After a procrastination of nearly epic proportions, I finally subscribed to GameFly last week. The GameFly queue system is not nearly as elegant as Netflix (since it seems to basically amount to a crap-shoot no matter what priority you actually give the games in your queue), but the result was that Infamous materialized in my mailbox a couple of days ago.

Infamous is a sandbox game of superpowers in which you have the choice to either be a superhero or a supervillain. My initial impression could be summed up as something along the lines of Grand Theft Auto + Knights of the Old Republic + Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. (The inclusion of two Star Wars games might seem excessive: But The Force Unleashed didn’t have KOTOR’s elegant light-vs-dark story arcs, while KOTOR didn’t have The Force Unleashed’s Force lightning powers.)

Where Infamous succeeds is the basic gameplay: Parkour-inspired climbing and leaping combined with an effective and interesting mix of electrical superpowers. Where it fails is the writing, which eventually turns the interesting gameplay into a mind-numbingly endless repetition of “been there, done that”. (In a fit of dark irony, the game even has an achievement trophy called “Oh, So You’ve Done This Before”.)

What I find particularly notable about these failures is the ultimately trivial amount of effort it would have taken to vastly improve the quality of the game: Hundreds of thousands of hours and millions of dollars were spent to make this game a reality, but it would have taken only a few hours from a dedicated writer and a fraction of a percentage of that budget to take a disposable trifle and raise it to the level of the sublime.

Which is what prompted this Rewrite essay. It’s obviously not going to do all the work, but it is going to sketch out the handful of simple fixes that Infamous practically cries out for. (Be warned: There will be SPOILERS.)

FAULT 1: THE SANDBOX

The primary shortcoming in Infamous lies in the design of its sandbox. Like most modern sandboxing games, Infamous draws its basic structure from the tradition of Grand Theft Auto 3. And like most modern sandboxing games, Infamous fails to learn some important lessons from Grand Theft Auto 3 (while also failing to capitalize on the opportunity to improve the format in key ways).

To simplify things, there are four types of content in Grand Theft Auto 3:

(1) The main storyline. (A sequential series of missions designed to be completed one after the other while telling the story of the game.)

(2) Designed side-quests. (Specifically designed mini-missions or mini-quest lines that the player could choose to either play or ignore.)

(3) Procedurally generated missions. (Missions created on-demand by the game engine and, thus, creating a bottom-less supply of semi-variable gameplay. Examples include the taxi- and ambulance-driving missions.)

(4) Self-guided play. (Because the game world responded dynamically to player activity, the player could engage in rewarding self-guided play by, basically, seeing “what happens when I do this”. Grand Theft Auto 3 didn’t have much in the way of dynamic world response, but even something as simple as “police chase you if your wanted rating is high enough” resulted in an endless variety of entertaining car chases.)

The first flaw in the Infamous sandbox is the limited nature of the self-guided play: In general, this play is limited to “there are bad guys roaming the streets, fight them” — basically the random encounters of an old school Final Fantasy game. (Surprisingly, despite the parkour-style climbing, there is little or no attention given to providing massive climbing vistas like those to be found in Assassin’s Creed.) Even worse, the primary sub-quests are designed to make city neighborhoods “safe” so that enemies no longer appear — which means that you’re literally removing content from the game as you play the game.

The second flaw is the complete lack of procedurally-generated missions. This significantly impacts the long-term value of the game. I remember playing Grand Theft Auto 3 for years after “finishing” the game because there was always something interesting to do in Liberty City. By the time I finished Infamous, on the other hand, there was literally nothing left to do.

The most significant flaw, however, is that the designed side-quests are written as if they were procedurally-generated: They are repetitive, forgettable fluff.

Grand Theft Auto 3, on the other hand, used its side-quests to develop either plot or landmarks. The former is self-explanatory: The side-quests were interesting little one act plays standing in contrast or support to the full-length drama of the main storyline. The latter is about providing context for the city: You came to recognize Vinnie’s pizza because that’s where you delivered Leo’s drugs (or whatever, it’s been awhile since I actually played Grand Theft Auto 3). The side-quests helped to bring Liberty City to life. They filled the empty, gray building polygons with life and meaning and identity.

The side-quests of Infamous, on the other hand, have no story or life to them: An anonymous guy asks you to kill 10 bad guys. Or blow up a bus. Or kill 10 bad guys. Or kill 10 bad guys. Or kill 10 bad guys. (Did I mention they’re repetitive?)

If these were actually procedurally-generated content (as they so easily could have been), it wouldn’t be a problem. I understand the limitations of procedural content: You take a half-dozen elements, mix ’em up randomly, and that’s what you’ve got. It’s not going to fool you into thinking that an intelligent mind was authoring it.

But this isn’t procedural content: Every one of these missions has been hand-crafted and hand-placed to fill a specific and non-substitutable place in the game. But if you’re designing this content individually, why not take the effort (and the opportunity) to make it individual? And meaningful?

THE REWRITES

In Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Chip Heath encourages people to copy success instead of trying to solve problems.

In the case of Infamous, what they got right were the Dead Drop missions.

To summarize: In these missions, you hunt down satellite dishes hidden around the city. These satellite dishes were used to make dead drops by an intelligence agent, and by accessing the dishes you’re able to recover the audio logs from his investigations into the strange events plaguing Empire City. These logs, of course, reveal a prequel-like storyline over time. (Although the game allows for a non-linear collection of the satellite dishes, the information is recovered linearly. Of course, one could also take advantage of the mechanic to do truly non-linear storytelling.)

