Assorted Rubicon theorizing

[General-RADIX]

Mostly reposts from elsewhere for the moment.


* What actually became of Haller? Tycho says on "Hairy Legs" that the ship that Durandal had you send Haller to, the UESC Triumph, doesn't exist, and you in fact helped Durandal do a bad thing. However--remember the seventh terminal back on "Honk if You're an Underpaid Cyborg"? The one with the line "Send_To: Tactical Analysis, UESC Triumph"?

Pretty sure Tycho's the liar here. Durandal's pretty serious about the UESC-Pfhor war effort as long as he doesn't know that Tycho's still alive, so I doubt he'd compromise it by not giving Haller back (he did probably have Haller's escape pod momentarily dock at the Rozinante for architectural analysis and note-taking, though). Plus, as far as I can tell, there are no real signs that Durandal assimilated what remained of Haller.

* Poking around "10001 Nordic Nerds", you can find a terminal claiming that Arthur Frane hand-coded the RNA structure of the Achilles virus; however, that was actually Lysander's doing. Obviously a bit of misdirection on the Dangi Corp's part, but does it hold any significance beyond that?

There could be any number of explanations for that; the one my brain jumped to was "Frane was Lysander's creator and possible overseer like Strauss was to Durandal, and thus the guy who'd have the easiest time successfully misleading the UESC should they suspect something".

* Around the midway point of "Frog Blasting/Blasted Frogs", Durandal discusses the remains of organic Jjaro AIs that he came across while the Security Officer was in stasis, and suddenly says, “You can imagine how wastefully constrained I must feel here, dealing with old threats improperly handled in the past, reopening ancient wounds that should have been healed and forgotten ages ago.”

The old Volunteers series assumed he was talking about his own possible mortality, IIRC, but I think this was actually an allusion to Tycho, with whom Durandal clearly has serious issues. He didn't handle Tycho properly in M2 (leading to Durandal's capture and presumably month-long torture), and the sight of him must've brought all those unpleasant memories right back to the forefront.

In addition, Durandal's more jerkass-y than usual on this level (meta-wise, because these terminals were the sole writing contribution of one team member), so perhaps his frustration over Tycho is mounting.

* Speaking of Tycho, "It's not my brain..." is a weird level story-wise. You're sent into what I assume is the Pfhoric boonies to retrieve the one clone of his that he hasn't already re-assimilated...but this 'clone' seems to be the Tycho from the UESC Marathon, who remembers you as Durandal's errand boy.

Seems to be; my guess is, that's a clone that happened to retain Tycho's memories of his time there. The original Tycho does specify that that was the data he copied; plus, his earlier use of the term "re-assimilated" on "Carpe *mumble mumble Latin*" does sound a bit like all those copies were carrying fragments of his mind, or something.

Plus, Tycho not being the original would undercut his eventual victories over Durandal in two of four Planks, so.


Any further theorizing would be welcome, especially on stuff like whose dreams the SO was actually experiencing and if "Dangi" actually means something (some kind of Norwegian wordplay I'm not getting?).

[Shocktart]

Rubicon is a scenario that I've noticed a few third party scenarios have loosely connected their plots to the plot of Rubicon, I want theories as to why anyone would want their stories to conclude with the events of Rubicon.
Rubicon the most dower dour, depressing, and awful story with no happy ending.

[General-RADIX]

I want theories as to why anyone would want their stories to conclude with the events of Rubicon.

Because of its strong narrative and sense of conclusion, I suppose? May also have to do with continuing on from M2, rather than Infinity. Someone may be able to word this better than I can.

(I like Eternal's story as well, but something about it feels more self-contained; Tempus Irae and RED are more side stories, can't judge Phoenix's plot as I haven't finished it yet, and Pfh'Joueur is interesting but bizarre. EVIL has you running errands for a conga line of different mission controls while three separate plots jostle for attention in the background)

[RyokoTK]

Rubicon is a scenario that I've noticed a few third party scenarios have loosely connected their plots to the plot of Rubicon, I want theories as to why anyone would want their stories to conclude with the events of Rubicon.
Rubicon the most dower, depressing, and awful story with no happy ending.

As far as Phoenix is concerned, I tied it into Rubicon because Rubicon is a good game with a story that's grounded in reality and isn't really self-contained, and I like the idea of a Marathon "extended universe" even though it's completely impossible to tie most scenario stories together. Like, how am I going to write something that leads into Eternal?

Also the word is "dour."

[Pfhorrest]

Like, how am I going to write something that leads into Eternal?

Write a story of the Pfhor War not featuring the canon player-character, and not have a happy ending to the war. Avoid contradicting the few details of it given in Eternal, and bam, that's the (or a possible) backstory to Eternal.

Alternately, to write something that follows from Eternal, write a story of the Pfhor War that does feature the canon player-character, and don't have a happy ending to the war. In other words, Rubicon. Any planck. If you want to tie it in more explicitly, have a time jump to try again after the tragic ending.

Or I guess write a story of the Pfhor War featuring the canon player-character that does have a happy ending to the war. That works too.

[Shocktart]

Also the word is "dour."

Nooo!

[General-RADIX]

Speaking of dourness--I know that Durandal's intentions for the Achilles virus at the end of the Salinger Plank are pretty ambiguous, but I personally suspect that he didn't actually want to use it against humanity.

Going back to M2, while he does consider humans to be slow, stupid, and irritating, and isn't above putting them in dangerous situations, he's not the active causer of death; heck, he says that he feels "some strange loyalty" to humanity. He pulverizes the Pfhor garrison that drowned/tried to drown some of his BoBs in lava, and when the Boomer crashes later, he evacuates as many people as he can without bothering to give the SO some transparent justification. At the end, when Robert Blake and co. hi-tail it, Durandal's annoyed that they didn't so much as speak to him, but ultimately lets them go. tl;dr this isn't M1 anymore and Durandal merely finds people annoying.

