SIGNAL OVERRIDE | S5 COMMUNITY EVENT
Another community event has started in the week preceding Season 5. I'll analyze and archive all the details in this article!
After a successful first community event before Season 4, Battlefield Studios started Signal Override on October 6th. This event doesn't drastically change from Hunt the Carrier, tasking the community to uncover a keyword each day to unlock sneak peeks. It does appear that towards the end of one week runtime there will be a shake up. On the official Battlefield website, the tagline for the community event is "Five mysteries, seven days." This implies that the last two days might be more complicated than guessing the correct keyword. The description in the BF discord also lends credence to this, which is quoted below.
From October 6 to October 12, we need the community’s help to recover a series of encrypted Pax Armata transmissions.
One new intercept drops each day. The first arrives today at 1:00 PM, with the rest following daily at 11:00 AM. You have until 10:45 AM the next day to collaborate, submit the correct keyword, and hit the community threshold.
Five encrypted intercepts. Five recovered keywords. Five exclusive Season 5 sneak peeks.
You get three attempts per intercept. Correctly solve at least 2 of the 5 intercepts to earn the Emberbrush Soldier Skin. Keep every recovered solution, you’ll need them to crack the final code when the terminal enters Safe Mode.
DAY 1 - CHAOS IN VEGAS
The first day's intercept was:
// TERMINAL CONNECTION: ESTABLISHED
// CIVILIAN EVACUATION: ACTIVE
// SAFE CORRIDOR NETWORK: CONFIRMED
// VISUAL CONFIRMATION: REQUIRED
// SOURCE TRACE: PUBLIC BROADCAST
PRIMARY COMMAND BROADCAST DETECTED OUTSIDE THIS SERVER.
LOCATE AND DECRYPT THE EMBEDDED CODE.
SUBMIT THE RECOVERED KEYWORD.
It's clearly hinting to us to look outside of the BF Discord server, and there just happened to be a gameplay trailer for Season 5 released today as well...
Sure enough, if you watched the trailer on either Twitter or Instagram, you'd spot something peculiar at roughly 23 seconds in.
The Morse code (...- .. --. .. .-..) shown is translated to "Vigil" and is the keyword for day 1.
The sneak peek was a short video showing the chaos on the Las Vegas Strip.
DAY 2 - UNDERGROUND EVASION
The intercept for today was:
// SUBTERRANEAN SENSOR GRID: ACTIVE
// PAX ARMATA MOVEMENT: CONFIRMED
// NATO RESPONSE UNIT: DEPLOYED
// INFILTRATION ROUTE: UNIDENTIFIED
// KEY LOCATIONS: LOCAL SERVER RECORD
// AUTHORITY SOURCE: TERMINAL REGULATIONS
PAX ARMATA UNITS DETECTED BENEATH THE LAS VEGAS STRIP.
NATO FORCES ARE MOVING TO INTERCEPT.
RECOVER THE ACTIVE REGULATION KEYWORD.
SUBMIT THE SUBTERRANEAN ROUTE DESIGNATION.
Compared to the first day, the keyword was much easier to guess. It was simply "tunnel."
The sneak peek gave us a good look at one of the new characters that's been prominently shown in the Gameplay Trailer.
"Vigil" is clearly important with it being the keyword for the first day and now being on the Day 2 sneak peek. Of course, vigil means many things but the one of importance is relating to staying awake for a long period to watch/guard. The soldier in focus here looks distinctly different, perhaps even corporate? He has the same symbol scattered across his gear, which suggests he's part of a company or at least employs the gear of said company.
One question to answer is whether this soldier is NATO or Pax. There are numerous examples of evidence to support he is fighting for NATO. First, in the image above, the shape of the helicopters looks most similar to the Apache. Furthermore, the soldier on the far right appears to be a skin for United Albion's Engineer (judging by the helmet). Second, this Vigil soldier is featured heavily in the Gameplay Trailer and appears next to NATO soldiers and vehicles. If we go back to the intercept, it mentions that the NATO response unit is deployed to deal with the Pax soldier underneath the Vegas Strip. The likely answer is Vigil was that response unit, and why it's highlighted in the sneak peek.
A last observation is this soldier wears a dark green pair of pants, and the image above shows the supposed Vigil symbol in green on the pouch. With such an emphasis on green, this further supports the idea that whatever Vigil is, it's separate from NATO and its recognizable blue symbol.
