History Main / Singularity

** This game is a contender for "Fridge Brilliance: The Game", and is in a tie with ''{{Prototype}}''. Just check the respective page.

*** Each one of those rounds is worth a fortune. ''[[TeamFortress2It costs four hundred billion rubles to fire this rifle twelve times!]]''

*** Each one of those rounds is worth a fortune. ''It costs four hundred billion rubles to fire this rifle twelve times!''

* DidNotDoTheResearch: During the flashbacks, Soviet scientists praise Stalin in their official reports, and a giant bust of the dictator is found in the first room. The game explicitly states that the facility was at its most active under Nikita Khruschev. Khruschev, of course, being most famous for his policy of De-Stalinization.

* DidNotDoTheResearch: During the flashbacks, Soviet scientists praise Stalin in their official reports, and a giant bust of the dictator is found in the first room. The game explicitly states that the facility was at its most active under Nikita Kruschev. Kruschev, of course, being most famous for his policy of De-Stalinization.

** Not really. Khruschev WAS an old-school Bolshevik who earned his chops doing nasty things under Lenin and Stalin's tenures. This IS the man who wantonly massacred Georgian Stalinists and Polish and Hungarian dissidents at the slightest whiff of opposition, who gave nuclear weapons to [[GeneralRipper Fidel Castro]] and [[AxeCrazy Che]], and by all accounts whose policies of trying to soften things up with the West had infinitely more to do with the USSR's strategic weakness than it did with his own natural goodness, and [[spoiler: it isn't unbelievable to see how he might well have pulled a NotSoHarmless if he every really got a definitive leg up over the West to a downright horrific degree.]]

** Key words here: OFFICIAL REPORTS. [[DisproportionateRetribution Do you WANT to know what would happen to scientists if they did NOT praise Stalin in their official reports?]] And Khruschev was still one of Stalin's acolytes, and while he did mildly critique the Stalinist system, he was still as authoritarian as ever and he did NOT broach criticism of Stalin that he deemed too strong.

Not to be confused with TheSingularity. Or with EndgameSingularity, which is an Open Source game where [[AIIsACrapshoot you're playing an AI]]. Also not to be confused with ''TimeShift'', the ''other'' time-warping FPS.

* TranslationConvention: Sort of. We see lots of signs that are posted in both Russian ''and'' English, something that would be odd for 1950s Russia to do, and most of the characters (except soldiers gunning for you) speak in Russian-accented English.

** Arguably averted because, well, he's ''using an external power source and a device that essentialy amplifies the power of the TMD''.

** Then again, it also has very low ammo.

* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: At one point, you can repair an audio log sitting on a table. Out of nowhere, the screen flashes several images, one of which being a hanging, dessicated corpse staring at the screen. It is never explained why and doesn't happen again. It's implied that the corpse is that of the recently-married man whose wife left to find supplies and never returned, leading him to hang himself, since you see the vision when listening to his first audiolog, and see his corpse hanging next to the second one.
** Probably done just to spook you, like that bit when you're swimming through some canals, you take a corner, and ''BAM'', a 50-year-old corpse is there, with the creepy sound effect.

* {{Gamebreaker}}: Almost. Deadlock, a shootable time dilation field that freezes enemies and slows down bullets, is ''very'' powerful and costs very little TMD energy, but without it it's much harder to survive at ''all'' against certain enemies with powerful attacks.
** The Seeker is a steerable one-shot killer that is so powerful that you one get to use it only 3 or 4 times in the whole game. It's easily the most enjoyable weapon in the whole game.
** The weapon locker system. Although a logically sound idea for allowing the player to cherry-pick the guns that have been upgraded over those that have not, it does however allow the player to pick out the [[{{BFG}} Autocannon]] at every opportunity after it is first discovered. Given that three rounds from it can put down the average {{Mook}} and it fires around seven a second with reasonable accuracy, it makes practically every other gun irrelevant.
** One word: Revert. What Deadlock does to powerful enemies, Revert does to mook swarms. Turn one mook into a monster and a six-on-one battle turns into "Hey, everyone fight the monster while I shoot you in the back!" And then the creature itself goes down quick to the above-mentioned Autocannon when it finally charges the player, which does brutal amounts of damage at close range.

