I actually finished reading most of the optional lore pieces that’s available in Endfield right now, and I find many of the implications quite interesting. While the main questline is obviously very limited as of the time of writing, there’s still some things one can ponder upon, and maybe in a couple years we can all look back at this and be astonished at how much I got wrong :) (Or right. You never know.)

I’m going to order this list somewhat in the order of plausibility — ranging from ideas that are almost definitely going to be expanded upon in further installments of the main story, to completely out there ideas that will probably never happen. Enough said, there goes:

The North Pole Expedition sought to reactivate the Cosmic Gate

On Terra, these structures were positioned at both the northern and southern extremities of the planet’s major continents. Talos-II, by contrast, possesses only one confirmed Cosmic Gate, located at its northern polar region.

— “Cosmic Gate”, Nexus files

Remember the North Pole Expedition that the Endmin went on 10 years before the game started? That, I think, was likely an attempt at trying to fix the Cosmic Gate that Terrans used to colonize Talos-II, which was destroyed in the First Aggeloi War. It makes a lot of sense why the Endmin would personally go on this trip, as one of the first colonizers of Talos-II, and likely one of the people directly responsible for introducing Originium to the planet in the first place.

Reconquering the North Pole was also of highly scientific and symbolic importance to the people now stuck on Talos-II — after all, the North Pole was home to the first human colony on the alien planet, and might have contained invaluable information about early human history on Talos-II that would otherwise be lost. We could actually get a glimpse of the research station in the North Pole during the flashback section in “Let Fire Consume the Ashen Past”, when the Endmin’s own subconscious memories manifest and hint at what possibly went wrong during the First Aggelos War. Reconquering the North Pole might be a way for the Endmin to recover what was lost in the conflict.

Nation-states existing outside the Band Accord

The description of the Civilization Band in the Nexus files was particularly interesting to me, due to one small detail I’m not sure if most people even caught:

The Civilization Band comprises various sized factions, coalitions, and organizations. Bound by Accord restrictions, it does not accept self-declared “nation-states” as members.

Now, why would the devs choose to put this line in there? Well, it’s most likely because a) the colonists on Talos-II wanted to avoid the bloody international conflicts that plagued Terra by restructuring civilization around supranational groups working in mutual interests, and b) because this presents an excellent opportunity for the writers to insert a hostile, isolationist faction into the lore that hates the Civilization Band, and by extension, Endfield and its affiliates. Sort of like the Kazdel Military Commission of this setting.

I suspect people will find Landbreakers and Aggeloi somewhat stale after a while in the plot, so I’m going to make an even firmer speculation that Chapter III of the plot would have the main cast travel in TGCC-affiliated Free Cities, while being confronted by attacks caused by a nation-state actor, who might be drawn to Blight and the Ætherside as the anathema of Originium-related technology. Such writing would certainly fit the existing tone and themes of the original Arknights, I think.

“Team α2 Scout” is still out there somewhere

If you pay close attention to certain Findings in the Archive, you can find several correspondences concerning a certain “Team α2 Scout” that was part of the North Pole Expedition ten years ago, who was a UWST Recon Squad member and had considerable ties to Valley IV, even knowing the Collinses by name (“North District Intel and Supplies Application”).

Documents pertaining to them are fascinating because in very atypical UWST fashion, a large part of them are redacted, including the time and dates of each document. In fact, the document “Silent Directive” even commands the Valley IV director (who was most likely the colleague of Crowe’s who had the other authorization keycard and was killed in the Power Plateau incident) to fully erase this person from the database:

Upon recipient of this Directive, you shall expunge all data and intel (with the exception of basic backup copies) concerning North Exploration Team α2 Scout ████ below Level █ within 30 days.

Now, why is this? It should already be clear now that this person is very well-decorated within UWST ranks, and have definitely survived the North Pole Expedition relatively unscathed. Perhaps they have now risen up into a level of importance that required their identity be kept secret? Maybe they are now one of the leading figures behind the UWST…?

Nobody can really tell, but as a matter of Chekhov’s Gun, nobody writes intricate lore about a character that wasn’t supposed to be brought up later, in the form of foreshadowing. Let’s see if they get more disclosure in future installments of the story.

The Endmin is a Reconvener (of the Doctor)

Amnesia? Check. Mysterious background that is never fully explained? Check. Outfit that conveniently conceals their appearance? Check. Supernatural mastery to Originium that is later explained by the fact that they brought it to their own planets? Double triple check.

This would also somewhat explain why the Endmin can freely exchange physical forms by diving into and emerging out of the Stasis Core, which appears to be simply one big chunk of Protocol-Originium, and why they were able to issue the Zeroth Directive which resuscitated them in the first place.

One interesting detail during the epilogue cutscene of Chapter I is that M3 and Perlica inadvertently mentioned that Endmin’s amnesia was a symptom that has been worsening each time they “awaken” — could this be taken that the Endmin’s “soul” that’s been present within the Originium Woods, that all Reconveners originate from, is significantly damaged every time they go into stasis? (The Doctor’s shown to project their own consciousness into information stored within the Assimilated Universe of Originium, too.)

More evidence that point towards this is the fact that Nefarith straight up calls the Endmin “Child of Originium” — while one could definitely interpret this as a metaphorical epithet, I choose to read this more literally as the fact that the Endmin as we see them today is literally made of Originium. If this were true, then it’s quite likely that the Endmin is some kind of Reconvened form of the Doctor, the other master of Originium that never seems to age a day despite being thousands of millennia old.