A Travelog of Ivalice, Part 18: Brothers

By The Rocketeer Posted Wednesday May 11, 2022

Filed under: FFXII 54 comments

Basch seems confused and annoyed that his dear sibling is still alive and employed. No, I don’t know how he’s alive, either. He probably got blown clear to Dorstonis by the Pharos explosion, and had to catch a charter airship here.

I greet my brother this way, too.
I greet my brother this way, too.

Gabranth tries to act tough, but he’s barely clinging to life at this point, lacking the strength to even stand straight without being wracked by pain. Gabranth throws himself a little pity party after nearly getting shitcanned, but Basch has no fucks. Gabranth loses his temper, asking Basch how he can still hold his head up after losing three (3) countries and, presumably, three kingsLandis was a republic; no clue what form their actual head of state took. in the process, but to Basch, it’s simple. He has someone more important to protect: the Lady Ashe.

Ashe says nothing, but it just now strikes her that she needs to keep this man as far away from her as humanly possible.

Basch tries to cheer him up a little bit by pointing out that he can take pride in being Lord Larsa’s bodyguard. Even Gabranth doesn’t buy that shit; Gabranth has never lifted a damned finger to serve Larsa.

NOT. ONE. TIME.

The one chance he got to actually carry out Larsa’s will, he threw sanity to the wind and tried to goad the party into carving a wheelbarrow of fantasy nukes and blasting the Empire to gravy. Shit, here’s the trump card: the only times in the entire game that Larsa has been even remotely in danger was while he was traveling with our party, subsequently being guarded by…. Basch.

Projection: the psychological phenomon of attributing to others the contents of one's own mind.
Projection: the psychological phenomon of attributing to others the contents of one's own mind.

Gabranth, enraged by the knowledge of what a miserable lot of screw-ups his whole family is, attacks the party. H-hey there, bud, hold on. You’re hurt really, really bad, and you lost once already at full strength. Seriously, be real for a moment, are you okay? Is there anything I can do for you? Tea? Coffee? X-Potion? I’ll work with you! Help me help you!

Basch holds his brother’s face as he uselessly windmills his arms around trying to strike him. Unable to do so, he swears that as long as he can curse Basch’s name, he will be invincible. Basch returns a bonecrushing “I’d like to see you try,” rolling his eyes slowly and making an exaggerated jerking-off motion. Gabranth, crushed by Basch’s utter indifference to his crybaby temper tantrum, asks wryly if Basch “has had his fill of this.” Basch, stunned, can’t even believe the question he’s just been asked, calling his little brother by his real name, Noah.

Gabranth remembers what villain he’s supposed to be channeling, starts giving his brother the “There is no good left in me” lines. It doesn’t even register on Basch. No one even cares. I can’t quite remember what it is, but it feels like there was something important we came here to do. Does anyone remember? Penelo? Ashe? No? Fran? No, I don’t want to hear the wiki entry for the Bahamut.

Oh, shit! The Bahamut! We’ve got a party to crash! Vaan hurries over and starts the elevator, which I really wish we had done before the touching family reunion. As it stands, Gabranth just sort of stays huddled over in the corner, silently reflecting on his innumerable shortcomings while the party bravely endures the longest, most awkward elevator ride this side of the Shinra Building.

Gabranth has innovated on JRPG villain clichés by magically gaining a new lifebar every time he's defeated without having to transform into an angel or a steaming heap of tentacles.
Gabranth has innovated on JRPG villain clichés by magically gaining a new lifebar every time he's defeated without having to transform into an angel or a steaming heap of tentacles.

Oddly, we arrive not at the conn tower shown earlier, but in an empty, circular chamber that doesn’t appear to serve any particular purpose. Yet in the center we find Vayne and Larsa calmly talking shop. Frankly, I’m pretty sure Larsa was still pissed at Vayne from earlier and intentionally lured him to the Boss Arena.

