Plot point I still don't quite get [Spoilers]

[MagpieOAO]

Probably a few, frankly, spoilers obviously.

Headhunters-
As I recall the idea is the suits have built in reflexes, if the pilot dies Leviathan I think continues to puppet the exo-suit using the 'instincts' of the machine and what remains of the pilot stored in the suit's data. Basically a lore-friendly explanation for AI taking over a player and why they act differently. Was there a bigger reason for them?

Xol and xol harvesting-
Typical time travel paradox shennannigans and a little nod to the ol myth of dinosaur fossil fuels (They're plant matter, primarily) in that Albius 'mines' time by drawing dinos to the present, which for some reason fills them with "xol" and then slaughtering them to harvest it.
This isn't done in any kind of intellegent way because A: Wouldn't be a fun game about shooting dinosaurs in exo-suits and B: Leviathan is the one controlling it and primarily interested in gathering combat data.

Dino plague-
In the main timeline it seems the dino plague is a consequence of the incident, now more a 'natural' problem that is undirected though Albius continues to harvest dinos, but cannot control the system.

In the 'bad' timelines Albius has many stratovators and controls the system but it causing other significant problems. Possibly still uncontrolled outbreaks but it doesn't seem elaborated on.

In the main timeline this is solved by preventing the stratovator explosion and defeating leviathan.

Exo suits-
They're kind of seen as an inevitable technology. Even though the main timeline has them due to people traveling into the past with them, the idea is they would theoretically eventually be developed regardless of timeline, hence all the exo-pilots from numerous timelines that don't even have relatively similar crews.

And/or this is a general issue with the screwing of with time in that all possible timelines were being sucked into a singularity, with all experiencing similar events resulting in exo suit teams traveling abroad and getting caught in Bikitoa.

The thing at the end-
The Mcguffin muffin (plot device) handed to us at the end seems intentionally mysterious and unexplained.

[Oro]

Er, the thing handed to you at the end was Sandy's memory core, lol. I had no idea I was supposed to care about Sandy until everyone suddenly got super torn up over her personality being scrapped.

[Legiav]

They said there solution for the Dino plague was the Exo suits , its like how Umbrella from Resident evil send out mercenaries as a rescue service but they actually manage to control the zombies. Creating their own solution to their problem and convincing the people that it wasn't them who spreed the virus. But they push there luck as they keep building more factories to harvest Xol and become over whelm with Dinos.

[MagpieOAO]

Originally posted by Oro:

Er, the thing handed to you at the end was Sandy's memory core, lol. I had no idea I was supposed to care about Sandy until everyone suddenly got super torn up over her personality being scrapped.

Majesty also asks your character 'what was that' at the end and your character is shockingly at a loss for words to explain it. Maybe she was asking about Nadir? But they're already aware of the origin pilot as a ghost in the machine...

[Baphled]

So time travel tends to make everything a mess with storytelling.

Headhunters-
This appears to be an effort on Leviathans part to continue collecting data for exosuits. During the final battle it comments that the perfect exosuit also needs the perfect pilot. Making use of data from both the trained exofighters and raw aggressive instincts of dinosaurs, it appears to also be trying to develop better pilots.

lo-xol and hi-xol-
Apparently moving biomass through time creates lo-xol. The minimum time threshold for this is 100 million+ years, and larger biomass has better yields of lo-xol. The lo-xol still needs to be further refined into hi-xol using spacetime manipulation. This whole thing is basically a twisted version of capitalism and energy addiction leading to the destruction of the world, similar to global warming.

dino-plauge-
This is a result of the distortions in spacetime. Apparently the 'mining' of the past is creating additional holes, and allowing dinosaurs to flood out of pretty much anywhere. The vast majority of the population is completely unaware of why this is happening, and see Aibius as the solution, since they've developed exofighters as the solution. They had advanced technology, mountains of money, and a powerful fuel source to develop the exosuits with. In the 'original' timeline, things developed a little differently (Leviathan didn't go mad and take over), so they were able to put up stratovators all over. This improved their ability to create fuel, but also made a lot more problems with dinosaurs appearing all over. I have to imagine that this was happening on a much larger scale than the 'current' timeline. Eventually some people figured out that this was all caused by Aibius and started a rebellion against the corporation. They stole exosuits and tried to jump into the past to stop Aibius before things got out of control. It looks like the distortions in spacetime caused them to significantly miss their marks.


This changed the timeline, allowing Aibius to 'discover' exosuits, instead of developing them from scratch. Which eventually lead to Leviathan being used to improve exosuits and going crazy with power when it was given control of the vortexers. In the 'original' timeline, it wouldn't have been involved with exosuit development for many more years, after dinosaurs had been a problem for some time.


