Launch Trailer Lore Bits
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Oh boy, there was a lot of little things in the launch trailer to glean from, including a hard slap to my face telling my one of my previous theories was wrong. Anyway I decided to go through it piece by piece and see what I could figure out. I'll be over-analyzing bits of lore and trying to determine the truth, so hopefully you were careful about what you included in your videos ninja theory! ^^
OpeningSequence
We now know H.A. stands for Human Augment Systems, our primary antagonist in this game. The evil and inhuman organization that is the top in R&D for augmentation technology.Also, as with the first trailer, basically everything that is happening is happening at the Jersey Sink. You can very clearly tell it's that map, and that the futuristic and nicer looking city is the one outside the map dumping all its waste onto it.
Hacking Sequence
We can see in Daemon's Hacking sequence a bunch of meaningless words thrown around for flavor like "Firewall Fail", "Data Receiving", "Source Linked on Chat", "Security Breach Warning", and so on. However there may be some things worth noticing.There is a "Subject_01", which appears to be some kind of unidentified person. Either this is data Daemon is retrieving, the fake identity he is using in order to retrieve the data, or some more wild theory. However, like most details on this screen, it's a rather bland detail with an ultra-generic designation so it's probably not important.
On the camera feed we have information on the camera being used and a timestamp. "CAM.001 Server Room D4" is presumably the camera and location where the Skeleton Key data breach took place. Everything we're seeing in this video would suggest that's what it's referring to... there's just one problem, the timestamp in the bottom left shows "01-03-2057 TC". Now Ninja Theory is in the UK, so while my American ass reads this as January 3rd, 2057, it's probably actually saying March 1st, 2057. Either way, it's not a line that makes a lot of sense.
For those who aren't aware, the date of births and ages of all the characters can be used to narrow down the "current" date as being between December 21st, 2055 and January 27th, 2056 (look at Maeve's and Miko's bios in particular). So it was assumed originally to be the beginning of 2056. Even if we assumed the current year was actually 2057, we know the Skeleton Key had to have been released prior to 2051, as I can show that that's when Buttercup joined Bleeding Edge. And while it's not explicitly stated, the Skeleton Key has to be referring to the massive data breach, the one that we have video footage of occurring in this video.
It's possible that TC means something stupid like "technical certificate" and that date explicitly is referring to a future date for some reason, but it's still a weird date to be showing up on security footage which was clearly recorded sometime in 2050.
Augmentation Sequence
There are a series of augments that are shown: a heart, an eye, and a hand. There's also a lot of text that appears, which I will post here. Anytime the text warps and shifts, it's merely going through a caesar cipher, meaning it's not actually changing in any meaningful way for those who don't know what that is. Some of the text comes from other parts of the screen, so the order may not be entirely accurate.There's also a binary sequence that appears on every single augment page, and it's the same each time. So far I haven't been able to derive any meaning from it, so it might be totally random. The breaks appear totally random, and whether you honor or ignore the spaces you don't end up with anything obvious like ascii characters, an easy cipher to use, or meaningful hexadecimal values.
