Like I mentioned in my last video, there is a
secret in Inscryption that has been hidden in the game for months, and the reason it hasn’t
been found yet is because it’s exclusive to the console version of the game. And for the
past few months, the Inscryption community has been putting their heads together trying
to figure out what this secret is, and after all this time, it’s finally been solved!
And so in this video I wanted to break down the puzzles and walk through everything
in the Inscryption Console ARG. And I’ll start with a quick recap of my last video to get
everyone up to speed on how this all started.
So as a frame of reference, Inscryption was
released on console in August 2022 for the PS4 and PS5, and this was when this
secret was first introduced. However, for whatever reason, it remained
completely hidden until it was mentioned by Daniel Mullins in
an interview in November 2022, where he was asked if there was anything left
in Inscryption that hadn’t been found yet.
“Normally, my answer for this is always no, but
I will say, because it still hasn’t been found, there is something that’s unique
to the console versions.”
But even though the community
knew there was something there, it still took months to figure out where to even
begin hunting for this secret. And it wasn’t until February of 2023 that something suspicious was
discovered during the Archivist fight in Act 3.
So the Archivist fight works a bit different on
console. Unlike the PC version, the Archivist on console doesn’t use files from your own hard
drive. Instead, Luke Carder’s hard drive is used, and on it there are some easter eggs,
fanart, and all of Luke’s other files. But, tucked away in his screenshots folder, there’s
this image called seems_important.png. And if you select it, it’ll display it on P03’s
face. And it’s a little hard to see, but it shows a dialog box from the Woodcarver with
a bunch of X’s separated into three sections. And this should look familiar if you’re aware
of any of the other Daniel Mullins ARGs or secret hunts that have happened in the past.
This group of X’s is a cipher and we can use it to decode something that’s encrypted. The only issue
is that we need to find where to use it first. Luckily, there’s only one place in the console
version of Inscryption where you can type in text, and that’s when you’re naming your deathcard
during Act 1. And you can only use a maximum of 16 characters for a deathcard name, which
is conveniently the exact length of this cipher that was found. So, if you put this cipher in
as the name of your deathcard, the screen will glitch out, the card name will change, and
the stats change to a 0 / 3 with no sigils.
And in addition to this, after you put this
code in, certain NPC’s will have additional dialog for you. Goobert in Act 1, the Pike
Mage in Act 2, and the Mycologists in Act 2 will all now have new dialog that’s totally
scrambled and completely unreadable.
So what this tells us is that we’re attempting to
decode this dialogue from these NPCs by putting in that code at the deathcard. And clearly
all these X’s are not the correct code, so we’re going to need to replace these X’s with
something else. And that, for the most part, was where the community was when I made my last
video a couple weeks ago. We knew we needed to replace these X’s. We just weren’t sure what to
replace them with. But since then, there has been a ton of collaboration between the Inscryption
community and this whole hunt has been solved!
So let’s figure out what
to replace these X’s with! Our cipher is divided up into three sections,
which indicates that there are three separate puzzles we need to find and those puzzles
will tell us what to replace these X’s with. Unfortunately though, there were no
hints as to where these puzzles might be, so the community was scouring over every corner
of the game trying to find these puzzles, but nothing was found for a while.
That was until Daniel Mullins gave a very helpful hint. He mentioned that some of the
puzzles use features that are exclusive to the Playstation version of the game. And looking
into it a little, the only exclusive Playstation features are one’s involving the controller. The
lightbar, the speaker, and the haptics on the controller are all used to enhance the Inscryption
experience on Playstation, and it looks like they were also used to hide some secrets.
And sure enough, a little after this hint was given, the community found that if you stand next
to the flickering box in P03’s Factory in Act 3, the controller lights will also begin to flicker
on and off in a repeating pattern. And what was interesting about this was that the controller
flickering didn’t match the lights coming from the box. So, if we translate this light pattern
using Morse Code, it comes out to say JAMES, which fits in either the first or third section
of our cipher. But since this was found in Act 3, the community placed JAMES in the third
section and theorized that the other two puzzles were in Act 1 and Act 2.
And so, with a little more searching, it was quickly found in Act 1 that there is
another Morse Code message that can be decoded in a very specific spot in the game. In the final
moments of Act 1 after you grab the camera from Leshy and take a picture of him, if you stand in
the far right corner and face the New Game card, your controller will begin to vibrate and repeat
a message in Morse Code…which when decoded comes out to say PARTS, which is five characters
long. So we can put PARTS in our first section, and that just leaves us with the puzzle in Act 2.
And this one took the longest to find out of all them, mainly because it was just really easy to
miss. It was hidden within P03’s boss fight. At some point in this fight, P03 will play
the Melter card, and if you damage the Melter card, the speaker on the Playstation
controller will play this audio. “PAIN”. The audio’s a little hard to hear, but it
says PAIN. I’ll explain later why the Melter card reacts this way, but for now, we have
the final piece of our puzzle with PAIN.
And so with a completed cipher of
PARTS|PAIN|JAMES, the community quickly found that when you put it in at the deathcard, it
decodes into JAMES COBB. Now, this is a completely new name that doesn’t really lead us anywhere at
the moment, but we at least know this is decoded correctly because it’s not just gibberish,
and this should mean that the dialogue from the other NPCs has also been decoded.
