Blog Description



This blog is a personal examination of the "Pizza Code Mystery" ARG created by Christopher Horn for the Black Mesa video game.
I will attempt to update this blog on a regular basis, for as long as the ARG is in existence and folks are willing to attempt to solve it.
This will not be a complete overview of the clues and such associated with the ARG--you can find a complete, up-to-date version of that material here.


Monday, October 22, 2012

The Missing X01 and X02 Rooms

I am noticing a trend with some of the new clues we've been discovering.  Four primary sources point to two rooms--X01 and X02--yet they are nowhere to be found in the actual game.  That said, I'll go ahead and break it down to show you what I mean.

Source 1:  The IRC Chat Clue

INCOMING TRANSMISSION - LOC 2 LAYER 2 SUBSTRATA 3 X01/X02 HALOS PROJECT INITIATED
41Nb recovered. HAFB Compromised.
Transfer to site complete, project HALOS underway. Further INFO [Classified].
CODE BASE 64 compromised, switch to old code talker.
They are watching, assume leaker on site.
WSMR No longer viable location, move to main site, check external sources.
 
Although it doesn't use the word "rooms", this is clearly a reference to the two secret rooms and the project Horn was working on within them--what is referred to here as the "Halos Project"

Source 2:  The Welsh Resume Page Clue

10/09/200x - Diary Log of Dr J Welsh

LISTS
LISTS
LISTS

So many lists, always with the lists. Dr Welsh do this,
have it on my desk by 3, Dr Foreman here is todays
list of tasks, please have it on my desk by noon.
Well, I got a call from Dr Stone over in Sector C,
and he thinks Dr Horn has been misappropriating
funds from the lab budget to buy pizzas with, and
fund some secret project we dont have the access
levels to get at. Only Dr Horn and Dr Bottomley seem
to have access to those rooms, hmm perhaps Dr Junek too...

All I know is, we had a complaint from the main administrator
Dr Montero that Lab D funding had a grossly disproportionate
impact on the lab funding, especially considering work
currently under way on the biodome in the sub levels of the facility.

We have a plan though to get back at Dr Horn, we're going to steal
all his misgotten goods, and hide them throughout the whole
facility, he'll spend months looking for them.


Once again, there is a reference to rooms that only Dr. Horn and Dr. Bottomley (who are the original two key players), and Dr. Junek (Raminator), have access to.  I'm guessing that last part was added in because, in all likelihood, if there were two hidden rooms IN the game, Raminator would have to know about them.


Source 3:  The Biodome Maps


The biodome facility map shows the X01 and X02 rooms as being adjoined to the hallways parallel to twin small laser rooms,  yet there are of course no rooms there in the actual game.  Furthermore, the rooms are listed as "~CLASSIFIED~", drawing even more attention to them.

Source 4:  The Questionable Ethics Chapter Wiki Page

You can scroll down on this page to the "Lab D" section to find the following text, added to the wiki by Stormseeker himself in September, 2012:

"This section is the most iconic part of the chapter, and includes the four Auxiliary Optronics labs and the Primary Optronics Test labs. It has been expanded to include personal offices and classified labs (X01 and X02), but its purpose is otherwise unchanged in from the original."

 Clearly, the rooms are meant to be found, especially considering this was updated so recently.  I could see how it might have been "forgotten" at an earlier stage of development, but there's no way this was an oversight so late in the game.

So, with all of these sources pointing to the existence of two secret and classified rooms, where are the rooms?  Could they be related to the exclusion of the "bm_c2a4d" map?  

I sincerely think we need to find out where these rooms are, and from doing so we can hopefully discover some more answers that will lead to the eventual resolution of this ARG.

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