i'd thought about something along these lines too... what if the events of the collapse aren't exactly as we were told...after the collapse, human civilization went down the shitter, and most of our historical records were lost. WE know what earth was like before the golden age, because we're living in that period now, but our guardian wouldn't know anything past "well, i'm told up until a little while ago, i was dead, and now i'm not, and i can't remember shit" now...obviously, something of humanity survived, and there may have even been an original speaker.... given what we know of humanity TODAY(and it has been stated in multiple places, most notably, the opening cinematic, that the traveler first arrived in the sol system very close to our present day), it's not unreasonable to assume that some sort of global cult, or religious movement would have sprang up, with the traveler as it's deity, or object of worship...similar to how the unitologists of the dead space series worship the marker... if such a thing happened, i imagine they would have had a figure in their order, similar to the Catholicism's pope...i imagine the speaker would fill that roll handily. so...let's run down real quick what we have so far: traveler shows up near to present day(perhaps between 1-3 decades from 2014), it changes everything...lengthens the human lifespan, endows us with technology we can't come close to today, and turns earth into a genuine utopia...this gives us what we need to expand to other worlds in the system(partly due to the traveler having made them habitable). the traveler is seen as a worker of miracles by many, and a religious movement is founded, based around the traveler. a prominent figure in this movement, perhaps even it's leader, is a figure known as "The speaker". the collapse happens at some point....we don't know for sure how long the golden age actually lasted, or how it actually ended...we don't know what brought on the collapse, all we know is what the speaker has told us, and what the people in the tower believe. i think when the collapse happened, the speaker at that time survived. i think a large number of adherents to the traveler cult/religion survived...i think we might be the victims of revisionist history. our worlds were destroyed, our history lost. it's not insane to think that perhaps through the ages, generations of speakers have rewritten history, to suit their purposes....never let a good crisis go to waste, right? another thing that supports what you've (bird of ares) said is something i heard Eva Levante say when i walked up to her last night...she said something like "i'm still not used to guardians walking around the tower, like they're.....regular people".....well shit, eva...wtf's THAT supposed to mean? yes, we're brought back from the dead...the traveler was capable, apparently, of some REALLY amazing things....why not the ability to resurrect the dead, like some kind of crazy space jesus?...and the ghosts are literally of the traveler, acting as it's agents.....so yeah, we're resurrected corpses...but we're still alive, so why would she think we're not normal people?

I don't think we're actually "resurrected". I've always thought that the Guardians are [i]engrams[/i]; "information devoid of matter".

I'm not seeing how that fits.. Could you go into more detail?

The idea of using being brought "back" (the zombie statement). Engrams allow the encoding of any complex pattern of matter, right? It wouldn't be any more sophisticated to create, and later, decode an Engram of a specific person. It's just in response to the idea that somehow Guardians were [i]dead[/i], a kind of divine action. When a simpler, less sinister explanation already exists: the Engram.

While that's actually a really interesting concept, we are, in fact, reanimated dead people. when our ghost brings us back, they say "you've been dead for a long time"...plus there are multiple Grimoire entries that support guardians being "resurrected" dead...

Uh huh. Because the grimoire is a study in transparency. We also use "magic" and fight "gods" which are neither. So the term "resurrected" carries similar weight. "Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear as magic".

Well.. Guardians aren't regular people, they're beings "blessed" by the traveler, able to use space magic... Regular people can't do that.

I have to say, the first time I went to the Black Garden, I immediately thought, "Wow, this place looks really beautiful for a den of evil." After all, it is the only fertile area on Mars.

The black garden is not on mars unless I am missing something. When you get there your ghost says you are in no known time OR space.

I don't think your ghost knows where (or when) you are when you enter the Black Garden, but once you defeat the boss your ghost tells you that you're back on Mars, so I assumed you were on Mars all along, considering you weren't transported away at the end.

I thought the same thing. Like how can something so evil come from a place so nice looking

I doubt we're the darkness, since the darkness gives the alien races powers similar to ours. I think it's more likely that The Traveler brought The Darkness here in the hopes that his undead army could vanquish the one thing capable of killing it.

True! The traveler found us, not the other way around. Maybe it tried to make us into an army to fight its enemy but failed? Or not failed yet...