Vayne is oblivious to such treachery, though, and warmly welcomes Ashelia & Co., Ltd. I wouldn’t be surprised, given how badly Gabranth botched everything else at the Pharos, that Vayne has no idea Ashe and the rest are here to assassinate him. His schedule for the afternoon could very well read, “2:00 PM: Meet with that one princess. Oil treaty or something? Gabranth said she was legit. What kind of name is ‘B’Nargin?’ *snicker*

No such luck, I’m afraid; Vayne asks straight out whether Ashe is here to throw down or just talk things out, and she answers evasively, saying that as long as Dalmasca gets hers, it’s all the same to her.

I know this is just more Ashe waffling and refusing to commit to anything, but… this actually is a great time to keep your cards close to the chest. Too bad for her, it seems like Vayne was asking less so he could react accordingly and more so he would know what to carve on her tombstone. He takes a kung fu pose and gives a great big-bro-to-little-bro “watch me beat the sand out of this scrub’s bloomers.”

But Larsa is in fine form, and out-bastards his brother like a true Solidor, drawing his sword and wondering aloud how seven-to-one odds must seem after years of meting noogies and titty-twisters with impunity.

Everyone takes up their ready positions... except Balthier. Balthier is fucking done. He's been done for a while now. He's been keeping his eyes peeled for chances to fake his own death since at least the trip to Giruvegan.
Everyone takes up their ready positions... except Balthier. Balthier is fucking done. He's been done for a while now. He's been keeping his eyes peeled for chances to fake his own death since at least the trip to Giruvegan.

Vayne is an old hand at fratricide, though, a fact that probably makes Gabranth feel even more inferior as his tin-can ass comes lumbering up the stairs. Yes, it seems he’s chosen this moment to get serious about defending Lord Larsa, now that he can’t walk without aid of a handrail and his armor is audibly sloshing with seventeen pints of his own inexhaustible blood.

Vayne actually puts up a decent fight; must be that super-high Monk strength and vitality, considering he fights unarmed and unarmored. Vayne actually seems pretty disinterested in everything that’s happening. In fact, it occurs to me now that Vayne rarely displays much emotion whatsoever. For once, I’m willing to overlook the fact that this is probably just his voice actor phoning it in and chalk it up to Vayne being left dead inside from a life of ruthless bastardry. Getting beaten the fuck up by five burly lowlifes, Penelo, and his little brother seems to raise a little fire in the acting regent of Archadia, though, and he… collapses flat on his face like a plank of wood.

Huh. You know, I’ve got to say, this was a totally reasonable thing to expect when assaulting an unarmed, unguarded noble with no demonstrable hand-to-hand fighting experience. Good on you, game.

Larsa chooses this moment to become shocked and concerned with his lord brother’s sudden, unexpected poor health (at least, that’s what the Archadian newspapers will read), and he runs to Vayne’s side.

Psyche! Larsa takes about a million volts from some unseen source, and falls to the ground beside his brother. This is Vayne’s favorite prank; it gets Larsa every single time.

So I guess we were accepting that Larsa would end up our amenable, complicit connection on the Archadian throne once we'd assassinated Vayne together. Standard regime change politics. Did we have a plan if they both died? All hail Arch-Judicer Zargabaath?
So I guess we were accepting that Larsa would end up our amenable, complicit connection on the Archadian throne once we'd assassinated Vayne together. Standard regime change politics. Did we have a plan if they both died? All hail Arch-Judicer Zargabaath?

As for the rest of the interlopers, Vayne has something very special planned for us…

Going fucking SUPER-SAIYAN!!

That’s right! Vayne slowly begins to rouse as a swirling nethicite aura surrounds him, and he explodes with a sudden two hundred fifty extra pounds of solid, shirt-shredding muscle. A septet of swords swirl around him from thin air, and he floats just above the ground.

Fran crushes her scouter in her hand, unwilling to believe Vayne could so easily veil such an incredible power level. The Emperor talks tough about his new power, but facts is facts: the sudden bulksplosion has given Vayne a serious case of the ugly, and— gather your strength, dear audience— ruined his hair. Weep, Archadia! Pyrrhus didn’t know how good he had it! A righteous vengeance fills the party now; halfheartedly shivving a statesman was one thing, but now we have a worthy cause! We fight now for a higher principle.

