Had an interesting back and forth in another thread but thought I'd just make a new thread to centralize it.
All the way back to good ol'e PSO we have our precious Pioneer 2, awaiting colonization of Ragol over government issues (and the renegade Arkz). We were able to explore most of the planet and uncover a lot of dirty secrets such as the remains of the lost Pioneer (Ruins) & the parasitic gene which took Flowen and presumably Rico as well (I've heard debate on whether Dark Falz was the actual manifestation of Dark Force keeping Rico contained or if it was just another genetic mutation such as Olga Flow).
I'm just hazarding a guess that we are to presume that the Phantasy Star canon does span across all of the games, even though the stories are all relatively unrelated (save for the presence of Dark Force). In RPG's like the Final Fantasy series...the stories are crafted to be in a different world every time. In Phantasy Star, we have a constantly reoccurring theme here, and I have never believed it to be a coincidence, or that SEGA is too lazy to think up a new bad guy. PSU has touched a bit on the connection to the other games with its virtual reality missions to old PSO areas based on data found on Rykros (the planet that passes through every so many years and causes turmoil in the form of Dark Force). The races have generally shared presence as well.
Before you unlock the ruins you go in to a very brief and small room where you open the door by unlocking a seal after activating all three totems in Forest, Caves, and Mines. This seal is presented in the form of 3 colored circles, green, red, and blue. The seal is also marked if you interact with it with the words "MUTT DITTS POUMN". This is a solid reference to the original 3 planets that make up the areas of the first few Phantasy Star games...the Algo systems planets : Motavia, Dezoris, and Palma. A character in PS4 makes a note that the Algo system serves as a "cell" for the Dark Force (Dark Falz, Profound darkness, whatever)...so this seal thing is almost everything but empirical evidence that an Algo civilization locked him up here, connecting PSO canon to all the previous PS canons.
I believe the Gurhal system to be a further future version of the Algol system. Aside from the names of the planets being quite similar, the presence of Rykros at all is p-much the only evidence we need that he's just doing his normal round through his normal choice of planetary system to harass.
The names of the planets have changed through a long game of telephone essentially, but for the most part are easy to tell the similarities between the games (Palma/Palm/Parma/Parum).
A lot of rares in PSO have a date on them in the form of "AUW *numbers here*". In the earlier phantasy stars the only reference to anything similar you get is the year "AW", and it's explained that this refers to "After War". This is presumably the great divine war between the goddess of light and Dark Falz that led to the creation of the Algol system (PS1) as a vessel for sealing the bad guy up.
I used to have the PSO art book that referred to "AUW" as the same thing. Except the U is sort of lost in translation and it's anyones guess what it stands for, I suppose. I've heard many theories. Some of the weapons like the Sange and Yasha have really old dates, going back as far as AUW1900s. These swords were crafted to be pretty much real world swords, so we must assume that photon weaponry was not created as of yet during these years. There is a small period in the 2nd (3rd?) game where technology is on the low side of publicity, and the AUW3000s (for example, Flowen's true sword was crafted in AUW3084) see much in the way of photon weapon advancement. The crafting dates would place those weapons firmly in the universe of the older PS games. Simple easter eggs? Possibly.
So now we're in PSO2. Gamerx on this site has suggested that the year that constantly flashes on the loading screen with "AP" stands for "After Pioneer". Which would place PSO2 hundreds of years after the events of PSO. He points out that in the concept art for our next possible planet (Ragol) contains the old totems, mossified and old, suggesting that Ragol is indeed our next travel point, and that much time has passed.
So the question is...what's going on in PSO2? Why was Ragol not colonized as planned after Ep3? Was there a cataclysmic event with Pioneer 2 that led to the rebirth of the government/coral army, in which they even started a new calender dating system in order to signify the beginning of a new era (AW > AUW > AP)? How much in the future are we exactly? So many questions! My brain is tingling!
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