WX-78 Lore Analysis (Compendium and Short examination)

[Scypham]

Hello! You know why I'm here, and I know why you're here so let's get down to examining WX-78's lore.

So in order to contextualise the short better, we should first look at the Compendium entry since that provides us with a general timeline on what happened.

WX-78's Compendium Entry

Spoiler

As we can see, the text in it has been manipulated, or isn't found. We can discern that the perfectly coherent ones at the least are from WX's manipulation of the info (RESOUNDING SUCCESS, and A SHORT-SIGHTED FOOL, AFRAID OF PROGRESS). Given the need they had to insert that, we can infer that the experiment regarding WX was likely a failure, and that Wagstaff, seeing the risks, put a stop to further testing. The binary at the end translates to 'TOO LATE TOO LATE TOO LATE', which we'll see the context for as we analyse the short. 

Now with regards to the short:

 

Spoiler

The first noteworthy things are 1. The initial perspective of these memories are from a human. We see them alongside Robert Wagstaff experimenting on small animals, with a rat being implanted with cybernetics and being extremely irritable or erratic. The human notes this and theorises the organic components are to blame for the behaviour, rather than the cybernetics themselves. It's important to note that as it shows the mentality this person is going into these experiments with. Rather than the surgically implanted cybernetics on the mouse being the cause of erratic behaviour, their theory is the organic parts are to blame for it.

Spoiler

Next we see the human looking at blueprints for WX-78, putting on something onto their head and next thing you know, our perspective changes to WX-78, with Wagstaff seeming surprised on the results of the experiment. Something important to note is it LOOKS like their empathy module isn't damaged unlike earlier in the short while Winona is repairing it. It could potentially be an oversight, it could be that it was damaged during the scuffle in the short, or it could be that it  was tampered with before the events of the short but after these memories we see. It's important to note that Klei states the empathy module working is what causes the memories to re-emerge in WX and they would have preferred them buried, so it's possible at some point WX deactivated their empathy module as they saw it as a needless organic component to themselves. It's at this point things get a bit messy and we need to take a much closer look at what's going on.

 

Spoiler

We see Wagstaff and WX working on something, which given the design of, we can infer is the portal to the Constant that Wagstaff eventually goes into in Winona's short (shoutouts to Mocha the Hyper on the Dont Starve discord for pointing this out). We see WX looking at their hands while they flash from their now robotic appearance to their formerly organic selves, followed by Wagstaff seeming concerned about WX. It's at this point I think is when Wagstaff sees the risks of the experiment and discontinues it, as WX seems to be somewhat unaware of their nature as an organic or their mind is having trouble being compatible with an inorganic body, perhaps.  

If this is the point in the Compendium where it's discontinued, then we can infer that next would be that WX, trying to perfect their work, works in secret on themselves until Wagstaff finds out.

 

Spoiler

We see WX destroying notes on themselves and throwing them away, proceeded by Wagstaff confronting them in a room full of other WX-78 models. Based on the Compendium, it would seem that WX was created more models of themselves to try and perfect their model and upon seeing that Wagstaff would find out, attempted to destroy the evidence. Wagstaff confronts them with disapproval and WX throws a machine part at them, possibly in anger, to which Wagstaff returns a displeased expression

 

Spoiler

Lastly in these memories, we see Wagstaff burning the WX-78 models, which likely tie into WX's campfire/firepit line of "IT REMINDS ME OF SOMETHING", showing that again, these memories were buried at some point. Then after seeing WX's reflection flicker between them and their former human appearance, we see Wagstaff looking at them with the same discontent expression as before, this time as WX is being pulled into the Constant. Due to Wagstaff's expression, WX's secret work on themselves and their lashing out at Wagstaff, it could be inferred that the argument ending with Wagstaff pushing WX into the portal in anger as they were deemed dangerous due to how their mannerisms had become. Whether their mannerisms changed due to the empathy module being inert due to WX's interference to try and perfect themselves, or the empathy module was deactivated once they came into the constant so as to forget these memories however, who can say. What matters is who WX once was was no longer who they are now, and that they displayed erratic behaviours themselves, even without organic components. 

It's at this point WX in the present day rips out their empathy module and destroys it, burying the memories once more and forever more, with the events to them being that Wagstaff couldn't see the potential they had and that they, WX, were in the right the entire time. 

That about wraps up the analysis and my interpretation of events, I hope you all enjoy the read! Tune in next time when Wickerbottom gets revealed to be 5 cats in a trench coat. 

EDIT: @-Variant brought one last thing to my attention that WX's voice files are referred to as 'Woodrow' rather than WX, possibly being the engineer/scientist's original name. Now these voice files are ANCIENT and who WX was back then may not be who they are now, so keep in mind this could have been an oversight by Klei. Note: who they once were doesn't mean it's who they are now. So please don't use this as an excuse to refer to WX as he/him. If you do that under the pretense they wouldn't care, you gotta admit referring to WX as such because of who they were as an organic would bother em.
 