Heart
Ablation of Test Subject -Optimum+
Acetylcholine Deferral 108- HEASWO
Desired Aphasia w/ Sustained Common Control/Y
Increased Cardiac Output-(AQA)%
Conduction System- FullFlow 5.5<
Polyplate Fusiform Aneurysm-90@44.1
Maze Surgery- 9380s
Induced Paroxysmal
Supraventricular Tachycardia
PSVT Count 779>
Sphygmomanometer AZR-333 EAL-333Eye
Anterior Chamber Expanse 9.0ext
Ocular Override -MEKK0 standard
Expanded Cecocentral Scotomas
Electroretinogram ERG
Maximum Fovea 10.0
AI Supported Ishihara Plate 2^
Isopter Grid Expansion
Macula Rigging 72.9Hand
Tactile Enhancement Overage System 8>
Identification Destabilization/Assimilation :Completion
Material Sensor HA Library Material- LIBXPM
Acquisition Frequency Range Multiplyer %B88BAH
Touch Drift Ratio: Reburst 03/27
Gesture Parameter Expansion Set: BirD1EBinary Sequence
0001101 110010 00010010
0100101
1000 1000100 1001000 10001 0001
1 10 10 101
0 100001 0000100 1001 0 0100
1001 0010000 1000110 100
01010101
010010001 011000 100111 0111001 100
100 10111 0111001 011100111 0110010Analysis of the Heart
The heart text makes a lot of references to both the brain and the heart. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that plays a big role in skeletal muscle control, the autonomic nervous system, and the central nervous system. Aphasia is a communication impairment generally brought on by some kind of brain damage like a stroke, resulting in an inability to produce speech, comprehend speech, read, and/or write depending on the severity. Cardiac output is the volume of blood being pumped by the heart. The cardiac conduction system is a group of muscle cells in the heart responsible for heart contractions. The only reference to "fullflow" I can find is in reference to full-flow CPB. A fusiform aneurysm is just a type of aneurysm in the brain, meaning that's both related to blood and the brain. Maze surgery is a special kind of heart surgery where you fix irregular heart rhythms by intentionally creating scare tissue in specific places on the heart, which prevents signals from passing over them. PSVT refers to Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia, which is a type of irregular heartbeat that the Maze Surgery might be in reference to. And finally a sphygmomanometer is that thing that takes your blood pressure.There is a lot of ominous terminology being used in general. Why is the test subject being ablated? Why is the acetylcholine deferred? Why is aphasia desirable? Why was PSVT induced rather than cured? Very weird and creepy, and you get the sense it's not really about the augmentation technology and more about a particular subject the tech may apply to. In this case, I'm almost entirely certain it's about Miko. Miko's augments are based on nanobot treatment, but visually speaking it's obvious they're centered on the heart and brain. She has also these tubes that seem to pump blood or send electrical signals around. We know she was experimented on in H.A. facilities, so it would make sense that the basis for her augments come entirely from H.A. as well.
Analysis of Eye
The Chamber Expanse, Fovea, and Macula are all parts of the eye, in particular they work together to create a strong central vision, meaning you can focus on things and see more easily while say reading or driving. A cecocentral scotoma means that region around central vision up to the blind spot is has visual defects, so the central vision is damaged for some reason. Isopter can refer to this general region as well, though I don't totally understand its meaning. The Electroretinogram (ERG) can be used to measure light sensitivity of the eye, such as the cones in the Fovea, to determine if some kind of visual impairment exists. If the 10.0 refers to the ERG, then from what I understand that's super bad. Ishihara plates are those colorblind tests with the colored circles where there's like a number or pattern of a slightly different color inside, and those with colorblindness can't tell.Not a lot to go on here, but there is a very interesting reference to MEKK0 (note that it's a zero, not the letter 'O' here). However, from what I can tell Mekko doesn't have an eye augment? From what I understand dolphins also have amazing eyesight. Maybe that's the point though - it gives you eyesight as good as a dolphin.
Analysis of the Hand
There is way too little to go off of here. There's a lot of hand and touch related words, and a general sense of perhaps the ability to steal one's identity through fingerprints? Frequency range could be about signal bandwidth, and libxpm sounds like the coding library for XPM files (which has literally no relationship with this game at all)... Maybe these are hacking hands? But who has a mechanical hand like this one? It kind of looks like Miko's hand a little, Zerocool might have augmented hands on under those gloves (that or those are just some cool looking gloves!), or maybe a totally new character will have these hands.And maybe that new character will be named Birdie! Not sure who or what that's a reference to, but it's the first time I've been able to identify hexadecimal in all of this. "BD1E" definitely looks like hex to me, and it was used to come up with the cuter designation of BirD1E. Much like how Mekko is mentioned on the eye, a character we've never seen could have had their name slipped in here.
