Even if it where, can you imagine Jack doing this? Sorry, but I can't :)! If at all he would be inside the container. Of course Caine has told Jack about the sarcophagus, but why would it be openable from within in the first place? You can't see the Dane from the beach, what you see are two oil-rigs according to the texture names in the maps. It may have been somewhat farther out before the Dane was noticed, but still easy to go there using a dinghy. I just checked Jack's official WoD stats and while he has no Obfuscate, he could have used Presence in case the crew spotted him. Also I think there might indeed have been someone else in the conspiracy, namely the one writing the emails. I don't see Jack or the Cabbie doing this and it might become the Prequel player!

Exactly, it goes like this in a cop convertation: "A box missing, looks like, all this cargo and one little box gone?" "That'd be just a typo in the manifest." "Yeah or someone in the crew could've swiped it." "Lost it?" "For now we should assume that's what they came out here for." "Does it say what was in it?" "No, looks like it was packaged with the uh, the big coffin thing, the sarcophagus, no contents listed." Good catch! So either Jack would have met someone near LA which is basically the setting that he arrives there himself or I can't see a solution. A dried out mummy surely would not survive a walk on the ocean floor whithout becoming a soggy mess or even being destroyed and Tesserach looked fine to me. I agree with you although it would have been a nice encounter for the Prequel to fight one there. Sadly, it's the first thing we hear in the game, so it could only be the media making an error ;)!

Now that you mention it, just WHO the hell is the one with the cryptic, warning emails??? It can't be Gary. It can't be Mercurio. Could it be Beckett? One of the emails also tells: DON'T OPEN IT!

Jack is almost an ancient vampire. Pretty sure he must have slept in a variety of weird places, including coffins.

You probably heard about the Trojan Horse and why it would be the best strategy to be inside the sarcophagus or the cargo container, rather then in the middle of nowhere on a boat attacking the ship with guns blazing, hoping that no one will sound an alarm. Why not? Presence must have some kind of a range, and crew could spot him before the ability will work on them.

It is strongly implied by the game that the emails were sent by Cain, since he was the mastermind of this little game.

If the prequel wants to be taken seriously, it should be based on the confirmed information. You know what? Whoever is creating the prequel should contact some people of the Troika's developer team, like Jason Anderson, Tim Cain or Leonard Boyarsky to be sure about some things.

One thing you should keep in mind (bear in mind that I've only finished the game once) is that the authors are not bound to tell the same story for each of the endings. Material from one ending need not be consistent with material from another.

No, why should he send you emails when he meets you in person throughout the whole game? It doesn't look to be his style either, as with Jack. It could well be the cabbie, but are we supposed to believe he has a laptop in his cab and uses it when nobody is looking?

No. Just imagine something went wrong and the Kuei Jin find the sarcophagus first and drop it into the ocean. Game over for anyone in the sarcophagus! It would be less dangerous to be inside the container and you still need to explain to us how Jack leaves the Dane! Because this would be a very specific item designed for your theory to work. I'll go with Occams Razor instead... Even the police on the Dane doesn't stop the player. You think the crew would panic if they see a dinghy in US coastal waters? Nothing is implied which is probably intended, see my other posting. Sadly, I don't believe they would answer or would have had deep thoughts about it in the first place! I had email contact with Brian Mitsoda and even he hardly remembers details.

Makes sense. After all those years...

I think you can see the Dane from the hotel.

I did research on this several years ago during this very same discussion. I didn't save anything, though. here is some quick evidence that I found through a quick I-net search. Not conclusive yet.

https://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view;_ylt=A0LEViRRi2xXcE0AKTgPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=sea+trade+routes+Turkey+USA&back=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fyhs%2Fsearch%3Fp%3Dsea%2Btrade%2Broutes%2BTurkey%2BUSA%26type%3Dbdc-bfr-6YC33__alt__ddc_dss_bd_com%26hspart%3Dddc%26hsimp%3Dyhs-ddc_bd%26ei%3DUTF-8&no=1&fr=yhs-ddc-ddc_bd&h=93&w=163&imgurl=www.giantlogistics.com%2Fimages%2Fimage073.gif&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.giantlogistics.com%2Fcontainer-shipping.php&size=78KB&name=...+sea+shipping+routes+along+with+a+list+of+most+major+international+sea&tt=...+sea+shipping+routes+along+with+a+list+of+most+major+international+sea&sigr=11k5v6vhf&sigi=11apqqpqf&sigb=14edd6faf&sign=1291sbrf6&sigt=1291sbrf6&hspart=ddc&hsimp=yhs-ddc_bd

http://linescape.com/ Search Mersin, Turkey to LA - 35 days gong west thru either a Spanish or a Netherlander port to LA; 53 days for routes through a Chinese port

EDIT: Another map - easy to see much closer going west from eastern Med.:
http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/07/see-map-worlds-shipping-lanes/54847/

Why would Kuei-jin be interested in this sarcophagus in the first place? Until the massacre on Elizabeth Dane it was just an ordinary box on an ordinary ship.

