Should Panzer Dragoon Orta be considered canon?

Panzer Dragoon
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14

I guess Shigeru Kurihara and Kenichiro Ishii (the main writers of Orta) just liked happy endings; deciding to ultimately give Azel resolution to her search. And This does sort of ruin the mystery of Saga’s ending. So, you can’t help but think of it as fan-fiction. In the end though, the events in Orta, whether Yukio Futatsugi agrees or not, are considered canon.

What I want to know is: why wasn’t Yukio Futatsugi on board to write the story for Orta? Was he tied up with other commitments, or did he just feel like the story was complete, refusing to touch another installment in the series?

15

I have continued to think about this - typically enough - but I will be responding in a few different contexts. First I want to address a couple things out of order, for reasons implied:

  1. Partly for now, as this really contains two different arguments. The aspect of the dragon’s appearance is tired for me, I have said anything I can repeatedly. Whether it is the ‘claws’ on the wings or even the split horn there are precedents in the Saga forms, of which there are so many and then so many variants which are ignored because only a few favorite primary models register as meaningful. This is a creature that has morphed so many times and taken on dozens of diverse characteristics, presumably all to meet particular demands of performance. The Zwei forms are less similar to the Saga forms than those are to Orta’s base form, and that is very similar to the original Blue form which is reptilian enough, except it’s green, and so what? The weird wings are the least commented on feature yet they are the most conspicuous, and there must be an intent and meaning to their pattern as it is also displayed on the wall/ceiling of the ruins Abadd leads Orta to. Ruins that are presumably directly connected with the conclusion of Azel’s own search and therefore have a direct connection to Orta’s own origin. Abadd led Orta to that specific facility for a specific reason, I think that is plain.

But that’s another subject. I have never been concerned with any argument that the Orta dragon is supposed to be ‘reverting to a beast’ and the implication that it should somehow appear more like the origin of Lagi in Zwei, such has always been a faulty assumption; the dragon may have lost a certain essence of power but not any essential aspect of its dragonhood. It displays the same archetypal features as the archetype it has always been most closely associated with, and like ever before it has made adaptations for reasons we can only guess at.

Artistic choices are just that, and as a game created a generation and a half later Orta’s visual context is literally a different state of the art. Any pretense of objective interpretation of art is fruitless, for art can only be interpreted through the perceptions of an artist or the perceptions of a sophist. Personally there is simply nothing in this.

  1. Legaia Flame already made a good argument and the most obvious point about the fleet itself, it is not a fair use of semantics to reduce the meaning of the reference to denoting their forces were “destroyed” or even that such term equates to the total obliteration of every last unit of those forces. An army is a relative measure of potential, and that potential can be well destroyed from being merely chopped into pieces. Few armies or military fleets in history have ever been absolutely obliterated yet thousands of such have been destroyed. Craymen sabotaged and rebelled and surely waged other battles, Edge destroyed hundreds of airships (or I sure did) even before the emperor committed his flagship and hundreds or thousands more to be slaughtered by Azel / Uru’s defenses. Again this seems a manufactured argument.

As is doubting the likelihood of a new political and cultural alliance, human history is garishly decorated with such political mergers and transitions, whether painted in old blood spilled or new blood filled, power attracts even as a vacuum. The readily apparent parallel would be the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, even as the cultural heritage owed little enough to the ashes of Ancient Rome the romance and stature of its legend are so great, and even a conqueror increases his own aggrandizement by his very envy of the conquered. And that Latin mystique and ratification endures to the Czars of Russia and the British imperial ethos.

Alexander the Great, seeded a new dynasty in Egypt, yet they also elevated themselves to the stature of the Pharos they succeeded rather than wishing to supplant or surmount them. Chinese national identity is built on the legacy of one man’s act of unification, and multiple dynasties anointing themselves by his eternal shadow.

Such is the psychological power of precedence, and the very real tyranny of tradition. Eradication and replacement, or even unilateral cooption of one culture by another is very much the exception in human history, so there is really nothing in this one at all.