If the Dead Drop missions had been constructed like the other side-quests in the game, the complexity of their programming would not have been noticeably affected: The player would still hunt down the satellite dishes and then push a button to access them. But rather than getting a snippet of story information, the player would just receive a tally of the number of dishes they had found.

The storytelling content that makes the Dead Drop missions work, on the other hand, is almost trivial: Less than a half dozen pages of script and probably a half hour of recording time with a voice actor.

So let’s take a moment and consider how the other mission types might have been made to succeed like the Dead Drop missions.

HIDDEN PACKAGES: Using his electrical powers, Cole is able to “hack” the brain of the recently deceased to see their last memories. At various points in the game, he’s able to use this ability on his enemies, revealing the location of hidden packages they’ve secreted around the city.

In the actual game, these packages are nothing — meaningless fluff to be checked off a quest list. But how much more evocative would it have been if there was actually something worth hiding? Perhaps something that had been split up between the various packages?

The possibilites are almost endless: The schematics for the ray sphere. Records from Kessler’s surveillance of Cole. Evidence pointing to a rebel faction within the First Sons.

TRACKING THE DEAD: Similarly, Cole is able to track the ghost-like ethereal “imprints” of a person’s recent movements. (Intriguingly, this ability is always used on murderers — suggesting perhaps that the violence of their action is responsible for leaving a stronger imprint on the world around them.) This is an evocative and interesting mechanic, but it would have been nice to see some of these end with revelations more interesting than, “That’s the guy who killed Senor Red Shirt! Vengeance!”

If nothing else, having the trails lead somewhere other than “a nondescript alley with a bunch of bad guys in it” would have helped. But it wouldn’t take much effort to explain why some of these people were being particularly targeted by the bad guys.

SURVEILLANCE DEVICES: The bad guys have covered various buildings in town with dozens of surveillance devices. It’s your job to climb the building and blow up the surveillance devices.

Oddly, the game never explains why the bad guys are interested in so heavily surveilling these particular buildings. Change “blowing up” to “hacking” and you (a) effortlessly add a new power for Cole and (b) provide an easy mechanism for revealing the reason for the surveillance.

PRISONER ESCORTS: The police periodically ask us to apprehend various bad guys for “questioning”. In other cases, the bad guys have already been caught and it’s our job to escort them to the nearest police station.

Spicing this one up is pretty easy: Have the cops actually report back what they find out from this questioning. This could foreshadow various developments, point us towards new surveillance missions, and so forth.

PROCEDURAL CONTENT: This suggestion moves somewhat beyond the intended scope of this essay (since they require more than a simple rewrite within the existing strictures of the game), but it would be nice if Infamous contained some legitimate procedural content.

For example, the picture-taking missions would be perfect for procedural generation. Triage missions using our healing abilities at medical centers seems like a no-brainer. A stalker fan that pops up to ask our hero for photographs or kisses or the like (or, for the evil-siders, a would-be assassin who periodically sends robotic drones after us). “Walk me home” protection missions (or muggings for the evil-siders). Bad guys blocking roads or railroad tracks. Bomb threats that need to be defused.

THE CORE CONCEPT

The mistake made in games like Infamous and Assassin’s Creed is thinking that storytelling only needs to happen in the main storyline. I would argue that the design principle behind these GTA-like sandboxes needs to be different: Any time you’re hand-designing content (instead of procedurally generating it), that’s an opportunity to tell part of your story. And you should take it.

In general, side-quests offer you the opportunity to create storylines in addition to your primary storyline. (The successful Dead Drop missions in Infamous do this to great effect.) Some of these storylines may be short (a single quest); others may be long (dozens of missions); others will fall somewhere inbetween (three or four linked sub-quests). But the ways in which these storylines will weave together is an exercise left to the player and your game will be the richer for enabling that level of intrinsic collaboration in the creation of its narrative. The result is a unique gameplay arising out of a complex system, but the actual execution of that system is very, very simple.

Continued Tomorrow…

My brother, who plays the mage Ranthir in the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign, requested a D20-statting of the spell seen in this video from Guild Wars 2:

FLAME OF THE PHOENIX
Evocation [Fire]
Level: Drd 2, Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S, M/DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Medium (100 feet + 10 feet/level)
Effect: Medium size phoenix of flame
Duration: 1 round (see text)
Saving Throw: Reflex half or negates (see text)
Spell Resistance: Yes

A bright flame in the shape of a winged phoenix appears before you. With a screeching caw you can command it to attack any creature within range. The flame phoenix will fly in a straight line to that target. If it passes through the space of any other creature in its flight, that creature must make a Reflex saving throw or suffer 1d4 points of fire damage per every two caster levels (maximum 5d4).

Once the flame phoenix reaches its target, it stops moving for the round. In a burst of flaming feathers, the flame phoenix deals 1d6/level points of fire damage to the target (Reflex save for half damage, maximum of 10d6). If the target creature moves, the flame phoenix will follow it up to the limit of the spell’s range.

At the end of your next turn, the flame phoenix flies back to you in a straight line. If it passes through the space of any other creature in its flight, that creature must make a Reflex saving throw or suffer 1d4 points of fire damage per every two caster levels (maximum 5d4).

I bought Valve’s Orange Box shortly after it came out. My main reason for wanting it was Half-Life 2: Episode 2, but a close second in terms of desire was Portal. So, needless to say, it’s been months since I played through the game. And I loved it.

