ENDING SPOILER, IF YOU DID NOT FINISH THE GAME, CLOSE THIS PAGE AND GO PLAY.

I was wondering who actually survive the "Thanatos in the radio" attack. I always assumed Thanatos exploits a weakness in the Metropol's robots kernel. After the death of the humans there no-one could fix it.

So survivors...
- Horatio, 187th and Primer are from Urbani, they probably do not use the Metropol flawed kernel;
- Gimbal is from Civitas (or was Municipa?) and she does not listen normal frequencies anyway;
- (possibly) Goliath it might be able to fix the problem which almost killed it the first time. If it did not after the death of Alpha, Beta, and Gamma (confirmed by Crispin) Goliath has no hope.

I do not mean to remove anything from the beauty and the emotional effect of that ending. The opposite, it moved me so much I had to muse over it.

They are all dead and avenged.

I found the "Thanatos the radio" ending quite emotionally riveting too, and not long ago I asked a related question on this forum not long ago--namely, whether the attack only shuts down the city of Metropol or whether it reaches beyond. Mark's response was that he intended for it to wipe out all AIs within the radio tower's broadcast range, which makes sense from the standpoint of physics. The lamps from Horatio's ship are shown at that point to show that the virus is being broadcast even all the way out there to the Dunes, since (as Mark pointed out to me) the moth-bot flying among them dies too.

But I do like your idea about Gimbal's unconventional frequencies making her impervious to the virus--mainly because I've always been partial to her! (What "sex" is Gimbal, anyway? I hear Gimbal as a "she," but that's mainly just because of the voice...)

Incidentally, from rereading Mark's Fallen novella I did get the idea that the virus was meant to work on any and all kinds of AI, not just those from Metropol (unless I'm understanding the story incorrectly?).

I also like the idea of Gimbal surviving. Given that multi-frequency radio communication was apparently standard in Civitas, there's maybe a better chance of her having some kind of defensive protocols to ward of mischief. Of course, she seemed fairly susceptible to Leopold's mischief, so who knows? It's possible that Goliath would have hardened himself against a subsequent Thanatos attack (like how a biological organism is resistant to a virus the second time around). It does seem like he might have taken some precautions, especially after deliberately setting in motion Horatio's self-awareness.

In terms of who was affected, here are two threads where it was discussed:
http://www.gog.com/forum/primordia/another_loved_this_game_here_are_my_questions_about_it_thread_spoilers/
http://www.gog.com/forum/primordia/obvious_spoilers_who_has_finished_this_game_d/post37

Well, but Leopold's mischief wasn't (strictly speaking) radio-frequency related, no? It seems to me that that was something more psychological (and I think we can use that word with intelligent machines like these): he duped Gimbal by playing on her desire to find someone or something to sing with. Even with her enhanced radio abilities I don't see how she could have known he was planning to pass off a useless vinyl LP on her.

Incidentally, it seems highly significant to me that Gimbal is the only robot we meet who isn't from either Metropol or Urbani. (I don't think we meet anyone at all from Municipa.) But I'm not sure why that seems highly significant to me. :) Neat idea--I never really thought about it that way before. (I wonder if that would have occurred to the main character of Fallen!) But in certain ways it seems like Goliath has been eliminated as a threat anyway; as far as I can tell, he was designed to destroy Urbani, which is pretty much toast anyway by the timeframe of the game, and even after Horatio revives him he just keeps lying there buried in the sand.

(Actually, the first time I managed to trap Gamma rather than destroying him, I was really expecting to see Goliath rise up out of the sand--which would have been super-cool from the animation standpoint--and/or later come galumphing into Metropol during the endgame or some such. But he doesn't, of course. Perhaps part of the point was to keep his real fate a mystery.)

Municipa is quite interesting, about humans we know:
- Urbani, the attack from Metropol killed them all. (source, Horus log)
- Metropol, Metromind killed them. (source, Metromind herself)
- Civita, Gimbat states she does not hear anything anymore from the city. It is not certain, but still probably there is no-one alive.

About Municipa we only know the city has been destroyed during the war. But still there might be some survived humans there...

Memento Moribuilt indicates that both Municipa and Civitas were destroyed before Urbani or Metropol: Beyond that, I don't think it gets any mention at all!

Yes, Municipa is indeed very mysterious. So is Civitas (which may or may not rhyme with "Milpitas" and "Encinitas"). The tiny bit we learn about about Civitas's culture we learn from our exchange with Gimbal-- the hive-mind, "choir"* mentality of the Great Fractal seems disturbingly close to the kind of singularity Ma MetroMind wants to achieve. One can't help but wonder whether that singularity-like character of Civitas's culture might have made it particularly easy to destroy. What a cautionary tale that would be for MetroMind, if only she would listen!

(Hmmm... would that then defeat the hypothesis that Gimbal survived Horatio/Horus's Thanatos attack? Though maybe totally different methods were used to destroy Civitas during the war...)



* A favorite quip of real-life choral directors is, "Choir is not a democracy."

I would definitely have worked that in if I'd known! Alas, I was so bad at singing when I wanted to be in choir as a boy that my teachers conspired to claim I needed remedial handwriting lessons, leaving me permanently doubting both my penmanship and my voice.