In regards to Rubicon, I think Durandal retained Achilles (and the scientists who worked on it) only so that if a similar super-virus came along, he'd have something to compare it with, which would hopefully allow him to make a cure sooner.

Lysander and Tycho (in different planks) both insist that Durandal can't be trusted with Achilles, but--it was made clear earlier that you can't trust Lysander (and while it sounds like he believes what he's saying here, he's ALSO blatantly trying to demoralize you), and even if Tycho's intentions for humanity were neutral (I hesitate to call them "good"), he still hates Durandal. May have to go back and check, but right now I don't recall much else that implied that Durandal had sinister intentions for Achilles.

...granted, even with my suggested reason for hanging onto it, Durandal's not infallible and if he were to ever lose Achilles (the virus itself or knowledge of it), welp.


(The Pfhor and Tycho Plank endings, I don't think I can put much of a positive spin on)

[Shocktart]

Rubicon ignores Thoth.
Thoth was obsessed with maintaining balance, if he's in Rubicon then Durandal will use Achilles to kill innocent people to prevent human dominance in the galaxy.

[General-RADIX]

Admittedly, this might be my biases showing, but I'm not so sure Durandal would do that, at least not to keep the humans in line (maybe as a last resort to save them from even worse casualties). I could definitely see Thoth assuming the worst of his intentions/ability to keep Achilles secret, though.

[Pfhorrest]

I think Shocktart is suggesting that the Thoth side of Durandal-Thoth would be inclined to do that, but that Rubicon ignores the Durandal-Thoth merger so...

[Shocktart]

I think Shocktart is suggesting that the Thoth side of Durandal-Thoth would be inclined to do that, but that Rubicon ignores the Durandal-Thoth merger so...

I can at least understand why, to acknowledge the Thoth-Durandal AI is to acknowledge that the Player is a mass murderer that does whatever authority tells him to do without question or protest.
The Cyborg must be Chinese to have that level of subservience.

[General-RADIX]

I can at least understand why, to acknowledge the Thoth-Durandal AI is to acknowledge that the Player is a mass murderer that does whatever authority tells him to do without question or protest.

Didn't the Trilogy want you to question whether this was really the case or not long before Durandal and Thoth merged? :p

So what I think you're saying is that said merger would have been the only thing preventing Durandal from misusing Achilles? If worst came to worst, wouldn't Thoth be able to step in and set things right (if not via fusion, then by some other method)?

(This assumes that Thoth was skulking about in the background of Rubicon, per his insignia being the one used in the dream levels)

[Pfhorrest]

I think he was saying that Thoth, or the Thoth half of Durandal-Thoth at least, would be the one to misuse Achilles, to maintain balance after humanity won against the Pfhor. The same way that at the end of Marathon 2, after the S'pht'Kr arrive and start kicking Pfhor ass, Thoth suddenly decides to offer his help to the Pfhor (who promptly ignore him, of course), because "balance".

[General-RADIX]

D'oh. :|

In that case...yeah, I think Thoth might attempt that if not kept in check (or provoked by humanity doing very bad things and becoming too much like the Pfhor, maybe).

Thothandal didn't seem to be that obsessed with balance, though--at least from what relatively little we got to see of him.

[Shocktart]

I want to know more about why the Player character is such a submissive bitch, killing his friends because Tycho asked him to.

[General-RADIX]

Was it really submission? "Lazarus ex Machina" reveals that the SO held onto Durandal's primal pattern somehow and eventually reactivated him; perhaps that was part of the SO's end goal. Completely neutralize all probable threats to humanity by temporarily switching sides, taking out the Dangi Corp. and robbing the Pfhor of their cloned AIs, and then, uh, breaking Durandal. (Suffering Plank, more like)

Maybe the SO figured that, after all the mess outlined above, he'd be in a better position to talk to Durandal about important painful stuff, and all the mistakes Durandal made in the Pfhor Plank (and/or the questionable decision to hang onto Achilles)? Perhaps someone could give Steve Levinson (that Plank's author, I think) a call and ask what he had in mind there.

Note that, in general, I assume the Security Officer to be a lot smarter than Durandal (and Tycho) likes to insinuate.

[Shocktart]

Was it really submission? "Lazarus ex Machina" reveals that the SO held onto Durandal's primal pattern somehow and eventually reactivated him; perhaps that was part of the SO's end goal. Completely neutralize all probable threats to humanity by temporarily switching sides, taking out the Dangi Corp. and robbing the Pfhor of their cloned AIs, and then, uh, breaking Durandal. (Suffering Plank, more like)

Maybe the SO figured that, after all the mess outlined above, he'd be in a better position to talk to Durandal about important painful stuff, and all the mistakes Durandal made in the Pfhor Plank (and/or the questionable decision to hang onto Achilles)? Perhaps someone could give Steve Levinson (that Plank's author, I think) a call and ask what he had in mind there.

Note that, in general, I assume the Security Officer to be a lot smarter than Durandal (and Tycho) likes to insinuate.

I was referring more to Marathon Infinity in which Tycho directly references in the beginning of Rubicon: "We had so much fun together" he's referring to the time Tycho told him to kill all the colonists and the Security Officer just did it without question. He sucked Tychos dick.

[General-RADIX]

This is a Rubicon thread and you didn't clarify that you were referring to Infinity, so I assumed "Tycho Plank".

wrt: Infinity, I figure the SO only did it in the hopes of finding some way to stop the W'rk. (Either that, or the conditioning worked for a bit)