rez vs pdo

[Judge]

To be honest, I was expecting Lagi to die from the end of Level 4- he's taken nastier knocks than that in the past (most notably from Atolm and the Type_2) and still remained airborne, and the mutated appearance of Base Wing confirmed that he was at far from full power. I hadn't picked up on the Heresey doing the narration, mind (I thought it was Gash) so cheers for that!

I really hope that they'll get the chance to complete the second trilogy which Smilebit talked about, although given Sega's current financial state it's not that likely. There's a lot of interesting stuff added in PDO, and the creation of drones to revive the ancients adds force to the theory that they created the Program deliberately in order to shut down the towers. This means that either the Heresey Program is just as much a servant of the ancients as Sestren or it's been tampered with by an unknown figure, who may have pulled the plug on the systems that Abadd was designed to operate. I just can't shake the feeling that Parts 2 & 3 would have been about Lagi's child (an unanticipated mutant creature, as the Program was expecting its host to remain in Sestren) using its powers against an all-powerful Heresey program and possibly the empire and seekers (who seem to be going off the rails judging by their treatment of Orta).

[Ish]

I'd have to agree with many of the posters that Rez and PDO are quite different. Sure boil it down to the basics and they clearly belong to the same genre of games but PDO certainly layers on a few gameplay elements that are not found in Rez.

Interestingly (or not, probably just interesting to me) it took me a long time to get into PDO. And took me longer to work out why. Coming from Rez and its pumping music I found the audio in PDO to be a bit flat and uninspiring. But having persisted its definetly up there with Rez as a top quality game.

[Canton Province]

I dunno why, but the thought of taking Rez seriously and trying to rinse out score attacks makes me laugh. The score attack is SO basic, its obviously just a lil bonus game. 'Travelling' is where its at. It enables you find the beauty of Rez. You dont rip Rez's play mechanics apart, you get lost in them. Thats the idea. Its not serious; its TRANCE VECTOR HEAVEN.

Chad, for a guy who doesn't even own an xbox to make bold statements about Panzer Dragoon Orta is just WRONG. Even if you did manage to catch a couple of plays round a mates yard, theres no way in hell that would qualify you to judge what the better game is.

Its quite obvious these two games are not directly comparable so I'll just say I MUCH prefer PDO over Rez, and I still love Rez. I re-bought it recently.

[Concept]

I really hope that they'll get the chance to complete the second trilogy which Smilebit talked about, although given Sega's current financial state it's not that likely. There's a lot of interesting stuff added in PDO, and the creation of drones to revive the ancients adds force to the theory that they created the Program deliberately in order to shut down the towers. This means that either the Heresey Program is just as much a servant of the ancients as Sestren or it's been tampered with by an unknown figure, who may have pulled the plug on the systems that Abadd was designed to operate.

True. In Saga, there are a few remaining ancient logs which sound like they wanted to pull the plug on the towers through the creation and utilisation of Azel, the first 'advanced' drone. But having said that I don't think Abadd is quite committed to the cause of resurrecting the ancients as he first makes out.

Remember he says he wants to resurrect his "ancient masters", not necessarily the anicents per se... He could mean other drones... I say this because he seems intent on using Orta's body as a device to harnass other half-human/half-drones. I think Abadd sees the drones as the only race that can return order to the world by maintaining the towers...

Because there are still more of them. Indeed, episode six is set in a tower leading directly underground, and level eight is based in a man-made tower. Ironcially, it seems the will of the ancients is influencing man on a far greater scale, and that perhaps humans are re-evolving back into an ancient level...

Take a look at the new empire, and how they are determined to use the dragonmares as well to control the skies along with the land.

I just can't shake the feeling that Parts 2 & 3 would have been about Lagi's child (an unanticipated mutant creature, as the Program was expecting its host to remain in Sestren) using it's powers against an all-powerful Heresey program and possibly the empire and seekers (who seem to be going off the rails judging by their treatment of Orta).

Well the seekers are no strangers to corruption. The old empire originated from the seekers themselves as they sought to fight against the ancients, but eventually fell prone to their own ambitions to dominate the world. It wouldn't surprise me if the seekers are beginning to turn once more. Without a strong leadearship, such as from Gash for example, they seek to protect their interests by using Orta as a shield of protection from the empire.

The empire tries and invades their turf, they kill Orta etc... But personally, I think the new empire is tricked into thinking they don't need Orta by Abadd, because at the beginning he seems to be working alongside them.

