That link reminds me that there is a whole range of CMDR's contributing to this forum - most of us are drunk and middle aged in a confused state before bedtime - but occasionally theres a CMDR that makes you wonder what on earth is going on.
Elite lore.
- Thread starter Gwyther
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Ah that's cool, I thought I had really annoyed you, which wasn't my intention at all.
I just had a bit of fun mocking the silly things in game etc, and like @Filthymick420 said, it was for everyone's amusement, as opposed to making fun of your question
No you didn't annoy me, honest
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Ah that's cool, I thought I had really annoyed you, which wasn't my intention at all.
I just had a bit of fun mocking the silly things in game etc, and like @Filthymick420 said, it was for everyone's amusement, as opposed to making fun of your question
That link I put up about the guardians is actually quite useful. It covers all the known stuff that you find on wiki or the canonn site, but then goes to very absurd conclusions, which get rather funny too - especially when you get to the level of the hand-drawn pictures lol! I hope it's useful in any case, and glad I didn't annoy you - was just having a bit of fun at the game's expense!
You're right about that thread - although obviously I linked it for the lulz in that other thread, the lore repository in the first post must have taken so much work to put together and is a genuinely noteworthy effort.
Hell yeah man, very very true on that thread. The level of effort involved is astonishing, and somewhat frightening...!
No you didn't annoy me, honest
Coolio, cheers mate
Totally agree with you on that one Red. I actually still have it open in a tab on my phone which is why it was handy to link. As you say, the funny side of it is priceless, but the amount of time and effort the guy put into complicated all the (accurate) information in the first post, is simply incredible.
Still funny as hell though!!
I believe the real reason why other alien lifeforms were retconned (except for the subsequent dis-retconning of the Thargoids in FFE) was a pragmatic one.
FE2 came with little icons of the people inhabiting the space stations you docked at. They weren't awesome graphics, even by 1990s standards, but they added "the human touch". And they were, indeed, all human. Creating space stations inhabited by avians, felinoids, walking treoids and such like, would have required the creation of a whole bunch of additional graphics. I guess they simply didn't want to go to that much extra trouble.
Furthermore, sentient life in FE2 wasn't spread out over the entire galaxy like it was in original Elite; it was confined to a small "bubble" of space a few hundred LY across, a tiny speck on an otherwise empty galactic map, much as human life in ED was at game launch. There'd be no reason why all the sentient life in the galaxy would be confined to the same region of space as the one where humans lived. True, they could have made a whole bunch of additional "alien bubbles", but given that it was physically impossible for ships to travel more than 2000 LY in the original ED without their hyperdrives breaking down and exploding, so the additional bubbles would have had to have been closer than this, and without incentives to visit them, they'd have been a whole bunch of extra work (designing alien spaceships, space stations, etc) for not a lot of eyeballs.
Thus, the FE2/FFE lore became that while alien lifeforms were rather common in the galaxy (Earth-like planets were probably about 10 times more common in FE2 than they are in ED), alien intelligent life was rather rare.
They never explained why this would be so, but there is actually a good lore reason once you include the Thargoids in the mix: the Thargoids exterminate any alien civilization they encounter, and have been successfully keeping the galaxy sentience-free for millions of years, thus no alien civilization ever lasts long enough to encounter another alien civilization, other than the Thargoids. It's actually quite a logical (if heartless) attitude for the Thargoids to take: rapid extermination prevents the younger alien civilizations from forming empires of their own and meeting up and forging an alliance against the Thargoid threat.
The Guardians and the Humans were presumably much faster than the average civilization in rising from pre-industrial to interstellar technology. The Thargoids presumably obliterate most aliens they meet before they can escape from their homeworlds.
FE2 came with little icons of the people inhabiting the space stations you docked at. They weren't awesome graphics, even by 1990s standards, but they added "the human touch". And they were, indeed, all human. Creating space stations inhabited by avians, felinoids, walking treoids and such like, would have required the creation of a whole bunch of additional graphics. I guess they simply didn't want to go to that much extra trouble.
Furthermore, sentient life in FE2 wasn't spread out over the entire galaxy like it was in original Elite; it was confined to a small "bubble" of space a few hundred LY across, a tiny speck on an otherwise empty galactic map, much as human life in ED was at game launch. There'd be no reason why all the sentient life in the galaxy would be confined to the same region of space as the one where humans lived. True, they could have made a whole bunch of additional "alien bubbles", but given that it was physically impossible for ships to travel more than 2000 LY in the original ED without their hyperdrives breaking down and exploding, so the additional bubbles would have had to have been closer than this, and without incentives to visit them, they'd have been a whole bunch of extra work (designing alien spaceships, space stations, etc) for not a lot of eyeballs.