Those two are persuasive distractions, as arguments they are only apparently valid at best but could not lead to any sound or constructive conclusions. I want to show I am not dismissing them out of hand, but as such they can be summarily dismissed.

16

I culled out points 4 and 6 there because they don’t pertain to continuity, rather distaste or perhaps plausibility, and are highly subjective even as such. Of course I don’t think they hold up as anything of substance regardless, but to address the other aspect of 4 briefly: the semantics call over the implications of the dragon being “weak” is again too presumptive, in this context of relative appraisal there is a vast gulf of capability between “immortal” and “mortal.” A mortal being is obviously likely to die, where this effectively immortal one previously could not.

This case rests on some presuppositions that are not necessarily clear and done, and also more possible misconceptions that have never been cleanly put to rest. You also mentioned Gash “imagining” he hears the dragon, but that is not how I ever took that scene myself, even before playing Orta, it was always at least open to interpretation. As you even say every game ends with a hint of conviction towards continuity and endurance, Azel was actually no different in that respect. Azel’s search, growth and endurance is implicit, are we to expect this amazingly resourceful and one of a kind expert system would achieve nothing?

I’ll save that line of argument for the next context though, and for structure I will address the remaining point of the bottom half first, since it is also basically a plausibility argument.

  1. Lathum, disgusting creature, so Gash says. Well in our own world some ‘primitive’ people coexist with or even eat things that could probably make anyone reading this forum puke to even think about. Though again Lathum are also dangerous… and in all probability highly specialized detoxification agents of the ecosystem, which would be a very pat explanation for that smell don’t you think? I have always had my own idea about the mutated-types anyway, I think their behaviors were broadly directed by Sestren and even their overt antagonism towards humans was a modal condition, generally switched on to discourage many people from interfering in densely active regions.

Let’s say the Great Fall was a pretty bad time for people in a lot of areas, and in addition to geological and meteorological cataclysms all the monsters start acting weird in different ways as well. Rugged tribes just looking to survive could well have tried to jump on a not obviously hostile Lathum as a slightly more promising alternative to being devoured by a hundred mile wide sinkhole don’t you think? Who knows, it isn’t even necessary to assume the Wormriders hadn’t already figured out something no one else knew long before, maybe they even used the Baldor to mask their presence somehow. A lot of creatures have parasitic/symbiotic dichotomies with smaller creatures, and squatters aren’t easy to evict once situated. Not that big a deal in any case.

So about that Sestren shutdown:

  1. As I recall Azel describes her search as “fruitless” even though she herself bore a fruit of sorts? That is the strongest suggestion of all that she didn’t ‘find Edge’ or any other emotional denouement of a sentimentally happy sort. But again she was searching for something, just searching for meaning and answers, or some new form of companionship in a world of people who could never relate to her experiences, so there is nothing inconsistent in that portrayal to me. She couldn’t really know the meaning of happiness, only connection, life, and death.

At least in both the original and English version, Azel is aware of her loneliness, the lack of connection. Let’s say she had said “I don’t want you to die Edge” that would split the difference between the two and describe the common denominator of both. I REALLY wish the “love” line hadn’t been added but as I put it long ago Azel can’t fully know what she’s saying there anyway. What she would fully know, if anyone in the world could, is how to go about finding more answers and how to infiltrate any and all remaining bio-engineered systems.

  1. So here’s the crux of all the presuppositions, and more semantics problems. “The Dragon” says a lot of very specific things to Edge - “I” exist to lead the Divine Visitor / to break the “spell” of the Ancient Age - the Divine Visitor must destroy “me” - the will of the Ancients, it is now with “me” - but then finally it says - Thank you, now “WE” must go… as it reveals four different faces of itself.

