Please note that I’ve acquired this information quite some time ago but just never seemed to have the time to post it here so here it comes:
The ending of the game, it challenges the true laws of quantum mechanics theorized by Einstein and only now to be proven correct. We always thought material can only arise out of material until Einstein theorized that material in fact arises only when there is information and a way to calculate this information and thus material arises out of non-material as it only arises there were information and calculation is set on. He didn’t have the equipment to test his theories but in the last decade science has finally caught up and slammed the foundation away under the presumptions we’ve always had.
When the sestren AI asks you to put the console off to end the world it hit me. The ancients in the game actually were the developers of the game! The puzzle finally fell in it’s place at the ending. It goes back to a question: if a tree falls down in the Amazon rain forest, will it make a sound? No. The tree isn’t even there in fact when there isn’t a device/person to calculate the information. Same here. The world of Panzer Dragoon is only there because you, the gamer, has this information. Once you put the console off, it’s gone. There is no reality independent of observation. We were the observers/calculators of the information that is the game, world and the story. it gives the story such a phenomenal twist and explains the breaking of the 4th wall in every way.
Please note as well that English isn’t my mother tongue, so it’s somewhat hard perhaps for me to explain but please ask away or give me your thoughts.
I have never doubted that the authors intended something along these lines to be a valid interpretation. But it doesn’t relate anything more about the story, the observer or “divine visitor” is inscrutable from the standpoint of the inhabitants of that world.
The narrative meaning which I conclude, from some key inferences are also valid. The apparent contradiction of the dragon’s claim that a human (of that world) must make the choice, and then telling “the one who controls Edge” to push the button to end its functions, is resolved by simply recognizing that the player is actually a mere facilitator of Edge’s will. Strictly we cannot change the important choices.
So my “true meaning” is something more like a metaphor of power and paradigm, what does it ultimately take to break out of self maintained shackles.
Actually you do Chelo. The world is inside consciousness, not the other way around There isn’t reality independent of observation because we are not just sacks of meat inside a 3d world. That’s a hoax purported by outdated models that studied the nature of reality through very limited definitions of what even constitutes reality (what I can see with my eyes within a certain frequency range; disregarding all our other senses and wholy in denial of our thoughts being also “visible” to us inside our minds just as an example of ONE possible counterpoint to that).
Eistein is all well and good, but if you are above 18 years old and still haven’t figured out that you are god (not the judeo-christian male god of course;other souls being god experiencing itself from other prespectives) and the whole of your life is a dream being dreamt by the big you (with physicality being no more real or unreal as air or radiowaves or your mental/emotional subjective direct experience of life)…you got your work cut out for ya (you’ll have to humble yourself quite a lot to make the necessary shift in perception).
When they discovered the observer effect I had hoped for a monumental shift in our concept of science and a big big shift in the worldview of the masses (who stick to science in our day and age as they did to religions in the middle ages;dogmatically)…but I guess it didn’t make a big enough impact in people to make them understand once and for all that we CREATE and affect our reality very directly…as opposed to being subjects to reality. As consciousness; the observers and knowers of our experience…not as the sumtotal of an organic contraption with consciousness being merely its side-effect. The sack of meat is INSIDE the dream. It does not produce the dream of your life. In a few years we’ll be looking back to the old ways of seeing things like we do to the idea that the Earth is flat (although there’s always some nut trying to keep things en vogue).
It’s an interesting theory drunkensailor. So Futatsugi & company were the ones creating the towers and setting the monsters against humans? But then they also created Edge and his contemporaries and everything else in the world that wasn’t the Ancients’ direct doing no?
