Kobold

Sorry for the late response, yes the character in-game says his name is Ben Gunn, the main character of the book Treasure Island which the character quotes often. You see, he really is Dr. John Farr, he just went crazy because of the incomplete rushed cure he made for himself and things he likes such as Treasure Island and the Martian Madness are causing him to do wonky things.

Hello Ross! I realize you don't read comments on YouTube very much because YouTube actively makes them horrible so here is a crosspost to your forums; I am here to say that I played through this game a lot when it was new on release for both PC and the Play Station. I hope I can sure up some of your questions at the end and shed some light on things you missed because of fan patches. “What is the significance of the Antarctica Meteor Crash” It is indeed what set these events in motion and helped motivate the building of Vita base as it was determined the source of the Meteor was from Mars. “Why was the corpse floating?” Yes it was telekinesis from the Queen but the real answer is it was an interesting set piece the developers wanted to put in to draw interest for the slow opening of the game. It was a plot hook basically. “Why did the kitchen guy float?” You are correct, the Telekinesis from the queen. When he says the Kurakarak are everywhere it is referring to the fact the bacteria is airborne and the bacteria IS the Kurakarak encoded into said bacteria. More will be answered about this in the question “why didn't we merge with the kitchen guy?” “How does two people joining kill the third if they're isolated?” As mentioned earlier the Kurakarak are a race of telepathic beings and they can used telekinesis, this is very important when answering this question. There are three strains of bacteria that join together to form a rod, oval, and spiral which combine. Now then, when two people with a different bacteria come close to each other it forms a bimorph, when in this state they know exactly where the nearest host is that contains the third strain of bacteria (again through telepathic instincts). They seek them out relentlessly and if somehow the third person avoids them long enough in about 24h the bacteria will kill them. Also, when a strain of this bacteria enters a host it normally results in only mild disconfort within the first 12 hours, then death after 24 if they cannot form together into a Trimorph. Everyone who is a “zombie” on the station was a result of people either dying to Trimorphs or isolating themselves and dying to the bacteria. “Why didn't we merge with the kitchen guy?” This is not a plot hole at all, that guy's name is Dr. John Farr, he was working on a vaccine for the bacteria to harmlessly create an artificial joining of 'fake' bacteria so you would both not die from the infection and also not clump together and form a trimorph. Due to many factors such as limited time, himself dying of the Bacteria, and the entire base going to hell he had to basically do a rush job and only managed to get about halfway with the cure. This imperfect cure caused him to form a partial telepathic link to the “sovereign” aka the Kurakarak Queen, which played havoc with his mind as even a minimal connection to the hive mind basically overloaded his brain and nearly fried it. “What was the other warning the lady on the radio was going to say?” Not a solid answer but, based off one of the many long text logs you find in her computer it is suggested that yes, do not let the bacteria escape mars. “What are the goals of the alien lifeforms besides propagation?” This is the only question I don't have a solid answer for. Throughout the game in various computers with locked pass-worded files (most of which you get passwords from MOOD or it's the password on your character's watches) you can learn so much about the Kurakarak but never their ultimate goal. I am guessing the developers just didn't have the time to make a full answer. Now for some bonus info from myself: When I played through this game when it first came out there was (I think) a bug where if you died to the screaming pillar room, you know the one where you have to cut those seemingly useless rocks into shapes to fill it or it kills your characters overtime? That one? If you died to it, your save would delete, at least on the PC version. I have not played this game recently so I am not sure if this was patched out by the fan patches and it was indeed a bug or if it was intended and fan patches removed this feature because it was horrible. I am actually quite surprised you glossed over this room so much in your video, this puzzle is a prime example of one of the hardest and worst put together puzzles in the entire game. You start it by finding what appears to be useless rocks throughout the game that your characters care very little about, only to realize they're extremely important in the worst possible way, not to mention you need to find a very obscure hint about the tuning fork that doesn't directly tell you exactly why you need it for the rock, and on top of this you would have to find that note with the scribbled down coordinate for the martin rover so you could find it without dying to trying to find it by guessing. So let's frame this in my context, playing this game back when it was new: this is a puzzle that may intentionally or via bug unintentionally delete your save. You spend hours and hours going through the game, over half way through the entire game before you get to this room and have to solve this puzzle, throughout the entire game you are finding 'useless' rocks, and you need to find two obscure notes mentioning a tuning fork and a coordinate that isn't even part of the main message and you just have to know to put this all together and have this one character ready with all of these parts before you enter this room. Needlessly to say, I did not have this prepared the first, second, and even a third time before I got to this room and had to replay tons of the game over and over.