But I was in the shower a few moments ago when the following question struck me: “Why didn’t I hate this game?”

I’ve played a lot of FPS games, and I can say that as an almost universal rule that, whenever these games decide to throw a “puzzle” at you, I am annoyed. Whether it’s stacking boxes or hitting switches or navigating an arbitrary maze, I just get annoyed.

So why is it that Portal — an FPS game that is entirely based around puzzles — was so enthralling for me? So enthralling, in fact, that I became a maven for the game, touting its virtues far and wide and citing it as a game that everyone should play.

I see a few possibilities:

(1) Despite years of advocating for games with richer and broader gameplay options — games like Deus Ex where it is equally possible to overcome a challenge through stealth, socialization, or violence — I’m actually fairly narrow in what I want from a game. I want a game to stay on point with a single type of gameplay.

The supporting evidence for this is how often, in recent days, I’ve borrowed from Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation in saying: “They forgot what makes their game fun!” For example, the designers of God of War kept forgetting what made their game fun (awesome combat combined with epic storytelling) whenever they stuck in a lengthy sequence of balance beams or platform-hopping.

On the flip-side, I can actually point to lots of games — like the aforementioned Deus Ex or Ultima VII or Thief — where I adored the different gameplay options.

(2) Maybe it’s that I want to be able to choose my gameplay. For example, I don’t necessarily want to be forced to first play through a shooter; then a puzzler; then a stealth game — I want to be able to choose, when facing a given challenge, what form of gameplay I want to use to overcome it.

This is probably true to at least some degree. But it doesn’t explain Portal, because there is no choice there: The entire game is puzzle-based and there aren’t any non-puzzle solutions.

(3) It’s possible that what I’m reacting to here is the degree to which the puzzles break my willing suspension of disbelief. For example, it seems odd to hit a section of Half-Life 2 where the only way out of a bomb-shelled ruin is to stack the conveniently placed cement blocks onto one side of the conveniently placed teeter-totter. On the other hand, the entire scenario of Portal explains exactly why these puzzles exist. (And even once you get outside of the structured portion of the game and into a more freeform environment, the designs don’t feel arbitrary.)

(4) Maybe it’s the originality of the gameplay behind Portal‘s puzzles. All of them, after all, rely on the amazingly cool implementation of portal technology. This is just inherently more interesting than loading up the teeter-totter, shoving boxes around to create staircases (Half-Life 1), or whacking random switches (Doom 3).

I suspect that the answer lies somewhere in the combination between the third and the fourth options.

In other words, if I hit a section of Half-Life 2 where I need to move bricks around in order to progress I am immediately (a) bored by it and (b) left with an overwhelming sense that the only reason this section of the game exists is so that they can pad out the “total playing time” stat on the game box. (To Half-Life 2‘s credit, there are very few places where it does this.)

(And I’m pretty much all about quality over quantity: I have absolutely zero interest in grinding XP for 40 hours in your CRPG so that I can enjoy the story and the characters in the other 20 hours of your game.)

Similarly, in God of War, I have no problem navigating my way through the Rube Goldberg machinations of the crazed architect of Pandora’s Temple: Shoving massive bricks around, standing on pressure switches, and searching for hidden passages are all pretty awesome. These mechanics are not only intrinsic to the game world, but are also fairly interesting in their execution.

On the other hand, the pain-in-the-ass balance beam sections in God of War are frustrating not because they switch up the gameplay, but because the resultant gameplay is simply boring. (And, in fact, only challenging because they randomly move the camera around while you’re trying to complete the puzzle.)

So I guess what we can distill from all this are three maxims:

First, remember what makes your game fun.

Second, increase the amount of fun stuff in your games.

Third, if it’s not fun it shouldn’t be in your game.

I would also add to this by saying that, if you give your players the option to choose between different types of gameplay, you dramatically increase the likelihood that they will be able to find a path through your game which they find fun at all times (instead of just some of the time). (Although, on the other hand, you have to weigh that consideration against the difficulty of balancing and polishing multiple types of gameplay.)

I’ve recently had the pleasure of playing through the God of War games for the first time. There’s a lengthier blog post rattling around in my brain about these games that I may get around to writing one of these days, but at the moment I’m playing through God of War II. I have just picked up the Spear of Destiny, which prompted me to say:

“What the fuck?”

For those of you unfamiliar with the games, God of War is set in a version of Ancient Greece where all the myths were real.

The Spear of Destiny, on the other hand, is the spear used by the Roman centurion Longinus to pierce the side of Jesus Christ as he hung in crucifixion.

I can accept that depiction of the Spear of Destiny as a purple, double-blade monstrosity with a telescoping shaft — I mean, the blood of Christ has been reputed to do all kinds of things. But what I can’t understand is how or why the Spear would have been transported back in time several centuries or millennia and ended up in Ancient Greece.

It would be one thing if this appeared to be some kind of deliberate choice on the part of the game designers, but that doesn’t appear to be the case: Everything else in the game is drawn directly from Greek mythology. As far as I can tell, they just didn’t know what the Spear of Destiny was.

(Pursuing this topic in Google, I discover that there have been some discussions suggesting that the end of the God of War trilogy will reach a conclusion as the Greek myths come to an end and the story of Christ begins. But even if that turns out to be true, the Spear of Destiny still doesn’t exist until after the death of Christ. So it still doesn’t make any sense.)