Spoiler

 

[.]

Also I found a weird spear type mistake in Trailers, I think it might be about how WX-78 got to hand of survivors, but it might be the reason because pigs does not attack waves in game. They might take something they have.

we posted almost same time, so I missed yours. Here is the link, mods can merge my post to this comment and remove my post.

[minespatch]

How many lives has Wagstaff killed?

[Dragonboooorn]

7 minutes ago, minespatch said:

How many lives has Wagstaff killed?

I have diffrent opinion on that. WX might be dangerus, actually. Long before rework, WX 78 had (and still have) quotes about how it hates flesh. Thinking about it now, the Wagstaffs partner even traded  their body for a synthetic one. Makes me wonder why... For experiment or out of hatred for flesh...?

[SpookyXy]

4 minutes ago, minespatch said:

How many lives has Wagstaff killed?

We can't blame him entirely for this one. WX and Wagstaff were working together as partners but WX made the decision to turn themself into a robot. Wagstaff initially seems concerned for WX and tries to get them to stop so he at least cared a little bit about them. Its at the end when WX is becoming violent that he pushes them through the portal. And considering we dont know when WX's empathy module stopped working and they lost their memories became an organic hating killer robot, Wagstaff might have believed there was nothing left of the person they used to be.

[SadeceAtakan]

2 minutes ago, SpookyXy said:

turn themself into a robot

so you're saying there's this scientist that turns themself into a robot

 

Spoiler

that's gotta be the funniest manure i've ever seen

 

[minespatch]

10 minutes ago, Dragonboooorn said:

I have diffrent opinion on that. WX might be dangerus, actually. Long before rework, WX 78 had (and still have) quotes about how it hates flesh. Thinking about it now, the Wagstaffs partner even traded  their body for a synthetic one. Makes me wonder why... For experiment or out of hatred for flesh...?

Are we sure Don't Starve isn't turning into Clive Barker's Hellraiser?

[Theukon-dos]

The "can" WX-78 throws at Wagstaff looks to be some sort of Empathy Module

 

[Dragonboooorn]

2 minutes ago, minespatch said:

Are we sure Don't Starve isn't turning into Clive Barker's Hellraiser?

Well thats still better than my failed guess of WXs origin. I thought WX was an explorer unit gone wild

[minespatch]

2 minutes ago, Dragonboooorn said:

Well thats still better than my failed guess of WXs origin. I thought WX was an explorer unit gone wild

Before we know it, Klei's going to introduce non-euclidian rubix cubes on another website for us to solve.

[Scrumch]

23 minutes ago, minespatch said:

How many lives has Wagstaff killed?

Ever since Hamlet, I've never trusted Wagstaff. He's the only survivor to actually seek out Maxwell without any pretence of a deal. He's clearly entered the Constant out of his own free will and judging by his quotes for the Nightmare Throne, Aporkalypse Calendar, Vortex Cloak and most imporantly Nightmare Fuel - he clearly wants to bring Them into the normal world. His quote for the Dark Sword states that he wants to weaponise the Fuel as well. WX-78 was an attempt at escaping the mortality that he is clearly afraid of (judging by his quotes for all the resurrection items), he wants immortality, regardless the cost.

[minespatch]

Just now, Scrumch said:

he wants immortality, regardless the cost.

And if blood is one of the ways to access the constant, WX's original body is a big toll.

[LinknAllie]

Even if the intention of shoving him into the portal seems evil I'm still on Wagstaff's side.  I mean, WX tried to harm Wagstaff by throwing the part at him which even breaks the rules being AI and Robots in the real world.  So destroying everything relating to WX is the sensible solution.  Also, he cared about his partner at first, seeming concerned when he looked at his hands after transferring consciousness into the robot body.

[ShadowDuelist]

Worth noting that the compendium names the original WX to be "ExW", makes me think they are referring to Ex (Name) which started with W.

EG: Ex Woodrow

[Eggsterminator]

3 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Worth noting that the compendium names the original WX to be "ExW", makes me think they are referring to Ex (Name) which started with W.

EG: Ex Woodrow

Well, it was in their character voice files...And since they used to be human after all...

 

 

[ChurroSalesman2]

I'm gonna kick Wagstaff in the groin

[sudoku]

6 minutes ago, LinknAllie said:

Even if the intention of shoving him into the portal seems evil I'm still one Wagstaff's side.  I mean, WX tried to harm Wagstaff by throwing the part at him which even breaks the rules being AI and Robots in the real world.  So destroying everything relating to WX is the sensible solution.  Also, he cared about his partner at first, seeming concerned when he looked at his hands after transferring consciousness into the robot body.

