“This world is a machine! A Machine for Pigs! Fit only for the slaughtering of pigs!
”The MachineStreets
The Machine is the main antagonist of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. It was a sprawling network of tunnels and factories situated underneath Victorian London, created by Oswald Mandus, and it gained sentience after part of his soul was inserted. The Machine's malevolent sentience was also referred to euphemistically as "the Engineer" in Mandus's conversation with the Professor. The conscious Machine was the wicked half of Oswald Mandus’ soul, torn apart from his body and given independent existence in the Orb he recovered, which was integrated into the machinery. It controlled both the slaughtering of humans and was partially responsible for the creation of the Manpigs.
Physical appearance[]
The physical part of the Machine is enormous, stretching far and wide beneath London. The Machine is powered by Compound X, which in turn provides steam for the various machinery. It also produces large amounts of waste that needs to be discharged by a vast system of pumps.
Although designed with offices, catwalks, operation consoles, and panels, The Machine seems to be able to run mostly on its own, requiring Manpigs for manual labour or small repairs. It also communicates with Mandus via a set of telephones and loudspeakers all throughout the system, further driving the realization of its intelligence and cleverness.
As Mandus destroys 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.
Personality[]
The Machine is both intelligent and cunning as evidenced by tricking and manipulating Mandus to repair it. It also displays utter contempt for humanity, at first. The Machine embodies the bitterness, the hatred, and the misanthropic feelings towards humanity in Mandus' heart. However, he appears to also be constructed of the twisted, selfish love the Mandus 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.
It claims to see fit to process and use humans to work and operate it as mercy compared to the coming wars and slaughters.
Using the Machine to process Aztec-style human sacrifices on an industrial scale, the Machine hoped to achieve godhood in order to prevent the coming wars of the 20th century. Despite these seemingly altruistic intentions, he seems to hold contempt for mankind's inability to care for itself. In his final moments, the Machine pleaded for Mandus to allow him to finish the task he was constructed for—to rid humans of their "painful, stupid, pointless lives" after he had seen the future and experienced the terrible events to come for so many humans.
Before it begins begging for mercy, it ruthlessly risks and uses Mandus to make it fully operational again. However, as Mandus progresses deeper into the machine for revenge, it calls him its "father" and pleads with him to spare it and let it save humanity.
Biography[]
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 Mandus after the disastrous trip to the sacrificial steps of an Aztec temple in Mexico when he came into contact with the Orb.
Origins[]
When Mandus came into contact with the Orb, his soul split into it, and he went insane.[5] At some point, Mandus integrated the Orb, holding the remnant of his own fragmented soul into the Machine, rendering it sentient. With a metal body and human mind, it assisted Mandus in the ritual slaughter and creation of Manpigs. The creation was shown to be both cunning and intelligent, as it tricked Mandus into reactivating the Machine after the latter woke up with amnesia, and later sent multiple Manpigs to trap Mandus as he tried to sabotage it yet again. He also had knowledge of ancient history, referring to himself 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.[6]
Interestingly, The Machine seems to be integrated with the hearts of Mandus' sons. When Mandus's soul is fragmented into two as well (by the fractured Orb when it 'sucked out the fever' that he had contracted in Mexico), the Machine gains sentience as another form of Mandus himself (a.k.a. "The Engineer").[5] Thus, the true antagonist is Mandus' own broken conscience, operating the Machine. It also refers 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.
Before Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs[]
Oswald Mandus was desperate to renovate his old butcher's business by making the entire system automated with machinery. The bank would not give him loans to make this possible, so instead Mandus looked into his great uncle's work with the Orbs, tracing one to Mexico. If he could retrieve it and sell it for a large sum of currency, he'd have enough to fund his new factory.
During his expedition in Mexico, Mandus gained visions of horrors that will occur in the coming century and also the death of his sons in The Battle of Somme during World War I. He sacrificed them on the steps of a temple in Mexico, and he might have intended to revive them sometime later with the use of Compound X and other components of Baron Alexander's experiments.
The factory was changed from one designed to butcher pigs to instead butcher humans. Mandus set about constructing the machine as a form of god in the hopes of saving mankind from future suffering via industrial, mechanized, mass human sacrifice. At some point, the angry half of Mandus's soul integrated itself with the machine, giving it sentience.
Events of Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs[]
The amnesiac Oswald Mandus awoke from sleep. The Machine called him via the telephone, hiding its true identity, and told him to reactivate the sabotaged machine "to save [his] children from danger." After Mandus reached the Reactor and reactivated the Machine, it revealed its true intentions and released every Manpig in London to destroy humanity and prevent future wars.
Mandus realized that he has been tricked and, unwilling to take responsibility for humanity's demise, vowed to stop it once and for all. As he progressed through many dangerous areas, he managed to reach the core of the Machine within the final hours of the 19th century. Wanting to redeem himself for the murder of his children, end the chaos of the Machine, and escape the tragedies of the 20th century, he sacrificed himself by ripping his heart out alive. As the world silently entered the new century, both Mandus and his Machine died together.
Death[]
Quotes[]
By the Machine[]
- Main article: The Machine/Dialogue
- "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!"
About the Machine[]
- "And you came then to London and you set me upon a mantelpiece and then you went into the house and gathered the servants and we set, you and I, on re-crafting them and then you went into the garden and buried those tiny shattered skulls. Alone." – Reactor
- "I live! I breathe again! I rise, I will rise to bleach the sky and still the water! I will spin the world wheel and set the future upon the path of redemption!" – Reactor
- "Mandus! I know you are out here! I own this city, I am this city!" – Streets
Trivia[]
- Mark Roper, the Engineer/Machine's voice actor, also voices the unnamed Professor heard speaking with Mandus on the phonographs.[4]
- During the Machine's last pleading to Mandus, it talks about the horrors of the 20th century; the First and Second World Wars, bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cambodian Genocide, the death of Mandus' sons (two brothers who would fall in the war), the Russian Revolution and the Stalinist regime in Russia, possibly the Ukraine Famine or more likely the Great Leap Forward in China ("starved the masses into faith"), the Holocaust, etc. Whether this was intended as an actual reference to the same events that took place in the real world, or simply poetic pleading is unknown.[what would be the concrete difference between "actually" referencing them and "poetically" referencing them?]
- It's unknown how the body of a shriveled adult male is in the tube operating or if Mandus kidnapped or offered the male individual to operate the Machine in the first place; in theory, it might've been a corpse that Mandus gave life into due to his soul being split into two.
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ February 14th 1899 (AMP)
- ↑ February 17th 1899 (AMP)
- ↑ Dialogue (AMFP) – "And as the dust settled on my open eyes and we lay together embraced forever, I heard miles above us, the sounds of the city turning over in its sleep. A church bell ringing out. And in that moment, the new century was born."
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs – English credits: "The Machine and The Professor were played by Mark Roper"
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Dialogue (AMFP) – "And you came then to London and you set me upon a mantelpiece and then you went into the house and gathered the servants and we set, you and I, on re-crafting them and then you went into the garden and buried those tiny shattered skulls. Alone."
- ↑ Flashback: "Jaguar-faced Man" (AMP) – "I am the jaguar-faced man, I am the feathered serpent. This priesthood is mine."
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| Mandus family | |
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| Others | |
| Manpigs | |
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| The Machinery |
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