* HighOctaneNightmareFuel: The worst part is the fact that the game was advertised as an ordinary First Person Shooter/Puzzle Game. The SurvivalHorror segments are quite unexpected.
** A few minutes after the start of the game, you're happily exploring old Soviet ruins. There are some old audio files around, that'll compel you to turn up the volume. As you walk down a hallway, [[spoiler: without warning, a nearby voice screams "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LET ME OUT!"]] [[ItGotWorse It goes downhill from there]].
** Also, think about what aging enemies to death would be like for ''them''. If time is only sped up in relation to everything else, ''they experience it at real time''.
** Perhaps scariest of all (particularly for almost anybody who experienced the old USSR and its satellites and Communism in general) is the idea of an effectively omniscient Soviet Union that has conquered the world.
** What about the little kids trapped at the top of the stairs? Or that...that ''thing'' inside a room ''standing over the crib of a baby?!''

* PortingDisaster: Unreal Engine 3's texture streaming was improperly configured in the PC version of the game out of the box. This resulted in texture streaming being non functional at higher resolutions, making the game look like [[http://ve3d.ign.com/images/71032/PC/Singularity/Screenshots/July-26th-Texture-Streaming-Screenshot this]]. Lowering the resolution would almost always fix the problem, but was of small comfort to players with 1920x1080, or 1080p, capable screens. The real issue was that the problematic setting would, in other Unreal Engine 3 games, be fixable by spending thirty seconds editing a text file. In ''Singularity,'' the config files are buried so deeply that [[http://forums.dearwandy.com/viewtopic.php?id=30090 the fix required a hex editor]]. Because the executable that launches the game must be similarly changed, the fix didn't work on the Steam version of the game, as it has a slightly different executable file. The problem was eventually fixed in an official patch, nearly a month after release.

** [[BOrat My neighbor, he is a pain in my assholes]].

* SpecialEffectsFailure: [[http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/06/29/breaking-news-from-singularity-hhhthhhfhhj/ This]] image in the Mir-12 video.

** Also, [[spoiler: look at the Singularity reactor apex before, during and after you set up the bomb: first, the reactor has a dodecahedral (I think, I haven't actually counted) cage around the main chamber (which is filled with blue light as you travel to the past), and there's a recharge port in front of it; back in 1955, the cage is no longer present, but the recharge station is still there; then, when you return to 2010, the cage is not there either, and the entire floor is changed (it's sealed, like it was in 1955). Then, when (if) you travel back in time again, to kill yourself, the singularity chamber is again covered in a field of blue light that mimics the old cage (probably indicating that the reactor is again changing shape?). I can't really explain this change of design, but it obviously means ''something'']].

** [[spoiler:There is also a fourth option, take too long to choose who dies, Demichev shoots BOTH you and Barisov.]]

** Debatable. [[spoiler: The guy writing the messages is ''desperate''. There are some that say ''"I'm starting to forget. It's been so long"'', and that big, circular diagram you find in one of the offices says ''"They took my arm, they will take my arm again"'' (in reference to the TMD). The same diagram shows that the guy tried several endings for the time loop (one line reads "Demichev wins", I think). Also, the BackToTheFuture-style diagram shows that history branches out in ''two'' points: one with Demichev living, that reads "BAD", and another one, that branches out later, and is double-crossed, which probably indicates the Barisov timeline. All in all, I don't think it's ''just'' the second iteration]].
*** Not to mention that the [[spoiler: Original Renko's voice is aged; Barisov even points that out, calling him the old man. The implication is that the first Renko has been watching others' attempts at fixing it and trying to point them in the right direction for years, if not decades, of the exact same events, not even really knowing what the right direction is, which is why the directions you get are muddled and confusing, including one that confusingly says, [[ParanoiaFuel "DON'T TRUST ME"]].]]

* {{Bookends}}: [[spoiler: Barisov's ending mirrors the opening which cleverly makes you think you've succeeded, at first]].

* FridgeBrilliance: Okay, so having an E99-armed Soviet Union curbstomp the world in the 1960s without anyone coming up with any deterrents is implausible, right? It seems like it...until you realize that not only is the USSR's new power coming from a line of research that no one else in the 1950s has ''imagined,'' let alone done basic theoretical work in, but said research has literally given the Soviet Union ''time machines''. If a defector steals some samples or someone at Los Alamos starts making independent discoveries, Moscow can just send someone back in time to kill them before they've done any damage. And they can do this ''as many times as they want.''
** Hey, why is the pathfinding function made out of footprints? [[spoiler: They're yours]].
** The explosion at the Singularity that wrecked the island and spread E99 radiation everywhere is [[spoiler: your fault. It's the E99 bomb you set off; YouAlreadyChangedThePast and Demichev just rebuilt the generator afterward]].
*** To clarify: [[spoiler: in the unaltered timeline, the Barisov reactor was never finished, and the island was devastated by an experiment gone wrong as a result of political pressure to produce some sort of result, after which the Politburo shut down the research program on the island. When you save Demichev, he lives to change their minds, allowing the Singularity to be built. Then you blow it up, causing the mutations and everything else. Supposedly, the ghost-imprints and the time waves that crash your helicopter and bring you to 1955 for the first time are either natural on the E99-addled island, or a result of the original experiment]].
** Why does the description for the futuristic-looking assault rifle say it's built [[spoiler: in the USSR? Because you changed history, and now the USSR rules the entire world in 2010!]]
*** Additionally, the Valkyrie is very clearly modeled on the AK-47, which not only parallels how Russian rifles have evolved in reality, but explains why you can find ammo for it in 1955.
** Why do the Phase Ticks, when mutated and inflated with the TMD's de-aging function, begin to attack their own kin? Why, it's the same with humans: Reverts are universally aggressive toward all humans as well.
** Here's something that will only become apparent upon multiple playthroughs: Those hidden messages scrawled in E99 dust that you reveal with the TMD? On a replay, the ones you have uncovered will remain uncovered, and any you haven't yet found will remain obscured. [[spoiler: The messages are written by yourself from the future, who has repeatedly gone back in time to try to fix things. And you've started the game over. Congratulations, you, the player, ''are now complicit in creating your own time loop!'']]
* FridgeLogic: If you choose Barisov's ending, why can't Renko, [[spoiler: instead of shooting his past-self in the face, shoot Demichev on his past-self's back instead?]]
** Tried that myself, as it happens. [[spoiler: Demichev does demonstrate an uncanny level of durability throughout the game, however: first time you saved Barisov, you shoot him and he falls through a ''window''. Then you shoot him again when he's threatening at the end, and he ''still'' gets up and talks as is nothing happened. Note that you can pretty much shoot him in the ''face'' and the result is still the same]].
*** In other words, another enforced ButThouMust.
*** [[spoiler: Shooting Demichev in the past would eradicate him from your timeline, meaning there'd be no reason for you to go back in time to shoot him, thus he lives, since you never shot him, so you go back in time to shoot him... See the problem? As Barisov said: "You are the anomaly", so the only way to effectively 'repair time' is to remove yourself from it, since you were the one who initially broke it by saving Demichev.]]
*** Two can play that game. [[spoiler: Shooting yourself would mean that you would not exist to go back and shoot yourself therefore when you go back in time the first time, no one stops you from saving Demichev.]]
** [[spoiler: In an after credits cutscene, you see Kathryn write Renko's name in the journal. Presumably this is what cause history to change even if you prevent yourself from saving Demichev. How? How does your name in the journal suddenly lead to Barisov deciding to take over the world, when he didn't in the original timeline.]]
*** It has nothing to do with [[spoiler: Barisov taking over the world. It's the only loose end that remains after the closing naration, and it shows up no matter which ending you choose]].
** [[spoiler: So at one point you are given the alternate history of the timeline - specifically that Russia used an E-99 bomb to blow up the east coast of the United States. And yes, it was apparently far more devastating than any nuclear bomb has ever been. But the game establishes early on that the US still has nukes.....so why is this a 'USSR takes over everything' scenario and not a giant nuclear holocaust as the US and all other countries retaliate as best they can? The response to a devastating warhead demonstration isn't going to be to stand down, it's going to be to throw everything they have back at the Soviet Union in bloody minded vengeance.]]