Sandy's core-
This part does get pretty weird. At this point Leviathan's core has been destroyed and the suit he transferred to is also destroyed. Nadi is part of Leviathan (who just left), and shouldn't be able to show up. The power on that platform seems to get cut off as well. Apparently he also uses a vortexer to transfer Sandy's core back to Ace somehow. Furthermore, he also says 'We have a chance, we have hope', and not 'We did it, we won'. This implies that there's more to do to fix everything.

Maj's line about 'What was that at the end' could be in reference to Leviathan, who we can see leave Behemoth and says "Emergency Transdimensional data transfer" before vanishing. We also learn at some point that Leviathan's in multiple dimensions have been communicating and working together.

[Power_Bert]

The headhunter thing feels to me like missing content.
Probably a way to explain why you would encounter some kind of humanoid zombie exosuit enemies. As i understand it those are nowhere in the game right now.

[Oro]

Originally posted by Power_Bert:

The headhunter thing feels to me like missing content.
Probably a way to explain why you would encounter some kind of humanoid zombie exosuit enemies. As i understand it those are nowhere in the game right now.

It's the in-universe explanation for the enemy team you face in literally every mission, lol.

[MagpieOAO]

Originally posted by Baphled:

Sandy's core-
This part does get pretty weird. At this point Leviathan's core has been destroyed and the suit he transferred to is also destroyed. Nadi is part of Leviathan (who just left), and shouldn't be able to show up. The power on that platform seems to get cut off as well. Apparently he also uses a vortexer to transfer Sandy's core back to Ace somehow. Furthermore, he also says 'We have a chance, we have hope', and not 'We did it, we won'. This implies that there's more to do to fix everything.

Maj's line about 'What was that at the end' could be in reference to Leviathan, who we can see leave Behemoth and says "Emergency Transdimensional data transfer" before vanishing. We also learn at some point that Leviathan's in multiple dimensions have been communicating and working together.

Thanks for the rundown on everything!

The funny thing is that the game ends as bewildering and confusing as it begins, which is maybe the point. The entire plot was unraveling "What is going on?!" so it would make sense that any DLC, Sequel, etc might follow a similar design of confusing insanity followed by trying to figure out what just happened.

A neat thing that comes to mind, Alpha and Beta (and possibly further) variants of exos are alternate dimension exos.

[ChaoticRecursion]

Originally posted by Oro:

Originally posted by Power_Bert:

The headhunter thing feels to me like missing content.
Probably a way to explain why you would encounter some kind of humanoid zombie exosuit enemies. As i understand it those are nowhere in the game right now.

It's the in-universe explanation for the enemy team you face in literally every mission, lol.

I mean, I assumed it was the in-universe explanation for the AI taking over when people leave, since the AI are literally named Headhunter [AI]

[Oro]

Originally posted by ChaoticRecursion:

Originally posted by Oro:

It's the in-universe explanation for the enemy team you face in literally every mission, lol.

I mean, I assumed it was the in-universe explanation for the AI taking over when people leave, since the AI are literally named Headhunter [AI]

That's still consistent with the fact that enemy players appear BRIGHT RED just like the headhunters shown in the story cutscenes, and actively work against you despite all the other exofighters in the story being allied with you against Leviathan until Durban betrays his dimension or whatever. For that matter, why does he do that again?

[ChaoticRecursion]

Originally posted by MagpieOAO:

Originally posted by Baphled:

Sandy's core-
This part does get pretty weird. At this point Leviathan's core has been destroyed and the suit he transferred to is also destroyed. Nadi is part of Leviathan (who just left), and shouldn't be able to show up. The power on that platform seems to get cut off as well. Apparently he also uses a vortexer to transfer Sandy's core back to Ace somehow. Furthermore, he also says 'We have a chance, we have hope', and not 'We did it, we won'. This implies that there's more to do to fix everything.

Maj's line about 'What was that at the end' could be in reference to Leviathan, who we can see leave Behemoth and says "Emergency Transdimensional data transfer" before vanishing. We also learn at some point that Leviathan's in multiple dimensions have been communicating and working together.

Thanks for the rundown on everything!

The funny thing is that the game ends as bewildering and confusing as it begins, which is maybe the point. The entire plot was unraveling "What is going on?!" so it would make sense that any DLC, Sequel, etc might follow a similar design of confusing insanity followed by trying to figure out what just happened.

A neat thing that comes to mind, Alpha and Beta (and possibly further) variants of exos are alternate dimension exos.

TBH The whole thing made sense to me at the end lol, they even give you a cutscene that breaks down the whole series of events in cause-effect order (Not chronologically, since time being a mess is the whole point)
Try rewatching the cutscene attached to Mystery B-18, "A Timeline of Bikitoa"

The variant exos being from alternate dimensions is a cool idea, but I figured the Alpha and Beta suits were literally the prototypes of the suits, like the alpha prototype suit and beta prototype. Guess we will know when they drop, plus they could be both hahaha.

