Game Theory: Hello Neighbor's SATANIC Plot!

Well, hidden

neighbor

s! Welcome to GAME THEORY. And even if you don't know it, it's the Christmas season. A time of love and togetherness. A time for family and brotherhood. A time when we are called to serve as

neighbor

s to one another in this great brotherhood of man. And when I say act like each other's neighbors I mean break into each other's houses to unlock their murder cellars. Screw you, Wilson! The '90s are over. Neighbors no longer give sage advice while hiding behind chin-high fences, my friend. Nowadays, if you move into a new house, at least one of those houses in your neighborhood hides a meat hook with your name on it.

Case in point: Hello neighbor. An indie horror

game

that will be released next summer, but whose alpha versions have already taken the Internet by storm. In a 2016 that was short on big releases, the indie scene took a big step forward, with everything from Welcome to the Game to Layers of Fear, Sister Location and Sarah is Missing. Unique, thought-provoking, and most importantly, terrifyingly fun

game

s. If you missed any of the playthroughs, check them out by clicking the GIF of me freaking out in the corner. You can also click the JIF of me freaking out in the corner, but I'll leave that choice up to you.

And, watching those animations play, if you don't know, I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to this kind of stuff, so expect all kinds of girlish screams in your future. (Oh, farts!) But of all of them, Hello Neighbor is the one that leaves people with the most questions, myself included. If you're not familiar with the game, let me quickly summarize: you play as a new addition to the community, you've just moved in. But shortly after moving in, you start to notice strange behavior from your jazz-prone neighbor. Screams coming from the house, erratic behavior, paranoid looks.

Looking through the windows you see a heavily guarded door leading to the basement. But seriously, what's down there that you don't want the world to see? That is the mystery you seek to solve in the game. Enter, find the tools necessary to undo his security measures, and discover your neighbor's dark secret before it's too late. But you know what? Why go through all the waiting and all the hassle? Today we gather the clues to solve this mystery half a year before the game's release. Partly because I like the challenge of doing it, but also partly because if I wait too long to make a

theory

about it, they post a Ditto the same day I post a video using Ditto's absence as a critical piece of my argument, and then the comments section blows up about it, and you know, it's a purely hypothetical situation but it's something I'm trying to avoid in the future, okay?

Let's be good neighbors. So the first important question people are left with is: is this guy really a bad guy? Sure, he acts a little creepy and REALLY takes his privacy seriously, using everything from bear traps to a security shark. (Beware the jaws of justice. Security shark!) But we don't actually see him commit any crimes. And the game seems to try to trick us; In fact, in the latest update, one of the opening scenes shows what appears to be someone running away from him, but slow down the footage and look closer, and you'll see that his supposed "victim" is just one of many mannequins. that he has placed throughout his house.

Note the shiny brown head, white body, and lack of arms. So are we just paranoid? Jump to conclusions? Will this guy really be revealed to be dangerous in the final game, or is this all just a big misunderstanding? Well, the answer is that he is 100% dangerous. Our first clue comes from an early Reddit IAmA with developers Dynamic Pixels. During it, they received a question from a concerned Redditor. Someone who felt uncomfortable playing a game in which they were going to be the criminal who broke into an innocent person's house. Dynamic Pixels' response is TELLING. "What if the neighbor is a psychopath!

And he has someone prisoner. Who knows? ;)" It smells like an insinuation. A pretty specific clue about that. What the game designers have been planning for the final

plot

of this game since the beginning. That someone is a prisoner in this house. As if words weren't enough, the wink seals the deal. Because? Well, it's a simple Emoji sticker. A face that winks at the end of a sentence is shy and flirtatious. Involving more than just the words spoken. For example, if I texted you, "Why don't you come over tonight?)" That winking face implies that you're not just coming to Overwatch and relaxing.

And in the case of Hello Neighbor, the nod from the developers means: "We pretend we don't give everything away, but you know better." Shy, knowing that "it will be our little secret." But if you don't think that interpreting emoji as modern hieroglyphs is a valid test, then check this out: It's a detail that every playthrough of this game has so far overlooked. Including mine on GTLive. But the question arises: why would a mailbox in front of a house not have an address, but rather two numbers separated by a colon? Of course, the first thing we all think about is time, but that doesn't make any sense here.

Why put an hour of military-style reading in a mailbox? There is no way this could have been an accident either. It's too specific a detail for Dynamic Pixels to include there. So let me tell you I looked. I looked A LOT. I was getting scientific coding sequences, NASA coordinates, all sorts of things that seem to have no possible connection to a game about trolling your creepy neighbor. So where else do you have two numbers separated by a colon? Ratios, quotes, Bible verses... Bible verses. Chapter number, colon, verse number. After striking out so many times, that seemed most likely.

