Keys
Last updated
Last updated
Players started off with an image of Bendy's black-and-white cartoon form, accompanied with the caption "Complete this sentence: Bendy is being threatened by..."
This was a reference to a Game Theory episode, which the player had to look for. As there are multiple videos on Bendy and the Ink Machine, the correct video had to be found in order to progress. The correct video is Game Theory: How Bendy Will END! (Bendy and The Ink Machine). MatPat finishes the sentence mentioned in the picture at the timestamp 6:51 (Linked video automatically goes to that timestamp). Listening to the video, Bendy is being threatened by a symbol of death, which completes the sentence and is thus the first key.
The second key is in the same fashion as the first; players had to find a specific video and complete the sentence that MatPat says within the video. In this case, it's an image of Sans with the caption: "Complete this sentence: Not killing him, but turning at least part of him into..."
This was a reference to another Game Theory episode. In this case, the correct video is Game Theory: UNDERTALE - Sans's SECRET Identity!. MatPat finishes the sentence mentioned in the picture at the timestamp 9:59 (Linked video automatically goes to that timestamp). Listening to the video, it finishes with "turning at least part of him into a pile of bones", which completes the sentence and is thus the second key.
The third key is in the same fashion as the other two. In this case, it's an image of base64 strings with the caption: "Complete this sentence: Using base64, the text reveals a creepy hidden poem titled..."
This was a reference to another Game Theory episode. In this case, the correct video is Game Theory: Doki Doki Decoded! (Doki Doki Literature Club). MatPat finishes the sentence mentioned in the picture at the timestamp 8:38 (Linked video automatically goes to that timestamp). Listening to the video, it finishes with "the text reveals a creepy hidden poem titled 'Open Your Third Eye'", which completes the sentence and is thus the third key.
Up to this point, this is the longest key of the whole ARG, and has many steps. Players were started off with a video titled 'one.' This video had references to many indie games, such as BATIM, Undertale, and DDLC. The end of the video tells players the goal is to find zero. To get there, players had to view the spectrogram of the video. This can be done by downloading the YT audio file with the given download link and view the spectrogram through any program they have (such as SonicVisualizer, Audacity, etc.)
In this case, the 'emerald' refers to whenever the green Chaos Theory logo appears in the video. When this happens, a glyph turned out to appear. A list of all 27 of these occurrences are here.
For a couple of frames at 0:36, this can be seen in the center. It's helpful since it has the website layout with the two X glyphs in their places as a guide. This clarifies the point where the two X's appear in the video (0:15), as some players mistake it as the same X, leading them to a non-related DeviantArt account (chibixi.deviantart.com is WRONG!).
These 27 glyphs combine to form CHIBIXXIDOTDEVIANTARTDOTCOM, or chibixxi.deviantart.com. This brings players to a DeviantArt account that has one picture. The account's name is "chibixxi 6d70617267', with the hex translating to "mparg".
The picture has a set of basic instructions for how to solve the rest of the key. The three images in the center can be remembered from the cryptic tweets that were sent out before the gate's release. The important part of this picture is the alien glyphs at the top left corner, which translate to bit.ly/67327a65726f.
Although the hexadecimal in that bit.ly link translates to "g2zero", bit.ly/g2zero leads to a completely unrelated link. Make sure not to translate the hex!
Now we must 'search zero for the hidden location' (step 1). Going to the bit.ly link redirects players to another YouTube video titled 'zero.' It is very similar to the first video, but has subtle differences throughout and has an entirely different ending.
Upon looking at the spectrogram (can be done from the link in the description box), there are two things to note.
One thing to note is this appears near the beginning of the video. It is similar because it tells players to follow the Chaos Theory logo, but it says to follow the crimson-colored logo this time.
The other thing to note is this appears at the end of the video, but it's mainly just saying the overall objective of this key.
Following the crimson logo, there were different letters that were removed at times throughout the video. A list of all 21 of these occurrences are here. These combine to form WWWDOTMICTLANTECUTLI.COM, or www.mictlantecutli.com.
This moves us on to Step 2 of the instructions: 'A graveyard lies beneath the ancient hex.' Saving the lone image on the site shows that the filename is encoded in hexadecimal. Decoding the hex gives www.mictlantecutli.com/01110100011010000110010100110011/THE.GRAVEYARD.zip, which downloads a huge .zip file full of ominous images (the binary in the link decodes to "the3").
Opening the .zip, each image's filename is in binary, and are pictures of signs of death, mystery, and the like. The goal is 'search the graveyard for these three symbols (Step 3)', with "these" referring to the three symbols on the DeviantArt picture (death, bone, eyeofRA).
While players could spend an hour searching through all the images to find the symbols, the binary filenames do have a purpose. Searching the .zip file for the images that have "death," "bone," and "eyeofRA" encoded in binary as their names is the intended method.
Once these three images are acquired, players must look deeper (Step 4). Players had to look at the appended data in a text editor. Doing so gets binary strings, but here are the decoded versions for death, bone, and eyeofRA respectively:
LIST 1: Wallyfranks Aliceangel Boristhewolf Shawnflynn Undyne Elyssa Libitina URL part 1: http://www.mictlante
LIST 2: Asrieldreemurr Flowey Toriel Alphys Natsuki Sayori Monika
URL part 2: cutli.com/746865666
LIST 3: (The others have escaped. FIND THE FINAL SEVEN. Only then can you enter my gateway. -RA)
URL part 3: 96e616c37.wav
Combining the URL parts together gets http://www.mictlantecutli.com/74686566696e616c37.wav (the hex in the link decodes to 'thefinal7'). This automatically downloads an audio file.
In the audio file, one can hear spectrogram noises and a deep, slowed voice. Looking at the spectrogram, there are two things to note. They are the backwards link with alien glyphs and directions on how to manipulate the audio.
Reversing the audio makes the link readable, which ends up being mictlantecutli.com/gatewaytora/.
After applying the speed multiplier of 2.000 (doubling the speed), the voice is audible and can be heard to say the following:
Sammy Lawrence, Protagonist, The Projectionist, Mettaton, Joey Drew, Yuri, Papyrus
These are the 'final 7' that act as LIST 3. Now that the player has all three lists, they can now find all 21 things in the word search provided by the previous link (Gate 5). At the top of the word search, it lays out how to move on by saying "Trail of blood will hide the key." In other words, the red characters that are unused will make up the next step. The completed version of the word search is found below with the unused red characters circled:
Here's a version with the words color-coded by game.
The unused red characters, when concatenated from left to right and top to bottom, get https://youtu.be/576bjygaMc8.
This final video, titled "RA=MP" in binary, is a rickroll that gives the final key of this gate. It is now understood that RA meant Rick Astley. The final key is given at 1:00, with a fancy version of "nevergonnagiveyouup" as the key.
However, players must copy each character from the helpful link that MatPat gives at the end of video, and individually place them in the text boxes of the fourth key input. Doing this one by one for the final key of Ñê¥ê®9@ñ#å9!¥£ÝÖûܶ finishes the second gate.
As the final hint of this key (Hint 12), MatPat provides a Google Slides presentation that allows the player to directly copy the characters instead of looking for them on the provided helpful link.
