I had a cursory look around the forums and the wiki and couldn’t really find any information regarding this so I figured I would make a thread and see if I’m the only one that’s noticed this.
Oh also possible spoilers about the I dunno, first half an hour of gameplay?
In the beginning of the game, after just completing Burial Hill, Kasparov (the guy in the building next to the riftgate) says some things that raise concerns for me about the lore surrounding the riftgates. He says that the riftgates are used by the Aetherials to get around and that he was working on a way to close them when the player stumbled through. He says “We have never seen a human, possessed or otherwise, pass through one before. Not a living one anyway”. He goes on to say that there is something about you attuned to the gates and that he wants to replicate it. He took some blood samples and the tests he ran show that our body is teeming with residual Aether energy.
So this leads me to believe that the reason we can use riftgates is because we were possessed and have this residual energy in us. Kinda like the passage thingy in Pacific Rim, if you aren’t Kaiju you can’t go through.
His next dialogue says that he is working on a device that will allow him to replicate this phenomenon, albeit without the possession.
This makes me think that humans can’t use the riftgates as they are now, hence the need for this device. But then this is completely blown apart by the fact that using riftgates is like the only way to get people back to Devil’s Crossing.
How can these ‘normal’ humans use the riftgates if this is the case?
I may just be reading into it way too much and it might just be like flavour to sort of explain the way the gates work and to sort of introduce the player to them but it seems like a pretty big hole to me.
I’m really interested in what everyone else thinks about this.
The player opens a riftgate with the device made by Kasparov to Devils Crossing. By doing so you could assume they traveled safely and ending up in Devils Crossing. I just wonder how they can find the right way and not end up somewhere else Think your in some reality/place where you can view some window/door or something on where you end up if you take that one.
There is also some more lore about riftgates, you can speak to Kuldo in the rover camp.
I’m assuming in an older version of the game you had to do some quest to be able to use a personal riftgate? If so that would explain why that part isn’t explicitly explained now. It’s like missing that part to link it maybe?
I feel like it could be explained a bit better maybe. Say when you do that quest with the device for Kasparov, he makes a point of giving it you to ‘influence’ anyone you find with Aether energy and thus allowing them to travel through the gates or whatever. Maybe one more dialogue to make it clear. I dunno.
I think I just read into it too much haha.
I think YOUR Rift Gates are different from THEIR Rift Gates. So once you take over their gate, it becomes yours, thus being attuned for humans since it is a human’s gate.
WE, meaning the PLAYER, are Aetherial possessing a “Human” (player avatar) remotely…we also take commands from other Aetherials to “buy the DLC” and “Tune in to the weekly dev stream on Twitch”…
What i got from the explanation is that normal humans can’t use or create riftgates on their own, but someone that can create and pass through riftgates can allow other beings to go through the riftgates, at least through the riftgates they create themselves.
The cook, the couple fighting about who is more in despair or possessed, the father so desperate that he is about to burn his house with his family inside, Ulgrim, the “witch” about to be burned etc. They all use rift gates as far as I understand.
So now you can indeed ask yourself whether they use the same kind of rifts or not. I have to admit I have never asked myself that kind of question and that I can’t remember having seen anything in the game relating to that kind of topic. But if your question is “are we really the good guys or not?”, ask yourself what kind of good guys use chaos, poison, vitality attacks, who look for killing anything on sight etc…
Human cannot ACTIVATE the riftgate, but the hero can because of the aetherial residue. Heck, even your dog and chicken can go through the riftgate, why not a human?
Think your in some reality/place where you can view some window/door or something on where you end up if you take that one.