The reason it's so insane that Ink is even just thinking about crafting a metal-heartknot adjacent sort of trinket for Miguel (not to mention she actually manages to go through with making it) is... well it is two things actually.
The main thing is that Ink is not naturally a creative in the sense of like... art things (I would argue she's mostly creative in improvization/acting ykwim). However, her not being particularly creative applies to her process of building things- her things LOOK good and function even better (once she gets the hang of it...) but they don't really have much flair or distinction. Ink is used to and needs rules... for building she needs instructions and measurements and diagrams. (Multiple times before we have seen that she has manipulated and/or gently bullied Qi into adding further detail or explaining detail she doesn't understand.) Making jewelry from an Idea She Had and not a diagram she was given is... not really typical for her.
The side reason is that it's just skirting blatantly obvious... ("It's detachable like a bangle or arm cuff, I swear!" Ink cries, "It's nothing at all like the Lover's Shackle!" She says and then kind of frowns because only now does she realize that's kind of... an odd name for that custom...) To that end, she doesn't really have any relationship with the Heartknot as a symbol of love or affection (as she is not from the Alliance, remember!) and therefore feels kind of... icky... trying to use it for some she has come to terms with actually caring about? If she didn't care it wouldn't matter, she's done this before when needed. But now that she is feeling her feelings... she doesn't want to. She is quite literally putting a piece of her self into it even if she doesn't expect anyone to be able to identify that piece (this is a little bit prideful of her but w/e)
Side note, but her modeling it after the heartknot (as opposed to making something up completely from scratch) also goes back to her trying to (forcibly) integrate herself with Alliance culture without also losing all of her own...
Saw a comparison picture between Aadit from MTaS and a character from MTaP and they actually looked really similar.
Late game spoilers under cut
He has a very similar face to Matilda, it turns out. And I keep thinking about that picture of her in her home, with her and two little kids.
So, it's possible the face shape is a red herring or a coincidence, but I'm going to pretend for a sec that I'm sure Aadit is her son. Who's the other kid?
It's possible the plan is for that kid to be the villain of a third game, or it's possible she was there to keep an eye on one of her sons.
It could be Pen, but I don't know if we'll find that out for a long time. He has a line about how is mom told him that if he had a gift he should share it with the world, but she didn't imagine it would be violence.
But if Aadit is his brother...what happened there? What's with the PTSD sessions and the music box and the running away. There's a chance he does genuinely abhor violence (and is truly trying to escape it, and failing), and there's also a chance he really takes after Matilda. She was very good at maintaining her mask until it became necessary to remove it. Aadit didn't fight because he didn't want anyone to know he was good at it, perhaps. Maybe it's some combination, with him.
The big joke in the interrogation, imo, is that you expect Miguel to be the smart one hiding the truth and Pen the one who's just brazen and terrible about lying. Pen is very good at lying. To what degree is his personality put on? You can figure out the things he actually cares about (finding someone who he can actually fight - against, or with) and he truly is distracted by his own image
Matilda Trait: Very good at putting on a persona that makes people dismiss her as a villain
All three of these characters potentially are like this
I'm not entirely sure I buy my own theory, here. It seems planned out, though, which is a good sign we'll find out the many ways i'm wrong here, eventually. in like a decade or w/ever.
I just think it's interesting, because it creates kind of a fascinating dynamic between these characters. I just keep thinking about Pen talking about Matilda's kidnapping, and how it was "hilarious!" It'd be interesting to see what Matilda and him are like when they're talking in private.
It also opens up the possibility that the three of them will be a combo boss in a future game, after Matilda lands.
WARNING!!! BELOW ARE SPOILERS RELATED TO THE KNIVES OUT UPDATE!!!
PLEASE BACK OUT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE IT!!!
It has been a few weeks since the Knives Out update has been dropped and the commumity has came upon many revalations. Some loose ends were tied. Some were left loose and we wait upon ACT III to finish off the climax that ACT II left off at.
One of those tied ends was "What did Duvos hope to find in Sandrock?"
A good part of the community theorized that Sandrock was being watched by Duvos because it was built upon the ruins of the Old World. Numerous relics were unearthed and even to this day there are new discoveries to find under the Eufuala. Such as the submarine containing algae that improved the growth of plants and allowed the town to finally grow trees out in the desert.
