Due to the nature of the game, all spoilers will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
New York, 2049: Peter Wright, a copywriter for a major advertising agency, has his last day of bereavement leave for his wife's recent death ruined by witnessing the NYPD's SWAT team raid the apartment of a next-door family and forcibly arrest the father. What was meant as a simple act of kindness by returning a child's teddy bear lost in the struggle sends him spiraling down a rabbit hole of conspiracies and utterly shattering Peter's perception of truth and reality.
Made by the same developers as The Mystery of the Druids, The Moment of Silence is best described as Deus Ex, but made in 2004 as a conspiracy thriller adventure game with nonsense puzzles and one of the most incompetent government conspiracies ever depicted in media.
This game contains examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Future: Aside from the elements which make the world crapsaccharine as well as the more futuristic (for 2004) elements, the world is shown to be functionally identical to that of the game's release date.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Thanks to the building's repairman screwing up Claire the security bot's latest software update, Peter is locked out of his place of work as despite the extensive, but quick and non-intrusive identity check required just to enter said building, Claire cannot be convinced of Peter's identity. He has to puzzle out how to contact his boss so he can vouch for Peter's identity so Claire will let him in.
- The Bait: When Peter is ready to escape from maximum-security prison, he ties the tooth he loosed, which is embedded with a tracking device, to a yard pigeon, then lets it go. Since the guards are more focused on the tracking device's signal rather than the fact the signal is clearly coming from a mundane bird, he gets away while they chase the signal.
- Crapsaccharine World: The world is secretly ruled by a nigh-omnipotent, always-watching super-AI, chatbots are run by said AI to perform more effective surveillance than normal dystopic means, those who know what they shouldn't, depending on how much they know and how much sanity they can retain, will become societal outcasts at best or shipped off to a maximum-security prison at worst, all food, drink, and medicine are controlled by a MegaCorp, and physical media such as newspapers or books are illegal worldwide. But for the average person, government surveillance is unobtrusive, the streets aren't overrun with crime, public transportation, while the only legal form of transportation outside remote areas, can take you literally anywhere you like, and life is otherwise as it was in 2004, just with smartphones, shinier high-rises, friendly AI (assuming the maintenance man doesn't screw up its regular updates), and hovercars.
- The End... Or Is It?: Stephanie, one of ESCHELON-II's chatbots, is shown attempting to start a new conversation with Peter on Deborah's computer, indicating the super-AI survived the destruction of its base.
- Failed a Spot Check: When Peter escapes maximum-security prison by attaching his prison-installed tracking device to a yard pigeon, the guards fail to notice the device's signal is now coming from a bird, not a human. Worse, they decide to launch missiles at the signal, which naturally miss and, instead, demolish the Statue of Liberty, which was apparently in front of the bird.
- Failsafe Failure: In the event ESCHELON-II is shut down, a retaliatory nuclear strike is set to launch against a major civilian center - in this case, New York - in order to provide a cover story for the inevitable breakdown of a society dependent on its rule. However, Peter, using a data disc found on the corpse of a soldier outside ESCHELON-II's bunker, is easily able to re-route the nuclear missiles while in-flight to strike ESCHELON-II's bunker instead, ensuring ESCHELON-II can't come back online.
- Flying Saucer: Invoked by the government in the design of their mass-produced spy drones so anyone who sees one either thinks they're a trick of the mind or actual extraterrestrials.
- Government Drug Enforcement: Downplayed. The government routinely sends particularly-troublesome dissidents to a corporate space station under the guise of a public lottery for a luxury vacation to be subjected to a wide array of mind-altering drugs, with the goal of making them 'functioning' members of society. The rest of the populace, however, is not subjected to any enforced drugs.
- Government-Exploited Crisis: A frequent tactic of The Conspiracy. One major example is the failed assassination of Peter which kills his wife and son before the events of the game gets explained as a Luddite terrorist attack.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: The Conspiracy's agents are so easy to fool, it's no wonder someone like Peter got as far as he did in unraveling their rule. For example:
- When Peter returns from a sabotage mission, he lands at a public airport in a zeppelin. While government agents storm the zeppelin and clearly notice Peter hiding out in the top storage compartment, they cease their attempts to breach it despite Peter barely keeping them out, with one of the agents handwaving the attempt by saying, "There's nothing we can do," despite being fully in control of the situation.
