Dollhouse

Save Hazel? Saved. Dollplay ARG comes to close

As quickly and as mysteriously as it began, the Fox Dollhouse alternate-reality game known as Dollplay has come to a close. The game asked players to “Save Hazel,” a woman trapped in some sort of container that has connections to the company behind the Dollhouse.

Find out from embedded blogger Joanna Griekspoor how a dedicated group of gamers did just that — and saved Hazel:

The mission to get Hazel out of a container on a ship has come to a close. After three weeks of sleepless nights, puzzles and people turning on each other in the chat room, we saved Hazel.

As the logs showed, there was a fateful night on April 25, 1999. On that night, the two blood stains on the walls occurred and Hazel let us know that the bullet holes indicated two different calibers, and one bullet was fired from a low angle. Many of us theorized on what could have happened here, and eventually it turned out the real events were a combination of our individual speculations.

Hazel’s mother, Dr. Andrea Rose, confessed that project Foxtrot revolved around her own daughter, meaning Hazel was Foxtrot. Project Foxtrot succeeded in transforming little, ‘anti-social’ Hazel into a sweet, young girl by taking out all the ‘bad’ from her personality. The good doctor mommy explained this to Hazel in a video both to her and to us.

In the same video, she let us know that all of Hazel’s ‘bad’ was stored on a wedge. One very genius person in the chatroom then figured out how to permanently combine Hazel’s current personality with the one stored on the wedge, which led to the conclusion of the story.

Once imprinted with the wedge, Hazel remembered everything and her personality noticeably changed. In fact, she is now a secure, strong and determined woman with a bit of a punk rocker appearance. With her personality intact, she explained to us exactly what happened on the night her mother disappeared.

What happened to Hazel Rose?

3-01-hazel_scaredOn that night, there were four people in the room: Hazel, Dr. Rose, a Mr. Bertucci and a ’suit’ from R-Central.

Mr. Bertucci’s daughter, Celia, was dying. He paid R-Central to take his daughter’s personality and imprint it onto Hazel (Foxtrot.) He said he was promised he could take his daughter home (albeit in a new body,) but said that Dr. Rose had not lived up to her end of that deal.

The suit from R-Central then pushed Mr. Bertucci into a chair, and Dr. Rose imprinted him with the wedge containing Hazel’s bad personality. When Mr. Bertucci awoke, he shot Dr. Rose. That caused the suit from R-Central to shoot and kill Mr. Bertucci. He turned the gun on Hazel but didn’t have the heart to shoot a child. Trying to clean up the mess, the man from R-Central removed the bodies of Dr. Rose and Mr. Bertucci right before the a security measure initiated the transfer of the lab.

This concluded Hazel’s quest to find out about her past. We made her a whole person again. She also now remembers the passcode needed to get out of the container, but she doesn’t leave before uploading one last video. The video expalins that the Dollhouse isn’t the only one that imprints people — everyone does it. Schools, parents, religion, governments, they all mold people into something they’re not — obedient little consumers who think they’re changing the world by voting for the least bad choice every four years.

But there is a line and this is where Hazel draws hers: People can be molded, but everyone has a right to their own personality.

Hazel thanks us for our help and warns us about Dollhouses all over the world. Together we have to ensure that they go down. With that, she takes her gun, her money and steps out onto the cold deck of a ship in the middle of Greenland.

We heard you, Hazel. Godspeed. Until we meet again.

 Joanna Griekspoor