Has anyone done a good breakdown of the lore in this game?

[jasta85]

So, just beat the game and had fun, but there's a lot of lore which I feel like I only got partial information on. For example, I assumed we blew up the moon with our ship, but in the end credits the Dolos guy said it was inevitable. There's also various events that seem to focus on either time travel or maybe multiverse situations. Such as a science ship crew coming back and having different memories of what has happened in our timeline. Is there anywhere that has a solid explanation on what is going on? or is it meant to be largely a mystery that we only get bits an pieces of?

[Amanoob105]

The Discord has entire sections, plural, on this.

There's definitely seems to be a multi universe thing going on (which means that lore wise, every playthough of this game, win or loose, is in effect cannon. How's that for a mind ♥♥♥♥?).
Which is also why we manage to find a piece of our own station floating about in space despite it also still being attached to us.

The idea of how this game is doing FTL, 'self similar space' is technically a thing. It's something that looks the same smaller as it does larger.
Personally I believe that this means our FTL is in effect us traveling to a smaller version of our own universe letting us then cross a smaller version of said universe so when we come back to ours we would be in the same relative location at the same relative distance. Only now that distance between where we started and ended is a hell of a lot further.

Now, as to the moon being inevitable. I once thought this is a misunderstanding, on his part.
It seems some of their members, before Dolo's was founded, where in an incident that resulted in them getting glimpses of the future. Or, I suspect, possible futures.
In their mind the moon was to go pop at a set moment in time. They were likely a lot less aware of why, only that the Tqquin needed to be launched before that happened.
However now?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ixion/comments/zhf009/naomi_protocol_decryption_major_spoilers/
That was an eye opener.

It's also clear that most of the higher ups in Dolos are all a bunch of massive transhumanists.
So when they found out about that planet of plant people....
To me that's solid evidence of why they tried to block the existence of that other world.

I suspect they were also planning to use the moon disaster as an opportunity to "encourage" humanity to head to space. Leave the mother earth behind.

----

There's also a number of areas in the game where the devs were a bit on the nose with their information.
Just look up certain key words and names. E.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolos_(mythology)

[jasta85]

Very cool, so it seems Dolos was basically the ultimate "ends justify the means" in that they assumed they knew what was best for humanity and were willing to sacrifice everything to make their vision a reality. No wonder the rest of earth got so pissed at them and hunted them down.

Yea, and I was kind of laughing at the end. When you first meet the plant people they say they will not allow you to settle on their planet unless you assimilate with them, but as soon as the enemy warship shows up they're like "we have no way to defend ourselves, please destroy it for us". I was like "wait, why am I turning into a plant person? I thought we were doing it because they'd attack us if we didn't, what's stopping me from just moving onto your planet as a normal human?"

[Kyang]

Originally posted by jasta85:

Yea, and I was kind of laughing at the end. When you first meet the plant people they say they will not allow you to settle on their planet unless you assimilate with them, but as soon as the enemy warship shows up they're like "we have no way to defend ourselves, please destroy it for us". I was like "wait, why am I turning into a plant person? I thought we were doing it because they'd attack us if we didn't, what's stopping me from just moving onto your planet as a normal human?"

Yes, exactly I had the same feeling. They were forcing you to race change despite being 'old friends' to those who finally managed to find a place to settle after such a long travel, only to prove their uselessness once an actual enemy appeared.

[MoreEvilSquid]

What I don't get is that if Vanir knew about "the end" and did this to bring it about faster, why would he do this while he's still on Earth? One would expect him to be ON the Tiqqun or have some kind of plan so he can see his plans come to fruition and not die with everyone on Earth.

[Furet Justin]

Spoilers, obviously... and a few interesting things to note:
When you play through the game you encounter anomalous spheres, in every other system than Sol. (some people on reddit made quite good breakdowns and theories) There actually may have been one in Sol : In the moon. Probably what caused the council members to see the futures, and what they intended to study with the VHOLE test jump (The VHOLE drive wasn't complete and didn't even have a way to navigate, which is why it's switched to the IXION drive later).

Also from my recollection, you do meet Vanir's personna later, implemented in the Protagoras as the "AI" (not sure about that but the voices clearly sounded the same)

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by MoreEvilSquid:

What I don't get is that if Vanir knew about "the end" and did this to bring it about faster, why would he do this while he's still on Earth? One would expect him to be ON the Tiqqun or have some kind of plan so he can see his plans come to fruition and not die with everyone on Earth.

That one's simple. Because he wanted to be remembered.
Earth wouldn't just instantly die, that would still take time. Time enough for him to lead humanity "into the light, from the darkness", something he can't do if he isn't there on the planet for it.

[MoreEvilSquid]

Originally posted by Amanoob105:

Originally posted by MoreEvilSquid:

What I don't get is that if Vanir knew about "the end" and did this to bring it about faster, why would he do this while he's still on Earth? One would expect him to be ON the Tiqqun or have some kind of plan so he can see his plans come to fruition and not die with everyone on Earth.

That one's simple. Because he wanted to be remembered.
Earth wouldn't just instantly die, that would still take time. Time enough for him to lead humanity "into the light, from the darkness", something he can't do if he isn't there on the planet for it.

If that's the case then he miscalculated pretty badly - humanity in general didn't exactly rally around him. Quite the opposite in fact.

Sure the Pythagoras ended up being launched, but that was already the plan anyway, and there are no signs (we know of) of any other Dolos vessels leaving on similar missions - i.e. nothing that wasn't already underway or planned for the near future already.

His actions did enable the UN to obtain actual powers. So there's that.

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by MoreEvilSquid:

If that's the case then he miscalculated pretty badly - humanity in general didn't exactly rally around him. Quite the opposite in fact.

Sure the Pythagoras ended up being launched, but that was already the plan anyway, and there are no signs (we know of) of any other Dolos vessels leaving on similar missions - i.e. nothing that wasn't already underway or planned for the near future already.

His actions did enable the UN to obtain actual powers. So there's that.

Oh no argument there . We only hear the guy talk on three occasions and it's pretty clear he not only has one huge ego (dudes like if Steve Jobs and Elon Musk had a baby and then baptised him in essence of Zuckerberg) but on top of that clearly believed his own semi-religious rhetoric.

He likely thought the moon popping would result in:
Earth: "Oh no, earths final hour is at hand, whatever shall we do?! Who shall save us in our time of greatest need?"
Dolos: "Come with us and we can show you a new and better way. A bright future for humanity found among the stars!"

When what really happened (to the shock of no one who wasn't with Dolos) was:
Earth: "Oy mate, Dolos's gone and ruined for the rest of us!! Get the buggers!"

----

While it's true that building and launching the Protagoras was always their real plan, I doubt it was their original plan to only build one of those ships. Or have it chased out of the system by the very people they likely planned to build more of them for.

To use an analogy.
We're driving a Benz Patent Motor Car, while they were in a RWE Bagger 288.
We're the proof of concept, they were built for purpose using that concept taken to an extreme (ignoring the fact that they sucked at that purpose).
The Protagoras is more like a double decker bus, a proof of concept taken to a far more practical extreme.

And to complete this analogy what the BMS built is like a Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte .