History VideoGame / Singularity

* UsefulNotes/SoftwarePorting: While the game was developed for consoles and computers both, the game's simplified menus and control schemes as well as the complete lack of any graphics options besides resolution suggest that the game was developed more with console users in mind. This is best seen whenever the game auto-saves, where the dialog tells you not to "turn off the system".
** It can also be seen in the Augmentor's and Weapons Locker's navigation, where 'only' the directional arrow keys are acceptable keyboard input, instead of whatever keys the player mapped for movement.

* TimeyWimeyBall: It's hard to make sense of some of the time-changes in the different parts of the story, particularly inside the Reactor.
** The various conflicting messages scribbled on the walls are probably best explained by being left there from several shifting timelines.

* TooAwesomeToUse: There are 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 save them through the entire game due to saving them for 'the next awesome gun', or hoping that better upgrade options become available 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 Dilation gauge in the sniper scope (even though it looks as though you ''should'', so go nuts.]] Additionally, it's actually fairly easy to beat the game without upgrading at all, as the game doesn't really become more difficult after about 1/3rd of the way through, and enemies don't become tougher as you progress.

* 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 speaking characters (except soldiers gunning for you) speak in Russian-accented English. [[AsLongAsItSoundsForeign Renko is not a Russian name, but it is a real surname.]] The fact that it ends in "ko" means that it's most likely Ukrainian. While the Ukrainian Language is distinct from the Russian Language, the two are quite close, holding a high degree of mutual intelligibility, but they are not completely mutually intelligible. Given his Ukrainian Surname, it's not at all Renko at least knows Ukrainian and at least some Russian. This also justifies why some things are translated while others are not.
** If you were going to send commandos to investigate the site of a possible nuclear accident probably associated with an old secret Soviet lab, it makes sense that you would pick men who can read Russian. It would be a terrible shame for somebody to get killed or make the problem worse because they couldn't understand the signs that read DANGER[[note]]Опасно[[/note]], after all.

* DroughtLevelOfDoom: The blind mutants actually aren't any tougher than other enemies, and can be mowed down fairly easily. However, the area in which you first encounter them is devoid of ammo pickups, which incentives you to at least try and sneak past them instead of just going through guns blazing.

* HeroicMime: Renko. [[spoiler:Or is he?]]

* ILoveNuclearPower: In this case, [[UnObtanium Unobtanium]] power! The E99 which the USSR discovers on Katorga-12 can do a whole mess of wonderful things, like...horribly mutating people into bloodthirsty, immortal killing machines! Or, mutating local plant life to be horribly dangerous, yet beautifully shiny! The Soviet government was working on a way to use the E99 radiation to give them super soldiers, and in the altered timeline, the elite soldiers you encounter are extremely resilient, and even resistant to the powers of the TMD, as well.
** They were even giving a select group of schoolchildren food supplements which contained E99, apparently [[ForScience just to see what it would do to them.]]

** Devlin was on the island when the big time-wave thing hit. Another possibility is simply that he ALSO went back and time and was protected by the same single-person nullification effect that protects Renko whenever he changes something.

* GreenRocks: E99 is only found on Katorga 12 and one of the writers says that it can do anything the plot needs them to, up to and including time travel.

* HauntedHeadquarters: Justified, the "ghosts" are temporal images burned into Katorga 12 by the original Barisov Reactor's Singularity's Chrono-explosion.

* MacGuffin: [[spoiler:The Demichev Reactor and the eponymous Singularity it creates. Barisov is completely wrong in his assumption that destroying the reactor will restore the proper course of history, and destroying the Singularity only helps perpetuate the StableTimeLoop by causing the disaster that ruined Katorga 12. It has nothing to do with the course of events that let Demichev TakeOverTheWorld with E99 weapons and technology.]]

* RequiredSecondaryPowers: The entire island seems to be a huge [[PowerNullifier nullification field]] since the people on Katroga-12 are aware of the changes to the timeline when they shouldn't be. For example, when [[spoiler:Renko saves Demichev from the fire]] he and Devlin still think they're in the initial timeline where E99 research was abandoned when in fact Russia took over the world using E99-based technologies.

* FromNobodyToNightmare: Demichev. [[spoiler: And in one of the endings, ''Barisov'' (maybe; it's a little vague). In two other endings, ''you'' become one thanks to exploiting the TMD into becoming co-ruler of either the USSR ("bad ending") or dictator of the United States ("ugly ending"]].

