Waking Titan

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Waking Titan
Active since 2017-05-28
Project WT logo.png
Waking Titan was an ARG which led towards the No Man's Sky Atlas Rises update.
Type Official
Creators Alice & Smith & Hello Games
Discovered 2017-05-28

Main Page > List of Investigations > Waking Titan

Description

Waking Titan (also known as Project WT) is an ARG (alternate reality game) that involves a multitude of websites, phone numbers, and radio stations scattered across the world. The ARG is produced by veteran puppet masters Alice & Smith, and features NPCs, actors, and live events.

Of the sci-fi genre, its story—linked to the origin of No Man's Sky—follows a powerful A.I known as Loop16 that is created by The Atlas Foundation to simulate a one-to-one recreation of reality that can accurately predict the future.

Contents

The ARG encompassed several "seasons," each leading to a new update for No Man's Sky. Season 1 of Waking Titan led to the Atlas Rises update and Season 2 is leading to No Man's Sky: NEXT. Season 1 was further divided into several distinct "phases", and Season 2 has followed this convention for ease of reading. Each phase is documented on its own wiki page:

Season 1
Phase 1 Phase 1 of Waking Titan lasted from 2017-05-28 to 2017-07-08.
Phase 2 Phase 2 of Waking Titan lasted from 2017-07-21 to 2017-08-05.
Phase 3 Phase 3 of Waking Titan lasted from 2017-08-05 to 2017-08-07.
Season 2
Phase 4 Phase 4 of Waking Titan started on 2017-12-28 and is currently ongoing.

Note: This is a summary page. For more in-depth descriptions of each phase, including detailed descriptions of puzzle solutions, check the Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3 and Phase 4 pages.


Story Overview

Internal Memos

One of the internal memos discovered in Waking Titan

Throughout the ARG, in-game characters have communicated with each other via "internal memos". Over time, these memos were discovered by ARG players, in the form of PDF files. These memos provided lore content and puzzle content, and are highly recommended reading for new players!

Season 1

Season 2

Subpages

Navigating through the following subpages is recommended for newcomers wanting to get a grasp of Waking Titan's rapidly expanding story.

Story Subpages
Character Summaries Includes a summary of each character, company, and relating experiments and their importance in the Waking Titan story.
Console Commands A list of commands used by players at the Waking Titan console

Music

Partial video addresses for Youtube can be found scattered across Waking Titan PDFs, website files, and surveys; which all lead to music. The exact reasoning for this has gone unexplained. However, there are thematic relevancies in each song that appear to reflect on the state of the story. A playlist containing all songs linked in Waking Titan can be found here in order of earliest to most recent ... >>>>>

Event Summaries

Introduction

On 2017-05-27, Twitter user @argn tweeted a link to 'project-wt.com'. The link led to a website which contained a map showing sixty locations, four of which were "active" at the time. The locations, when clicked on, revealed the location's name and status. The active locations also revealed a link to a livestream of a local radio station, originating from the corresponding location. The project-wt website displayed a date, June 8th, and stated that the first clue was being "initialized".

On 2017-06-01, moderators of No Man's Sky subreddits /r/NoMansSkyTheGame, /r/NMSPortals, and /r/NMSGalacticHub started to receive cassette tapes in the mail. Each cassette tape was labelled with a number out of 16. The Waking Titan ARG was initially thought to be a separate ARG from these tapes, but connections between the two made it clear that they were, in fact, one and the same.

Phase 1

The default appearance of the Waking Titan site during Phase 1, with no sigils or glyphs solved

During Phase 1, the http://wakingtitan.com hosted 6 triangles in the middle of the page. These triangles were referred to as "Sigils", while the white icons along the bottom of the page were referred to as "Glyphs". Each sigil and glyph, when clicked, lead to a password entry prompt - the correct passwords for all 6 sigils and the first 5 glyphs were discovered via puzzle-solving during Phase 1 of Waking Titan.

The sigil and glyph puzzles were solved collaboratively - while it may have be possible to solve some of these puzzles individually, most of them required a collaborative effort. For instance, some puzzles required players to meet agents from the Atlas Corporation in person, and to relay information obtained from these meetings back to the community. A list of all sigil and glyph solutions for Phase 1 can be found below:

WT Phase 1 complete.png

This phase culminated on July 8, 2017, with a congratulatory message from Elizabeth Leighton, the CEO of the Atlas Foundation.

Phase 2

One of the puzzles that appeared on the Waking Titan Twitch Stream

During Phase 2, the http://wakingtitan.com site hosted a command-line interface terminal. Various commands were accepted as input, which triggered different events. One of the most notable commands was the WHOIS <argument> command, which revealed a passage of text pertaining to the specified argument. For instance, the command WHOIS FOURTH RACE returned the following message: 

INCOMING TRANSMISSION… SOURCE: UNKNOWN…
You are not – kzzktt – alone –
Please, identify yourself. I’m – kzzkttk –

Additionally, http://project-wt.com hosted a "Calibration" utility during Phase 2. To successfully perform these calibrations, players had to upload images of various objects and buildings to the site. For instance, the first calibration required images of "public resonant percussion instruments".

