Good catch! I tend to agree–it fits too well to NOT be part of the ARG. Keep in mind, however, that red herrings are always a good chunk of these things–not saying this is one, but sometimes when things seem too perfect it’s because they are.
Well so much for sending that email, it came back saying recipient not found. Ah well, it probably wasn’t going to lead anywhere anyways.
Does anyone else remember there being portals cliff-side in the GOTY edition?
That was add by the devs for an easter-egg
I’ve just read the whole thread, I’m a bit more insane than I used to be I suppose…
I think It has not been mentioned, but having played the game yesterday, I remember there was a computer screen in QE that shows elements, the compound they’re part of, a string of numbers and a porcentage, like “Oxygen H2O 58908/93084 (59.9%)”. About 20 elements, including the so famous niobium. I think it was in one of the observation rooms, either the one where you can kill a creature in a tank by gas, electric shock or fire; or the one that overlooks the room with the glass cylinders.
If the 752 Hex Code is not encrypted, as stormseeker said, it may be encoded, so this may be useful. I tried turning the Hex Code into decimal and look for the numbers next to the elements, but I don’t know exacty how many characters I have to take from the Hex Code at a time to turn them into decimal. It’s a long shot, but I guess nothing it’s lost trying.
It has been comented a couple of pages ago, but I think that nobody noticed about a detail. There is a blue dossier on Dr. Horn’s desk, and another one in other room with two desks on QE chapter. Both have a page what shows a bit outside them and you can read it if you zoom, well, if you pick the dossier and look through the side you can actually see the whole page inside with writing on it, the problem is that the angle and zoom do not allow reading, somebody can access the game files to have a closser look at the pages?
Also, is HALOS a refference to HAL? HAL operating sytem? Anyway, I really enjoyed reading all this and I would like to see this solved.
So there were portals in the original 98’ version? What did they do?
*The cliff-side portals
No. They are only in Black Mesa
Has anybody tried hashing “CongratulationsyouwonthePIZZA” against the latest codeblock in whatever encryptions we’ve looked at?
Was having a conversation with ThatWimmerKid a bit ago, and he happened to mention that one of the maps in the ST shed is a map of Ohio.
As shown on the Borealis Blueprints in Episode 2, One of Aperture’s locations is in Ohio.
This could very well be coincidence, but it might also be relevant.
(Also, this could have been notice before. Can’t recall.)
I’m pretty sure this is new information, in the sense that no one has really mentioned it. Stormseeker has clearly pulled out all the stops to give us one of the most involved ARGs I’ve been a part of, so it would not surprise me at all if these were related.
As for the ARG in general, the noted silence suggests to me that this puzzle was intended as a sort of wall to slow us down while he and the team work on Xen. Once that has neared launch, I expect we’ll get a tidbit of information slipped to us in one form or another.
And you guys may think Storm and the rest of the devs have not been watching this thread. Trust me, they are watching. 
Fake number.
I’ve been looking to all the clues, and somethink called my attention. In past clues and messages the OTR protocol is ?OTR2,?OTR3 or something like that, while in the message that includes the 752 hex code it states “?OTR,3,4,?OTR…” “…ANALYSIS COMPLETE>>> [CLASSIFIED INFORMATION LEVEL 8][OTR//4.0]” I’ve read in the wiki that it doesn’t exist, but i’ve found this:
It’s OTR 4.0 for pidgin. After investigating a little about OTR protocol, the “?OTR2” and the like are messages between the people in the conversation to agree a protocol for the encryption, that will be used in the conversation. Also found that the encryption used for the messages is, at least in older versions, AES 128 in ctr mode with an iv of zeros, ussing SHA1 to generate the key from the password. But I’m not sure if this is correct for the current version. I’ve tried to decrypt the 752 hex code using Openssl with the passwords “BENALOHPAILLIER” “BenalohPaillier”… and “CRYPTOGRAPHERS” “Cryptographers”…, but I may be doing something wrong, since I’ve just learned to use it and I’m not precisely an expert in this thingies.
There seems to be a lot of watching going on:
- “[…] an ominous feeling that something is constantly watching this all from the shadows” (Terminal message)
- “They are watching, assume leaker on site” (IRC clue 3)
- “seek code out he is watching” (Tempus clue)
- “It is one thing to communicate with something mysterious but it is quite another to be silently observed by it.” (Tempus clue)
- The IRC user who “leaked” the IRC clues used the name “Watcher”.
Time reveals all - what do you check the time on?
A watch.
Or maybe that’s taking it a smidge too far.
But yeah, that’s a fair point.
Just a thought about the whole “watching” thing going on:
Isn’t there an observation area in the Questionable Ethics chapter? I’m at work right now or I’d check myself, but it could be a clue pointing to either the government or a literal observation room. Then again, I’m pretty sure we exhausted everything of interest in that chapter, so it’s more a desperate reach than anything else.
shrug
The only thing that comes to mind is a G-Man sighting in an observation room overlooking the lab with the bullsquid pens (wasn’t there a “The Pizza is a LIE!” in the room in which he was standing?). I think there was also a DALsys console with a red button in that lab. It’s possible I’m remembering incorrectly, I’ll have to check. But I’m not sure any of this is directly relevant to the puzzle.
Obviously, the “watching” thing going on plays a part in the story, and it’s possible that that’s all there is to it. However, I’m thinking if there is a puzzle in the Tempus clue or in other clues that we haven’t figured out yet, that may help us solve the current puzzle, then maybe “watching” is part of it.
One thought I had was if the “watching” thing could have something to do with monitors and terminals. “Terminal” seems to be a recurring theme in the clues. First, we have the “Terminal” message. Second, almost all the IRC clues contain the string “[Terminal.]”, except in HALOS.txt where we have the string “[ABORTIVE.]” instead, almost as if it was meant to draw our attention to it. Third, TERMINAL was the key to the inner code in IRC clue 4. And finally, in the most recent clue, if it was a clue, the “DALsystems remote terminal module” at terminal.bmrf.us.
Another “Terminal” related thing, which is probably just an easter egg and not relevant, but in the WGH chapter (IIRC), we find a copy of “The Terminal” newspaper lying on a desk, which is from HL2.
About the “?OTR,1,3,?OTR:” string, according to the OTR protocol v2, the “?OTR,1,3,” string means that the data following it is piece no. 1 of 3 of a fragmented data message (so in theory we’re missing a “?OTR,2,3,” and a “?OTR,3,3,”). “?OTR:” marks the beginning of the data message. “?OTR,1,3,” is found in IRC clue 1, 3, 4 and 5. However, IRC clue 6 and HALOS.txt differs from the others in that the string is “?OTR,3,4,” instead of the usual “?OTR,1,3,”. I’m not sure if this is something we should read too much into, but I just thought I’d mention it.
Several months ago I tried using MD5 hashes of various passphrases, including “congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA” (not sure if I tried with a capitalized C though), as keys for 2-key 3DES, Blowfish and CAST-128 in ECB mode, and Tiger hashes as keys for 3-key 3DES, to no avail. I also tried hashing the full “congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA” string which includes the the quotation marks, spaces and some ASCII control codes at the beginning and at the end of the string. Furthermore, I also tried hashing the grilledpizza.jpg file. I even tried keyed (HMAC) hashes (using BENALOHPAILLIER as key). But I was doing this manually using command-line tools, so the number of passphrases and cipher variations I tried were limited.
It’s a research area. They’ve got giant anti-organic death rays and alien habitats and tanks with aliens floating in them. Of course it’s going to have observation rooms.
I meant more like the one mentioned by flavrans9, but you make a valid point.