Well this is a sci-fi game at heart, Geoff: anything’s possible, including an organic anti-gravity field. (I mean the idea of the dragon’s spontaneous morphing is pretty impossible by normal organic standards, too.) There definitely is a mechanical component to many of the Ancients’ creations: but there’s evidently a large organic component too, represented by that white-black substance. I agree that they are bio-mechanical, but there’s definitely some serious bio in there.
Remember that although Lagi can morph into different kinds of dragons, there’s no real evidence that actual Ancient Age dragons were capable of any kind of morphing. (All of the Empire’s observations about morphing come from watching Lagi, after all.)
Also, even if Atolm’s skin colour could somehow be changed, the “blue lines” are a blue glow coming from between the cracks in the armour-plating (just like on Black Fleet ships). I don’t see how Azel could make Atolm’s interior workings glow a different colour, especially seeing as there is no evidence that Atolm could morph at all. I’m sure that they’re just made through similar technology.
A group of Seekers founded the Empire; they studied the ancient ruins for over 200 years. The Seekers thought the Towers were towering machines and I’m in agreement.
“The manipulation of genetics was the very foundation for all ancient technologies”.
If we applied this statement to the ancients’ bio-mechanical predators would that mean they were purely organic?
There’s no evidence suggesting that the Towers were organic other than this Imperial blanket statement.
We’ve stumbled on two pieces of evidence that contradict one another and I’m not prepared to discount either for any reason.
It depends on how strictly we consider the term “machine” in the very original context of the PD world. The bio-engineered pure-types are repeatedly described as “weapons”, for example - I honestly don’t think the idea of bio-engineered “machines” is any further down the line of improbability, given the immensely similar appearance of most ruins and pure-types. A machine is in essence a physical thing that performs in a certain way under certain circumstances. Many scientists have labelled the human body an incredibly complex organic machine.
Just as the word “weapon” doesn’t mean “mechanical” in the PD universe, I’d venture that the word “machine” doesn’t have to have the same connotations either, for exactly the same reasons.
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]“The manipulation of genetics was the very foundation for all ancient technologies”.
If we applied this statement to the ancients’ bio-mechanical predators would that mean they were purely organic?[/quote]
As I’ve already said, I agree that all these things are a fusion of the mechanical and the organic. The Imperial statement does not say “purely organic”, and I’m really not trying to push that idea either. It just says that they have an organic “foundation”.
As all these things look so similiar I’m willing to believe that this is what they have in common: this organic element, no matter how mechanical other parts of them must be. I’d say that Towers are almost certainly more mechanical then pure-types, but given the obvious design similarities - and this piece of information - it would make sense for there to be some genetically created material in there somewhere.
Just to add to my previous post that I hope in the next games, if they keep the base,glide,heavy forms I hope that the base wing will evolve as well. It didn’t evolve in Orta propably to match with the FMV cut scenes… I hope they’ll just have enough time/resources to make the videos match the dragon you ride at the moment like in PDZ or if it’s an RPG make it like PDS where you morph to certain forms at certain times
Oh and I agree that the structures and float engines are bio-organic as well but I’m just not so sure about the “growing” them part…
Also I don’t tnink the description of Sesten by the Seekers is far from the truth, we know it was a data network BUT there are no PCs and such in their world, how could they call it with our own terms? And also how many data networks do you know that can accept inside them organic beings (Lagi and Edge and Orta and Abadd) even if those beings are being “converted” first? And how many networks do you know that have programs able to download themsleves in real life? The “astral passages beyong our world” sounds like a good description to me for a ppl that didn’t have knowledge of computer terms and for what exactly Sestren appears to be 
I agree it sounds really weird, but then how else would someone produce an organic object? Unless these things were created whole, through some process that we simply don’t know of.
BTW, I agree with pretty much everything you said in your previous post. I thought that the Episode 4 “Guardian Statue” boss looked more out of place than the Episode 8 boss, though (- that Episode 4 boss definitely was “all mechanical”, and it didn’t look very Panzery at all to me).
Out of the new dragon designs I prefered the Base Wing, but I actually thought that the really high-level Glide Wings and Heavy Wings looked a bit too abstract: very graphically pretty, but not really in keeping with the solid Panzer style.
