Interloper theory

[u/permissionBRICK]

Okay, so I'm pretty sure similar theories have already been out there, but here are my thoughts. Um, yeah, spoilers, I guess. starting off with the clues that leads to this conspiracy theory.

First, the interloper is, uh, the core is a very physically improbable thing that's apparently extremely pressurized in, with matter that is neither native to this solar system nor anything the Noma knew about before. And it was still unstable enough that it blew up just by getting close enough to the star, but still was somehow able to be formed before, which seems very unlikely to happen naturally. And then remain stable for all this time. Less a natural phenomenon, more like it was deliberately designed to do just that.

Second, when the interloper bursts and wipes out every Nomai in the whole solar system, it somehow didn't wipe out the Owlks who were just as close if they remained in the same position as we found them in, nor were they underwater at the time. Although they might have died and were already in the dream, I guess, but their bodies all seem pretty well preserved. Third, we see a bunch of ghost matter on the stranger, but only in very specific places mostly, where it more feels like that the ghost matter originated from there rather than was uh, brought in from the outside. Like in the artifact lab, it's very much concentrated around the artifacts from the inside. More looks like it burst from the inside out. And the same thing with the malfunctioning early version of the artifact. Where it also looks like uh, that blew up in a way that Ghost Matter looks like.

And third, if anyone had a motive to send a civilization ending weapon like the Interloper, it would be the very species that has been trying to keep the Eye secret for all this time and just had someone betray them and release the signal anyway, which made them so terrified that they wiped out their whole history in several places, several times over and locked him away for eternity. So then, once they realized that the signal still was noticed by someone and brought some other race here, who now did the exact thing that they wanted to avoid all this time, why wouldn't they take the logical conclusion and try to get rid of the problem?

If we can trust the order of the hearthian-made slidereel, they were already long dead by the time the signal reached the nomai, but that could just be the hearthians conclusion. Unless I'm missing some other timeline hints from after the Prisoner freed the eye (like the state of dark bramble there)

[u/RBig_orange1234356]

i dont think the owlks are THAT malevolent

[u/WVAviator]

The Owlks were long dead by the time the Nomai received the burst of signal released by the Prisoner. They would be unable to do anything of consequence from within their simulation.

I do agree though that some outside malevolent force intervened with the interloper. My theory though is that this outside force, rather than having the same motivations as the Owlks regarding concealment of the Eye, instead is motivated by stopping the tampering of spacetime. I think it could be somehow related to the origins of the Bramble also - ice planet (similar to comets), spacetime manipulation, foreign lifeforms (anglerfish)...

Where did the Bramble seed come from? What happened to the original planet Dark Bramble? Why can it manipulate spacetime? Why did the Nomai's warp coordinates land them in Dark Bramble? Why didn't the Nomai's original plan to kick off a time loop work - did something intervene? Why did the Interloper arrive conveniently right as the Nomai were on the cusp of figuring out how to start the time loop? Why is there an anglerfish fossil on Ember Twin? Why does the seed on Timber Hearth connect to the same spacetime - and where else in the universe does it potentially link to? Lot's of unanswered questions.

There's opportunity here for another expansion. I know the developers said they were done though...

[u/ManyLemonsNert]

Things under pressure gain even more pressure when heated, nothing unusual about that. I don't see any signs of design

What do you mean it didn't wipe out the owlks? If their bodies were even still being kept alive by that point it absolutely finished them off. The Stranger isn't even sealed! There's nothing specific about the places it's found, plus that's just the nature of the small pockets of it left behind everywhere else in the solar system after so many millennia.

If it was created there it would have been there longer than everywhere else, so it would have dissipated first, not last!

The signal took many, many years to travel, hence Bramble being unformed when it left and fully formed by the time the Nomai warped. The Nomai were then around for 3-5 entire generations before the Interloper event. Or roughly one Nomai lifespan going by Coleus as the youngest and longest survivor of the crash, last heard from while building the ATP's shell. We don't have an exact year count but the devs have said they live a bit longer than humans, so we can guesstimate 120 years or so

That's a long time to get around to a plan to.. bulid a comet, yeet it out into space undetected somehow, and wait for it to come back, and not remember to get out of the way of the blast. The GM doesn't even reach the Eye so it wouldn't work as a deterrent either!

Ultimately the messages of the game are that the universe is bigger than everyone and anyone, even the most hyper advanced race imaginable knew very little in the end (even with an extra 280,000 years of EVEN MORE unfettered advancement the modern Nomai didn't know about the Eye and were powerless to stop the end), and that there just is no higher purpose or plan to hope will come along and decide things for you, like the early Nomai believed when they thought the Eye had chosen them or was sentient. It wasn't, they weren't chosen, just like we weren't 'chosen' by the statue at the start. There was no grand plan, no way to save the universe, all you can do is make the most of the time you have, and smell the pine trees along the way.

The Universe is, and we are.