The Man in the Wall…

[Omega114]

Before going any further, the following has spoilers for the War Within, Chains of Harrow, the Sacrifice.

 

So after replaying the War Within to realign my sundial, I noticed something odd during the segment where you regain your memories.

When you start discussing your father, you mention that he says the infamous two words… “Hey, Kiddo.”

This, of course, made me put on my Alloy Plate colander on my head with the theory that it might be possible that the MitW could be your father.

Another theory is that he is merely using your memories against you, as seen with the Sacrifice when your ghost reflection asks you about how you remember/accept Juran’s death.  

 

What do you guys think?

[Spartan336]

Sorry. Every time I hear the Man in the Wall I can't stop thinking about this statue. 

I have a theory that I'm working on that it's something akin to the Devil. My choice of hat? I go with Salvage. 

[RetroNomad]

Noticed that too during a recent replay for footage.
My jaw kinda hit the floor. That doesn't explicitly imply that was your father per say but maybe a care giver of sorts as father can be akin to many things, not just birth parent.
Still. Made my skin crawl after going the The Sacrifice, etc and going back noticing that as well.

[Terran007]

Or maybe the MitW its a void entity that has taken interest in the Tenno for a particular reason... or not. 🤔

During the sacrifice ordis said that there could be "residual effects" doing that semi-transference thingy with da boi Umbra, thats maybe why we said "My son..etc" to the MitW at the end.

[Omega114]

33 minutes ago, Terran007 said:

Or maybe the MitW its a void entity that has taken interest in the Tenno for a particular reason... or not. 🤔

During the sacrifice ordis said that there could be "residual effects" doing that semi-transference thingy with da boi Umbra, thats maybe why we said "My son..etc" to the MitW at the end.

Maybe we should ask ol' Captain Vor to see what he knows. 😕

[Eidolon_Slayer]

The Void is your father.

[(PSN)EpICFreeDoMZz]

I wouldn't mind meeting one of our parents tbh. Most likely in a dream sequence but think of all the cool things that could be done. They could even do a system like in fallout 4 where it takes what your character looks like and create a parent based on that. Idk maybe that's just me but would be cool.

[Omega114]

9 minutes ago, Eidolon_Slayer said:

The Void is your father.

That’s not true...! That’s...  improbable ...?

 

9 minutes ago, (PS4)EpICFreeDoMZz said:

I wouldn't mind meeting one of our parents tbh. Most likely in a dream sequence but think of all the cool things that could be done. They could even do a system like in fallout 4 where it takes what your character looks like and create a parent based on that. Idk maybe that's just me but would be cool.

The only issue with that is we most likely turned them into space dust after the Tau jump... though as you said, a dream sequence in which would make us relive that memory would be heartbreaking yet powerful.

[Eidolon_Slayer]

6 minutes ago, Omega114 said:

That’s not true...! That’s...  improbable ...?

Remember Chains of Harrow? All Tenno experience void exposure. The man in the wall is something each Tenno had to overcome.

[Omega114]

Just now, Eidolon_Slayer said:

Remember Chains of Harrow? All Tenno experience void exposure. The man in the wall is something each Tenno had to overcome.

Space Mum hasn’t been the most honest of late...

Also the Vader/Luke joke was obviously not as prominent as I had believed. 🙂 

[xXx_mtv_xXx]

Man't in't then't walln't

[Diarmut]

I think MitW is a void entity, playing us by using our memories, I think. It'd be cool to have future quests involve us time traveling (a la fissures) to us being on zariman, us in the Orokin empire,( I'm dying, literally, to meet the Seven) and some more Tenno.

[khazlol]

whatever he is, it's probably why they were put into those pods in the first place.

i bet it will get worse as we uncover more of the past. especially of what happend on that ship.

[Falconer777]

8 часов назад, Omega114 сказал:

When you start discussing your father, you mention that he says the infamous two words… “Hey, Kiddo.”

This, of course, made me put on my Alloy Plate colander on my head with the theory that it might be possible that the MitW could be our father.

 

I think so too.

