Extinction

[M.R. Smith]

I am pumped for Extinction, and what it will bring to the story of ARK. I have some thoughts on what might be happening, and some interesting stuff I found in the trailer.

First, the interesting stuff in the trailer.

1. Functioning Obelisks. I find this interesting, because I thought that the Obelisks were only maitanance devices for the ARKs, but this suggests that they have uses beyond what we have previously thought based on the Explorer Notes. I wonder if Earth began to be unstable some how and required Obelisks to help keep it from collapsing, or maybe they are used entirely differently from the ones on the ARKs.

2. At the beginning, it shows the player spawning in next to a Rex that already had a saddle on it, so a pretamed Rex. I also found it interesting that the Rex didn't seem very large compared to the point of view of the player, I mean, my survivor compared to my rex isn't even up to my Rex's knee. It didn't look that way in the trailer, so either I am not getting it right, or we get a pretamed dwarf Rex or something. Either that or we just get a pretamed Rex, which is just as good.

3. The Obelisks seem to be making small little TEK domes over some areas, so that has something to do with the lore.

This is what I think happened.

Humans began to learn how to make dinosaurs, and even learned how to domesticate them. That was groovy. Humans began to get cocky with their new advances in technology like TEK and stuff. They began to genetically engineer more things that weren't dinosaurs. Things were still pretty groovy, because they could tame these creatures with little effort and nothing bad came of it. Everyone had pet dinosaurs at this point. Then a war broke out. Humanity started manufactoring dinosaurs and other animals for battle purposes. This gave rise to the Ultimate Lifeforms, weapons that were meant to be used in battle against other humans. Amoung these Ultimate Lifeforms were the Dragon, the Broodmother, the Megapithicus, the Manticore, the Titans, and whatever the Boss for Extinction is, I'll call him Baddy. Things ceased to be groovy. The Dragon, the Broodmother, the Megapithicus, and the Manticore were easy enough to kill and keep contained, but the Titans and Baddy really presented a problem. See, they were superior to almost everything the humans could whip up, because they had the ability to corrup living things (mainly Baddy) and cause even passive creatures like the dodo to become vicious and try to kill people. Humans begin to be nearly forced to extinction, so they make the ARKs and place all kinds of creatures that will be found on Earth on the ARKs to prepare future humans to defeat the Titans and destroy Baddy. They placed the Ultimate Lifeforms in arenas on the ARKs to help prepare them to fight the Titans, which would ultimately prepare them for Baddy. Any survivors advanced enough to complete the ARK Cycle should be advanced enough to destroy the Titans, Baddy, and the corrupted dinosaurs and save humanity from, Extinction.

(roll credits)

Leave your thoughts and anything you found interesting in the trailer below in the comments.

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

1 and 3: The obelisks seem to all have the purpose of maintaining habitats, they exist on the arks to do this, and they exist on earth to do the same thing. My guess is that the obelisk dome-habitat things are like a version 1 of arks, and that the arks were heavily based off the obelisks on earth.

2. The rex was probably just there for the trailer, I don't think we'll be starting off with a rex in the game lol.
If we do though, that would mean that everything else in there is going to be bad enough to make the rex a starting tool...

About the Titans, I don't think they spread corruption at all. In fact, it seems like they got corrupted. Watch the trailer and you'll see that the Titan is hyper corrupted on its bottom half(just look at the bottom of what we can see of it.) In the dossier though, we can see that it wasn't supposed to be like that. My guess is that they're agressive because they're corrupted(in the same way we know that corrupted dinos will work) and that when we "tame" one, we're actually freeing it from the corruption.
I instead believe the story went something more like: People discover Element, and find out that Element can be used to make amazing things. People go on to create cool stuff like Tek gear.
We also know that Element causes corruption. The Element spires on extinction will produce corrupted animals(we know that already) When Rockwell injected the light pet with Element, it got corrupted, and when he injected himself, he got corrupted. Thus when Element first started to corrupt things, people got worried about it. This corruption started to cause massive problems, especially when it started infecting humans.
In some of their attempts to stop it, they created the obelisks. The domes they created were able to prevent the corruption from reaching the inside. I think the reason that the Titan was at the obelisk was because things inside the dome weren't corrupted, so the Titan thought it could stop the corruption from getting worse if it stayed at the obelisk. The Arks were created with this same premise, except in space where no corruption should ever be able to reach. It's kinda hard to say when and for what purpose the dinos, others, and the ultimate lifeforms were created, but my guess is that when they started to put things on the Arks, they just started putting everything on them. Or at least uploading all information about the lifeforms so that they could be made/cloned on the Arks later. The ultimate lifeforms were most likely created as test/training for anyone who could fight them. This was done with the intention that some people would eventually make it back to Earth and when they did they would be strong and smart enough to be able to save the Earth from the corruption.
An AI, or some intelligence uploaded somewhere has since been waiting for us to be able to get down there, this is the person who has been sending us the new messages in the Extinction Chronicles.

