#i'm absolutely shoving this into various tags. look at my essay

[warriorend-2]

ok ok since i can't be stupid and gay all the time (<- college student)

putting this shit under a cut bc while it's mostly just me rambling it's. spoiler heavy. & also wound up being 1600 words. sorry

1: possibly the most glaring thing, which makes me doubt the Phantom being a lot of otherwise-possible candidates, is that they would have to be very good at infiltration

-I presume Roxana didn't put the medal in her computer herself, which means whoever did put it there had to get in after she left, get into the computer without waking up Robutler, modify it to put it there, & put everything back (mostly) the way it was & leave a combination. granted maybe they just gave the medal to Roxana to put in there, but like. why

-getting it into that spot in the mines wouldn't have been too hard i don't think, just. knowing where the mine is and then sneaking in during off-duty hours (...assuming those happen)

-tbh the one in blind spot is probably the easiest to place given that it's just behind a license plate, & cars do have to stop sometimes even if it's not often

-i'm. not sure how they got the medal into hot water though. i'm guessing they snuck it in among the materials? (the other option here is that Zor had a hand in getting it there, which opens up a whole other can of worms so i'm not gonna. think about that one too hard)

-the one in cold shoulder is also not too hard to see it getting there. i would laugh if they had to make a mold of that little compartment & then make a block of ice for it though.

-the one in kboom is where i'm like. OK this facility is presumably not super new but it's also not super old given its current purpose. it may have been repurposed but still. how did they get the medal where it is and then also tag the bucket. the volcano doesn't look like it's horribly far away from shore (in the ending credits) but (also i'm aware the medal shouldn't even be able to be where it is but. yknow.)

and odds are that it doesn't matter that much, i'm just. they had a little safe set up in the control point already, they had access to the pneumatic tubes, etc. if the locations have any bearing and aren't just "here's somewhere to stick this puzzle that would be hard to figure out", then that implies some Shit about the phantom (& possibly also their allies. if they have any. if they do I highly doubt they're Agency-related.). given where the phantom gets to i am somewhat leaning towards the idea it may be V. Vitti (also the. insignia), given that we've seen the sort of places Agent Phoenix gets into (...seat of power) & so

2: Zor's goals feel a lot more on a personal bent this game, not just irt destroying the Agency but also. destroying the kinesium & anything that uses it. so whatever their reason, it seems to be a lot more personal (+ they actively Address the player more often, which could be Phoenix's infamy but also in the other games they were barely present, both in terms of voicelines & actual like. Story Push. they were a very passive supervillain in the other games, is what i'm saying)

which leads me up to like. we all know characters can lie, & in this series it's kinda expected, but. idk. i keep circling back to the shield generator. & the lava generators being accessible from Phoenix's cabin, but not the one Roxana was in. & Phoenix's cabin seemingly having all this shit that the others didn't have, & it could have been a tactical choice on Phoenix's part, but.

i mean. Zor does definitely say they want you dead, but they don't say it directly a whole lot (iirc they say "kill you and Prism" but otherwise they don't directly address the player in death threats, it's usually just. agents, plural. or "whatever end you meet" which is also a threat but is vague)

which just. why is Agent Phoenix still alive? Game design aside, of course. It wouldn't be much of a game if the villain kills you in the first level, after all.

But it feels, to me, like the weaknesses are far too glaring to be just missed over, especially in 3, because. if they want you dead that badly, why. why leave things so safe?

Hot Water is one i wind up on a lot, because you could chalk things up to being deathtraps, but Ollie knew about the gas and the grenade trap, & seemed completely unfazed by them (& kinda implied that's just How It Is for new folks), so they're not necessarily targeted, it's just standard practice. Putting aside the fact that even if they were intended to be deathtraps, they're so. Mild. to put it bluntly. Zor knows Phoenix by this point, knows the shit they've pulled & survived, a gas trap & a grenade in a vending machine feel very. yknow. that's like throwing a rock at the back of someone's head, comparatively

and then the KBOOM demo & the shield generator, both explicitly left for you to see. & it's a pretty 1-to-1 comparison for how the actual KBOOM mission goes, except for the telekinesis save at the end. the squid gets involved, but for the most part, considering it's a lab Zor loosely implies they were at, the security is very. lax. & everything is accessible to the "new hire", popsicle-ID necessity aside. (also apparently Ollie has been down there a while, given he doesn't seem to. know about the whole "world domination" thing. which is Eerie because if that's the case then how long exactly has the whole Kinesium thing been a plan?)

to me. & it has felt like this since the end of the second game. When Zor says they want you dead, there's a whole host of unstated conditions to that, which they would be good at given the whole CEO thing.

"I want you dead if you aren't good enough at your job to survive" sort of deal. which also lines in nicely with how they seem to be as an Actual Boss. of course, they never say the second part out loud, but. short of them just being Really Smart in a lot of cases (failsafe in Juniper's mask, leading Roxana along long enough to get her research & then trying to kill her, etc) but Really Dumb in others (leaving the shield generator, making the squid the only real danger to Phoenix down there, not having any failsafes to make sure the missiles launch at the end of 2 even if the briefcase is compromised (or just not using them), etc), it's like. the ways their plans get foiled at the end of 2 & 3 feels intentional.

plus you could make the argument that Roxana was also being used to lead Phoenix along until they were where Zor wanted them, at which point both of what they were using her for (Kinesium research, kite Phoenix around until they're in position, even if that second one wasn't in the deal) was done & they could get rid of her without feeling bad.

would stopping KBOOM have been possible without Roxana's help? Dunno. Not the way it's presented in-game, because in-game she was also instrumental to stopping it.

i'm also going to briefly play semantics for a second. i'm not sure i consider "even the great Agent Phoenix will eventually burn out" to be a threat because. that's what phoenixes do. They burn, and then they come back. Sometimes it takes a while, but. if i'm not just thinking about semantics Way Too Hard, the wording of "burn out" suggests something far different than "die". combining that with Zor talking about the Agency like That, & the Phantom (at least vaguely) implying prior experience with the Agency, & realizing that their involvement would cost them their life, makes me think. maybe "burn out" isn't a threat of death, but a threat of something about Phoenix changing soon. Maybe as a result of almost dying. "burn out" is also used for like. becoming exhausted, stopping trying, & maybe that too. who knows. i don't, i'm not on the dev team, i'm just some 21 year old chewing on semantics.

at the end of the day, my current standing on Theories is. hard to sum up but i will do my best. o7

-The phantom is probably one of a very small handful of candidates, & I'm leaning towards it being V. Vitti or maybe possibly Zor in a funny hat.

-Zor is trying to kill Phoenix, but not inescapably. maybe they're testing Phoenix, maybe they're just trying to almost-kill Phoenix enough times they get tired of the Agency and fuck off so Zor can do the whole "world domination" thing (which i am not. wholly convinced they actually are after.)

-summing those two up made me think of something else. perhaps the Phantom was also testing Phoenix in a roundabout way, by seeing if they could survive everything else, because they only show up in the third game. Their note opening with "it seems you're as good as they say" indicates they are at least familiar with Phoenix & their reputation, albeit maybe not directly (if it is Vitti, i doubt she would have access to Agency knowledge, but post-Rising Phoenix, once the rumors started getting out...)

-this is a silly theory i like to throw around in my head, but i'm very fond of it, so: the "death room" you go to after dying in a mission may not necessarily always indicate Actual Death. in some cases, yes, but in other cases. idk. i've always gotten more the vibe of having been captured as opposed to outright killed (although being able to respawn does throw a wrench in there, but oh well. game has to be a game & all)