Rise of the Golden Idol: Chapter 3 The Machine Walkthrough

1. Scenario 1: 6/18 (Marmot’s calendar). Eugene Marmot activates the device and sets himself on fire, impressing the board and getting further funding for the research lab
2. Scenario 2: 6/13 (organizer note). A group of hippies evicted from the Harmony Foundation sit outside protesting. One of them knocks over a bird bath, sending a frozen disc of water down the hill. It’s icy even though it’s summer. A member of the group hands Eugene Marmot a pamphlet
3. Scenario 3: Unclear date, but chronologically first. Tesa fails to impress Spender and Wakefield, leading them to evict her and seize the Harmony Foundation. A dedicant stabs security

New Evidence:

• A letter to Nathan saying that the Emotion Studies project has been repurposed and that a new person is replacing Tesa as the head
• A letter, dated 6/4/74, from Jack Nowak to Issac Nowak, complaining about how he wants to swap roles with Marie
• Oriel Toussiant’s analysis of Tesa’s idol. The pieces are not connected properly and Tesa mistranslated the symbols
• A phone call from Eugene Marmot, who has taken Westfield’s job. He wants to hire someone back, as he would have never got where he was without their insight

Story 1 and Hierarchy Hints:

• The hierarchy scroll has a trick: it’s dated to 7/12/75. The most recent scenario is 6/18, so the question is asking for who does what after the fire and restructuring
• The idol Tesa has in scenario 3 is the one she spent all the time and effort on from Chapter 2. The security orders in scenario 3 say that all Harmony Foundation assets were claimed by OPIG, so they still must own it in some form.
• Back in Garden Retreat, Tesa had a message saying someone was going to confiscate her credit card for reckless spending. What organization was her card from?
• When the device works, the runes glow blue. We can use this to tell when it’s working and we can flip it to see when it’s not working.
• Marmot says that he’s going to hire someone “back”, so whoever he’s hiring was previously fired by the company

Story 2:

• Tesa’s interpretation of the runes isn’t right. It’s always a shame when someone influential believes something wrong; it’s going to rub off on and influence others
• Tesa isn’t only a scientist: she’s a spiritual leader. The harmony foundation hippies are familiar with the device and believe it does what she thinks it does
• The obvious interpretation of Case 1 is that Eugene Marmot is kind of dumb and set off a dangerous machine by accident. What if he thought what he was doing worked?

The event scroll wants you to understand how the device works. I’m going to give two different answers. If you played the first game, you know how the idol works and have a glossary of what its runes mean (if you forgot, check case 7 of my guide for the first game, linked at top). If you haven’t played the first game, you need to think through these three scenarios to figure out how it works

I played the first game. How does the idol work?

• In scenario 1, the device is set to Increased Matter Heat
• In scenario 2, the device is set to Decreased Matter Heat
• In scenario 3, Tesa has it set to Increased Heat. It didn’t work for Tesa, because she needs a subject, such as Matter, for the ritual to work, in addition to the fact that the idol was connected incorrectly

I haven’t played the first game. How does the idol work?

• Tesa’s translation of the runes is noted to be off base by Oriel. He notes that her interpretation of hatred is metaphorically true and would more precisely be fiery. Her translation of Eliminate and Replenish is straightforwardly wrong
• There’s a concept in thermodynamics that always confuses people. Let’s say you put an ice cube in a glass of water. What’s happening, from a scientific perspective, is that the ice cube has a deficit of energy and is absorbing energy from the water. That is, the ice is absorbing heat from the water. Many people, especially laypeople unfamiliar with chemistry, will say the opposite. That is, the ice cube is adding cold to the water. These both adequately explain the process, but only one of them actually explains the mechanism.
• Think of the Eliminate and Replenish or Give and Take commands as being the same thing with opposite signs. A Replenish is a negative eliminate and a Take is a negative Give. It all depends on what you define as a starting point
• Tesa is defining the runes as if the idol receives and the subject gives (Eliminate Hatred by sucking out hatred and Replenish Empathy by shooting back empathy).
• That doesn’t make sense with the tests we see, where the idol gives and the subject receives (Scenario 1 is, from her perspective, Eliminate Hatred, but the device shot out heat; Scenario 2 is, from her view, Replenish Hatred, but the device is sucking in heat).

Back to the full Rise of the Golden Idol walkthrough for every chapter and DLC.