* {{Foreshadowing}}: You see messages scrawled everywhere, constantly warning you that the plan you're following ''isn't going to work.'' Since the messages are written with E99, they ''must'' be meant for you, because they can only be seen by using the TMD to revert them to a state before they became smudged and unreadable. After awhile, they also start implying a StableTimeLoop is in effect. It turns out that the messages are actually [[spoiler: completely correct]], but [[spoiler: not in the way you think]].

* FollowTheLeader: Owes more than a little debt to ''VideoGame/BioShock1''.
** And then inverted when ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' was revealed to also have an alternate timeline mechanic!

* ScrewDestiny / [[spoiler: [[YouCantFightFate You Can't Fight Fate]]]]: Mixed together and played with a lot. Obviously, you ''can'' change the past, since that's how things start out, [[spoiler: but every opportunity for changing things subsequently doesn't change ''much.'']]

* WrittenByTheWinners: Invoked.

* NoOneShouldSurviveThat: So, Demichev, just how did you survive being shot, falling out of a second-story window onto a glass-covered roof, and subsequently falling again to the ground?

Not to be confused with TheSingularity, ''Literature/{{Singularity}}'' the novel, or ''Film/{{Singularity}} the film. Or with VideoGame/EndgameSingularity, which is an Open Source game where [[AIIsACrapshoot you're playing an AI]]. Also not to be confused with ''VideoGame/TimeShift'', the ''other'' time-warping FPS.

* RussianGuySuffersMost: We don't really get to see what the rest of the world is like after history is changed, but life for the poor Russian scientists and faculty on the island was tnasty, brutish, and short after the singularity exploded.

* AbnormalAmmo: most of the weapons use "normal" rounds (i.e. bullets, railgun spikes, rockets) that you find packets of around the island. Not so with the [[GatlingGood Gatling Gun]]. The reload animation shows that you replace a small E99 device on top of it, instead of loading new bullets. The Developer's Blog on the game's homepage has revealed how this works: The E99 device actually turns time backward once you install it, letting you fire the same [[FridgeBrilliance cartridges all over again]]. It doesn't quite explain if those bullets [[FridgeLogic leave the dead bodies of your foes]] or simply appear out of nowhere, though.

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: In the ending where you [[spoiler:side with Barisov, the game's opening plays again this time with the opening credits in Russian]].

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

* FlashbackMontageRealization: when Renko realizes [[spoiler:his quest to reset the timeline has been done many times already, he has a flashback to all the TimeTravel related graffiti he's come accross.]]

* BadassGrandpa: Demichev and Barisov are both very spry given the fact that they are 84 and 87 respectively in 2010. Guess all that research into E99 bioengineering helped cure arthritis...

This does not go well.

* MacGuffin: [[spoiler: The Demichev Reactor and the eponymous Singularity it creates. Barisov is completely wrong in his assumption that destroying the reactor will restore the proper course of history, and destroying the Singularity only helps perpetuate the StableTimeLoop by causing the disaster that ruined Katorga 12. It has nothing to do with the course of events that let Demichev TakeOverTheWorld with E99 weapons and technology.]]

* OurZombiesAreDifferent: There's basically 3 types of [[strike: zombies]] murderous mutants in the game:

** While the [[spoiler: Mir-12 ARG has little to do with the game as it is, the confirmation of a sequel in the works means that they might re-introduce the issues of the possible collapse of time and other, unforseen effects of the Katorga 12 experiments.]]

* ArtisticLicenseChemistry: The name "Element 99" apparently literally means that it is the element with 99 protons in its nucleus, as you can find periodic tables in the game with E99 occupying that slot. In reality this element is called Einsteinium. It has very few practical applications, the most prevalent use being as a component in creating other transuranic elements. On the other hand, replacing such an obscure element means it does not clash badly with reality.

* ArtisticLicenseChemistry: The name E99 apparently literally means that it is the element with 99 protons in its nucleus, as you can find periodic tables in the game with E99 occupying that slot. In reality this element is called Einsteinium, and it has very few practical applications, the most prevalent use being as a component in creating other transuranic elements. On the other hand, replacing such an obscure element means it does not clash badly with reality.