36 replies to this topic

[khh]

I think I will have to disagree with you V, because that is not how dreams work. When you dream within a dream you simply move from one mental state to the next, you don't go to a "deeper" level. And the amount of times you dream you wake up is not in any way connected to the amount of times you've dreamt you've gone to sleep. There is no overhead processing, there is no stack preservation (Think of it as tail-call optimised recursion, if you wish).

 

What this means in practise to me is that even if Zoë is Dreaming her way into Propast she could still Dream herself to Arcadia - though her projected body would disappear from Stark as she did so. I'm not sure how normal nightly dreams and the Dream Machine would work and if they would interfere, since I'm not entirely clear on the specific rules that govern Dreaming.

[Mr Moo]

Imagine you're Reza. You may have had a fight before going to bed, but she seemed happy and relaxed when falling asleep. In the middle of the night, you suddenly wake up, noticing you're now all alone. Zoe is nowhere to be found, and all exits are still locked. You report her missing, but as the security tapes never show her leaving, you're arrested and held in custody as the only suspect in her disappearance ...

[Vainamoinen]

I think I will have to disagree with you V, because that is not how dreams work.

 

Maybe Dreams do and dreams do not.

 

Both Arcadia as well as Stark are real places. Real-real. Zoë has and had the potential to dream herself into real places while others do not. Personally, I would prefer that immense power to be limited front and center – an operation within narrow confines and a loss of power if my proverbial rubber band is stretched too thin.

 

Also, from the mere narrative perspective, I'd rather that Book 2 already establishes that Zoë is still in a coma, and therewith the mechanics by which she can travel between the worlds.

 

Both scenarios are possible, of course. Maybe she can travel to Arcadia via Dreamachine, just like that.

[toremygg]

"... but if you travel back to 2015 from THIS alternate 1985 ..."?

Can you travel to the real Arcadia from the dream Stark using a dream dreammachine? I suppose that depends upon the extent of the effect Zoë demonstrated when upping her dosage.

Needless to say, I'm not a big fan of this solution. But what happens, happens.

[agirlnamedbob]

While I'm not sure if I really completely buy into what V's positing, I also don't know if we can really apply what we know about how dreams work to what we know about how Dreams work. Much of the Dreamer mythos is uh...well...based on mythology... which doesn't necessarily give it a firm grounding in the science of dreams (which we don't even really understand all that well anyway.) Plus we don't really completely know what the extent of Zoe's powers are or how they work. The info we got about it in Dreamfall was a lot of "Well...she's not a Shifter..." and "Huh. Yup. You're weird kid." (I mean, in a lot of ways, the Kickstarter info and teaser trailer was more straightforward about it.) 

 

I expect we'll get more information about the limitations and extent of Zoe's powers once she "wakes up" (whatever that actually means). I'm hesitant on how much I want to really speculate about how it works without much info (especially because it's so much fun watching you all do it. )

 

Can you travel to the real Arcadia from the dream Stark using a dream dreammachine? I suppose that depends upon the extent of the effect Zoë demonstrated when upping her dosage.

 

The key piece here, IMHO, is that based on what we've observed of Zoe Dreaming herself places, it wouldn't be a dream Dreamer. It would be a real Dreamer that a solid physical projection of herself would be interacting with. When she Dreams, she ends up in two places at once and she has the ability to interact with real objects and manipulate real things. She's not in "Dream Stark." When she interacted with Kian and April and everyone in Dreamfall she wasn't in "Dream Marcuria." A physical manifestation of her Dream self was in Real Marcuria.

 

Basically what I think I'm saying is that it's possible that even if she doesn't need a Dreamer to get to Arcadia, it may help jog her memory and/or boost her powers or help her do whatever mental gymnastics she has to do to remember how to Dream herself into Arcadia. 

 

Or maybe we'll find out that Dreaming works differently than we've kinda-sorta been able to infer it does. 

 

Again...still not sure I like the whole "still in a coma" angle, and if it is the case, I agree with V that I'd rather have it be established sooner rather than later. 

 

Ugh...is it February yet? I want answers. 

[toremygg]

The key piece here, IMHO, is that based on what we've observed of Zoe Dreaming herself places, it wouldn't be a dream Dreamer. It would be a real Dreamer that a solid physical projection of herself would be interacting with. When she Dreams, she ends up in two places at once and she has the ability to interact with real objects and manipulate real things. She's not in "Dream Stark." When she interacted with Kian and April and everyone in Dreamfall she wasn't in "Dream Marcuria." A physical manifestation of her Dream self was in Real Marcuria. 

I think you may have read me wrong. My concern is that if her physical body is not actually connected to a Dreamer, only her astral body (if the still-in-a-coma situation applies), would that be able to send her into the real Arcadia? I agree that there is no "Dream Stark", that was bad phrasing on my part - there is Stark-in-which-Dream-Zoë-lives.

 

Man, this is almost as bad as time paradoxes.