For me I just see it as our soul venturing into a parallel universe to aid it and set certain events in motion. A divine visitor as they call it in the game. We incarnate into Edge at the beginning and I guess somehow we are connected to Sestren since that’s where we are asked to type our name at the beggining of the game. Just as Sestren is a parallel world to the world of PD, ours (or wherever you attribute our origins in the game) can also interface with it …in this case using a Saturn
There is no “observer effect”. That’s what you got totally wrong. You can see whatever you want, but that doesn’t change what it is. The universe existed much before us, and will continue to exists after we ceased to exist.
cheloxxl you seem to follow the determinist view of scientists from 20th century that has been proven to be incorrect. that’s what’s so fascinating about it. it destroys our perception of how our world/universe was created. since science thought material could only arise out of material they had one big hole in their theories and that was the big bang. since what was before the big bang when there supposedly was no material to create this universe?
Well, I would like to know when that was proven incorrect. I have a phD in physics and known very well quantum mechanics as well as schrödingers cat (that BTW, that was a mental experiment to try to get people understand quantum mechanics that people took totally wrong).
Also, there is no big hole in the big bang (not sure from where you got that information). There are yes missing pieces of information, but that doesn’t invalidate it, in the same way as we don’t have every fossil out of there, but that also doesn’t invalidate evolution.
You don’t need material to create material. And yes, the original state of the universe is still not known, but that doesn’t invalidate everything else from the 0.00xxx01s after that state.
I would suggest you to actually read about physics and learn about it if you want to seriously discuss about it. Science works by observing the reality. You can make any hypothesis you want, but you have to prove them. What you said is nonsense (in the real world. As part of the game, yes, whatever…)
Have a look at the ending on YouTube. After you push the button, the “camera” turns off like an old CRT television. We are then presented with Gash’s epilogue, the end credits, and finally Azel’s epilogue.
If you literally say: “Panzer Dragoon Saga’s world is a game”, I would agree with the theory. But, I don’t really see it that way. Also, in Orta you can see Abadd trying to resurrect the Ancients. So, I don’t think they were the developers. If he succeeded I don’t think they would jump into the game or come out of those stasis pods!
Although, yes, the Divine Visitor is literally the player. We control Edge and guide his actions throughout the game. We as the player are interacting with a parallel world from our own. The only outside influence is “us” the player/Divine Visitor. The world of Panzer Dragoon Saga is for the most part, presented as a real world not a virtual one. Everything else in the world of Panzer Dragoon Saga, should be considered a real part of that world, imo.
Chello :Nope.We are the universe dressed up as individual characters and are part and parcel of the one consciousness that generated it.We are not apart from everything we see.it is all one big cosmic soup. Everything is inherently meaningless in the play and we affect what happens within limits by choosing what we believe about things and how relate to them. It is just that we still have trouble separating ourselves from the mental lenses we use to perceive the world and see them as optional rather than absolute points of view. We have ages of mental conditioning on top of us to sift through.moreso, we have very little humility and a lot of need to be right (or, god forbid step out of what is commonly held as true in our insane society that still hasnt even figured out basic equality and respect as evidenced by all the power games wars racism etc etc) so dogma rather than exploration and constant qurstioning prevails.
But anyways, i made this go a bit offtopic.this would probably be a discussion for anothet thread. Your last statement isnt untrue but it heavily dependa which pov we come from when defining what we mean by us.that, is where our definitions and understanding needs to be updated in this 21st century.
I sort of came to this conclusion a few years ago. Not that you can prove anything but, basically, you could say the “one consciousness that constitutes all existence” (call it God or whatever) got extremely bored and separated itself into separate beings…“us” and all living beings. To live, re-learn and re-experience.
“All the cosmos is a single substance of which we are a part.”
“God is not he who is but that which is.”
Imagine if you knew everything, had done everything, had experienced everything? What would you do…? It’s kind of ironic that people strive to be all knowing, God-like, when we are probably the result of that God, becoming complacent and utterly bored of itself thus separating into slivers of itself containing amnesia…
At least that’s how I’ve come to see things. It must be how Q feels from Star Trek: The Next Generation! But anyway, sorry for going off topic…
A follow up on a point I missed before, not in response to any particular post or person, but Solo and legaiaflame gave some reasons why it isn’t quite so easy to package up all the elements into this explanation. I have touched on this once or twice before but the topic got me thinking about the topic again so…
I honestly didn’t think much about the “fourth wall” break when I played PDS, I appreciated it and pretty much took it at face meaning. Seeing how much some other people got caught by it, and so giving more thought to it, it usually seems to need a little more thought to me. To leave it as “breaking the fourth wall” does an injustice to the actual trick it pulls, and I think the reason it is as effective as that for many people.
