At least, I assume that’s the game that is being referred to.
It started with this mysterious video that I first saw on GameVideos. It’s a 9 minute live-action short film, done in the world of Half Life. It appears to take place right at the end of Half Life 2, with the explosion at the Citadel, but I’m not sure (haven’t played the game in a while). The main character appears to be attempting to prevent a box from being retreived by the familiar Combine soldiers.
Anyway, first check out the video, which is titled “Whats In The Box Test Film 2009″:
http://download.gamevideos.com/24069/gv.com.WhatsintheBoxTestFilm2009_320x124.flvLittle is said about the video, and no “official” connection is made to Valve. But it’s pretty obvious that they are taking a viral approach to hyping this game, and I love it!
I took a quick look at the site that is linked to from the video (Whatsinthebox.nl). It appears to be nothing more than a flash animation, but if you look closely, there is a huge JPG file, titled “anti.jpg” This is what it looks like (click for the original 2MB file):
So the answer to “What is in the Box” appears to be a mathematical formula of some sort.
Also, there is some code comments inserted into the html, at the very end:
<!-- Every medium, as its ancestors --> <!-- Every pro, has his anti's, now you think about that -->
Remember, the name of the image above is “anti.jpg” and was found in “anti.css”. There is a “pro.css” but doesn’t contain much text other than this:
/* CSS Document */
body {
height:100%;
background-color:#000000;
}
#anti\Paine{
display:none;
}Unfortunately, I am pretty much stumped from here. And this is the fun part, figuring it all out! The formula might be a red herring, and so could all the Dutch names (including “TIMSMIT” showing up several times; I wonder if it has anything to do with the Tim Smit, who worked on the Eden Project?)
Post in the comments if you have any ideas…
UPDATE: Gamespy spoke to Doug Lombardi, Valve’s Vice President of Marketing, and he claims that Valve has nothing to do with any of this. Yeah, right. He points to another Half-Life video that came out a few weeks ago, saying ”The Box video was a cool piece from the community. Two in just a few weeks. I hope there’s more on the way.”
So what do you think? Two movies shot in completely different ways, by different people, paying homage to the same series of video games, both released at around the same time? What a nice coincidence! I, too hope there’s more on the way; in fact I would bet that there will be ;)
Excellent video but I somewhat doubt that it’s anything to do with Valve or Episode 3 – The video is a little amateurish. This strikes me more as a Dutch mod team getting some attention for their upcoming HL2 mod or so :) Either way, good stuff!
I still think there is something to this story. And I am going to find out :)
This has not relation to Valve nor Half life.
It’s and ARG, like the Lost Experience.
After checking out the site (www.whatsinthebox.nl) I wanted to search for the picture.
I noticed that this site was loading its content from “babel-research.eu”. Being curious about exposing the sites “mothership” :) i went there…
On the bottom of the page it has 3 logos … the Aperture Science logo from Portal and the Hanso Foundation logo from Lost, I dont know the first one….OH FUCK i just wanted to do research on the first one and on the bottom left there pops up the fucking picture of a cat titeled “schroedinger.gif” (babel-research.eu/images/schrodinger.gif)… turns out schroedinger is the quantum physics guy with the “cat in the box experiment”
Yeah quantum physics … I’m out!
In conclusion I think it’s a fan project … cause I don’t think Valve would merge with Lost when it comes to marketing.
Funtime – HL2 and LOST have refrenced each other. (you tube HL2 lost room) and (Lost gman) and you will see what i mean. it doesnt look like a “officialy created’ video. but thats normaly how these thigns work. either way i cant wait to find out whats really going on here
^^part of the code
also in relation to the shrodinger tangent in relation to quantam physics:
there is a famous experment /or theory ,here is the jist of it i got from wiki
“Schrödinger’s Cat: A cat, along with a flask containing a poison, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If an internal Geiger counter detects radiation then the flask is shattered, releasing the poison which kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not a mixture of alive and dead.” <—i tryed cat, shrodingers cat and so on but may be related…..the actual theory is a bit more complex so im gonna find the exzact particals in which shrodinger was refearing and check them
So I looked at the babel-research.eu site, and it appears to be fairly unprofessional, the language they use leads me to believe its more a fan site than a official project. odd
If you click on that Schrodinger cat, an mp3 file discedoMalum.mp3 comes out;
discedo : (discessum )to break up, depart, go away, pass away
malum : evil, misfortune, misdeed, crime, injury, damage
in latines. And when you “reverse” the mp3 and listen it says “Found project attainable misfailed”.
When i googled this sentences nottin came out.