Purpose of the behemoths

[Mavrah]

Spoilers follow, of course.
Has it occurred to anyone else that the behemoths are simply far too big to be practical?
Looking at Stobe and the Obedience graveyard, the behemoths are just massive skeletons. They don't have any obvious weapons or built in tools; they're just androids of ridiculously huge proportions. Wouldn't they have weilded weapons like their smaller (and I dare say standard) warrior cousins? Archaeology should have provided some evidence if there once existed weapons the size of a watchtower. Certainly the ancients were capable of crafting on such a scale, and if it was done in the quality fashion of Cross or the Edgewalkers those weapons would have endured to the modern day.
I think it implausible that the behemoths existed to punch out leviathans Pacific Rim-style. Similarly they are just too big to be practical for deployment against crimpers, iron spiders or cleanser units.
Has anyone else found evidence for what they were made for or just have a better theory than 'the ancients were over-compensating?'

[wordwaster]

“After the war the behemoths lost their purpose Man became afraid of the destructive capabilities of its own creations
The irony is that it was their blind obedience and unquestioning loyalty that walked them down into that pit, entirely unresisting”

The price of obedience.

[ManDudely]

While I have yet to see Obedience and understand the scope of the constructs you are describing, I do know there's at least one example of an organic rib-cage so large you can build a city inside it. So mega-fauna have existed.

[Red Purger]

Skeletons were made for war, they probably just smashed things with their giant hands. I think they were probably made in the Black Desert, which is why the place is destroyed. The ancients probably destroyed it after they killed the behemoths to make sure no one could make more, or maybe it was destroyed in the war by the other side to prevent them from making more behemoths. Who knows.

[Kingangus]

You ever seen Princess Nausicaa and the valley of the wind? This game takes heavy inspiration from that movie. The plot goes a long ass time ago humanity built giant humanoid bio-machine hybrids. These machines ruined the entire earth and made a majority of it uninhabitable since they lived and breathed radioactivity. Anyway go watch it since its on netflix and its really good. My point is that ♥♥♥♥ doesn't need to be practical, it just needs to serve the plot.

[Radiosity]

I always thought they were just civilian constructs intended for building (especially huge constructions in space) that were repurposed for war.

[Wisp Cat]

Or maybe something along the lines of Belaz 75710...

[2tecs]

until i read the comment regarding them here, i had started to wonder if they werent just massive statues in the image of regular skeletons. Because while there are big structures around, there's nothing big enough to have needed these guys to be the builders of. And yeah good point about the massive rib cage, i forgot about that. Also what's the lore regarding the big crater? is it just a comet or is there some lore about any orbital weapons which may have ravished the world so?

[lizardmang]

Originally posted by 2tecs:

until i read the comment regarding them here, i had started to wonder if they werent just massive statues in the image of regular skeletons. Because while there are big structures around, there's nothing big enough to have needed these guys to be the builders of. And yeah good point about the massive rib cage, i forgot about that. Also what's the lore regarding the big crater? is it just a comet or is there some lore about any orbital weapons which may have ravished the world so?

I don't know of any in-game lore regarding the crater off the top of my head, but I assume it was caused by a weapon based on its proximity to the Grid, which appears to be military-related.

[Radiosity]

Originally posted by 2tecs:

until i read the comment regarding them here, i had started to wonder if they werent just massive statues in the image of regular skeletons.

The in-game dialogue if you have a skelly in the group when you find Obedience doesn't really comport with this.

[Mavrah]

Originally posted by Radiosity:

Originally posted by 2tecs:

until i read the comment regarding them here, i had started to wonder if they werent just massive statues in the image of regular skeletons.

The in-game dialogue if you have a skelly in the group when you find Obedience doesn't really comport with this.

No, they were most certainly 'alive' at some point, if any of the game's lore is to be believed... Mind you, it feels like the lore is a nonsensical puzzle that wasn't designed to fit together anyway.

[lizardmang]

Originally posted by Mavrah:

No, they were most certainly 'alive' at some point, if any of the game's lore is to be believed... Mind you, it feels like the lore is a nonsensical puzzle that wasn't designed to fit together anyway.

I think you bring up a good point that might be wise to keep in mind during any discussion involving fantasy lore, which is that fantasy isn't always a meticulously designed puzzle meant to be solved. As natural an impulse as it is to solve a mystery when one is put before us, it's not always the case that there's a solution to be found (whether by design or by oversight).

That said, I also agree that it's fairly safe to say the behemoths were as alive as one might consider the skeletons to be. Giant humanoids don't make sense in terms of practicality, engineering, or even physics, but they're still a common trope even in otherwise fairly realistic fantasy settings simply because the imagery is strong and resonates with people, so I wouldn't use that as any sort of evidence against their existence unless the setting implies that to be the case.

[Radiosity]

Originally posted by Mavrah:

Originally posted by Radiosity:

The in-game dialogue if you have a skelly in the group when you find Obedience doesn't really comport with this.

No, they were most certainly 'alive' at some point, if any of the game's lore is to be believed... Mind you, it feels like the lore is a nonsensical puzzle that wasn't designed to fit together anyway.

Yeah. Just like real history :)

[Mavrah]

Originally posted by Radiosity:

Originally posted by Mavrah:

No, they were most certainly 'alive' at some point, if any of the game's lore is to be believed... Mind you, it feels like the lore is a nonsensical puzzle that wasn't designed to fit together anyway.

Yeah. Just like real history :)

It's not like your grandparents and great-grandparents built some giant robots then half-buried them in Las Vegas but somehow forget to mention to anyone that it was just a prank. Most of history makes some sense and archaeology is pretty good at verifying it.

[Wisp Cat]

Originally posted by Mavrah:

It's not like your grandparents and great-grandparents built some giant robots then half-buried them in Las Vegas but somehow forget to mention to anyone that it was just a prank. Most of history makes some sense and archaeology is pretty good at verifying it.

OMG!!!

You know my grandparents?

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Part of the problem is the length of time, and the fact we're having to dig through the ruins of Cat-lon's empire first and how much of the old empire history was lost during his attempts to salvage it's remains and rebuild it.

It's trying to research a the ruins of a settlement that was long demolished and repurposed by another settlement down to it's bricks and stones (or gone out of their way to erase the existence of it).


not to mention, the fact that a lot of the recorded history is full of outright lies and half-truths spread by one party or another to steer aspects in their favor.