Let's say Vayne wins this fight. Ashe slain. Resistance routed. Dynast-King Solidor unites Ivalice. Is there any reversing this transformation, or does Vayne give the law with his watermelon-sized biceps? This is the one time you should have learned from Gabranth!
Let's say Vayne wins this fight. Ashe slain. Resistance routed. Dynast-King Solidor unites Ivalice. Is there any reversing this transformation, or does Vayne give the law with his watermelon-sized biceps? This is the one time you should have learned from Gabranth!

Amazingly, Gabranth manages to haul his powderized bones up the stairs. I’m honestly not sure what the short exchange between him and Vayne means; Vayne tells Gabranth to guard Larsa well, because he’ll sure need it in hell, where they’re both going… and then Gabranth raises his sword and says defending Larsa is exactly what he intends to do. Vayne, despite having just threatened Gabranth’s life, seems surprised by Gabranth’s betrayal, and resolves, as if for the first time, to kill him with the others.

I’ll leave that alone, because the idea that Gabranth could… wait a second… Darth Gabranth is a guest star party member for this fight?Gabranth’s right-hand sword is the Chaos Blade, named for the strongest knightsword in Final Fantasy Tactics. His off-hand weapon is called the Highway Star, and yes, I’m pretty sure it’s a reference to the song. Again, it’s technically not a weapon but functionally a pointy shield. And Emperor Palpidor is all jacked up on the Dark Side?

Gabranth! You useless sheet of shitstickers! I have no idea, not one clue, how you’re even alive, much less able swing or even raise a weapon with all your fading strength, but if you can hoist Vayne over your head, tromp yourself down those stairs, and hurl his roided-out ass over the side and down the bottomless pit, I will forgive everything you’ve down since sabotaging your own character at Ridorana. We’ll have a nice lovely funeral pyre made for you at Eruyt Village, while all the viera sing and dance watching flaming debris fall on Rabanastre.

I think Vayne has understandably seen Gabranth as such a servile poltroon for so long that the idea he would actually object to being executed with Larsa came as quite the surprise.
I think Vayne has understandably seen Gabranth as such a servile poltroon for so long that the idea he would actually object to being executed with Larsa came as quite the surprise.

Vayne chimes in with some lovely gibberish about freeing the world from Occuria, like the one controlling him now. I admit, I liked the cut of Vayne’s jib up until now, but this? This crap right here? We’ve already fought this exact boss battle three times now, and it’s never worked out for the enemy. This stupid fucking “fight the power” schtick has gotten mighty old ever since we figured out “the power” could be handily defeated by just telling them to go slide a fencepost up their hind ends! Oh, and mighty convenient how your big principled stand happens to involve you taking over the world for yourself in the process. And it’s not even your plan, you got it from Cid! And he got it from an Occuria, so I don’t even know what the fuck!

Could you please manage an original idea before I pound you so hard I cause an integer overflow? You’re, what, “Vayne Novus” now? Wasn’t that Seymour’s eighth or ninth boss form? Wait, these sword things are called Sephiroth? That’s an entirely different main villain! The one compliment I can pay you right now is that the boss of (coincidentally Hitoshi Sakimoto-scored) Valkyria Chronicles stole most of your schtick, and managed to make it work pretty decently.

Gabranth, seizing the opportunity to smear his failure all over the screen one last time, tries rushing Vayne Ferrigno and gets the taste slapped out of his mouth so hard a chunk of his helmet goes flying. I guess it’s that swagtastic Judge Armor that keeps Gabranth indestructible, because once this happens, he realizes his number’s up and squeaks out some rot about still having his pride.

This takes the cake, Gabranth. You were squatting in a crumpled heap of your own inferiority not five minutes ago, stewing over what a hopeless failure you are and screaming at your brother to share the secret of living with the crippling shame that eats away at you in the quiet moments.