So basically, Abadd is using the empire by promising he will make more drones himself, so they go and attack the seekers to kill Orta thinking they don't need her anymore. This in turn frees Orta and places her right in Abadd's hands, whereby he can lure her to Sestren and hopefully extract the DNA from her body there.

Abadd could go and pick up Orta himself but that isn't his total objective. By tricking the empire into attacking the seekers he places humanity into chaos once more, because there is effectively a war being launched by two parties. Abadd hopes he can take advantage of this situation by building his army and reactivating the towers quietly in the middle of this mess, while the seekers and the empire are slugging it out toe to toe.

Their being manipulated.

Sestren itself isn't actually in Panzer Dragon Orta. I really do believe it was killed off at the end of Saga. Also, half of heresy commits suicide at the end of Orta too...

And perhaps this is also Abadd's doing. If he could trick the Heresy dragon into thinking its work was done in the mortal world then he would have Sestren's space all for himself so he could build and unleash his drone army when he wants...

But Orta doesn't want to play along. In fact, Azel's recording might not even be real. It could be set up by Abadd to help try and sway her to his cause. After all, he does seem to be rather forthcoming with details on Orta's heritage straight after.

I think what stops Orta joining the drones is because the only individuals she has been with that didn't want or demand something from her were the worm-riders, who consequently happen to be human, which she is half of...

[Chadruharazzeb]

Chad, for a guy who doesn't even own an xbox to make bold statements about Panzer Dragoon Orta is just WRONG. Even if you did manage to catch a couple of plays round a mates yard, theres no way in hell that would qualify you to judge what the better game is

I never said Rez was better than PDO, I merely stated that I prefer the former. And if we have to be heavy on the amount of time I've spent on PDO then I'll just say that after x hours I thought PDO wasn't as good as the equivalent time I spent on Rez.

Nothing bold about that, and I'm clearly not the only one here who prefers Rez.

[H-Man]

Rez \o/

PDO is good ......... but Rez was something new - and played in the dark with the sound up can't be beaten

[Concept]

I never said Rez was better than PDO, I merely stated that I prefer the former. And if we have to be heavy on the amount of time I've spent on PDO then I'll just say that after x hours I thought PDO wasn't as good as the equivalent time I spent on Rez.

Nothing bold about that, and I'm clearly not the only one here who prefers Rez.

But if you spent x amount of hours on Orta how could you claim they play "identical"? It's blatantly obvious even without scratching the surface that they are very different in terms of mechanical structure/play controls etc.

[Tokuda]

I never said Rez was better than PDO, I merely stated that I prefer the former. And if we have to be heavy on the amount of time I've spent on PDO then I'll just say that after x hours I thought PDO wasn't as good as the equivalent time I spent on Rez.

Nothing bold about that, and I'm clearly not the only one here who prefers Rez.

But if you spent x amount of hours on Orta how could you claim they play "identical"? It's blatantly obvious even without scratching the surface that they are very different in terms of mechanical structure/play controls etc.

Exactly.

I love Rez, (and clocked everything in the game and got all the endings) so have rinsed the game, but it ultimately it isn`t as satisfying as PDO, and doesn`t play anything like it.

And Chad I seem to recall you saying in other threads that Rez pissed over PDO (and how can you claim that after the fact you`ve obviously not played PDO for more than 5 minutes- you can`t have if you think they aren`t that different)- you didn`t just say that you preferred Rez.

I don`t mean to get personal here (I`m really not), but I must take issue with what you`re saying.

[Chadruharazzeb]

I dunno, maybe I was dreaming or the HAXX0RD copy I played had been hacked by some Rez fanatic.

The version of PDO I SCRATCHED THE SURFACE OF seemed to involve moving a cursor over single or multiple enemies, locking and firing. Funnily enough, so did the version of Rez that I played. Granted you can spin about on PDO and there are different forms you can assume (as there are in Rez to a lesser extent), but otherwise basic gameplay was very similar.

This little faux pas I made will haunt me forever. Alas!

EDIT - Tokuda if I said that Rez pissed on PDO then it was merely my way of supporting Rez. You probably shouldn't take it so literally or personally, it's just my opinion. And a few others, too.

[Tokuda]

I dunno, maybe I was dreaming or the HAXX0RD copy I played had been hacked by some Rez fanatic.

The version of PDO I SCRATCHED THE SURFACE OF seemed to involve moving a cursor over single or multiple enemies, locking and firing. Funnily enough, so did the version of Rez that I played. Granted you can spin about on PDO and there are different forms you can assume (as there are in Rez to a lesser extent), but otherwise basic gameplay was very similar.