PROBLEMS WITH GOD OF WAR II

This is actually just the most glaring example of my problem with God of War II: While it’s visually more impressive than the original God of War, the game just isn’t as good. There are two reasons for this:

First, the game is simply not as polished. The game-controlled camera angles are frequently awkward. The pacing is more disjointed. The cut-scenes are cruder. The gameplay is less fluid and more dependent upon arbitrary QTEs. The plot is less focused. The list goes on. None of these are horrible problems, but they generally take the edge off the game.

Second, the underlying mythology of the game is not as well-executed. One of the things that made God of War particularly entertaining was that it truly felt like an “untold Greek myth”. It very cleverly incorporated very specific things from Greek mythology; expanded that mythology in a lot of creative ways; and then wove a completely original story of epic scope. Combined with addictively compelling gameplay, the result is easily one of the best video games I’ve ever played.

But in God of War II this starts to fall apart quite a bit. Instead of a careful and clever use of the Greek myths, you instead get the feeling that they just grabbed the closest copy of Edith Hamilton and picked pages at random whenever they needed to fill another 5 minutes of gameplay. The result is a kind of schizophrenic, dissociated grab bag.

The main plot of the game revolves around Kratos trying to reach the Three Sisters of Fate so that he can re-weave the threads of his fate. This is fairly clever. The problem is that everyone and everything from Greek mythology is apparently on the same quest… at the very same time.

For example, a youthful Perseus shows up. He’s seeking the Three Sisters so that he can save his love from the fires of Hades. This makes no sense: Andromeda survived the Perseus myths, fathered his children, and died of old age before being placed in the sky as a constellation by Athena. I can only assume that they were thinking of Orpheus.

A little while later an old, deranged man wearing wings shows up. He intends to fly to the island of the Three Sisters. And I’m immediately thinking, “Hey, that’s kinda cool. Daedalus, driven mad by the death of his son, is trying to rewrite history in order to save him. Clever.”

Only it’s not clever, because the guy self-identifies as Icarus after a couple of minutes. Since Icarus died as a young and foolish man (and that’s the entire point of his story), this makes no sense. It makes even less sense when you discover that the wings are literally growing out of his back.

And even if these individual uses of particular characters were not so jarringly wrong in so many ways, the collective effect of having the All-Star lineup of Greek mythology all showing up in the same place at the same time doesn’t work. Where God of War takes a few elements and uses them consistently in building a unique narrative, God of War II just takes a bunch of famous names and hopes for the best.

With all that being said, God of War II is still a great game. And there are many ways in which it marginally improves on the original.

But, ultimately, God of War is the better game.

(This paper was first presented at the 49th Annual Midwest Archaeology Conference in October 2003. It contents were classified TOP SECRET two days later. It has been supplemented below with more recent findings. I would not release it to the public now if I did not fear that my life was in imminent danger. I no longer believe that those attempting to prevent the dissemination of this information at acting in the best interests of anyone other than themselves. –JA)

I have come to this conference to discuss several recent discoveries in a series of digs outside the city of Basra in Iraq. These digs, primarily centered on some of the oldest ruins of ancient Babylon, were funded largely by the BSAI and carried out during the spring and summer of last year. Most important among the discoveries made during these expeditions were a series of pottery shard inscribed with characters from a previously unknown language. To find such a system of writing, placed in such close proximity to Babylonian artifacts, was a nearly unprecedented discovery.

I had originally hoped, in scheduling this presentation, to be able to offer a much more authoritative reporting of the pottery shards’ exact nature, provenance, and the like. Unfortunately, the shards were entrusted to the National Museum of Iraq in order to carry out spectroscopic cans and carbon dating. The shards have now been reported as lost among the many artifacts looted from the National Museum in April of this year. Fortunately, it has been reported that several color slides and other documentation regarding the shards has been preserved, although it has proven impossible to retrieve that information due to the war.

I have, however, retained my own notes as they were taken during the original expeditions. While a poor substitute indeed for the rare wonder which may be felt in viewing the ancient shards themselves, these notes should prove sufficient to at least familiarize you with the material we discovered.

The original find consisted of four distinct and complete symbols on four separate pottery shards:

Other partial inscriptions, stylistically similar to these symbols, were also found in the same location, although none so complete that they could be identified or reconstituted. Structurally these images obviously suggested a pictographic design — possibly directly ideogrammatic or perhaps alphabetically derived from an ideogrammatic construction. But without any meaningful context, it seemed as if these symbols would remain hopelessly mysterious.

However, several weeks later a single large shard was discovered. Several more of these symbols were found. But, more importantly, the symbols were accompanied by what appeared to be a literal translation written in Akkadian cuneiform. It appeared that the shard recovered constituted one complete and one partial sentence, suggesting that the inscription may have originally been part of a larger whole. The language was written in a top-to-bottom, left-to-right format with each sentence comprising a single column of symbols. It can be roughly translated as follows:

	WE		???
	ARE NOT		THE
	ALONE		SECRET
	IN		OF THE
	THE
	MANY STARS

The first word in the second sentence, given its symbolic resemblances in other ideogrammatic languages, could be considered “defend” or “protect”, rendering a full translation of this fragment to read something to the effect of: “We are not alone among the many stars. Defend the secret of the–”

To date, this represents the full scope of our discoveries regarding this strange new script and language. I present them here today in the hope that others may have encountered similar symbols in their independent research or that, failing such unlikely fortune, that fresh eyes may bring some elucidation to this subject.

