This is indeed one of the reasons why I think it was the Tower’s voice. But that’s also why I believe that Unit 01 was in fact the Dark Dragon’s rider. Drones were meant to control he Towers, so why would this Tower take instructions from the dragon?
Not to mock your theories but I always saw it as the Tower’s voice.Ever since I played PD1 for the first time.
Chances are, the Sestren concept wasn’t even born at that time.
I agree. I also suspect that the fine details of Drones hadn’t been hammered out at that point either, which is why we will be confounded for the rest of time by the Sky Rider and the Dark Dragon’s rider 
I’ve been trying to make sense of all this myself, so I’ll just run through my reasoning based on the three relevant quotes from PD1:
Unit 01, activated.
Unit 02, activated.
Commence final program sequence.
At the beginning of the game we hear the voice confirming the activation of two “units”. We can more or less rule out the possibility of one of these being the Blue Dragon, as it wouldn’t have been activated by Sestren / the network. It was also around before Sestren activated the Dark Dragon - it was the cause of this activation, as the memory orb from PDS reveals:
Impurity reacquired…
Eliminate it once more…
…Activation of D Type 01…
confirmed…
Note also that these words of Sestren’s are different enough from the above lines for them to realisitically be two different voices talking about similar things.
Instructions from Unit 01 recieved and confirmed.
All ground units mobilized, initiate operations and secure the area.
When the Dark Dragon nears the Tower, the voice confirms that the Tower is receiving and acting on instructions from Unit 01. The voice almost certainly has to be the Tower’s automated voice rather than Sestren’s, because Sestren would presumably not be taking orders (or even instructions) from one of its underlings; it would be instructing them.
Also, Unit 01 cannot simply be the Dark Dragon, as the Tower would logically be taking its orders from the Drone if anything. (So as I pointed out earlier, Unit 01 cannot be synonymous with D Type 01, apparently for two major reasons.)
Unit 01… Confirmed.
After rendezvous, take Unit to full strength.
This is the bit we haven’t looked at recently: when the Tower and the Dark Dragon meet, the Tower takes Unit 01 “to full strength”. This realistically has to refer to the massive enhancement of the Dark Dragon which occurs at this point. Unit 01, then, can’t really be just the Drone either.
My best explanation is that “Unit 01” refers to the Dark Dragon and its rider. A “unit” can of course contain more than one entity, and as the Dark Dragon and its rider are bonded together throughout the game it would make sense for the Tower to consider them a single unit.
With that in mind, I’d suggest that Unit 02 is the Tower itself; after all, it was activated more or less simultaneously with the Dark Dragon. The fact that the last lines of text refer to the meeting as a “rendezvous” could vaguely suggest that it was a rendezvous between these two vital units, as well.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.I’ve never really made a mind out of these events so I’m open to sugestions.
I agree that Unit 01 was how Sestren defined the Dark Dragon and its rider acting as a unit. Still, the Tower’s words, “Unit 01… confirmed”, and Sestren’s later words in the memory of the events “Activation of D-Type 01… confirmed”, seem like Panzer Dragoon Saga’s way of confirming that the voice we hear coming from the Tower was the voice of Sestren (by providing the correct translation).
Remember these words:
“Too many mutant Khourieats are born these days”.
In Sestren’s memory orbs the Elpis villager who spoke those lines says:
“Too many mutants are born these days”.
If only Panzer Dragoon’s English script wasn’t plagued by so many inconsistencies.
The Tower in PD1 is only confirming what Sestren tells it to do.
That was what I thought at first too, but as I said above some pieces of evidence really do suggest otherwise - like the fact that the owner of the voice is taking orders from the Dark Dragon and its Drone, which wouldn’t make sense for Sestren but which would make sense for the Tower. It also wouldn’t make that much sense for Sestren’s voice to be coming out of the Tower, either - but as we’ve observed, all large ruins seem to have an automated voice of their own.
If you look at the script, too, Sestren’s voice in the memory orb doesn’t seem to be a better translation of the voice from the PD1 intro (like the Zwei example you reminded me of) - it seems to be saying something significantly different:
**Unit 01, activated. Unit 02, activated. Commence final program sequence. **
… compared to:
**Impurity reacquired… Eliminate it once more… …Activation of D Type 01… confirmed… **
… and as we agree, “D Type 01” is not synonymous with “Unit 01”. On top of that, the voice emanating from the Tower (predictably) doesn’t belong to the same voice actor that plays Sestren.
