The Purpose of the Sphinx' Questions

[moira.lachesis]

Idk but to me, they seemed never threating nor testing. I'm certain every answer would've been accepted. And there was no immediate threat anywhere, albeit certainly a warning. This little interview seemed very much like a socratic lesson to me.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3073138430

[bvrakvs]

Real reason behind those questions can be deduced from the image below;
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/098/586/262.png

[moira.lachesis]

I'm referring to 1k's reply to Byron's team enquiring about the purpose of the Sphinx' questions. You can call it a threat, a test, a nuisance, meaningless. You can't call it a lesson or a warning. Might be a translation thing, warning and threat are related words.

[Charlweedo]

Currently, I'm pretty confident there is no "purpose" it's just flavor dialogue. Which I don't like BTW. I can't give the answers I want, and it has no impact on gameplay. So it's just a waste of my time.
The answers I want to gave are like: "The humans took their gods with them into oblivion, and none of your mythological events ever happened. If you have a REAL question, ask that."

[moira.lachesis]

It's the Sphinx. She's famous for being cryptic.

Purpose refers to the perspective of the characters, not the player or the creators of the game.

[Tenrec772]

The way I look at it...

Who is the Sphinx a part of? What sort of questions is this character asking and what is their relevance to that person? To your society, specifically this character's inner turmoil regarding society? Her personal struggles?

And how do they relate to the major themes in this story?

Personally I think the Sphinx is asking you because she is also looking for new answers - she's just thought of every answer you're about to give and is resistant on settling. She's caught in a loop.

Almost a bit Milton-esque (if we think of his role from the first game, at least).

She's also sussing you out IMO, but not like in a "ah yes, answer this the right way and you get a reward" manner, more like a "I'm still trying to understand who you are."

[Ano]

The point is not the "ingame dialog," but to break the forth wall and speak to the player, educate the player and let them think. - The problem is that you can just answer after this in at most 5 not fullfilling ways. Maybe you can see this as the limitation of the human mind or a bad game design decision or just put it down as meaningless dialog you can skip. There are no choices in The Cryptic Dialogs which are meaningfull. You can answer things like "i'm a robot" and nothing will change. as the world will never change if an old man yells at clouds.
At the end the only thing you can take out of it is what your own thinking is and even if you could not have given your question to the game you now know your own answer to the question.