The rest of my presentation today will discuss other aspects our expedition and the context in which these fragmentary artifacts were found.

Such were my findings — meager as they were — in the autumn of 2003. I was contacted two days later by [TEXT DELETED]. My research was confiscated and I was informed that all information regarding these symbols had now been classified. I was prohibited from speaking about it. The original material lost during the looting of the National Museum was never, to my knowledge, recovered.

But I remained fascinated by what we had found. And so I kept my eyes and ears open, hoping to find some new scrap of information that might shed light on these symbols and their true history. But if any new discoveries were being made, no news of it reached me.

Then, in the summer of 2005, quite by accident, I made a new discovery. In the July 1954 issue of the American Journal of Archaeology I found an article discussing several artifacts recovered during an expedition in the Andes mountains of Peru. Among these artifacts was a “small disc with a metallic triskelion in the center and strange ideograms along the edge”. Dubbed dramatically the “Mystery of Piedra de las Acianos”, it was treated in the article as little more than a curiousity. But several of the symbols from the edge of the disc — selected seemingly at random — were detailed in accompanying illustrations. Several of these symbols were exact duplicates of the symbols we had discovered outside of Basra!

I immediately set about trying to track down the current whereabouts of the disc. This proved to be surprisingly difficult, but after much effort I eventually discovered that the disc had recently been transferred from a Peruvian museum to a small research group in the United States known as the Benefactor Stone Project. I was unable to determine what, exactly, the Benefactor Stone Project was or why such an unprecedented transfer had taken place.

It seemed as if the trail would go cold and I would, once again, be denied any satisfactory answers. But then, quite suddenly, the Benefactor Stone Project found me: I received a package in the mail with no return address. Inside was a plaster reproduction of several symbols in what appeared to be three distinct sentences. There was also a written request to “provide whatever insight and translation may be possible”, along with instructions detailing how anonymous e-mails could be sent to a particular address.

This was only the first of many correspondences. It quickly became apparent that I was not the only one working with material apparently drawn from the “Mystery of Piedra de las Acianos” (which we were now referring to as the “Benefactor Stone”). The Benefactor Stone Project began to disseminate “confirmed translations” of various symbols, apparently derived from the work of other researchers. It also became clear that, while the samples gave enough context to make meaningful work possible, there was a definite desire to conceal the full text of the Stone.

Work was slow at first. My own knowledge, derived from the Akkadian translations I had found in 2002, helped considerably in giving context to the material I was shown.

But another breakthrough came in March 2006. I received an e-mail from Dr. R. Garriott, a professor of linguistics and archaeology at Columbia University. He claimed to have discovered my e-mail as a “fellow collaborator of the BSP”, although he said that “it would be better if you did not ask how I came by such information”. He was apparently writing in order to share three unique discoveries:

First he provided pictures of an obelisk he had discovered with a complete sentence of alien text intact:

Most astonishingly, Garriott asserted a translation for this sentence (which contained many symbols which had been previously unidentified): “This sentence means literally: “A long — time ago [time in the past] — our — civilization — grew — upon — a — planet — that was [in the past] — a far — journey — into — the stars.” Or, more succinctly: “Long ago our civilization grew upon a planet that was a far journey into the stars.”

Second, Garriott offered another short sentence without any explanation of where he had gotten it from:

Regarding this sentence he said this:

In this language dots are used to mean specificity, so that first dot is the word “the”. The second symbol of crossed swords (again most advanced cultures likely fought with sticks, then blades), means “battle” (or war), the triangle pointing to the right means “for” (or to), if it had pointed left it would have been “from”. The next symbol of radiating arrows in an enclosure is the symbol for “control”. The radiating arrows are the symbol for “chaos” and the nearly closed box around it is the symbol for “enclosure.” Thus bounded or contained chaos is “control”. Parenthesis around a symbol means possessive. So parenthesis around a stick figure man would mean “his,” in the next symbol the dot inside of parenthesis means “of the.” The next symbol is a collection of three “star” symbols, which is the word “cosmos” (or universe). There are many symbols which incorporate arrows to imply direction, going, stopping, etc. The next symbol is an arrow leaving a boundary line that means “begins.” The final symbol is built by the symbol for “time” bounded on both sides by vertical lines. Time with a dot to the right would mean “future” time with a dot to left “past”. In this case time between these boundaries means “now”.

And thus: “The battle for control of the cosmos begins now!”

Dr. Garriott was frustratingly vague in where this material had come from and how he had obtained or derived his translations. But when I compared his material to the material already in my possession, I found it consistently providing what appeared to be useful and accurate context.

I suspect I was not the only one to receive this material from Dr. Garriott. The stream of “confirmed translations” coming from the BSP multiplied rapidly in its wake.

My attempts to contact Dr. Garriott directly proved fruitless. Columbia University listed Dr. Garriott as being on temporary leave while researching with the D.G. Archaeology Group.

Several weeks later, however, I received another package from Dr. Garriott, this one containing only a single picture of an obelisk similar to the one he had discovered previously:

Garriott provided no translation of this text, although some guesses can be made in that direction based on the material we had already discovered:

SYMBOL 1: The symbol for “battle” or “conflict” modified by the dual-lines which modify “time” into “now” and “person” into “alone”. This suggests, perhaps, “fight” or “attack”.

