I finally finished the game last evening (after having to look up how to beat the final boss). There are a few things about the story I might just not have understood correctly so I figured I might as well take advantage of the collective wisdom of my fellow gog-ers. Here are my questions / thoughts so far:

1. What happened to the Tetra Snatcher? All we were left with is a bad photo and apparently Rho saw him on Sunder but I did never find the guy to put him to justice. Or is he supposed to be this final boss guy?

2. So Grumpos fooled us all the way? Cool twist, but how can he be a Dark Servant and a member of the Church of the Order at the same time?

3. I thought all the Dark Servants longed for was the arrival of their masters (these floating chaos creatures) in the games universe but when the Echo Gate is opened the chaos creatures didn't appear to travel through it. It rather looked like they had been on Anachronox since the beginning. All the Echo Gate did apparently was to free them from their stone structures somehow.

4. What actually did we achieve by defeating this final boss guy and by the destruction of his floating Mystech platform?

5. Mystech was supposed to be the key component to be used to defeat all the chaos creatures but it didn't play any essential role in the major battles or the story. Quite to the contrary the key to Echo Gate was made of Mystech. Hadn't the Order beings send Mystech back to this universe Echo Gate couldn't have been opened at all.

Overall I liked the writing in Anachronox very much. It seemed more attune to my sense of humor (something that newer titles like Saints Row or Borderlands don't manage to achieve). I may be over-thinking the story of a game that doesn't take itself all to serious but I'm curious nevertheless. Perhaps I've just gotten a few story points wrong, somewhere between the collection of TACOs, Red Bipidris, Baby Hyraxes etc... What do you think?

Part of the confusion is that Anachronox is the first in an unmade trilogy, so there are bound to be a lot of loose ends. I think that the chaos creatures were imprisoned - and that the Mystech both was able to free them, but could also defeat them.

It's a while since I played it though.

I don't think it was the final boss. My understanding was that there was supposed to be a sequel, in which that would presumably be explained. As it was I don't think it was explained. It seems like Grumpos was the enemy all along - remember how upset he got when you first find the "key" in the Mystech tunnels and Detta grabbed it? The very key that was to "close the gate" (or open it)? Seems like he wanted it all along, as he got really worked up about Detta grabbing it. Naturally at the time I didn't think anything of it, but by the end it makes more sense.

As to how he could be a dark servant and member of the Church of the Order - it's not unheard of for someone to pretend to be something for a long time, even in real life let alone fiction. On these two, your guess is as good as mine. To be honest by that point I was pretty confused about what the hell was going on with all that stuff. Possibly something else that would have potentially been explained in the sequel that never was. To be honest the first time I played through on the hardest level I hardly ever used Mystech at all - won almost all battles purely with lots of use of battle skills and occasional normal attacks, though I occasionally used a new piece of Mystech just to see what it did.

It's not possible to complete the entire game without Mystech though. The the Cyber Insect Queen is resistant to normal attacks so I think you need Mystech to defeat her - don't think you have a choice in that one. I'm not sure if you can defeat the final boss without Mystech, but that battle's pretty hard so it would be pretty damn difficult even if you could. All other battles though are no problem as far as I remember.

At first I thought that too, but then certain things don't add up. If he knew about the key all along, why did he forget about it so soon. Instead of insisting that the party first visit Rho, then go to Hephaestus so that he can study Mystech, he could have persuaded Boots to take back the key from Detta. Remember that Detta wasn't so powerful before all the Mystech awakened, which enabled him – being a slag collector after all – to take over the planet and start creating a clone army. My theory is that Grumpos was a Dark Servant from the beginning of the game, and that he was looking for a way to open the Echo Gate, but he didn't know exactly what it was, only that it had something to do with Mystech. That's why he wanted to study it.

As far as the ending is concerned, I don't quite get it either. The platform on which the final battle takes place resembles a giant elementor host – notice its honeycomb pattern and colour configurations. Apart from that, I'm at loss as to what exactly was going on. So the gate is opened. Chaos creatures are released from their imprisonment in stone (there's even one at Rowdy's), and they go through the portal. Grumpos goes willingly with them, or is forcibly taken, I can't tell. The silent Dark Servant climbs the platform to go through the portal, but the party manages to prevent him from doing that by destroying him. They land back on Anachronox, but the portal remains open.

If I understood Rho's presentation correctly, the portal serves to establish a link between the previous universe and the present time, so that the previous unverse can dump matter into the current one, delaying its implosion indefinitely and hastening ours. The formerly imprisoned Chaos creatures go back to their previous universe. Boots and his team follow them to make things right, setting up the plot for the sequel. I'm guessing that he plans to close the portal from the other side and prevent the dumping of matter, but it still seems like a wild idea. I guess we'll never know.

I'm leaning towards agreeing with you that Grumpos didn't know exactly what it was, or how important it was - otherwise you're right in that he would have likely nagged Boots to attempt to get it back much sooner. Maybe he needed the "power" of Mystech to be awakened first before he could use it though? Remember it too is made out of Mystech, and before it awakens all Mystech items are just paperweights.