Overall I think it’s safer to assume that the voice we hear in the intro belongs to the Tower, simply because this avoids all of those inconsistencies. The idea that it’s Sestren’s voice doesn’t really add anything or achieve anything theoretically, but it does run into these continuity errors. On the other hand, the idea that it’s the Tower’s voice is perfectly plausible; so I’ve no problem with this more boring explanation, simply because it doesn’t run into any real contradictions.
The thing is other than the voice coming from the Tower, we have no reason to believe that the Towers are automated. The Towers are supposed to be “tools of Sestren” with which it imposes its will on the world. The only thing we really know is that Sestren controls the Towers, and that they cannot function independently without it.
As for the D-Type 01/Unit 01 issue, Sestren/the Tower do define the Dark Dragon as such. The use of the word “confirmed” by both Sestren and the Tower also stikes me as something that overlaps intentionally.
Team Andromeda didn’t have the whole series mapped out by the time they developed Panzer Dragoon, so some minor inconsistencies are inevitable. And as we know, Panzer Dragoon’s English script isn’t exactly true to its Japanese counterpart, which can complicate matters.
I dont think it’s impossible for Towers to be partially automated, in fact I think it’s most likely they are, it’s like your PC, you control it ofcourse but if you turn it on it will keep being on and it will posibly do it’s “idle” tasks if you don’t touch it, turn on the screensaver etc… And you can also schedule tasks for it to do automatically, you won’t have to always “control it” to make it do those scheduled tasks. While if someone forces you to turn it off, ofcourse the PC won’t turn itself back on. If Sestren was the one that decided ALL functions like that then there would be no need for drones like Azel either. So it’s clear that other things have control over towers other than Sestren as well, I don’t see why they can’t be automated especially since other ruins are automated as well like Lance has said.
Edit: I don’t remember well but while being in a Tower in PDS the security system is activated automatically and then we have to fight lots of droid like enemies, correct? Sestren wasn’t the one that activated that was it? It was most likely an automated function of the Tower, no?
When Unit 01 sends instructions to the Tower, it is merely activating it. The Tower only becomes fully active when the Dark Dragon and its drone rider arrive at the capital, and as we know, drones are required to activate/operate ancient technology. Then the Tower begins securing the area.
How can Sestren not be controlling the Tower when we know it controls them all? Why bother contructing Sestren at all if the Towers can function autonomously?
I never said it’s fully automated did I? And when did I say that Sestren did NOT control it? Besides just cos it confirms something doesn’t even mean it does a function. It’s like if you program your pc to say “confirmed” for every action you do. “Instructions received… Hard Drive Analyzing commencing… Confirmed… Defragging commencing…” But again that doesn’t mean there aren’t automated functions like an automated security system for example that sends droids against infiltrators.
I think Alex’s points are pretty accurate; the Towers can’t be entirely controlled by Sestren, as they do have a certain amount of automated systems within them. The Tower of Uru definitely had a voice of its own, too, which was not Sestren’s: and (literally speaking) the voice we hear in the PD1 intro is not Sestren’s either.
We also know that specific Drones can control the Towers to some extent, which evidently the drone in “Unit 01” is doing. I get the impression that the Tower is merely confirming what its automated response systems are doing, in exactly the same way that the Tower of Uru says things like “The Rotor Pile has been deactivated” and “Opening the Left Gate” while Edge is travelling down through it.
My point was the “Unit 01” does not literally mean the same thing as “D Type 01”. Unit 01 realistically has to refer to the bonded dragon and rider, whereas as I pointed out before, D Type 01 is simply another way of writing the Dark Dragon’s true name (“Prototype Dragon”). Unit 02 can’t really be referring to a “D Type 02”, so the content of the passages is definitely different: not just a mistranslation.
There’s also the fact that the voice from the Tower says the completely different bit about “commence final program sequence”, whereas Sestren doesn’t say that but instead says the lines about the “impurity”. Although they are reasonably similar passages of text, they are definitely not the same, and I don’t believe that these differences can be put down to an erroneous translation.
Agreed, but I like to avoid assuming that any piece of script is “wrong” unless there is no other explanation. I’m almost totally convinced that at the time of PD1 the idea of Sestren would not have been invented, and that the voice was originally meant to be the Tower’s. I think what you’re suggesting (correct me if I’m wrong) is that Team Andromeda tried to subtly re-write this fact at a later date with the memory orbs. If that is indeed the case then they can’t have done a very good job of it (see all my above points), and as we’ve no real evidence that they were attempring a re-write I prefer to think that they didn’t. After all, none of Sestren’s other lines in the memory orbs are re-writes of anything else we’ve ever heard.
