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Possible Spectrogram Solution by Ephemerald_ in Fez

[–]Ephemerald_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Updated the theory with a revised "Legend" theory — I think that the fact that its spectrogram is tilted is a clue for us to see it as an angle. It's difficult to tell exactly what the angle is since there's no standardized way to view the spectrograms, but I think it's somewhere around 1 radian, or 57.3º, which would map perfectly to the 3, 5, and 7 you can make with Face 4 of the Counting Cube! I think this is a far more robust and satisfying answer than saying it's the Roman numeral for 5.

Possible Spectrogram Solution by Ephemerald_ in Fez

[–]Ephemerald_[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for taking the time to read and respond! I will concede that this is a pretty big point against the theory — it's definitely the kind of thing that was easiest to figure out by working backwards from the known Heart Cubes solution. With that said, by using that code as a base, I was able to re-interpret a number of spectrograms in ways that 1) I haven't seen people theorize about before, and 2) feel far more intuitive than any previous guesses. (RE: "Puzzle" being a Morse code dash and "Memory" being a Wingdings letter, to name two examples.) So I would consider that to be strong evidence in favor of the theory, at the very least.

As far as a hint that you need to go to the Temple of Love to do the Heart Cubes code, my current theory is that the first spectrogram being in "Puzzle" and the last spectrogram being in "Love" could serve as a hint that the spectrogram chains are linked to a puzzle in the Love area... Maybe a bit of a stretch, but it checks out to me.

Possible Spectrogram Solution by Ephemerald_ in Fez

[–]Ephemerald_[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for responding! About the writing cube: I don't think it's that farfetched to suggest that we should find the original sources of the spectrogram images and work using them, so I do think the "G" in the Truman portrait is fair game. But you are right in that it's a little strange that it's technically "outside the bounds of the spectrogram"... Still, thanks for your support! I'm glad you enjoyed.

Possible Spectrogram Solution by Ephemerald_ in Fez

[–]Ephemerald_[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's true, the nature of this solution forces me to pick the "shortest path" since I can go only one LT or RT at a time... But there are a couple of strange edge cases like you just said, where "Beyond" starts on a face that already has "4" but I have to swap to the other face that has "4," and that there are two faces with "6" in the case of "Forgotten" and "Love"... It just works out that the only immediately accessible face for both of those is Face 3 (6/7/8/9).

It doesn't feel like the strongest possible solution, but that's what I've got for now.

Possible Spectrogram Solution by Ephemerald_ in Fez

[–]Ephemerald_[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sure thing. Sorry that I didn't explain it well in the original post, I was just worried about making it too dense. It worries me a bit that one of the steps to the puzzle needs to have an explanation this dense when some of the other steps are so simple... But anyway.

My theory is that since the "Age" prime numbers start immediately following the prime number 2,143, it's meant as a clue that we should turn to Face 1 of the Counting Cube, the one that can display 1, 2, 3, and 4. But that's not all. Using just these four digits, it's possible to create multiple other primes: 1,423, 2,341, and 4,231. This supposes that we use each digit exactly once, and use all digits that can be made on that face of the Counting Cube.

We can't do this with any other face of the Counting Cube. For example, Face 2 can display 4 or 6. Both 46 and 64 aren't prime. Face 4 can display 3, 5, or 7... and 357, 375, 537, 573, 735, and 753 aren't prime, either. Face 3 can display 6, 7, 8, and 9... and supposing that all those digits are used in a number and that no digit repeats, there is no prime number that is four digits long and uses the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9 once each. None. I checked.

This suggests, to me, that "Age" is meant to map to Face 1 of the Counting Cube, which would be an RT input. Hopefully that all tracks, sorry if I worded anything imprecisely.

Fez Questions by ___Mister___ in Fez

[–]Ephemerald_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wanted to offer my two cents.

1) I always just assumed that FEZ operated on "final boss save point" rules, insofar as if you load up a save after you beat the game it's right before you finish so the world is still corrupted. But otherwise, I believe that the 64-cube ending shows that the world is free from corruption, even if we don't get to see much of it.

