Real Identity ![G5]

[Shaper Twilight]

Just want to ask can I at least get to know the real identity of my char. if so., where ..?

[Geneforgeisformeyukkyu]

Jeff didn't include the real identity of your character, he left it up to your imagination for the most part.

[Lilith]

The most popular fan theory is that the main character in Geneforge 5 is the main character from a previous Geneforge game, probably Geneforge 4. It's reasonably consistent with the facts, for the most part.

[Micawber]

Did we establish / guesstimate how long has passed since the earlier games? The main playable characters from G1-G3 should also be plausible candidates, I would think. In case you picked one of the older classes (shaper, agent or guardian) out of pure nostalgia

[Slawbug]

G1 is probably too old, although with Geneforge alterations who knows. G2 seems unlikely. G3 is quite plausible, particularly in conjunction with the Monarch hypothesis. Monarch fits the G5 PC about as well as the G4 PC does, and while it isn't certain, the comments that Alwan, Greta, and Litalia make about Monarch in G4 make it sound quite possible that Monarch is the G3 PC gone mad.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

G2 is especially unlikely because conversations with Litalia in G5 indicate that she's been pretty thoroughly retconned into the G2 PC.

 

Also, I'm not sure if people have mentioned the following before, but if they have, I haven't seen it. I think there's a pretty strong argument against the G5 PC being the G4 PC. It just doesn't work with the timeline the games give us. G4 takes place ~7 years into the war, while G5 takes place ~10 years in. Vener in Stormhold says: "When I saw you. It was about ... three years ago. I was patrolling a road in the Mera-Tev. South of Mera." In Rawal's journal, it says: "Subject was found wandering at base of Drypeak Mountains. Complete memory loss. Showed signs of long travel and exposure to wilderness, so dementia may not have struck at that location."

 

If G5 starts exactly 3 years after G4, then Vener encountered the G5 protagonist as an animalistic amnesiac at around the same time the G4 protagonist arrived at Southforge Citadel. Even if we assume that G4 starts in early year 7 and G5 in late year 10, the G4 protagonist would still have to go through all the events of G4, then go insane somehow, then get to the Drypeak area (while insane, and thus probably tending to meander), get captured by some shaper, and taken to the Mera-Tev where Vener sees him/her, all in less than a year.

 

I submit that if we take the timeline laid out in G4 and G5 as canonical, it is extremely unlikely that the G5 PC is the G4 PC.

[Lilith]

On the other hand, Jeff has never been very good at keeping timelines straight.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: FnordCola

G2 is especially unlikely because conversations with Litalia in G5 indicate that she's been pretty thoroughly retconned into the G2 PC.

Absolutely not! Litalia's backstory has shifted from one game to the next. She likely was in a position similar to the PC, but the details don't fit for her to be the PC. For one thing, when you leave the valley in G2, Ghaldring is still incubating in a sealed chamber -- he is not stalking you in the forest to gain your allegiance.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

As has been pointed out before, the canon in subsequent games never quite matches the endings of previous games. Litalia mentions "The previous Shaper sent to deal with the situation had not succeeded." On the one hand, this suggests that said shaper might have been the G2 PC. If it was, however, this line and Litalia's other dialogue in G5 imply that this other shaper (if it was the G2 PC) didn't do anything worthy of note. And of course, that certainly doesn't accord with the G2 endings either.

[Micawber]

Except, of course, the ending you probably saw most frequently. You know, the one with the fyora pining at your feet.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Heh. True enough. Of course, that still rules out the G2 PC as the G5 PC, unless the thing that drove him/her insane was a controversial experiment in cryonics that both brought the G2 PC back to life and sent them ~25 years into the future.

[Agnessa]

Originally Posted By: FnordCola

If G5 starts exactly 3 years after G4, then Vener encountered the G5 protagonist as an animalistic amnesiac at around the same time the G4 protagonist arrived at Southforge Citadel. Even if we assume that G4 starts in early year 7 and G5 in late year 10, the G4 protagonist would still have to go through all the events of G4, then go insane somehow, then get to the Drypeak area (while insane, and thus probably tending to meander), get captured by some shaper, and taken to the Mera-Tev where Vener sees him/her, all in less than a year.

I submit that if we take the timeline laid out in G4 and G5 as canonical, it is extremely unlikely that the G5 PC is the G4 PC.