In the first place where in any of that is it explicit or even directly suggested that Sestren as an infrastructure or whatever is being destroyed? There is simply no objective continuity problem at all here. Unless you are assuming that it is the “I” of the dragon speaking - that which is now bound with the will of the Ancients - which also survives somehow, but that is not explicit either. And this is the big interpretation issue I have actually mentioned once or twice before, which I formally oppose with: the Divine Visitor did destroy that Sestren / Dragon, according to its own definition. The apparent conversation between Orta’s dragon and the Sestren spirit thing is misleading, because it is a memory like all the others in that “memory block” system. This was the choice the living dragon, let’s just call it Lagi, made at the last moment it had to either ‘cross over’ with the whole collective entity or remain and become a mere “mortal” creature. The Sestren dragon spirits and the Light Wing ARE entities which cross beyond conventional boundaries of life and death already, for them to be ‘alive’ is simply a state of arbitrary restriction and servitude to the Ancient masters who fashioned and focused their own wills from out of the void.

It is why “I” have returned (from where?) And now “we” must go (to where?)

There is no incongruity if you let go of your own mortal context, and take the words for what they plainly state. The dragon which returned to this world was destroyed in this world, and left it again, breaking and taking the spell of the Ancients with it. It was then speaking to the creature(s) which had helped host its mission, with the attitude of an immortal will that could not in turn fully comprehend the attachments of that other essentially mortal will to its life.

  1. This is my closest point to agreement, and it’s funny because it relates to what may have been the first question I ever asked after joining. I still see the transformation / destruction of the Tower of Uru as a very singular event. After viewing it again later I had to acknowledge it is indeed destroyed by whatever Azel caused, but the initial projection looks exactly like it’s supposed to be opening a portal to another dimension, and I’m sure that’s the intent. Azel then presumably uses the same incredible energy burst as some feedback against the Tower which ‘melts’ it in seconds, and it’s a big freaking tower…

That WAS a portal to Sestren, the real overlord dimension if you will, a mostly impregnable citadel at the center of everywhere and nowhere. And I assume it was both the instrument and the vessel of the collective Will(s) of the Ancient masters, and when it was indeed destroyed / deactivated / collapsed their illustrious fates were sealed as well. Too late indeed for Abadd to ever fulfill his mission and role.

So we have two at least equally valid interpretations, Gash imagined / mistook hearing the dragon (and we’re inside his head) or he did not. It’s very easy to imagine one of the final thoughts in Edge’s mind as the intent of his commitment to gash, especially in the very moment he knows and accepts it cannot happen. The dragon’s mind is not like ours, it feels a sense of purpose and responds, to make the rendezvous, to see Gash is alive, it has fulfilled Edge’s last mission. But it also impressed with Edge’s deeper commitment, and would have a more tangible connection of its own to Azel. But by one of those interpretations we already know that the mortal dragon had to have an exit vector. This concludes the direct response though.

Are there post-hoc rationalizations in this? Of course, and by the same token if one doesn’t like the “story” of Orta as such, and proceeds from the premise that Orta is not or should not be canon, and looks for discontinuity that will be virtually all an exercise in post-hoc rationalization as well.

For myself the question is moot, I’m not about to attempt to disentangle every piece of information and inspiration in Orta from my existing viewpoint and understanding of the Panzer Dragoon scenario at this stage. Nor could I arbitrarily pick and choose which pieces are/aren’t, and luckily I have no reason to. Altogether PD remains a marvel of continuity and congruity, without any direct parallel in my personal exposure.

17

I don’t remember much in the way of details from Evangelion since I didn’t follow the whole thing. I caught some of it aired for a while but since I didn’t start from the beginning I stopped watching, it has been an intent to watch the whole anime series sometime though I probably got one of the big reveals unfortunately.

Recently I fixed on another anime influence which I think has been subconsciously informing my take on Panzer Dragoon from the start. Although it can appear like a pretty standard, cheeseball power fantasy now Guyver was still one of the better manga/anime of its time, and it also has a very grim and vicious scenario. I think it’s probably the most popular and influential precedent for the bio-engineered weapon motif - and indeed there is only a hint of that in Nausicaa with the God Warrior, also it does not have quite the universalized alien technology theme of Panzer Dragoon - so there are a lot of crossovers both obvious and nuanced. The contrast between the hulking and grotesque Zoanoids, and the compact and sexy Guyver which mostly effortlessly outclasses them, always seemed like an obvious parallel. Also the trope of people/humanity rejecting an ordained destiny, while a staple of Japanese pop fiction in general, is very closely represented in both Guyver and indeed Nausicaa - the latter being another argument for the likelihood that the Abadd related revelations were inherent to the Panzer Dragoon scenario all along and not representative of any revision.

