Yeah, I agree that that’s a logical interpretation - I’ve actually brought that up as evidence in exactly the same way in the past. Still, in light of the fact that the Heresy Program was classified as a “bug” and an “impurity”, and that it was doing things like “ignoring” its original duty and “disobeying” the absent Ancients, and that there’s no clear way that it could have been programmed with a duty that revolved around the intervention of the player, I’m willing to believe that it was talking about its “duty” in the sense that it felt a “moral obligation” (for want of a better term) to do what it did.
Those “ancient records” seemed to be incredibly vague regarding the nature of the player, though - so vague that the Seekers were able to mistake the dragon for the player. My point was that - from what we know, at least - the Ancients couldn’t have known exactly what the player was. The fact that they named it the “Divine Visitor” implies that they considered it to be a godlike entity, visiting the PD world from some kind of “higher” place.
It seems genuinely unlikely to me that the Ancients would have constructed the Towers’ “shut-down mechanism” with the Divine Visitor in mind, not only because they would have no way of knowing how the Divine Visitor would act and no clear way of knowing exactly when it would arrive, but because the Divine Visitor only arrived after ten thousand years, which was apparently some time after the Towers’ programme was meant to be completed anyway.
Neither the ancients nor their enemies could logically have based their plans around the intervention of this supposedly godlike entity which they did not full understand, which was not even sympathetic to their cause, and which only arrived after their plans had failed. The logical conclusion, of course, is that they didn’t base the Towers’ deactivation around any such intervention - and that the Heresy Program was not built to do exactly what it did.
Lance, The dragon’s purpose still propably would be to destroy the towers since it’s the only dragon with the power to do it, albeit one by one. The arrival of the DV enabled him to shut them all down at once through Sestren, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t his original purpose though… If it wasn’t then why bother shutting down the two towers it did shut down… And why be the only dragon with the power to do it (horn glowing then the tower and shellcoof the tower of the sky being blasted to pieces as seen in the end of PD1 and Zwei)
I think the will of the ancients was to create some kind of perverted utopian society, but perhaps at a great cost. Maybe they wanted to suppress certain classes or other races of people. Or maybe they created these bioterrors as weapons. They fancied themselves as Gods because they could create life. Sestren was created as a living computer to control the monsters and the towers were the control centers. Then they went out enforcing their “superiority” on other nations. The dragon bible states that a dragon ended the reign of the ancients and that the dragon was a creature of God sent to burn away all impurity and end all the wars. But everybody knows that the dragons were created by humans to be the ultimate guardians of the towers. So which is true?
Except for the fact that I’ve written several hundred words in this topic already which point out that it’s very much doubtable? Disagreeing is just peachy, but I’d be interested to know why you’re so convinced that the Ancient rebels created the Heresy Program…
That’s a fair point; but if it were the case, why would Sestren consider the dragon to be generally “doing what it wasn’t meant to be doing” when it did go to destroy the Towers? I know I’ve said in the past that it might have been created to destroy the Towers eventually, just not at that specific point in time, but taking all those things into account it seems more likely to me that the Heresy Program was acting on its own, contrary to whatever original purpose it was designed for.
I’m also not sure about the Heresy Program being the only dragon capable of destroying the Towers… certainly it was the only dragon that had any wish to destroy the Towers, but then it wasn’t a normal, physical Ancient Age dragon anyway. The Heresy Dragon was some kind of “custom made” (or “custom mutated”) creature engineered by the Heresy Program, so if the Program’s descision to destroy the Towers was its own, the exact nature of the physical dragon could be of its own making as well.
Because this is all just really a bunch of video games with made up history and a bunch of blank spots than can be interpreted any number of different ways?
But the Heresy program stated that its duty had spanned thousands of years, and it also said it existed to guide the Divine Visitor. That implies that it was counting on the arrival of the DV. The ancient records may have been vague, but the name “Divine Visitor” was mentioned, just like the Heresy program and Sestren itself mention it. And basically, if this was not the case, it means humanity was saved because the Ancients’ own program changed its mind, or even because of a bug in the system? And what about the Sky Rider and Azel? The visions that Lundi recieved from Lagi showed both the Sky Rider and Azel. I’m still convinced there was a plan behind these events.
Absolutely: so doesn’t that mean that any one storyline theory cannot be “undoubtable” if evidence and implications point to other explanations at least as strongly?
That’s my current theory… sorry it’s not very optimistic.
The Heresy Program’s ability to perceive the future in some mysterious, fragmented way is actually one of the hardest elements to place in all this. It’s struck me that this ability to foresee what will happen might not have been so mystical, though.
If the Sestren network had been monitoring the known world for the past ten thousand years, perhaps it had reached the level where it was able to predict the future based solely on its staggeringly massive data input? Partially predict the future, at least; it seemed to be more of an impression of the future than a concrete vision, which would make sense because predicting the future with 100% accuracy would be “tricky” to say the least.