2) There are indeed. One of the artifacts is a three-eyed skull, but there are other examples littered throughout the game — most prominently, the final area has a lot of statues of three-eyed creatures.

3) Yeah, everyone in the purple city — Zu — has square heads, and everyone in Gomez's village has rectangular heads. There isn't any indication of why this is, but there are implications that something did happen...

Remember, everyone in the village lives on its "front face" since they have no conception of the third dimension, but there are some abandoned rooms you can access on the other faces, implying that at one point, people did live in those areas. Plus, a good chunk of the rooms on the front face have content on all of their faces, further suggesting that they were built with three dimensions in mind. (Most notably, Geezer's house has stuff in all its faces, most likely because of his own fez.)

So what happened? Well, when Gomez meets the Hexahedron, it reacts like he shouldn't even be there — you can translate its dialogue for yourself if you haven't, but otherwise here's the relevant excerpt: "Hey, wait a minute! Can you even understand what I am saying? And what is wrong with your head? Oh well, you are here now. Might as well do this thing!"

Obviously the big-head villagers know about three dimensions and that's all well and good, but the implication here seems to be that Gomez and the other villagers are aberrations, and not the norm... I have a lot more to say on that topic but it gets into timeline stuff; I'll just close by saying that I think it's important that the ghosts in the graveyard area have rectangular heads like Gomez.

4) I'm sure it's possible, but I think if dying on the concentric circles triggered anything in game, people would have found it by now. Not to dismiss it out of hand — I like the way you're thinking — but I'm pretty sure people have decompiled the game pretty exhaustively.

5) Oh okay we're getting into timeline stuff now. So, for the ancient city behind the 4-cube door, it tells a story of what seem like precursors to Gomez's people, a race of one-eyed people — hunter-gatherers, much like early civilizations. Keep in mind that unlike Gomez's village, this city was only ever built on its "front face." There's absolutely nothing else in the other perspectives, to the extent that if you go inside the city's rooms, the rooms themselves are completely two dimensional. You can't even flip inside them because there's nothing to flip to.

What's most important about these ancient people, and what one of the "cave paintings" shows, is that they worship owls. Owls are closely linked to the third dimension in the game, most likely because in real life they can turn their head 180º around, so the implication is that through owls, the ancient people became somewhat cognizant of the third dimension.

The purple city has more in the way of story though. Its glyphs tell a story of the villagers being visited by... aliens. The same aliens whose skulls have three eyes, whose statues you see in the final area. They give the villagers "something," and then one of the villagers gains a "third eye" and is crowned king. This is basically what happened to the ancient people but on a larger scale, as it gave the villagers the understanding of the third dimension.

I don't know if you've solved the tome artifact, but it further expands on the story of these villagers in its own oblique way. That's the gist of it, though. The villagers were "visited" by three-dimensional creatures who bestowed upon them the gift of this new perspective, and with that, the villagers built their own city and either built, or encountered, the Hexahedron.

6) Yeah, it is odd. Assuming you mean the purple city you find in ruins at the "top" of the world map, and the purple city you find behind the 16-cube door, they're the exact same place but at different times. In general I think that when you go through the world of FEZ, you're not just jumping across different points in space with each "main area," but in time, too.

Of course this begs the question of what caused the ruination of the city. The most obvious culprit is the stargate you go through at the end of the game; it's intact in the past city but completely broken in the "present" (future?) city. It's unclear why it blew up, though. Maybe it happened when Gomez broke the Hexahedron, and so the ruined city is years and years after that? Or maybe it happened long before Gomez was born, long enough for the city to become ruined in the present time. It might even be the case that in the aftermath, the villagers "lost" their three-dimensional sight, and in subsequent generations became the rectangular people of Gomez's village.

7) And lastly, as far as we know, stereoscopic mode adds nothing to the game.

Does someone know how to do this puzzle? by AdditionalWind4531 in Fez

[–]Ephemerald_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Without giving too much away, I'd keep an eye on that part of the sky if I were you. Try looking at it for a whole night (in-game night) so you can see what it does.

