This isn’t exactly news, but as far as I know this evidence hasn’t been posted before, so I thought that now was as good a time as any (and forgive me if it has been show).
Basically, by zooming in on screenshots from PD1’s opening sequence it can be seen that the Sky Rider and the Dark Dragon’s rider are physically one and the same - they literally use the same 3D model.
So what does this mean storyline-wise? As has been pointed out before, it would appear to prove once and for all that the Sky Rider was indeed a Drone. After all, there can be practically no doubt that - in retrospect - the Dark Dragon’s rider was one of the Ancient’s loyal Drone servants. If the Sky Rider was physically identical to him it would seem that there can be little doubt left regarding his own Drone status.
Forgive the blurriness of the images, but I hope they’re still clear enough to speak for themselves:
Check out the two plates of armour on the chest, and the strips of armour running down the black legs. Also of note is the dark patch on the Sky Rider’s chest-plate - it’s on the opposite side on the Dark Dragon’s rider, which presumably means that they’re the same 3D model but horizontally mirrored.
Shadow posted a similar gallery some time ago, only he set a flipped/magnified image of Lundi’s gun side-by-side with the Sky Rider’s gun to highlight the differences between the two.
The Sky Rider is, of course, a drone, even if Team Andromeda didn’t know what he was at the time (which may or may not be true). I think perhaps TA intended to give the Sky Rider a background story in Panzer Dragoon Zwei in the form of Lundi but later scrapped the idea.
i noticed that they were similar if not identical from that one quick segment where the dark dragon’s rider fires the killing shot… but why do its eyes glow? o_o
and did you ever consider the quote:
“don’t let him go BACK to the tower…” would this imply that they had been there before? or perhaps just a translation oversight?
[quote=“Megatherium”]i noticed that they were similar if not identical from that one quick segment where the dark dragon’s rider fires the killing shot… but why do its eyes glow? o_o
and did you ever consider the quote:
“don’t let him go BACK to the tower…” would this imply that they had been there before? or perhaps just a translation oversight?[/quote]
The glowing eyes complete the picture of an evil villain mindlessly bent on fulfilling his purpose, don’t they?
In the Panzer Dragoon anime the Dark Dragon left the Tower to find a rider, but the proper translation for the Sky Rider’s words you’ve quoted were “don’t let him reach the tower…”, which can be heard in Forbidden Memories.
My thoughts exactly; it does seem that the creators worked hard to make the contents of the earlier games retroactively “make sense”. If they didn’t indeed have the idea of Drones in mind back then, I’d suspect that this intentionally mysterious pair were their inspiration for the concept.
Maybe that green glow that leaves the Sky rider once he dies is in fact not a sorts of DV but the Heresy Program.
After Lundi’s death (?) the Heresy program just divided itself into both the dragon and a new drone rider to carry out it’s duty.
Oh and an just an idea (not that i really believe in it):
Until now we have been comparing both riders and sugesting that the sky rider is a drone because it’s similar in many ways to the DDD.We are assuming the DDD is a drone.
What if he’s human meaning that they are btoh humans?
Ah, but everything does point to him being a Drone; particularly the fact that he was tranmitting data and requests to the Tower in PD1, and that he was riding a lethal pure-type monster. And that he looks exactly the same as the Sky Rider; that fact alone suggests that they both “dropped off the same production line”.
thanks for clearing tht up geoffrey, i haven’t seen the anime
i touch on the idea that the heresy program can convince certain ancient creations to join its cause because it has been shown that drones are free thinkers… i find it strange that the ancients would program such a powerful drone as azel to simply follow the orders of whoever wakes her up but even if it was craymen alone that persuaded her to help destory the towers, she was going against the will of the ancients (and most likely, her intended function). we also know that drones can have emotions…
so did anyone wonder why the dark dragon did not kill lagi as well? it had the perfect opportunity but it simply flew away. for some reason… i always thought that the two riders shared words with eachother just before the dark dragon flew away. could it be that these drones were friends even though one joined the “light” side and the other was loyal to the “dark” side? unfortunately we weren’t privvy to to the conversation, but did anyone else get that feeling?
The fact that the DD didn’t kill Lagi is exactly what made me believe the dragon wasn’t the “Impurity”. In the memory cells, Sestren clearly states “Impurity acquired. Eliminate it once more.”. The “once more” comment doesn’t make much sense if it was talking about the dragon. The Skyrider was the DD’s target. Lagi didn’t seem to be of any significance to Sestren.
Shelcoof’s actions are similar. It destroyed the village of Lundi, but then it didn’t head towards the dragon, even when Lundi and Lagi pursued the ship. Shelcoof let Lagi evolve until he became strong enough to defeat the ship. Perhaps because Shelcoof had already eliminated its target when it destroyed Elpis. The dragon was again not the real target. That would also explain the “eliminate it once more” comment.
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]
The glowing eyes complete the picture of an evil villain mindlessly bent on fulfilling his purpose, don’t they?[/quote]
Perhaps just a coincidence, but the “evil dragon witch” artwork in PD Orta gives Orta and Lagi the same kind of eyes as the Dark Dragon’s rider in the PD1 intro.
[quote=“D-Unit”]The fact that the DD didn’t kill Lagi is exactly what made me believe the dragon wasn’t the “Impurity”. In the memory cells, Sestren clearly states “Impurity acquired. Eliminate it once more.”. The “once more” comment doesn’t make much sense if it was talking about the dragon. The Skyrider was the DD’s target. Lagi didn’t seem to be of any significance to Sestren.
[/quote]
Well,yeah, but Lagi was the “impurity” in Zwei for sure.
I’d say that by killing one half of the Heresy (like I said before the Sky Rider was also inhabited by the heresy program) the DD/DDD made it powerless…
Maybe the dragon does need to have a rider in order to pose a threat.
That’s why the Heresy picked Lagi instead of the other Khourieats.(cause it had a potential rider taking care of it)
I’m not sure I’d go that far Gehn, but remember that dragons and their riders do psychologically bond to one another; the Sky Rider wouldn’t need to literally contain the Heresy Program in order to be influenced by its desires, if both he and the Program were directly linked to the mind of his dragon friend.
I do agree with this point though - after all, Azel told Edge at one point in PDS that a dragon literally couldn’t function without a rider.
When Sestren said “eliminated” I’m quite sure that it was referring to the massive amount of time (eighteen years) that the Heresy Dragon was put out of business for following the events of PD Zwei.
Remember that “eliminate” doesn’t literally mean “destroy”, either; it essentially means something closer to “nullify”. By destroying the Heresy Dragon’s rider, the Dark Dragon’s rider presumably thought that it had eliminated the threat that the Heresy Dragon posed; because a dragon allegedly cannot function when not psychologically bonded to a rider.
Whatever the situation, it seems that Kyle saved the day simply by being in the right place at the right time.
The coolia’s mind is not the Heresy Dragon. Otherwise, the dragon we see in PD Orta would have been “mindless”. The conversation between the Heresy Dragon and Lagi confirms they thought for themselves. They acted as one unit but were still different from each other. After they were separated, Lagi made his own decision and went his own way.
Those are my thoughts exactly, Gehn; if the dragon didn’t have its own mind then Panzer Dragoon Orta simply wouldn’t make any sense. The Heresy Program may have entered into Lagi’s body and even merged with his mind so as to influence and guide his actions, but based on everything we know it just wouldn’t make sense if it was his mind.