In my opinion it simply creates less problems if we assume that when Sestren says “Impurity reacquired… Eliminate it once more… …Activation of D Type 01… confirmed…” we are in fact hearing lines that we are never meant to have heard before. (And in all honesty we haven’t heard them, just something vaguely similar spoken by a vaguely similar voice).
Does “D-Type Zero One” pronounced in this exact manner literally translate into Dragon Prototype?
Sestren’s fifth memory orb is replaying the events of Panzer Dragoon in which it confirms the activation/presence of the Dark Dragon when it reaches the Tower just as the Tower in the game did. We don’t know if these units were even meant to be called units because the English script is so rife with errors (unless you want to argue otherwise).
The statements “Unit 01… confirmed” and “Activation of D-Type 01… confirmed” are referring to the same entity – the Dark Dragon. Who or what is the Tower taking to full strength when the unit enters the Tower?
Why would the statements overlap if the voice we hear emanating from the Tower wasn’t the voice of Sestren, or Sestren speaking through the Tower?
Or provide the correct translation/information for a game that had no future mapped out for it to tie up loose ends.
Sestren, not the Tower itself, was controlling the army of pure type creatures that invaded the Imperial capital through the Tower.
You may have overlooked my previous post, but yes, they literally mean the same thing - that being “the first type of dragon”. “Prototype Dragon” is just one possible English translation. As I pointed out earlier, “Proto” means “one” and “D” is always an abbreviation for “Dragon” (hence D Unit, Guardian D, Prototype D etc.) So “D Type 01” means exactly the same thing as “Dragon Type Proto”, or rather (as our translations give it) “Proto Type Dragon”.
But to get back to my point, Unit 01 apparently incorporates the dragon and the rider. D Type 01 means just the dragon. More importanatly, “Unit 01” and “D Type 01” cannot be literally synonymous because there is no “D Type 2” to finish the equation by representing “Unit 02”. So although the names end up referring to roughly the same thing, they do not and cannot literally mean the same thing.
The two sets of lines - while being superficially similar - cannot be held to have the same content, or even be based on the same content. The lines from PD1 seem to be using arbitrary tracking tags (Unit 01 and Unit 02), whereas the lines from PDS use the dragon’s original name (D Type 01).
The content of the lines is ultimately not the same; they may appear superficially similar, but that’s where the similarities end.
In actually fact it is not - the memory orb shows a scene from the Sky Rider’s vision, which is not the same scene where we hear the Unit 01 / Unit 02 lines. That further implies that they are not meant to be the same thing; even the modified Zwei quote had the right FMV footage to show that it was meant to be the same.
I agree that the PD1 script certainly has its errors, but it’s not all wrong, and what’s the point of us assuming that things are wrong just to believe that the voice coming from the Tower’s is Sestren? It doesn’t make anything make any more sense, it only confuses matters and creates continuity errors. There’s no actual evidence standing against the idea of it being the Tower’s voice, and loads of things that suggest it’s not Sestren’s. Why should we all assume the least probable explanation when it only serves to create plot holes anyway?
That’s because it was the only FMV footage of the dragon entering the Tower available, so rather than reshooting it, it was simply recycled.
In both the game and the memory orb a voice confirms the presence of the Dark Dragon when it reaches the Tower. Coincidence?
The similarities between “Unit 01… confirmed” and “Activation of D-Type 01… confirmed” were clearly intentional. We can argue about semantics forever but the fact remains that in one instance the Tower is confirming the presence of the dragon and in the other the real voice of Sestren is doing so in a memory as it reaches the Tower.
How does believing that the voice booming out of Tower is the voice of Sestren serve to create a plothole?
There’s plenty of evidence suggesting that Sestren was speaking through the Tower, nevermind the fact it controls all the Towers. The Tower wasn’t controlling the invading bio-monsters; if the Towers could do that by themselves then Sestren would be redundent. Sestren was controlling them through the Tower.
As for plotholes… I’m sure if Panzer Dragoon was developed alongside the other games or with the other games in mind and if the translations were 100% accurate, then some of these issues wouldn’t even arise.
Sesten’s memory orbs look back on the events of the previous games and provide clarification.
I’m pretty sure the Towers are automated.Simply because if they were just following Sestren’s orders Edge probably wouldn’t be granted entrance to Sestren…
My point was that it isn’t the same bit of footage we see when we hear the lines in question from PD1; they could have chosen to use the opening sequence footage but they didn’t. If they were really trying to make us believe that they were “clarifying” those lines, why would they confuse matters by showing us different pieces of FMV? The scene of the villagers from Zwei was the same, after all.