There is a finer point to this tangent though, as I think the “out of control” line from Guyver really sums up how it informed my perspective on some features of the PD scenario. I see the dragons as just that, something the ancients themselves understood as a conventionally uncontrollable force in comparison to their other creations. Consider that the purpose of the drone riders - almost direct parallels to the “control metal” - is not even strictly to check the power of the dragons but simply to direct it at all. These are beings of raw incredible will without agency, and the drones are the agents without a will of their own, combined into a single “dragon unit.” Basically the dragons were not made the way they are deliberately, rather they are the way they are because they can be made no other way. The dragons are like a conduit to a power that shouldn’t really exist in a living creature of the world, so another interface is required.

It is Azel herself who impresses us with how exclusive the bonding between a dragon and it’s rider should normally be, and her puzzlement over how Edge is able to “control” his dragon as well as a recognition of something more than her own experience of that bond. Of course I am now convinced that we are told what the role of the Light Wing is very directly by the game, if cryptically. So I think his dragon appeared in direct response to the Divine Visitor’s possession of Edge, it was virtually created to be his dragon and his alone.

Previously the Heresy Entity was also able to direct Lagi’s development to bond with Lundi, and presumably the Sky Rider was able to project something of itself to Kyle as it was dying, enough to form an ad hoc bond; also with the Heresy dragon’s help.

But now consider the problem, though the last incarnation of the mortal dragon was still a very powerful creature even after getting cut loose from its parent force - it is still Edge’s dragon!

Like even the full Heresy Dragon before it, without a rider, without its companion interface, as a living creature it is listless and frustrated. So let’s assume Azel understands this all too well, she has seen or even felt the presence of Lagi, perhaps it can even muster the agency to protect her at times. But Azel knows the limits and perhaps she even feels it as a painful trap, whether the dragon can be said to know pain or not. Set aside all the useless “love” sentiment, it doesn’t matter one way or another and Azel was simply searching for a new meaning to her existence, and responding to the innate meaning of life itself. It is absurd to think she like synthesized some sperm and impregnated herself and suddenly, baby daddy Edge. Orta is Azel’s own creation, the only answer to her fruitless search, a new creature in the world who can continue the search and continue life. And Azel needed “him” because Edge needed to be a part of Orta, so the dragon could have a true companion again, and be Orta’s true protector.

18

I’d just like to note that using the English translation as a basis is far from ideal. I still don’t know enough Japanese to accurately translate parts that were altered. But for the “thank you, now we must go” line, I’m pretty sure he actually says “thank you… and… I’m sorry”. The English script appears to make things more cryptic than they originally were (such as the identity of the Ancients), and completely alters other dialogue for no good reason. So ironically we’re debating about Orta being fan fiction, while the PD Saga we played genuinely entered the realm of fan fiction at times. A lot of the debates here were unnecessary, as they were centered on things that weren’t even in the script.

I may comment more later, but there’s a reason I didn’t reply to all the points in the original topic specifically and that’s because I don’t see the point. Orta is by definition canon. You can debate whether or not a sequel was needed and whether or not it’s inconsistent with the ending of Panzer Dragoon Saga, but it’s an official sequel. So unless SEGA says otherwise, it’s canon.

19

Agree with all of that generally, and oh well about the translation dilemma, but nothing new there. :slight_smile: My first post summed up my own attitude, but as noted it’s typical if I really start thinking about PD’s story at all its on a theme I feel a need to follow through to some conclusion. This touched on so many personal loose ends and, as stated, interpretations I either have never entirely shared or not for some time, which may serve to inform a less consistent perspective on the story than the one I personally hold.

