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Theories > Divine Visitor Theory
Written By Geoffrey Duke, July 2003
The Divine Visitor is supposed to be the player who assumes control over Edge. But what if the player took control of the Divine Visitor, an altogether different entity that then occupied Edge? I fail to see the point in holding onto a concrete notion out of some desire to agree with whatever is accepted at this time when the events can be thrown into the realm of reinterpretation with such relative ease.
 
If the leaders of the ancient civilisation, only known as the ancient ones, converted their minds into computer data and uploaded those minds to the Sestren data stream networking the Towers, they would need host bodies to occupy upon retaking the planet after its many millennia period of cleansing and rejuvenation. What better place is there to hide from the bio-weapons programmed to hunt down humanity than Sestren space? Imagine if the Divine Visitor was an actual ancient without such a host. He/she/it leaves Sestren and then downloads itself into the body of Edge. By now Edge has succumbed to a fatal shotgun wound, or has failed to survive his long fall into a deep chasm where a pocket of water lay in wait at bottom which would still have shattered every bone in his body as opposed to cushioning his descent (the water would make no difference: to his body it would feel as solid as concrete), or simply drowned (how long can a man hold his breath underwater?). There's no way Edge could've survived the fall. None. How then could the player, an outsider, save him? Edge is stationary beneath the deep pocket of water for what seems like minutes until a white ball of light, almost transparent were it not for its buzzing vibrant exterior, spirals as it descends silently from far above towards the deathly still Edge. The water sizzles as soon as the ball of energy makes contact with the water to harbinger a dramatic reaction that lights up the entire ruin from bottom to top in a momentary flash of brilliance. Colourful light beams gathering around Edge are pulled into him, interrupting his stillness. Floating in complete darkness, the water becomes clearer and clearer with each passing beam drawn towards Edge. He awakens the very moment the last make their way to him. Believe it or not, Edge is quite literally brought back from the dark jaws of death itself.
 
When we enter our name, the name of the one who controls Edge, before the orb of white light that is the Divine Visitor enters Edge's body, we are inside Sestren space. The coiling patterns of light unique to the domain are swept along and folded in on themselves by invisible currents.
Sestren itself welcomes the return of the Divine Visitor when Lagi and Edge finally confront it in its own domain, if anger directed towards the Divine Visitor's defiance constitutes a welcome. That would imply it was once here before and helps to piece together an explanation. Not only does Sestren say the Divine Visitor has returned with a human in tow, but has disobeyed the will of the ancients. The Divine Visitor couldn't disobey the will of the ancients unless it was one of them or once under their control. The player could not disobey Sestren or the ancients because the player never followed their orders in the first to place *to* disobey them. Sestren reminds the Divine Visitor that their duty is to fulfill the will of the ancients, and continues its verbal assault on the Divine Visitor by condemning it for choosing a new, stray path, where it now ignores its duty. What duty? If Sestren was talking to the Divine Visitor (which it was otherwise it wouldn't have referred to it by name), then we must ask ourselves how exactly the Divine Visitor was ignoring its duty etc (as if an answer to this question was forthcoming). If Sestren is talking to the Divine Visitor, then Sestren's every spoken word applies to it and it alone. The player wasn't disobeying its ancient duty; the Divine Visitor was. Sestren seems to be more worried about the Divine Visitor than the Heresy dragon. Why? How is it the Divine Visitor holds the key to ending the will of an ancient race Sestren was built to implement and protect? Team Andromeda maintained the illusion of Sestren holding a conversation with the dragon when in reality it is talking to the Divine Visitor by the very fact Sestren is speaking to the Divine Visitor (whose goals happen to coincide with the dragon's purpose) in the presence of the dragon. When Sestren notices the Divine Visitor has returned with a human, who at that time are we meant to think Sestren has in mind? The dragon who has brought Edge along for the ride of course. Far be it for us to believe that the Divine Visitor hasn't merely returned with a human, but in a human. The Seekers thought that the dragon was the Divine Visitor and at this point we have no reason to believe otherwise (the Heresy dragon had visited Sestren space in the past, so you might be led to believe Sestren is talking to the dragon). That is, until Sestren Exsis, the AI controlling the whole Sestren domain, is destroyed.
 