Off topic but i much prefer this younger Wagstaff design to the current one we have.

[ShadowDuelist]

Spoiler from Portal 2:

Spoiler

Overall WX story is very similar to Portals game series main antagonist. GLaDOS

 

[Hornete]

3 minutes ago, ShadowDuelist said:

Spoiler from Portal 2:

  Hide contents

Overall WX story is very similar to Portals game series main antagonist. GLaDOS

 

Darn you beat me to it, I was about to mention the same thing, hehe.

[Eggsterminator]

That feeling when you (kind of) predict WX lore.

Aka an unifinished sketch I did half a year ago for s**ts and giggles.

[GrapeVruit]

 

- He used to be one of Wagstaff's close colleagues, and at the time they were experimenting with mechanical body modification on small animals.

- It seems like these early experiments weren't going well, as in their notes, they state that the specimen "1A4" displayed erratic behavior, and that their organic components were to blame.

- Perhaps some time later, Wagstaff developed a humanoid automaton, which would possibly make the process of mechanical body modification go a lot more smoothly, as there would be no organic components to make it act erratically.

- Wagstaff's colleague puts on a device that transfers his mind into the body of the robot, which turns out to be a resounding success.

- As time passed however, they began to see flashes of their human self which they are shocked by, and in the next scene, they erase a sketch of their empathy module on a whiteboard. Maybe this implies that they deactivated their empathy module on purpose to remove any semblance of being human, as that would make the transfer process or the making of future automatons less efficient?

- It does seem that in most of their quotes that they see humans as weak and inefficient compared to them.

- Near the end of their flashback, we see WX toss away patents of the robot Wagstaff designed and the two arguing with each other of what appears to be 4 slightly designed automatons.

- In Wx's compendium, it states that they experimented on more machines in secret, adamant that the process created them could still be perfected. That could be the reason why they threw away those patents, as to prevent Wagstaff from seeing their plans to modify more machines, and those 4 automatons could be what they were hiding from him.

- Wagstaff, not liking what he saw, decided to put an end to their experiments by burning the parts of their robots in an open flame and sent Wx away by pushing them into a portal to the Constant.

- I guess Wagstaff didn't like the direction of the project and decided to cancel it.

There were some other things that I wondered about when watching the short:

- Why did Wagstaff decide to build these robots? Were their intended to be tool's that could help humans by working on different chores?

- In the midst of the experiment, were they already developing a portal device into the constant? It looks to be similar to the one seen in Winonas short.

- How did they get in contact with the world and how long have they known about it?

 

I know this was a mouthful, but I knew I needed to get this off my chest

[Well-met]

1 hour ago, LinknAllie said:

Even if the intention of shoving him into the portal seems evil I'm still one Wagstaff's side.  I mean, WX tried to harm Wagstaff by throwing the part at him which even breaks the rules being AI and Robots in the real world.  So destroying everything relating to WX is the sensible solution.  Also, he cared about his partner at first, seeming concerned when he looked at his hands after transferring consciousness into the robot body.

heh "side" with wagstaff

sorry to point it out but wagstaff is 100% a villain. Klei obviously couldn't use Maxwell again after the events of DS1 and apparently they didn't want to develop charlie much so they obviously came up with a new opponent. They're doing a great job at making him seem innocent and likable though.

[kilobit]

5 minutes ago, Well-met said:

apparently they didn't want to develop charlie much

well charlie is sort of the endpoint, and with all of these reworks we've been going backwards to learn more about the characters (after everyone was curious for like 10 years)
wagstaff has served as a good villain to spice up these shorts since charlie's not relevant to any of these people, and her important matters come much much later
hopefully after they finish all the reworks we'll get some more time with charlie... and wagstaff

[GrapeVruit]

2 hours ago, SpookyXy said:

 Its at the end when WX is becoming violent that he pushes them through the portal. And considering we dont know when WX's empathy module stopped working and they lost their memories became an organic hating killer robot, Wagstaff might have believed there was nothing left of the person they used to be.

 

How I saw it, I thought it was more along the lines of Wagstaff telling WX that enough was enough and they should cease the creation of more automatons and WX arguing to Wagstaff that what they were doing could have the potential to be revolutionary technology, as to me it seems that they were fixated on cybernetics/robotic augmentation and were adamant that the process could be perfected. 

Whether it was fear of what these automatons were capable of or Wagstaff not liking what his friend had become, he decided to burn any remnants of the machines and pushed his friend into the constant. 

Maybe that's also another reason why WX hates organic beings, as apart from thinking that organic parts make robots less efficient, having your hard work that you believe to advance humanity by a few decades, destroyed by your close colleague and then sent away into an unknown world would definitely lead you to think that humans are the scum of the earth.

 

 

[Ninten_Draw]

GREAT POST SCY

MY EYE HURTS I DONT KNOW HOWForums work