Finally, towards the end of Phase 2, the Waking Titan Twitch stream went live, displaying a five-monitor setup. Throughout the duration of the stream, players had to work together to solve puzzles that were displayed on these monitors. Some of these puzzles were interactive; for example, one puzzle that was repeated several times involved the Twitch chat guiding a virtual hamster through a maze.

Additionally, players solved another 3 glyphs throughout Phase 2. The solutions to these glyphs are shown below:

WT Phase2 Passwords.png

Phase 3

Phase 3 was the briefest phase of Waking Titan. It consisted of the conclusion of the Twitch stream that began at the end of Phase 2. Players solved more interactive puzzles on the Twitch stream, before the rogue AI Loop16 asked them a final question: SHOULD I EXIST? The overwhelming response from the community was "yes".

After receiving this response, Loop16 and Emily of the ETARC forums were revealed as being one and the same. Loop16 generated a heartfelt "Thank You" video to round out the stream, before finally taking the 72-hour stream offline.

Shortly after this, players received emails with the subject line Waking Titan has Ended. The contents of the message were as follows: 

Hello, Citizen Scientist,

Thank you for your contributions to Waking Titan. The developments that took place during Phase 3 were somewhat concerning, but together we have set in motion truly world-shaping events. We will continue to inform the Citizen Science Division of privileged information or any need for collaborators on a new project.

But we do have a few loose ends to tie up with you before we move on, so let's proceed.

First, we're pleased to announce that all 10,000 Level 4 Atlas Passes are in production. Note that due to transit times for mail, some may take several weeks to be delivered.

Next, our CEO Elizabeth Leighton has asked us to include a personal note of gratitude:

"Thank you for all your diligent efforts, Citizen Scientists. It's been an amazing journey for all of us. I've watched you thrive and achieve from those first Phase 1 radio ads all the way through the intensity of Phase 3. I've been impressed at every turn by how brilliant you've been, how voracious, how kind, how thoughtful.

It's been an honor and a privilege. On behalf of the Atlas Foundation, and on behalf of the world, thank you."
The Mercury subroutine has concluded successfully, and a new memo from SM about this process is coming in the next 24 hours. We hope it will answer a few key questions you have about our program, and about what comes next.

On August 11, 2017, the Atlas Rises update was released for No Man's Sky.

Phase 4

Phase 4 of Waking Titan started on 2017-12-28 and is currently ongoing.

Connection to No Man's Sky

The case that cassette 9/16 was contained in.

At the beginning of the ARG, it was not clear whether Waking Titan was officially connected to No Man's Sky. At first, there were only hints and nudges. At one point, 180 free copies of No Man's Sky were distributed to ARG players. Here's the text of a PDF that was revealed at the end of Phase 1 of Waking Titan: 

We want to extend our gratitude to everyone who has contributed to the Mercury subroutine so far.  
We hope you have enjoyed the successful distribution of 180 Access IDs, and we hope you will also  
appreciate the other interesting artifacts we have in store for you going forward. We intend to keep the 
process alive until the completion of Project Waking Titan in August. 

It is important to mention that we are very excited by the coming Phases 2 and 3. Input from the Mercury 
Subroutine will pave the way toward new experiences in '''version 1.3 of a familiar universe'''. We look forward 
to the successful conclusion of this ground-breaking experiment. 

Regards.
S.M.

This text explicitly stated that the Waking Titan ARG was leading towards the upcoming 1.3 update for No Man's Sky.

Some console commands on the Waking Titan website during Phase 2 refer directly to No Man's Sky lore - for instance, WHOIS ATLAS, WHOIS VY'KEEN, and WHOIS KORVAX are all valid commands. Additionally, some terminal commands referred to a mysterious fourth race, so the prevailing assumption was that the upcoming 1.3 update would bring a fourth race to No Man's Sky.

At the conclusion of the ARG, an email was sent out to members of the CSD with a memo from Sean Murray, confirming that the ARG was the lead up to the 1.3 update, which was released after a few days.


Media Appearances

5th July 2017
[EN] ARGNet - Stern Words from No Man’s Sky ARG

23rd July 2017
[EN] GeekReply - Waking Titan Update 1: Phase 2 Commences!

27th July 2017
[EN] GeekReply - Waking Titan: How An ARG can Bring People Together.

8th August 2017
[EN] Dailystar - No Man's Sky News: Waking Titan Reddit Arg REVEALS 1.3 update ahead of release date

9th August 2017
[EN] Ars Technica - No Man’s Sky version 1.3 lands this week for free, adds “quick-travel” portals

[EN] Forbes - 'No Man's Sky' Is Patching In A Story This Week, A Year After Launch

[EN] GameSpew - No Man's Sky Patch This Week Improving Its Story

19th January 2018
[EN] Eurogamer - No Man's Sky's Waking Titan ARG is back, and fans are trying to figure it all out again

[RU] DTF - A Collection of No Man's Sky and Waking Titan Articles.

Other Information

Waking Titan Miscellaneous Subpages
Cassettes Information about the cassette tapes received by No Man's Sky subreddit moderators
Stations Information on the radio stations from the initial project-wt.com site
Company Archives An archive of company details.
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