[Aliciakus]

On 2018-07-15 at 5:15 PM, Terran007 said:

Or maybe the MitW its a void entity that has taken interest in the Tenno for a particular reason... or not. 🤔

During the sacrifice ordis said that there could be "residual effects" doing that semi-transference thingy with da boi Umbra, thats maybe why we said "My son..etc" to the MitW at the end.

Well look back to the chains of harrow, we remeber that MitW had occupied rell for a long time, and before he went to sleep he said      [ Rell:but the man i the wall...Who will....? Palladino:They will have to. All of them They owe you this. We all do.]      Which is why i think before we went back to our ship he went with us somehow and gave us our first suprise visit

[Aliciakus]

On 2018-07-15 at 9:59 PM, Diarmut said:

I think MitW is a void entity, playing us by using our memories, I think. It'd be cool to have future quests involve us time traveling (a la fissures) to us being on zariman, us in the Orokin empire,( I'm dying, literally, to meet the Seven) and some more Tenno.

Yeah and maybe the quest could be what happaned over the day but we are watching it

[Aliciakus]

On 2018-07-15 at 5:56 PM, (PS4)EpICFreeDoMZz said:

I wouldn't mind meeting one of our parents tbh. Most likely in a dream sequence but think of all the cool things that could be done. They could even do a system like in fallout 4 where it takes what your character looks like and create a parent based on that. Idk maybe that's just me but would be cool.

we cant meet our parents, they perished on the zeriman [Lotus:All her crew gone, except the children.]

[Slaughterdance]

15 minutes ago, Aliciakus said:

we cant meet our parents, they perished on the zeriman [Lotus:All her crew gone, except the children.]

Yes, they did perish on the Zariman, yet, they first of all got driven mad by the influence of the Void. And while he is still creepy as heck to me, that weird Operator-imposter never does anything else than say 'Hey Kiddo' and disappear... until now that is. The hell knows what or who exactly he is but we might find out eventually. Maybe that's just the way the Void manifests itself to communicate. He could be watching over us. Noone knows 😄

[Aliciakus]

1 minute ago, Slaughterdance said:

Yes, they did perish on the Zariman, yet, they first of all got driven mad by the influence of the Void. And while he is still creepy as heck to me, that weird Operator-imposter never does anything else than say 'Hey Kiddo' and disappear... until now that is. The hell knows what or who exactly he is but we might find out eventually. Maybe that's just the way the Void manifests itself to communicate. He could be watching over us. Noone knows 😄

I think he is trying to do what he did to rell. Drive him up the wall. Get it?

[FlusteredFerret]

I've just done The War Within and weirdly that section of the quest, where you regain your memories of what happened on the Zariman, reminded me of the movie Event Horizon.

The Void is evidently some weird region of space that made the adults lose their minds and turn into raving savages (while somehow the kids survived but gained strange powers).

Then at the end of the quest where you have the option to destroy, control or consume the kuva, there is that weird moment ("Remember kiddo...you're nothing without me")

 

You remember your father saying (before he went totally insane) "Theres something out there kiddo..watching us..."

So my best guess is that there is some sort of malevolent entity that lives in the void and has psychic powers that enabled it to tap into the minds of the crew and drive them mad. For whatever reason it doesn't have the same power over children. It can communicate with them, but not control them. Perhaps thats where the kuva comes in? As well as granting immortality, or at least greatly prolonged life, it also makes you susceptible to manipulation by this void entity?

At this point my best guess would be that the Man in the Wall is the Void attempting to contact you and gain your trust by impersonating your father (though doing a very poor job given it only utters 2 words).

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by FlusteredFerret

[-STR-Lotus]

I think an old orokin is somehow trying to control us with void.

The War within if you select the second option in the task

''remember,kiddo you're nothing without me.''

maybe the man on the wall is a bigger threat to us

as we know, lotus goes after this mission  maybe Lotus  went to protect us from a big threat.

 

[Im_a_Turtle]

On 2018-07-15 at 7:17 PM, Eidolon_Slayer said:

Remember Chains of Harrow? All Tenno experience void exposure. The man in the wall is something each Tenno had to overcome.

