As was concluded in the Exploring the Maps article, none of the existing maps can possibly portray the Continent at the time of Panzer Dragoon Orta, because unfortunately they all show what the world looked like before the Great Fall. However, there is one intriguing lead as to what the geography of Panzer Dragoon Orta’s lands might look like, and it can be found subtly hidden within an official desktop wallpaper for the game.

Contents

• Introducing the Altered Genos Map
• River
• Wasteland
• Desert
• Sea
• Snow?
• Forbidden Sea
• Mountain?
• Conclusion

Introducing the Altered Genos Map

Many official wallpapers for Panzer Dragoon Orta can be found at www.panzer-dragoon.com, which is Smilebit’s own official web site for the game. The wallpaper gallery itself can be reached at the following address:

http://www.panzer-dragoon.com/jpn/gallery

Note that these wallpapers can only be found on the Japanese version of the site; for anyone visiting the Japanese site normally, the third link down on the main menu leads to the wallpaper gallery.

The official “Altered Genos” wallpaper, pictured to the right, contains the only known image that could possibly represent a map for Panzer Dragoon Orta.

Like two of the other wallpapers, the Altered Genos wallpaper showcases enemies from the game. Rather than just showing the enemies from the Altered Genos episode, it actually features all of the mutated monsters that appear in Panzer Dragoon Orta. Similarly, the “Legacy” wallpaper shows all of the game’s pure-type monsters, and the “Empire” wallpaper features all of the game’s Imperial ships. Also like many of the other wallpapers, the Altered Genos wallpaper has a distinctive Ancient Age design visible behind the images.

What sets the Altered Genos wallpaper apart from the others, however, is the fact that it has a map mixed into its background as well. It is almost entirely covered up by the screenshots of enemies, and what is left is mostly merged together with the separate Ancient Age background design - but there is definitely a map of some kind there.

Although most of the map cannot be seen, it features quite a few text labels which evidently denote different regions. On inspection, though, these labels are disappointingly vague; for the most part they are simply bland single-word descriptions rather than names.

Unfortunately, the English labels on this Japanese map would almost certainly not have been written by the same people who eventually translated Panzer Dragoon Orta’s in-game text into English. There is consequently no direct correlation between the place names on this map and any in-game place names. Also, owing to the extremely vague nature of the labels on the map, it is impossible to confirm which in-game locations (if any) they actually refer to.

Despite this, (and assuming that the map does indeed show places that can be visited in the game,) it is not too difficult to speculate which regions the map might be referring to. The in-game location which seems to be the most likely candidate for each map label follows, in no particular order:

River

The only river really encountered or mentioned in the game is the one flowing through episode 2’s Forest of Mutation. The encyclopaedia in Pandora’s Box also confirms that this river flows into the “West Sea”, and the river on this map does indeed flow into a western sea. If the river on the map is meant to be one that appears in the game, it most likely represents this one.

Wasteland

Episode 3’s Sea of Ash would fit the definition of a “wasteland” quite perfectly, so this is possibly it. Note that it is also just north of the “River” (probably episode 2), but not as far north as the “Desert” (probably the Wormriders’ desert - see below). If those other labels do indeed denote what they seem to, then the “Wasteland” would be perfectly placed to represent episode 3’s Sea of Ash.

Desert

The most typical example of a desert seen in Panzer Dragoon Orta would be the desert of vivid yellow sand dunes that the Wormriders’ lathum village could be found flying over. As was mentioned above, this map placement would make perfect sense if the “Wasteland” is indeed episode 3’s Sea of Ash.

Sea

If episode 2’s river is the “River” marked on the map, then this “Sea” would have to be the West Sea, which episode 2’s river flowed into (according to the encyclopaedia in Pandora’s Box).

Snow?

The enhanced detail to the right shows one of the less clear labels on the Altered Genos map: it apparently says “Snow”. Note that it’s quite possible that this is only the beginning of the word, and that the rest might be blurred out. The whole word could possibly be something along the lines of “Snowlands” or “Snowfields”.

The term “snowfields” is actually used to describe episode 5’s Glacial Plains at one point during Iva’s story. As this region on the Altered Genos map is relatively white, it is very likely that this label denotes those Glacial Plains as well. Also - quite importantly - all of the enemies from episode 5 shown on the Altered Genos wallpaper are clustered around this label. When these pieces of information are taken together, it would seem very likely that this label represents that frozen region.

Forbidden Sea

Unfortunately, not all of the labels on the map are so immediately meaningful. The most obvious candidate for an inland sea of this kind would be the location at the end of episode 5: the waterscape littered with ruins, over which Orta battles the Els-Enora boss.

Looking carefully at the map, it seems that the white snowy region comes more or less to the edge of the Forbidden Sea, so this would be quite a sensible placement. The fact that the waterscape at the end of Episode 5 was filled with ruins would also make the name “Forbidden Sea” understandable to some extent, as Panzer Dragoon Saga’s Forbidden Zone was named for a similar reason.

It is also worth pointing out that the Forbidden Sea cannot realistically be the Forbidden Zone itself. Assuming that most of the regions on this map are in-game locations from Panzer Dragoon Orta, this would apparently be what the Li Vis region looks like after the Great Fall. (As was discussed on the previous page, episode 2 and episode 3 of Panzer Dragoon Orta took place in the region where the nation-state of Li Vis used to lie.) This area was very close to where the events of the original Panzer Dragoon game took place before the Great Fall, and as the large “routes map” shows, Panzer Dragoon Saga took place far away to the south-east of this region. The Forbidden Zone would therefore have to lie far away from here.

Mountain?

There is one last label on the Altered Genos map, and it is shown in the image to the right. On the original wallpaper, this label is surprisingly difficult to make out: not only is it faded, but it is also partially covered up by the image of the ikrakav boss. As can be seen from the enhanced detail to the right, however, the visible letters are definitely “ntain”.

As “ntain” forms the end of the word, the whole label would almost certainly be “Mountain”; this would also fit in perfectly with all of the other simple single-word descriptions on the map. Strangely though, there is no area in the game which would really fit the description of a “mountain”.

It is possible that this is the reason why the word is partially obscured, however. If this “mountain” label is not meant to refer to an in-game landmark - but it is instead something that was added to the map for extra detail - then it would be of little consequence if it was covered up in this way. The fact that the pictures of enemies are placed carefully around the other locations’ names might signify that they are of more importance than this one. Of course, if they were actual in-game locations and this one was not, this could very possibly be the case.

Conclusion

Unfortunately then, this map seems to yield up far less definitive information than its earlier counterparts. A full version of this map must presumably exist somewhere in the world - in order for it to have been merged into the background of this wallpaper - but if it does, it seems that no copy of it has been publicly released. Also, unlike their predecessors, the Panzer Dragoon Orta player’s guides seem to be sadly devoid of maps.

Perhaps the geography of the post-Great Fall continent will yet be revealed, at some point in the future - maybe a sequel to Panzer Dragoon Orta will shed some more light on the state of this new world. For now though, it seems that this enigmatic image is the closest thing to a map of Panzer Dragoon Orta that exists, and of course this leaves much of Orta’s world shrouded in mystery.