Before this update, there were large hints to Sandrock having observatories and relics related to rocket science/spacefaring. Many missions related to Qi are space related and he even admits to coming to Sandrock because of his theories of what he can find. But those relics left room for deniability due to the things we found ATT were telescopes. So some players assume that the Scarp Yard Ruins were an Observatory.
Then it’s revealed that to the north of Sandrock were ruins containing an incomplete spaceship, the Olympia 06. A groundbreaking discovery where the Olympia contained engines capable of powering an "air-castle." But how come the Free Cities didn't find any of the spaceships before during the Relic Rush? The answer can be found in a log that contains an email the player can find on the Olympia 06.
"Dear Marko,
I'm sorry to inform you that we have had to delay the launch of the Olympia 06, which was originally scheduled for this month. There have been some internal technical issues. We are unable to load you experimental samples at this point.”
Another example to explain what the people from the Old World may have been doing is a log entry from a child visiting his mother's work place.
“Ma said that her friend worked here and said I should prepare some questions to ask. I asked the AI who Ma's friend is, but it said it's "confidential." When we went to the command center, I met this lady sitting in the commander’s chair! She was so cool! She said she was going on a long journey to another star system!"
There are multiple things to draw from those entries. One is that Geelge Corp was using the ships to also conduct secret experiments. The second is that there are other ships that have been sent out into space with a small population of people. Three is that they were the last ship suppose to launch before the Day of Calamity.
So what does this have to do with Sandrock? Well they must have been built multiple ships at the same time. Out in the desert past the bones, you can find the shell of what could possibly be the hull of a space ship. They where likely building 2-3 ships at a time and lauching them one by one. How did I came to this conclusion? Because you can find other [launch pads all over Sandrock].
And the city of Sandrock is built right next to one.
And if there is a launch tower, there is a water system called a [sound suppression system]. In short, it floods the launch pad with over half a million of gallons of water to absorb the shock waves being produced by the space ship's engines. This is to minimize damage because the water mitigates the risk of acoustic damage to sensitive instruments by attenuating the noise. This video goes into much more detail and shows the system in use. [Please check it out.]
So that explains why and how the water tank got there! After the Old World ended, the launch pads sound supression system still contained massive amounts of water that may have started to leak after years of erosion and wear to create a small oasis. From that oasis a forest emerged and for years that forest grew into the natural treasure that one day Martle discovered and founded Sandrock in.
And now that water tank is on its last legs. I don't know how Pathea plans to address that in story issue Act III. But my best bet is that we find another launch pad to scrap its systems for parts or Qi helps us create a new diagram to repair it because its related to space ships.
If you made it this far, thank you for taking the time for reading this post! Please comment and tell me your thoughts on what you may have found!
I am genuinely very curious about the differences between the chinese language version and the english localization. i was incredibly happy that they started out with localization in mind, since a lot of dialogue in portia was stiff and kinda dull. part of the reason i like your rival in that game so much is because he gets an end game character arc that is actually written in a fun way. he went from "meh" to "one of my faves" just through being written in a way that entertained me.
I appreciate the localization in Sandrock, so I could be entertained by the weird characters right from the start. I am, however, incredibly curious about what the differences are. I don't have enough chinese cultural knowledge to get a lot of those differences without explanation, but it would still be cool to know if the chinese version had the same meme jokes (cross language memes?) or if it's something completely different.
It's like when Sans Undertale got translated into Japanese with a pronoun primarily associated with rural farmers and suddenly there were all these pictures of him wearing a straw hat and chewing on wheat. It's fascinating, the differences in language, and what is brought over and what is left behind because there's no easy and clear way to communicate it.
So I wrote this bit of meta/speculation regarding Pen back in February but hesitated on posting it for a variety of reasons. I figured I'd post it after playing the recent update because some of my suspicions were correct. I haven't edited any of it because, frankly, I don't want to because I messed with it so much that I honestly wouldn't know where to start on fixing things.
Anyway here's some stuff I've noticed about Pen. Spoilers for the The Secrets Behind The Mask update of MTAS and Major Spoilers for My Time At Portia.
