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89 Comments

Let’s Share Fez Notes!

Be warned, there are spoilers within! Also, madness. Also, scribbling.

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Note: If you have not played Fez, do not read further. There are spoilers. You have been warned.

209.4%. Feels good.

There’s a moment when the Fez you've come to know ends, and the real Fez begins. Making heads or tails (or owls) of anything required me to keep the lights on and a pen handy. Soon, the nonsense began.

That nonsense was absolutely crucial to finding my way through the labyrinth of logos, maps, and ciphers that awaits anyone who wants to explore the other half of Fez, which may as well be a completely different game. It was often frustrating, always maddening, but lead to fist-pumping a-ha elation.

I didn’t come up with the idea for sharing notes about Fez--that distinction belongs to this brilliant Tumblr blog--but I wanted to bring that idea to the Giant Bomb community. Also, that blog didn't allow me to attach more than a single image, and I sure as hell had more than a page of Fez notes!

If you, like me, appreciated the joy of cracking Fez’s codes, please share your notes, too!

...or you can just laugh at how many times I had to scratch out ideas that didn’t make any sense.

Patrick Klepek on Google+

89 Comments

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AstroCow

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Edited By AstroCow

Shoot, I have enough problems with Superbrothers - Sword & Sworcery EP, Fez probably isn't for me.

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Clumpy

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Edited By Clumpy

Tne next time one of the Bombers says that a game is too obtuse or "for crazy people" (read: Dark Souls), I'm going to remember these pages and pages of scrawled Fez combinations :D.

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deactivated-5a46aa62043d1

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@Clumpy: You know, it's gotten to the point that whenever they say something is "for crazy people" I know I'm probably going to enjoy it. Though I don't know if that means that I'm crazy or they just have shit taste in games.

Anyway, yeah I'm positive I missed the boat on this whole thing. I'll probably never play it now because I know reading everything online would never be the same experience as hashing it out on my own and with others on the internet.

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aurahack

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Edited By aurahack

Shit... all of you have your notes all organized and stuff... mine look like I should be wanted for serial murder or something.

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What an experience, though.

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chiablo

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Edited By chiablo

This game needs to come to Steam. Like now!

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AthleticShark

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Edited By AthleticShark

@EchoEcho:

Thanks. It is just hard to comprehend when I am not seeing it. That is why, like many others have been saying, they should do another QL.

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deactivated-5f39c75856922

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@aurahack: Ha ha mine is a mess too. Best fun I've had in a platformer for a long time though.

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BoringK

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Edited By BoringK

Admittedly, I didn't find the "Rosetta Stone" for the alphabet on my own (give me a break, I've got a full-time job, a big backlog and an even bigger Netflix queue), but to make up for it I transcribed the entire thing on my own instead of using someone else's key. I mostly figured out the Tetrimino code on my own but had to find a guide to confirm how to read it. I've still got ten anti-cubes and one cubit left (stupid owls). And I'm totally going to cheat on that security question.

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BoringK

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Edited By BoringK

Oh, and: am I the only one who didn't bother drawing the outer squares on the alphabet? Because they're all just squares, guys.

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YoThatLimp

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Edited By YoThatLimp

Can someone tell me where the Rosetta Stone is for Fez? You know, the break out moment where you can start making sense of the alphabet/numbers? I am avoiding all of the spoilers because i really want to do this on my own, but I feel at this point I am focusing too much on the wrong stuff. I am NG+

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Purple_eye

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Edited By Purple_eye

I loved this game. I spent hours going over notes to crack certain puzzles, the number system and deciphering the book are two that stand out to me. I'm now at 209.4% but i had to look up a few solutions on the web, the black monolith and the security question i never would have got on my own.

Idea for a feature: <game name here> on the slab. Where a game is "dissected" in a post mortem autopsy kind of way.

There you go GB, you can have that one on me!!

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LongMasterWolf

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Edited By LongMasterWolf

@YoThatLimp said:

Can someone tell me where the Rosetta Stone is for Fez? You know, the break out moment where you can start making sense of the alphabet/numbers? I am avoiding all of the spoilers because i really want to do this on my own, but I feel at this point I am focusing too much on the wrong stuff. I am NG+

Look for the fox jumping over the dog.

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ChrisTaran

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Edited By ChrisTaran

People bought this game?