Thus, the FE2/FFE lore became that while alien lifeforms were rather common in the galaxy (Earth-like planets were probably about 10 times more common in FE2 than they are in ED), alien intelligent life was rather rare.
They never explained why this would be so, but there is actually a good lore reason once you include the Thargoids in the mix: the Thargoids exterminate any alien civilization they encounter, and have been successfully keeping the galaxy sentience-free for millions of years, thus no alien civilization ever lasts long enough to encounter another alien civilization, other than the Thargoids. It's actually quite a logical (if heartless) attitude for the Thargoids to take: rapid extermination prevents the younger alien civilizations from forming empires of their own and meeting up and forging an alliance against the Thargoid threat.
The Guardians and the Humans were presumably much faster than the average civilization in rising from pre-industrial to interstellar technology. The Thargoids presumably obliterate most aliens they meet before they can escape from their homeworlds.
I would humbly suggest that it might be worth putting a * next to the ‘all’ and a bit of a disclaimer. (For OP’s sake, even if for no one else’s.)All my bad jokes aside OP, did you mention the guardians? I don't recall seeing it in your post but I might have just been distracted. If not, there is a great tinfoil thread about them that will give much enjoyment, as it covers all that is known, and some great hyperbolic conclusive too. I know you asked this seriously, and I apologise for my silliness, but the thread I have in mind will make you smile I promise you
Ps - I don't really apologise for my silliness, I'm just trying to be polite
Also, I’m just going to throw in a standard cautionary note for the OP (and anyone else who isn’t aware) - beware the wiki. Not everything is correct and accurate. For example, it will sometimes have info that is <counts...> 4th or even 5th hand. Taking that as canon is pretty risky.
(Edit - separated part replying to the OP's original question into another post.)
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No lore explanation is needed.
ED isn’t the same game universe as any of the previous games. There is a lot of crossover obviously but things from the previous games aren’t canon for ED unless explicitly made so.
As to reasons why the ED universe is the way it is, ED is set in a simulation of the Milly Way, which they’ve set out to make reasonably accurate. (This doesn’t just include things like the stars and planets, but also includes things like the extent of humanity’s expansion into the galaxy.)
Our best info at the moment is that there are zero other alien civilisations in the Milky Way, but that’s based on a very limited capacity to detect and observe, so it could be way off.
However, Braben’s view is that the potential cross section of interaction for alien species is very very small, and so that’s what we see in ED.
For reference, see:
(From 5:22 if the timestamp doesn’t work.)
The whole thing’s worth a watch as well, particularly if you’re interested in lore, and the general nature of the game universe.
There is no lore on this one because Elite Dangerous is descended from the lore of Frontier Elite 2 and Frontier First Encounters (1993 and 1995). The original Elite lore of 1984 concerning sapient animal types was retconned for the Frontier Elite 2.
As you've found, Galcop was also written out of current Elite Dangerous lore by the passage of time, though the "Old Worlds" of Lave, Diso, Leesti, Tionisla etc. from the original game still exist.
There is no lore explanation of the retcon.
I did write about it in my very old fanfiction. In the novellas, Status Quo, Mutabilis, Incursio and Finis I determined that the universes of Elite/Oolite are parallel to that of the 'official' games and diverged at a point in time between Elite and Frontier Elite 2, with the result that the sapient animals escaped via "galactic hyperspace" to another galaxy and shutdown down the galactic hyperspace capability after them, leaving humanity (with its rapacious destructive nature) behind. This also neatly explained why there is no "Galactic Hyperspace" in the subsequent games, unlike the original.
Characters who lived through the events found some of their memories intact, vague recalls that something was different in the past...
None of which is ED canon of course.
You can still read those old fanfic stories here > https://www.ascorbius.com/drewwagarooliteCheers,
Drew.
How about zero G cricket it was mentioned in the original
We don't know whether we actually have Thargoids yet!
Eh? They are in the game dude!
Or do you mean physical thargoid people on legs?
Or do you mean physical thargoid people on legs?
We only have thargoid ships...don't actually know its thargoids controlling the ships! At moment only human's for elite dangerous.
Cool, was just unsure what you had meant