Hello everyone.

I have been busying myself trying to decipher some of the cryptic stories, themes, and language in PSO Ep 1-4. I have a film series in the works that is going to 'better' bridge the gap between Ep 4 and 3.

The amount of research has been nuts... most of it has been made substantially easier given some progress in the past by other fans.

I was looking over http://www.pso-world.com/forums/showthread.php?t=195322
to see if it was the same written language in PSO1. It's not.... There is no relation between the symbols AT ALL. I was a little taken aback because I was going to interpret EP 3's 'Arkz' in the same way as PSO2. I will come back to this.

I have studied that language for about 3 or 4 days (...pro?). I was able to create a reference for the symbols used for the alphabet minus J and Z from the intro of PSO 1,2, and blue burst from the character descriptions that are ripped from the manual. I might of have a corrupted version of the video as a few descriptions didn't match the character, while some where different than what the manual printed. I would like to assume this, but I will comeback to this later also.

Here is the image file of what I found (along with the obvious visuals to show how I got it) [ATTACHED PSO Alphabet.png]

I wasn't able to hunt down the J and Z symbols in any of the game videos or ingame in blue burst (on ep 1 at least)

Interesting thing was, I did this translation AFTER trying to decipher the language in ep 3. What makes that interesting is that, the font is slightly different. It's a bit easier to decode, but quality images are hard to come by on EP 3 (and I have the game in PAL and NA). There was 1 screen of language in the intro of EP 3 that had not been decoded (or I wasn't able to find it).

This bit of text (opening screen lingo.jpg)

I originally believed it was directly translated to what follows afterwards (feel free to reference this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzV1tD0fFvo around 40 secs and after).

The words the follow screen states:
Of the darkness
A boundless expanse
Join us
And you shall attain fortitude.

With some eye-soring work, I managed to decode it as this (and attached as the pso ep 3 language)

"Of the lim#it
Beyond the limit of time
Comewi thus
And you shall see our brilliant splendar"

NOTE: There are spelling and grammatical errors. The # sign is used to denote a character that I couldn't decipher, but is most likely an error in either the designers or poor zooming graphic capabilities. Sans errors its,

Of the limit
Beyond the limit of time
Come with us
And you shall see our brilliant splendor

I believe the first limit translated into something different. Something involving an endless void (as I believe this is in reference to both Dark Falz and space consciousness or even the darkness which the second screen refers to). The second limit, I feel is better made plural (limits).

I thought this was pretty interesting to note the difference between the two verses (I'll call it that anyway). I figure the 'original' verses were created from the japanese creators while the second screen is the localized version. Thus I can refer back to there being errors. The EP3 verse was most likely written in English by a japanese artist/programmer which would imply that their meaning behind the words they used was lost but signposted by the words they used (hence when we got the following screen it may have been the localized interpretation). However, the difference between the last line is a bit more pronounced.

And what about ARKZ (EP3)? I am going to believe it does mean 'Artificial Relict, keep species' but they decided to use a Z instead of an S. I also believe that since Ep3 was released after 1 and 2, they shifted the font, possibly to make it easier to read. Or perhaps the written language shifted in over 2 decades. The language is completely different from PSO2. This would likely imply that the peoples of PSO2 are not the same people of PSO1-4 or at the very least, through some sort of events, developed a completely different language.

That's all I'm posting for now. I do want to share my project with you guys, for those that remain interested in the lore of PSO or machinima.