How does Shaila sound as a candidate for G5 PC? It's a bit tight, but I could see an attempt to help her by the Shapers going horribly wrong, resulting in the condition that the G5 PC is in when Vener saw her. And since her destination is unknown when we see her sailing off in early G4, it does seem possible.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

The timing's still slightly iffy, but not damningly so. I think the real problem is the number of people who mention the G5 protagonist seeming familiar. Greta would know her, obviously, but Alwan seems less likely: the impression I get is that Crowley intended to send Shaila somewhere pretty far off to help her recover, and one would think that if Shaila met up with Alwan around the time the G4 protagonist did, we would've heard something of it in G4.

 

Litalia seems to be the real obstacle for this theory, though: she's nowhere near Southforge Citadel during G4; the farthest south she gets is the Fens of Aziraph, and even seems to be a fair bit into the past. It's possible that Shaila spent time in Burwood and near to Litalia before using the Geneforge, but she would have been just a prospective then, and probably not too notable to the woman who leads a substantial portion of the rebel war effort.

 

It also seems a bit weird from a narrative standpoint: Shaila, while interesting, is a minor character, and G5 hints that the PC was a pretty big deal in his/her past life.

 

Still, while I think these factors make it pretty implausible that Shaila would be the G5 PC, none of them render it actually impossible. If anything, the timeline of the series makes it more likely that Shaila, rather than the G4 PC, is the G5 PC. I still favor the idea that the G3 and G5 PCs are the same person, and also possibly Shaper Monarch.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: FnordCola

Litalia seems to be the real obstacle for this theory, though: she's nowhere near Southforge Citadel during G4; the farthest south she gets is the Fens of Aziraph, and even seems to be a fair bit into the past. It's possible that Shaila spent time in Burwood and near to Litalia before using the Geneforge, but she would have been just a prospective then, and probably not too notable to the woman who leads a substantial portion of the rebel war effort.

The game doesn't say that Litalia actually recognizes the PC, just that she is interested in the PC.

Dikiyoba names the G5 PC Shaila whenever Dikiyoba chooses the shocktrooper class. It seems to fit.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Well, they do have the same character model.

 

On the subject of Litalia, she claims she doesn't know who you are, but she could be lying. Given the way the game frames it, this seems at least as likely as not:

 

"She thinks carefully before she responds. 'No. I do not know who you are. But I do know that you, like me, have been altered, forever separated from our kind by Shaper magic.' You try to tell if she is lying or not, but her face is blank. For all you know, you bore a great grudge against her once. There is no way of knowing yet."

 

Still, at least it's not certain that she knows you.

[Waladil]

Originally Posted By: Ouranosaurus

Dikiyoba names the G5 PC Shaila whenever Dikiyoba chooses the shocktrooper class. It seems to fit.

'Course, I name all my female characters Shala, and shocktrooper is my personal favorite class. But that's coincidental. (I name all my male characters Waladil.)

And Shaila is quite a possibility... Even though she's minor, most of her history is vague enough to rate interaction with any other given character. If she did meet Litalia, I'd suspect that it was after the PC meets her in GF4. She was Shaped by the Geneforge, but I get the impression Litalia saw her as more heavily Shaped than that. Meaning canisters.

I will give you all a grain of salt for my comments: It has been a long time since I played GF4, and I've never beaten 5 as a Trakovite so I don't know all of Litalia's dialogue. But I'm still allowed opinions, right?

[Ceiling Durkheim]

I'm confused by "but I get the impression Litalia saw her as more heavily Shaped than that. Meaning canisters." Saw her as that when?

[Waladil]

When I spoke to Litalia in GF5 (I used the female pronoun because I play as a shocktrooper) she very much seems to know the PC before, although she denies it. If we assume that Shaila is the GF5 pc then she would have had to meet Litalia after Shaila met the GF4 pc, because she met the GF4 pc right after she was first Shaped by the Geneforge and became an important person, rather than a low-level mage.

 

The way Litalia acts to you in GF5 highly implies Litalia already knew you before GF5. The way she acts says to me that when she knew you before you were a typical rebel lifecrafter; canister-mad. Unable to control yourself. Obsessed with power. So, in this scenario, Shaila would have used the canisters to become more powerful. Maybe she regained her sanity, maybe not. One of the two.

