I gotta admit, through this thread i was wondering "What would Dreamstate think?" given i remember your activity in this space... and I'm genuinely surprised that's your stance (that's meant to sound positive, but the way)
That's an interesting take on things though, hadn't thought of the three sites as being representative of the phases of Guardian civilisation.
I've been away for a while, so I think it's given me a fresh perspective or angle on the Guardians ^^ I'm glad I've surprised, I'll take that!
I think we've all been too obsessed wondering if there are hidden meanings in the Ruins or Structures. If we back off and think for a moment, we have to realise we need to see how the Guardians viewed their place in the universe, narratively speaking, than thinking rigidly "Frontier has hidden some type of meaning for us to discover".
Going back over the logs, the evidence for this goes all the way back to Ram Tah's 1st & 2nd missions where we uncover the lore. We sort of missed out the parts of what made the Guardian society who they were, and why and how they did what they did.
The Guardians began to learn their place in the universe once the Thargoids had shown up. It taught them a lesson that they aren't the only evolved gardners floating around out there. This is when, I believe, since each Guardian versus Thargoid site contains the Alpha Ancient Ruin, that these Shrines were built soon after the Thargoid War to honour those lost at Barnard's Loop by the Guardian society as a whole - so these were built first in every corner of the galaxy.
But, just like humanity with the Far God cult, the Guardian's developed their own versions of them - no doubt, probably eerily similar to the Far God cult.
This eventually spurred their traditional spirituality into a fullblown religion, where they hated "technology" and "AI". This led to the Homeworld Civil War, which is represented, I believe, by the Beta Ancient Ruin - it shows the circular key symbol we're all very familiar with - marked with a single, elongated diamond border, followed by the much smaller circular symbol in the bottom left-hand corner (this either represents they Homeworld or the fledgling "progressives" or "exiles" they kicked off planet).
That small circular symbol then bloats into a second "tribe" (one of the titles of the audio logs is titled "two tribes" I believe, perhaps even in the codex). This is represented on the picture I linked, which I expect you saw, for the Gamma Ancient Ruin.
All of these Shrines were built in systems wherever they had a conflict rage (but not all).
The important detail here to remember, though, is this: if there are systems that lack one or more of these types of Ancient Ruins, it can tell you many things.
For instance, the obvious ones are the Guardian VS Thargoid surface sites. These only contain Alpha ruins. This means these systems were long abandoned after the Thargoid War, but before the first two civil wars.
If there are no other Shrines in the system, except Beta, for example, it means the traditionalists had a single claim to that system soon after the First Civil War. It would have been a relatively new system that was populated after the Thargoid War, but before the Second Civil War happened.
Any system containing a Gamma Ancient Ruin is defacto a system that had an ongoing conflict - likely both tribes warring, much like a human contested system.
Any system containing just Guardian Structures with no Ancient Ruins is defactor a Progressive controlled system with no Traditionalists present. These you will find only inside the main Guardian bubble (there are no Guardian Structures beyond that in any of the far flung nebula clusters).
So, there we have it really. Any Guardian areas beyond the Guardian Bubble are basically the Traditionalist factions fleeing from the losing conflict (which, again, can be seen in the Gamma Ancient Ruin, where obelisks are arranged in such a way to resemble ships fleeting from the technologically superior Progressive tribe).
Which means, really, if we have missed anything to claim more hybrid technology, it'll be resting in the original Guardian bubble somewhere at a Guardian Structure (or not... looking at you Fdev).
Any Shrines we find outside the bubble are refugees. All three ruins are a story, something they developed into their religion.
In a way, it's a bit like the biblical story of Exodus. The Guardians just made their Shrines their bibles aswell.
A part of me wonders if the Gamma shrine was actually created by the AI, since it shows the two tribes in conflict with one another. But, unless any evidence crops up to support that hypothesis, I'm still going to draw my conclusion that all the Shrines were created by the Traditionalists.
If anything, I believe the technology on all of those Shrines could have been added by the Constructs after the Guardians had been destroyed, since it makes no sense to cover the Shrines with Obelisks and power sources if you are a tribe that believes in no higher technology - however, if we pick and choose, it was the AI they deemed unnatural. So we could go either way on those ideas.
1drv.ms
