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Is it possible to settle on another planet? Or is space habitation just doomed to fail? One game dared to answer that question, but does it have the science to back it up? Hello, internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show that loves to explore new and distant worlds, just like the one featured in today's sponsor, Ark Knights Endfield, where in this brand new 3D real-time strategy RPG, you play as the end administrator of Endfield Industries, controlling a four-person squad for combat to defend their operations while also expanding their factory building operations yourself, which I have to say is a surprising but interesting take on the genre. I was
actually made aware of this game by a friend of mine who voices one of the characters in the original Ark Knights game. And then I learned they just had their first major update, Old Deep Water Dies by Rising Tide It is Denied, which has brought new stories, new characters, and some brand new areas like the Kingbo Stockade in the Wooling region. So, I was already intrigued. But once I jumped in and saw this new area, something immediately caught my attention. You see, the game takes place in a world called Talos 2. Although technically it's not a planet, it's a moon. Everyone calls Talos 2 a planet, but truth be told, it's actually the second moon of the planet named Talos.
I suppose one of those has to exist somewhere. But the place is populated by people who traveled here over 152 years ago from the planet Terra, the planet from the original game. However, their means of returning home was destroyed, which means these guys have had to figure out survival on their own with absolutely no help from their home planet. Which begs the question, should that even be possible? Can a moon like Talos 2 even support life? Or did these settlers just get lucky? I mean, so far we've seen two very distinctive regions, Valley 4 and Wooling, and both have very different climates from each other. How the heck did these guys even survive?
Well, get ready, loyal theorists, because it's time to wake up from cryosleep and get our lab coats on because we're going to figure out whether Talos 2 is the perfect place to settle down or a fate worse than whatever they left behind in the first place. Obviously, there's a lot of factors that go into figuring out what makes a planet or planetary body habitable. But the simplest definition as chosen by NASA is that a habitable planet is one that can sustain life for a significant period. And those guys know space. So, I trust that definition. Sorry, Mark. But what does it take for a planet to sustain life? Well, life as we know it requires three main things: water, nutrients, and energy. These are the key components that every single
living thing needs to survive. Let's start with the one at the top of our list, water. A huge part of maintaining water on a planet requires it to be within the solar systems Goldilocks zone. This zone is the area around a star where liquid water is able to exist. It's not too hot and it's not too cold, hence the name Goldilocks. For our solar system, the Goldilocks zone is around 120 million km wide, starting just inside of Venus's orbit and ending around Mars's orbit. Unfortunately, we don't know the size of the star this solar system is revolving around. In fact, we don't know much about the space around Talos 2, beyond the fact that it's a moon orbiting Talos. I even tried going full theorist mode to see if I
could measure the sun and figure out the distance, but there were just too many other variables to get a good measurement. So, I did the next best thing. I stopped overthinking. I know crazy, right? But it's hard to argue with the results. In order to figure out if Talos 2 can contain water, we just need to look at Talos 2. And there is water everywhere, especially in the new Wooling district that is known for its lush environments with plenty of marshland thanks to, you guessed it, water. So, big old check here. This environment would also imply that there's an oxygen-rich atmosphere as well. Lots of plants equals lots of oxygen, which is another important factor when sustaining life. We need to
be able to breathe after all. Although, just having things that produce oxygen doesn't prove Talos 2 has an atmosphere. But there is something that might. People have reported strange cascading veils of light in northern Talos 2 after the launch of the OMV Djang, the spacecraft that Enfield operates from. These veils of light came to be known as auroras. Now on Earth, auroras are caused by solar wind interacting with Earth's magnetic field and causing the particles to collide with gases in the Earth's upper atmosphere. It's a
phenomenon that can literally only be visible if the planet has an atmosphere. But that's not the only thing these auroras do. Every time the northern lights flare up, we're warned of the potential of a power grid failure. This is because auroras cause a major geomagnetic disturbance. And these geomagnetic disturbances have the potential to damage high voltage transformers and lead to major power outages. And in the game, we see the same thing with Enfield's very advanced pieces of technology being unable to break through the Aurora. It's like throwing your phone into an EMP. It's just not going to work. Now, technically, we're told that the people of Kos 2 are still learning about the Aurora and why it exists. Apparently,