Vayne knows the score, and sends Gabranth flying across the room with his furious pimphand. Gabranth shoots a quick, “Oops, I’m boned!” to his brother as Vayne sends his swords to mince the Judge Magister once and for all. Aw, come on, Vayne! You’re bad enough at being a villain without helping accomplish goals the audience has been pursuing since the Pharos! Just the audience, mind you, not the characters; near as I can tell, the party has never taken Gabranth seriously as a foe, which I think speaks volumes.

Still, what’s done is done, so lets all stuff some popcorn down our faces and watch Vader finally get his comeuppance. The flying vortex of blades comes sailing towards Gabranth… and are absorbed into the manufacted nethicite shard held aloft by Larsa, which breaks into pieces from absorbing all it could handle.

Et voilà.
Et voilà.

what

…You win, Larsa. You win. You are the Troll-Father, our blessed lord Loki, may your name be praised by utter bastards everywhere. It was my favorite early-game accessory, and you stole it right back just as I was starting to get a taste for it. If I had had it at any time after that point, I could have used it to defend myself from Mjrn and Tiamat, or from Bergan, who always kicked my ass, or in this very fight, while a swirling tornado of blades fired superlasers at me and my party. But you kept it for yourself, despite never needing it. What’s more, that shard is obviously the same shard from earlier in the game, despite manufacted nethicite being so dirt-common truckloads are used in every airship in the Imperial fleet, and Judges can use them as performance enhancers. But no, you didn’t use your connections to hook the Resistance or our party up with a suitcase of the stuff. You held on to the one shard, our one shard, so that you could bust it out fifteen seconds after it stopped being of potential use to us. Those would have been excellent trolls, all on their own. And then it shattered. It shattered, its one and only use being to save a man that I would give my right eye to see dead, and who— spoiler, or whatever— will fucking die anyway in moments. And, having accomplished this purpose, it shatters, in your hand, while you smile beatifically. Poof.

I feel like the bad guy at the end of Kung Fu Hustle. All that I am has been broken, and I just want to prostrate myself at his feet and relearn everything I thought I knew about being an utter asshole to everyone around me, for absolutely no reason.

Vayne, too, is stunned, fresh out of gimmicks and facing quite the long day at the tailor even if he wins. Vaan, seizing the moment, raises Gabranth’s sword and charges at Vayne to run him right through. Instead, the razor sharp point of the blade propels Vayne over the balcony and down the stairs without scratching him. Vaan seems as confused as I am about the logistics of this, and throws away Gabranth’s Nerf-edged gag sword, jumping over the balcony to pursue and finish the job.

<b>Venat:</b> ''Hi! Do you have a moment to talk about humankind's new lord and savior, myself? Oh, sorry, is this a bad time?''
Venat: ''Hi! Do you have a moment to talk about humankind's new lord and savior, myself? Oh, sorry, is this a bad time?''

But who should appear in his path but Venat! YES! Sweet merciful Dycedarg, deliver unto us some proper villainy! Venat, being Satan more or less, uses her terrifying power to… glare menacingly at Vaan while Vayne staggers out the door to the cannon superstructure. I mean, she doesn’t do anything to harm Vaan, or really anybody, and disappears once Vayne is out the door (though still easily within arrow or gunshot range), but still, it was menacing!

While Penelo checks on Larsa, who seems to have collapsed at the realization that he is the most competent villain the game has left, the dying Gabranth asks Basch if Larsa is “a good master,” and Basch replies in the affirmative. To confirm, Gabranth just asked his worst enemy if his boss is an okay guy, because Basch has spent more time with him and knows him better.

<b>Basch:</b> ''Who? Vayne? Look, I haven't been privy to your internal conflict, and I really don't give a shit. I've already put up with enough dithering to last me the rest of my life from my current boss. Not like that Larsa kid! Now there's a lad who thinks of a fucking terrible idea and just rushes it with a wink and a smile. Heeey, the Ministry of Law has a few vacancies right now, doesn't it...?''
Basch: ''Who? Vayne? Look, I haven't been privy to your internal conflict, and I really don't give a shit. I've already put up with enough dithering to last me the rest of my life from my current boss. Not like that Larsa kid! Now there's a lad who thinks of a fucking terrible idea and just rushes it with a wink and a smile. Heeey, the Ministry of Law has a few vacancies right now, doesn't it...?''

