Finished the thing, chose Atlantid. I’m not sure if it’s the lesser of two evils, or if it’s evil at all, but having the Telamon story in mind, anything capable of opposing the Atlas and the Sentinels is a good thing in my opinion. Of course, the Atlas kind of is the thing running the entire simulation, so I have no idea what opposing it could actually result in.
It also seems to me from the lore in this expedition that the “world of glass” seems to be some kind of deep-storage archive of the simulation, similar to something like Amazon S3 Glacier, where data is stored in a way where it’s cheap to retain but slow to access. Heck, they could spin this off into a classical “open a portal to another world to summon an ancient demon”-kind of story by having us help set up the retrieval of the data from the archive storage and reloading it into the active simulation, that would be kinda cool. Also something they could totally play as an actual ARG outside the game…
I’ve interpreted it that way myself, but i flip flop between “world of glass being a separate storage device” to “being stored in the same space, just being marked for deletion, still there but the root address is no longer valid”. I sometimes think of it as being on the other side of a lens that’s projecting a hologram, but its mostly the glass that puts that image in my head.
The LayLaps lore with the gek first spawn also gives me the impression that the perceived passage of time is not present while in this state. Similar to Hades.
“Separate storage device” is no longer an applicable concept in todays computing. The actual hardware device the data is stored on is largely irrelevant, since it’s all distributed and mirrored several times over. A significant fraction of our current storage production capacity is actually used to replace failing storage devices, a concept that would work exceedingly badly if we would still couple the existence of data to specific carriers (also a fun prediction for the future: At some point, our available storage may be limited by our industrial capability to replace it as fast as it’s breaking…).
You would certainly store archived data on a cheaper, more resilient but slower fleet of storage devices, but in the overall virtualisation of “the storage space” that’s not really separate. Merely slower to access and much, much slower to search because you’d cut down on indexing overhead as much as you could, but you can still access it like any other storage in the virtualisation. That’s the level of abstraction at which the industry is currently operating.
In other words, the code isn’t actively being run. That makes perfect sense.
I chose Atlantid … because I liked the shape of the helmet better…
I hesitated at the stage and also thought, wait, “Hope” actually sounds good? Can’t I enable both in one bot?
Did they leave it ambiguous on purpose? I mean, it would be weak story telling if they labelled one “peace, joy, and pancakes, pick me!” and the other one “evil evilarity of evilness”.
With how HG operates, and how pretty much the majority of game developers do the same, they likely didn’t create two or more entirely different paths that lead to significantly different changes to the game. Its likely that there is a predefined story path with a predefined ending where, maybe, some dialog lines will be different depending on your choices and your reward will be different again.
My guess is that a new race is going to make an appearance at the end of all this and their evil/good status will be ambiguous like everything else is. Also, some dialog from this expedition seems to hint that something is going to happen to the nexus. So im guessing an update or replacement to the nexus(maybe at the same time as the upgrade to stations?) may show up. The nexus was great at first but several things could use an update there now.
I think what’s going on is, the Atlas deletes universes when they get too many glitches and things start to break down. The Void Mother wants to bring the archived deleted races and other things back from the World Of Glass, but this causes more and more chaos and eventually results in the deletion happening again. The cycle continues, as the expedition stated.
So it’s not about good or bad, it’s just different views. Is it okay to delete things to maintain simulation stability? Is it okay to bring things back from the “dead”, if it puts the universe at risk of collapse?
There was a statement from one of the autophages in this expedition that made me think of the ‘magic smoke’ conversation we had way back. @Polyphemus knows what I am referring to.
I can’t help but think of lost data, along the lines that @jedidia refers to above.
I can’t access my screens right now since I still have no power from the recent storms.
According to the Telamon dialogue sequence, one of the first sign of rampancy in the Atlas was that it began deleting worlds that resembled the home of its creator. There is no suggestion these worlds were glitched or broken down - it seems to have been simply a series of acts of malice.
The traveller is based on the Atlas’ scan of its creator. From this template, the Atlas has sent out billions of flawed and partial copies to explore its simulation. Null has been systematically killing and absorbing these versions of the original.
It seems possible that if enough (all?) of the travellers are combined, then the original maker of the Atlas might be re-created. It also seems possible that if all the worlds deleted by the Atlas could be retrieved, then the original homeworld might be re-created.
