u/Marx615

Yes I know his tattoos have been looked at in general, but after googling the meaning of this, I believe it provides yet another piece of evidence that the game is a simulation/braindance.

From Google:

EWMN most commonly stands for "Evil, Wicked, Mean, Nasty," a traditional four-letter knuckle tattoo found in prison and biker subcultures to signify a hardened or defiant personal disposition.

It can also stand for Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation, a symbolic system used to record and analyze human dance and movement, which is then transcribed to a readable physical data medium akin to piece of sheet music.

Does this sound incredibly similar to the engram to anyone else? Joshua's whole team may be psyopping us using reverse psychology, to trick you into giving them engram data for the next player that they put into the game, using our looped data for their nefarious purposes.

Key Aspects of EWMN:

Spherical Reference: Uses longitude and latitude axes around joints to measure precise rotational angles of limbs.

Applications: Utilized extensively in modern dance choreography, behavioral studies of animals, and physical therapy analysis.

Documentation: Movements are transcribed onto specialized manuscript notation sheets much like a musical score.

I'm now of the belief that this is NOT "Joshua Stevenson." I think it's the gamemaster, or perhaps a literal "titan of entertainment" seeing what choices we make during this very important and emotional quest, that is universally lauded as everyone's LEAST favorite quest. Of course I cannot prove that this is correct, due to the double-meaning, but it seemed worth mentioning

Just like part 1 of my reverse psychology theory, this one's gonna be long, too.

In this post, I'm going to attempt to explain why we must avoid ALL birds (including Songbird), ALL therapy, and ALL ties to family (unfortunately including fan-favorite, and ultimate trickster Panam) Please note that for the purposes of part 1 and part 2 ONLY, I am applying Simulation/Ready Player One theory to my explanations.

Birds:

First with the birds, let's look at the Avian Extermination Act. The shards in the game are actually telling you the truth about the birds.. somewhat. According to the lore, the birds were exterminated in 2063 due to the spread of disease. Well the disease is actually a virus that infects the player. The virus is analogous to "stupidity," so in order to keep things interesting, the gamemasters removed all birds... except for 3 specific ones. Please bare with me until the end of the post. (Disclaimer: I'm an animal lover, and mean no disrespect to birds, but the logic I'm using is that birds have tiny brains, even if -some- can be quite intelligent)

Also of note is that birds are NOT mammals...they're actually aves. Interpret that as you will.

I want everyone to think about the only 3 places in the game where we can see LIVE birds.

1. The Arasaka ending, right when we enter Yorinobu's office. The Arasaka ending is universally described as the "bad" ending, and it is the DEFAULT ending if we do not unlock any of the other base endings.

This literal bird-brained player in the Arasaka ending has tricked you into making some of the worst choices possible in the game, thus dooming you to the unenlightened path, regardless of whatever choice you make on the space station.

2. The Play It Safe mission during the Dashi parade, way high up on a balcony, hidden away. Keep in mind that on the same level as this mysterious chirping bird, is a LOCKED door, behind which lies an iconic weapon, if you enter the passcode. We can UNLOCK the door, but we need to TURN BACK and reject violence by NOT picking up the iconic weapon. I also believe that the bird is watching over your mission, and your battle with Oda, to see if you spare him (RIGHT) or kill him (WRONG).

I understand these "links" may be a point of contention, so if anyone has an alternative interpretation of why this bird is here (assuming my reverse psychology/simulation theory is true for the purposes of this discussion), I'm open to listen.. but I do believe this bird is psy-opping us into picking up the iconic weapon, putting the idea of violence in our head, and thus hoping that we kill Oda.

I KNOW that when the devs were asked about the placement of this bird and the other 2 animals next to it on the balcony, they CLAIMED it was simply a dedication to someone else. What's funny is that that's because it's literally another player trying to trick us into doing the wrong thing.

3. At the VERY end of The Star ending, right outside Panam's car. Keep in mind this specific bird is the one of the VERY LAST things we see before the credits roll. This is important.

