Sega of America’s old PDO site contained plot summaries of the Sega Saturn games, which were unique because they directly tied the Panzer Dragoon world’s “Bibles” in with the background story of the series. Of course most of us never gave those books from PDS a second thought the first time around because their contents seemed so random, but this development created a bit more discussion about them.
I’ve just discovered something, however. It seems that although the author of the text for that website was the senior content writer for Sega.com at the time, he wasn’t directly involved with the Panzer Dragoon series. Here’s a quote from his website:
I’m a Panzer Dragoon fan from way back. I can’t think of a game series that can match the unique style of the Panzer series. Sure, the first two games were just rail shooters – but they were damn good ones. And then there was Panzer Dragoon Saga, which is definitely in Marc’s Pantheon of RPGs. I have yet to experience a better combat system or more unique setting in an RPG.
I was really pumped to do the Panzer Dragoon Orta site, as it gave me a good reason to figure out the series’ sprawling storyline. To that end, I created “The Chronicles of Panzer Dragoon” section, which was my attempt to create the definitive (and official) history and timeline of the Panzer series. To make it, I culled together all the resources I could, including game scripts, concept art, and rough translations of Orta. The game scripts went back several years, and were localized by different people; therefore, there were many inconsistencies that had to be ironed out. Even simple things like character names (Randy or Lundi?) caused me headaches.
What strikes me is that - although he clearly did an excellent job on the site - it doesn’t sound like he was much better informed than the Panzer community at large, and it’s possible that he took the PDS Bibles more seriously than the games’ creators or localisers intended. It seems at least plausible that those Bibles existed to show the confused beliefs of the PD world’s people, and that they weren’t meant to fit into a realistic (or at least an accurate) Panzer timeline.
Not that any of this is a big deal, but it seemed worth mentioning.
(Incidentally the text of the deceased PDO site is archived on the page I’ve linked to, and I’d say it deserves to be added to TWotA’s links section.)
