The game itself features a recurring snake motif amongst the side of good—the Order of the Holy Snake, the Serpent fighters, the ZODIAC Ophiuchus, with Ophiuchus being a constellation represented by a man holding a snake. The international version was released in 2013, which is the year of thesnake.
Unlike the other two games, which have canonical identities for the ships' pilots (Guehala Dennis in ALLTYNEX Second, Panaffil('s brain) in KAMUI), RefleX does not have a canonical name for the player ship's pilot. This is the only game in the trilogy where you input your name at the beginning of the game rather than after the end of one and achieving a high score. Conclusion? The pilot's name is whatever you put down for your name. To take it a step further, the pilot is you.
It could also be taken another way when looking at the Theme Naming present in the game. Spica Astrea is the Virgo's pilot and Spica is the name of Alpha Virginis, Antares is the Scorpio's pilot and the name of Alpha Scorpii. So it stand to reason that the Phoenix's pilot is named Ras Alhague, after Alpha Ophiuchi... and coincidentally it's the name of the stage where he dies.
The ZODIAC Ophiuchus doesn't care about humanity or the Earth, only focused on destroying the other 12 ZODIACs at any and all costs. What does that sound like? A typical action game player who only plays games for the gameplay and ignores the story.
After the Phoenix reawakens as ZODIAC Ophiuchus in Area 7, it doesn't seem like anyone bothers to touch the ship for years. There was a pilot inside when the ship was ostensibly destroyed, and he was killed in the attack. Does that mean ZODIAC Ophiuchus then spends years flying around blowing up other ZODIACs with a dead body in its cockpit?