I also can't help but notice that purple Element seems to be the 'bad' Element, while blue Element is 'good'. On Aberration, we see rivers and pools of the purple Element, this stuff will break your armor and you very quickly. Wel also see that the corrupted skins glow purple, and the corruption spires glow purple too. Rockwell refers to the liquid Element as pure, and the type we use as refined(or something like that)
We see that the useable Element is blue, all the glowing lights on all Tek items are all blue. They can of course be dyed, but that's besides the point, the default color of the lights is blue, all effects of the armor(fall damage prevention, jetpack, super punch, others) are blue, and all of the energy balls we shoot with Tek weapons are blue too. The blue Element we see at the end of the Tek cave also refills our Tek gear, instead of destroying it and then us.
It might not mean anything, but I'm strongly leaning on the idea of 'good,' refined Element and 'bad,' pure Element. We even take the purple Element ore and refine it into usable Element on Aberration.
Obviously, they could be made other colors with stuff like dyes, but there natural colors are important, I think.
Following this line of thought, the Titan's eyes glow blue, you can see that in both the trailer and the dossier. In Aberration, at the hidden Titan skeleton, you can see that the bottom of its mouth glows blue too. If I'm correct about the purple vs blue Element, this would imply that the Titans actually aren't our enemies on Extinction, and that after we remove their corruption(which would be how we tame them,) they'd be on our side against the corruption.

[Wohn]

cool

[M.R. Smith]

Woah... Yeah... I like that theory better.

Although one theory I had was that molten element (the purple stuff) flows through tunnles in the ARK like viens, giving it life and powering everything. However, we only see examples of molten Element in Aberration, which has been corrupted, so maybe in stable ARKs its blue. YES, it is, in the caves on the Island, we can see things on the walls that kinda look like branches of stone or something. Inside are pulsing veins of blue, or blue element. I also think that the Nameless are more crudely corrupted humans that have had time to breed and become more naturally corrupted.

However, I do remember hearing that there is a creature that can corrupt creatures as well, maybe it is the endgame boss.

The corruption on the Titans lower torso looked black and as if it had some pulsing purple thing in the middle. Maybe that's like having a sort of, second heart that is controlling you.

Wouldn't it also be cool if we could see corrupted and mutated humans in Extinction.

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

Originally posted by M.R. Smith:

However, I do remember hearing that there is a creature that can corrupt creatures as well, maybe it is the endgame boss.

I couldn't find anything like that, any chance you can find it again and show me?

Originally posted by M.R. Smith:

Although one theory I had was that molten element (the purple stuff) flows through tunnles in the ARK like viens, giving it life and powering everything. However, we only see examples of molten Element in Aberration, which has been corrupted, so maybe in stable ARKs its blue. YES, it is, in the caves on the Island, we can see things on the walls that kinda look like branches of stone or something. Inside are pulsing veins of blue, or blue element. I also think that the Nameless are more crudely corrupted humans that have had time to breed and become more naturally corrupted.