Probably the most crucial is that Sestren entity image in Orta, and I will maintain that the only really consistent interpretation is that it is a recording / memory since everything else there is including Azel’s message. Which actually sets up my remaining context and contemplation well enough:

Yes I was always bothered by the data circuits motif, as well as the more incongruous aesthetic style of that facility before Orta just goes ‘blip’ into the system like it’s no thang. Even so there are a few other such anomalies, like the gear works in the oddly ‘breathing’ walls of that ruin Keil enters in the legendary opening to Eins. So the one big annoyance is both the dragon and Orta’s translation into and out of (nominally) Sestren space, which has a few possible disclaimers. The most direct and compelling clue is again the wings of the Base Wing, followed by the system recognizing one or both of them as a “supervisor” or something?

On the premise that again, the dragon must have found an exit vector from the Sestren continuum after the hypervisor dimension collapsed, this facility would appear to be something rather special and even protected. If the circular patterns have significance, as they must, then I take it as a sign of the dragon’s new relationship with a sort of backup infrastructure, roughly replacing its previous conduit to the infinite powers of the void. Now if the dragon had already made use of this facility to escape the collapse, it would have been very likely to help lead Azel back there in some manner, which she plainly found it in any case. But the final big ambiguity of interpretation has to do with Abadd.

Like in all previous games, who is truly the hunter and who the hunted is deceptively vague. On the one hand Abadd clearly lured Orta to this location expecting to gain something by it, but that does not mean he was genuinely in control of the situation. Still taken together the important features of Orta’s story are not incidental, the Empire’s dragonmares know exactly where to find Orta and Abadd is yet a step ahead of them, it is reasonable to guess that he could have found out about Orta and relayed that to them in the first place. You could sum it up a bit like Training Day:

Orta: You asshole, you had this all planned when I first met you ten days ago didn’t you?

Abadd: Bitch I have been planning all of this out for TEN YEARS!

When you confront Abadd the first time it is not represented as a fight with the real drone, even though Orta and the dragon are themselves ‘normal’; and as in contrast to how the original Sestren fight was primarily depicted. What you fight is Abadd’s virtual avatar, for whatever reason he believes Orta will be more vulnerable once in the system and he appears to be hacking into it from the outside. He is of course thwarted and either he miscalculated or didn’t fully comprehend her real mastery of the domain. Abadd led Orta home, this is her crèche, as well as perhaps an instrument of the dragon’s own rebirth.

Which I find a compelling theme there overall…
It is a very consistent message running through this lore, the Ancient Masters had closed the gap between life and death, for themselves as well as their most amazing creations. But with the spell broken that gap is reopened, the cycle restored, and the wheel must start to turn naturally again. Azel can be no less mortal now, and though it is also compelling to imagine her also expending herself on helping to stabilize the world if she can; Azel must have been aware of her own finite existence. Orta is more than a simple child, I now think of her as Azel’s rebirth as well, her final act of defiance of her own ordained fate. As Abadd describes it, drones cannot pass on their life, but Azel cheats that fate by remaking herself into a being which can. Which is why she could not be a mother as well, she can only leave a memory of who she came from. And, just perhaps… the ghosts or residual defiance of Edge and other remarkable agents somehow helped make that possible.

Perhaps we can also explain the whole ‘circuits’ episode as a virtual interfacing, but that’s a stretch and brings problems of its own. I’m content to say that Orta and the dragon are an exception in this specific and discrete realm, returning to their own element in a sense. Abadd was plainly out of his element, or out of his depth, even if he was resourceful enough to penetrate some of the secrets of this domain.

There is a further connection to an idle theory which attempts to resolve the discrepancies between the abilities of all the different dragon incarnations. And a few other scraps I’ve been reminded about. I will attempt to tie up my own de facto theory of everything with another post or two, while it’s all on my mind again.

20

A post was split to a new topic: What the ‘eye of Sestren’ represents in Orta

21

I know this is old but as I was digging to get some sources, I realized the 1UP link is down and I cannot find the original interview of Futatsugi this was referring to.

