If I remember right the first mention of Laylaps popped up in the ARGs Second Season before showing up in the games lore (and then physically some time after), so while its not canonical it hinted at a lot of things to come. Or did I imagine that? 
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Seems like I may remember that too? It has been a while. 
Though, Laylaps is mentioned in the base computer archives early in the game.
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There were a few NMS teasers thrown in. Distorted pictures of future ships, and such, but very little that was story related. The main thrust of the Waking Titan story was entirely different to No Man’s Sky.
It’s not that Waking Titan had nothing to do with NMS - as I’ve said, Alice & Smith were clearly briefed about No Man’s Sky and its story line (such as it was). But then they went off and did their own thing with it - using the standard tool kit they use for all their ARGs - even down to some of the characters.
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I always thought of the ARGs as fun puzzle interludes between updates and indirectly related to NMS. I did love playing and getting some advanced game-related clues, but never thought they were NMS canon.
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I honestly dont remember what it was specifically and I am much too lazy to dig that far back into what im talking about. Lol. My apologies for not providing a list of things. But I know a handful of individuals, my self included, kept looking for what the connections to the game were back then. I specifically mentioned “in a way”, “may or may not have taken liberty to bend and twist the story…”, could be “coincidence” or “a stretch”… so you might not find much but im sure there was some “connections” to the game. But the ARG was its own thing so the connection isn’t really a “connection”. Not sure if you know what I mean.
I know the obvious ones are the player models and the frigates but I don’t remember what specifically about them was mentioned in the ARG that was mentioned in the game also. Even though the ARG was a separate non-cannon thing, the ARG was also where players received information about upcoming new features so naturally some words, names, etc. came to the game as well.
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I wish we did get a mini ARG before each update. Would be cool. Maybe just cracking a simple code, or unscrambling some words using a cipher. Nothing too big, just something a little more advanced than a “back of a children’s cereal box” thing. Maybe the key to the code relies on you reaching a planet and checking the name of a creature or a tree to get a code. Or speaking to an NPC at a very specific location to get your clue on what the next update is about.
But I guess SM’s emoji tweets are fun too lol.
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Just checking, I assume you’re also reading the original CSD Discord as a source? It should contain the complete timeline and speculations.
Aaargh. The speculation. I’m getting flashbacks. At every event they had to activate slow mode and people responded with emotes instead of typing because text scrolled away so quickly. … … Oh dear, how many years you said have you set aside for this? 
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I think Hello Games decided to sink money into expeditions between updates vs. paying for an ARG. I did enjoy the ARGs, though, despite not being a code decipher type. They were fun.
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And then there is the datamining which HG does not seem to mind. In fact, the clues in the ARG were a bit like that. Datamined images that gave a glimpse.
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Some of the puzzles did reveal the occasional bit of in-game lore text of the Atlas Rises story as a reward.
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It’s not just that they don’t mind it - they actually play it.
You can see it in the way they release updates. When they’re planning a big update, they tend to release a lot of the data early - but missing small, crucial, parts. That way, they don’t have a mad scramble of people downloading huge files on release day - most of the data is already sitting on your computer, inactive.
The dataminers can play with it, they can show it to people, but without the missing parts, they can’t get it to run. Speculation can grow, people anticipate the release… and then, when the release does come, HG don’t have to send out the whole package, all at once. They only have to send out the small, critical, parts that make it work.
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Oh awesome, tyvm! Given the context of the conversation I think I’d shift over my understanding of who is the implied source of the attack over to W/ARE rather than the gov’t, unless there are any other documents or mentions elsewhere that say something different? IIRC the attack happened the day after the raids, so it makes sense it might be retaliatory?
Also, running the risk of sounding impatient, but I’m new to ARG’s and this kind of stuff and the general best-practices/culture of it so I can’t really tell the difference; I can’t tell if I end up not getting answers about some of my previous questions because folks either don’t know/remember or don’t want to give answers for one reason or another, like I’m supposed to discover/solve it for myself? Excuse my ignorance, but I gotta ask if I’m ever going to make progress. 
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I am now 
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Waking Titan Is well and truly over and done with. I doubt that many people would feel the need at this stage to have you solve the puzzles yourself. In any case, the great majority of the content is already documented on Game Detectives (there were some more sites, but I can’t remember).
The story of Waking Titan was (like No Man’s Sky), deliberately cryptic and ambiguous. It was intended to leave the audience guessing. If people don’t answer your questions, it’s more likely because they don’t know the answers. It may be you’re asking questions the writers never intended to have answers.
@AdaRynin has suggested you go back to the Discord discussions. If you do, you’ll rapidly become aware of the level of speculation and disagreement that existed at the time, about the meaning of the information people were discovering. Again, like No Man’s Sky, an awful lot was left to the interpretation of the player.
It may be that the questions you’re asking don’t have hard-and-fast ‘true’ answers.
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Too bad the website links are now dead. They were quite fun to play around with.
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Ok good to know, and I understand. I had to ask, knowing that it could be a possibility, y’know? I just know there are likely tons of little tidbits of information that I am unaware of and/or that I wouldn’t even know how/where to look for, for which people familiar with this whole story may be able to answer easily, even if it’s pointing me to a particular page or document. If I hadn’t discovered that dead link on the game detectives page and you hadn’t had that information handy to share, I fear I might have talked about my whole ‘the government did it’ theory as if it was some kind of leading theory, and the last thing I want is to make a video that ends up having hundreds of thousands of views on it spreading misinformation or silly speculation from myself because I’m late to the party.
If there is speculation on something, disagreements on details, I’d rather represent it that way and do the story justice than further muddy some already muddy waters with my ignorance.
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I still have copies of some (by no means all) of the material. If there’s something specific you need, by all means ask, and I’ll look.
Bear in mind that what you see on Game Detectives is one person’s synthesis of general opinion at the time. There were other interpretations, and, barring confirmation from the people who actually wrote Waking Titan, we can never be certain.
Also be aware that the Waking Titan storyline had branches built into it. At various points in the narrative, the actions of the players had a real influence on the direction the story took. If the players had made different decisions, Waking Titan might have been a very different story.
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Understood. I was actually going to add a few things to some of the game detectives pages, but it doesn’t appear like it’s the same as most wiki’s.
For example, reading through Tariq’s dreamer page and the doc assembled by the CSD neither has any mention that he tried to kill himself linked to REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) issues that appear to be linked to their headsets, and that there was a policy enacted to prevent leaving sharp objects within arms-reach of the dreamers because of it.
Not sure if the reference to RBD is connected to another sleep disorder that was referenced in one of the twitch streams that had the message “DSM 307”, or if that connection had ever been pointed out.
I’m sure this is because I must have not gotten deep enough into the seemingly infinite amount of conversation about Waking Titan or not, but this is the first time I’ve seen this idea mentioned. Once again, this may be a stretch, but I get the vibe from this aspect of the story that perhaps the dreams/what’s happening in the simulations/something else is reaching out from inside of the simulation into the “real world” in a more direct, physical way, as opposed to (something I’ve seen alluded to multiple times but don’t have specifics on just yet) attempting to effect the real world indirectly by influencing or manipulating people to do their bidding.
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Dammit… Is this a completely unrelated inside joke that I just wasted almost an hour digging into? 
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Is what a joke?
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