I get the feeling that the Arks have both blue and purple Element running through them. Either that or just the blue. Aberration is the only place we get to see the inner workings of the Ark though, so it's hard to say. But we do have spots of blue Element down there with the purple, except the blue seems to be much more permanent and solid than the purple Element. We have large glowing blue lights and the Element wall at the terminal, and then we have the purple rivers and Element ore.
My guess is therefore that the Arks definitely use blue Element(it's in the Island, Scorched Earth, and Aberration) and they may or may not use purple Element too. We know that there is some way to turn blue Element purple because Rockwell did it just before he transformed, therefore something going wrong on Aberration could cause some of the Element to revert back to purple on Aberration. Either that or it was already there. No way to say for certain yet.

Originally posted by M.R. Smith:

The corruption on the Titans lower torso looked black and as if it had some pulsing purple thing in the middle. Maybe that's like having a sort of, second heart that is controlling you.

We do know that corrupted things are connected to a 'hivemind,' so I think that's exactly what it's like.

[M.R. Smith]

I'll see if I can find it.

[Leviathan]

THEORIES EVERYWHERE IT HURTS!

[M.R. Smith]

I also would like to discuss exactly where the Nameless came from.

[NotDylan7055]

Originally posted by M.R. Smith:

I also would like to discuss exactly where the Nameless came from.

Well, after rereading some Aberration notes, Helena says this in note 26: "For weeks, we've been besieged by monsters that Rockwell either bent to his will or created himself". This implies to me that the nameless were created by rockwell, after injecting himself, finding some random creature and injecting it with element, like he did to the light pet he mentions in note #22. The creature then mutated into whatever the heck those things are, and he decided to make a whole batch of them. I don't know if the Queens and Kings or the regular Nameless came first, but I think Rockwell made the Nameless.

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

Originally posted by M.R. Smith:

I also would like to discuss exactly where the Nameless came from.

Well, we don't have a lot on that, really.
At first I thought it was some kind of wierd, mutated human, but now when I look at them, they don't really have much resemblance aside from 4 limbs and a head. Now, when I look at them it seem like they're some kind of odd combination of a bunch of other things which may or may not include humans. It has very odd features and doesn't really have much of a resemblence to any one creature I don't think. It's got large fangs, oddl placed hair, webbed fingers(only the hands are webbed, not the feet, which is very wierd, since you'd need both to be webbed really) and looking the Nameless' picture in the dossier next to a dodo... their feet are oddly similar, while if you look at the entire leg together, it looks like legs from a procoptodon minus the foot. The arms look rather similar to a rex's arms until you get to the hands, where the claws are webbed. So I'm currently going with some wierd cross of lots of different things.
Worth noting though, the nameless and reaper kings(and therefore reaper queens) are linked together in some way as told in the Aberration notes. I think this means they probably appeared at the same time.

Originally posted by dylan:

Originally posted by M.R. Smith:

I also would like to discuss exactly where the Nameless came from.

Well, after rereading some Aberration notes, Helena says this in note 26: "For weeks, we've been besieged by monsters that Rockwell either bent to his will or created himself". This implies to me that the nameless were created by rockwell, after injecting himself, finding some random creature and injecting it with element, like he did to the light pet he mentions in note #22. The creature then mutated into whatever the heck those things are, and he decided to make a whole batch of them. I don't know if the Queens and Kings or the regular Nameless came first, but I think Rockwell made the Nameless.

Mei encounters nameless before Rockwell mutates:

I was attacked by a pack of small monsters with spines on their backs. In another life, they would have terrified me, but now I fear no beast. I slew many of them, but more kept appearing. Even after killing the largest of them, they did not hesitate.

Only when I neared a strange, glowing pillar did they retreat. They seem to fear the unusual light it emits. I should use that weakness against them.

So they're not one of Rockwell's creations.

[M.R. Smith]

Based on the context of the game, I have my heart set upon the fact that they might be mutated humans. Then I realized that Rockwell is also a mutated human and looks nothing like the Nameless. However, the Nameless greatly resemble a primate. My theory is that they were more crudely mutated (I mean, I guess we could call Rockwell a sophisticatedly mutated), human through mere exposure to molten element, not injection. The first few Nameless looked a lot more corrupted, but then they bred a bit and began to be more like their own new species, looking less like a corrupted being like Rockwell and just a monster.