 

Are we to trust the words of a literal sentient in disguise? She hasn't had and is incapable of having any experiences with the man in the wall so how would she know that it's not a genuine entity only affecting void centric entities such as the tainted void children?

[E3R0Z]

I think the man in the wall is just an illusion the Tenno experience due to the void and stuff. The mitw looks like you and if you remember in the war within your character says that his father said "hey kiddo". I think it is judt an reflection from your character's past 

[AuroraSonicBoom]

If you paid close attention during War Within you'd have heard that the MitW's voice, which is your Operator's passed through some distortion effects, multiple times during the quest. Specifically, whenever the queen's manipulation makes you remember fragments of your past.
 

Spoiler

 

 

In the last instance, it's interesting to note that we can see the Operator speaking with the MitW's voice instead of just hearing it. But why do we hear his voice echo the last parts of our recovered memories? I think it's because Teshin helping the Operator recover their memories, and part of those memories being the MitW. We've only seen three distinct instances of Tenno being affected by the MitW(Our Operator, Rell and an unnamed Tenno in the comic 'Rell'), and in each case he doesn't appear to act and speak in a consistent way. If he were a distinct entity possessing Tenno he'd act in line with whatever his character is. That's not the case. The only common denominator between all those instances of him appearing to take control of different Tenno is that he's driven by emotion. Rell was alone and afraid, our Operator was angry(War Within) and grieving(Sacrifice), the unnamed Tenno in the comic was aggressively protective.

I don't believe the MitW is a single entity, void demon or whatever. I think it's a Tenno's Shadow, an unconscious part of their psyche that is driven by instinct and emotion which has fragmented by the exposure to the Void and resides as sort of alter ego in their minds. Remember how it's been mentioned multiple times that the adults exposed to the void would go mad? That I think is another bit of evidence supporting the shadow theory. Generally speaking, a kid's mind carries a lot less emotional baggage, suppressed instincts and traumatic experiences than an adult because they haven't lived long enough to gain it. If an adult mind's subconscious or shadow would split off and gain sentience, it'd be significantly more powerful than that of a child, and I think that's exactly why they loose control over themselves. This Void madness, or "effects of Void exposure" as the Lotus called it, could be nothing more than the subconscious part of person splitting off into it's own psychic entity and start vying for control over the host - the body of the affected individual. It's why conscious adult minds get overtaken by their much stronger Shadow inevitably, and why kids can keep theirs in check - to a certain degree.

I say 'to a certain degree' because we've seen multiple times how Tenno being put into traumatic situation will cause them to lose control, like the kid on the Zariman that disfigured Investigator Kaleen in Ember Prime's codex entry, Rell being forced to defend himself and kill his own mother in the comic, and most importantly, Margulis, who was blinded. I think those instances were examples of a Tenno's being under enough emotional stress(fear, mostly) for their Shadow to emerge and lash out. It'd also explain why Ballas calls the Tenno devils - an assessment that didn't make sense if you only look at what they appear to be on the surface.

Kepping all that in mind, the Tenno's Shadow approving of the experience they had letting Umbra's pain become their own post-Sacrifice quest fits in with that theory. More emotional baggage means a more powerful Shadow, something of which it would certainly approve. Looking at Rell's fate, he's isolated himself for so long that his mind - trapped in Harrow - became utterly dominated by his Shadow before even that part of himself cracked and split apart into all of the emotions we've captured in his quest.

As a last note, and this one is just baseless speculation, we can see how Rell had trouble keeping his focus, which might also make it easier for the Shadow to take control. He had his donda to keep him fro giving in, while mentally more stable Tenno didn't need such aids at first. But later, while they've been mistreated by the Orokin, there's a good chance that one of the reason for the Tenno to have founded focus schools is to keep their Shadow from gaining control over them. An unfocused mind, as seen with Rell, could lead to their thoughts going astray more easily, delving into dark caves the Shadow occupies and can use to pull himself up out of.

 

[(PSN)EpICFreeDoMZz]

9 hours ago, Aliciakus said:

we cant meet our parents, they perished on the zeriman [Lotus:All her crew gone, except the children.]

I wouldn't mind meeting one of our parents tbh. Most likely in a dream sequence but think of all the cool things that could be done.