Who are the Progenitors?

Discussion in 'Backers Lounge (Read-only)' started by michael7050, October 15, 2013.

  1. michael7050

    michael7050 New Member

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    First of all, apologies if a thread already exists, as I did not see one.

    Ok, so to quote the KS update, so you guys dont have to double check it:

    One thing that I have constantly noticed is that there is no animals/creatures/humans/aliens on any planets - in fact nothing except trees and plants. Fair enough, this is a beta, and therefore graphics are limited, and I dont think that having animals and beings on planets would do anything except clutter up gameplay.

    Assuming that animals do exist, but just are not rendered for gameplay reasons, the main thing missing in this vision of the future is intelligent non-artificial species, especially humans. There is clear evidence that Intelligent life existed at one point, and given the similarities between the factions so far and Humanities history, I would be willing to assume that in the world of PA, Humans existed at one time.

    All straightforward so far.

    Now before this update, I assumed that Humanity did something stupid (tm) and did done die-ded themselves, probably in a war. Progenitors obviously were a threat, so it could have been a war against them, explaining humanities war machines (commanders) obvious fear and hatred towards them. Still straight forward.

    And then came this update.

    If Ezek, or First Follower, or whoever he will turn out to be is believed, Progenitors were 'made' by whoever made the commanders. Most importantly, however, Progenitors ARE BIOLOGICAL CREATURES. As I have shown above, there have been NO intelligent creatures found so far, so this is huge.

    More importantly, the Progenitors are intimately connected to the Commanders, being made by the same person.

    And here is where I begin to speculate wildly.

    Assuming that Humanity created the Commanders, like in SC to serve as their warmachines, (based on how Factions resemble factions from Earths history), then Humanity could be the 'Great Machine God' that Ezek is referring to. However, he says 'god' not 'gods' and presumably he would be able to tell the difference. So then, if Humanity created the Commanders, Ezek might have just been unable to accept that someone so 'inferior' in intelligence as Humans could have created him, and preferred to instead believe that he was created be a god. This is supported slightly by Invictus (was that his name?) not even mentioning any existance of a 'Great Machine God'.

    So therefore, if there was no 'Great Machine God', who are the Progenitors? We know that they are biological beings, supposedly made by the same beings who made the Commanders, and that Invictus is terrified of them.

    If Humanity created the Commanders, then that leaves two options:

    1. Progenitors are genetically engineered creatures created by humanity, which then wiped humanity out.
    pfft. nothing to see here.

    or 2. THE PROGENITORS ARE HUMANITY ITSELF!
    We are through the rabbit hole here people!
    We will be fighting against Humanity!
    In the manor of Humans inside gigantic robot suits, of course!

    Settling down here for a second, this could actually be quite believable. Humanity created the Commanders, did one of their patented omgwhathaveicreated freakouts about the AI rebelling or something, and tried to exterminate them, leading to a War which left the Robots damaged, and the Humans fleeing to distant star systems to regroup.
    As a sidenote, this also explains why there are tons of dead 'Progenitors' in the city where Ezek wakes up - they used to live there, as humanity! (or they were invaders from scenario one. meh.)

    tl;dr the Progenitors are US

    So what do you think? Is this believable, or just some half-cracked pie in the sky theory that only I can see.

    I don't know.
    Last edited: October 15, 2013
  2. BulletMagnet

    BulletMagnet Post Master General

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    Well, it's been established that people are long gone. This was made clear on Day 1 of the KickStarter campaign.

    Of course, Uber could retcon that if they wanted to.
  3. hanspeterschnitzel

    hanspeterschnitzel Active Member

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    Hm, might work. I mean, the faction number two has yet to find any planet with progenitors on them.. so they might just all be dead already. Like humanity.
  4. kryovow

    kryovow Well-Known Member

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    when I read the new story news i understand it like this:

    1. A "machine god" created Progenitors, who are called biologics, so maybe some kind of bots that also have biologic parts?

    2. They fight against other machines and later creations of the machine god.

    Did I understand it wrong?
  5. Malorn

    Malorn Member

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    Keep in mind that our religious commander may not be correct about what he thinks. His machine god may not have created the Progenitors, or may have lied to him about certain things. Personally, my bet is that progenitors are human, and from their name, probably created all the machines, including the 'god'. They probably got themselves enslaved, perhaps willingly if they created the 'god' as a way to solve all their problems.

    So long story short, humanity rebels, the commanders are created to stop them. Humanity hits back, destroying the machine god, causing the commanders to reboot without a guiding memory. Perhaps humanity didn't survive their own solution, or perhaps they fled, knowing the commanders would reboot.
    michael7050 likes this.
  6. chronoblip

    chronoblip Member

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    Note that it could be the "biologics" are machines with a significant number of biological components, or biologically inspired components, not just pure biological beings. The machines represent a pure synthetic life, where the "biologics" may represent anything from pure organics to the various hybrids between synthetic and organic.

