that CATER to my OWN SPECIFIC interests, so here we go.
(click here for other videogames)
what to expect from TR-49
Mystery, puzzle, text game
Partially voiced (the protagonist and a few characters she speaks with are fully voiced, books' extracts/quotes are also voiced, but additional notes are not)
You play as Abby, a woman who wakes up in a basement and in front of a mysterious archive machine. You can speak with Liam, a man who asks you to find a book
The machine is an archive of books, texts and notes from the 1800s till more recent times
The only way to read the entries is indexing them (finding the title of the book and matching it to the code that identifies author + year of publication)
The player needs to investigate and uncover the books titles, codes and the correct matching, for example: CC-11 to identify the note/entry written by Cecil C. in 1911.
Each entry is composed by: a quote from the book, alongside a title (both unreadable until correct matched), a note by an archivist. Clues for the correct answer and uncovering more codes/titles are found within the text in a labyrinth of associations
Clues and information is also written by Abby into a notebook
Some codes unlock other events (ex. go back of one entry, some comments under certain entries, a maze etc.)
Through reading these entries and the comments, you can uncover not only who Abby is, how she ended up in there, but also a bigger story about what is happening in the world
The game also has some real books (ex. Alfred Tennyson's Lady of Shalott) which are always in the game, and some other novels that randomly change from playthrough to playthrough. These are not plot relevant, but simply easter eggs
There are multiple endings depending on your choice. Only your final choice will determine the ending
The detective work is done by the player not the character (I found myself with a calculator at one point, summing up dates of death and birth and publications to find more codes). As in, the game is not going to explain the story to you.
The setting of the texts/books in the story is mainly World War II
plot? You are a young woman named Abby who finds herself in a mysterious basement and in front what looks like an old war machine. A man you have never met before (Liam) asks you to find a book through the archives of the machine.
gameplay? text choice, decoding, puzzle
characters? The protagonist and the people who added notes to the entry, alongside Liam, are the main characters.
sadness level? medium
death? (spoilers)
yes for some, yes for others depending on your choices
Attempting to create a timeline for TR-49: part2 -> 1941 - 1999 (endgame)
Part 1 is here
MAJOR spoilers
1941 - Thaddeus Detzer (no info on him) writes "Internal Oversight", it is almost a warning about how the words they write have too much power and to not wield it without will. (Maybe he was working for the Academic Journal? There seems to be no other info about him)
1942 - Ursula Letour (daughter of Pierre Letour, editor of the Academic Journal) is born
1942 - Silverton (under pseudonym) writes the last Rampage novel, this time about Guinevere becoming basically a mindless slave to Lancelot. The author also insists he was writing from experience. (I suspect the novels acted as a cautionary tale for Revisions, and that is why the Church of Rampage was born)
1943 - Joshua Silverton dies
1944 - Kendrick marries Emma
1949 - Cecil Caulderly starts to work on the machine and feeds it Pemberton and Quentin's work "Revisions" to try and understand it better. The machine reads and reads (and keep reading) everythng it "eats" (Revisions work while the information is read, but because the machine constantly access the information, reality is changed once for all)
1949 - Beatrice talks about Cecil thinks this is only his machine (but it is hers too). Cecil thinks the machine will understand DME for him, but Beatrice thinks this can happen only if they feeds it books. Beatrice also mentions Henry (Henry has feeling for her)
1951 - Kendrick writes "In the Shadow of a passage" about a university professor's relationship with a student, until his work is stolen and published by his rival.
1952 - Emma writes "Doomwild" a novel about a young woman entering the world of academia
1956 - Hammerston Press is purchased by Cecil. Cecil creates a way to make copies from his machine and made copies from Quentin's "Astral Perplexities". What came out was this "Perplexing Astrality" work published with Hammerston press.
1956 - Cecil realizes that when he added Dorothea's "Irrationals" into the machine he changed history, and made it so that Dorothea could actually go to France
1955 - Beatrice Dooler builds the Quantom State Storage system, and feeds it to the machine. This is a way to compress all the information of the index. The machine claims it understands itself better.
1958 - Cecil and Beatrice marry
1959 - Cecil writes a note about the machine being ten years old.
1961 - Aliz is born (from Beatrice and Cecil)
1965 - Emma writes "Greenwalker"
1967 - William (Liam) is born (from Beatrice and Cecil)
1969 - Cecil says his wife Beatrice left him and took Aliz, because he has become a hermit, obsesse with the machine. Cecil says it is because of what happened with Henry (Beatrice left him for Henry?)