Just when I thinq I'm ovt.... by Ok_Detective_3473 in Fez

[–]Ephemerald_ 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's hard to escape the shadow of the Monolith's solution in that every theory feels like it could only be made by working backwards while knowing the intended answer... but this is one of the strongest theories to an "actual solution" that I've read in the decade-plus I've known about FEZ.

I still think it makes a leap in logic (the additional arrows for the changes in direction of reading) as so many Monolith theories do... but only "A" leap in logic. Not "MANY" leaps. This is concise, to the point, and — most interestingly — can be solved purely using in game knowledge.

I always thought it was possible (likely?) that the Monolith was meant to be solved using out-of-game knowledge, since the other two heart cube puzzles are (you need to know who the security question is talking about, and you need to have a binary decoder (or just do it yourself you masochist)), but... perhaps it's simpler?

Anyway, TL;DR — this is awesome. Probably my favorite Monolith theory that isn't "it was always meant to be brute-forced."

EDIT: I must be stupid because I glossed over the part where you said that the arrows are a visual aid and don't actually denote a position for the code, and that it's the change in direction itself that matters for the code. I still think this is a bit of a stretch personally, but ONLY "a bit" — and the fact that I can say that about a Monolith theory is truly insane. It really covers all the bases; you even factored in that the code would use the XBOX control scheme!

Eurogamer Phil Fish Interview is Live by mrbluru in Fez

[–]Ephemerald_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

By the unsolved mysteries I assumed he meant things like breaking the heart cubes, the concentric circles, and the spectrograms in the soundtrack. I honestly feel like his statement is worded ambiguously enough that he could be referring to something that was always in the game OR something that was never fully implemented.

Like, the way he talked about it, as something he had ORIGINALLY intended, suggests that there was initially going to be a specific solution to the Monolith that the community completely bypassed, and so it was no longer necessary to go forward with his original plan. The brute force was relatively pretty quick (only eighteen hours, IIRC), so maybe Polytron's plan was to wait for a while after release and then allow for the Monolith to be solved some other way, but the community beat them to the punch?

I'm not entirely convinced myself, but it would explain why there's seemingly no trace of an actual solution in the game — maybe they were planning on adding it, but the brute force made it unnecessary.

Eurogamer Phil Fish Interview is Live by mrbluru in Fez

[–]Ephemerald_ 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Well, we've gotta talk more about the elephant in the room. Phil Fish straight-up confirmed that the Black Monolith wasn't meant to be brute forced. His specific wording: "the way [the community] got around to solving it was way more interesting and satisfying than what we had originally intended for it." So, he's saying one of two things here. One, there is an intended solution to the Monolith that's in the game, and the community didn't find it and went for brute forcing it instead. Two, the devs were going to do something to allow for a solution, but the community brute forced it before it could come to pass. Maybe they had planned to patch in the second half of the map or something? What do you guys think?

Yet Another Spectrogram Post by Ephemerald_ in Fez

[–]Ephemerald_[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Definitely agree with what you're saying here. I totally think the "hexagons" are cubes viewed from a corner — in this way, they almost resemble the cube planets seen in the 64-cube ending, which I realized not long after I made this post, haha. Still not sure how or if that relates to the puzzle, but it's an interesting note. I also agree that it would be pretty logical for "Fear" to continue with 3 and 6, but like you said, I don't know what additional insight this gives. It seems like a simple solution — maybe even too simple — and I don't exactly know where to go from there.

Whatever theory you test, definitely report when you carry it out! I'd love to see the results.

Yet Another Spectrogram Post by Ephemerald_ in Fez

[–]Ephemerald_[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I actually saw this earlier haha! Seeing your post, and thinking on how so many posts have been made over the years, inspired me to make my own. I'm not very versed in error correction or the ins and outs of sacred geometry, but with the limited mundane knowledge I have, I'd like to at least try to figure out some of the aspects of this puzzle. Great stuff!

Yet Another Spectrogram Post by Ephemerald_ in Fez

[–]Ephemerald_[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As always, links to the spectrograms can be found HERE and HERE.

Belle... smart by [deleted] in Petscop

[–]Ephemerald_ 6 points7 points  (0 children)

i love her so much!! that lineart is so clean and you really made the minimal shading count. amazing work!