So I searched the entire Bible to find every instance of Chapter 14 Verse 14. What I came up with was the following list. Many of the quotes were purely random. Red herrings, inconsistencies, things without context. Unless, of course, we must leave Joshua and the neighbor is secretly Caleb, son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite. I'm going to say a tentative no to that. But one quote in particular stood out. From Kings 2, Chapter 14 Verse 14. Specifically related to someone breaking into a palace, where he "took away all the gold and silver, all the objects found in the treasuries of the royal palace, and some hostages." So it seems to me that we have printed on the mailbox in front of the neighbors house a Bible verse that specifically tells the story of someone breaking into a palace and stealing not only the valuables, but also rescuing some hostages in the process. .

Now, it's true that we're still VERY early in the game development process, but I like our odds. So the neighbor has been keeping people in his basement against his will, and our job is to take Robin Hood out of things and steal everything. Free the hostages and then escape. And the evidence in Alpha 2 already points to this. If you make it to the basement, we get a soft confirmation, with a mattress on the floor and a crib, as if someone is being held there against their will. In fact, whoever is down there may look like they're trying to escape.

Despite all the fuss surrounding entering the basement at Alpha 2's big launch last week, those who actually bothered to research the game knew what it looked like in Trailer #2, where we can actually see the basement in detail. Running down long stretches of hallway to escape the approaching neighbor. But the most interesting thing here is what happens when you go down to the basement. In fact, you hear a child coughing, a baby whimpering, a woman crying, shadows moving frantically across the floor, and finally, someone yelling something that sounds a lot like "RUN." At the end of the trailer, we are presented with a door labeled "Hide Here" that is locked.

We, as players, have to resort to hiding under the bed, and just before the neighbor catches us, we hear a female scream. That scream leads the neighbor to open and check the hiding place. It seems to me that the mother and her children tried to escape, they hid in the hiding place, obviously a trap, with the large arrows attached to it, and were caught by the neighbor, who has the key to that door. He captures the family who were already his prisoners, but we, as the player, escaped because he didn't know that WE were there too.

So now we can see how big chunks of this story are starting to fit together. But that leaves us with a big question: who or what is this guy? Who is the neighbor? Well, the simple and really creepy answer is that he works for the circus. The guy is a clown. Literally a clown. I know, I know, it sounds stupid and it's the biggest logical leap you could ever make, but the evidence is there. On the game's website there's a ton of promotional material ranging from trailers, pre-made animated GIFs or JIFS if you prefer, and of course our assets.

And hidden among the promotional images showing locations and images we're already very familiar with at this point, lurks a real oddball in the bunch. No, it's not the one where the neighbor is dressed as the devil showing us that crack is crazy like some kind of tanned middle-aged Coppertone girl, but that one is pretty weird too. No, it's not that one, it's this one, where our favorite curly chin is covered in white pastel makeup, summoning us to the basement. Weird, right? And this is the only image where something remotely similar happens. So I would have written this off as just an early game design decision that was eventually scrapped if it weren't for the widespread use of carnival-style visuals throughout this game during the Alpha1 minigame that teaches you how to hide, you're in a queue. with a height limit like you would find while waiting for a ride at an amusement park.

The second floor of her house has a shooting gallery, like those rigged carnival games that are legitimately impossible to win, unless, of course, you're Stephanie, who wins on her first shot. The mystery train on the third floor looks like a monorail system you might find at a theme park, even the music reinforces the funhouse atmosphere. Funhouse, not Funhaus. was present in the game trailer released on the website and I thought maybe this carousel-style music was just temporary, but no, there it is again in Alpha 2, ominously playing a carefree tune as you descend into that creepy, candle-lit Basement and a mother and her son cry.

We apparently live in a time where all horror games revolve around the developer's childhood traumas of stranger danger when men in furry suits or clown suits steal them and hide them in secret hideouts. Speaking of animatronics, he even has one of those too, on the second floor one of his defensive mechanisms is the security shark. (Prepare to finish. Safety shark!) But if you turn around a little and look below the water level, you'll see that it's not a real shark, but a robotic one. Sort of like something you'd see again at a Universal Studio-style attraction, or I guess at a haunted pizzeria.

Freddy, Foxy, Bonnie, Chica and introducing Sharkey! So we have a creepy clown carnival worker who kidnaps mothers and their children and keeps them in his basement. So let's take a moment to look at some more of the concept art and get even more ideas about what's going on in this game. This image, for example. Do you see anything that says, um, a little off? Right there, hanging on the clothesline on the balcony to the right, is a woman's skin suit, or perhaps more accurately an inflatable doll. Man, I hate it when the neighbors leave their sex toys on the clothesline to dry!

It really leaves us with some awkward conversations for kids. Now, I'm not sure this tells us much more than he's a man with personal needs, okay, so leave him alone! And in these mock-ups of the playing area we see where our player eventually gets buried if the neighbor catches him too many times: in his own backyard. But there's another essential detail in these images that we haven't covered yet. As we see in this image from their site, there is a mysterious shadowy figure in the background behind all of this. "Well, could this be the player?" I hear you say, and while it's a good guess, he looks closely at the hands.