And if that were to happen, then the creator, the homeworld, and the Atlas, would be made new again.
And yes, that just sets the whole cycle in motion once more.
I don’t know if it’s just me being confused so please help me if I’ve misunderstood any of this. The iterations that we the players inhabit are the fabled “Last Traveller” that Hirk and Nal heard about among other mentions throughout the races lore.
The Travellers always existed, one per sim, and I don’t know if they were always based off their creator, or if only The Last Traveller is. I’m also not sure if the OG Travellers were paired with Telamon near the end or if this is only something that has happened with The Last Traveller, but I have presumed it to be the case. (I recall someone also saying something about the possibility of Telamon also being based off Atlas Creator.)
It’s the distinction between “Anomaly” and “Traveller” in the appearance modifier that has me viewing the sim and story like this. I think we the player are the Anomalous iterations, A Traveller based off of their creator, same but not the same. Is it first? Or is it last?
I think the races refer to us as Traveller etc because thats just what they’ve com to call the being that travels alone amidst the universe. And they’re not wrong, they just don’t realise we are Anomalies of the Travellers. The Last Traveller walks among them a billion times over through the multi-sim, all concurrently bringing the countless versions of Korvax Prime back from the void.
I think the Atlas wants this to happen and again any sense of choice is just an illusion by the atlas. Which works for this sort of interactive story telling really well. As JupiterBlues put it, we will probably land at the same conclusion but the slant on it might be different depending on community percentage split on choices presented.
But please correct me if I’ve got some things misunderstood with anomaly/traveller distinctions and I’ve interpreted some things wrong.
My 2 cents… Players’ decisions during the Expedition will have effect on the game. Maybe only in what a new “race” of AI looks like, but an effect nonetheless.
That seems like a good possibility that a small dev team can do. I can see that happening too. A selection of NPC models or alternate colored assets that they can plop down based off our choices.
What I would love is multiple new races. One that grew skin and looked like a flesh-and-metal monstrosity that pilot Living ships and hate the korvax(would be lore friendly, I believe). And on-foot sentinel species that pilot sentinel ships. Or a “royal” race that pilots royal ships and wears capes.
I’m all-in for any new race but I want these 3 the most lol.
Remember, in Waking Titan the community voted for a certain shade of pink, and that’s why the forum looks like this. These choices can have long lasting implications…
Something else that hit me, red and purple are very similar as far as pigments go (red + blue = purple) however, if you are talking about colored light, red and purple are at opposite ends of the color spectrums (infraRED vs. ultraVIOLET), so the Atlas and Atlantid are opposites, two sides of the same coin.
Finally finished my first run through. I had the last bit to do & inadvertently chose Atlantid because I didnt realise that was how the optional milestone thing worked at the end. No matter.
Like everyone else I’m doing a second playthrough to get the other choice, (this time dressed in all the new construct attire) & taking my time again.
Both runs have been with MP turned on with almost no issues. Found other players bases rarely have power working so its not possible to cash in on their generous sharing efforts.
Nice expedition though. I’ve enjoyed it.
I think @MacForADay might be onto something with that Infrared/Ultraviolet/opposites idea regarding who is who.
I couldn’t help but think of infared remote controls being in invisibly in ‘charge’ of ‘powering up’ & ‘turning off’ everything. At the same time noting the power source that ultraviolet can provide.
I’m still undecided on exactly how I think it works but noted during this expedition that in a conversation with Nada how all the non-Atlas references, (Atlantid/World of Glass etc.), were regarded as one & the same 'being/existence.
Made me think that the Atlas keeps resetting & the ‘world of glass’ keeps re-entering the deleted information in an never ending but increasingly glitchy evermore complicated cycle.
Turn off-Deleted > Turn on-Restored.
A final random point I’ve always wondered about is the fact the portals, knowledge stones, monoliths, plaques & the Nexus all appear to be made of the same substance yet their ‘powersource’ glows differently, ie; cian at portals, orange in the Nexus, white at knowledge stones & blue at (some) monoliths & of course the red of the Atlas.
Add to this the unexplained Boundary Failures which are similar but not the same but look to have an Atlas style interface & I’m lost as to how they all came to be.