And sure enough, in Act 1 if we have our newly created JAMES COBB deathcard in our deck
and we go talk to Goobert, he’ll say this:
“That deathcard…in your deck…painful memories. His
trial? Quite unusual. Parts of his body…morphed! Transformed! Even stranger? He enjoyed
it! But the master could not allow that…”
So Goobert clearly recognizes this James Cobb in
our deck. Apparently they were once a follower of Magnificus who went a little too far. They were
morphing and transforming into something else and Magnificus was not ok with that and threw
them out. And that’s all we get from Goobert, but maybe we’ll learn more from the other NPCs.
And heading over to the Pike Mage in Act 2, she’ll now say to us: “To soothe the pain I imagine how
things could be worse…like that Mage who came before me. A Ruby Mage like me! But Magnificus
got rid of him. He even got The Blue Man involved. The deal was that The Master has to find someone
with a use for the poor sap. Making NPCs isn’t cheap and all that. The name’s Amber by
the way. Now, back to my meditations.”
So this expands a little more on the story we
heard from Goobert earlier. James Cobb was a Ruby Mage until Magnificus removed him. But
we learn some additional info here. Mainly, that the Blue Man was involved with removing
James Cobb. And this is referring to Irving, the AI assistant for Gameworks from another Daniel
Mullins’ game, The Hex. Irving was also involved in the development of Inscryption too, but here we
find that he had struck a deal with Magnificus. If Magnificus could find someone else who would
take James Cobb in, then Irving would happily create another NPC to replace James Cobb. So, it
looks like Magnificus did find someone that had a use for James Cobb, because he now has the Pike
Mage instead, and her name is Amber by the way. This isn’t really super important to the story,
but it’s cool that we finally know her name!
But who did Magnificus find that had a use for
James Cobb? Well maybe we’ll find out at our last NPC, the Mycologists. If we talk to them, they’ll
say: “James Cobb? We…we…we operated on him. Oh… oh no. The Scanner doesn’t do flesh so we worked
on him. But…he volunteered? 25% bot, 54% bot, 75%...Mm. That’s when he started to get crazy.”
So it looks like P03 was the one who took James Cobb in, but P03’s Scanner wouldn’t accept James
Cobb’s flesh. So the Mycologists kept operating on James, and transformed him piece by piece
into a bot. And when James’ body was 75% bot, his mind began to decay and he started going mad.
And that’s all we know at the moment. These three NPCs have all shed a little bit of light on who
this James Cobb is. But while I was reading, you probably also noticed that there were
certain characters surrounded by parentheses in their dialogue. If we pull all of these
out, we get 8 characters. Unfortunately, these 8 characters don’t really get us anywhere
at the moment. If you put them through different cipher decoders, it really doesn’t come up with
anything useful. So maybe there’s just something we’re missing? Something we’ve been overlooking?
So let’s go back to the deathcard. There’s one element there that’s been overlooked across all
this. The stats on the card. Every time the James Cobb deathcard is created, it becomes a 0 attack,
3 health card with no sigils. This had to mean something, so the community did some investigating
and eventually this led to the card creation sequence in Act 3. If you create a 0 attack, 3
health card with no sigils using P03’s scanner, once you get up from the table, a message will
display on the terminal next to the scanner.
This message is a log entry from P03 and it says:
“Log 27.3. My OP card creation continues. Reached 75% bot. Still wasn’t scanning so we put his
head in the Melter. Popped a new head on top. I thought I was lagging when I saw what happened
next. Not killed. Still had his memories…his soul? Asked him his name and he shot
a pattern into my factory floor…”
So it looks like even at 75% bot, P03’s
scanner was still not able to scan James Cobb into a card. So P03 did what anybody
would do, and ripped James’ head clean off, tossed it in the Melter, and slapped a gun on
top instead. And this explains why that audio came from the Melter earlier. It was actually
James Cobb’s head which is somehow still alive. It even explains why the Melter turns into a
Meatbot when defeated, it’s James’ head.
But somehow even though his head had been
removed, James’ body still retained its memories, and when P03 asked for his name, he
shot it into the factory floor.
And we’ll come back to that shortly, but you
probably also noticed again that there were some more letters in parentheses. And pulling
these out gives us “yek”, which brings us to a total of 11 characters. And you know what also is
11 characters long? Youtube video Ids! So if you go to that specific video on Youtube, you’ll find
the video ??-?? by gw_archive_private, and you’ll immediately see the words Plasma Jimmy on the
floor. And this must be that pattern that James Cobb shot into P03’s floor. And so with this, we
find out that James Cobb is now going by the name of Plasma Jimmy. And in case you don’t remember,
Plasma Jimmy was a card you could get in Act 2. It was this goofy little gun guy that let you
spend energy to shoot cards across from it.
But the rest of this video just plays the credits
to Inscryption with the song “Waiting for a Train” by Jimmie Rogers playing, which I can’t play
because I’ll get copyright claimed. But with the credits rolling, this marks the end of this
secret hunt and the end of James Cobb’s story. He was once a follower of Magnificus, but after
being kicked out and having his head replaced with a gun, he now serves P03 as Plasma Jimmy!
And who knows, maybe we’ll see Plasma Jimmy again in a future game somewhere down the line?
Either way, I had a lot of fun putting this all together and I hope you found it as interesting
as I did! But that’ll be it from me for now, I should be making some more videos in the future
like maybe finally getting the Hex ARG video done. I’ll also be streaming and playing a bunch of
different games on my other channel Flembons. I’m a lot more active on that channel, so if streams
sound interesting to you, you should check that out! But again, thank you for watching! I hope
you enjoyed and I’ll see you in the next one!