Character Panels
Well crap, it's clearly shown the years that most of the characters joined Bleeding Edge on those screens! Plus some interesting tidbits we didn't know before. Anyway, here's all I was able to accurately determine from that tiny ass text. To be clear, I'm listing their real name, height, weight, and the year they joined BE. I was only able to see the year for Zerocool. Cass, Miko, and Kulev were way too blurry to see their panels and we never get a close up of them.- Mekko: MEKKO-H2O666, 228cm, 1600kg, BE since 2055
- El Bastardo: Juarez Gallardo, 199cm 130kg, BE since 2052
- Daemon: Damon John Banks, 148cm, 70kg, BE since 2050
- Gizmo: Molly Gibson, 165cm, 58kg, BE since 2054
- Buttercup: Angelica Butters, 233cm, 260kg, BE since 2051
- Maeve: Maeve Murphy, 160cm, 47kg, BE since 2053
- Makutu: Hēmi Makutu, 250cm, 195kg, BE since 2052
- Nidhoggr: Steiner Foss, 207cm 117kg, BE since 2052
- Zerocool: BE since 2054
In particular, we did not know the real names of some of these characters, which may be important later.
Timeline
So now I need to adjust my timeline of events that I had posted elsewhere, since I was so clearly wrong. Unfortunately, we still have some unknowns, but we also have things we can deduce. I'm just going to completely ignore that 2057 date from before because it makes no sense in context so I won't bother with it for now. Let me know if you can figure out what the TC means.- 2036: Black market augmentations already exist. Buttercup uses them to begin her augmentation journey ~20 years ago.
- 2040-41: Cass becomes a Russian agent ~15 years ago.
- 2046-47: Makutu gets his augments ~9 years ago and overtime starts to feel too restricted from using his strength.
- 2050: Daemon starts Bleeding Edge and causes the Skeleton Key data breach solo.
- 2050-51: Kulev dies 5 years ago and is resurrected, possibly over the timespan of a year or longer. Kulev joins BE sometime after.
- 2051: Buttercup joins.
- 2051-52: Gizmo wins a competition using the Skeleton Key at the age of 13.
- 2052: El Bastardo, Makutu, and Nidhoggr join.
- 2053: Maeve joins.
- 2054: Gizmo and Zerocool join.
- 2054-55: Cass joins. She stopped being a Russian agent ~1 year ago.
- 2055: Mekko joins.
- 2056: Current.
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@Evade-This5965
You're either flexing on us so hard or the devs are already working every little detail. Or both. Really nice work you did there. It takes a lot of time lol. -
@Votre-Daron
I doubt most of these details matter, but damn were a lot of complicated words used. They clearly did their research to flesh out text that flashed on the screen for a few seconds at best. The thing I was the most excited about was the mentions of the years each character joined - that's information I really cared to know.On the other hand, this BirD1E thing is really bothering me. I can't help but feel like it's a reference to a character in-development.
BD1E on it's own as hexadecimal doesn't seem to mean anything though... in binary it's:
1011 1101 0001 1110
It's kind of interesting how B is a reverse of D and 1 is an inverse of E I guess? It's not a reference to anything in IT that I know of anyway. -
lol idk dude you might be reading to much into it. we already kinda have a bird character. maybe its just supposed to be code for being able to spread your fingers like a bird spreads its wings. but also that mekko thing is very strange, it makes me wonder if it was just random, or if they were just trying to reference current characters in these or idk. lol
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@D4m0R3d
99% of it doesn't matter. There are some clues to the underlying lore, simply because they had to base the fluff on something, but it's still mostly just fluff. I mostly did this for fun and out of excitement for the game and to make a more accurate timeline. But BirD1E stands out hardcore. It might actually be a reference to Cass, but that seems unlikely. If you're interpreting it as referring to a literal bird, you're missing the point. The real name is more likely BD1E, and Birdie is just a playful monicker based off of that. It may not even be the name of a person, it might be an AI. That or it's literally just a package of gesture parameters or whatever with a cute name lol. -
@Votre-Daron
Thanks! Tetris229, one of the ninja support guys, said this on discord when I asked:"@Evade_This Lore is super important to the design team and especially the Creative Director, I am not in a position to answer any lore questions right i'm afraid but feel free to discuss it with other players and look out for updates from the team!"
He's obviously talking about Rahni Tucker, who we've all seen in the dev interviews and basically runs the show for Bleeding Edge. If they think the lore is important then this could all be worthwhile. If not then at least I learned a lot of cool medical terms so it's a win-win~
