*SPOILER* Story ?

[Mesarthim]

Hello,

I just finished Axiom Verge and I'm glad Youtube does exist because since the middle of the game all dialogs and story elements just stopped working about mid game =/
I think there's a huge bug there.

So I didn't understand most of the story :(

Would anybody be so kind to write a short description of the story for me?

I got that Trace is actually a clone and originally he was Athethos, is that right?
Now I don't know if there are more information about what happened back on earth because this part in the story hugely annoys me, what was the experiment about and what were they trying to do that it opened a tunnel towards Sudra?

So, each time Trace actually die, it's just another clone and there were probably hundreds before him?

Since I didn't get anything about the story, all the boss we fights are originally humans (we even find a room full of those mechanical bodies. Are all the bosses a previous Trace?

What was the intention of Athethos orignally? The breach is only to keep the rusalki prisonner of their planet, right? So, in the end, Athethos is not such a bad guy?

Rusalki are not trustworthy for sure, but there was a war between them and the one who sided with Athethos (and has a complicated name) could have been? Even by reading the logs I found, I didn't really why she sided with Athethos first and rebelled against all the other rusalki.

Again, since the dialogs stopped working, I don't know if there are any conversation with other rusalki and I don't know what I did, what happened to Elsenova to be all the sudden on that giant worm like machine? I thought they were all immobile and the only things they had to fight were drones? Did the drones moved her to those machines? (the room I was talking about earlier).

From the start, I didn't trust Elsenova, I knew something was up with her, I really thought she would be the last boss, so I was surprised that the story ended with Athethos' death.

Anyone can help/ enlighten me?

Thanks :)

Edit: So the entire story about Worldstream and breach Elsenova tells you is probably a lie, isnt it ?

[Exophase]

You should try using the passcodes CUTSCE-NExxxx where xxxx is a number between 0000 and 0044. This will replay the cutscenes. They appear in the same order as they do in the game, except 0040 is the intro that happens when you start the game, 0041 happens in the middle of the game (I think between 0026 and 0027), 0042 is the ending, and 0043/0044 are the two bonus scenes you get for a fast playthrough and high completion playthrough respectively.

If this doesn't work in your save game I recommend trying it in a new game.

If I get permission from the developers I can post a transcript of all the cutscenes and notes you find.

[Mesarthim]

Amazing :) Thank you for the tip !!!

I hope you'll get the persmission then because I really got hooked on the story and the universe.

I also hope we will see a second axiom with SNES-like graphics after that, it would be pretty fun actually ! Just like the graphical evolution Metroid received ! If they do that, I'll really congratulate the dev for thinking about it.

[s2banks]

Am I misremembering that Athetos claims that he can't turn off the breach attractor, because it will let the Rusalki out too, even though he had disabled them prior to Trace's turning on the repair drones (and even then he would have had *some* time to act)?

[Black Hole]

From what I gather Aethetos the original is in a way a good guy even though he comitted genocide it was to save Earth...so you esentially doing the bidding on the wrong side.


...so you basically are the bad guy you just dont know it.

[Mesarthim]

Well, no, you're not a bad guy, you work for them until you realize what happens (sort of) ! You're a clone, you're born on the planet (that's why you start in a clone machine) each time you die, you are actually another clone.
You never went to earth... ever ! You're just a weapon of the rasalka, sort of.
Each clones before you are actually transformed into one of the boss you fight except for Athetos who is actually the real Trace.
Which is less clear is why the rasalka send you back to earth when she already betrays you by actually killing Athetos and taking back everything you gained during the adventure since you can hypotethically be another Athetos... Is it pity? Forgiveness? Is there a more evil plan ahead?

But anyway, I don't think that's what Kierkegaard is actually asking.
Athetos doesn't want to turn off the breach attractor so the rasalka are imprisonned in the planet.
However, I think there is on Rasalka (the one destroyed at the begining) who was working with Athetos (well, that part is a bit unclear since it was mostly written in text logs which also mention the rasalka's society not going very well and being already in some sort of conflict, but correct me if I'm wrong) and they were fighting with repair drones (when did Athetos exactly come in between this, is unknown or at least unclear).

I don't know if Athetos really disabled the rasalka or if they were already part or totally disabled when he came because of their drone war. It's also unknown/unclear as to how many rasalka were part of this war and who sided with who and for what reason exactly (I might have missed logs too).

There are some nice explaination of the game on youtube about different universe and different explanation (all more or less complex) to the story but nobody really explains what happens based of a time line... Things gets quite complicated especially with the Rasalka sending Trace back on earth where the lab is not destroyed, did the rasalka do that? Is it a parallel universe? I think it's a bit up to you to decide until we see a second episode.

Don' t forget that in one of the ending, Athetos (or maybe another Trace clone) comes and kill our character (well, he shoots him then it's just left for the imagination).

----

I'm not sure the dev will come to explain any of this anyway as he must be laughing in a corner about the different explanation to the story everybody is trying to provide... When what he thought is probably not even that complicated or he didn't want to think about anything more complex and just see what ppl would think about it before writing a second episode.

What I can absolutely tell you is that to make a success story which would be really complicated you have to write it and leave blanks, jumps from a time period to another and so on so it becomes really hard to understand... then ppl will talk about it for hours (of course, never comment on the story) and you can just laugh at everything that is said and decide what will happen next following everything you just read ! =D I'm just kidding but there might be some part of truth in what I say ! lol

[Nokundhi]

Originally posted by souls-stream:

Which is less clear is why the rasalka send you back to earth when she already betrays you by actually killing Athetos and taking back everything you gained during the adventure since you can hypotethically be another Athetos... Is it pity? Forgiveness? Is there a more evil plan ahead?

