Bydo point of view

[Hepativore]

I think it would be interesting if you had some sort of hidden logs in the game or secret dialog that you could unlock somewhere where you could actually see how the Bydo view you or their human enemies and what exactly they want or what they are after. We have gotten hints of this here and there from R-Type Command and R-Type Final but I think that it would be cool to put more of this into context of how the Bydo are organized.

Also, this brings up an interesting point as to who are the commanders of the Bydo in general? Most of them do not seem to be sentient so who actually leads their forces in invasions or tactics other than the Bydo Core? For instance, do creatures like Dobkeratops have any sort of authority or status within the Bydo hierarchy, or is it simply one of their various experiments?

[Chibi310]

It would be interesting to see a sort of log from the POV of the BYDO. Although we do get some details on their thought process... Well, at least what we can figure from any BYDOfied mission. Usually the ones who get BYDOfied don't even realize that they're BYDO, as to why they attack their own friendlies after BYDOfication, I'm not sure, unless from their POV friendlies look like BYDO.

As for who leads the BYDO, it's the BYDO cores. While they don't "Appear" to be sentient, the BYDO cores are described as massive Super Computers, so you can think of them as something akin to Skynet. The BYDO cores are in command and issue commands to all the BYDOs and keep things running as needed.

The BYDO are also somewhat "Legion" like, so I wouldn't be surprised if they have a Mesh-Network hive mind among themselves. Although, given the premise of Final's story, where the remaining BYDO forces are more like wild animals and this is a clean up job, I don't think they have such a Mesh-network setup. As such, only the BYDO cores are in command, take down the cores, and the BYDO fall apart (that doesn't disqualify the potential of one of the current BYDO evolving into a new CORE).

Going back to your original idea, I guess an interesting way to get a hold of such information about the POV of the BYDO would be something like "Recovered Database from a BYDO Core". It would be the best and most justifiable way to bring that side of the story to light without it feeling forced or speculative.

[phoenix_54d]

Maybe we'll get lucky with the ship lore entries of the manual section (loved the new additions there).

The 'leader' at the beginning of the Bydo campaigns in Tactics 1/2 is a stock Nozari, but we also know one such 'admiral' eventually mashed a whole lot of ships evolving into a Kombilerlilil.
We also know they form something of an ecology, some forms eating others and everything.

So Bydo may be more of a self-centralizing swarm intellect. Probably all larger ships have a core, or become one in order to evolve to a Complex Bydo form; we see an overeating infested fighter become a new, not-so-large core in 7.0.

This 'leader' continues growing in power and size; smaller ones flock to it for shelter and perhaps to eat its scraps or recharge off its massive reactors.
In exchange it commands them, gaining reach and protection, thus opportunities to evolve further - a boon it also passes on to its new underlings/allies/appendages. If you die something else will take your place somewhere. If you run into an even bigger badass Bydo you'll just cozy up to it.
Smaller (however large that may be) Bydo will happily link their telemetry or assimilate themselves into a greater whole, depending on species/situation.

• Well, not happily; they're physically incapable of such positive emotions. Still, basic survival instincts say listen to the big house that nukes your predators.

Eventually a complex Bydo that's going big becomes large enough that snubfighters with continent-cracking weaponry are more of a killer-hornet and less of something it can easily just punch in the face with its own limbs. It houses more and more (and larger and larger) Bydo for increased protection.
The Kombiler may be vulnerable to an R-9A (what isn't) but getting to that weak point is a stage of its own; it has a whole fleet of mates and remoras and tenants with it now.

Get big enough and the hangar's got whole capital vessels in there. Maybe you've even been eating battleships lately, turning them into new subordinates.
Just make sure no one can just sneak in and stab your brain with a planet-cracker.

[Hepativore]

In the PC-Engine version of R-Type I, there is a bit of dialogue from Dobkeratops in the cutscene. As I cannot read Japanese, I am not sure what it says, and I am also not sure if this is canon.

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=S9BicddeXdg

Still, Dobkeratops seems to be a creature of some importance among the Bydo forces as there is always one in some form or another in all of the R-Type games except for Leo.

[dsagent]

In the PSP game you play as they Bydo. Same for Final 1 in one of the endings.
They seem to think they are the true humans.
When you consider the bydo are man-made this raises some disturbing implications. The entire Bydo race might be sentient with human like intellect and originally wanted to live peacefully.

[phoenix_54d]

26th century Humanity basically failed to design a proper IFF for Bydo before they woke up for the first time. The Bydo don't explicitly believe they are human, but rather ARE. They're human DNA retooled using everything from psykers to cyber nanoware to black magic to scrub out all the happy thoughts and leave only our nastier base instincts propagating as an angry angry wave.

No really. Some of the old lore available back when Irem had an R-Type site stated outright that magic was used in the design.

What Bydo do lack however, at least generally (while the admiral figured it out more or less, there's no guarantee there was much left of that mind by the second game) is any ability to figure out whether or not what they're destroying is human or not. They just know they're themselves within the context of their fleet, and everything else that looks like it may be armed is to be explosively seduced.

[evernam993]

Uh, so much words, trouble to read and understand :)
So summary, Bydo is kinda like Zerg in Starcraft?

[phoenix_54d]

They are more like Lovecraft's 'The Colour Out of Space'.
Zerg are a hungry species, and can sometimes turn someone into a Zerg, but most Bydo do it just by being there.

Bydo travel as a wave, and can infect anything; turrets, weapons and computer programs can become Bydo. There are even wireframe Bydo made just of light (Ralma for example).

Closer would be Fel (demon radiation) in Warcraft, if Fel could transform even rocks or your gun into more Fel... and if demons looked like (or wielded) human genitals.

[evernam993]

so....well, i have played all stages in this shiny final 2
did humanity just won in the end and happy ever after? or just somekind of
"oh, you may won the war, but we villian are eternal, we will return and ruin your life again"....

[Dalek zen]

Originally posted by KoolKool993:

so....well, i have played all stages in this shiny final 2
did humanity just won in the end and happy ever after? or just somekind of
"oh, you may won the war, but we villian are eternal, we will return and ruin your life again"....

Final 2 certainly seems to be much more upbeat compared to the original Final.