You will notice the outline of the gloves that extends to the wrists. That's an important detail because at no point in the footage for this game, both in-game and in promotional materials, is the player character shown wearing gloves. Which brings us to perhaps the biggest twist of all: he has a partner. But then who is he? Well, we don't have much information about the other characters that appear in this game, but I took it upon myself to take the neighbor's model and scale it to the relative size it would be if you were that far away from the camera in This image and discovered that the neighbor is actually a little shorter than the shadowed figure.Why does it matter?

Actually, two reasons. First, confirm that this is not the player character. Every time the neighbor catches us playing, he always looks at eye level or slightly down. We are shorter than the neighbor. So the heights just don't add up. But that brings us to point number two. We can only see one other person in the game: this man in the images. And he looks at the relative heights of him. The neighbor is a little shorter than his male counterpart. It is also evident that they have a long history together, as this portrait was taken years before.

Notice that the neighbor has more hair in this picture in addition to a beard. So it would seem that we have two kidnappers working at a carnival or circus and hiding live and dead victims in the basement. According to Kings 14:14, Our job will be to go in there, rescue them and stop these two murderers. It seems pretty clear, but something kept bothering me while I was writing this

theory

. Because? What is the reason? Are we supposed to believe they do it for fun? Hey, they're just two wild and crazy guys! No, it's too simple, too easy, and honestly, too boring for a game that has developed its

plot

this way.

And that's when I saw it last week while browsing these images. Look closely at the picture with the shadowy figure. Near. Near. You see it? The book. In this conceptual image, when the shadowy figure lurks near the neighbor, the neighbor is reading Faust. Splendor! Quick summary for those of you who don't know, Faust is a German legend about a brilliant scholar, appropriately named Faust, who in the pursuit of supreme knowledge and power strikes a deal in which he sells his soul to the devil. . Yeah! The devil. That's the shady character, that's the one who has been helping the neighbor from the beginning, and that's the reason for these murders.

Do you need more proof? Well, I could start with the candles filling the basement, which are certainly reminiscent of

satanic

channeling circles, but maybe that won't be enough for you. Maybe you need more. Well, look here. In the latest alpha version of the game, you can find a house on a dark street. Inside you'll find a frozen version of the neighbor, suspended in the air along with his bed. Is it just a technical problem? Developer error? Exorcist reference? It doesn't matter. The important thing here is that for the first time it gave us access to a full 360-degree view of the neighbor's character model.

And look at the sole of his shoes. There is a sticker. Some might say a seal that says 6 6 6, the sign of the beast, the number most associated with Satan. The neighbor is literally being equipped by the devil. And that made me rethink this whole theory. Perhaps Kings 14:14 is not the passage you were looking for. Maybe there was something more. So I looked through my notes and found this. Isaiah 14:14 "I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the Most High." Who is speaking here? The answer is a few lines back in Isaiah 14:12 "How you fell from heaven, O star, son of the morning!" The son of the morning star is another way of referring to the morning star, which is another name for Lucifer, also known as the devil.

Isaiah 14:14 is the last thing the devil said before being thrown into hell forever. It is a cry of pride, that he will rise above all and claim supreme knowledge and power over the universe, the very thing Faustus negotiates in his story. So that's the real message that Mailbox is trying to convey: that it will be a story of an unholy alliance between man and the ultimate evil to claim power over all. Or at least one man's quest to ascend to the level of God. And that's how all the pieces fit together. The strange candles of the victims, the neighbor's access to all kinds of security devices, the glowing doors that look like portals to other realms.

Not only does the neighbor not work alone, he works with the devil himself and performs horrible acts against his unsuspecting victims to fulfill his part of a terrifying contract. Which makes the thought of entering the house even creepier and getting caught even more horrible. Before we end here, if you're interested in more theories about Hello Neighbor, push that creepy swinging door with a no trespassing sign to subscribe to Game Theorists because you can bet this is a game I'll be revisiting as you go . more details come out. I can see these theories becoming as fun as FNAF, so if you're a fan of that series, click this and if you're not a fan of that series, well, it's not FNAF, it's actually completely different. he's a killer dressed as a clown instead of a killer dressed as an animatronic.

Anyway, please subscribe and I know I mentioned this before, but if you're interested in seeing my first game of Hello Neighbor, where the neighbor fails badly and gives me free rein in the house, click on the welcome mat over there and We do a little freaking out, we theorize a little. Overall, it's a good time with a good game and hey, it gives us more time to hang out together. I love doing live broadcasts. The GT live community is one of the most positive on YouTube. They are very supportive of each other so if you want to join that community click there check out

hello

neighbor and make sure to subscribe but now if you'll excuse me I have to go because Christmas is right around the corner and I have I'll be writing a bunch more theories if I hope to get far enough along to be able to take a vacation, so with that in mind guys, remember it's just a theory, a game theory, thanks for watching.