It isn’t as simple as ‘acknowledging the observer(s)’ or speaking directly to the audience / player, or that is only a superficial component of it. By reserving the role of “Divine Visitor” the game instead pulls the player through the fourth wall, it formalizes the audience / player as an actor in the story. So it is a trick unique to the game medium, and much more special than merely winking at the audience on the other side of the wall.
My own little ‘theory’ is purely personal, I haven’t had a reason to offer it before, but again the topic of another meaning to these details got me focused on them. It has been a very long road of discovery and reappraisal but my personal take on the bigger scenario is pretty secure at this point, if I can’t exactly ‘prove’ the PD world was stuck in a cycle of fighting with itself the idea is plainly mooted a few times.
What I like is then the metaphor for pathological existence, the “spell” of the ancients, or as the Heresy Dragon-become-new-Sestren says “the will of the Ancients, it is now with me” … it is like the axiom “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink” or more plainly that a decision to change must come from within. As the guide we supply a power and confidence to accomplish that change, which is sometimes otherwise impossible to accomplish from within a vicious cycle trap of pathological self defeat.
Indeed, it would be quite difficult to translate Panzer Dragoon Saga’s story into a film or novel without making some fundamental changes - and likely losing some of the story’s uniqueness as a result.
From a scientific standpoint, @CheloXXL is the only one making any sense here. It’s really disheartening to see how the results of some quantum experiments have been misrepresented for sensationalist purposes (“What the Bleep Do We Know!?” is a good example of that). The double slit experiment in particular has repeatedly been misrepresented to feed into the incorrect notion that our mind can change reality merely by “observing” it.
As for the ending: the Ancients aren’t the developers. There’s plenty of background info available at this point. Panzer Dragoon is its own world, and personally I found the Divine Visitor to be an effective plot twist, but nothing more than that. It succeeds brilliantly at breaking the fourth wall, but at the cost of introducing several plot holes.
Yes Draikin, I found that “what the bleep” film generally annoying, for all the talk of brain plasticity and the like it’s almost ironic how propagandistic the approach is. It constantly hammers on what are the only conclusions you are supposed to draw. I recall waiting for some / any comment on the wondrous fact that our “emotions” are so critical to our biological function that nearly every cell needs to be chemically synchronized to them… that’s so much more trippy to me than any of the pseudo ‘demystification’ angle the movie revolves around.
I am also curious, I no longer recall any plot holes tied to the Divine Visitor. At least not with respect to PDS alone, I have the notion most of the issues have had to do with extrapolating the DV to the plots of other games somehow. Naturally that’s a reason I eventually stopped trying to do that.
Didn’t Gash and the Seekers say the Divine Visitor was actually Edge’s Dragon (Lagi)? And later on, at the end, obviously, you found out the Divine Visitor was actually “You”…
So how could the seekers have had access or knowledge of what the Divine Visitor actually is, if it is “us” from the real world? There would be no records, because we came from an outside world as a sort of avatar…
Maybe the seekers were just looking for some divine intervention of any kind, sort of like a deity, anyone, of any culture, would wish for in times of great need; and placed those hopes on Lagi. And it turned out that the Heresy Program detected us in the Sestren Network at the end; explaining we in fact were the “true” divine hope of mankind and not it.
There isn’t reality independent of observation because we are not just sacks of meat inside a 3d world. That’s a hoax purported by outdated models that studied the nature of reality through very limited definitions of what even constitutes reality (what I can see with my eyes within a certain frequency range; disregarding all our other senses and wholy in denial of our thoughts being also “visible” to us inside our minds just as an example of ONE possible counterpoint to that).