We know eventually players are going to be able to build stargates, and we know that some sort of new space (or more precisely, "New world") will be involved as per this image from Fanfest:
So let's dissect the trailer and see what it tells us. Disclaimer: I'm no lore expert like Rhavas of Interstellar Privateer for example, but I'm very curious as to what this end result will be.
0:14 - 0:28 - "From the formless void, there springs an entity more primordial than the elements themselves."
Well that sounds very dire! And who is saying this? Narrator? Very gravelly voice.
0:30 - 0:36 - "In its wake, it will follow a storm."
That makes no sense... unless we change the punctuation to something more Yoda-like: "In its wake it follow; a storm."
0:38 - Scene description says "Theology Council Listening Post" and a location given of "Mamet - Domain Region". Here's what Evelopedia says about the Theology Council:
The last great vestige of the religious sect that once ruled the Empire, the Theology Council has the same role as the supreme court has in other empires. It also acts a moral police and hunter of heretics, which gives it considerable power within the Empire, allowing it to investigate, question and even imprison almost anyone at its whim.Mamet is a low sec system in Domain two jumps from the border of Tash Murkon and Providence regions. A few stations, lots of stargates, nothing else special and nothing mentioning the Theology Council.
0:40 - 0:45 - "The prophecy is true. The heretics have constructed the gate."
UPDATE: From the 2nd episode of the new Hydrostatic podcast I learned that the prophecy is one in the description of the Erebus Gallentean titan which reads:
From the formless void's gaping maw, there springs an entity. Not an entity such as any you can conceive of, nor I; an entity more primordial than the elements themselves, yet constantly coming into existence even as it is destroyed. It is the Child of Chaos, the Pathway to the Next.Interesting. The line I find most intriguing is the "appetite of nothing expands over the world". I have thoughts on that in the conclusions.
The darkness shall swallow the land, and in its wake there will follow a storm, as the appetite of nothing expands over the world.
From the formless void's gaping maw, there springs an entity.
Dr. Damella Macaper
The Seven Events of the Apocalypse
0:45 - 0:47 - "It must be destroyed."
Male speaker, I assume talking to the female voice we just heard, referring to the aforementioned gate.
0:48 - 0:49 - Scene switch, out in space now. Scene description says "Drekar Alliance Command" and subtitle of "Deadspace Construction Facility". The "Drekar" alliance was previously seen in the Causality trailer.
0:50 - Caldari Leviathan titan.
0:52 - 1:05 "Commanders, its the dawn of a new era. Today we hold the key to new worlds, wealth, and our independence."
I'm going to ignore overall the Dust / Valkyrie / Capsuleer working together component in this post because part of me thinks its just marketing and pipe dreams and interests me less than what this trailer means for the development of Eve.
So who is talking? Some overlord with obvious alpha-male voice proclaiming they have "the key to new worlds". So this big stargate we saw the Amarrians getting angry over obviously is the key to new worlds and they are about to open it. Once open, they have access to its resources for the wealth, but independence from whom? The empires?
1:08 - 1:12 - "Once the gate is active we'll change our world forever."
So is it a gate that opens a wormhole that cannot be closed or destroyed? Can there be only one that has to be fought over?
1:15 - Scene switch, descriptions reads "Imperial Fleet Staging Area" with a subheading of "Aridia Region".
1:17 - 1:20 - "The fleet awaits your command, my lord."
Looks like these guys are not going to let that gate get activated if they can help it. Those meddling Amarrians, always putting their Apocs in other people's faces!
1:30 - 1:34 - "We're not aborting the sequence. Prepare for battle."
Okay, gravelly voiced alliance leader! Apparently the big stargate has a EMP ignition zone which we don't know is a feature of a bug. Who am I kidding!? Its a bug that's been turned into a feature! Engineers twenty thousand years in the future are still engineers.
2:01 - 3:02 - Big cinematic fight. Damn cool looking, but not what I'm writing about today.
Interesting note: the capsuleer fleet has a mix of ship types from Caldari, Gallente, and Minmatar but didn't see any Amarr ships. Cinematic contrivance for visual appeal?
2:32 - 2:34 - "*garbled*-ing fuel is online. Clear the ignition zone now."
2:35 - 2:38 - "Negative! We defend the gate!"
For the life of me, I can't make out that first word. Sounds like "Re-tuning" or "Refueling". And of course gravelly voiced generic leader wants to defend the gate, he's a safe distance away. I sense a fail cascade in the future...
3:03 - "Ignition complete." EMP detonation and the gate is active, destroying the fighting fleets. Fuck you, gravelly voiced leader.
3:24 - - "In its wake, it will follow a storm."
Conclusions:
On the surface, we can draw some pretty safe conclusions. Capsuleers will be able to build these gigantic stargates that lead to new space with lots of resources to allow the alliances that build them to become independent of the Empires. I kind of thought they were independent already out there in null space so I don't know exactly what that means, but whatever.
The empires, or at least the Amarrians, are not happy about this (but when are they ever happy?). Does this mean building stargates will have actual in game consequences for those alliances in empire space? HA! Probably not but one can hope.
So are the Amarrians really afraid of this new stargate due to the prophecy, or are they using it as an excuse to try and knock down the capsuleers and prevent them from accruing more wealth and power? It could be a combination of the both. As for the prophecy itself, I find it very interesting and suggestive of a new NPC type, perhaps some rogue drone type AI that humans lost control of...
Here's where I whip out my crystal ball and make some wild ass predictions.