This little faux pas I made will haunt me forever. Alas!

Fair enough (and I know we went through this already), but thats like saying DOA3 and VF4 Evo are the same because they involve people hitting eachother.

Just playing with you

[Judge]

Nice ideas, Concept, even if I don't entirely buy into your reading of Abadd's actions. I just can't bring myself to look on Abadd as the mastermind of PDO- he's got "pawn" written all over him. Remember that there's still a lot about the Panzer world that we don't know, particulary the nature of the Divine Visitor and the origins of Lagi's rider at the start of the first game (I had assumed that this was Lundi from Zwei, but PDO's box says otherwise).

To my mind, Abadd distinctly looks like he's being used. I still believe that he's talking about the ancients as his "Masters"- if he was refering to the other drones, surely "brothers" would have been more fitting? Abadd appears to be committed to his original purpose, pledging to circumvent the system failure. My reading of events is that he's been "hacked" by the same force that prematurely activated the Heresey Program (A Dark Divine Visitor?). Think of all the excavations which were needed to bring Azel up from storage, and compare it to the comparativly small-scale work shown in the credits as the empire pulled Abadd out of his cocoon. They were meant to find him and unleash him on the world.

This is the only way I can think of reconciling a number of things about him: the genuine attempt to revive the ancients, the stuttering and scrambled speach and his suicidal repeated attempts to engage Lagi. While I can accept that Azel appears exceptionally human compared to the other drones, I can't believe that Abadd's creators would have left such blatant personality clashes within him, or failed to lay out command directives in case the mechanisms holding the ancients failed. I also doubt that he would have been given such high-level acess to Sestren originally, particulary in light of the measures which were needed in Saga to gain entry. He's been altered, given a new aim that would innevitably force the humans' protector to stand against him. And die in the attempt.

My view of Abadd's actions is pretty much what he claims, with a burning need to be free of his slavery to the empire leading to his "hacked in" desire to manage a drone revolt, which overwrites his original programming. His impulses are destructive, with a needless attack on Lagi after the viewing of Azel's message (I believe that this to be genuine, with Azel's control over Sestren outranking the abilities that the hacking granted to Abadd) and the focussing of all his firepower after the completion of his dragonmare, when flight would have been a more logical option. Remember that Abadd had escaped from the empire long before they decided to target the Seekers to recover Orta. He has little interest in the actions of the humans.

Someone triggered the Program to leave Sestren and obey its directives when there was no chance of the ancients awakening. Someone wanted Sestren's sytems free for his own use. And someone wouldn't have been happy that Lagi was still waiting in the wings for his next strike. And so a plan is implimented, one that will not only threaten the humans which Lagi has given everything to free, but will create a threat which will innevitably target the child of Lagi's former rider.

Everything points to Abadd being intentionally used as a weapon against Lagi.

NB- I'm not 100% sure about this, but the term "Sestren" appears to be being used for both the towers' co-ordination creature (killed in Saga) and the otherdimensional computer system it inhabited (shown in Saga and Orta).

[bowser123]

I was very late getting into Rez (only played it about 3 months ago at work on the PS2) and loved it. So much so that I bought the Dreamcast version and have played it to within an inch of its life. Playing it in the dark with the sound coming through a 5.1 amp is pure gaming bliss. No other game of recent time (bar AC) has engrossed me so much. I love it to bits, especially the last level which tells the story.

I bought an X-Box the week before Orta came out just to play Panzer.
IMO it's the best game on the machine. It's beautiful and so in depth once you get used to it, which admitadely took me some time.

Both games are similar in the basic concept (fly through a pre-determined path, locking onto enemies) but are very different games.
Rez is more of an experience, whereas Dragoon is more about learning the skills to get higer scores.

PDO will probably last me longer than Rez, but if I had to choose my favourite then I would say Rez. No other game of recent times has hooked me so quickly and firmly as Rez has.

[Chadruharazzeb]

This is what I mean:

At the basic level there are certain games which have influenced the gameplay of Rez. In simple terms, Rez has a similar execution to Space Harrier and Panzer Dragoon. It's no surprise to hear that several ex-Team Andromeda are part of the Rez development team.... The control method is extremely similar to Panzer Dragoon in that you do have control over your main character, but that the main purpose is to control the cross hair present on the screen. You place the crosshair over the enemy and press fire

That is all I have been trying to say, it also shows why Rep is a writer and I am a bum.