Here's what's going to both infuriate you, but also make your head spin. Just like the devs knew you'd emulate Johnny/Keanu Reeves, because they're "cool" they -also- knew you would go the "hot and wholesome" romance route by doing everything Panam wanted, and also knew how excited you were about Phantom Liberty..the main character being a hot emo cyberpunk chick literally named SONGBIRD. They knew you couldn't refuse, and well, by choosing the Panam ending, or by choosing to even initially help Songbird, congratulations you've failed spectacularly.. you gave into your most primal urges, chose more birds, and made the wrong decisions. This is why it's called PHANTOM Liberty, because it's a fake choice, which I will discuss later.

Family:

Panam represents family, and she reminds you of this SO many times in her dialogue. Most players trust her 100%, because she pretends to have some of the purest intentions in the entire game. WRONG. Panam is another player trying to trick you. She is the ultimate troll, and here's why. What happens when we do The Star/Panam ending? There is a glimmer of hope for a cure, as we ride off into the sunset with her, but at the last minute, when we're feeling our happiest, BIRD. DEFEAT. It is LAUGHING at you. You failed again in this ending. You failed to reject FAMILY/Panam, and fell for the most basic tricks they pulled, therefore one of the smallest-brained contestants was once again able to beat you. You lost to a damn bird.

Where else do we see an emphasis on family in the game? Could it be these weird mysterious papers that are littered all over the game world at important places, telling us to essentially EMBRACE family? These papers are one of the ultimate TRICKS placed by the devs. They SEEM like common sense and wholesome tenants to live by, but from a reverse psychology perspective, what they're doing is hammering the concept of FAMILY into your head at every step of the way. This is why the papers are on top of the statue, and also why the monks say to "activate the meridians on the roof." It's all a psych out, because they KNEW you couldn't resist looking on the top of that statue.

Therapy:

There are 13 of these mysterious greenhouses located around Night City. The player will likely first encounter one of these in Corpo Plaza, near both the statue and Arasaka Tower.. this is a TRICK. Each one is called a "Night City Center for Behavioral Health." Red Flag #1 is that there's 13 of them. Red Flag #2 is that while there aren't any REAL birds inside any of them, they play soothing bird sounds, to keep you locked in and sick in this IRON CAGE. Red Flag #3 is that SOME of the doors quite literally say "No Entry," because they knew that you couldn't resist opening that door. Congratulations you've made the wrong choice again. The 2 dead bodies you can find in 2 of these specific greenhouses were other players that committed suicide, due to being driven crazy by the sounds of the non-existent birds.

Here's another interesting note: Through extrapolating meaning from various parts of the lore, it is heavily implied that BARTMOSS is watching the player through the cats in the game. One of these cats (that you can WAIT with) is located in one of these greenhouses. When you choose this option, you take a nap, and when you wake up, the cat is gone. I'm still fleshing out my theory regarding Bartmoss, his cyberdeck, and the cats in general, which I hope to elaborate on in a future post.

The other notable reference to therapy is one of the gigs in which instead of visiting a Center for Behavioral Health, we are visiting a Center for PSYCHIATRIC Health. There is only -1- (Enlightenment) of these Centers in the entire game, while there are -13- of the fake kind. Keep in mind that Pawel Sasko is a literal psychologist. I haven't played this quest in a while, so I don't have any insight as to the specific choices we must make, but I'm fairly sure this is one of the quests that must be completed. I will run through this one with FactFinder as well.

I hope you enjoyed my analyses in theories in parts 1 and 2. I'm on mobile and it is incredibly difficult to format and make these long posts clean and tidy, while still explaining the pictures, but I appreciate it if you still read and tried to see things from my perspective.

My ultimate point of these posts is to reverse engineer the quests to determine the correct choices in EVERY quest, in order to outsmart the devs, and achieve the enlightenment that the game dangles before us at various points. I also have no issue sharing my entire FactFinder log with anyone who thinks they can pull more information from them than I can. If we "crowdsource" on this sub, and solve every quest correctly, I THINK we can do this.