Maybe he was picked up from the ship by the Cabbie. That's what he's doing, no? If I was a little bit more skilled in history and archeology, I'm pretty sure I would be able to give you a few examples. All in all, I don't think that's something out of the ordinary, especially for the WoD setting. First of all, if I would want to attack such ship I wouldn't be doing this in the US waters, not to say such a small boat is a bad transport for this job. But as I said, I would choose to hide on the ship and terrorize the crew, rather than attacking it in front. It's simply the best strategy.

Cops are lazy because there are like 20 armed policemen on this ship, not to say that no one would dare to board on it, considering what just happened (aside from journalists, obviously), so they aren't expecting anyone. Actually it is. The only one who is perceiving this LA struggle as a chess game is the mastermind behind all this, and we all know who it is. I find it hard to believe, considering that Rik Schaffer gave a very insightful interview not so long ago.
The same applies to Tim Cain and his various interviews, along with Leonard Boyarsky.
Andrew Meggs said he remembers the game very well and could have helped with the code (those guys who tried to move the game on the latest version of the Source engine asked him), but he was working on Camelot Unchained then (and still working).

No. These are the same two oilrigs you can see from the beach!

@wesp5: It looks like you have to play as Jack in your prequel. I am also not sure if prequel is the right term. I know the terms sequel and prequel. Is there a term that describes that you have the same story, but you see it from the point of view of a different person?

back to the general dicussion:
The problem is, that the game world is not 100% consistent in the first place. The devs made a game where the main char has to do several quests to get from start to end in a way that the player enjoys playing. Therefore the setting must be "realistic" enough so the player does not complain that some things make no sense at all. I think they did a very good job in this game.

In this game the sacophargus is a MacGuffin, a plot device that exists in order to advance the story. There is an object, many groups fight each other to get or destroy the object. The player has to do quests to find the object, find things related to the object (like the key) or find information about the object. I am not sure if the fact that we see whats inside (in some endings) disqualifies it as macguffin.

Many things are not explained in the game to add some mystery to it. (Who writes these mails? What happened on the ship? How did the explosives get into the sacophargus? Who informed the archeologist about the sacophargus? Who is behind this whole plot? Is the cab driver really caine? and many others).
Now we discuss which explaination is most plausible. But I do not think that the devs have the ultimate answer for it. Most likely they did not even care. But they made a game that is so immersive that people discuss all kinds of things all the time.

If you make a prequel, you should write that this is one possible way of how it could have been. Whatever you do in the prequel, players will find things that are inconsistent with the original game, because the original game is not 100% consistent in itself.

@carnage: sorry, you wrote this while I was writing my last post.

- Jack does not attack the ship with a small boat. He sneaks on board and kills the crew when he is on board. It seem plausible that a small boat (dark color, at night, no light) can get close to a large ship without being detected and a person (especially a vampire) can sneak from the boat to the ship without being seen.

- Do you have links to the interviews with the devs?

That's a good question. It would only work if the Cabbie spread rumors about the Antediluvian in the box to the Kuei-JIn beforehand, and I doubt he would do that! So we probably should see this as a Cthulhu easter egg, Yes. Which is basically the same as attacking the Dane right there except that the crew is already dead. So weeks on the ship compared to the small risk of raising alarm when entering it? I don't know what Jack would rather do. Probably, it could have been custom build for a vampire who wanted it to be openable from the inside. Still from a player point of view, you would suddenly be retro-fitting an item with a feature that was never mentioned in the whole game of Bloodlines and this is just bad writing to me. If we want to go that road, Jack should be in the container! According to Wikipedia the territorial waters extend only to 12 miles from the coast, so the Dane could easily be entered outside of this. Also you are always talking about an attack! This is not necessary. Jack and the Cabbie and whoever else could have played lost fishermen, no weapons needed at all to kill the crew once they are on board! Maybe. The Cabbie would have been my first choice too, but Troika kept this vague on purpose! Rik Schaffer is a friendly guy who likes Bloodlines. Sadly, he doesn't know much aside from the musical side! I don't know if EntenSchreck, who is behind the prequel, already asked them for info, but when I was restoring cut maps for the patch, Brian Mitsoda could hardly remember details and when I used an Eurogamer interview to ask Leonard Boyarsky some questions there were no answers forthcoming. Maybe I should try it over FaceBook, I think one of them just lately posted a picture there :)! Who is this and how can he be contaced?