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mesoian

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Edited By mesoian
This is also how I took notes in college. There are days where I'm amazed that I graduated with honors.
This is also how I took notes in college. There are days where I'm amazed that I graduated with honors.
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Lokno

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Edited By Lokno

I've got pages and pages of notes, some of which are digital or python scripts

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megalowho

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Edited By megalowho

Fez notes, Fez notes, Fez notes!

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jonnyboy

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Edited By jonnyboy
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Airickson

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Edited By Airickson

@jonnyboy: Insane to see Castle Crashers and Trials HD in the top ten on that list on Major Nelson's site!

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oraknabo

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Edited By oraknabo
Some of the numbers on the white sheet are unrelated, but this is it for my Fez scribbles
Some of the numbers on the white sheet are unrelated, but this is it for my Fez scribbles
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Shreik

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Edited By Shreik

Bought the game, but haven't played it yet. These notes both make me want to play it, but also scares the shit out of me. I just think that the puzzles will break me, and I'll start "cheating" really quick. >_>

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flufflogic

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Edited By flufflogic

@YoThatLimp said:

Can someone tell me where the Rosetta Stone is for Fez? You know, the break out moment where you can start making sense of the alphabet/numbers? I am avoiding all of the spoilers because i really want to do this on my own, but I feel at this point I am focusing too much on the wrong stuff. I am NG+

IIRC they're both near their respective artifact - the language is explained by the pangram (quick brown fox, look for the animals) and the numbers I can't remember but I'm pretty sure it's near the counting cube on a blackboard.

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flufflogic

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Edited By flufflogic

The main page of my notes:

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dropabombonit

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Edited By dropabombonit

As someone who hasn't played this game yet, these notes look like tricky's descent into madness

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munocard

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Edited By munocard

Because I'm a "dirty hipster" I posted my feznotes on Instagram. Here they are.

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KyleSellers

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Edited By KyleSellers

Final tally was 19 full size pages in a composition journal... a bit too much to post all here. (Until I'm sufficiently motivated, i.e. bored.)

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yeahno

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Edited By yeahno

@Shreik: The way I played... I "learned" the alphabet, code, and number system. I went alone from there. You still have to figure out how to read and apply what you're given. Still satisfying that way.

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RiotGirlRach

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Edited By RiotGirlRach

This game seriously boggles my mind, but I love it anyway.

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fuchikoma

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Edited By fuchikoma

@HatKing said:

Am I alone in having enjoyed the game before all this crazy shit started coming up, but now that the game requires more research than a term paper, being afraid to get invested?

Nope. I enjoyed the platforming and discovery aspects. I wanted to beat it all on my own, but I stopped worrying about "spoiling" the solutions when I found one that requires extra hardware and software to decode (like, you literally cannot crack it with pencil and paper - it's a machine-readable glyph.) Now the extensive codebreaking aspect just sucks the fun out of the game. It feels like it can't be solved fairly, at least without tens of hours of boredom and misery. Really, to me this aspect is as fun as doing taxes for weeks.

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mrcraggle

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Edited By mrcraggle

I only wrote these a few hours ago and now I can't make heads nor tails of them. They're like the scribbles of a mad man, useless to everyone.

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SpunkyHePanda

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Edited By SpunkyHePanda

I found the stone that lights up to show which symbols correspond to which movements, and said "Oh, dude, this is HUGE. Ain't no stopping me now!" Played a few more hours, and have solved exactly zero puzzles with this knowledge.

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HerbieBug

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Edited By HerbieBug

The owl! The Fox! 64-bit name of God! The One Are Many! The Many Are One!

0_____0

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SpunkyHePanda

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Edited By SpunkyHePanda

Haven't quite figured everything out yet, but I'm proud of what I've gotten so far.

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Tilghan

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Edited By Tilghan

I finally got 100% on this game a couple days ago. Seriously the best puzzle game I've played in a long time.

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Twiggy199

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Edited By Twiggy199

Had a lot more pages but binned them these were my final 2. wish i would of kept them now.

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I_smell

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Edited By I_smell

I... didn't write anything down, I just remembered it all :/

Got 60 cubes!

Never learned to read.

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ryn

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Edited By ryn

Here are some of my workings. I think I hit 190-something percent complete before i had to start looking for help from the internet though for a lot of the number/letter stuff i got help figuring out the letter frequencies and testing theories. (Missed the Fox until after I had already worked out the alphabet >( )

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linkster7

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Edited By linkster7
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Had more stuff spread across a lot of random writable surfaces by my desk.

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golguin

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Edited By golguin

I'm really late to the party, but these are my finished notes.