In my next post, I'm planning on analyzing the importance of Names, Nix and Bartmoss, and I plan to expand on WHY I believe Morgan Blackhand used Nix's "Book of Spellls" to activate the Arasaka Tower "Emergency Cooling System," at the end of HIS game, which is why he was able to break the simulation.

I searched and haven't seen this specific "monument" discussed, so I wanted to posit a theory. Warning: this will be a very long breakdown of the monolith/monument.

First, I'm at the point where I am 95% sure that the "Hidden Messsage" in the dev room is a multi-layered hint as to what we are looking for. After a previous post where I discussed how the art for Nix's Book of Spells on the wiki has an odd misspelling (Forbidden Spelll), I came to the conclusion that there are hidden things to look for in both holographic assets, and places where words are misspelled, or have extra letters.

According to the wiki, this monument is called "The Needle," and it is dedicated to the Presidents of the United States. The map location is shown in picture 4. The monument was designed by a Jared Cox, in the year 2063. The only event listed on the wiki for 2063 is the adoption of the "Avian Extermination Act," to eradicate all birds in order to stop the spread of avian diseases. This act is mentioned in several other shards throughout the game.

Here are the reasons I think there may be something here:

Note: I did not trigger an event, and I'm also not 100% sure this isn't a red herring, but the specific combination of assets gave me pause.

1. Holographic nature of the plaque, just like the Hidden Messsage screen

2. Non-unique, but uncommon graffiti showing what appears to be "3D" glasses under the plaque (unfortunately I don't personally own a pair)

3. At night, the plaque brightly reflects the lines (filaments?) on the Heavy Hearts club pyramid in the moonlight

4. There is a box in each corner of the plaque. 3 have a X in them, but the top right one has a circle for some reason.. and even has 2 arrows literally pointing to it

5. There is a repeating set of two distinct (characters) vertically along the left side of the plaque. If we label them 0 and 1, for instance, the pattern would be 0100101. They don't look like or resemble any language, or anything else discernible.

6. In the bottom center-left, the numbers 00033 05_64 0B CP can be seen, with what appears to be a mildly similar wavelength(?) pattern underneath.

6a. Next to the numbers mentioned in 6, there is another box with a single line struck through it.This box reminded me of a rare "painting/picture/poster" that can be found in a few places in the game. The strange picture (that I've seen people refer to as simply leftover prefab code), is solid pink/magenta with a YELLOW line struck through it. I can't for the life of me find a picture of this anywhere on this sub, so if someone knows what I'm referring to, please share the pic. I can only remember that one place I found it was pretty up high on the top of a building in the base game

7. The bottom center-right shows the characters 0x00001230ABC L<-D P/SK-1, with a mildly similar(?) wavelength(?) pattern above the characters

8. This is more of a question, but can anyone decipher what the vertical images on the monolith are? 3rd one from the bottom is obviously a dragon, but I'm unsure of the others. Are these also potential instructions?

Maybe it's just me, but it's almost like the devs are saying "look here for something important." My schizo idea was to use photo mode to fly up and zoom in on the single open circle on the plaque, in order to see a reflection, or possibly something else at a specific time. That circle may also be telling us that regardless of our distance/angle, this needs to be the center point of our camera

Dogtown's main color is yellow (filter effect 10 in photo mode, I believe), and during sandstorms, the yellows seem to pop out. I briefly played around with photo mode, but was unable to find anything yet.

I'm going to reiterate my belief that Misty's comment early in the game to "caress the filaments of light along your fingertips" is of significance to deciphering at least part of the mystery of the colors in the game. I do believe she's referring to photo mode, and to use it on distinctive "lines of light" we may see.

You are not required to waste your time trying this, but I wanted to put the idea out there in case anyone can offer any further insight to this specific monument, or if they did want to try something with it. I do believe this specific asset combination warrants more eyes on it... No Coincidence. Appreciate it if you read it all.

