Edge being tortured

This might be a strange topic so I apologize.:anjou_embarrassed: I think this might have been mentioned before…but, I always wondered how that imperial soldier tortured Edge? I know for sure I heard the sound of a flame, or torch being lit, then Edge started to scream!

I believe he used some kind of blowtorch…But Edge had no marks or visible injuries when he fell to the floor, tied to the chair. I guess you could say: “Oh well that’s Sega Saturn graphics for you!!”

I guess this scene really tugs at your imagination as to what really happened. Any ideas?

I always imagined it was torture by use of a hot poker.

This is another good example of Panzer Dragoon Saga being implicit and allowing multiple interpretations of an event. Compared to many movies/games which show every detail of violence on screen. You don’t need to see it to know that it was bad.

Since there was no visible scaring, perhaps they used some kind of precise laser torture to only cover a small section of his body. Or perhaps the Divine Visitor healed his wounds.

Well, it definitely sounds like it was something hot!

If you subscribe to the ‘zombie Edge’ hypothesis I guess it would be no thang really, if he’s already dead? Either way I think the dragon imparts protection to all of its riders somehow, boosted healing doesn’t seem far fetched to me.

I have always sort of wondered about how the Sky Rider is the only rider ever seen to take a mortal attack directly. Perhaps the abilities of the Heresy program are more constrained working with a drone even. Then the Divine Visitor is an added variable with respect to Edge in any case.

“So you were guiding me… then, you must be the divine.” I like Edge’s use of the word guiding here, it feels much less ominous than “controlling”. If the Divine Visitor was merely leading the way, then Edge would be concious to experience and react to whatever he encountered… good or painful.

[quote=“Solo_Wing, post:6, topic:7920, full:true”]
“So you were guiding me… then, you must be the divine.” I like Edge’s use of the word guiding here, it feels much less ominous than “controlling”.[/quote]
Hearing the original Japanese dialogue, Edge seems to say “I see, so you existed inside of me”. So it’s not clear to what extent he understood what was happening. But given his calm reaction, it seems unlikely that he realized that he was merely being kept alive.

I’m not sure. It makes me wonder what a Panzer Dragoon story that explored the Divine Visitor/Rider relationship in more depth would be like… perhaps some genuine tension about completing the mission would be expressed by the rider earlier in the story. But what we can acknowledge, I think, is that Edge’s story closely parallels the wider story of humanity’s enslavement by the Towers. So long as the Towers remained active, both Edge and humanity weren’t really living, just being kept alive. We know that Edge was prepared to die for that larger mission at least (based on earlier dialogue). Edge had made up his mind that destruction was the correct path, himself included, but I think an interesting story would be about a rider who was genuinely on the fence regarding preservation vs destruction.

Kind of off topic but: I always wondered, eventually, wouldn’t the entire planet turn into a barren wasteland once the Sestren Network shut down? Weren’t the Towers sort of like a terraforming network, monitoring, balancing, producing and keeping a planetary ecosystem in check?

I think Craymen knew this and was aware of the consequences, if and when the network were to entirely be shut down. It would mean the end of the human race. What really needed to happen was the deactivation of all the Puretype monsters, wreaking havoc on all civilization! But how do you do that without completely deactivating the Towers? I guess that is why a choice between two evils had to be made…

Personally, I think Craymen might have been right. If you could somehow take control of the Towers instructions, you could balance the world to your own liking. But completely turn it off and you doom all mankind to a husk of a planet…

Although, in Orta we still see that certain ruins are still active. But is the world really in decline? Or did the writers overlook what was explained in Saga for the sake of continuing on with the series?

I think Panzer Dragoon Orta is consistent on this point. The Towers were created to keep the ecosystem balanced, but it was never stated that they were required for environmental stability. At least in the short term. So after some initial chaos (The Great Fall) the world began to return to normal, balanced by natural ecological processes. Craymen’s fear was that humans would be the ones to mess things up if there wasn’t someone (him) or something (the Tower) keeping humanity in line. It’s too early (in Orta’s time) to tell if he was correct.

But this is where the larger story of humanity and Edge’s personal story diverge, at least seemingly. Because the protagonists of Panzer Dragoon Saga ultimately chose the path of the Destruction Faction, Edge died, whereas humans as a whole survived and became free. It was in large part an act of principle rather than an understanding of the consequences. Edge and his friends could only hope that the freedom of humanity was not short lived and, without the management of the Towers, the path of destruction doesn’t end with humanity destroying themselves.

Bringing the topic back to Edge being tortured, perhaps both Edge and the human species couldn’t be killed/made extinct while the Divine Visitor and the Towers controlled them respectively.