[SPOILER] Plot Discussion Thread *Spoiler Alert*

[FromTheSidelines]

I just realized something. Isn't it downright impossible for someone to have managed the initial sabotage while they descended downwards?

Intriguing. The gates are far too heavy for a man to lift and are
instead hoisted aloft by a chain coiled about a tube that appears to be
spun by motors connected to these electrical switches. Whilst the fuse
is blown, the motor cannot be spun, and the gates will remain an
impenetrable barrier to progress.


Indeed, I remember that part. You fix each fusebox in turn, and each opens up the path onwards. If one were to break each in sequence, it'd have to be while backtracking through the complex. Consequently I'd make the assumption that the saboteur had to be coming from below.

My impression was that Mandus sabotaged his own machine before his amnesia and complete split from his other personality. After, said other personality took advantage of his memory loss and got him to turn everything back on. So throughout the game you're basically retracing your steps and undoing your own work as the saboteur.

In all these scenario the "Professor" seems to be real (we hear the conversations like bits of memory), and the moment he's killed would indicates he's definitely cut-off from reality.
all of this doesn't mean there couldn't be some kind of coherence inside his mental construction.

I think the Professor is definitely a symbol of objective reality or the world outside the machine. Maybe his death is a signifier of Mandus feeling there's no more need to play nice and hide what he's doing. That things have gone too far to be stopped. Or maybe that was the Engineer and it turned out that overconfidence cost him...