I don't think Elsenova actually sends player-Trace back to Earth. I think it is suggested that she puts him in stasis, which is supported by the image of Trace lying among Rusalki machinery during the credits. The Earth that Trace finds himself in during the ending is not real -- it's an algorithm created by Veruska's special ability. This is why Trace comments that something feels off, and why Athetos appears to him after the credits and tells him to "wake up" out of the illusion he's trapped in, which opens the door for a sequel.

---

What I don't understand is why Athetos perceives the Rusalki as enemies and vice versa. From what I gather, I would assume that they would be allies. The Sudrans trapped the Rusalki on Sudra by activating the Breach Attractor, so as Nin Turri suggests in one of the notes (The Kuliltu), the Rusalki should naturally feel some resentment towards the Sudrans, and therefore be in support of them being wiped out by Athetos' plague. Instead, the situation is such that the Rusalki want Athetos dead for some reason and Athetos has no option but to keep the Breach Attactor running to keep them at bay.

The only thing I can reason is that Athetos realized the Rusalki actually being war machines posed too great a threat to the universe and decided it would be more beneficial to disable their vital systems and maintain the Breach Attractor to slowly kill them rather than following his original plan in taking Sudran technology back to Earth to solve humanity's problems.

---

Another thing I don't understand is how many times Athetos visited Sudra. I'm pretty sure it was at least twice -- the first time is when he healed himself in a Re-Birth chamber, and the second is when he released the plague. However, in one of the notes (Letter), it's stated that a man named Athetos visited Sudra hundreds or thousands of years prior; I have no idea what this is about.

[s2banks]

What I meant (going back to my previous comment), is that in the dialogue with Athetos immediately before his boss battle, he mentions that the 'Rusalki were the flaw in [his] plan', and that if he had shut down the breach attractor, then he would have released them as well as himself.

...but one of the first thing Elsenova asks Trace to do is re-start the generator(?) / release the repair drones. Wouldn't this have been a window of opportunity for Athetos to turn off the breach attractor, while the Rusalki - as far as we know - are all disabled as more-or-less talking heads? Not enough information I suppose, so his (Athetos') explanation strikes me as having quite a few holes.

I also agree with the above: the implication throughout the game is that Trace was 'returned' to a simulated world in his mind.

[Corv]

Hey folks! A few thoughts.

First, everyone in the game is lying to you, or hiding the truth. Athetos outright states, "If I tell you too much, your captors (the Rusalki) will have to kill you." So we have, from him, at most a partial truth. His motive in that conversation is either to sway Trace to his side, or if he anticipates Trace's survival and his own "inevitable" defeat, to convey the little information that he does.

Elsenova is homicidally aggressive and violates her word in killing Athetos. She and the other Rusalki answer questions minimally and with half-truths when given the chance (e.g. Elsenova's description of the bosses after defeating the Gir-Tab variant). The motive of the Rusalka is to recover their capacities, shut down the Breach Attractor, and ultimately leave Sudra (mentioned in passing in the Power Filter conversation, and confirmed by Athetos).

Trace himself suffers from hallucinations and amnesia. His apparent recovery from amnesia comes following a bout of hallucinations and fever, and while he is comatose and at the mercy of Ophelia. None of his flashbacks, from the opening sequence to the pathogen sequence to the credits, are reliable. It is entirely possible that any or all of them are fabrications. Trace alludes to this dilemna in the Clone conversation, asking the Rusalki why he lacks the original Trace's memory of coming to Sudra (while his other memories appear to be intact, for amnesiac values of "intact"). Ophelia's suggestion of data degredation is suspect because it is immediately followed by a demand to know what Trace *does* recall, and because it is, from a narrative standpoint, simply too clean of an explanation.

That leaves the "on camera" events, the notes and the gameplay, as trustworthy sources. Trace's memories are of unknown quality and any NPC can only be trusted so far as they will say whatever they need to in their own interest.

Second, the Rusalki are not the united group they sometimes appear as. The note Reply: The Outsider seems to be written by Veruska (based on the style of writing), and implies that she is allied with the author of The Outsider. The Outsider, taken together with Drones, implies that the outsider is Ophelia, and Plan B would then imply that Ophelia was the one to kill Katrahaska.

For further support of this, note that Ophelia does not share Elsenova's native tongue (dialogue at the warframe silo). Digging into the etymology of names, Elsenova's word "rusalki" and the name Veruska are both from a Slavic (Russian family) language, while Ophelia is Greek.

To finalize that point, there is an interesting art cue in the presentation of the Rusalki. Katrahaska is the only Rusalka shown facing to the left. Veruska and Elsenova both face right. Ophelia faces the camera. If Ophelia is the outsider, then as suggested by The Outsider and Reply: The Outsider, the art supports the suggestion that she is playing both sides.

[Corv]

I realize the above is not entirely germane to the discussion at hand, but it touches on some of the points regarding motive and whose word to trust. Also, I wanted to get it out of my head and into a public space for discussion, and there aren't nearly enough threads on these topics.

[s2banks]

Those are some good thoughts, unfortunately I have nothing to add to them right now :(