So a couple days ago I went down a rabbit hole pertaining to Pen. It started with a character from Portia and then snowballed into a loose analysis of the game events and possibly where they might take the story. It's very inconclusive, and I'm not really dedicated to any one idea of where the story will go or how certain characters will develop. I'm simply speculating here because speculating is fun.
Y'all are free to disagree as I know I'm not good at knowing where the story is going at all (I guessed wrong about who the spy for Logan was :')). I'd appreciate input or other theories though. At the very least, some of this might be entertaining muse fuel or a headcanon.
So one thing I stumbled upon while looking at Pen's wiki is under the Trivia section:
[Image ID: A screenshot of the Trivia section of Pen's wiki page. It reads as follows:
The word on his chest armor is "Justice" (正义, zhèng-yì).
According to Chinese version his full name is Péng Hǔ (彭虎) . Pen (彭) is his family name.
Hu (虎) means tiger. /.End ID]
After we meet with Logan and find out that Grace has been working with him (and that Grace is a secret agent for the Ataran government) we find out that there's a Duvos spy in Sandrock. Grace's people intercepted a message under the code name "Tiger" that they were targeting the water tower.
Other folks have pointed this out on the Steam discussion forums and believe that Pen's name translating to "Tiger" is a misdirect. Others think it might mean he's the Duvos spy due to the fact that a lot of the character's (Chinese) names pertain to aspects of their personality.
I'm personally on the fence about it. There's a lot I don't know about Pen, and I'm not sure if anything is really revealed about his past in some dialogue I missed (started a new save specifically to take a better look at things again since it's been a couple months). But currently, I really don't know anything about Pen's background.
All that aside, I find it very interesting that this game takes place shortly before the events of Portia. If you've played Portia, you'll know that they also have a Duvos agent in their midst called the Rogue Knight. After defeating the Rogue Knight, it was strongly suggested that he was Aadit; a resident of Portia that was a refugee from the border between Duvos and Elthea.
I'm not going to get into whether or not Aadit was actually the Rogue Knight just because both of their wikis explain there's contradictory information. But it's more commonly accepted by ppl in fandom that he was (from what I've noticed anyway).
I'm bringing this up mainly because.... isn't it kinda weird that both Portia and Sandrock are having issues with a Duvos agent almost around the same time?
One of the things I find interesting about Sandrock is how they flipped a lot of character's personalities compared to Portia. Example: Gale is very confident as a mayor compared to Trudy. Higgins is such a hard working builder that he's standing outside the door of the commissions office just so he can get first pickings of the commissions on the board, and you can often see him at the furnace stations next to his workshop. Meanwhile, Yan implies not so subtly that he barely even works, and most of the time you find him in the office with his feet kicked up on the table; never at the worktable next to his house.
Let's say that Aadit is the Rogue Knight and that Pen is a Duvos spy. Aadit is a soft spoken, polite pacifist that you can lose friendship with if you challenge him one too many times to a fight. Meanwhile Pen is loud, rude, confident, and loves to fight.
The contradictions in characterization are there, but do they mean anything? Probably not. Even if Pen was designed to contrast Aadit, it doesn't necessarily mean he's aligned with Duvos.
There's much we don't know about Aadit, and the fact that Pathea has been so cagey about him kind of makes me think that if he doesn't make a cameo in Sandrock, we're probably going to see him further along the line. They said as much in the FAQ of their kickstarter for Sandrock:
What’s happened to Aadit? Is he ever coming back to Portia?
Aadit’s story is left open so that we may be able to explore it down the road. Hopefully we’ll see him return to Portia one day.
(Tho them saying "Portia" makes me wonder if they're interested in making a sequel to Portia?)
And as I mentioned earlier, there's a lot we don't know about Pen either.
One thing worth pointing out is that it's very interesting Pen has a relic weapon on him considering the Rogue Knight himself uses a relic weapon.
After The Perfect Trap mission in My Time At Portia, Django asks you what it was like fighting the Rogue Knight. When you answer "He was using ancient weapons" he replies:
Oh was he now, most knights these days use some type of relic. It's like their calling card. The real knights though, they don't need these corrupted things.