SYMBOL 2 — WE

SYMBOL 3 — JOURNEY

SYMBOL 4 — COSMOS

SYMBOL 5 — FOR/TO

SYMBOL 6 — This symbol appears to be some variety of the symbol meaning “discovery”. Multiple boxes appear instead of a single box. Perhaps this is a way of representing the plural?

SYMBOL 7 — ????

SYMBOL 8 — FOR/TO

SYMBOL 9 — GIVE

SYMBOL 10 — The BSP had independently confirmed the symbol for “energy” (a lightning bolt). In this construction the lightning bolt has been placed inside the “enclosure” (to use Garriott’s terminology) which represents control when surrounding chaos or a secret when surrounding a piece of information. Thus “enclosed energy”.

SYMBOL 11 — ????

Giving us a fragmentary translation of the sentence as: [FIGHT?] [WE] [JOURNEY] [COSMOS] [FOR/TO] [DISCOVERIES?] [???] [FOR/TO] [GIVE] [ENCLOSED ENERGY] [????]

The next major discovery was apparently the result of a BSP-funded study to Tulum on the Yucatan peninsula that took place during March of this year. Why anyone would think to look for new discoveries in what has, essentially, become a tourist trap astonished me. (Although now I hypothesize that, perhaps, some unique information gifted that expedition with unusual insight into fresh possibilities.) Nevertheless, the expedition met with success, recovering a partial tablet containing a remarkably complete fragment of the ancient script:

The discovery of this tablet helped confirm how much progress we the diverse efforts of the BSP had made, as we were able to translate the tablet in its entirety almost immediately upon its discovery:

SENTENCE 1: [THE] [FOE] [DISPERSES] [FAR] [INTO] [THE] [COSMOS]

SENTENCE 2: [NOW] [WE] [BATTLE] [TO] [CONTROL] …

SENTENCE 3: [DISCOVER] [THE] [SECRET] [WE] [MIGHT HAVE] …

This translation reveals several basic grammatical structures which have been found throughout these ideograms:

(1) The specificity indicated by the symbol a single dot, and the use of that glyph to indicate past, present, and future tense (as can be seen in the modification the glyph for “might” into “might have” — if the dot had been on the opposite side of the glyph it would have indicated “might be”).

(2) The function of the square as a means of indicating an “enclosure” — as seen in the symbol for “secret” (where it contains “what is”); the symbol for control (where it is in the process of containing “chaos”); and the symbol for “into” (where an arrow indicates the action of putting something into the enclosure).

(3) The vaguely humanoid figures used to indicate relationships, groups, and individuals.

In general, the fact that complex symbols are generally made by modifying simpler symbols using a few basic constructions has made understanding this language painfully simple, almost as if it had been specifically designed for others to learn and understand its meaning.

But this tablet raised twice as many questions as it helped to solve: How had a language originally discovered in the fertile crescent founds its way, virtually unaltered, to an ancient Mayan ruin?

Now we come to the most recent chapter in this strange saga — a saga which has brought no peace to my mind or to my dreams. The BSP has supplied me with a message of unknown origin. (It clearly does not originate with the circular disc which is still kept so jealously in their possession.) It is the most complete text I have ever seen in this language which has beleaguered me for more than half a decade, and the ease — nay the eagerness — with which the BSP has parted with it makes me think that there is some quiet desperation in their efforts to decode it as quickly as possible.

Between the work of Dr. Garriott, the confirmed symbols I have received from the BSP, and my increasingly subconscious — and oddly disturbing — understanding of these ideograms, I believe I have successfully translated this text. The message it reveals is but one part of the reason I seek to communicate these findings to the wider world. I fear what the wide dissemination of this knowledge may mean, but I am possessed of the firm conviction that what I do — though it may ultimately end in my own discrediting or even death — is of the utmost important.

To begin, let us look at what I knew for a certainty as I came to this text. (It should be noted that, oddly, the first and last sentences are, in fact, those found and translated by Garriott.)

KNOWN TRANSLATION

SENTENCE 1: [LONG] [AGO] [OUR] [CIVILIZATION] [GROW] [UPON] [A] [PLANET] [THAT] [WAS] [FAR] [JOURNEY] [INTO] [MANY STARS]

SENTENCE 2: [???] [OUR] [CIVILIZATION] [WAS] [YOUNG] [WE] [LOOK] [FOR/TO] [THE] [MANY STARS] [AND/WITH] [???] [WHAT IS] [WE] [WAS] [ALONE] [INTO] [MANY STARS]

SENTENCE 3: [AFTER] [LONG] [???] [OUR] [CIVILIZATION] [DISCOVER] [THE] [SECRET] [OF THE] [???]

SENTENCE 4: [???] [???] [???] [THE] [???] [OF THE] [MANY STARS]

SENTENCE 5: [AND/WITH] [???] [WE] [JOURNEY] [INTO] [THE] [MANY STARS]

SENTENCE 6: [WE] [???] [FOR/TO] [DISCOVER] [???] [WHO] [MIGHT HAVE] [JOURNEY] [THE] [MANY STARS] [BEFORE] [WE]

SENTENCE 7: [???] [THERE] [WAS NOT] [???] [BEFORE] [WE]

SENTENCE 8: [WE] [ALONE] [DISCOVER] [THE] [SECRET] [OF THE] [???]

SENTENCE 9: [???] [WE] [WAS] [JOURNEY] [THE] [MANY STARS] [FOR/TO] [DISCOVER] [???] [FOR/TO] [GIVE] [THE] [SECRET] [OF THE] [???]

