''Garland''': ...Do not limit memory to just one individual's experiences from birth. That is only the surface. Every life born into this world, whether natural or artificial, requires a parent. And that parent also requires a parent. Life is connected, one to another... If you trace the root of all life, there exists one source. The same can be said for memory. All life constitutes an intelligence that holds memory beyond experience. Memory is not isolated within individuals. It is an accumulation of generations of memories that continues to evolve. You can say that memory and evolution go hand in hand. But most life-forms do not understand the true nature of memories... ...which explains why most memories never cross paths and are left..."untangled."

I know there's some pretty clever folk out there, so I'd like to get a conversation going about the above statement. Does it make sense? Does it apply to human evolution? And what is this being 'untangled' all about?

I would say that's just a clever idea the writers of the game came out with. I don't think that in real life people have all the memories to the beginning of life.

dude, remember when we were all single-celled and shit, and one thing led to another (nudge-nudge) and there we all were crawling outta the ocean! those sure were the days!

dude, remember when we were all single-celled and shit, and one thing led to another (nudge-nudge) and there we all were crawling outta the ocean! those sure were the days!

My, how observant!

No wonder people don't want evolution taught, it's so risque. Really, that sounds a lot like sex.

I suppose that's your answer: Sex.

I know this has been explored in other games.... Possibly Xenosaga. By Nephilim. But I'm unsure. Anyway, it really relates more to passed lives and such parapsychological concepts. Some people have been noted, using hypnotism, to remember things prior to when they were born. It's fascinating but skeptics will always claim it's non-existnet.

Yeah it's not common common knowledge..but it's not that hard to discern. You'd have to be a scientist to know if humans actually have memory in their DNA as demonstrated in Underworld: Evolution or its limited to one or two or no generations past. A better question is why our country isn't republican yet....

The statement works, and it makes perfect sence. Though its hard for me to word how though. For starters I think youve taken it too far, though yes it could be possable to carry memory in our DNA etc. but think about it more simply. Memorys is passed on generation to generarion, like he said, but not via DNA and genitic traits (sorry, i gave up on science after 5th form) but simply through "story telling" and "lessons". for example back in the cavemen days fire was discovered, then they discovered that i burns your skin and hurts like hell. and now we all (hopefuly) know that fire burns us. the caveman was the "scorce" of this memory (as it was to him, now it is knowledge to us). Now we can take this example and put it into other turms to fit the memory side of things. Then if you look at it without memorys (thus becoming knowledge) there is no evoloution. eg. a lizard walks a certain way through a forest and a bird attacks it. It survives but the next day it goes the same way, the bird attacks again. the third day the lizard remembers the attacks and so goes another way and doesnt get attacked. this is very minor evolvement, though still evoloution. when that lizard has children it teaches them not to go the right way, and tells them about how it got attacked by a bird. They regester this information and the memory of the older lizard and use the right path. So in just one day the children learn what took the older lizard three days to learn, therefore they have an extra two days to learn more then what the old lizard did. This expands on evoloution of the momory. So to expand on what Garland said, memory turns to knowledge which gets passed down generation to generation, and thus goes hand in hand with evoloution.
Just my five cents (more $20 I would say). you could disregard this and get angury with me for taking so long to get my "simple" point across or take it into account.

this reminds me a lot about the philosophy forums, it's nice to see gamers who are also intelligent, thank you

The guys at Square just got good writers, that's all. :p