DAY 3 - SECRETS UNDER THREAT
The message for this day was:
// BLACK SITE PERIMETER: COMPROMISED
// PAX ARMATA ACQUISITIONS UNIT: ACTIVE
// TARGET DESIGNATION: UNKNOWN
// SATELLITE COORDINATES: RECOVERED
37.2431°N/115.7930°W
IDENTIFY THE TARGET LOCATION.
SUBMIT ITS GEOGRAPHIC DESIGNATION.
The coordinates point towards Area 51, which is located near Groom Lake. Evidently, the keyword is specifically "Groom Lake" because they requested the geographic designation.
The sneak peek was the image below, and doesn't reveal anything major. We can see that the image appears to be viewed from a screen, with static scattered across.
DAY 4 - MELTDOWN
The message was:
// UNDERGROUND GENERATOR: OVERLOADED
// STRUCTURAL BREACH: CONFIRMED
// BASE EVACUATION: ACTIVE
// TERMINAL ACCESS: FAILING
FINAL SECURITY LOG RECOVERED.
SECURITY: ACTIVATED
MARKERS: SENT
LOCK SEQUENCE ENGAGED
OVERRIDE CHANNEL CLOSED
COMMAND AUTHORITY REJECTED
KEY ACCESS DISABLED
OUTBOUND SIGNAL TERMINATED
USER SESSION EXPIRED
TERMINAL SEALED
IDENTIFY THE SYSTEM RESPONSE.
EXTRACT THE LEADING MARKERS.
SUBMIT BEFORE TERMINAL BLACKOUT.
The keyword was "Lockout," which was found by taking the first letter from each marker. It appears that Pax might've found out that we've been eavesdropping on them and put the terminal into safe mode.
The sneak peeks were about Rapid Royale, a new mode in REDSEC coming in Season 5. This also coincided with the release of a trailer for the mode.
DAY 5 - SAFE MODE PHASE 1
Today was a little different...
// SAFE MODE: ACTIVE
// RECOVERED KEYWORDS: 4
// RECOVERY SEQUENCE: PHASE 1 OF 2
// USER INPUT: DISABLED
// SIGNAL PRIORITY: LEADING DATA
FOUR INTERCEPTS RECOVERED
ONLY THE PRIMARY INDICATORS REMAIN STABLE
SEQUENCE INTEGRITY MUST BE PRESERVED
INPUT MATRIX RECOVERY PENDING
NEXT RECOVERY PHASE: 24 HOURS
There was no keyword for today because the terminal is in safe mode, and we must wait until the recovery phases are over. Given today was only phase 1 of 2, that means on October 12th we will be able to disable safe mode.
The sneak peek, however, was quite interesting... The button presses are reminiscent of entering the code to the Phantom Program room on Battlefield 4's Hangar 21. This is further solidified by BF4 music that is played at the end.
DAY 6 - SAFE MODE PHASE 2
With the terminal still in safe mode, the intercept for today gave the matrix to use on the four keywords.
// CONNECTION RECOVERY: 72%
// LEGACY ALPHANUMERIC MATRIX: RESTORED
2: ABC
3: DEF
4: GHI
5: JKL
6: MNO
7: PQRS
8: TUV
9: WXYZ
FINAL COMMAND FREQUENCY REQUIRED AT REBOOT.
NEXT TRANSMISSION WINDOW IN 24 HOURS
Similar to day 5, there was no keyword and a mysterious audio file was sent.
DAY 7 - OVERRIDE
The final day saw us override the safe mode.
// TERMINAL ACCESS: RESTORED
// PAX ARMATA FIREWALL: ACTIVE
// DOUBLE-HELIX ARTIFACT: SIGNAL DETECTED
// AFFECTED PERSONNEL: COGNITIVE DETERIORATION CONFIRMED
// COMMAND INPUT: ENABLED
REVIEW ALL RECOVERED KEYWORDS.
RECONSTRUCT THE FINAL COMMAND SEQUENCE.
CONVERT THE FOUR LEAD CHARACTERS.
ENTER THE FOUR-DIGIT OVERRIDE FREQUENCY.
INPUT:
With the four keywords ("Vigil," "Tunnel," "GroomLake," and "Lockout"), we can apply the alphanumeric matrix given to us in day 6 to get the four-digit override frequency of "8845."
The intercept mentions a "double-helix artifact" and "cognitive deterioration confirmed," which coincided with the sneak peek being about the Dead Space collaboration. Here we can see a stylized look at the SWS Motorized Pulse Rifle.