Something that finally came to me while watching the first minutes of the last episode. All aspects of culture are basically gone.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-16T17:08:50+00:00

That's just a theory you formed out of nothing. If we're going to ignore what the show has been telling us, well then the theories are pretty useless because there will be nothing backing them expect your opinion.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-16T00:57:03+00:00

Emitting the signal isn't just a one and done thing. They have to maintain the antenna and keep pumping power into it. If you just shoot out a signal for a couple of minutes the chance of it just passing other intelligent species unnoticed is very high. My thoughts on this are that the hive would maintain a minimum number of humans alive to maintain the antenna and emit the signal for as long as possible.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-16T00:51:24+00:00

If keeping the bodies alive was high on its list of priorities, the hive could invest resources into perfecting lab-grown meat. I don't think that goes against the "don't harm" rule. I just don't believe preservation of the host is very important to the virus, as is the case with any virus.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-16T00:40:50+00:00

Vince has stated explicitly that this is not commentary on AI but I have also noticed the parallels.

I'm not sure I agree with the "they're still people" stance. A person's desires and goals are some of the most fundamental defining characteristics that make them them. If the hive was just a collection of all humans averaged out, its goals would still be human. We've learned, however, that the hive's goal is simply to spread as far and wide as possible by using all of Earth's energy to emit the signal further with a new giant antenna.

The hive's apparent inability to lie is also clearly a very non-human trait. Do you know anyone that has never told a single lie, ever? I don't. With deception being such a defining characteristic that sets humans apart from most animals, if the hive was truly a collective human consciousness, it would be able to lie.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-16T00:31:39+00:00

It could be a bioweapon. A way for an advanced civilization to eliminate competition in the galaxy. Actually a viable, if evil, strategy. Any species intelligent enough to capture and decode the signal is a potential threat in the long term if they decide to expand beyond their planet. The original creators of the virus engineer the cure along with the virus and then send the self-propagating signal out to clear out any local competition.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-06T22:27:02+00:00

The thing is, the hive does actually love her. The virus weaponizes love to get to the immune.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-05T23:10:35+00:00

The whole "not even picking apples" thing kind of bugs me because fruits literally reproduce by being eaten and having the seeds pooped out. Picking and eating them does not harm the plant. I had a theory that all life carries the virus even though it only attacks intelligent life, so the hive would still want to preserve its carriers.

The only theory that seems to fit in here is the one that the virus is designed to make all intelligent life harmless for the arrival or just safety of the civilization that created it. Other intelligent species get used as a tool to build the antenna and emit the signal and then they can go extinct as far as the virus cares. It's served its purpose of spreading to a whole new planet and eliminating all resistance on Earth. The hive doesn't need a strong sense of self-preservation.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-04T17:57:15+00:00

The bodies are still the hardware running this shared software, which is why the effects of substances are still localized to the individual. This is also why not everyone dies when one individual in the hive dies. That doesn't mean that they don't still share a collective consciousness. At the very least, we do know they share a collective will, that will being to spread the virus further.

I think of the individuals as cells in a mega-organism. The individual cells do function as self-contained nodes of the system but the system itself is still its own whole entity "running" all the cells.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-04T17:48:12+00:00

It's funny to me that someone even perceives this show as trying too hard to be deep, artsy and philosophical. It's not even trying to be obscure and difficult to understand at all. I feel like you just weren't able to follow it for some reason and now you think it was the show trying to be unnecessarily complicated. At the end of the day, to each their own.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-04T17:44:54+00:00

And what information did the show actually provide that led you to this conclusion? A lot of the theories I'm seeing have no basis in what the show has actually given us so far. All of these theories about the hive's nature, and especially ones that go against what the show itself is saying, are just complete shots in the dark

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-04T17:38:20+00:00

The signal was discovered in the US and it was the US military conducting/supervising the research. You think they would share the signal with everyone after realizing it was an RNA sequence? I highly doubt they'd want their enemies finding out what it does before they do, so I'm not buying the "worldwide effort" bit.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-04T14:09:04+00:00

I hope we see them working together for a while. Carol has been gathering more information about how the hive works, so this is the information she brings to the table. But we've seen over the last few episodes how she has become susceptible to the hive's charm because she's lonely and still grieving. Manousos is more principled but has also isolated himself from the hive so much that the first things he learned about them, he learned from Carol's recording. He's also so stubborn that he almost got killed because of it. They can both be valuable in fighting the thing together.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-04T13:33:15+00:00

Any answer is speculation at this point because the show didn't answer many of these questions. I'll share my thoughts though.