1971 - Pierre Letour dies
1972 - Pierre's "A life lived in wartime" (published postumously) talks about the principles of DME, says Kendrick's work was weaponised by a woman (Emma?)
1973 - Kendrick opens Silverton's last letter to him and writes his own last novel "Men Must Devour"
1974 - Kendrick writes "Men Must Devour", his last novel: a professor reads a book that eats his mind. The book ends mid sentence with the professor apologizing to his wife for having done the same to her years before.
1974 - Cecil finds a pamphlet by Cecil Erstwhistle (from 1932), the founder of the Church of the Rampage. Inside it there is also Silverton's last letter to Kendrick. In the same year C. Erstwhistle keeps writing his authoritarian ideologies.
1973 - Ursula Letour (daughter of Pierre Letour) writers "On a Life Unlived" talks about how her father neglected her (like Cecil, her father got lost into revisions)
1975 - Kendrick is committed into an asylum, and later he dies
1976 - Cecil writes that he feels like he is losing his mind. He cautions about observing (reading?) the books. He also wonders how has it all come to this and he says "all for one man, whose mind I never respected anyway".
1977 - Emma writes "Endpeace", a novel about her academic protagonist now turned nurse. She leads a rebellion in France (against the nazis), she casts herself as a hero and makes sure Silverton is still alive/resurrects him. (I suspect she just stopped him from dying. Also this time we can see the contraddiction because things become true for the past once fed into the machine)
1977 - Cecil reads Silverton's last letter to Kendrick. He dies that very year too.
1977 - Beatrice goes to visit Cecil but he doesn't remember her.
1979 - Beatrice writes a note in the machine and mentions that Aliz wants to take over the work. She also says that she told the little one (William?) that Henry is his father.
1980 - Emma writes "Confessionday" where she talks about her husband being dead, and feeling like she never loved him. She remembers once being in love with a brilliant man, until one day out of nowhere he fell for Kendricks.
1981 - Emma is interviewed by the Literary Review. She talks about how Lemarchant Quentin showed her the way to being back the deads. She said that she started thinking about it when the man she loved died, and that her method worked. "I knew almost as soon as it was published"
1981 - Aliz starts working on the machine
1985 - Silverton (now alive in this revisioned reality) writes a letter for his dearest love. The letter was found inside "The Weapon of the Enemy" in 1992 by the Church of the Rampage.
1985 - Aliz stops working on the machine when she sees what the machine is really doing. She enters Emma's "Endpiece" into the machine (That changes the past and Silverton does not die, allowing Emma to marry him)
1989 - C. Erstwhistle keeps writing for the Church of the Rampage.
1992 - Emma writes "Breakcode". Her initials are now E.S. She talks about Cecil believing in a machine who can help humankind. (Emma married Silverton). In the book Emma talks about Revisions will allow a small powerful group of people to change what reality is.
1992 - Pamphlet by the Church of the Rampage is written about how they should use the weapon of the enemy (the power of Revisions)
1999 - Aliz comes back to work on the machine after 14 years. She suspects the Church of the Rampage has been there because she found the 1992 pamphlet on the floor of the archive. Still in 1999 Aliz also enters the book "Breakcode" (by Emma) into the machine (I believe by doing so, Aliz fed into the machine the necessary Revision to make sure that William found the machine itself and put it on the path of destroying Revisions)
After - After 1999, the Church of the Rampage used Revisions to take hold and power over the world. Not much time must have passed as William is still alive.
Attempting to create a timeline for TR-49: part1 -> 1799-1940
As usual, Inkle games always make me end up taking notes and trying to decipher them. This time, I am trying to put together a timeline of TR-49, with the actual events as they happenen. I will add in italics my comments.
SPOILERS (in two parts because of tumblr limits. Part 2 is here)
So the main concept of the game is that by reading words you can change reality. Normally, this is a very weak power, but once these words have been fed into a machine things change. The machine is a catalogue that by its nature read these words and texts over and over again, all the time, leading to permanent fixed revisions, basically changing the past.