they aren't caused by exactly the same thing as on Earth or on their original planet, Terra. But given how it behaves, I'm going to count it as a win for Talos 2 having some kind of atmosphere and therefore its overall habitability. Up next in our recipe for life is nutrients. The chemical compounds in all foods. Things like vitamins, minerals, proteins, and carbohydrates. stuff that we need to survive and thrive that our bodies unfortunately just don't produce. It's super important that we have access to these or else we get deficiency diseases like scurvy or ricketett, both of which are absolutely no fun, or so I'm told. Luckily, Talos 2 seems to be filled with flora and fauna just waiting
to be consumed. There's plants like buckflower, sand leaf, and tart pepper. There's wild animals like tusk beasts that drop meat. And these things can all be crafted into consumables that both give buffs and restore our HP. So, it's pretty clear that the people of Talos 2 are wellfed. Plus, they've got this guy cooking them up food. Look how cute he is. He would never let you get scurvy. Not like Santi. Which brings us to our final point, energy. And this is where things get a little trickier, because I'm not talking about things like coal or nuclear. I mean, the constant renewable energy that the whole planet needs, a local star. The sun sends its beautiful rays of sunshine down onto the Earth so that we could be
nice and warm, not turn into human popsicles. and it allows plants to photosynthesize. On Earth, that's easy. We have a sun, but we're a normal planet. Talos 2 is a moon, and moons don't have the same relationship with that central star like planets do. Most moons are tidily locked to the planet they're orbiting. This is why we always see the man on the moon smiling down at us in the night sky and never the moon's backside. The moon has never mooned us. Anyway, on the planet locked side of Talos 2, you're provided with beautiful views of the gas giant Talos. The only problem is this means that a day on the moon would be equivalent to the time it takes for the moon to orbit the planet.
If we take a look at Jupiter's biggest moon, Ganymede, it takes roughly 7 days to orbit around Jupiter, which means its day night cycle lasts an entire week of Earth time. That would cause the nights to get even colder and the days to get even hotter. Thankfully, the atmosphere on Talos 2 would help to lessen those extreme temperature changes a bit, especially compared to a moon like Ganymede. But then there's also more regular eclipses that would happen, which could mess with the amount of the sun's energy that's able to reach Talos 2's surface. Dang it, we were so close to a perfect run. But sadly, based on that last point, it seems like life just wouldn't be sustainable for them. Or it wouldn't if they were us. See, we do not
have the technology that would be required to fix this fundamental issue. But these people aren't earthlings. They're terrans. and they are way more scientifically advanced in almost every possible way, particularly in the area of hypothetical science known as terraforming. Terraforming allows you to alter a planet's environment to become more habitable, focusing on things like atmosphere and temperature. These guys would be able to terraform Talos 2 by building things like orbital mirrors and light concentrators to help boost the energy at certain points of the planet like the poles, kickstarting greenhouse feedback, increasing the temperatures lost by the lack of sun. And look at what we're doing in the game. We're not
just exploring Talos 2 or fighting enemies. We're setting up the industrial backbone of the planet, constructing power facilities and rooting energy to keep our production systems online, including literal mining rigs that may help to produce the greenhouse gases necessary to make this planet habitable. And it's even better because the main thing we're harvesting is a special material called originium, which is an energyrich crystal. Everything we need for our survival would be impossible without originium. The mineral powers our machines and is the basis of the arts we wield.
Without origin, regions like Wooling would fall into disrepair as much of their prosperity and life comes from materials like Zeronite, which can only exist thanks to Originium. And so, it could make sense that Originium is what allows terraforming to be possible in this timeline, powering this whole operation and allowing the habitable cycle of Talos 2 to continue. I guess the game wasn't lying when they said originium is the pillar of life. the link that connects everyone. So, if you're looking to save the planet from falling into disrepair by hyperfixating on factory building efficiency, or if you prefer to optimize diverse character rosters and real-time strategy tactics, then you can go and
check out the game today by using the link in the description or by scanning the QR code on screen. Despite being a relatively new game, it already has 25 playable operators, each with their own unique class elements, and skill kits. Two of which being Tang and Rossy, who were just introduced in the game's first major update, Old Deep Water Dies by Rising Tide. It is denied. It's also available for completely free on PS5, PC, and mobile. So, if you haven't tried the game out yet, now is the perfect time to get in on the action. Thanks again to Ark Knight Enfield for sponsoring this video. And as always, friends, remember that's just a theory, a game theory. Thanks for watching.