[Agnessa]

Well, for theories--here's a few of mine:

 

Monarch = GF1 PC (via the 'used the Geneforge then destroyed it' ending where the PC is last seen stalking off into the wilderness being a target of Shapers and raising armies of creations).

 

GF3 PC goes on to be horrified by everything that happened during the days since the attack on the school, and in a "pox on everyone's house" starts the Trakovites, but being a purist (unlike Litalia) dies an anonymous death somewhere a couple years before GF4 starts. This would also explain both Alwan and Greta being loathe to admit to having traveled with the GF3 PC.

 

As far as Shaila as GF5 PC, I think it's not impossible that she could've been brought through briefly encountering Alwan (who hardly would've deigned to mention anything of that nature to a lowly freak like the GF4 PC especially if Shaila's tenuous hold on sanity had snapped in the interim after she was last seen in GF4).

 

While Shaila's definitely a minor character in GF4 (and quickly spirited off), she was a person of enough interest to get the rebels *and* the Shapers targeting her for different purposes. To me, this suggests that she had been up to a great deal more than simply living in the Boiling Cavern and being a bit unglued from her experience of being Geneforged, and we don't know too much about her career prior to running through the Geneforge. She might've been much more significant (therefore they were expecting great things from her and really disappointed when she went mad). In any case, I like Shaila as an option much better than the GF3 PC, although war is a big enough thing that some other character might have been involved but never encountered during the GF4 PC's wanderings.

[Tracer Bullet]

Shaila, eh? I hadn't thought of that. It fits the facts, I'll give you that, but there's another possibility.

 

Ahem.

 

The G5 PC was found in the Drypeak mountains. Madmen have been known to unconsciously fall into old habits.

 

Conclusion: G5 PC was a G2 character.

 

The G5 PC has most likely used a Geneforge in the past.

 

Conclusion: Phariton, Barzahl, and what-his-face the Awakened researcher are the best candidates.

 

Phariton was sufficiently obscure and "faded out" well enough to be a candidate for the G5 PC and Monarch, and possibly both.

[Triumph]

Except that none of the G2 crazies had a chance to use a Geneforge. They make better candidates for Monarch. The only Geneforge around in G2 was drakon-only, and killed all others.

[Tracer Bullet]

I never even got a chance to try using it, and didn't know it was deadly. I blew it up in Easss's face.

[Dantius]

Remind me again who Shaila was? Was she the agent you meet up with in the basement of the first area in G3?

 

I need to do a runthrough of all the Geneforge games again sometime soon, once I get off my Bioware kick.

[Mod.]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Remind me again who Shaila was? Was she the agent you meet up with in the basement of the first area in G3?

Shaila was your first quest from Greta in G4. You had to eliminate her after she went crazy after using the geneforge.

[Grimm]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

G1 is probably too old, although with Geneforge alterations who knows. G2 seems unlikely. G3 is quite plausible, particularly in conjunction with the Monarch hypothesis. Monarch fits the G5 PC about as well as the G4 PC does, and while it isn't certain, the comments that Alwan, Greta, and Litalia make about Monarch in G4 make it sound quite possible that Monarch is the G3 PC gone mad.

If you let Monarch live, he says he'll flee into the western continent by heading through the southern pass. Which means that several months after the PC arrives at the southern citadel, which happens 3 years before the events of G5, there's a crazy shaper wandering around the Drypeak region. According to the timeline, Monarch seems to be the most coherent candidate.

[Tracer Bullet]

Amnesiac = Shanti's apprentice.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Sage of Numenor

Amnesiac = Shanti's apprentice.

Amnesiac = Shanti, reanimated by Drakon Shaping.

[Tirien]

Right..becuase this explains the pc's gender/class/race. Never knew that Shanti was a servile. Or a guardian.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Amnesiac = Goettsch, post Atkins diet-induced stroke.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Tirien

Right..becuase this explains the pc's gender/class/race. Never knew that Shanti was a servile. Or a guardian.

I was being facetious, first of all. Second, I never knew that Monarch, Phariton, the G1-3 PCs, and any of the other theories besides the G4 PC were serviles, able to changer their gender, etc.

[Tracer Bullet]

I didn't know Shaping extended into necromancy. I'm DEFINITELY a Trakovite now.

[Randomizer]

Necromancy is a magic skill that is used by some Shapers. All sides seem to engage in it to some degree along with demon summoning. It makes it harder to find a side that is totally good.