But anyway, in the recent article on Polygon by James Mielke, they (the former dev team) all seem to have found a way to look at things that satisfies them now. And to be fair, it seems they never really bothered trying to connect all the pieces, even when they made Orta. I think we the fans have been wondering about a lot of things that will simply never have any ‘official’ answer, simply because it was not written in stone. They now seem to be interpreting things, which is another confirmation of that IMO.
I think it’s cool even though each of their versions are not convincing me, I think this is a good step for them to maybe consider re-working together at some point, who knows?

By the way, I still don’t consider Orta’s events canon. And if they made a new game, I’d like it to be either focused on the Saturn trilogy or a completely new story.
I read some of the comments about Craymen being Orta’s father just because she has grey hairs… come on Craymen was probably grey because he was old enough. Doesn’t impact his genes lol. No offense here, you know I like being sarcastic sometimes.

I still think Orta is a great game, especially technically and it’s fantastic to have it in 4K (or very close) but I just think the story & art direction in Saga was more subtle.

22

I realised I hadn’t responded to @Draikin’s point earlier about Orta being canon by definition. According to Wikipedia, “The term [canon] was first used by analogy in the context of fiction to refer to the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as contrasted with numerous Holmes adventures added later by other writers.” I’m not sure if this is true (there’s no citation), but it raises a question: does the fact that the original team didn’t work on Orta take priority over who owns the IP when it comes to deciding what is canon? Similarly, if the Tolkien Society decided to release a new Lord of the Rings story where it is revealed that Gandalf was actually a robot all along, would that be canon? Food for thought.

23

I consider it canon just like I consider all those Star Wars books I grew up reading as canon over the new trilogy. Those books were way better than this new nonsense by the way!:grin:. I understand the love of PDS, but I also feel that Orta was fantastic, even if the old team wasn’t completely intact. It is all really silly when you consider PDS had a completely different team than Zwei, but those are both considered cannon.

24

Yea But Futatsugi supervised the script on all three games prior to Orta.

I don’t care who makes the graphics & all the technical stuff. For me, the main reason I don’t consider Orta canon is because he wasn’t involved and consequently, one can see the story was made up and is not totally coherent between Saga & Orta. I might have preferred a totally different story, different characters, much later or much earlier.
I guess the relation at the time was not good enough for them to have Futatsugi as a consultant, it’s life (business life)…
I’m ok with Orta, the game on its own is really good. I came to appreciate it even more since it looks this good in 4K, I think it really pays justice to the vision Smilebit had for Orta.
But it doesn’t change my mind on the story disconnect.

25

I prefer my personal headcanon over getting twisted up on what technically is and isn’t officially canon.

(Like how Halo 4 never happened)

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What stood out to me from the recent interview is that Akihiko Mukaiyama seemed to be hesitant to position Orta as a direct sequel. This wasn’t an issue before, but with Futatsugi more in the picture now, he didn’t seem very comfortable talking about the game’s position in the PD Saga universe. I was especially surprised when he proposed that maybe PD Orta was a prequel or alternative to PD Saga. That didn’t make the least bit of sense. One can argue there are potential plotholes, but PD Orta is obviously a sequel to the events in PD Saga. They even had official timelines, there was a ton of info on what happened to the world in the game’s encyclopedia, and flashbacks to previous events. They can always decide to call it an alternate timeline if they want, but their initial intention was obvious.

So the way I see it, PD Orta could very well be positioned as an alternate timeline if Futatsugi ever makes a new Panzer Dragoon. That’d be fine with me either way.

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Yeah, I think that was a mistake in the interview (either when the editor was typing it, or a bad choice of words by Mukaiyama), since there is too much information in the game that confirms that it takes place after Saga. In the official timeline Saga takes place in 119 AF, Orta in 156 AF (37 years later).

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Yea, they seem to have some clumsy explanations. Orta was obviously thought as a sequel to Saga.
But what I retain from that interview is they ‘try’ to find some explanation and we haven’t seen this sort of collective effort before ?
We may still be far from another Panzer Dragoon game but to talk about things this way is a good sign I think, knowing where we come from.

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In response to point 3 - my frist thought is that altho less superstitious than the common folk
…Seekers still spoke relying on myth and stories passed down from sources that would have interpreted Sestren through less enlightened eyes.

