Eins troubles me (but not as much as Zwei)

Panzer Dragoon
1

Playing through the games in timeline order ftw!

  1. From the opening text:

With a desolate future, the people
look to their past for a glint of hope.
Excavations at an ancient Tower have
provided the people with a deadly
arsenal, now turned upon their foes.
This power created strife amongst
surrounding nations, all struggling
against each other and the evil forces
of the Dark Dragon.

Makes it sound like the Dark Dragon has been around for ages. Maybe it means the will of the Ancients.

  1. The opening scene at the tower. What is that voice? It’s saying Type 01 and Type 02 have been activated, and I know these are the Dark and Blue dragons - but why have they been activated? Did the Empire do something accidently?

  2. What happens when the Dark Dragon gets back to the tower (if we hadn’t stopped him, I mean)?

  3. The Sky Rider is definitely a drone. Darky also has a drone rider. Atolm has one too. But where is the rider for the Guardian Dragon in Zwei and Lagi in Saga?

  4. During the game you destroy the Space Battleship. Is this the ship at the end of the forest level, or the blue ship with the four white engines that is seen throughout the game?

SDR: 78.2%
Rank: Seeker of Chaos

Average.

2

1.The the evil forcesof the Dark Dragon could be interpreted as the other bio-monsters I think. PD1 is the first game and no doubt if it were today that sentence wouldn’t be there, though.

  1. The Empire was “experimenting” with the Tower. I’m not sure about the voice anymore. I think the Sestren Exsis clear it up though…I can’t recall.

  2. We didn’t stop him. That’s why he transforms into Prototype_D.

  3. In every game we have proof that dragons can act on their own so that might mean they don’t necessarily need a dragon rider.

5.No idea.

3

  1. Panzer Dragoon is still imperfectly evolved from “3D Shooting Game”, it’s clear there was some revising / revisioning of the details of the scenario in turning it into the franchise we know. The dialog and events are later clarified in a manner consistent with the game, but the finer points of the third person narrative must simply be discarded from the canon I believe. And it’s so generic and indistinct that it feels irrelevant anyway, IMO.

  2. It’s the voice of the Tower / Sestren, and it doesn’t quite make sense - in the revisionist context anyway - that it would be referring to the Blue Dragon in that way… so the “Units” 1 and 2 may be Darky and the Tower itself.

  3. We basically see what happens, because we don’t actually stop the Dark Dragon.

  4. I agree the Sky Rider must be a drone. And I believe that the Guardian Dragon needs no rider because, unlike other dragons, it’s linked to Shelcoof in the same manner most dragons would be linked to their drone riders. So that’s also why it always stays in close proximity of the flying Tower. Besides, there’s a number of ways in which it’s obviously different from other known dragons. Plus I no longer believe every tower is assigned a specific dragon, Shelcoof however is.

EDIT: In response to your answer there Gehn. We only have proof that ONE dragon can act without a rider otherwise, and it’s the total exception to all dragons anyway. But also, if it could do anything it wanted to on it’s own, why did it always seek out a rider? :wink:

  1. I think the Space Battleship must be the 5th stage boss, it’s too similar in design to Grig Orig.
4

I just re-watched the Sestren Exsis on youtube and Sestren says Activate “D Type 01” as we see an image of the Dark Dragon. I think PDZ’s Pandra’s Box confused me (and other people?) when it comes to Type 1 & 2 but as far as “Units” 1 & 2 are concerned they are definitely the Tower and the dragon. I wish they had made cool dragon designs like the Dark Dragon in Orta :frowning: By far the best.

I think that the Imperial ships near the Tower simply witnessed the activation (by Sestren) as they were messing with it.

5

So it could kill the enemies that were Anti-Laser. XD

Ahem. Sorry.

  1. I think this opening text is telling us that the uncovering of the Tower has awakened the Dark Dragon. I don’t think he was around before that. So, once people started getting nosy and excavating, Darkie showed up/activated. However, I agree that he could very well be part of the Ancients’s plan. He’s integrated with that tower.

  2. I don’t think that all dragons need riders to function. They just need riders to complete their missions. I agree with Heretic that the Guardian Dragon doesn’t really need a rider. It’s purpose is to protect Shelcoof, and I think that it’s massive size and power hold their own without the necessity of a rider.

6

[quote=“Shadow”]1. From the opening text:

With a desolate future, the people
look to their past for a glint of hope.
Excavations at an ancient Tower have
provided the people with a deadly
arsenal, now turned upon their foes.
This power created strife amongst
surrounding nations, all struggling
against each other and the evil forces
of the Dark Dragon.

Makes it sound like the Dark Dragon has been around for ages. Maybe it means the will of the Ancients.[/quote]

Dragons can live for thousands of years, so it is possible. According to Sestren’s memory orbs, the Dark Dragon seems to have been sent by Sestren around the time the Heresy Dragon reappeared, but I’m not sure if it was around in the world before then. As some of the others have said, it could simply an inconsistency, unless the Dark Dragon had previously gone around terrorising people and civilisation.

Heretic Agnostic’s theory about the Guardian Dragon being linked to Shelcoof instead of a drone is probably right here.

While dragons don’t need a rider to stay alive, the way I see it, a rider is critical to the original combat design of the Ancients created, completing the Panzer and Dragoon of the single unit. Orta’s encyclopedia goes into this more, claiming that dragons are incomplete by design, possibly as a safeguard to prevent the dragons from being too powerful. The Guardian Dragon seems to be an exception to the rule, especially if the Sky Rider was a drone prepared for the Heresy Dragon in the Ancient Age.

Although… another exception is Abadd, who created his own dragon(mare) using the Cradle.

There could have been a few months between when the Tower was awakened and the start of Panzer Dragoon. The Tower Report isn’t very specific about dates; even though it mentions twelve days at one point, it seems more time passed after that, including the start of a “full scale investigation”. That could give the Dark Dragon some time to cause trouble, even if it didn’t appear before then.

7

Sure, what Solo said is true. But, to quote the document he linked to - “It appears that dragons require the sharing of thought and senses with a rider to realize their full potential as a combat organism.”

We only get to see (Saga’s Disc 2 last FMV doesn’t really count;nor does Atolm’s death) two dragons with no riders on their backs. The Heresy Dragon and the Guardian Dragon. Both act on their own to some degree.

I’m not saying dragons are completely independent, of course, but we can’t really say the Heresy Dragon is the only one who can act on his/it’s own.

You could argue that, as an agent of Shellcoof, the GD was being controlled by Sestren. That isn’t any different than having Heresy for a mind. Just different programs =P

8

Gehn, both you and Solo (and indeed even snowgirl) just elaborated on the same thing my flippancy merely alluded to. So I basically agree with what you said.

But we do have several independent reinforcements for the idea that dragons were designed to need riders, it’s not only a frivolous reference or two, like some other issues. Some of the things Azel has said, indirectly illustrate the principle as well, that dragons “aren’t easily controlled by normal humans” <—from memory.

My impression for a long time has been that dragons are almost as a force of nature, in that they cannot be programmed as simply as the other Ancient weapons, nor is their intelligence equivalent to human patterns, in the way drones are. So the only way to ensure that they behave according to the agenda of their masters is to have them linked to another system that can reliably interpret the Ancient’s directives.