Yuku free message boards

Yeah, the password protection notion certainly makes sense...though I'd certainly like to come up with something more creative, if possible. I would say, however, that this would have to have been put into place before the Day of Lavos, before Arris Dome became a barely functioning heap of debris.

To me, this is one of CT's problem points. It's easy to overlook in a game but makes very little sense when trying to put it in a novel. Anyway, if it's for password protection, the rat is a good choice because it can run away from people when it senses that they are after its secrets. When caught, however, it squeaks out the information and runs away, ultimately making it a pretty ineffective means of password protection.

Maybe the drive-in mouse mascot is the better way to go. ;p

Made it THAT far? Heck yeah! I'm just editing this chapter right now. The writing itself goes all the way into Zeal at this point. After this many years, I'd probably shoot myself if I'd only made it to the Arris Dome chapter, haha! (Thanks for the nice comment, just the same!)

The Mother Brain was a supercomputer stationed in Geno Dome and essentially "mothered" the R-series robots (including Robo and Atropos). Its original purpose was never explicitly revealed, but it's reasonable to assume that it was a central control point for various systems connected throughout future Guardia relating to security and many individual robots. I'd speculate that the Guardian robot in Arris Dome was connected to this system and kept in place in an effort to facilitate the starvation of the people in Arris Dome, but that's a bit off-topic.

Mother Brain was responsible for creating robots (probably not ALL, but many), but this was not done using human souls. You may have gotten that idea from the Geno Dome scene in which humans are conveyored through machines and come out as points of light. This is a somewhat enigmatic part of the game, but I personally think it's far-fetched to think that any machine could extract souls from bodies and then send those souls down the line in a factory-like manner.

I still think you're on to something interesting, though. The "rat" could have been some type of Mother Brain creation set up as an additional means of keeping the weary humans from getting the password necessary to extend the bridge leading deeper into the facility. It knew that none of them would have the strength to catch something as agile as a rat, just like they weren't able to get past the mutants in Lab 16.

That's just my spin on your initial thought process, of course.

I'd have to say that Corsair brings up a valid point. What real benefit is there to the story for the rat to be included? As for the robot room, I would pretty much have to agree there. That's only a game area used for additional battles, none of which have any point in the story itself.

So far, we're up against 3 options: the rat is real, the rat is a robot, or the rat is nixed from the novel completely. In the last option, the password could either come from the dead man or Doan. Of those two, I think the dead guy makes the most sense.