Hmmm... Wasn't the Formidine Rift a pitch from Drew to FD? And what we've seen is more Drew's concept being built into the FD tapestry? (Or rather more accelerated to fit with the timings of other threads of the tapestry.)
Drew can chime in if he hasn't rage quitted this game already. From what I understand, Fdev had a little program for authors and provided them some info related to their narrative and worked with the authors as they expanded the story so they can write books that fit into the game universe. Everything was then proofed and approved prior to publication. In other words, the connection to the game was decided by Fdev and any potential ideas that originated with the author, were approved by Fdev. He participated much more than others but Fdev controlled things.
But on a few specifics, the base logs should have been found just before the hyperdictions started. With hyperdictions being mentioned in the logs, I thought it was fairly well established that those bits of the logs were teasers for the player hyperdictions.
Jump misfires and spooky sounds and glowing lights. Nothing really related to hyperdiction the way we know it from thargoids. They're not even remotely near where thargoids are and it wouldn't make sense back then for these things to happen where they happened due to thargoids. The lights always are suggested as being alive in some sense and the source to the jump malfunctions (be them accidental or intentional).
This is very different from what we see with thargoid hyperdiction.
Jacques was UA/TS bombed which is what caused his misjump and the messages talk about the UAs singing and then 'they' finding Jacques. So a definite Thargoid connection there but also possibly something else - Jacques seems to be settled where he is, so if he was found by the Thargoids then he's evidently not worried about them (either that or he knows there's nowhere to hide!), but equally it may have been something else in my opinion.
The damage due to UA bombing occurs without any kind of interaction from thargoids. Malfunctions during jumps due to the jump drive being damaged in addition to the jump being the largest ever attempted both require no intervention from thargoids or other aliens to be believable. We haven't experienced similar malfunctions due to damage because of game implementation decisions, not because that's not how things happen in Elite's universe. In fact, malfunctions due to jump drive damage is dangerous and far from unheard of. But it is unheard of in the game because it hasn't been implemented. But it can be scripted or narrated as having happened since it's supposed to be something that can happen.
Thargoid hyperdiction has only ever been documented when carrying certain thargoid objects/tech. Damage due to UA corrosion is unrelated.
Nothing about any of these instances that mention lights and sounds relating to jump malfunctions have any connection that i've seen to thargoid hyperdiction. Plus, no thargoids when exiting hyperspace has been noted in any of these logs.
(edit) And we know exactly what happened after he dropped out of hyperspace. His logs were preserved online if they're no longer in the game. However, all of that was basically retconned intentionally and unintentionally by Fdev and the game itself by completely not reflecting anything described in the logs. Both due to the botched way Jaques was found and how quickly it was done and in aspects of the game engine that prohibited Fdev from even trying at the time to simulate their own narrative in the game.
My view on Halsey's encounter has always been that it's a reference to the descendants of the Guardian exiles/AI hybrids.
Having said all that, I do still think (or hope anyway!) that there will turn out to be more things that link back to all this much further down the line.
She does mention guardians and what not. But it's not entirely clear if she's being given this info directly or if she's assuming things based on discoveries that were happening at the time.
The Guardians seemed like they would be the second alien race included in the game if they ever do get put in. It feels like they had been building up to that but unless they're just going to re-use a bunch of thargoid assets to do that, i dont know how confident I am that they still are going to put them in the game. They did spend a lot of time fleshing out the details of these different races and it seems like they wouldn't have done that if they weren't going to be in the game on some level. Currently though, i wouldn't put money on anything other than the two types of "thargoids" that we already know about (one in col70, and the one seemingly based around maia).
(edit2)
Additionally, i think the nerfing of space travel due to not having any gameplay involved in hyperspace jumping and supercruise to a lesser extent has negatively impacted a lot of Fdev's long term plans, at least in terms of the lore and game universe. Distant sectors and such were supposed to be mysterious and take a very long time to fully discover and map out, so placing permit blocked sectors in certain places where you intend to implement alien races makes a lot of sense and even if you have a handful of players who take the months long journeys to visit around these areas ...you can easily believe that they maybe just missed all the evidence of aliens etc. But by nerfing distance so hard so that having jump ranges of 50ly is normal and you can reach halfway across the galaxy in literally an afternoon, you make that far less believable. At which point, when fdev does (if they do) put alien races in these permit blocked sectors ...it's going to be really hard to explain why we haven't interacted up until now without sounding ridiculous.
rolleyes
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