Outside, Vayne calls Venat to him and owns up to being a ripe failure of a bad guy, but he does it with class, and wishes Venat well in finding someone better to take his place. Venat disagrees, though, saying that, with the Sun-Cryst destroyed, they’d actually won already, since handing out parts of it is apparently the one trick the Occuria had. So I guess if we had made up our minds and destroyed the Sun-Cryst right off the bat, all of this could have been avoided.

ALL OF THIS COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED.

But hey, about that nethicite thing, anyway… does anyone else remember, at the bottom of the Great Crystal, there was a sphere, apparently of pure nethicite, which dwarfed the Sun-Cryst and seemed to be the origin point or power source for the entire Great Crystal? It’s okay; the game doesn’t remember either.

Venat declares the age of Stones and the Occuria over and done with. But she isn’t so quick to abandon Vayne in his hour of need, and bids him follow to the edge of the superstructure. As Vayne walks, the party arrives to see Venat apparently dematerialize, her Occurian essence flowing into Vayne. The reaction is slow to take places at first, but great plumes of energy begin firing out of Vayne’s body, wrecking parts of the superstructure and even a capital ship in the distance. It isn’t long before Vayne is overwhelmed by the power of an Undying coursing through him, and in a fiery veil of this new strength, sections of the Bahamut are torn off and reassembled around him into a new form. As he flies high over the sky fortress, several pairs of wings and a long tail begin to take shape. Venat’s face seems to sit above his own, and he swoops down on the party as the wyrmking incarnate.

I'd like to reiterate my concern regarding Vayne's New Groove in the event he wins this fight.
I'd like to reiterate my concern regarding Vayne's New Groove in the event he wins this fight.

Looks like a final boss to me. Let’s rock.

The Travelog continues next week.

 

Footnotes:

[1] Landis was a republic; no clue what form their actual head of state took.

[2] Gabranth’s right-hand sword is the Chaos Blade, named for the strongest knightsword in Final Fantasy Tactics. His off-hand weapon is called the Highway Star, and yes, I’m pretty sure it’s a reference to the song. Again, it’s technically not a weapon but functionally a pointy shield.



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54 thoughts on “A Travelog of Ivalice, Part 18: Brothers

  1. John says:

    Good job, Rocketeer. You get bonus points for the Kung Fu Hustle reference. For double bonus points, try to work a Shaolin Soccer reference into the next entry.

    1. Aceus says:

      I second, third, and fourth all of this.

      Extra bonus points for making the reference laugh-out-loud hilarious.

  2. Joshua says:

    Ok, I’ll admit this plotline is starting to get a little bit strange, like an 8-year-old playing with their action figures while tripping on shrooms.

  3. Rho says:

    Huh.

    It occurs to me they *should* have done the Vader-throw-Palpatine move. It would have been a good way to exit Vayne from the scene without killing him.

    Oh well. Does Star Wars have Trollsa? No? Well then I think we know which is superior.

  4. RamblePak64 says:

    It occurs to me this game is trying to do some thematic motif thing with brothers. Vaan’s got a brother that is/was a vegetable, and the two remaining brothers, Brasch and Gabranth and Vayne and Larsa, are just… well they suck at being brothers.

    …and that’s it.

    Normally, if you were going for some sort of motif like this, each pair of brothers would represent some form of relationship, be it positive or negative, to reflect all kinds of circumstances that might cause the relationship to be strengthened or weakened. Here, it’s just… brothers. There are brothers. And that’s it.

    Even Scarlet Nexus deals with its “red strings of fate” and “parallels” motifs better than this, and that game’s story is one pile of crazy twists stacked on top of another.

    ………hey Rocketeer, ever thought about doing a long-form travelogue of Scarlet Nexus?

    1. John M says:

      I would also be interested in a Scarlet Nexus travelogue.