 

Starting in Geneforge 1, every time you turn in a spy, a little red spot keeps appearing for all the factions.

[Shaper Tristan]

Originally Posted By: Grimm

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

G1 is probably too old, although with Geneforge alterations who knows. G2 seems unlikely. G3 is quite plausible, particularly in conjunction with the Monarch hypothesis. Monarch fits the G5 PC about as well as the G4 PC does, and while it isn't certain, the comments that Alwan, Greta, and Litalia make about Monarch in G4 make it sound quite possible that Monarch is the G3 PC gone mad.

If you let Monarch live, he says he'll flee into the western continent by heading through the southern pass. Which means that several months after the PC arrives at the southern citadel, which happens 3 years before the events of G5, there's a crazy shaper wandering around the Drypeak region. According to the timeline, Monarch seems to be the most coherent candidate.

It's been a while since I played gf5, but isint the southern pass on the bottom left of the map while drypeak is a bit off the map all the way on the bottom right?

[Slawbug]

The Southern Pass is on the bottom left of the G4 map, which is immediately adjacent to the bottom right of the G5 map. So geographically it does fit.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Sage of Numenor

I didn't know Shaping extended into necromancy. I'm DEFINITELY a Trakovite now.

Necromancy is completely forbidden by Shaper law. The only people we ever see use it are doing it illegally and are usually pretty crazy.

Dikiyoba.

[Tracer Bullet]

Oh. I hadn't noticed.

[Lord Safey]

The only instances I have seen shapers messing with necromancy the play they did in usually gets sealed of and quarantine kind of stuff.

[Shaper Tristan]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

The Southern Pass is on the bottom left of the G4 map, which is immediately adjacent to the bottom right of the G5 map. So geographically it does fit.

Ah, that's right gf4 and 5 are on opposite sides of terrestia. In that case I would think it's awfully coincidental monarchs destination and your founding place are the exact same, but maybe Jeff is just trying to tease us.

[Tracer Bullet]

The intro specifically says that the rebels captured a THIRD of Terrestia. So there's another unmapped section in between G4 and G5.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Sage of Numenor

The intro specifically says that the rebels captured a THIRD of Terrestia. So there's another unmapped section in between G4 and G5.

No, the area map of G4 is significantly smaller than that of G5, and wouldn't think it a stretch to say that it's half as large, and this a third of Terrestia.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Sage of Numenor

The intro specifically says that the rebels captured a THIRD of Terrestia. So there's another unmapped section in between G4 and G5.

Last time I checked, as of the intro of G4 the Rebels had not captured the entire G4 map -- far from it.

If you're talking about the G5 intro, we know the Rebels are more or less in control of eastern Terrestia, but it's unclear if this control is total and ubiquitous, or partial and spotty.

[Tracer Bullet]

No, they captured it, and then lost it again.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Seconded. If you look at it in terms of number of provinces, rebels only control two of the nine (Illya and Burwood) as of G5, and a small slice of the Storm Plains. On the other hand, Illya and Burwood seem to be (along with the Mera-Tev and Storm Plains) the largest provinces. Of the others, most are mid-sized, but the Whitespires are tiny. When considered carefully, a third seems like a good estimate.

[Tracer Bullet]

It said the Shapers were taken by surprise and lost a third of Terrestia. Then their armies rallied, and drove back the Rebels.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

And then the rebels rallied again (i.e. created and unleashed the Unbound at the end of G4), and took back what they had lost from that third, with a little extra on the side.

[Tracer Bullet]

Yeah, but at that point, the game doesn't even claim the Rebels possessed a third of the land.

[Lauren CW]

All of this discussion makes me want to replay the whole series again while taking notes to write a book/wiki

[Tracer Bullet]

Originally Posted By: Beer and Motor Oil

All of this discussion makes me want to replay the whole series again while taking notes to write a book/wiki

THAT is a very good idea.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: The Voice of Atalantë

Originally Posted By: Beer and Motor Oil

All of this discussion makes me want to replay the whole series again while taking notes to write a book/wiki

THAT is a very good idea.

HAH.

No, Dikiyoba is not going to explain it.

[Lauren CW]

^

Oh trust me, it was merely idle musing.

I know the enormity of the task, especially given Jeff's timelines. One would have to take an extreme amount of liberty.