SENTENCE 10: [???] [WE] [???] [A] [???] [THAT] [NOW] [???] [THE] [MANY STARS]

SENTENCE 11: [???] [OUR] [???]

SENTENCE 12: [???] [THE] [SECRET] [OF THE] [???]

SENTENCE 13: [???] [WE] [WILL] [???] [THE] [FUTURE]

SENTENCE 14: [THE] [BATTLE] [FOR/TO] [CONTROL] [OF THE] [MANY STARS] [BEGINS] [NOW]

WORKING THINGS OUT

SENTENCE 1: This sentence is known in full, thanks to Dr. Garriott’s work.

SENTENCE 2: There are two unknown symbols in this sentence. The first of these is a compound symbol in which we do, in fact, know both constituent parts: The first part means literally “what is” and the second part means “time”. We have, in fact, seen this construction in some of the symbols known to the BSP. In a similar construction the compound of “what is” and “person” the symbol is known to mean “who”. Thus we can conclude that, in this case, the compound means “when”.

In the case of the second unknown symbol, we have another compound symbol, but in this case we do not know the constituent parts in full. Once again, however, we have the symbol for “what is”. Given the relatively humanoid quality of the ideograms in general and the context of this compound in other situations, I feel comfortable in guessing that this symbol is being literally embedded in someone’s forehead — a traditional expression of thought. Thus we have a symbol which might be literally understood as “thinking on what is” or “wondering”.

SENTENCE 3: There are two unknown symbols to be found in this sentence, as well. The basic form of this ideogram is “year”, but there is an additional “x” in the lower right-hand corner. It is my belief, particularly given its context here, that this “x” is meant to denote a plural form — thus, “years”. (NOTE: This has recently been confirmed by the BSP through study of other sources.)

The second symbol here is literally a diagram representing the mathematical Golden Ratio — also known as the Golden Logos. We have seen this ideogram elsewhere, but are uncertain of exactly what it is being used to refer to. For the moment we have taken the liberty of translating it simply as “logos”, allowing the context in which it is found to speak for itself.

SENTENCE 4: The first unknown symbol here is, again, “logos”. We’ll come back to the second, but the third is a variant on known symbols for “none” (four empty boxes), “few” (one box filled), “some” (two boxes filled), and “many” (three boxes filled). It would seem to be a safe assumption that, with all four boxes filled, we are looking at an ideogram for “all”.

The fourth unknown symbol is that for a “star” with a hole in the middle. This might be blackhole, but it seems that “wormhole” would be a better translation given its context in a later sentence (as we shall see).

Thus the sentence may be read: “Logos ??? all the wormholes of the cosmos.” By context it would appear that the symbol which remains must be some sort of verb. The two arrows (representing action) revolving into each other would seem to indicate a cycle of some sort, but “Logos cycles all the wormholes in the cosmos” makes little seeming sense. But consider, for a moment, how often “creation” is referred to as a cycle in our primitive philosophies, religions, and mythologies. Thus I propose that “creation” is an appropriate fit here (although I am fully willing to admit that it may not be a perfect fit).

SENTENCE 5:  “Logos” is the only symbol we do not know for certain here.

SENTENCE 6: Again we have the ideogram suggestive of “thought”, but this time the thought imbedded in the forehead is that of “future”. It is literally a “thought for the future” or a “thought of the future”. Perhaps it may mean hope or perhaps it may mean a plan, but in essence the distinction between the two is nearly meaningless in this sentence.

The second unknown symbol in this sentence is a variation on a symbol which means “we” (with a single line above it). I will suggest, given this relationship and its context in this sentence, that this usage may mean “they” (or, more generally, “others”).

SENTENCE 7: The first unknown symbol here, with its actions between the positive and the negative, suggests an opposing charge. It would seem to mean literally “opposing” or “opposite”, but is most likely used here in the sense of “but” or “on the other hand”.

The second unknown symbol is much simpler to intuit: We know the sign for “is not” (the equal sign with a line through it) and we know the dot preceding it renders it into the past tense of “was not”.

SENTENCE 8: Once again, “Logos” is the only symbol we do not know for certain here.

SENTENCE 9: Here we find a symbol which seems to gouge the symbol meaning “for” or “to” out of the symbol for “contain”. I have an intuitive sense that this symbol means “therefore” or something akin to it. The symbol for “others” is the second unknown symbol in this sentence and “Logos” is the third.

SENTENCE 10: This is the most difficult sentence to unravel. The first symbol we have established as “but”, but this leave three symbols unaccounted: A hand with arrows (indicating action) pointing towards an indeterminate object; the symbol for a person with an unknown symbol above its head; and a symbol for one person (with upraised arms standing over the figure of another person laying down.

Let us start with this last unknown symbol: The symbol of a person with their head pointing towards the left indicates “youth” or “infant”, as we have seen. Given the positional grammar inherent in many of these ideograms, it seems likely that the symbol of a person with their head pointing in the opposite direction would have the opposite meaning, indicating either “age” or “death”. In either case, the prostrate position indicates a position of weakness while the other figure seems somehow triumphant with its upraised arms. Would it be absurd to suggest that this symbol means either “threaten” or (perhaps more likely) “conquer”?

Thus we have a sentence reading: [BUT] [WE] [???] [A] [???] [THAT] [NOW] [THREATEN] [THE] [MANY STARS]

But we <something> a <something> that now threaten the cosmos.

They were exploring. What natural consequences could there be from exploring? Finding. Searching. Reaching. Contacting.

