One curious plot point that keeps getting brought up when the Rusalki are still pretending that Trace and Athetos are two completely different people is that Ophelia searched through the Breach to recover Trace to help them.Īfter restoring the Power Filter, there's this dialogue:Įlsenova: Trace, my 'sister'- Ophelia- find you in Breach. So then, what is my theory about what happened? To put it broadly, I think the Rusalki were the ones responsible for Athetos' return to Sudra, or at least Ophelia. Of course, there's a long time between the events of the two games and their personalities might have changed, but I find that explanation weak in this context. Axiom Verge 2 giving even more context to them, particularly Ophelia, casts even further doubt on this potential characterization. While Veruska may be a bit of a sadist, and most Rusalki are pretty manipulative, none of the notes left behind from their perspective really give off the vibes that they'd kill an entire planet. So I highly doubt they resorted to genocide just so they could fly through the sky again.įor another, and this is less directly supported, but I just really do not get genocidal vibes from the Rusalki. As we'll get into later, we know that at least two wanted to get to A'ansur, but it doesn't seem like most of them had any desire to leave Sudra entirely as a general concept. For starters, there's little evidence the Rusalki simply wanted to leave Sudra generally. Perhaps they wanted to leave Sudra, or perhaps they just wanted revenge on the Sudrans for using the Breach Attractor to begin with. The exact motive from this point on would be unclear. This is somewhat supported by Indra's arm Damu being the presumed source of the pathogen. The common theory is that one or more Rusalka unleashed the pathogen because they wanted to get rid of the Breach that kept them trapped on Sudra. This alone, in my opinion, is sufficient, but allow me to keep going.

Yes, he tells Trace he can't say too much, but that fact does not force him to confess to a crime he did not commit, especially one that would make Trace hesitant to work with him. While it's definitely valid to question everything Athetos says in that cutscene since he basically tells us to, I find the idea that he somehow wasn't the one who released the pathogen confusing.īefore we get to my more specific theory about what exactly went down and what the Rusalki are attempting to hide from Trace, let me just lay down why I think Athetos is the only one who makes sense to have released the pathogen. This, combined with the pathogen appearing in Axiom Verge 2, before Athetos ever returned to Sudra, has created a theory that Athetos never unleashed the pathogen. In one of the last cutscenes of Axiom Verge 1, when asked about his use of the pathogen to wipe out the Sudrans, Athetos says that if he tells Trace too much, the Rusalki would kill Trace. A discussion in another thread recently reminded me of a sentiment I've seen a lot in the community that I have not been able to get on board with.

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