1799 - Xavier Youngman is born
1855 - Xavier writes "Matter in the Dark"
1856 - Quentin Lemarchant is born
1878 - Xavier's "On the Intangibility of Matter" about how the world is the sum of people's believes. He also mentions that he would be able to show the world only if he could live again. (This is where DME/the concept of Revision is born)
1881 - Xavier's death and Dorothea Pemberton is born. (Xavier managed to be born again into Dorothea, and live once more to finish his work)
1896 - Dorothea writes "In my dreams, I walk" at just 15 years old. (Dorothea remembers her past life maybe. It is also said she finds one of Xavier's books. What could have happened is that by reading Xavier's words and his desire to be reborn, her reality/mind was changed and she was convinced she was continuing Xavier's work)
1898 - Pierre Letour is born
1900 - Dorothea writes "An Image in Water" about how semantics is the creation of reality. She quotes "Treasure Island" saying that Silver is a real man, realer than her.
1903 - Joshua Silverton is born (Did Dorothea create him? or was she just referring how she is both Xavier and Dorothea in the previous book?)
1906 - Hammerston Press is founded. It is created to publish anynonimous writings.
1908 - Dorothea writes "Irrationals" where she says that "the hidden stuff of the universe are ideas themselves". Probably met Quentin Lemarchant when she visited France even if she was bedridden. (Probably Quentin read "Irrationals" there and was influenced/changed by it. This happened because all of this was fed into the machine, so the past was changed)
1909 - Emma Meyfleur is born
1909 - Hammerston Press publishes "Primitive Man, He-Who-Remains", a book about fascism basically
1911 - Dorothea dies after writing "End Notes" where she says the rot inside her brain is too severe, so someone else must continue her work (Literary Review asks her to explain her work while she is on her deathbed)
1911 - Quentin writes "Astral Perplexities", inspired by Dorothea, saying that his ideas are not his own anymore.
1918 - Quentin writes "Revisions" and connects Dorothea's ideas with dark matter and science (destroyed by the Church of the Rampaging Christ in an attempt to stop DME)
1922 - Literary Review publishes about the wrongness of Hammerston Press. They also claim to have contacted Dorothea and have asked her help (while she was on her deathbed) to understand her work
1922 - Hammerstone Press publishes "Utopia within reach", it is also revealed that the editor was shot for supporting Mussolini. The culprit said that Literary Review put them up to it. (Literary Review used DME to kill the editor)
1924 - Quentin dies and J. Silverton writes "Semiotic Assertions" paper on dark matter
1920end - Kendrick's research is stolen by a student he was having an affair with, a reviewer accuses Silverton of being the thief (Emma has an affair with Kendrick and steals Kendrick's research, later published by Silverton. It would fit with the Rampage -> Silverton=Arthur saved by his queen)
1929 - Silverton writes "Quantum conceptuals in Nature", a work on DME based on Quentin Lemarchant's work and Dorothy's 1896 work, putting it together in what is the fundamental shape of revision theory
1931 - Silverton writes "The Pen of Galileo", it ruins his reputations and people are mocking him
1932 - Kendrick writes "Dark Matter and the Veil" (reminiscent of Silverton 1929). The Academicalist's Journal says it was eye-opening. (This is when the Academic Journal starts using DME too)
1932 - Silverton writes "Rampage: The Sword Moon" (under Arklovich as a pseduonym). It is about a king being kidnapped and then saved by his queen.
1935 - Silverton writes "Rampage: the Glen of Galileo" (a reference to his old paper), about King Arthur finding a time portal. (In these novels Silverton is represented by King Arthur, Guinevere is Emma and Kendrick is Lancelot)
1936 - Emma writes "Deadvoice" about a medium who can see ghosts of people who have not died yet and about paradoxes. In the novel the medium receives a visit from herself about her own death.
1936 - Kendrick writes "Time and Temporality", a novel about a protagonist always wronged
1937 - Kendrick writes the sequel novel "Temporality Waits for no man" about a love triangle. It is said this is the moment Emma Meyfleur fell in love with him. (Kendrick uses Revisions to influence Emma and make her fall in love with him)
1938 - Silverton writes a letter to Emma calling someone "a rat-bastard" and saying he turned Emma against him and destroyed his reputation
1938 - Emma ends up in France, helping against the nazis. It makes little sense for her to be there.
1939 - Kendrick writes "Doom comes to the doctorate" a novel about a student finding a notebook from a dying university professor, the notebook is about how to change reality. Before fully understanding it, the notebook is stolen until one day a young woman comes back to sell it to him. (Here describing what happened with Emma, Kendrick and Silverton)
1939 - Silverton writes another Rampage book under pseudonym. It refers to a "Silverton curse" and talks about a sentient robot. (I wonder if by trying to create Kendrick's demise, he unadvertedly created the seed for the Church of Rampage, otherwise I cannot explain the names similarity)
1940 - Silverton's final work, a letter that he sent it to Kendrick but the man did not open it until 1973
1940s: Somewhere during WWII, Cecil, Beatrice and Henry (?) start to work together to decipher German secret codes. The Academic journal also seemingly starts to use Revision theory to change things.