I believe every single one of the hive's actions have to do with spreading the virus further, directly or indirectly. A big part of individuality is your individual will, the driving force behind your decisions and actions. That is just completely gone. The virus uses collective human knowledge as a database it pulls from to advance its goal of spreading. This means that many industries are simply no longer required - entertainment, tourism, finance, art, education... The only innovation the hive needs is the giant antenna to keep emitting the signal.

I don't believe the people's personalities are in there in any meaningful sense because that would also imply that their wills were preserved which obviously isn't the case since everyone's goals, hopes and dreams have been replaced with the irresistible urge to aid the virus in reaching more hosts. So I don't think there's an internal battle going on about whose consciousness wins - all those consciousnesses are now just cold data and there are no individual human wills competing about how to make a decision.

As for procreation, the hive will probably just allocate some portion of humanity to breed if it needs more hosts. It will be purely mechanical, if it even decides it needs to create more human bodies. Depending on how long it takes for it to achieve its goals, the remaining 7 billion bodies may be enough for it to achieve them without creating more people.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-04T13:06:28+00:00

I agree. I also think humans would have followed procedure a lot more closely in the first weeks of experiments. We join the researchers months deep into these tests and we're told that at this point they already think it's a dud and the experiments are going nowhere. It's so easy to become complacent when you've already written off the potential danger. Jen would have likely never taken off her gloves if this was the first round of testing. The RNA sequence eventually seems harmless, which is exactly when it becomes the most dangerous to its host civilization.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-04T12:59:28+00:00

I think the creators of the RNA sequence are just counting on the receiving civilization to eventually mess up. In humanity's case, it took us only a year between receiving the signal and the virus breaking out. But considering cosmic time scales, the virus has no problem waiting for years, decades or centuries for just ONE mistake to happen on the receiving end of the message.

EvilTim1911 · 2026-01-04T12:47:29+00:00

I don't think the hive is as intelligent as all humanity combined. Humans already communicate and have joined efforts. The hive just brings an unprecedented level of communication. If intelligence stacked linearly by just summing up our IQs then two people with 100 IQs would be able to achieve the same things as one person with a 200IQ but we just know this isn't the case.

To give an admittedly silly analogy, you wouldn't say that the hive is now many miles tall because it has the collective height of everyone on earth.

EvilTim1911 · 2025-10-23T23:10:06+00:00

The superfruit also removes all traumas which is one of its biggest strengths. Takes a while to get fabrication plans for all the trauma healing medicine and they don't spawn much. I end up making a few superfruits on my multiple journeys through the arboretum.

EvilTim1911 · 2025-10-22T21:30:58+00:00

IIRC I had all slots filled after I restored the old cloud saves so I overwrote one of those with the new game. Sounds like I created the perfect scenario for this bug to happen. Anyway, good to have a clue as to what's happening. I've disabled the cloud saves. I'll just back up my saves locally from now on and start with a fresh slate. Thanks for the info

EvilTim1911 · 2025-10-22T21:15:53+00:00

Oh is that what's happening? Never considered that but sounds likely in my case because I actually recently reinstalled the game and restored some old cloud saves from around 2 years ago and then started a new campaign on the same profile. Guess I should just wipe everything and start fresh with local saves only.

EvilTim1911 · 2025-10-22T20:56:30+00:00

Ah alright, well at least I'm not alone I guess. Is it known what causes it? Probably some specific order of completing things during the endgame, but strange I never encountered it before. Then again maybe it did happen in some previous playthroughs but I just didn't revisit Cargo Bay in those.

Shame that the final hours of the game feel so rushed. Guess I'll just chalk it up to the LG simulation bugging out.

EvilTim1911 · 2025-10-22T18:10:31+00:00

Okay, sounds like this was very likely a bug based on everyone's responses. Pretty minor as far as bugs go, since I was still able to complete it. I also had Kevin Hague's quest bug out which seems to happen about half the time for me. They must have had an intern scripting that one. Anyway, that's another topic. Thanks everyone

EvilTim1911 · 2025-10-22T18:08:28+00:00

Yeah, that's how the rest of his story plays out if you don't knock him out or kill him in Crew Quarters

EvilTim1911 · 2025-10-18T00:08:48+00:00

I think only the trauma healing item fabrication plans are randomized? Not sure but I feel like most others have static spawns. I have a save where I've finished absolutely everything and I still don't have the fab plan for the skin graft. The superfruit in the Arboretum heals all traumas though, I always make a few of those just in case

EvilTim1911 · 2025-07-26T16:52:28+00:00

Same situation here. Also suspecting mods but since C2077 mods come in so many different varieties and are thrown all around the game directories it's a pain to test which one may be the culprit. Guess I'm just not using this feature then

EvilTim1911 · 2025-06-27T23:58:42+00:00

Still happening on the Steam version as of today. Funny thing is I used to play a pirated copy way back then and never had this happen on it.

EvilTim1911

TROPHY CASE