A long time ago in a galaxy that may or may not be this one…
MUSIC: “Passing Time” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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The Dwemer have a lot of elements of precursors
One of my favorite applications of this trope (though it obviously takes liberties and strays from the trope's mold) is in Sanderson's Stormlight Archive. You get all sorts of hints about the evil Voidbringer monsters and the precursors that fought against them, and you subconsciously assign certain remains and ruins and legacies to one of these sides or another. And then finding out the truth of the matter is as much of a gut punch to you as it is diagetically to the characters.
There's implications and other bits involved in the series that I'm less thrilled about overall, but this particular part really felt like a good fusion of well-established tropes to do something novel without any specific part of it being new.
It turned out that the Blight in Dragon Age was created by the ancient elven “gods”. Basically the fourth category.
History's cycle of Reason Vs Faith makes for an interesting variation of this trope: the older precursor may seem more familiar to the characters of "the modern day" than a more immediate civilization, if understandable remains survive.
if only Red would play warframe and see that game's very specific take on the precursors
Love this!! I think the Kingdom of Xerxes in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is another really interesting example of this trope.
Babylon 5 does precursors really well. They manage to combine a lot of these tropes and it's masterful. Definitely an underrated series.
Chozo from Metroid are stil funniest and weirdest kind of precursors in how they are advanced civilization behind most stuff you see in series that 1) only died out recently so they aren't really "precursors" 2) the main reason they died out was that they used to be warhawkish asshats who forgot to reproduce before they got too old to reproduce naturally any longer and then came wisdom with age.
Plot idea: the precursors did not arrive, yet; the ruins were created by drones they sent ahead to make the world habitable to them.
One type of precursors I find really funny is when they're not actually gone gone, but just went elsewhere.
The only example of this I know is Kemono Friends, where the "precursors" are just modern-day humans, who built a park on an island, and then stopped coming when it became too dangerous.
There are robots that keep things running, and it feels really depressing if you think about it too long (especially because one Friend, Domestic Dog, basically serves as a Hachiko stand-in, except Friends are immortal).
Anyway, it's a weird spin on the trope, where the precursors aren't actually dead, just somewhere else, and unaware of the plot happening.
Their technology still works because it's barely been a century, and barely anyone knows how to operate it because Friends still run on animal software, despite being able to talk like humans.
Anyone read A Wizard of Mars (in the So you Want to be a Wizard series)? They managed to make a whole book about discovering the Precursors of Mars and then deciding to not bring them back.
Your intro makes me want to read so much ^^
I think you'll like Outer Wilds
Numenor was destroyed by Eru Illivatar who is more God than gods.
Btw i yave wanted this video since infound trope talk like wow 8 to 10 years ago… inleft a comment about it one one or two of the old talks cant even recal which ones. But assassins creed with its Isu and Atlantis Lost Empire really got me into this trope its one of my favorites.
Thanks for getting to it…eventually. jk
Kind a disappointed that the Precursors from Jak & Daxter didn't show up
Wht is this animation at 11:54?
Just remembered that I subverted this trope in the weirdest way, where there was an ancient pre-human civilisation who was wiped out by using all powerful tools found in an older civilization's ruins, the older civilisation being planted there by an even older iteration of humanity that we might know as 21-Century civilisation here on earth.
Plot twist…current civilizations ARE the Precursors!
This is where I leave the One Piece comment…so yeah. One Piece also does this
…
Also Attack on Titan
The Precursors is one of my absolute favorite tropes ever!
Final Fantasy XIV did a FANTASTIC job with this particular trope.
Dwemer Dwemer Dwemer Dwemer Dwemer
Yah know whats interesting? Halo kinda does all these at some point or another with forunners.
The Covenant think the forunners achieved the good game over screen using the halo rings to ascend through the great journey.
Halo 1, you learn the forunners died to the flood, and descendants (implied to be humanity by bungee) and followers like guilty spark continue on. Theres also the hubris part.
Theres even the ancient race isnt dead and oops there the antagonist in Halo 4. kinda crazy
Platos Atlantis is sadly also were a lot of the ancient civilisation conspiracy theorists get their inspiration. Cant believe the fraud Graham Hancock gets another seasons on netflix to peddle his nonesense…
In the videogame series Jak and Daxter there is a funny subversion of the Precursors (BIG SPOILER HERE):
For three games players thought the Precursors where this machine, god like beings because all their artiphacts and ruins look like robotic beetles capable of mass destruction.
But turns out at the end of Jak 3 the Precursors where actually ottsels like Daxter, who became one without knowing.
I have never been more excited for the podcast episode discussing this video, between you and Blue! The real world examples are so much fun and I can't wait to see how they bounce off against the fantasy examples that you're presenting! Great video as always!
I see EARTHSEA! lets goooo
Fragged empire is an rpg that has multiple precursors and is fantastic because of it.