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4/5⭐| Steam | Fun, if quick, puzzle game, with an interesting if subtle plot and great voice acting
From the makers of Heaven's Vault comes another puzzle game, this time about searching for books inside a weird computer archive. The only interface is entering 4-character codes into a machine, which may or may not lead to specific documents. Finding the documents' titles unlocks snippets of them and helps connect the various documents through time and history. The gameplay is very reminiscent of The Roottrees Are Dead, just with a plot centered around fascism, dark magic, and resistance instead of family soap opera celebrity drama. 😅
The puzzle aspect of the game is very fun, and I enjoyed it, even though it never really was that hard. At first, the sheer amount of material feels overwhelming, and I love being faced with a giant puzzle and slowly unpicking it. Even later on as the final connections became very straightforward, I still had fun and felt satisfied overall! The game takes notes for you, which definitely makes it a lot easier than something like Blue Prince - not sure how I feel about that, but it didn't really affect my enjoyment. :)
The WWII era machine aesthetics are gorgeous, and the sound design is amazing, both with really immersive, chunky sound effects and wonderful voice acting. My only issue is that at first, the voice acting kept interrupting me when I was trying to read and absorb information - but you're not on a timer, so pausing to have conversations and then returning to research is fine. I also think the second "outsider" character to appear was a complete miss. He was upsetting for no real purpose, as far as i could tell, and I basically ignored him completely.
My other complaint is that the "final ending" is so easy to find - I wish it was some sort of ultimate puzzle combining the entire games' worth of knowledge, but instead it was just a super obvious step from the previous solution. There are 4 endings though, so finding all 4 of them is a fun little exercise even when you have completed the entire archive.
Despite its small issues, this is definitely a game worth playing. It only took me 5 hours to 100%, so it doesn't overstay its welcome. It serves up an intriguing world with fun puzzles that's beautiful to look at and listen to - what more can you ask for?
Deleting the various works removing their influence would suggest that they can't. You can mostly make the effects fit by understanding that the revisions don't just change the future, they can revise retrocasualy.
But it seems clear that Dorothea used revision to somehow make Long John Silver real (as Joshua Silverton) and that revision isn't in the machine but persists.
Endpeace may also be a case of this?
My current read is that while various people were trying to figure out how to make persistent revisions PK and JS never managed it but DP and EM may have done so with creating JS/Endpeace respectively.
PK believed he'd succeeded but his revision only stuck because the text was (would be) in the machine.
(Kendrick's idea was to keep writing the same revision to reassert it hence the repetitive novels while Silverton's idea was that his obsessive madness letter made the person subjected to it constantly ruminate on the words thus reinforcing the revision
these aren't bad approach from what we know of revisions but if they actually worked deleting the texts shouldn't stop the revisions I think?)
So Revisions (major spoilers for everything in TR-49 under the cut)
XY-55 revises the world to a world where revisions work
XY-78 also revises the world to a to world where revisions work. XY-55 could revise the world because XY-78 allowed it and in turn XY-78 could revise the world because XY-55 allowed it to. It's one of those circular "it works because it works" scenarios the game is fond of.
Youngman "sees more on rereading" XY-55 "than was initially present"
The dying Youngman also uses this revision to be reborn as Dorothea Pemberton.
(DP possibly revises the world to create the fictional character Long John Silver as Joshua Silverton in 1903 but unclear how she made this persistent when the text of the revision isn't in TR-49?)
DP-08 bed-bound Pemberton revises herself as convalescing in France, inspires Lemarchant to further her research into revisions.
PK-37 Kendrick revises his academic and romantic rival Silverton into a fraud. Stealing his success and Emma Meyfluer from him.
(Later writing used by PK to reinforce this revision?)
JS-40 Uses revisions to drive people obsessively mad ("I have not been able to shake its words from my mind") aimed at Kendrick who would read it decades later and be driven mad and inadvertently drove Cecil Caulderly mad when he read it before adding it to TR-49
EK-77 The revision that introduced resurrection to the world. Mayflower used it to revive her lost love Silverton, it is a self-resurrecting revision, used by the powerful to make themselves immortal while their enemies are left mortal.
(I just want to put down what they do broadly here so haven't got too into the detail)