I do see where the dragonmare / Alien comparisons are coming from, though - that imagery of the mouth is very similar from an artistic / design point of view. And do dragonmares really have eyes on their backs? That’s something I actually haven’t noticed before. Where are they placed, roughly?
As the Sestren system has extensions into different ruins and Towers that are apparently not physically linked, I accept that it’s almost certainly a massive virtual reality that’s being broadcast between all these places. Still, “Astral passages beyond our word” has serious connotations that “data circuit” does not, which is all I was really pointing out.
The terminology of the Seekers cannot be held as infallible (but then, neither can the terminology of the Empire). As I covered earlier, “machine” does not have to strictly equate to “non-organic” in the modified terminology of the Panzer world, which is the big point I’m trying to make.
So we basically don’t know if it’s possible or not.
There was a reason for why Atolm shared the same colours as the Black Fleet ships but I doubt it’s because the Empire constructed a fleet out of a rare breed of black organic engines that were identical in design to a dragon that self-same black fleet would later steal. That’s pretty coincidental don’t you think? The engines were probably painted in order to reflect their elevated status among regular ships.
But the Towers are never described as “organic machines”, just machines, which suggests a huge mechanical element. Pure type creatures are referred to as bio-weapons, which means living weapons, and they are almost always bio-mechanical.
Something as complex and huge as a Tower couldn’t be grown.
Maybe, but I can’t see how they could be grown, or be purely or mostly organic.
Nevermind the eyes part, I looked at the pics again and apparently what I thought is an eye at first is actually something mechanical added on the creature, perhaps a cockpit of sorts for the rider? I;m talking about that green glowy thing on their back, you can see it on the pics on lagi’s site… I guess they don’t have eyes at all after all…
About that statue boss I don’t think it would have been out of place if it was for example outside the gates of some tower or other ruin to protect it. What I thought was REALLY out of place with it was it’s rocket attacks which doesn’t seem like an “Ancient” weapon type and also doesn’t seem that the Empire has enough knowlegde to modify something so heavily to be considered they added the rocket weapons… So yeah you are right anyway it’s not so panzer-ish either.
As far as the Sestren statement is concerned…it’s not WHAT Sestren is that you should be concerned about - instead it’s WHERE Sestren is located that we should be focusing on. As I’ve said in previous posts, I believe Sestren to be a multi-dimensional computer created solely for the purpose of observation and record keeping.
If that be the case, then it very well could be in an another dimension entirely.
Though there have been other theories in the past which speculate Sestren to be located on one of the two moons orbiting the planet. Another related theory speculated that one of the two moons is artificial and is Sestren, itself.
As I say though, it’s not just the shell of these engines that is different: they have a luminescent blue glow coming from the interior workings. When I paid very close attention throughout the games, I realised that other ships, ruins, creatures and relics shared this black-and-glowing-blue colour scheme too, not uniquely the Black Fleet.
If all this stuff was made by the Ancients, that seems to suggest that the Empire just farmed out the black colour-scheme Float Engines to the special fleet, in order to be able to tell them apart.
I’m still quite convinced that neither the Dark Dragon, the Guardian Dragon or Atolm could morph though, on the reasoning that if they could, they would have in order to improve their battle skills at some point. Surely they’d have tried a last-ditch morph into a different form before dying in battle, at least…?
I agree that’s the most obvious suggestion of that particular statement, I’m just seeing whether or not these descriptions can be attributed to terminology. The Seekers were being pretty vague when they said that Sestren was made up of “astral passages”, and I don’t find it hard to believe that they’d think the same thing here. I mean they’d never been to the Tower of Uru before (as far as I can remember), just as they hadn’t been to Sestren. How could they be expected to give a 100% flawless description of it?
Remember also that even though the Seekers have been looking at Ancient technology over the years, the Empire has put infinitely more time into studying and actually using these technologies. The organic concept evidently surprised them quite a bit, too, judging by that statement. I definitely don’t think that the Imperial conclusion should be discarded in favour of the Seekers’ one, especially when the Seeker one could feasibly mean the same thing, just with simpler terminology.
Now that’s a bit of an odd statement… the human body is one of the most ridiculously complex structures known to us, but I don’t have to remind you that it is grown. The Ancients were meant to be the “god-like” masters of bio-engineering, so I honestly wouldn’t put such things past them.