Having said that, what you suggest makes sense: he was a "Dark Servant", but he only knew as much as he'd been "taught" (e.g. via legends/etc - as these things go) - so he just figured the Echo Gate was something that he, as a Dark Servant, wanted to open (e.g. to let in lots of Chaos Creatures - assuming he even knew that much). Which means at the start he was simply angry at being denied another piece of Mystech (and a unique one at that), but he didn't know the significance of that piece (exactly). I guess he always knew Mystech was important (which is why he's pretty eager to "awaken" it), but he's less interested in Rho's theories about the Universe (after Mystech is activated) - he's primarily interested in finding out more about Mystech, so I guess he wants as much Mystech knowledge (and therefore, power) as possible before he finds the Echo Gate (assuming he's even thinking about the Echo Gate at this point in time, or if he doesn't figure this out later as well).


I don't agree that Detta wasn't that powerful then though. If you speak to the "rebellion", one of the first things they tell you is that Detta is already making a play. For one thing, right at the start, he has all the other crimelords imprisoned, making him the sole power on the Anachronox (with the Noxguards effectively reporting to him - although he most likely bought most of them off ages ago). So he's pretty much already on the verge of taking over Anachronox at game start - and would likely be in that position with or without Mystech (although since he holds most of the planet's Mystech supply that naturally helps).

The stuff with PAX is partly to get better "soldiers" on Anox in case the shit hits the fan, and partly to get more influence outside of Anachronox (e.g. Sender Station - where he's also donated to the Sender Station Science Museum).

As for the clones, I'm pretty sure he already "took in" some clones. The guy that beats up Boots is a clone. I'm not sure where they came from (if it's explained, I can't remember) - but at the start he definitely has some. I'm not sure Mystech figures into his cloning expansion - unless there's something that I've missed? I figured he didn't need Mystech for his clones - I figured that had something to do with the "item" you grab from Sender Station from that researcher (if I'm not mistaken)?

Note the above is as far as I remember - please correct me if I'm wrong anywhere (or correct inconsistencies, which could mean that the plot is itself inconsistent - which wouldn't suprise me).


As for the ending...

Firstly, my memory is pretty hazy on what happened, so thanks for clearing it up. Well, not that it makes things that much clearer plot-wise, but I totally forgot that Boots and co. went through the portal to the other side - I just remember wondering two things: 1) "WTF just happened?" and 2) "So now what?!?".

Secondly, I would have thought that the aim of Boots and Co. would be to CLOSE the portal so that crap doesn't keep getting chucked into our Universe (hastening our demise and increasing the previous Universe's life indefinitely). The question I have here is why would Grumpos actually need the key for? I thought it was only supposed to be to CLOSE the portal, but since it's clearly already open (as the destruction of Sunder demonstrates, which also confuses the protagonists after the meeting with the Grand Mysterium if I'm not mistaken) - well let's just say the whole key opening/closing portal thing is still a tad confusing there.


On top of that, how does Tetra figure into all of this? It's likely that would have been explored more deeply in the sequel that never was, but Tetra (well, unflawed ones anyway) must be important to some evil-looking creature. I doubt it was just a coincidence either - it must tie into Mystech somehow surely?

Even so, he still seems reluctant to take the stone himself to the Fountain. At first he refuses, and then takes the stone when somebody calls him a coward. What if someone else had volunteered for the task? If he was trying to prevent the destruction of the key, that was a pretty big risk to take. Or maybe the people of Limbus were wrong and the key cannot be destroyed at all, so he didn't worry about that. There are some notes on several computers in Detta's fortress that suggest some transhuman abilities of those clones. I'm not sure whether Detta achieved this using conventional nanotechnology or the newly discovered MysTech powers, but his army was definitely supposed to be better than human. But you're right, he was very powerful even at the beginning of the game. Boots wouldn't have been so afraid of him otherwise. The only thing the key does is mechanically open the circular aperture above the Fountain so that the beam of energy can be projected further up, opening a NEW portal within the Anachronox/Sender shell. The Sunder portal was promptly forgotten and we hear nothing new about it. Dark Servants come out of a THIRD portal above Limbus (from a giant slag of MysTech arranging itself to form a portal?). So all this indicates that the forces of Chaos can open portals from their own universe, reducing the need for the one opened by the Fountain.

EDIT: It would have been very easy for the good guys to just place a hard enough plate over the fountain and voila, the portal is again closed!

I don't know... far too many things have been left unexplained; they might have all been planned for the sequel. In any case, when the Fountain portal opened, things tried to get IN, not out. Perhaps in time an army of Chaos creatures would have poured out but at the end of the game it seemed imperative to prevent things from getting into the portal and out of our universe. I wonder why's that. Why go through the trouble of waging a difficult battle to prevent the platform from being raised all the way up, and then taking a shuttle back to that same portal? The best guess that I have is that it's an unfinished quest line that was supposed to have converged with the main MysTech storyline, potentially explaining some loose ends regarding MysTech. The photo that Rukh took before he was killed would definitely open up at least one new quest, especially since there's no proper closure at the end of this longish quest line. However, there wasn't enough time to implement it, especially considering that the developers planned to include a few more planets in the already huge game, but they had no time for them.

been a while since I've played, but about the TetraSnatcher

Rho bumped into him on my way to the shuttle when fleeing Sunder.
Brother Morpheus said something about dark servants opening wormholes with tetra.
The Dark Servants had been hoarding unflawed tetra to open a portal to get their masters out of our universe.
Whether this was related to the echo gate is unknown though.

source: http://lparchive.org/Anachronox