What if both Ancient and Future Paradox Pokémon are just... Artificial Intelligence, and the Tera Crystals just absorb input/data in order to imitate and literally "reflect" this input/data?
The time machine uses the Scarlet and Violet books as a key to work, so wouldn't this literally be equivalent to using "training data" in order to "train an AI model"? Just as how AI Sada and Turo are "copies" from the original professor. I always found it strange that the game went out of its way to explain what an AI is, and how training AI works.
Wait, frick, frick you, that makes more sense than the imagination theory
Yeah, I was working on a theory video and while doing research I thought about this and it just made my head spin, because it just seems like it makes way too much sense. The AI Professor mentions in Area Zero, when you reach the entrance to the lab, that the crystals possess a peculiar energy that "can alter the functions of living things and optimize the performance of machinery".
It could probably be just that - it takes input, and modifies its host to reflect the input it was given. Terapagos might be this but in a greater capacity. I've always also been bothered by the insistance on "Paradise this, Paradise that" but now it makes sense to me. Terapagos literally alters living things and optimizes them in order to create a perfect reflection of them. If someone were to use its energy to "optimize the entire world" it would create a "perfect paradise".
Isn't that what players think about the future pokemons? It was the first thing I thought about after finishing the game.
I mean, those mons are literal robots. It's obvious they're AI, no?
They would still be products of imagination made real by AI, but it's better than a general wish making machine.
Yeah, I'm not denying that this is basically just another flavor of imagination theory, but my main problem with that theory was that it was a little bit too generic and I wanted to narrow down the way it works so it wouldn't feel like a cop out.
Yeah, I imagine so, but what I'm proposing here is that BOTH "ancient" and "future" paradox mons are just AI that feeds on the descriptions given to it, the reference sketches, etc. to "reflect" that into a material body. That's why you need to put the Book in the "time machine" for it to work. You're literally giving it the input data.
If it was using the book as input data wouldn't the creations be closer to what the book describes? All the various paradox donphan images differ from the real paradox donphans and it doesn't seem like we're getting the trio fusions, and most of the paradox pokémon are described in the occulture magazine not the book
doesn't the game say that they throw pokeballs into the future and it gives a robopokemon back or something
Yeah, because there's no way to actually reach the other time periods and return. Master Balls are sent through the time machine, catch a Pokemon on the other side, and are drawn back here. Then Sada/Turo releases them to live in Area Zero. Three of the Paradox Pokemon were introduced into the environment through the player's battle with the Paradise Protection Protocol, they don't appear in Area Zero at all before that.
I'm not gonna comment on your hypothesis because it's interesting, but you had to put the book in the time machine to initiate the shutdown because the professors liked the books so much they embedded their ID cards into them. The cards are what start the shutdown procedure.
Ah frick, you're right about that shutdown thing. I must've been remembering wrong, I need to read that entire scene again... There's just so many things that bother me that can't be explained with either time travel or imagination theory, that it makes my head ache.
The fact all the copies of the books have that final page with those messed up letters, especially, bothers me so much. I just can't make sense out of why that would be the case in-universe... It just makes me think that the Scarlet and Violet books were tampered with on purpose. Since no one believed in them for a while, and "The Scarlet Book/Violet Book was condemned to the shelves of used bookstores as just another book of wild paranormal stories", I imagine there was a lot of time to tamper with them, maybe to make them more interesting by someone who could profit from it (like Briar, if we go by the theory that she's Heath's descendant or a Heath AI).
I just can't understand how else every copy of the book would look like that. And (assuming this isn't just a mistake by Game Freak) if there's an "imagined pokémon sketch" made in the image of the Three Legendary Beasts, which weren't even born yet because the Burned Tower incident hadn't happened 200 years ago... The tampering would also explain that part.
My interpretation is that it's a total coincidence that the imaginary pokemon sketch looks like the Beasts.
The original version of the book was like probably written with the last page messed up, all the printed copies retained that.
Arvens childhood is accounted for, and the journal entries have a line about "expecting" and about arven being born, so I don't think this would work at all.
Of course, why else would a picture book be a key part of a time machine?
I don't understand the professor's motives whatsoever. What the frick was his endgame?
One theory I had was that Arven died a loooong time ago, and that the motive of the professor was literally to have a world in which Sada, Turo and Arven could be a happy family (which is why the obsession over past/future came to be). I was thinking that the "new life to treasure" was not actually Arven being born, but Arven literally appearing thanks to the "time machine" (time travel or not), and that the obsession with the Paradox mons came afterwards because the machine also ended up popping that out without the professor expecting it. This would also be why the other professor "walked out", since they would have been fricking creeped out by the appearance of this "copy" of their son.
I thought this especially because of the journals in the Research Stations, since the first journal mentions them discovering the cause behind the Terastal phenomenon which is supposed to have happened 10 years ago (which would make Arven literally be 9 years old or under at most) but I highly doubt this theory is more than fanfiction and I don't think the game is going to head in this direction.
The AI says he wanted to build a "paradise" where Paradox pokemon lived in peace with humans and normal pokemon.
Basically, I think he went insane from loneliness.
Basically the synths from Fallout 4? That's actually more interesting than time travel / imagination
I like to think Tera Raid Dens are nexuses of Terapagos' power, which is why you can only get Herba Mystica there, Pokemon in there have Tera Types that don't match their native type, and why those Pokemon appear out of light and disappear into a swirl of glitter when defeated. That's why Walking Wake and Iron Leaves appeared there instead of in a giveaway or in Area Zero.
Did Arven have black hair?
That's silver.
But Silver has red hair, silly anon.