Welcome to THE page dedicated to talk and share interesting things about one my favorite ARGs of all time: Interloper!
But before we get into the wall of texts, I would like to give you a short introduction to this web series by answering a few questions:
Created by the very talented Anomidae, Interloper is a horror web series/ ARG that began in 2022. The series follows the character Anomi and his research on a mystery that, even many years after its discovery in Half-Life 2, is still unsolved.
Alright, alright. I feel like episode one does a great job introducing everything, but fine. I’ll give you a very summarized recap of episode one and nothing more because I don’t want to spoil anything that happens later on!!!
The episode begins showing where Anomi discovered this mystery, a forum named halflife2.net from 2005. In this forum, there’s a discussion board about a weird and creepy umbrella man graffiti in Ravenholm. Anomi takes interest in this discussion and boots up Half-Life 2 and looks for said graffiti and…
He finds it.
However, this graffiti is very odd… There’s a couple of umbrella man graffiti in Half-Life 2, but this one looks different from the regular one.
Slightly different…?
What’s weird is that, when looking at it with the Hammer Editor (Map editor for Source Engine games.) reveals that the decal is actually corrupted!
The source of this corruption being this secret message inside the file when looked as a text file:
“FOR J.J.
console: INTERLOPE
>>"Unknown Command: INTERLOPE"
console: get.s.interlope.pull:27015“
Weird… Instructions for the developer console hidden on image file inside Half-Life 2?? Anomi follows said instructions and… Well, see it for yourself:
Well, my friend, that is a demo recording (Demos are basically recordings players can make using the developer console. These demos can be sent to friends and they can play these demos on their own games.), this command is capable of generating demos!
… But wait, this doesn't make sense. Demos can only be made by players, how did this command generate a demo??
Well, that's something for you to discover while watching Interloper!
I gave you the first 5 minutes of episode one to hook you, now it’s your turn to watch it for yourself!
You can watch it on Anomidae's Youtube Channel! Or by using this Playlist here!
Don’t you dare watch a video essay about it before watching the entire series!
…
Well, you can, that’s how I discovered the series actually. Just make sure to watch the series itself on Anomidae’s channel later!
Uh, that's a… silly question. You know what this page is for, I mentioned in the text at the top! The purpose of this page is just to show my appreciation and excitement over this web series that has captured my attention for countless hours!
Of course not! On the left there's a few tabs you can click on!
But be careful, I WILL ASSUME you have WATCHED ALL the EPISODES of INTERLOPER. That means SPOILERS AHEAD!