[Concept]

Nice ideas, Concept, even if I don't entirely buy into your reading of Abadd's actions. I just can't bring myself to look on Abadd as the mastermind of PDO- he's got "pawn" written all over him. Remember that there's still a lot about the Panzer world that we don't know, particulary the nature of the Divine Visitor and the origins of Lagi's rider at the start of the first game (I had assumed that this was Lundi from Zwei, but PDO's box says otherwise).

--Lundi is Lagi's rider in the original Panzer Dragoon. I'm pretty sure that there's a book in the seeker's stronghold library in Saga that strongly hints at this. Not only that, but there are unfortunately a few continuity problems in Orta, as it states in Pandora's Box that the dragon can't reproduce or have offspring. And yet at the end of Orta what do we have? A baby dragon. Also, the dragon in Orta isn't referred to as "Lagi" in Pandora's Box at all, even though we know who it is. Confusing matters even further is the fact that the dragon in Orta has four legs too, kind of like a dog... Yet we know Lagi evolved from a Coolia, a species which is distinctly two-legged.

So... What I'm pointing out is that Smilebit haven't exactly nailed down the series history in full through Orta. It's more than possible that Lundi is the dying rider at the start of Panzer Dragoon.

To my mind, Abadd distinctly looks like he's being used. I still believe that he's talking about the ancients as his "Masters"- if he was refering to the other drones, surely "brothers" would have been more fitting? Abadd appears to be committed to his original purpose, pledging to circumvent the system failure. My reading of events is that he's been "hacked" by the same force that prematurely activated the Heresey Program (A Dark Divine Visitor?). Think of all the excavations which were needed to bring Azel up from storage, and compare it to the comparatively small-scale work shown in the credits as the empire pull Abadd out of his cocoon. They were meant to find him and unleash him on the world.

The one question mark in my mind about the "dark" divine visitor brings me back to the original Panzer Dragoon. We never did find out the dark dragon's rider was...

This is the only way I can think of reconciling a number of things about him: the genuine attempt to revive the ancients, the stuttering and scrambled speach and his suicidal repeated attempts to engage Lagi.

--I think the reason behind the scrambled speech is simply because of a conflicting sense of ideology within Abadd's mind throughout the game. In episode 1 Abadd claims that the world needs "saving". That it's a thing in despair. And yet in episode 7, suddenly Abadd wants to "rule", a totally different line of thought. In my opinion, Abadd says that drones should rule the world because he wants to confuse Orta just as she's at her most vulnerable after discovering her heritage. He wants to throw the girl mentally off balance and then lay it all in her lap, so she acts rashly without thinking things through.

While I can accept that Azel appears exceptionally human compared to the other drones, I can't believe that Abadd's creators would have left such blatant personality clashes within him, or failed to lay out command directives in case the mechanisms holding the ancients failed. I also doubt that he would have been given such high-level acess to Sestren originally, particulary in light of the lengths which were went to in Saga to gain entry.

--I think Abadd's lack of control is due to a lack of understanding of morality. He only goes crazy when Orta questions his need to kill. Put simply, the robot doesn't know. Abadd doesn't perceive or understand the reasoning for Orta's need not to kill, hence the reason why he is bemused she can't kill a simple creature with all the power she has (end of episode 5). Abadd doesn't place any value on life itself and any concept of this messes up with his perception of the world around him.

With regards to Abadd's access... Well, he has the ability inside Sestren to activate the Cradle, so he must have at least some form of heavy-duty access. Even a newcomer like Orta can decide what section of the mortal world she wishes to transport to from inside Sestren's space. This hints that preparations have been made inside Sestren to give clearance to Orta, almost as if her move is anticipated to a degree, or there have been counter-measures put in place just in case she refuses to work with Abadd.

My view of Abadd's actions is pretty much what he claims, with a burning need to be free of his slavery to the empire leading to his "hacked in" desire to manage a drone revolt, which overwrites his original programming. His impulses are destructive, with a needless attack on Lagi after the viewing of Azel's message (I believe that this to be genuine, with Azel's control over Sestren outranking the abilities that the hacking granted to Abadd) and the focussing for all his firepower after the completion of his dragonmare, when flight would have been a more logical option. Remember that Abadd had escaped from the empire long before they decided to target the Seekers to recover Orta. He has little interest in the actions of the humans.