And when you ask him "What exactly is a knight?" He answers:
Didn't you have knights in Barnorock? Anyway, if you're lookin' for a history lesson, it's best you talk with Isaac. But knights are highly skilled warriors that defend the weak and balance the strong. Or that's how it's supposed to be. But nowadays…
What's interesting about these responses: Modern knights tend to use relic weapons, and that knights are highly skilled warriors that "defend the weak and balance the strong".
Pen's entire thing is that he's the Defender of Sandrock. And he has a relic weapon on him. Does this mean Pen is a knight?
Oddly enough, it's likely as Pen says as much when you speak to him once a day:
[Image ID: A screenshot of Pen with the caption of him saying: "Aren't you clad we have a knight in this town? Saving damsels and delivering justice. Of course, I'm talking about me. I'm the Protector of Sandrock." /.End ID]
Assuming Pen isn't just claiming or masquerading as a knight (considering he owns a relic weapon) could this mean he's actually working for Duvos similarly to the Rogue Knight in Portia?
I'm really on the fence about this. Pen's entire personality feels like a facade; a spy that hides in plain sight by being an egotistical windbag. A useful egotistical windbag, but a windbag nonetheless. I feel this is at least partially supported by the fact that some people write him off immediately because "he's too dumb to be a spy".
Yet at the same time.....If Grace is in Sandrock and is specifically there to help Logan find the Duvos spy, could there potentially be a third party who's also interested in helping. And if so, could that party potentially be Pen?
Probably the only bit of dialogue I've been able to find (so far) on Pen's background and why he's in Sandrock is what he says here:
[Image ID: A screenshot of Pen with the caption of him saying: "I bet you're wondering how did someone so awesome, me, end up in this unsavory place. Well, the Light told me to look after the weak, and guided me here. That's the short version." /.End ID]
Pen could be lying here considering he lies to you (almost unnecessarily) about why he wasn't present to stop Logan from destroying the water tower. Logan not only says he was there, but he was also the one responsible for destroying the water tower.
It's possible it could be just as Grace says; that he lied to avoid being blamed for destroying the water tower. But I also think if he was being honest about it, he would have to explain how he destroyed the water tower. Yes, he's a very good fighter, but the water tower literally exploded.
But let's consider he's being honest about his reasons for being in Sandrock. Judging by the way he's speaking, the "Light" he's speaking of is related to The Church of Light..... Could it be possible that he was sent by a church to Sandrock to find the Duvos spy? More specifically, could he have been sent by the High Temple in Meidi, seeing as how Meidi literally borders Duvos, making it likely that they would have easier access to information on what Duvos is doing?
I personally don't think this is likely due to the fact that Pen is intent on going after Logan. Pen alleged that he only saw Logan flee after the church collapsed while attempting to rescue Howlett. But what if he didn't? Perhaps he's going after Logan because he thinks he knows something more (particularly that there's a Duvos spy in Sandrock, and that's something that could potentially compromise him). Because the alternative in this situation is him going after Logan under the suspicion that he's the spy, which makes no sense given he's a native of Sandrock and just lost his father.
I'll end on the last thing I noticed about Pen's concept art. The pose is very similar to that of the Rogue Knight's concept art:
I was pretty reluctant to point this out because it's just a pose and this particular thing feels a bit too much like "reading too deeply into things. Especially since Arlo and Justice share similar poses, and even Logan's pose is reminiscent of the above pose. I just thought I would mention it because it threw me when I noticed how similar they were when I was looking at the thumbnails on my phone.
Just to be clear: I don't think Pen is the Rogue Knight or Aadit. I mean, I would be interested in them proving me wrong. But due to the fact that these games take place closely around the same time, I don't think it's feasible that the two are the same person.
I would, however, be interested to know if there's indeed a connection considering how some of Pen's facial characteristics are reminiscent of Aadit's, but I'd rather not speculate that far. Especially considering it hasn't been canonically confirmed that Aadit is the Rogue Knight (and we don't know where Pen grew up).
Anyway these are all my thoughts for now. Like I said, I'm not really dedicated to one line of thought. It just tickles my brain. I would like to talk more about the stories Pen, Burgess, and the others gave about the night Howlett died and compare it to Logan's. But for now I'll just end on this.