That being said that made me think…did Saga ever refer to it as a computer network?? Where did we first get that idea from?

30

Re-reading the original topic, I really think none of the points raised are actually a problem. Here are some answers to two of them:

If that’s the biggest problem, I can safely say there’s no continuity problem at all. This is from the official PD Saga guide translations we commissioned years ago, showing that the idea of parts of the network surviving wasn’t something Smilebit grabbed out of tin air. Team Andromeda already set up this sequel hook when PD Saga was first released:

Sestren was destroyed due to the actions of Edge, and all the Towers ought to have ceased functioning. However, a large-scale biologically critical transformation has yet to take place within our bodies.

However, perhaps the Sestren that was destroyed in the Azel Affair operated only a small fraction of the Towers, and there are several Sestrens that continue their activities to this day.

I have to disagree on this, I think it’s always made obvious that Sestren is a creation of the Ancients. This is also from the PD Saga guidebook, which refers to Sestren as “Technology With a Will of Its Own”. That’s what we call an AI.

Because Sestren was established according to the strong will of the Preservation Faction, who sought to ensure the continuation of life on the planet and purify the atmosphere, it was continued for many thousands of years. However, thanks to Edge and the dragon, these functions were brought to a complete halt.

I distinctly remember that in PD Orta, it was also referred to as a place “beyond space and time”. Nonetheless, we were supposed to understand that Sestren is a highly advanced AI even back in PD Zwei/Saga. Here’s the part talking about the Heresy Dragon, from the PD Saga guide book:

This idea was successfully programmed into the as-yet-incomplete Sestren as the determination that “the future of humanity ought to be decided by humankind”. However, Sestren itself discovered the existence of the program and removed it from its functions, regarding it as a bug. As a way of dealing with these circumstances, the program was also configured to turn itself into a dragon. The dragon is an organic life-form molded from the will left behind by the Destruction Faction during the latter days of the former civilization.

Programs. Functions. Bug. The parallels with our technology were always there. And let’s not forget that the English script rewrite made things more mysterious than in the original Japanese script. PD Orta only elaborated on the concepts already in place.

I can go on for the other points. But in my opinion those are even less of an issue. The original trilogy had plenty of inconsistencies of its own, perhaps too often excused because of the mysteries surrounding the storyline.

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I suppose Azel could have found a recording that contained Edge’s DNA in some other part of the network. Maybe his DNA sequence was replicated to a surviving part of the network before the part we see at the end of Saga was destroyed. I could live with that explanation. Perhaps Azel didn’t even know that Edge had died; the word “fruitless” could have referred to her giving up the search.

I meant that Sestren might not only be a creation of the Ancients. The Ancients referred to the Light Wing as something more, “a messenger of the Gods?”, even though they created it. There’s an overhanging theme in Panzer Dragoon Saga that there might be divine or spiritual forces involved. Much of this was likely due to how the people of the Panzer Dragoon world interpreted the mysterious (to them) ancient technology that they didn’t understand. There’s a sense of not being certain what Sestren really is.

Orta presented Sestren in a one-sided fashion, as only a data network. I agree that this doesn’t make Orta strictly inconsistent, and the Seekers could easily have been wrong about no mortal being able to reach Sestren.

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The Ancients might be simply a more technologically advanced version of the “present day” people of PanDra. They could create AIs and dragons but were still far from understanding their world and realities, hence the term “Messenger of the Gods” when applied to Light Wing project. They could still have the belief that there’s was a grander reality than they were privy to. They could believe in gods themselves…and be baffled by their own ability to be able to create something perhaps only gods or a God could create.

Or maybe (far fetched)…“messenger of the Gods” is a hint at how they wished to be viewed by the less enlightened people of their own era. A self-title for the ages.

I’d really like clarification from someone on where we first got the idea Sestren was a computer network. I haven’t played the game in years and don’t recall it ever being in Saga.

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I don’t think it’s ever explicitly called a network in the game. There’s the official guidebooks (of which we had select pages translated a while back) that go into more detail about the background story of Saga though.

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