Edge wakes up from an inexplicable state of sleep ranging an unknown amount of time into a dreamy reality where he is floating helpless for a second time. A voice, he instinctively recognises as the dragon's, draws his attention. Edge turns his head to find a massive four-limbed creature set against the bright background like a dark shadow. Now that Edge has the opportunity to talk to his friend (part of his dragon friend really, but that's another story), he asks him if he is the Divine Visitor. Edge finds the answer incredible: he is not. It only existed to lead the Divine Visitor to break the spell of the Ancient Age, and ultimately, to give humans control of their own destiny. The voyage that began when it strove to return the world to the hands of the people, a duty spanning thousands of years, was soon approaching an end now that humanity had finally been freed from the will of the ancients.
 
With Sestren destroyed the Heresy dragon now carried the burdensome will of those masters and therefore must be destroyed. This can only mean one thing in my mind: the Heresy dragon had taken control of the Towers, which were the embodiment of the ancients' will. The will of the ancients could only be with it if it was built by the ancients too. The Heresy dragon's purpose to destroy the Towers couldn't have been a part of the ancients' plan, otherwise Sestren would not have resisted. Sestren refers to the Heresy dragon and the coolia it occupied as an impurity; perhaps a virus activated it earlier than planned. Perhaps the Heresy dragon was meant to activate after 10 000 years but because the world hadn't grown into the paradise the ancients envisioned yet, Sestren perceived it as a fatal error running amok in the system and consequently tried to stop it. On one hand, I find it hard to believe that the Heresy dragon did what it was programmed to do without a care in the world, but on the other, the ancients certainly didn't programme one of their own dragons to give humanity control of its own destiny. Still, the people who stole Azel wouldn't have resorted to stealing her if they could simply build their own drones, so I remain firm in the belief that no one other than the ancients could've created the Heresy dragon.
The black Heresy dragon asks the one who dwells within Edge to press the button to pave the way for a new beginning. The Divine Visitor has no choice but to destroy the Heresy dragon if there's going to be any hope for a bighter future, or any future at all. Then the screen fades to black until we press a button on the Saturn controller. Edge then stares into the face of the Divine Visitor (our first person perspective), proving it has now exited Edge's body and that Edge himself can now actually see he/she/it. The Divine Visitor was the player, or so it seems, and yet the player took the form of a very noticeable orb of buzzing white energy -- a gender neutral entity serving as the eyes and ears of the player. It would be very hard not to notice.
 
Here's the best part of the theory: after the player presses a button on the Saturn controller the Heresy dragon doesn't deactivate or isn't destroyed as you'd expect. It and Edge float into the shining tunnel of golden light never to be seen again (Team Andromeda wrote the series to end here). Fans can argue that the Heresy dragon wasn't destroyed at all, but lived to narrate the events that transpire in the the non-Japanese version of Panzer Dragoon Orta from an unseen vantage point inside Sestren. However, shortly thereafter, your screen -- the screen of the Divine Visitor -- turns off like any mechanical motion picture feedback device shutting down (see images above and below). What if by pressing the button you erased your computerized presence inside Sestren? Turned yourself off, so to speak. What if the Divine Visitor was the consciousness of an ancient who wiped the memories of all the other ancients whose minds were translated into computer data from the Sestren data stream? Pressing the button couldn't have shut down all the Towers for one simple reason: now that the will of the ancients was with the Heresy dragon, it and it alone was the only one in any position to deactivate the Tower network, so what, if anything, did pressing the button do? Another idea is that pressing the button turned off whatever hibernation chambers the ancients slept in on the planet. Meaning they were just humans like everyone else. I choose both ideas. I think host bodies were kept frozen for the ancients in preparation for the return of their minds. No human body could survive 10 000 years of hibernation. A drone designed for it, yes, but human bodies are fragile. If anything went wrong, new bodies could be cloned without losing a single consciousness. Sestren's death at the hands of the Heresy dragon left these hibernation chambers vulnerable. The result being the Divine Visitor switching them off, or the same virul impurity controlling the Heresy dragon walking a short path towards their termination in the same manner. The drone Abadd couldn't revive them, because they were all dead. If the ancients were temporarily immaterial -- without bodies -- no wonder they built drones to serve them. Drones would literally get their hands dirty, adding a whole new meaning to the idea of drones doing their dirty work for them. I can't understand why Abadd's masters were so dependent on drones and bio-weapons for survival if they weren't spheres of white energy. Perhaps these ancients were just hibernating. They were an extremely advanced race who built the Tower network to guard the ecosystem; there's no telling what they could accomplish.
 