- Peter is able to escape a maximum-security prison - which, strangely, doesn't have a human guard posted on him at all times - by attaching his self-removed tracking device to a yard pigeon. The guards, who are clearly chasing the signal in armed-to-the-teeth attack helicopters, fail to notice the source of the signal is now a bird.
- All Deborah has to do to distract the two Men in Black keeping her and her son under house arrest long enough to not only open her husband's password-protected computer, but print out the contents Peter needs, bring them to him, and escape with him, is to simply clog the bathroom toilet and inform her captors of the situation. Both guards go to look, when one could've easily stayed behind while the other looked.
- He Knows Too Much: Several people Peter meet suffer this fate, either off-screen or because the goons The Conspiracy tasks with trying to kill Peter find his presence a good excuse to execute such people anyways under the guise of 'friendly fire'.
- Hell Is That Noise: On what should be his last bereavement day from work for his wife's recent death, Peter hears the elevator on his apartment floor act up and peeks out his apartment door's peephole to see what's happening. He then witnesses the SWAT raid, which ultimately sends him on his adventure.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: People such as Stephanie are actually chatbots run by ESCHELON-II. It does this for the sake of information-gathering since people are far more willing to divulge sensitive and personal information to those they perceive as average people than to interrogators.
- It's a Wonderful Failure: If Peter fails to re-route the nuclear missiles aimed at New York, you get a nice cutscene of the city being destroyed with nuclear hellfire.
- Last-Second Ending Choice: Whether Peter re-routes the nuclear missiles aimed at New York before using ESCHELON-II's emergency escape pod.
- If he does, he escapes, ESCHELON-II and its base are destroyed, he and Deborah live Happily Ever After, and another iteration of Stephanie attempts to initiate a conversation via Deborah's computer.
- If he doesn't, Peter escapes ESCHELON-II, but New York is nuked, and Peter is trapped inside the escape capsule, forced to watch the aftermath on the capsule's built-in TV. Mercifully, the game returns you to the screen before the escape capsule, so you can try again.
- Master Computer: ESCHELON-II, the super-AI secretly running the world and the Man Behind the Man of all the government conspiracies Peter's been up against all game. Peter shuts it down by depriving it of the surveillance data it needs to function.
- MegaCorp: One controls the world's food, drink, and medicine. Unlike most mega-corps, however, the worst thing it's shown to do is aide the government in reeducating dissenters via a secret, government-backed, drug-based reeducation program. Otherwise, the only negative thing people have against the company is their brands are the only brands available.
- Monumental Damage: As Peter escapes prison, the guards, who are following The Bait he planted on a bird, decide to open fire on the bird with missiles, which miss their small, agile target and, instead, demolish the Statue of Liberty, which was apparently in front of the bird.
- Ominous Multiple Screens: ESCHELON-II's master control room is filled wall-to-wall with monitors showing the various visual data it's receiving which help fuel its ability to rule the world.
- Propaganda Machine: What the advertising agency which employs Peter is involved in.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: The Alien Attack Club is correct about UFOs invading Earth and aliens covertly communicating with their Earthly agents. However, this is because ESCHELON-II, effectively an alien of human creation, is exploiting the Roswell That Ends Well trope in order to mask its global communications and the existence of its mass-produced spy drones, which themselves are deliberately designed to look like flying saucers.
- Roswell That Ends Well: ESCHELON-II exploits this to hide its global communications and the existence of its spy drones, which themselves are deliberately designed to look like flying saucers.
- SkeleBot 9000: Claire the security bot is effectively a realistic-looking, talking human female face attached to an articulating robotic arm. If someone needs to speak through her, such as Peter's boss, her face does not change in the slightest to reflect who's talking.
- The Tooth Hurts: While falsely imprisoned, Peter gets implanted with a tracking device. Once he figures out the device is in one of his teeth, he has to jury-rig his automatically-opening cell door to allow him to yank out the bugged tooth so he can escape without being noticed.
- Water Source Tampering: Subverted. While the government does employ drug-based reeducation methods, it only does so for particularly-troublesome dissidents and in a controlled, isolated environment under professional supervision...though the dissidents under their care are nonetheless gunnie pigs for various mind-altering drugs.