      1. Fizban says:

        I passed that game several times on Steam going “oh that looks kinda neat. . . high price, screenshots almost all cutscene, think i’ll keep passing.” Now I just read a review of the anime that I’d forgot was also a thing, wich says even with 20-some episodes everything is too rushed and compressed. And now here it’s come up again. Is the universe trying to tell me I should play Scarlet Nexus? Well I’m still not paying $60 so it can get in line.

        1. RamblePak64 says:

          It is not, though mostly due to the fact that I played it on Game Pass and therefore don’t know if I’d recommend it or not. It’s fun, but is it “I just spent real money on this” fun? I don’t think so. There are better JRPGs for $60, even the lower budget janky ones (oh hello Caligula Effect 2, sorry I haven’t purchased you yet. Oh, hi there Triangle Strategy, wish I could squeeze more time in for you. Oh, gosh, and you, Ys IX, I forgot I even bought you!).

          I’d definitely be warmer on Scarlet Nexus if the entire weapon upgrade and team bonding activities didn’t require major grinding. You’d swear there’s materials microtransactions in this game for how stingy they can be. It really bogs down the latter chapters of the game. Simultaneously, it’s not like the characters are all that great. There’s some interesting little details there, but it’s all delivered in Generically Anime Sheen. For example, a girl with clairvoyancy mentions once, just once, that her actual eyesight is starting to diminish. That’s neat! But all we really get is her obsessive love of plants. For the dude’s campaign, at least. What a waste of an interesting character, right? Well, that’s kind of how they all are.

          I also take umbrage with the game’s shoddy jank dodge mechanics that weigh its combat down, especially in the early hours when those bond abilities haven’t unlocked your absolute domination across the battlefield quite yet.

          All that said, I’m going through again on New Game Plus for an acquaintance’s podcast so it’s not a bad game. I’m not sure what price point I’d recommend it, though. It’s a perfect Game Pass game because you can play it, quit whenever, and yet if you liked it well enough, well, there you have it. You liked it well enough.

          I definitely wouldn’t spend $60, though.

          1. These are the same reservations I have about Caligula Effect 2. I tried twice to get into the first game; I was very entertained by how unabashedly fucked-up daring it could get, and I wanted to see how far they’d take it. But like you describe Scarlet Nexus, the game’s roots as a Vita port were very obvious and the game was plagued by the faults that handheld/lower budget JRPG’s tend to be: an extraordinary amount of grind, really god-awful balance, and the insane expectation that you’ll eagerly play the game six times to get the full story.

            I saw Caligula Effect 2 on sale on PSN recently, and if I had good word that it was just the first game but with tolerable combat and very slightly higher production value I’d be interested, but as it is, I’d be very hesitant to spend cash on it after basically getting rooked by the first title.

            1. RamblePak64 says:

              I get that. I don’t know who recommended it, but I played the first game on Hard and it made boss battles and select random encounters decent. The problem is that most random encounters are still not a challenge and just eat up time, and in true modern day JRPG fashion, the dungeons are all just long stretches of unending corridors. Did no one else ever play Wild Arms? At least 1 and 3? Where dungeons were actually fun because they had puzzles and stuff?

              But the cranked difficulty making boss fights an actual challenge and the narrative were enough to sell me on the experience. In the end I’d probably have gotten Caligula Effect 2 by now except I’m not really buying games on PlayStation anymore and I don’t trust its performance on Switch, so I gotta wait for a port to PC or something. Or to suck it up and just get it on Switch anyway.

              I would definitely recommend Scarlet Nexus over Caligula Effect: Overdose, if that says anything. So I guess Caligula Effect 2 was a weird inclusion in my post considering Triangle Strategy and Ys IX are definitely a step above most mid-to-low budget JRPGs right now.

              Meanwhile I’m just waiting for Tales of Arise to hit Game Pass since Bandai Namco seems to be on good terms with Microsoft these days.