Imagine being Me: You make a DnD campaign 1 shot. (A game that can take place in 1 meet up)
It has "The last of their kind" Immortal beings and the "bread crumb trail" of what happened to their civilization
The party finds themselves charged with exploring both the old ruins of a "Atlantis" type ancient civilization but also realize that they existed and boy did they EXIST and how that changes their world veiws.
Watches this video
"Damn."
In wilds beyond, they speak your name with reverence and regret
For none could tame our savage souls, yet you the challenge met
Under palest watch, you taught, we changed, base instincts were redeemed
A world you gave to bug and beast as they had never dreamed
-Monomon the Teacher
I do indeed need to publish my work because the precursors in my series are effectively the prior generations of gods and none of them actually know if they had an original creator, just all assume “what we do is the Creator’s will” every time they remake and sustain the Universe. It’s hard to make good stories like that so I have been studying a lot of random stuff to attempt to get it better.
This is one of my favorite trope talk videos
My favorite precursor story is Ozymandias by Shelly
I have been waiting for this trope talk for years!! Praise be 🎉
I realize it's a little beyond the scope of this video, but the fact that "ancient lost civilizations" is also a trope that racists have used to fictionalize real-world history, and that Fascists use to hearken back to their "mythic past" narratives is a fascinating, if dark, element of this trope. The fact that Atlantis stories became so heavily abstracted that at one point it became one of the foundational pillars of all that "aryan" nonsense is… well it's a lot.
I think Halo has some of the best uses of the precursors trope.
1. There were two precursor civilisations: The Forerunners, who were a hyper technologically advanced alien species; And the Precursors, who were so advanced they were basically gods and could rewrite reality on a whim, and are responsible for making the Forerunners, ancient humans, and every other species in the Halo universe
2. What did they leave behind?: The vast majority of the super ridiculous tech in modern Halo comes from or is build upon tech from the Forerunners, including the Halo Rings which the series is named after
3. What happened to them?: The Forerunners declared a surprise war against the Precursors, and managed to mostly wipe them out. I say "Mostly", because the Precursors didn't die, they just mutated into the Flood, a horrible parasitic hivemind which gets smarter the more biomass it consumes. The Flood were so dangerous, it led to the war between Forerunners and ancient humanity, because the humans were trying to escape them. The Flood also basically wiped out the Forerunners, only stopped by the Forerunners making and activating the Halo Rings, which are designed to instantly kill all life in the entire galaxy in order to starve the Flood into extinction
4. The problem they left behind: The Halo Rings didn't work. The Flood are still around, although scattered, and threaten to consume all life in the galaxy again each time they appear
I really want to use humans as the precursors, dressing them up as giants for a post apocalypse fantasy setting for animal peoples
Awe no outro song
Ah shit my favorite trope 😂
6:46 brilliant video, but I just wanted to point out that we do know what happened to the Dwemer/Dwarves in the Elder Scrolls. At the Battle of Red Mountain around 1E700, their Chief Tonal Architect (sound mage) Kagrenac used his tools on the Heart of Lorkhan (the heart of a slumbering god) in an attempt to create an artificial god called the Numidium or Brass Tower and defeat the forces of Nerevar, who was assaulting their fortress. There was a miscalculation however, likely brought on by the fact that Nerevar, leader of the Chimer (Dunmer before they were cursed by Azura) made it inside the chamber he was working in and began to duel with Dumac Dwarfking, while the remaining Dwemer retainers attempted to fight off Nerevar's forces. This miscalculation led to the spontaneous extinction of the Dwemer in the entirety of Mundus. Although, interestingly, Dwemer who were outside of Mundus at the time this event took place were untouched, as proven by Yagrum Bagarn, the Last Living Dwarf.
Edit: Nevermind, just saw it was mentioned literally a minute later lol, sorry, I'll leave this here though in case anyone happens to scroll across my comment and learns something new.
Warhammer 40k it's all because of the precursors,
The Great Old ones created Eldar and Kroaks and kickstarted humans
Necrons killed the Great Old Ones then had a nap wake up 60 million years later
Eldar murder fucked their civilization into oblivion
Krorks devolved and became Orks
Humanity made cracked shit but got fucked by robots and chaos
T'au have no fucking clue as to what shit show they rocked up into
I'm naming this the Stargate episode.
Here I am, remembering that the scariest thing Gandalf saw when he was separated due to the Balrog, was not the Balrog. It was an ancient undescribed horror from before most of the universe was created. It was so horrifying that Gandalf refused to give it a name or even describe it.
11:53 i had been thinking about the Flood and the Forerunners the whole video without it getting mentioned and was like “Please. Red. It’s right there!”
This is just Rome for Medieval Europe, is it not?
Not me listening to this while playing Rain World
Yeiii Halo finally appeared, with how many tripes it has I always thought it would be a fun world to explore and learn about!
You need to collate these tripe talks and publish a book.