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Color Research 3

Dreamscape

Overview

This line of color research is dedicated to documenting color anomolies found, where light and color don't operate in the way we expect them to.

Color Ghosting

There exist several points throughout the game where colors have a ghostly halo around them. They usually follow a simple rule of opposites:

Color Halos

I believe that this could likely be a rendering bug, but I'm including it just in case.

Color Ghosting Skippy's cyan text has a ghostly opposite red glow, despite being simple paint. This Arasaka logo has an opposite blue glow... This Arasaka logo loses all yellow when viewed from an angle. Lots of yellow gold objects in the parade glow blue. With a bright light hitting the brown, we expect an orange into yellow. Instead, this car's trim reaches across the color wheel from orange for pale blue. Skippy's red component under some pink lights reflects the opposite color green. Skippy's red component under some orange/yellow lights reflects the opposite cyan into blue. This yellow combat zone graffiti in the second floor of the GIM is glowing blue. From the overlook of Ghost Tunnel during specific weather, the cyan "bio" sign appears green and carries a pink glow. Unlike all previous examples, the top of the Murkman cache has red triangles ghosting blue. Is the red actually yellow?

Lizzies Bathroom Lizzie's Bathroom has a blood orange glow to it... ..but the light is magenta... ..as are the walls. This glow should be magenta but it isn't. If the research on Ghost Tunnel is correct, then we have a magenta lens we see the world through. Using green (Kiroshi) would cancel out that filter and show us what's really there - a red wall. Interestingly, the light is still magenta. If this were straightforward, you'd expect both to change. Unfortunately this would still result in a pinkish-red color glow. The only way the orange light works is if red paint in this scene is actually yellow.

It's as if the color wheel is being folded in half in addition to a few colors shifted along the way.

COSMETIC_TROLL

2.3 Added the COSMETIC_TROLL twintone hack, which allows incompatible vehicles access to color customizations by tricking the software into thinking you are driving a Rayfield. Did you notice the color swatch in the top left?

COSMETIC_TROLL The color swatch shows a cyan item bar on the left. A fast stroke of red comes down the center... ...causing cyan to change into a glitchy yellow.

Applying Known Swaps To The Title Screen

This is an expirement in trying to apply the knowledge contained within this line of research.

Filtering The Title Screen This is the title screen as it appears normally. Now we apply the opposite of FF06B5, green, as a filter. Next, we swap the red and yellow channels. Finally, we swap the yellow and cyan channels.

Before interpreting anything about this expirement, I want to point out what this strategy has done. It pinpoints where the discolorations are coming from that cause the red areas to look a little more pink normally.

Interpretively, this makes the title screen cyan and yellow, matching what the logo should be. It also seems to imply that the chip is the cause of the discoloration, as the inward heat is radiating out from itself as the source. A magenta that is physically hot? Could this overheating be the result of a buffer overflow and corrupted memory?

Thoughts

Perhaps it isn't that colors are being swapped, but rather the case that things are more than one color at a time? If we have the shared perspectives of Johnny & V, maybe it isn't that yellow is actually red. Maybe the object is both yellow AND red, leading to the anomolies we see.

Attempting To Model The Colors

I began modeling possible color systems that could represent what we see in game. The following 2 models are what I've come up with (still wip):

Color Model Mk2. Click the image to enlarge.

It attempts to answer the following questions:

  • Why V is red-magenta cast in cyberspace
  • Why Johnny is blue-magenta cast in cyberspace
  • Why V has Red & Cyan UI
  • Why Johnny has Blue & Yellow UI
  • Why Alt's engramatic data is represented in V's UI colors
  • Why red and yellow are swapping around in some cases (Mint's car, wash buckets, etc)
  • Why V can't see green all that well
  • Why Johnny has trouble seeing red
  • Why the player can't see magenta
  • Why Johnny sees modern 2077 Night City in Atlantis behind orange tinted glass.
  • Why V sees magenta while holding Evelyn's head one direction while Johnny sees orange while holding Alt's the other in these mirrored scenes.
  • How the moon can be both magenta and not magenta at the same time.
  • Which three perspectives are at play with the rotating cube.
  • What is real and what is not real.
  • Why the devil card is embedded in an at-the-time-unsolvable color cube in the Devil ending.
  • Why V "tastes purple" if Arasaka removes Johnny
  • Why Songbird interferes with Johnny when communicating
  • How Ghost Tunnel can exist and the cyan/yellow map on promotion material can still be true