However, if the Divine Visitor was more than merely the player, it had to be something. An ancient is the first on my list of suspects. If the Divine Visitor was simply the player then why do we keep watching the ending after its monitor shuts down? Why doesn't the game end then and there? The ancients thought of themselves as gods due to the fact they could create sentient lifeforms with the aid of their advanced technology. The very name Divine Visitor betrays the orb's identity: he/she/it was an actual ancient. What better clue is there? The Divine Visitor was given that name for a reason. Even the Heresy dragon is named in such a way as to suggest it was meant to overthrow gods. If the ancients weren't gods, or didn't consider themselves gods, then why was the rogue Heresy dragon called the Heresy dragon? The ancients are considered gods by the current inhabitants of the Panzer world, and dragons are considered to be messengers of those gods, even by the Seekers who had been studying the Ancient Age for over 200 years. When the ancient scientists who recorded the Uru logs describe one of their own dragons as a messenger of the gods, what are we supposed to believe? Even if the ancients weren't gods, they did play god when they started creating life. The Ancient Age is known as the age of the gods and the ancients were the ones who created the dragons. The Heresy dragon sought to end the reign of the ancients; in other words, its [ancient] name defines it as something that rose up against the gods when it has clearly joined in the struggle against the will of the ancients, not any actual gods. The prevailing theme here is self-evident. The Divine Visitor could just as easily be one of the gods of the Panzer world as well as the player. Remember, for an outsider, the player certainly had a real impact on the game world. The Divine Visitor was a part of the story whether we like it or not. Maybe the Seekers thought the dragon was the Divine Visitor because dragons are known as messengers of the gods - something the ancients called the light wing. Extensive research of the Uru ruins (we know the Seekers studied) guided them to the description the ancients bestowed upon their dragon creation.
I refuse to believe the Divine Visitor was nothing more than the player. In-game characters, including Sestren, quite aware of it. Do you really think an AI as ubiquitous and watchful as Sestren would be unaware of the Divine Visitor? The Divine Visitor was the only entity that could bring the Ancient Age to an end, after all, so Sestren would have to be blind not to recognise it. Of course the Divine Visitor is the player, but that doesn't change the fact it was present in the game world to precipitate that end. Games are meant to have no relationship with reality whatsoever. Sestren wasn't aware of the player; it was aware of the Divine Visitor. If the Divine Visitor was the player and just the player, why didn't Edge survive the consequences of his visit to Sestren space? The answer lies in the fact the Divine Visitor kept his body alive until the mission was complete. Once the Divine Visitor separated from Edge, Edge simply died - a separation far from the inconsequential and nearer to the profound. You played the role of the Divine Visitor whose name you could choose like many RPG main characters. Ask yourself why you couldn't change Edge's name. Whether we like it or not, the Divine Visitor existed in the game world. It began its existence in Sestren, resurrected Edge by temporaily inhabiting his body, then left his body a lifeless husk upon departure. My reasoning is: if Edge survived, then he would've left Sestren on the back of the dragon he rode in on. Lagi wouldn't leave Edge behind... unless he was dead. We must also remember that Azel's search for Edge ended in Azel only finding Edge's DNA, but not Edge himself, further leading us to believe that his journey to Sestren was a one way trip, and dare I say, a tragic end to a tragic beginning. Like all true heroes, he sacrificed his life to save the world. Not only was the Divine Visitor the player, but it was also one of the gods of the Panzer world whose reasons for shutting down the Towers were its own. In a world where the ancients were considered gods by the people, the Divine Visitor was also considered something approximating a god, but as we know, gods are far from immortal in this world. The fact that the Divine Visitor was the player doesn't preclude the possibility of it being something else as well in my mind.
Back to Page 1 of the Theories Section
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