[agirlnamedbob]

I think you may have read me wrong. My concern is that if her physical body is not actually connected to a Dreamer, only her astral body (if the still-in-a-coma situation applies), would that be able to send her into the real Arcadia? I agree that there is no "Dream Stark", that was bad phrasing on my part - there is Stark-in-which-Dream-Zoë-lives.

 

I don't think I really read you wrong. My point is that based on what we've seen her her "astral" or Dreamer body IS a physical body and the same physical rules apply to it. So I don't really see any reason why it couldn't use a Dreamer. Which is why I'm calling it her Dreamer self, rather than her "astral" self. Astral implies non-physical. That really doesn't seem to be the case. 

 

I think the question is really if Zoe's Dreamer self connects to a Dreamer, does it allow her to project that Dreamer body into, say, Arcadia or ...does her Dreamer self create another Dreamer self. The latter seems improbable. 

 

It's just so hard to speculate on this with the information we currently have. It's a lot of "if we assume A and B, then probably C." 

 

Man, this is almost as bad as time paradoxes.

 

Right? I can't wait until we find out more about the HoAW. 

[Vainamoinen]

There's only one Stark and only one Arcadia and only one Storytime. Ground rule!
 
Zoë's presence in those worlds is as real as it gets (as long as her subconscious doesn't project subliminal messages into her environment ). She was real in Arcadia, she is real in Stark. toremygg's question here is very valid though, because there HAS to be a difference between previous visits and this one. Stark to Arcadia via Dreamer versus Storytime to Stark via, well, Zoë's pure unleashed powers? There's more to the mechanic, that much is certain.
 

 

[khh]

I don't think Zoë will need a Dream Machine at all, I think she "has the power within her" still. It just needs to be unlocked.

[magritte]

Maybe when the worlds are united, she'll take a bus.

[Dagget]

I think Zoe projects in Arcadia much the same way Neo projected into the 'world' in The Matrix.  And I think that at some point she will face a similar crisis where she will be in Arcadia and has to 'know' that she can't be killed there to avoid dying back in Stark.  The Dream machines seem to facilitate her getting to that state but are also probably traceable and she may have to learn to project on her own into Arcadia to avoid WATICorp pouncing on her in Stark (again, much like in The Matrix).  Once she understands her nature, she may become a real force in Arcadia.  At the moment, though, I suspect she still needs a Dream machine to bootstrap into Arcadia.

[Thundex]

Hello everyone I got a question!

 

Why do people believe that the Zoe we see in Propast isn't the "real" Zoe and that she's actually is dreaming. I never thought of that and just curious the answer thanks!

[CosmicD]

We have a famous (forum) theory about that, it's not so much that she has to wake up, but remember the memories she has lost.

Spoiler

As we know she lost all memory from the moment Marcus hooked her up to a dreamer back in newport.
 

That means that she doesn't remember that Damien wasn't the cause of the conspiracy but a victim of it, and that's why she doesn't remember the story time and all the trapped dreams there.

Perhaps (and now its me speculating) when she sees a dreamer lying around she simply tries to connects the dots and asks herself if she could remember again if she's using one, perhaps her curiocity being aroused by the very girl she warned to stay away from a dreamer

[deckarde]

I still think it's confusing what she remembers and what she doesn't.

 

More on topic:
I hope that she masters her powers, or whatever. Since she's a "dreamer" she probably will have to dream to move across the worlds, but that she at least doesn't need a dream machine.

 

Edit:
Honestly, I wouldn't mind it if it's revealed that Zoë's a Shifter.

[urzagc13]

Nah, we can't have THREE* of those (shifters)!

*said a strong proponent of the "Kian is a shifter" theory (and also of the "we haven't seen the last of April" theory, of course)


As for the subject in question, I agree with magritte: "use the bus, Zoe!"
[more seriously, I think the use of a Dream-machine will be the first trigger again, but most probably she'll learn to Dream without any external aide by the end of the game].

[virumor]

In her underwear.

[Dreamincolours]

Zoe went to Arcadia from Stark; if the Dreamer theory is correct, she's probably dreaming herself into Stark from the Storytime: "where dreams are woven into reality" (oh god I hope that quote is correct). We know from TLJ that the worlds of Stark and Arcadia are connected by dreams. Only a Dreamer would, amplified by the powers of the Dreamachine, be able to fully land in the reality of Arcadia while other people would always get stuck halfway in the Storytime. Well, it's just one way to look at it I guess.

 

But if she's dreaming already, a FURTHER journey might be way too far. The same rubber band that let her snap back to Stark in Dreamfall would not possess the elasticity to let her take that detour and go from Storytime VIA Stark TO Arcadia.

 

A lot of things could happen when Zoe uses a Dreamachine. If I was somehow creating this story with the Dreamer presupposition, Zoe would not be able to, because she can not dream within a dream. The Dreamachine gives her an empty void, a blank page, a green screen. While sleeping, she hasn't dreamt in Propast at all because she is already dreaming.

 

 

Actually if that were the case, then her comatosed body already Dreamt her into storytime, meaning that her astral body from the Storytime could no longer Dream her into Stark or Arcadia.

So if it were posible for her to Dream herself into Stark from Storytime, then she could do it again to Arcadia.