Before I spend the next few days essentially writing a dissertation on what I now believe is going on, will someone confirm to me that this is a bug? (Before I embarrass myself, and annoy you guys)

I used the "glitch" elevator in DFTR and walked above the floor all the way to where Mikoshi is supposed to be. I dove into the "placeholder" water room, fell through the bottom, and fell... endlessly. After a few seconds, this message popped up. Afterwards, you will continue falling until your deteriorating health kills you(?) I waited till I was 15KM below the map before I loaded a previous save. Curiously enough, due to passing through the water, you will not die from the fall, and can still see bubbles as if you're swimming during your entire "fall."

I DID both Google this and search on this sub, and couldn't find much. Gemini AI spit something out about how this message can appear when an area is not loaded in yet, but it couldn't provide me links to sources. This is the OBVIOUS explanation, but I do want to confirm before I delete this post.

Looking at the art on the wiki for the "Book of Spells," I noticed it says "Forgotten Spelll" on it..the word Spell having an extra "l." Remind anyone else of the "Hidden Messsage" in the dev room in Kabuki? This got me curious, so I did a deep dive. Why would there be magic in the world of Cyberpunk? Also could be a double meaning, and be referencing the Witcher III in several ways.

Nix's quest for the Book of Spells, "Spellbound," has a bunch of different outcomes, and is also tied to the Bartmoss Cyberdeck quest, "KOLD MIRAGE." Most people decrypt the "Book of Spells," and when you do, the item disappears from your inventory, and you get the readable shard called "Spellbook" instead. However, decrypting it is optional, and you can actually just keep the original Book of Spells for yourself. If you choose to do this, and ignore Nix, KOLD MIRAGE will still trigger after a few days, whereas normally Nix triggers it for you once you decrypt it and save him from being fried by the malware on the shard, so you can get both the unencrypted Book of Spells, and Bartmoss' Cyberdeck (which has the mysterious eternal quest marker) in a single playthrough.

I've seen people mention that they think the Book of Spells resembles the mysterious glowing databank in Arasaka Tower that you can't interact with, but that seems purposeful. Not sure I agree, but I do agree that the fact that the databank is flashing, is trying to tell us that we must either use or read something from our inventory. I've seen old posts where people took the unencrypted Book to the databank, with no results, but I've yet to find a post where someone has tried to decrypt the Book in the Netrunner Nest near this mysterious databank. In the wiki, the Book of Spells is listed as "an old Zetatech XPR, top-of-the-line hardware in the 2020s." Well guess what, the only Arasaka Tower ending that takes place in the past, in 2023, is the secret ending.

In the Hollow Bastion "secret area" in The Witcher 3, in the cellar area that has our FF06B5 symbol with the immortal wraiths, Geralt makes a comment that says "Man I sure wish Yennifer (a sorceress) was here right now." In Arasaka Tower, prior to slotting Alt in the mainframe, Johnny "can" comment that he sure wishes Spider Murphy (the Cyberpunk equivalent of a sorceress) was here right now. Well if we look at the -decrypted- Spellbook, there's a curious line it that nearly matches Johnny's line verbatim. The Book of Spells supposedly belonged to Spider Murphy, and when you read the decrypted shard, it says "SPIDER MURPHY WAS HERE." Johnny's line does not seem to trigger if you slot Alt into the mainframe too quickly, and simply let her clear the room for you by zapping all the enemies/netrunners. I'm also unsure of what triggers his line "It feels like a goddamn adventure game," because in my last 2 runs, he did not say this.

I used the Fact Finder mod, and saw that when you raise the mainframe, a quest fact "nest maintenance mode" is triggered. Why would raising the mainframe put the entire floor in maintenance mode? I believe this is our FIRST step. You can go down the wrong elevator from the lobby first, which leads to the 06 netrun ops floor being vacant of all enemies, letting you freely roam around, and thus you can run straight to the mainframe and raise it without doing anything else.