    Like in the Dune prequels, the Titans and Cymeks were big war machines run by a human brain in a jar. Or in Blade Runner, where even the androids were capable of bleeding, feeling, and emotion:



    It could be that the "machine god" was a company, and it created the human-influenced design beings first, but that the independence of those machines prevented them from following the intent of the company. Queue movies like Short Circuit or the RoboCop, or classics like Frankenstein. The company was able to achieve amazing things, and if you look at fictional companies like Weyland-Utani, Buy-n-Large Corporation, and Cyberdyne Systems Corporation, their accomplishments are certainly godlike in their influence over their respective stories.

    A slight tangent, a company is really just a number of individuals whose combined will creates a single output. A car manufacturer has many people, but they produce singular products - cars. In the same way, perhaps the idea of individuals sacrificing their individuality to serve the purpose of their creator, and their creator being deified whether appropriate or not, would be a possible explanation of the "religibot" faction's "machine god", and also the conflict with the Progenitors as well.

    The Progenitors individuality at the cost of the creator would be sacrilege in the minds of the "religibots", who assert that machines should be working as a whole to achieve singular purposes. Even the ideas of working parallel processes might be heretical, which would give good reason for the Crusaders to turn against even their own robotic brethren. Differing goals, multi-tasking, or even producing a competitive product might be viewed as attempts to usurp the Founder's will. :D

    Purity through purpose!

    Edits for content, grammar, and spelling have been made to this post.
  7. gobbygee

    gobbygee Member

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    Or the giant machine god is the giant fabrication facility that created the first commanders, kind of like the metal planets. and the progenitors where an attempted at biological machine, the progenitors then sore the humans as obsolete and killed them all then turned on the commanders and started a war with them, this ended in a MAD situation where only a few commanders survived and any progenitors that survived are long gone and the "machine gods" where destroyed/long lost, none knows what happened as all records where lost and the commander lost there memory.

    And the faction leaders are the first few commanders that awoke and took control/build smaller commander repair/fabrication sites, thus giving the faction leaders the ability to produce more commander and expand, and the fuel of these fabrication sites is extracted out of starts, thats why all the fighting takes place over systems and no one cares if all the planets get destroyed in the process, the leaders only want to stars to fuel there factories.
  8. neutrino

    neutrino low mass particle Uber Employee

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    Just because a commander believes something doesn't make it true in the PA universe (the same as the real world). Remember these guys are waking up with their memories shredded (or was that not clear?).

    I'm glad to see speculation here because this is the kind of mystique I've been wanting to build about what's going on in the PA universe. There is a rich history there and we're only really seeing events from TDZ-ZERO at the moment...
  9. archcommander

    archcommander Active Member

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    I hope its left a little open ended concerning these guys. I like this degree of depth. Some games really miss this part - the reason the fictional 'universe' exists or its purpose etc. It also gives direction and a framework for other creative ideas in the development of the game ( I hope).
  10. chronoblip

    chronoblip Member

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    Taking the relevant section from the posted lore bit:
    I would say that for me there would need to be a bit more indication that the information the commander is working on is not all there. Did they just wake up with shredded memories, and they could recover them over time, or are the memories permanently shredded, or outright fallacious?

    For instance, if the following had been written:
    This does do a bit more hand-holding, but also reinforces to the reader more clearly that the commander doesn't have complete information without even commenting on whether the information he does have is accurate or not. It supports the aura of mystery, gives flexibility for what the "machine god" and Great War actually were, and shows that the religibot leader is just working off the information available. Might make the character arc even more interesting as the religibot becomes consumed with the conclusion that his own conclusions are correct, even if other commanders have further information which seems to contradict the assertions of the religibot. That would help complete the parallel and satire of existing fundamentalist believers of various faiths while not having a particularly malicious origin or implementation.

    I mean, the Great War after the First Rebellion could have been a computer simulation, with the machine god never having existed, but the information describing the scenario as being completely fallacious having been lost in the memory degradation. :D

    When do we get a dedicated fan fiction/art/community content section for the boards? ;)
  11. michael7050

    michael7050 New Member

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    Wow, really excited to see all the input and discussion my humble post has stirred up - and even neutrino giving somewhat of an endorsement to my wild imaginings.

    I do like the idea of the 'Machine God' being a Metal planet, or an assembly line created by humans, or even the 'Great Computers' or whatever they were called from I Robot, (the book, not the movie), I hadn't even thought of that.

    In terms of Gameplay as the Progenitors, I think that the Progenitor commander would have a human brain/human cyborg/ or an ordinary human inside like Pacific Rim, (which is an awesome movie), so there would be would be something like chronoblip has said.
  12. michael7050

    michael7050 New Member

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    Also, just found this to back up my idea that only Ezek believes in the Metal God, making it not a god at all:
    Last edited: October 15, 2013

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