Frictional Games Forum

This hands out a rather intresting question, which is, "Is anything Phillip sees, real?". For the sake of the argument, question the existance of everything in the game. Lets also prematurely assume that Red has created the entire everything in his mind, but that Phillip can experience it (more on that soon).

RED
As a small child, Red is trapped within the cave complex. The world declares him dead, but amazingly Phillip has contact with him after 30 years.. but does that make him alive?
The books in the game mentions the inuits belief in souls, but that some souls can be as powerful as god is in christianity.
Perhaps Red already died, some time after he was trapped. However, his soul kept on infesting the mine. With the power of a god, Red's reality started influencing the cave. As time went by, the cave started looking more and more what 14 year old Red imagined it to look like. I'll follow up with some examples.

- The dogs
In one of his radio messages, Red mentions how his thoughts sometimes are like a puppy "Uncontrollable and rolling in feces". This line of thought influenced the dogs in the mining complex, into something more ferocious and uncontrollable.

- The supersized animals
Worms, leeches and spiders. I suspect that's the animals Red was most occupied with during his stay. He probably enjoyed torturing them (Just like the carvings in the walls), but in the end these animals had one thing he would never have - the ability to grow up. With the knowledge of never leaving the cave he was trapped in, the envy for maturity became unspeakable. Thus became Red's reality one where the the tiniest creatures were viewed as unspeakably large, since Red would never experience aging anymore.

- Complete knowledge of your position
Red always knows where you are, with the exception of when his own emotions takes the better of him. This is because you're in Red's world, a world which he has created. He has no direct control over it (IE the dogs behaviour and such), but his reality is the actual reality in the cave.

- No corpses
In the entire complex, not ONE single human corpse is found. There's a few cobwebs, but also a few dead animals.
This could be a further indication that Phillip only sees what Red feels.
Since Red hasn't directly controlled what his reality has done to other people, nor has seen death, it's logical to assume that there are corpses but Phillip just can't see them.

- People dying from trying to reach help
It seems that as soon as someone really expected to be saved (the spiderguy for instance), they lose everything. This is probably because Red herd how people tried to located him when he was trapped, but noone actually found him. The little hope he had was crushed, but he still remained on his toes in hope for help (the letter in his drawer hadn't been burnt, for instance).

- Couldn't escape/Kill himself
Even though there was just one door seperating him from the lower section of the mine (which we are yet to see), Red never went through it. This is probably because the door never existed in the first place, but is rather something else. It can't be accessed whilst Red is still alive, and it's clearly seperated from the rest of the mine.
He couldn't exit, nor die, because it was his world. You can't kill yourself in your own mind (duh), but you need someone else to do it for you. Red had tried to repetely kill himself, but it never worked since it was never real.

- Red's notes in UV
Red couldn't possibly been trapped AND written his thoughts in UV in a room with a barricade that was just a few weeks old.
Red probably wanted to have those thoughts kept within himself, forgotten. Yet he feels it's necessary for Phillip to see them, so Phillip can ultimately kill Red and set him free. That is why, despite Red's warning, that Phillip is able to get into the room.

FINALLY

- The shady man in the end
After liberating Red with death, the hallway Phillip is standing in is turned pitch black and he's knocked uncountious. Perhaps this is because Red's world no longer exist, so it's impossible for Phillip to exist within it.

My explanation for there being no bodies would be in defense of the world being reality, the worms eating them and taking them away. After all, the spider guy was still alive when you are at the mine, and he gets killed while you are in the same area/section as he is.

RED
It's not Red's spirit that infests the area. This is explained in Black Plague, and there are several hints to it in Overture, too, from the same sources you came up with this theory.

- The dogs
Infection explains the aggressive dogs. More on this in Black Plague.

- The supersized animals
You'll actually see a pic of Red in the beginning of Black Plague. He's fully grown. Also, scientific reports on creatures of larger size than normal are found in that chapter, though it's more talk about some inches, and how some changes in their natural habitat can rapidly increase the size of the creatures. And remember the spider guy's journal about how the spider's have been growing in size and become more aggressive. The growth has mostly to do with the infection, though.

- Complete knowledge of your position
This one's actually a bit weird, true. However, it could possibly be explained because Red's infected, and the infected have a hive mind. He might get the information from other infected creatures. Or he might've had some other way of tracking you, perhaps through some kind of tracking device in the walkie talkie - unlikely, though.

- No corpses
There might not be any corpses in Overture, but there sure are several in Black Plague.. Also, the corpses are most likely being eaten by the various creatures that inhabit the area. Remember, if you die because of a dog, it starts eating you. And also, though not human, you do find a corpse below the spider guy's room. And you find his tounge - so there's a partial corpse.

- People dying from trying to reach help
The whole area is a death trap, so it would be hard to survive in any case. Everyone you encounter has actually given up on being rescued, more or less.

- Couldn't escape/Kill himself
Red is infected, and the parasite stops him from doing so. You find at least one scientific report about this, though I don't remember if that was in Overture or in Black Plague. I believe it was in Overture, though. Anyway, the parasite stops the host from killing himself/herself. It's therefore also highly possible that it stops the host from leaving the area and venture too far from the core of the parasites.

- Red's notes in UV
Actually, Red's been trapped in the general area, not in the furnace. He was trapped by a cave in - which is why you had to make the second bomb and blast open the caved in corridor. Also, remember that his radio was in his living quarters, not in the furnace room. Also, when you find the notes in UV, he explains them to you.

- The shady man in the end
This has to do with the sequel, Black Plague. Personally, before I played Black Plague, I thought this might be a clone of Philip himself, which had manifested through his use of the artifacts - however, that's completely wrong, too.

When Philip is getting in the spider caves deeper, Red talks to him and says at the end: "Please, for the sake of both of us, don't get killed!", that BOTH is very irritating me, and Philip can't speak the whole game...RED is the one whom speaks alot.

Your theory has some ideas about it, but it just doesn't holds enough.
Philip=Red? Unlikely, because Red is a different person whom got infected by the Tuurngait, and couldn't kill himself (all the people can't kill themselves, so you have to say that Philip=all zombies).

something that REALLY disturbed me in Black Plague is that I couldn't ever find the Tuurngait's original tomb, which lacks in my opinion.