*** Related to the FridgeBrilliance entry above, [[spoiler: it's because E-99 lets the USSR go back in ''time''. Even assuming that the near-certainty of most of NATO capitulating after a single bomb blows the East Coast off the face of the world ''doesn't'' deter a Western nuclear response, the ability to reverse time back to before a launch and recalibrate to take out the newly discovered nukes ''would''; that, coupled with the ability of the Soviets to do things like send "Time Spetznaz" back to take out Western allied targets like the silos themselves and even the subs, and possibly to even reverse the course of the missiles in mid-air so they fly back into their silos without effect would nullify any attempt by NATO or any outside party (like, say, the Chinese) to attempt a response. Because if something goes wrong, the Soviets can just use E-99 to travel back in time and [[GroundhogDayLoop try it again until they get it right]]. Either that, or really good strategic planning on Demichev's part]]
**** It cannot be that [[spoiler: the Soviets have control over time - it is clearly established in the game that while they have found quite a few novel uses for E99, no one else but Barisov can figure out how to manipulate the time stream (and then only in natural occouring rifts or with stuff infused with E99) - otherwise why would Demichev be so hellbent on getting the TMD? Or for that matter, why didn't he go back in time and get it before Barisov could hide it?]]
***** [[spoiler: From what I saw, the TMD represented ''miniature'' time manipulation. Barisov's prototype was a big honkin' thing, maybe with a backpack? They could have very well been able to reproduce the time travel apparatus without making it as small as the wrist unit. Remember, the Spetznaz units you have to fight are immune to the aging effects of the TMD ''already'', they couldn't defend against something they couldn't control.]]
** Why is it we never see the fancy weapons that [[spoiler: allowed the Soviet Union to take over the world]]? All the troops you fight seems to have pretty normal gear (granted it is infused with E99, but in the game it mostly hinders them).
*** It is probable that the USSR didn't [[spoiler: Conquer the World]] in a conventienal military campaign, with the [[spoiler: E-99 bomb probably cowing most resistance and the vast pre-existing Soviet military bieng used to stamp out what was left.]] That, and you ARE using some of the weapons they used if they did do it conventionally because said weapons are almost to an example infused with E-99.
** Why is it that [[spoiler: Demichev]] does not have Katorga 12 searched from top to bottom for the TMD before you arrive? He has had plenty of time since 1955 - and there is nothing in the game that indicates that only you should be able to see the past echoes.
*** Point of fact, there IS evidence in the game that supports the opposite, that everyone can see them. You can find records early on before you reach the TMD, talking about how a group of survivors, after ambushing and beating another survivor half to death in order to steal his food and shelter, refuses to go into said shelter because of the echoes of their crime.
** Where did ''Devlin'' go when the first time wave hit?
** Why do all the Russian residents of a Soviet facility all speak perfect English, even in videos recorded for the benefit of the Politburo and new arrivals?
** Instead of [[spoiler: temporal suicide]] or [[spoiler: shouting from a distance]], why couldn't Renko just [[spoiler: break through the burning planks, run up to himself, and go, "Hey, I'm you from the future, and you really need to let that guy die."]]
* FridgeHorror: The island is called "Katorga 12." The "Katorga" was a system of ''penal colonies.'' How many of the people working on the island were actually volunteers?
** It was a penal colony during the '40s, when they were mining for Uranium (a job usually delegated first and foremost to those people you wouldn't miss). When they found E-99 and set up the facilities, it's pretty clear that everyone was enthusiastic with the project, and their families were there as well.
** On a vastly more massive scale, [[spoiler: imagine the effects an all-powerful Soviet Union has on the world.]]

* TooAwesomeToUse: There a couple dozen Weapon Upgrade cases strewn throughout the game that can be spent to upgrade a characteristic of one of your guns. It's possible to go through the entire game having never used them due to having saved them to upgrade 'the next awesome gun' or hoping that you get extra upgrade options later in the game. [[spoiler:You can never increase the maximum ammo carrying capacity for a weapon, and you can never increase the limit of the Dialation gauge in the sniper scope.]]