This page will be a somewhat long page that I wanted to make to describe my feelings and appreciation for this series! Going episode by episode, I’ll share some of the things that made me both fascinated and invested in the series!
However, I must say that this page won't have much “use” compared to the next 2 pages, it's just my almost coherent ramblings about something I really like.
So, without further ado, let’s begin!
Episode 1, the start of the series! I think it did a fantastic job at introducing the concepts and the type of thing we are going to explore!
Previous to this ARG, I wasn’t really acquainted with the demo system Source games had, only heard about it in passing mentions from friends and Youtube videos. But I think using the demo and its functions were a really creative and unique idea to build a Source Engine horror web series around!
Another thing I found very creative was using the Half-Life 2 graffiti image of the umbrella man as the base of this mystery! All the graffiti in that game creeped me out to some extent, but that umbrella man in specific was… scarier than the others. Something about it always made me uneasy, like, what is its purpose? Who made it? What are they trying to say…
I’m also a little ashamed to admit I did bootup Half-Life 2 to check if the black variant of the umbrella man graffiti actually existed in the Ravenholm alley… look, we all do silly dumb things from time to time okay?
Anyway, the whole hidden command thing and the functions of the Interloper command was a VERY fascinating thing to witness, like, generating demos and sometimes maps? That 's very cool!
…
Until a type 5 was generated…
CSTRIKE was the point where this went from “Oh, this is a cool command!” to “Oh, this is not a cool command at all!”.
I wasn’t really creeped out from CSTRIKE, more like, asking questions and curious about what was happening. Who is this umbrella man? Why are the POV so dynamic and actually interacting with the world?
We had no answers to these questions and the second and third type 5 demos from this episode only served to make more questions…
FORTRESS wasn’t really scary, it was more comedic than anything, I just can’t take a T-posing Heavy seriously… But SPOOKYCOAST was spooky! Seeing those broken NPCs and eventually being jumped by one was pretty good.
Episode 2 we get more clues to this mystery and we get the first instance of viewer interaction in the web series, the files for the FORTRESS and CSTRIKE demos! You can download these demos and play it on your own copy of TF2 and CS:Source, albeit, they have been a bit corrupted due to updates and stuff. This is the moment we, the audience, get to use the many tools available on the Source Engine, such as the Hammer Editor, to explore and dissect these demos and maps generated by the Interloper command… Well, I’m not smart enough to do it, so I only watched/ read what other people much smarter than me saw using those tools!
Either way, this episode is more of Anomi generating demos and trying out other Source games, which is interesting to see that the command works in many games. Until that last type 5 demo he generated…
That demo gave me a genuine scare and it didn’t even have a screamer! And the aftermath of it, leaving completely breaking Portal, was really fascinating!
In this episode, we get the confirmation that a previous Interloper investigation did happen and the first mention of our “Villains” named FSKY.
The duality between this investigation and the previous one is such an interesting twist and I like it! From time to time, we will also see some interesting parallels between Eidamona’s investigation and Anomi’s.
But more importantly, we finally get a name behind all this mystery, the people seemingly responsible for this command: FSKY.
A long forgotten and dead server hosting service… that for some reason still exists and appears in Half-Life 2... how interesting.
This was one of the coolesting things ever, a livestream event showing the process of generating demos! After testing and discovering that he could run the broken version of Portal RTX and other Source games at the sametime, he started a livestream and showed to the public that he could still generate demos using broken Portal RTX!
Obviously, everything was pre recorded, but it was so cool to watch the entire process live with the commentary by Anomi! Really made it feel like this command exists and actually functions.
Many interesting demos came from this episode, including my favorite type called WHITEROOM but the most interesting one was the final demo generated, a type 3 that was in the correct map! That whole segment of the demo seemingly going in the right direction through the maze while Portal RTX approached a glowing door only for everything to crash when reaching the door was so intense and cool.
This is the moment where this web series went from “very cool and well made series” to genuinely fascinating! The Source void was something I generally tended to not think too much about and avoid as a kid while playing TF2 and Garry’s Mod. I can’t tell you why tho… maybe I was afraid of flying too far and getting lost?
But due to the events of the last episode, Anomi got the key to explore and see what is in this seemingly infinite black void! The moment of the episode where he went all out trying to find any areas around GM_Construct and the music during that segment felt really grandiose and cool! I really loved that part!
One of my favorite moments in any fiction is when the visuals and music are in sync, and Anomidae pulled this moment off masterfully! I GOT CHILLS SEEING! THAT’S HOW GOOD IT WAS!!
This one is really small.
It’s just showing that a long thought lost type 5 demo was rediscovered in a video compilation of old HL2 videos. The demo itself was moderately spooky.
In this one we get some backstory on the Source Engine, which is pretty interesting and ties nicely with what we have been shown so far. But the highlight for me was the automation of the process to search the void, like, building drones in Garry's Mod? That 's genius!
The VRAD entity was also very intriguing… Flying through the void (and games!) and hunting down Anomi to crash Portal RTX. The entity being related to previous investigation also adds so much to the series, like, things from the past can still be seen and felt today, love that!
This is probably THE coolest episode!
Started off as another livestream, but it later turned to an automated demo generating showcase when Anomi had to leave and accidentally forgot to turn off the stream and RAVENCHECK.exe kicked in at midnight.
The feeling of waiting on a BRB screen for 30 minutes to then be shown that the graffiti had just returned and all the automated process to make demos kicking in to exploit this opportunity was really cool! Well… Would be cool if I was there…
I saw the start of the stream and thought it was just a regular gaming stream and Anomi was just having fun interacting with the chat, so I just left and only saw the aftermath a few hours later. But hey, I did get to check out the hundreds of demos generated that episode because-
Drum rolls
They were all available to be downloaded and played on your own games the next day! That’s right, just like episode 2, we got the files to all the demos generated during the livestream and helped Anomi investigate them!
I got a friend and later that day, after work, we spent a few hours going through demo after demo, looking and searching for the cool secrets and investigating ourselves. Very good times! We weren’t smart enough to find anything cool though, but it was still fun and fascinated me on how this whole thing is even possible!
I really hope when this series ends, we get a really detailed behind the scenes on how all these things were made. Like, how do you even begin to emulate a type 6 demo??
This episode is more of investigating the demos from last episode and spotlighting that Source Filmmaker was doing something while those demos were being generated.
And just like the previous Interloper investigation, Anomi managed to trap a ghost in the Source mod he left open before leaving the stream. Parallels and parallels… he even hurts the entity in an attempt to make them do something…
This episode brought the creepiness back to the series in my opinion. The things Sky Ghost did were so spooky and the cubemap demos were actually scary and creepy! And I LOVE THAT!
The sound design, animation and how fast everything moves makes it so much creepier! I hope we get to see more of these in the future. That ending was also pretty insane, it got me jumpy and guessing on what happened and what's going to happen next!