You have to admit, the idea that they constructed the Towers manually from other substances isn’t so much more realistic. The Towers were so mind-numbingly massive that it wouldn’t matter where their component parts came from, whether they were grown or created or a combination of both: The Towers’ constuction would still be a work of immense technological prowess.
What do you mean where? if it’s a data network then it’s not actually physical so there isn’t an actual place it’s on, it’s just data shared by all towers and perhaps a central tower or whatever… maybe a central structure isn’t even needed though, it might just be the combination of all the towers together… You can’t say an exact place of where “the internet” is located can you?
Ah, I see what you meant now. Yeah, that’s actually meant to be the pilot, with the green bit being the “eye” of their helmet. The pilot is apparently mounted inside the creature’s back, sitting in what’s called a “control core” (or something similar).
Now that’s what I was getting at earlier: Sestren basically seems to be some kind of “ultra-net”, which has a considerably better graphical user interface than Windows (i.e. you get transformed into data and you experience the network as a weird virtual reality).
Anyone read Neuromancer by William Gibson? That focuses on a similar-ish use of a data network: the “internet” in that story was experienced as a bizarre virtual reality, just as Sestren seems to be here.
The Empire’s belief that “the manipulation of genetics was the very foundation for all ancient technologies”, doesn’t translate into “the Towers were grown”.
The ancients couldn’t bio-engineer anything without the aid of mechanical technology. Was the Grig Orig’s beam cannon grown too? After all “the manipulation of genetics was the very foundation for all ancient technologies”.
I can interpret that generalisation a little differently if I were to dismiss the Seekers’ description of the Towers.
Sure you can. Data has to exist physically to be shared…and in the internet’s case, it’s via the Internet Backbone - which is what ISPs tap into to give you access. Sestren, is more or a less, a gigantic mainframe which shares it’s data with anything that has access to it - in this case, the Towers. When Azel opened the Gateway to Sestren, it didn’t mean that Edge accessed Sestren through the Tower, itself…instead he was transported INTO Sestren, kinda like how Orta was transported into Sestren in Episode 7. With that in mind, Sestren has to exist physically SOMEWHERE, and that location is currently unknown.
I don’t think that with the Ancients tech level it’s impossible to have a network with every tower linked to each other without the use of a backbone. So my previous post still applies. Either way I mentioned there could be a “central” tower as well…
Also the general belief is that when something enters sestren it is “converted” into data itself, same goes for Lagi and Edge and Orta and Abadd I guess. Similar to the recordings in the memory cells of sestren which seemed like actual creatures… Except not just a recording anymore.
On another note I find theories of the type “the second moon is where sestren is” very outrageous since we have nothing to base that on or to hint at anything like that and it’s more like a random guess than a theory. Fanfics on the other hand are welcome to use any innovative ideas and thoughts like that. But that’s just me
No, it certainly doesn’t: it could, but the Empire could be mistaken and it could not. Or these things might be organic, but not “grown” in a normal sense. This is all just speculation: seeing how far the different facts can go in certain directions. I honestly don’t think we have enough evidence either way, but seeing as many of the Tower’s internal components look just like pieces of pure-type monsters - which were organically created - I’d suspect that those sections were created through genetic construction too, whether they were grown from scratch or produced whole through some Star Trek-esque replication process.
I’d say it could be a mechanical laser weapon, it could be an organic energy-focusing weapon, or it could just be something designed by the Empire which harnesses and focuses the power of the Ancient technologies. As I said, what evidence do we really have? Personally I’d say it’s a tampered with piece of ancient technology, but whether that piece of technology draws upon an artificial or an organic mechanism or energy source is pretty much unprovable.
Look at some other sci-fi examples: Farscape featured a crew of people inside a “living ship” that even looked vaguely reminiscent of a Panzer pure-type.
With the Ancients creating organic things to fulfill a specific purpose, the line between organic and mechanical will surely be quite blurred anyway. When the pure-type monsters look so barely organic themselves, how can we accurately judge what does and does not fall into either category?
I really don’t get what you mean by this, Geoff: I don’t think that any of us should simply dismiss anything. It all needs to be carefully considered.