As others have pointed out, when you use "Distract Enemies" on either of the strange Control Panels in the center of the room, "nest trigger overheat 1" and "nest trigger overheat 2" are written to the save file. I am 100% sure these 2 control panels are analogous to the 2 crystals in the Hollow Bastion that must be hit with the "Aard" spell in The Witcher 3 to open a portal and escape, but the question is do we activate 1 or both of them, AFTER we put the floor into maintenance mode? Not pictured here, but in the actual fact log saved to my computer from using fact finder, triggering either control panel, or raising the mainframe, all write a "new" quest phase to the save file.

Slotting Alt into the mainframe is the WRONG thing to do, and I believe it cancels out any secret triggers we've previously activated.

Last thing I want to mention goes back to the decrypted Book of Spells. The very first line reads "BBS rumor mills actually churned out some truth - that Zetatech fort is a fucking Alcatraz: modified PitBulls at each entry port, SpeedTraps and SeeYa at access points."

Looks like a bunch of weirdness, right? Well I looked up the definitions of Pitbulls, SpeedTraps, and SeeYa, with some very interesting results.

Pitbull: Pit Bull is an Detection/Alarm program that is the most advanced form of the Watchdog series. Pit Bull not only tracks the intruder to its source, but also cuts the line after acquiring the location. It will continue to cut the line every time the intruder logs on from that point of entry, requiring him to move to another phone line or cybermodem. Like Watchdog, Pit Bull can be set up to watch a part of the Net and report back to you at another workstation or modem.

SpeedTrap: Speedtrap is Detection/Alarm program is an early warning program that detects the presence of an offensive program within 10 squares of the Netrunner's position (within the same subgrid). It cannot tell you where the program is, only that it exists.

SeeYa: SeeYa is Detection/Alarm program designed to detect invisible ICONS within the range of one Subgrid. This includes programs, hidden Netrunners and things hidden by Invisibility in a virtual reality.

I put all this information together, and to me the Spellbook is telling us that all of the access points in the netrun ops 06 floor are BOOBY TRAPPED, and either need to be avoided totally, or need to be carefully hacked with Breach Protocol, avoiding numbers that are 10 squares or closer in the subgrids we are given. There's the 10BROOMS access point, multiple computers we can jack into to hack, and then the 1 in Adam Smasher's room, which I believe may be totally irrelevant.

As a bonus, I very carefully noclipped into the glowing databank on the desk in the netrun ops floor (it is incredibly thin, so you have to go slow in photomode, and I've posted a pic of the inside of the "databank." I won't speculate as to what the single "pixel" means, but I'm open to ideas. ;)

Was wondering if anyone had fully checked out the Militech Training Shard, aka the combat tutorial that Jackie offers to you in your car ride. Completed all 4 modules, went back to the main door and found a way to get out of bounds in a spot to the left of the doorway. You can access the training by going to Settings-->Controls-->Replay Tutorial

I'm sure this is probably nothing, but there appears to be 2 models of T-Bug overlapping each other, except they're named "Restricted Data."

Also of note are the handful of panels that zoom up and down sorta like elevators. If you -very carefully- walk along the ledges of this out of bounds area, you can continue to slowly climb higher. Currently I'm trying to land on one of these flying panels, so they'll shoot me to the top of the map.

At the beginning, one of the (both optional) objectives is "Use the door to exit the simulation." Could this have a double meaning, given that you access the out of bounds area right beside the doorway?

Last thing I'll say on this post is that initially the "drill sergeant" guy will glitch and turn into T-Bug briefly, the first time you use the training shard. The drill sergeant is the same model used in the burning man "easter egg" in the badlands. If you freeze your game during the millisecond the burning man transforms into T-Bug, the "glitch" will show a strange but intentional-looking image that appears to be a creature with a bunch of angel wings on both sides..very hard to explain. As you're not allowed to use photo mode in this area, I'm going to have to go to an old save and take a separate video using the training shard for the first time.

ETA: "Glitch" appears to be nothing, but was the least interesting part of the video to me. Would really like to hear thoughts about the out of bounds portion/restricted data T-Bug, rather than the singular mistake in my post. It's "no coincidence" the burning man is the same as the drill sergeant, and to me the "use door to exit simulation" objection seems a bit suspicious.