The memory orb is not confirming the Dark Dragon reaching the Tower, it’s confirming the activation of the Dark Dragon (in response to the impurity). And it’s not really coincidental, because the Dark Dragon did indeed go active at that time: Sestren confirmed it by saying one thing, and the Tower’s voice evidently confirmed it by saying something else. The two sets of lines just happened to contain the one and only common word “activated”, because quite simply the Dark Dragon was activated.
I thought I’d explained why I thought this quite clearly already:
- The voice from the Tower was taking orders from the Dark Dragon. This would make sense if it was the Tower speaking, but not if it was Sestren. If it was Sestren speaking, this would be a plot hole.
- The two voices are saying significantly different things. If they were meant to be the same, this would be a plot hole too.
- The two voices are literally not the same; they aren’t even attempting to speak in the same tone of voice. This would also be a plot hole in my opinion.
… and to back up the idea that it’s the Tower’s voice:
- We never hear Sestren speak through Towers (or any other ruins) at any other point in the games. (Why would Sestren choose to transmit its voice out through the Tower anyway?)
- The two voices speak while two different pieces of FMV are running. (Team Andromeda could have used the same piece in PDS, but they evidently chose not to).
- We know that Towers and ruins do have automated voices of their own.
- Everything else that Sestren says in the memory orbs is new script (as this literally is).
In comparison, the only things which really suggest these two voices might be the same are:
- They’re both male voices
- They both include a variation of the word “activated”
The difference is that these points can easily be explained away otherwise. For the alternative problems however, we’d have to completely ignore large portions of script and other pieces of evidence - but why bother when the alternative explanation makes perfect sense anyway?
This is how sentient AIs communicate, evidently. Sestren, like the Heresy dragon, blends images together to convey a certain meaning.
The beginning of the final memory orb shows the Dark Dragon reaching the Tower, then Sestren shouts the words “Activation of D-Type 01… confirmed”. This coincides with what happened in the game: the Dark Dragon reaches the Tower and the Tower’s voice states the similar line “Unit 01… confirmed”.
Who knows what the Tower actually said since neither of us has played nor could understand the Japanese version. Yet the events and the words are similar for a reason. Sestren was controlling the Tower.
But it’s still shown reaching the Tower and Sestren still “confirmed” its activation in the presence of the Tower just as the Tower “confirmed” the presence of Unit 01 in the game.
Receiving instructions doesn’t amount to taking orders. All Unit 01 did was fully rouse the Tower to life, after sending it instructions.
At the time, Team Andromeda may not have even invented the idea of drones controlling Towers; the dragon itself could’ve fully activated the Tower. Of course, this was later revised.
neither the sky rider or the dark dragon’s dragoon stood atop their dragons!
anyway, about this whole tower voice/sestren voice subject, i got a completely different feel off it when i played it back in the day (but i was young then…) so i’m probably wrong here because some simple piece of information disproves it… but this is what i always thought:
i thought the voice was some kind of imperial commander. i thought that the dark dragon was in league with the empire; the way abadd was in league with the empire. they almost seemed to be protecting it throughout the levels. perhaps they had known about the tower’s immense potential for power and THOUGHT that they had the drone under their control. but then it betrays them in the 6th episode and activates the tower for his own purpose.
i mean, there were a lot of imperial ships just floating around (guarding?) the tower. and to me the voice in the opening movie sounded like a voice going out over a loud speaker rather than the tower’s voice.
… but you’re comparing two quotes that are talking about completely different things; they do not coincide. One is talking about the activation of the Dark Dragon (prior to the beginning of the game) and the other is talking about it reaching the Tower (after Episode 6). The actual quotes that discuss the Dark Dragon’s activation are as follows, and as I keep pointing out they are significantly, irreconcilably different:
**Unit 01, activated. Unit 02, activated. Commence final program sequence. **
**Impurity reacquired… Eliminate it once more… …Activation of D Type 01… confirmed… **
Sestren was indeed controlling the Tower, but Towers as we know have their own voices. All of the ruins and Sestren speak in a very formalised manner (because they were all created as servants to the Ancients), so they’re bound to have a vaguely similar mode of speech. The fact remains that they are not saying the same thing, though.
The voice is acting on the Drone’s instructions; the Tower is acting on the Drone’s instructions. Sestren is not acting on the Drone’s instructions. How can it be argued that the voice belongs to Sestren and not the Tower?
I agree, and I also heavily suspect that Sestren was not invented until much, much later and that the voice in question was almost certainly designed to be the Tower’s voice.