I think that the stargate leads back to space near Earth. The Amarrian empire is pretty old, not as old as the Jove or Sleepers but oldest of the still alive empires. They might have some cultural knowledge of some bad things that happened on/near Earth prior to the New Eden wormhole being closed. Did the wormhole really accidently / spontaneously collapse or did someone close it to protect New Eden from the encroaching danger? I think some type of advanced AI tech got loose near or on Earth and started to dis-assimilate everything. I am starting to suspect that the New Eden wormhole was purposely closed to save humanity in New Eden.
Stargates are paired in New Eden and both ends have to be functional for a transfer through a temporary wormhole to work. This capsuleer alliance built stargate seems to not require a pairing so its endpoint could be random in the new space much like wild wormholes are today. In the trailer the stargate is massive, perhaps bigger than a station. The image from the fanfest presentation says "Stargate construction and control". In the trailer we saw Dust boarding parties fighting defenders of the stargate... can these things be constructed and then fought over? Can you take them like a station? Can they be destroyed? I predict yes to these questions, and in addition I predict that outposts will be destroyed as well when this plan comes to fruition.
Brace yourself.
I was wondering when someone was going to tear apart that video piece by piece. :-) Now I feel like going through it myself to pick up on the things you pointed out (that I missed, of course).
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of a TERRIFYING enemy that nobody knows what the hell to do with, and your thought about the New Eden gate having been closed intentionally is seriously intriguing.
This. The New Eden gate being intentionally closed would be an awesome monkey wrench in the lore.
DeleteSome really good wild-ass guessing! No idea if any of it is true or not, but it all sounds fun to me.
ReplyDeleteAnd would it not just drive all those "PvE should be removed from the game" nutters even MORE round the bend if massive NPC fleets started showing up blowing up null sec holdings for any group that built a gate, and the null sec cartels actually had to put together defense fleets against hugely powerful NPC's, and they actually LOST stuff, with no gain?
ReplyDeleteGood breakdown - you beat me to it. I do hope to do one but more specifically on the Prophecy of Macaper. Thanks for the shout out!
ReplyDeleteThe video actually has closed captioning. I switched it on in full screen mode, and that helped make sense of some of the parts that are harder to make out. The part before the command to defend the gate is "Retaining field is online."
ReplyDeleteThe Prophecy of Macaper refers to the advent of the capsuleers as one of the signs of the Apocalypse.
ReplyDeleteThey are the "Children of Chaos" that keep "constantly coming into existence even as it is destroyed". "The Pathway to the Next" refers to what the Capsuleers will bring in their wake when they build their stargate
"The darkness shall swallow the land, and in its wake there will follow a storm, as the appetite of nothing expands over the world" Refers to the consequences of their actions, how capsuller's greed "appetite of nothing" will give them the power to destroy the empire.
Great piece kirith!
ReplyDeleteMy own suspicion is that the wormhole was closed at the "Earth" end, not to protect New Eden from something on Earth, but rather to protect Earth from what was discovered then in New Eden.
ReplyDeleteOur empires are just now reaching the limits of that which existed at the collapse of the New Eden wormhole. We have found again, what the Amarr histories-turned-apocrapha-turned-prophecy heralded. These Amarrians sought to stop what the Earth-end folks stopped eons ago.
The Earth may have been saved, but with the new Gate(s) in the hands of capsuleers the Empires will be unable to stop their use.
Whatever is on the other side will be able to destroy the four empires, with only the capsuleers holding the breach between the empires and the danger.
Nulsec won't be the place of ultimate conflict between capsuleers - nullsec will become the proving grounds to identify those that can push back the oncoming darkness.
It reminded me of Iain M Banks description of the universe in the book Excession - the universe we know being like the skin of an onion, there's a younger universe below it, going deeper and deeper until you reach the endless Big Bang at the center which constantly spews out more young skins (universes). What if you could build a gate to step down to a younger universe or up to an older universe? What could you alter there? What rules would differ? Who might you meet? Certainly some older universes would have occupants "more primordial than the elements themselves" and I don't think religions would go crazy about the concepts proposed by going either way. What if you drilled all the way down to the Big Bang, "The child of chaos and the pathway to the next"?
ReplyDeleteThe nice heretic declaring lady may be a Sister of Eve. They're not all that fond of capsuleers, and constructing a gate, which they regard as divine, would be heresy for them.
ReplyDeleteThat, and they'd be the first to be ticked off if someone made a gateway to heaven without them.
They also have a history of collaboration with the Amarr (hence the Amarrian alloys on their 'exploration' ships).
The mixture of races is probably a nod to the eclectic nature of the new Mordu's Legion ships, since each has a nomenclature from races apart from Amarr. Most likely just an artistic nod, but it does add another wrinkle in the tin foil. I haven't heard anything about who is actually hiring the Legion (which is in itself suspicious considering the DUST announcements).
I don't believe the woman's voice is a Sister of Eve. It's more likely that it is the voice of Empress Jamyl Sarum and the hooded man is Lord Victor Eliade, Jamyl's closest adviser and the only other person she trusts. Although they may be located in a Theology Council station, it does not mean that they are necessarily the heads of the Council, otherwise the hooded man would look like the CEO of the Theology Council in the game (which he looks nothing like; see for yourself next time you log into EVE).
ReplyDeleteAlso, at the end of the Templar One, The Other takes complete control over Jamyl's mind. So she is no longer acting at the best interests of the Amarr Empire. There is a connection to Sleepers, Sansha, and the Jove to that as well.
I'm not sure what the Prophecy is referring to that is on the other side of that gate, but it is apparent, judging by the wording of the Prophecy, that it is an actual entity. It would be very interesting to see a whole new part of space with its own history timeline to add to the lore. It would also be interesting to meet another lost race of humans, or even a new species of intelligence that humans have yet to encounter in the Eve Universe.
I'm excited =D