{"id":9543,"date":"2011-01-21T02:51:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T00:51:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T22:00:00","slug":"three-in-game-secrets-you-didn-t-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/9543-three-in-game-secrets-you-didn-t-know","title":{"rendered":"Three in-game secrets you didn&#039;t know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&rsquo;s kind of inevitable that in-game secrets don&rsquo;t stay very secret for very long. Gamers are typically a bit obsessive-compulsive about this stuff. But every once in a while, there&rsquo;s a secret so secret, nobody works it out in the traditional secret space of a month or so. And by the time someone does work it out, everybody&rsquo;s playing something else, anyway.<\/p>\n<p>I&rsquo;m going to bet a case of whiskey that you&rsquo;ve no idea about at least one of these. And if anybody claims otherwise, that case of whiskey is a secret too*.<\/p>\n<p><strong>***WARNING: SPOILER BOMBS DROPPING IN 3-2-1&#8230;***<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Warden Sharp&rsquo;s secret office extension in Batman: Arkham Asylum<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This one makes the list because it was so well-concealed, nobody knew anything was even there to be discovered, prompting developer Rocksteady to drop a public &ldquo;coughcoughthere&rsquo;ssomethingthereguyscoughcough&rdquo; hint about it six months or so after the game launched.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn&rsquo;t turn up on the in-game map, it isn&rsquo;t marked in Batman&rsquo;s detective vision mode, and it&rsquo;s not even accessible until after you&rsquo;ve completed the game.<\/p>\n<p>As you enter Warden Quincy Sharp&rsquo;s office in the Arkham Mansion, there&rsquo;s a nondescript, unremarkable, and totally featureless wall just to your left. It&rsquo;s the one tagged with &ldquo;NOTHING TO SEE HERE LOL&rdquo; in invisible neon pink spray-paint. <\/p>\n<p>Slop all your explosive gel on the wall, and KA-BOOM! What&rsquo;s this? It&rsquo;s Warden Quincy Sharp&rsquo;s panic room. Or something like that. Its most significant feature, perhaps, is a map of Arkham City on the wall &ndash; which looks for all the world like an in-game map for&#8230; Batman: Arkham City. Holy sequels, Batman!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dead Space spells it out for you<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Granted, he was probably somewhat preoccupied what will all those Necromorphs and severed limbs and insidious corporate scheming and everything, but if Isaac Clarke had paid a bit more attention to the game&rsquo;s chapter titles, the ending might have been a little less traumatic. Or maybe they don&rsquo;t teach <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Acrostic\" target=\"_blank\">acrostics<\/a> in space school.<\/p>\n<p>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <strong>N<\/strong>ew Arrivals<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <strong>I<\/strong>ntensive Care<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <strong>C<\/strong>ourse Correction<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <strong>O<\/strong>bliteration Imminent<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <strong>L<\/strong>ethal Devotion<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <strong>E<\/strong>nvironmental Hazard<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <strong>I<\/strong>nto the Void<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <strong>S<\/strong>earch and Rescue<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <strong>D<\/strong>ead on Arrival<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <strong>E<\/strong>nd of Days<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <strong>A<\/strong>lternate Solutions<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <strong>D<\/strong>ead Space<br \/><strong><br \/>&#8230;And so does Call of Duty: Black Ops<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Only, it&rsquo;s somewhat more subtle. At the start of every chapter, there&rsquo;s a sort of mission briefing in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. The first line always includes a series of numbers, and a NATO designate. In order, these are:<\/p>\n<p>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 15-18 X-RAY<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 9-19 ROMEO<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 0 ECHO<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 8-5 ZULU<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 4-5-1-4 NOVEMBER<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 20-8-5-18-5 OSCAR<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 23-1-19 VICTOR<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 23-8-15 XRAY<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 14-15 XRAY<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2-15-4-25 INDIA<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 9-19 SIERRA<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 14-15-20 DELTA<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 8-5-19-1-25-19 ECHO<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 8-5 DELTA<br \/>&bull;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 9-19 XRAY<\/p>\n<p>Assuming the X-RAYs are to be understood as breaks (and, yes, they are), the NATO designates read: REZNOV IS DED. Then, with some basic alphanumeric decoding (1=A, 2=B, etc.), the numbers come out as the rather more inscrutable: OR IS HE DEAD THERE WAS WHO NO BODY IS WHO NOT HESAYS HE.<\/p>\n<p>With a bit of expert reorganising, punctuation, spelling correction, and contextual assumption (just like a real military despatch!), this turns out as: <br \/><em><br \/>Reznov is dead. Or is he dead? There was no body; he is not who he says he is.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But wait, there&rsquo;s more! Friendly fire is disabled throughout the game &ndash; it&rsquo;s impossible to even aim at an ally. But after escaping Vorkuta, you can shoot and stab Reznov to your treacherous heart&rsquo;s content. Why? BECAUSE HE&rsquo;S TOTALLY NOT REALLY THERE. You might&rsquo;ve known about the warden&rsquo;s office, you might&rsquo;ve known about Dead Space&rsquo;s dead giveaway, you might even have known about Black Ops classified intel &ndash; but you did not notice <em>that<\/em>, did you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you want to know a secret? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}