I assumed "Maj's" line was about Leviathan's "Emergency Transdimensional Data Transfer," and I think the point is that we can't fix everything because it has essentially become an inter-dimensional war in an infinite multiverse (which is the in-game explanation for our ability to keep fighting dinos, leviathans, Durbans, etc... after we finish the game.) This is reinforced by Nadi telling you that Leviathans from different dimensions have been communicating so you need to go stop them too (I don't remember his exact words).

I have to agree that the part where Nadi is still around after Leviathan left is weird and not quite thought out story-wise. At best, you could claim that the emergency transfer takes time, or that Nadi stalled the transfer. You could also explain it by him communicating back to your dimension from wherever he ended up. Sandy's memory core is just weird though, because it doesnt look like it was summoned from a vortexer.

[ChaoticRecursion]

Originally posted by Oro:

Originally posted by ChaoticRecursion:

I mean, I assumed it was the in-universe explanation for the AI taking over when people leave, since the AI are literally named Headhunter [AI]

That's still consistent with the fact that enemy players appear BRIGHT RED just like the headhunters shown in the story cutscenes, and actively work against you despite all the other exofighters in the story being allied with you against Leviathan until Durban betrays his dimension or whatever. For that matter, why does he do that again?

The enemies are highlighted bright red, as if your HUD is doing it. The game doesnt change the colors on your enemies' skins to make them look like headhunters. They actively work against you because otherwise Leviathan will just straight up kill them with no rez. Durban wasn't really betraying his dimension so much as trying to get his own Golden Goose so that he could change the timeline himself and try to put himself as God-Emperor of all space-time.

[Oro]

Originally posted by ChaoticRecursion:

I have to agree that the part where Nadi is still around after Leviathan left is weird and not quite thought out story-wise. At best, you could claim that the emergency transfer takes time, or that Nadi stalled the transfer. You could also explain it by him communicating back to your dimension from wherever he ended up. Sandy's memory core is just weird though, because it doesnt look like it was summoned from a vortexer.

This is just fantasy sci-fi story writing fluff and you're not supposed to think of the logistics of it too much.

Originally posted by ChaoticRecursion:

The enemies are highlighted bright red, as if your HUD is doing it. The game doesnt change the colors on your enemies' skins to make them look like headhunters.

And the fact that they're working against you even though all the other parallel exofighters are allied together and collaborating across their prototype golden goose?

[ChaoticRecursion]

Originally posted by Oro:

Originally posted by ChaoticRecursion:

I have to agree that the part where Nadi is still around after Leviathan left is weird and not quite thought out story-wise. At best, you could claim that the emergency transfer takes time, or that Nadi stalled the transfer. You could also explain it by him communicating back to your dimension from wherever he ended up. Sandy's memory core is just weird though, because it doesnt look like it was summoned from a vortexer.

This is just fantasy sci-fi story writing fluff and you're not supposed to think of the logistics of it too much.

Truth but I think it is fun to try and find in-universe explanations instead of hand-waving it as a plot hole.

[ChaoticRecursion]

Originally posted by Oro:

Originally posted by ChaoticRecursion:

I have to agree that the part where Nadi is still around after Leviathan left is weird and not quite thought out story-wise. At best, you could claim that the emergency transfer takes time, or that Nadi stalled the transfer. You could also explain it by him communicating back to your dimension from wherever he ended up. Sandy's memory core is just weird though, because it doesnt look like it was summoned from a vortexer.

This is just fantasy sci-fi story writing fluff and you're not supposed to think of the logistics of it too much.

Originally posted by ChaoticRecursion:

The enemies are highlighted bright red, as if your HUD is doing it. The game doesnt change the colors on your enemies' skins to make them look like headhunters.

And the fact that they're working against you even though all the other parallel exofighters are allied together and collaborating across their prototype golden goose?

Feel free to reread my previous comment. I edited it to respond to you editing your comment.

It was 2 comments back so I decided to quote it here for you

The enemies are highlighted bright red, as if your HUD is doing it. The game doesnt change the colors on your enemies' skins to make them look like headhunters. They actively work against you because otherwise Leviathan will just straight up kill them with no rez. Durban wasn't really betraying his dimension so much as trying to get his own Golden Goose so that he could change the timeline himself and try to put himself as God-Emperor of all space-time.

[Oro]

Originally posted by ChaoticRecursion:

They actively work against you because otherwise Leviathan will just straight up kill them with no rez.

There's no precedent or even attempt to explain this in-narrative though, whereas headhunters exist in the story explicitly to provide an explanation for enemy exosuits. They serve no other purpose in the story, there is no reason for a suit that logs your reactions and tactical responses to threats directly from your brainstem to also preserve your identity, voice, and personality data (like in the cutscene where "Debs" is repeating Leviathan's little mantras in crazy zombie speech) other than to explain the (again bright red) enemy exosuits, with player names, that you face in every mission.