This last seems most likely, for the symbol of a person as the other known symbol suggests a sentient being they could have contacted. And the ideogram of a hand performing an action towards an object could be to “contact” that object.

Thus we have: [BUT] [WE] [CONTACT] [A] [???] [THAT] [NOW] [THREATEN] [THE] [MANY STARS]

What did they contact? Other compound symbols using the single person with a symbol above their head are known: For example, the symbol for “father” is a single person with a carat above their head.

Perhaps some clue can be garnered from the nature of that symbol: It resembles an inverted omega. Certainly other characters within the ideograms have been known to resemble Greek letters. Is it possible that, as the omega literally means “the end”, an inverted omega could mean “new”? A “new person”? A “new people”?

Or possibly this symbol indicates another relation (other than father). But what relationship? Cousin perhaps?

Or perhaps this symbol is meant to symbolize an all-inclusive category. Could it mean simply “race”?

The subtlety here is lost due to lack of context, but we know from other research that the people who created these ideograms feared people known as the “Bane”. Given the context of the entire sentence it does not seem unlikely that, whatever the precise meaning of this symbol, that it refers to the Bane.

Thus: But we contacted a race [the Bane] that now threatens the cosmos.

SENTENCE 11: The symbol of the small square with three lines is a nearly universal representation of writing in primitive ideogrammatic languages. Writing is, literally, the embodiment of knowledge. Thus, in the first ideogram in this sentence, the knowledge is literally being placed into a person (suggesting a meaning of “learn”). In the last, the knowledge appears to be coming out of the person’s mouth (suggesting a meaning of “teach”).

SENTENCE 12: Here, again, we see the symbol for “learn” and the symbol of “logos”.

SENTENCE 13: The symbols of two people are shown coming together using the familiar action arrows, clearly indicating a meaning of “together”. The shield in the other unknown symbol suggests some form of protection, while the arrow indicates an action — thus “defend”.

SENTENCE 14: And this is the other sentence for which Dr. Garriott has given us a complete translation.

IDEOGRAM TRANSLATION

Thus the complete message can be understood (ideogram-by-ideogram) as:

SENTENCE 1: [LONG] [PAST] [OUR] [CIVILIZATION] [GROW] [ON/UPON] [A] [PLANET] [THAT] [WAS] [FAR] [JOURNEY] [INTO] [MANY STARS/COSMOS]

SENTENCE 2: [WHEN] [OUR] [CIVILIZATION] [WAS] [INFANT] [WE] [LOOK] [FOR/TO] [THE] [MANY STARS/COSMOS] [AND/WITH] [WONDER] [WHAT IS] [WE] [WAS] [ALONE] [IN/INTO] [THE] [MANY STARS/COSMOS]

SENTENCE 3: [AFTER] [LONG] [YEARS] [OUR] [CIVILIZATION] [DISCOVER] [THE] [SECRET] [OF THE] [LOGOS]

SENTENCE 4: [LOGOS] [CREATE] [ALL] [THE] [WORMHOLE] [OF THE] [MANY STARS/COSMOS]

SENTENCE 5: [AND/WITH] [LOGOS] [WE] [JOURNEY] [IN/INTO] [THE] [MANY STARS/COSMOS]

SENTENCE 6: [WE] [PLAN/HOPE] [FOR/TO] [DISCOVER] [OTHERS] [WHO] [MIGHT HAVE] [JOURNEY] [THE] [MANY STARS/COSMOS] [BEFORE] [WE]

SENTENCE 7: [OPPOSING STATE] [THERE] [WAS NOT] [OTHERS] [BEFORE] [WE]

SENTENCE 8: [WE] [ALONE] [DISCOVER] [THE] [SECRET] [OF THE] [LOGOS]

SENTENCE 9: [THEREFORE] [WE] [WAS] [JOURNEY] [THE] [COSMOS] [FOR/TO] [DISCOVER] [OTHERS] [FOR/TO] [GIVE] [THE] [SECRET] [OF THE] [LOGOS]

SENTENCE 10: [OPPOSING STATE] [WE] [CONTACT] [A] [COUSIN/RELATIVE/RACE/BANE] [THAT] [NOW] [CONQUER/THREATEN] [THE] [MANY STARS/COSMOS]

SENTENCE 11: [LEARN] [OUR] [TEACH]

SENTENCE 12: [LEARN] [THE] [SECRET] [OF THE] [LOGOS]

SENTENCE 13: [TOGETHER] [WE] [WILL] [DEFEND] [THE] [FUTURE]

SENTENCE 14: [THE] [BATTLE] [FOR/TO] [CONTROL] [OF THE] [MANY STARS/COSMOS] [BEGIN] [NOW]

THE FINAL TRANSLATION

Long ago our civilization grew upon a planet that was a distant journey into the cosmos.

When our civilization was young we looking into the cosmos and wondered whether we were alone in the universe.

After long years our civilization discovered the secret of the Logos.

Logos created all the wormholes of the cosmos.

With Logos we journeyed into the cosmos.

We hoped to discover others who might have journeyed the cosmos before us.

But there were no others before us.

We alone discovered the secret of the Logos.

Therefore we journeyed the cosmos to discover others to give the secret of the Logos.

But we contacted the Bane that now threatens the cosmos.

Learn our teachings.

Learn the secret of the Logos.

Together we will defend the future.

The battle for control of the cosmos begins now!

MAKE OF IT WHAT YOU WILL