--All interesting points. I partially agree that there could be outside interest, simply because Abadd is prophetic... He keeps mentioning that the world needs saving and that it's “doomed”. This almost suggests as if someone or something has been whispering in his ear or has planted a sense of foresight in him, whether it be true or not. Frustratingly, Abadd never gives any reasons for the impending doom in the world. All I can summarise is that he fears the empire's new resurgence, and that any more interference with the remaining towers (if they are found) may upset the world's eco-balance again.

Although you suggest Abadd may not be interested in humans, his character role is incidentally reversed from the normal in Panzer Dragoon. For example, Crayman starts off as being viewed as pure evil, but as Saga progresses he transforms into a noble man who means well but has rather misguided aims. With Abadd it's almost the reverse. He seems to want to save the world at first, but as the game progresses his aims also get progressively darker. This is why I think Abadd isn't a pawn because I think his personal ambitions grow throughout the game, ambitions which are encouraged because Orta triggers something inside him by asking why he is the way he is (episode 5). That question (IMO) means he starts looking inward instead of outward.

Someone triggered the Program to leave Sestren and obey its directives when there was no chance of the ancients awakening. Someone wanted Sestren's sytems free for his own use. And someone wouldn't have been happy that Lagi was still waiting in the wings for his next strike. And so a plan is implemented, one that will not only threaten the humans which Lagi has given everything to free, but will create a threat which will innevitably target that child of Lagi's former riders.

--Well, the end of every single other Panzer Dragoon game has cumulated in a battle inside or outside a tower. However, in Orta the battle doesn't end in a tower, which kind of almost suggest that there are events unresolved at the end of Orta.... This sort of hints at your theory that there may be outside interests influencing events. But as you say, if this someone isn't human and opposes the ancients, who could it possibly be?

Another theory is that there may have been opposing factions within the ancients, hence the creation of two light and dark divine visitors.

[Judge]

Indeed, and there's a precident for various factions of the ancients in the group of renegade scholars who preserved the D-Units found in Saga after they were ordered to destory them.

There's a bit of confusion as to what species Lagi evolved from. PDO names it as a Coolia (the two-legged pack animal found in various games in the series), but I could have sworn that Zwei refered to him as a mutant "Knouerant" or something of the sort. Still, it's an interesting bit of mirroring, how humans are chosen as riders by Lagi, who was himself selected to host the Program. The tone taken by Pandora's box in PDO makes things difficult- it appears to be going out of its way to avoid spelling things out, by describing "Lagi", "The Blue Dragon" and "Edge's Dragon" from the empire's perspective. I wasn't sure whether to read between the lines that the rider in the first game was Lundi, or whether the speculation as to his identity as a drone/ancient should be taken seriously. I think that the reference to the Dragons' inability to reproduce is a nice reference to Lagi's situation- all his life he's used the powers of the Program dragon data to achieve his ends, yet it's his roots as a harmless mutant animal (with its capacity to reproduce) which allow his legacy to be passed on.

Regarding Orta's acsess to Sestren and control of it, I assumed that she's simply inherited her Mother's genes, equalling her level of authorisation. If Azel's message was genuine, then she would have been expecting her daughter to make use of these powers. I think that Orta's trip throught Sestren is genuinely under her control, as I doubt that Abadd would have the capacity to "arrange" the entry to the Deep Cell.

It hadn't occured to me before just how little we know about the "Dark Dragon" and it's rider. I had assumed that it was the dragon sent by Sestren in Zwei to activate Shelcoof against Lagi, but what's interesting is the evolutionary path taken by Lagi during Zwei. Each of his forms is more heavily armoured than the last, and closer to that of the Dark Dragon seen in the original game, until what I believe to be Lundi's influence pulls him into the radical departure of the Skydart form, and then his classic blue configuration. We'll never be able to resolve this unless another game clear it up, but I was assuming that the ambiguity as to the armoured rider in the box was a hint that this would be explored. There's quite a big time gap here, as the official timeline released with Saga placed that game as being about 120 years after Zwei...

Abadd's preoccupation with "Doom" is interesting, and it would indeed support either theory- he could have recieved undefined impulses from a reprogramming or genuinely fear that humans would ruin the world. It's worth remembering that precognative capacity has been shown before in the Panzer world, when Lundi recieves glimpses of the future at the end of Zwei. I agree that the reversal of Craymen's role is a nice touch (I hadn't spotted it!).

Unfortunately, most of these issues will never be resoved unless future games recieve the go-ahead. Still, it's fascinating to speculate!