Podtacular: The Unofficial Halo Universe Podcast

Podtacular Episode 117: AAAAARG!
for the week of June 26th, 2007

(hosts Foo Mo Jive, JVB, CapnKrunk, ... )


introductions


Well my question may be a little vague but…what the hell is this
Alternate Reality Gaming and what does it have to do with bungie or the
Society of the Ancients? Sorry if my questions are el stupido but I am
out of the loop on this one.

Here’s a question about ARGs in general: Why would companies promote their
products using ARGs as opposed to general advertisement?

Some people here at Podtacular typed in the coordinates given by Adjutant
Reflex into Mapquest and got a place in the Africa. This spot is
supposedly the site of the “Ark”. Is this true? Because from the looks
of the map, it the area looks like a canyon.

The timer has finished and now leaves us with what appears to be a
Forerunner information device with a video, two pictures, and two text
files. From what I gather from these files, it seems that containment has
failed and the flood has already spread from the rings. What do you think?

My theory is that Adjutant Reflex was the monitor of the Ark. He probably
has been watching humanity for a long time and had grown affectionate of
them (or we are the Forerunners and don’t know it). When the first halo
came back online and the Flood broke loose, the Ark, like Onyx, came
online as well. The Activation of Delta Halo put the Ark on standby for
activation. The “other” is probably another AI who was programmed to take
over the Ark if such a thing happened. That is why he “outranks” Adjutant
Reflex. I still don’t know if Adjutant Reflex was deleted or just
deactivated.

There was also something interesting I noticed about the comic. It shows
the African man witnessing the Forerunners building the Ark. This shows
that Humanity existed during the time of the Forerunners. This leads to
two theories of mine: #1. The Humans are the Forerunners. However, a
race that advance surely would not have members who did not recognize his
own race or would still be “uncivilized.” this leads to theory #2. The
Humans are the successors of the Forerunners. The Forerunners may have
built the Ark to protect a world with a race worthy and capable of owning
their empire should the Flood outbreak cause them to activate the Halo’s. They could be “Re-claiming” what was left to them by the Forerunners, hence
the “Reclaimer” title the AI’s give them.

I have been mildly interested in Adjutant Reflex and that one countdown
thingy that the Capn was posting about, but could not really get into it,
much less understand it. Now that you’ve told us that it was an actual
interactive game thingy, i’m afraid i’ve missed it. I love this kind of
thing but have never really discovered one worth spending my time on. Am
i mislead, or can you help me out?

Thanks and keep on stuffin people who talk frags. no, scratch that. reverse it.
P.S. shoutout to redotonur4head (if its spelled right) for the idea of
mixing up the name. im thinking of making it permanent.

Briefly let me talk about the 27.com site. That was the
hub. The start. Apparently the whole arg centers around a few key
individuals. Katie, aikon(nokia backwards), Omega, and Arypa. These four
people have tasked people designated CONTACTS to open the gates. What the
gates are, or why they want them opened is not fully understood. It is
understood that opposing them are AR and Lance Gate. Katie and company are
from a different level of existance. It’s not know in what way, but it’s
thought that they may all be flood. AR is human, and lance is an unknown.
AR is still around, although his presence is being made secret. Tomorrow
the six remaining CONTACTS are to open the final gate and make a decision.
They decision effects whether our plane of existance gets wiped out, or if
katie and aikons plane goes. If the six are unable to open it, then AR
will make the decision. There seems to be two viral campaigns at once
here, as well as the main sota campaign. The campaign started on 27.com is
the one with the contacts, and we believe it started too early. The other
is the b-net AR side, which we believe never quite got off the ground like
they wanted it to. However this has been in planning for months, perhaps
even since the game began development. It goes very deep, and if you
missed even a little bit of it, you would be lost. There is still a lot to
tell, i just gave you the bare bones. If you’d like to know more, hit me
up. There is so much here, it’s not even funny. And a lot of it is
documented, so all involved will be rewarded in the end. Which is what i
forgot to mention. So of the six remaining CONTACTS only three will
progress after tomorrow, and in the end 1 will go down in history. It’s
important to notice its a number 1 and not the word one. Every time we
were told this they used the number, which has some significance. I really
want the community to get all this, and sorry it’s so late. Email me back
and ill respond as soon as i can. Time is very important and the sooner
this all gets out the sooner well all be able to figure it out. Cause
right now there are way too many smart people stuck on the wrong page.
Peace out Foo-moo, and keep on fragging spiral markets!

when i found out about the countdown timer i wanted to know what it was
for,it took about 11hrs to reach zero and then nothing(big
dissapointment).it was about 1 in the morning when it was finished and i
was the only person in IRC that was this close and everyone was waiting
for me to tell them what happpened.i guess they were dissapointed aswell

I just have a little comment on the Iris ARG compared to the I Love Bees
ARG. According to new laws, the company that does any Viral Marketing has
to indicate that it is them that is doing it, that is the reason that the
http://206.16.223.61 site has to show that it is by Microsoft and Bungie.
Personally, this takes the mystery out of the game a lot more than the
mystery in I Love Bees.

This ARG is looking pretty cool right now and It should give us a detailed
backstory of the forerunners and how the flood came to be.

Shout out to The Russian-Kolob

hey guys this is Warlock6.66 and this is my first time sending in
something. i have a question you know that the site 206.16.223.65 recently
opened up and it says Server 05 open. when you open it up it just makes u
fill out some info and shows you a pic of something i cant describe. if
you look closely it has the symbol AR had. What do you think this is and
what part does this play in the ARG? oh yeah by the way i rather not say my gamertag so if u wanna see it go
look for me
thanx for reading it(if u picked it)

tubaguhbluba here and ive got my opinion on how we should look at the ARG.
first off, this is taking place in the year 2007, not 2552. if it took
place in 2552, it wouldnt be an alternate reality game. so if its taking
place in 2007, we cant know anything about Halo, the Covenant, and the
Flood, because we havent discovered them yet. so we cant go around saying
“ZOMG!! AR is cortana in disguise!!!!” because Cortana has not been
created yet. but then comes the question “Well, did she go back in time?”
well, i hope not, because i think that would ruin the game. so, we have to
act like we know nothing about anything that happened in the Halo games,
otherwise we wont be able to get anywhere in the ARG. and y do people
think its Gravemind? i dont think he’d have any possible way to access and
destroy an AI.

secondly, i think that AdjutantReflex was trying to warn us about
something that will to happen in the future, maybe an event that will
occur in Halo 3. now that this new AI has taken over and has destroyed
AdjutantReflex, we have to find out what AR was trying to warn us about,
and why this new AI destroyed AR.
Speaking of pie, i wanna talk about the star chart. maybe, if each of the
server things comes with a star chart, they could all be placed on top of
each other, and if each star chart had a different shape or symbol or
clue, they would all combine to point to a specific area on the chart.
well, thats my input on the ARG. keep on fraggin members of SOTA

The are is really starting to heat up, fast. The four files that were able
to be downloaded no doubt hold the clues to the next step. The star map
might be a clue to a set of coordinates which might translate to
[i]another[/i] IP address. Who knows. Methinks the second picture is a
microscopic view of the Flood organism, something akin to the background
of the countdown timer that ended recently. One of the logs is a firing
log of the Halos, presumably, and the other seems to be a final signal
sent out from deep space. one can only speculate and imagine.

Shout out to Klutch, for finding it, CrashWave to capturing the video,
duststorm, Killazilla, Duffman, and all the other people who where on the
IRC with us when this was discovered.

Keep on solving Alternate Reality Games!

To cover:
  1. what is an ARG?

Wrap up

Until next time I’m Foo Mo Jive (and this is)