              1. A problem I have with a lot of JRPG’s is that they seem to have a very thin wedge of satisfying combat that rewards paying attention and playing smart, below which you can just mash X to end combat and above which you’re literally unable to deal damage and will die instantly to enemy attacks. In Caligula Effect, the problem was that it seems like this theoretical wedge does not exist at all; because the game slams your accuracy as relative enemy difficulty increases, any enemy you can’t alpha strike in the opening seconds of battle by mashing X is probably also so evasive that there is no practical use for the elaborate and cumbersome timing/planning/combo system. Why, yes, it is possibly to use your whole party to set up a twelve-action combo that uses attack-type-specific counterattacks and multiple types of crowd-control to lock down an enemy and activate follow-on combos and damage boosts building to a stored superattack charged to max power by clever prep-work… but each of those actions has a 23% chance to hit so you have the same chance of getting this shit off the ground that I have of launching myself to the moon with an oversized ACME slingshot. Oh, the enemy is weak enough/your accuracy is decent enough that a three-move chain has a better-than-even chance of hitting? Well, then it’s so weak that you can just have everyone spam their bread-and-butter attack the second battle starts and it will be dead in four seconds without ever having taken an action.

                It’s a god-awful system that wastes a ton of potential and hearing that turning the difficulty up improves it leaves me completely cold. CE2 needs to offer some major assurances before it sees a dime from me.

                I’m also mildly curious about Tales of Arise, but even if the price wasn’t a bother the Tales series is 1-for-4 for me.

                1. Fizban says:

                  Have you mentioned which Tales’s you’ve played before? I feel like there’s enough of us that pop up with any mention of Tales games that you probably have (ah- thinking further, it might have been you who mentioned how at least Berseria has you playing an unrepentant asshole for a change?). I don’t even know if Tales is a franchise I should be recommending any more- I loved Symphonia (and the sequel) and Abyss was good enough but I never actually finished Phantasia, nor even got that far in Destiny, and the latter two are from back in the actual sidescrolling combat days. By this point there are far more Tales games in the newer styles on systems I don’t own that I’ve never seen a bit of than the number I have. For all I know the majority could be total dreck.

                  1. RamblePak64 says:

                    The Tales of franchise is a weird one. I remember playing Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Abyss, and I remember enjoying them, and I even recall a few character designs from both games.

                    …and, uh…. that’s about all that’s stuck with me.

                    It’s funny, because Akiba’s Beat is a Tales of rip-off that wound up being more memorable to me because it’s story struck home right when I was at a severe low-point in my life. However, I could never recommend the game because the dungeons are that awful, linear corridor slog that so many are, the combat is hardly intricate at all, and the story was only meaningful due to where I was at in life. Yet, despite being a worse Tales of game set in modern day Akihabara, it still stuck closer to me than Symphonia or Abyss.

                    A lot of my friends have been singing the praises of Arise, though, so who knows? Maybe it’s actually really good.

                  2. My first was Xillia, which I liked a lot. There are a couple things that drove me crazy about it, but I thought the story was interesting and I enjoyed the combat.

                    So, I tried Xillia 2 when it came out and… it kinda threw out everything I liked about Xillia storywise, and replaced it something completely out of left field and much dumber. They also tweaked the combat in a way that your teammates would constantly screw you over.

                    After that, I tried Symphonia, which a lot of people love, knowing beforehand that the story is uncannily similar to a certain other JRPG. I really did not enjoy it at all, and after a softlock forced me to reset the game I realized my last save was before an entire dungeon I’d just left, and I’d rather do anything other than replay it.

                    The last straw was Tales of Berserkia. I don’t think I’m the person you’re thinking of (I think there are a couple of other posters on this blog that really dig Berserkia) but I actually got pretty far into this one. There was a lot I liked about it and it made a good first impression, but the overall story and a couple of the game systems slowly and steadily wore away my enjoyment until I dropped it near the end of the second act, long after I’d stopped getting anything out of it to be honest. The most I can say about Berserkia is that it makes for an interesting comparison with Drakengard 3… which is not really a compliment, but as a Taro Yoko fan I readily admit Berserkia is a much, MUCH better game than Drakengard 3.

