F, E, Z in 1, 2, 3: A Retrospective (in Threes): Part Three

Part One and Part Two are not important, but you may read them if you wish. As usual, SPOILER ALERT!

I have written a lot about fez before, and now I have a new thought about the game, another way to look at it, which may or may not be intentional on the part of the makers, but I think it's fun.

Fez has a lot of 8s and 64s and 16s. It's completely full of powers of 2, which fits in with its theme of n-dimensional squares (squares on the ground, collectible cubes, the hexahedron, the hypercube Dot, and more). But buried deep in the dark, occult center of this game, is the number 3, which I think is a bit interesting too. Don't worry, I'm not going to go all numerology on you.

The number 3, like the number 7 (the number of visible concentric squares, the number of completed 1/8ths in the geometric shape of each of the collectible red cubes in the game), or the number 15 (the number of inputs in the completed monolith code) is one less than a power of 2.

First, the entire game is more or less divided into three parts, each more mysterious and difficult to understand than the last. The first is upon first getting the Fez and ends at the point where you see the 32 cube ending. Joyfully sprinting around we find our 32 lovely yellow cubes, and maybe some blue cubes too. Then comes PART 2 which is much more difficult, but definitely designed to be solved and completed. And we get our 32 blue cubes, and that's all fine and dandy, and we see the 64 cube ending. But during these two parts, the game intentionally exposes to the player the monolith. It's really not hidden at all. And so even when the player finishes what seems to be all 2 parts of this nice little game they can't help but think, "Wait what? But what was that monolith about? And the other two rooms that still have question marks on them? Huh?" And this is the part where the true hellish nature of the game reveals itself. No longer do we have these nice, completable 32s and 64s and 2 different types of cubes, but we are introduced.... to PART 3

Which is itself in three parts,

Which introduces a third kind of cube,

Of which there are just three to be obtained,

Each of which is more unfairly difficult than the last,

The last of which is actually impossible to legitimately solve.

The observatory cube is possibly the easiest to find: it's a straightforward binary conversion via ASCII. The METATRON cube is more difficult. In fact, it's a special kind of riddle where the riddle itself is not enough information to find the answer: it involves already knowing the answer, then realizing that the riddle fits it. It's a non-riddle, not a test of mind, unsolvable. It's not the kind of riddle which you can solve logically. And then the third cube, the one the game taunts you with from the beginning. The one which there is simply no way to solve because the necessary information is simply not in the game. Remember that while the other two red cubes involve nice, whole powers of 2 (8 input sequence for the observatory, 8 character answer for METATRON), the monolith solution is fractured and is only 15 inputs long, again coming back to this theme of not-quite-a-power-of-two.

PART THREE concludes with your typical gamer-friendly charm: after obtaining three cubes which were impossible to find, you open your inventory in the temple of love and input codes in your inventory, which nothing else in the game ever in any way even hints at. And thus, you have broken the game and seen the back wall of this monstrosity in threes which was never intended to be seen by human eyes, this occult abomination. Oh, and there's nothing there.

Consider that there are three primary colors. Yellow, Blue, Red. And the red cubes, if you look closely, have a small yellow bit inside. It's a reference to the 32 cube ending, the part where we zoom into the incomplete cube, each interior cube a different color than the last. It's feeding back to the beginning.

As for why the heart reboot exists? Here's one how I look at it: I think it's because the three parts to Fez need to have dividers, a beginning and an end to each, punctuated by reboots. The Yellow cubes section gets one. The Blue cubes section gets one. So, the Red cubes section gets one too. One that is just as crazy and hidden and undocumented as its contents. It exists, because symbolically it should. It doesn't matter if nobody ever finds it, just like the monolith code, just like the 4th concentric cube. It exists, indifferently to whether it will be seen or appreciated. And the fact that it is undocumented, gives it an almost... occult status. And I say this partly inspired by the fact that all files relating to the monolith are entitled 'ritual'.

As for why three? I would say that it's tied to the shape of the heart, which is composed of 3/4ths of a square, which is in turn the experience a two dimensional being might have of an incomplete cube that partly intersects its plane of existence (incomplete cube is my word for the shape of the heart cubes, or the shape of the cube in the fractal room, which is incomplete at every level). And this image, of a lower-dimensional running around trying to understand or appreciate the shape of the partial intersection within its dimensional reality of a larger and ultimately incomprehensible higher-dimensional form, is how I see Fez as a whole. Insufficient information and higher dimensions. It ties into the whole 'navigating a 3 dimensional space through 2 dimensional viewports' fractured-dimensionality idea.

Sorry for the mess, but there are my ideas. http://puu.sh/ehbPL/77ec1868ea.png