The Engineer (character)

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   "They weren't looking forward to visitors, were they?"

   This article contains spoilers for Amnesia: The Bunker. Proceed with caution.
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   “

   This world is a machine! A Machine for Pigs! Fit only for the slaughtering of pigs!

   ”

   The Machine^Streets

The Engineer is the main antagonist from Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. The Engineer is the sentience of The Machine that control the slaughtering of humans and the creation of the Manpigs.

Information

The Machine was created to harvest people and automate human sacrifice on an industrial scale in the hope that it might prevent the horrific events of the 20th century. It was envisioned by Oswald Mandus after the disastrous trip to the sacrificial steps of an Aztec temple in Mexico when he came into contact with the Orb.

At some point, Mandus integrated part of his own fragmented soul into the machine, rendering it sentient. With a metal body and human mind, it assists Mandus in the ritual slaughter and creation of Manpigs. It is shown to be both cunning and intelligent, as it tricked Mandus into reactivating it after he woke up with amnesia, and later sent multiple manpigs to trap Mandus as he tried to sabotage it yet again. It also has knowledge of ancient history, referring to itself as the jaguar-faced man and a feathered serpent, attributes of the Aztec God Quetzalcoatl, who in Aztec myth fled across the Atlantic after his removal from the sun throne, causing an apocalypse.

The Engineer embodies the bitterness, the hatred, and the misanthropic feelings towards humanity in Oswald's heart. However, he appears to also be constructed of the twisted, selfish love the Oswald had for his children -- shown by his reasoning under the madness that it was better for his children to die than to live on to eventually suffer a painful death later.

Using the machine to process Aztec-style human sacrifices on an industrial scale, the Engineer (the Machine) hoped to achieve godhood in order to prevent the coming wars of the 20th century. Despite these seemingly good intentions, he seems to hold a contempt for mankind's inability to care for itself. In its final moments, the Engineer pleads for Oswald to allow it to finish the task it was constructed for - to rid humans of their "painful, stupid, pointless lives" after it had seen the future and experienced the terrible events to come for so many humans.

As Oswald is destroying the final components of the machine, there is a large metal container connected to various pipes and lights with what appears to be a shriveled adult male inside it, implied to be the physical embodiment of The Engineer.

Speculation

• It is worth noting that the Engineer tells Oswald in the final sequence of the game that "we are one, our souls are entangled!" This implies that they are the same person, while being separate entities at the same time.
• At earlier points in the game, the Engineer recounts how he was placed "on the mantelpiece", which implies that he came from the Orb and fused with the hateful side of Oswald's broken soul. It could mean the spirit of the Orb or even the Shadow - neither is confirmed.

Quotes

• "Precious eagle cactus fruit... help us."

• "Daddy, Daddy, please don't kill me."

• "They will eat them Mandus, they will make pigs of you all and they will bury their snouts into your ribs and they will eat your hearts!"

See Quotes: The Engineer for a full list.