The Heresy Program was a part of Sestren, so it would make sense if it had been privy to such information if Sestren had indeed calculated it: it would also make sense if the Heresy Program based whatever agenda it had around this information accordingly. This could actually account for how the Heresy Program was able to know of the player’s impending entry into the Panzer Dragoon world.
Lance, i still actually think that the sestren’s classificating (is that a word) of the heresy program and indeed the term “heresy” were based off of its own “beliefs” and will. therefore the theory that it is all a break up due to different interpretations of twota is still legitimate. isn’t it?
i mean if sestren exis was the absolute power of the ancients, the highest creation they used to govern all the rest, it could view it’s own logic as the will of the ancients. so it would be able to accuse the dragon program of being heretic for disagreeing, it could call it a bug or impurity because it was not a sycophant to sestren exis. couldn’t it?
New theories tend to get large posts from me because I really hate being vague. I do overcompensate at times though, so my apologies.
Only as in the way it gave Lundi and Edge visions of certain future events when it did the “mind meld” thing with them, in the ending to Zwei and in the intro to Saga.
It certainly could; but what is it that makes you think Sestren was acting in its own way rather than simply carrying out the duty that it was created for? My point was only that I thought Sestren’s interpretation of the will of the Ancients seemed to be “correct” as far as we know, so the Heresy Program’s would therefore have been incorrect, if it was not disregarding the Ancients’ wishes altogether and carrying out a different agenda.
Remember that “Heresy Program” is our name for the entity though, not an official one: Lundi called Lagi the “Heresy Dragon” in one of his diaries, but it seems unclear whether that name was simply his own invention or not.
Well since he does mention that the dragon’s birth was “equally heretic”, it seems he might have gotten this name from Lagi’s visions. Lagi showed him the secret of his existence and the world. It’s possible that Lundi got a vision of the rebels, and got the “Heresy Dragon” name directly from that vision.
True, I’m only pointing out the alternative; there doesn’t seem to be any way we can be sure either way. The “heresy dragon” title would make sense whoever bestowed it upon Lagi, although I’m really not sure what was meant when Lundi said that the dragon’s birth was “heretic”. My best guess is that he just meant it was mysterious and unorthodox.
I apologise if it sounded like I was “getting” at you, I just honestly didn’t think that your point made much sense. And I respect that not everyone has the time to sit around writing huge posts with which to annoy Gehn. (Just kidding Gehn.)
with the theory i suggested earlier, everything would be truly carrying out the will of the ancients, just different interpretations of it. i think of sestren as a consciousness potentially much much greater than any human mind. and with that kind of depth and intellect, it would have to be thinking independently and judging situations dynamically due to the unpredictable behavior of its enemies. if it were program that simply ran the orders to keep the world in a decent state, that would mean that the ancients anticipated the heresy program and installed anti-heresy virus software. which… is a possibility, but there isn’t really any evidence.
still within the confines of my theory, you may judge the sestren to have made the correct interpretation of twota and indeed, perhaps most of the ancient creations agree as well and support it (we know that azel was a heresy drone and perhaps the sky rider too).
but it’s really just the heresy’s opinion versus the sestren’s opinion and they are both technically right, but that’s where the interesting conflict appears. one side isn’t simply malfunctioning. i believe in the description to one of the pure-type creatures in PDO, it said that if this species of pure-type detected a mutation within itself it would destroy itself before it became a mutant-type. so they do have a concept of flat out malfunction.
and going inline with the political story of PDS (lacking a real “villain” or “evil side”) would be the idea that neither the sestren or heresy program’s interpretation of twota would be an “impurity” or a “bug”. those terms are just relative to sestren’s standpoint.
i think i’m over doing it
didn’t lundi write in one of his journals that he was supposed to take care of the birth, then lagi’s mother died during it and his dad beat him?
i don’t know why that would really be heretic, maybe it’s a seeker thing. that’s the only mention i recall about the dragon’s birth.
No, I really see your point; in fact I’ve argued exactly the same thing in the past. The theory that the Heresy Program simply re-evalutated or reinterpreted its mission - its place in the will of the Ancients - seems to run into one problem, though. The Heresy Program seemed to state that it knew it was going against the Ancients’ wishes at the end of Panzer Dragoon Saga:
The will of the ancients…
It is now with me…
The Divine Visitor must destroy me.
I exist to lead the Divine Visitor,
to break the spell of the Ancient Age,
and to give humans
control of their own destiny.
Fulfilling the will of the Ancients would presumably require that the Heresy Program maintained the “spell of the Ancient Age”, not that it would set about trying to break it. That’s why I believe it’s more likely that the Program wasn’t trying to fulfil its original purpose, although considering that we can’t be sure what the Program’s original purpose was it seems very hard to draw any conclusions.