                    1. Mye says:

                      I’d recommend trying out tales of graces if you can get your hand on it. The combat system is pretty interesting, every attack you do is effective against certain type of enemy (ie one could do bonus damage against fire, beast and ground) every enemy has a certain number of type (maybe you’d have something like lighting, dragon, flying). Every attack you do cost stamina but if you manage to hit every attribute of an enemy before you run out of stamina, you’re stamina will regenerate and you can continue your combo. So you have to create combo for every enemy you meet. Also every character has 100+ title that give them bonus stats/ability, these are earned trough various things, from completing side quest or mini game to performing specific action in combat (which means you want to do every fight differently to prioritize certain actions, you also want to constantly use different character so you can earn titles for your whole team).

                      Sadly the story is pretty terrible, at best its painfully generic (“friendship is the most important thing in the world!”), at worse its incredibly stupid (“I must destroy the world because no one was ever kind to me even though the main character was always kind to me!”)

                      Tales of abyss does some interesting thing story wise, although it spend a lot of time shitting on the MC for something he’s not really responsible for.

                      Tales of lengendia is mostly generic (a couple of somewhat interesting things story wise here and there), but after you beat the game you have this long epilogue where you go trough every character backstory and I wish more game did that. The lack of world ending threat makes it more reasonable that we spend time on those side event.

                      Although take my opinion with a grain of salts, I was really not a fan of Xillia. I found combat disappointing since you could easily clear everything by just spamming low level technique (I spend most fights just spamming palm strike since SP was effectively infinite) and the story just annoyed me most of the time (like when a comedic side character push the giant red button for no reason, screwing you over and yet your character don’t bother stopping him).

                    2. Sleeping Dragon says:

                      Ha, while perhaps not as glorious a mess as FFXII (judging largely from this series and the comments as I haven’t played this game myself) Tales of Symphonia definitely gave me some “this effin game” vibes in its attempt at deconstructing the “chose one gathers the elements” trope.

                2. Th30n says:

                  Speaking of combat, have you or anyone else tried SaGa Scarlet Grace?

                  I’ve recently bought it for Switch, and it has some of the best turn based JRPG combat I’ve seen (that is not grid based SRPG). Though, the game is balanced such that each encounter is deadly and I think it fits that thin wedge perfectly -> each fight feels like a boss fight where you have to apply (a different) strategy and narrowly edge out a victory.

                  The combat system relies a lot on manipulating the timeline of actions both for you and your opponents, so various buffs and debuffs are super useful, as well as class combinations. On top of that, there’s the “formation” system and bunch of other interesting things that spice it up.

                  1. bobbert says:

                    I have only played the gameboy Saga games.

                    Are the others good?

                    Are they ALL about killing God with a chainsaw?

                    1. Th30n says:

                      I don’t know, this is my 1st SaGa game and I’m completely overwhelmed by the freedom the game gives you. So far, it feels a lot like the perfect mix between old school isometric cRPGs and JRPGs, and it has that tabletop RPG feeling in spades. Main quest? Pff, I don’t know, I got sidetracked by a rumor of a legendary sword, which now I’m trying to get my hands on.

  5. Dreadjaws says:

    Let’s say Vayne wins this fight. Ashe slain. Resistance routed. Dynast-King Solidor unites Ivalice. Is there any reversing this transformation, or does Vayne give the law with his watermelon-sized biceps?

    Pulling the conversation away from FF specifics and more into gaming in general, this is the sort of thing I’ve always wondered. Maybe you can argue that magical transformations can easily be reversed but when, say, Salazar in Resident Evil 4 transforms into a giant plant-human monster hybrid that really looks like the sort of thing that can’t easily be turned off. What would he have done had he won the fight? Just… live in that room forever from then on, forever trapped in that grotesque form?

    And you can at least excuse Salazar’s behavior by him being a fanatic member of a cult. What about people who are supposed to be more autonomous and basically working for selfish causes? Would you irreversibly make your life much less comfortable just to win a fight? There’s being desperate and then there’s no measuring the consequences. Sure, you won this fight, but now that your arms are turned into rifles and you’ve grown rock tentacles all over your waist, wiping your butt is going to be a nightmare.

    1. FluffySquirrel says:

      My assumption is generally that a) They’re about to die if they don’t take whatever the current biodrug of choice is, and b) They know Wesker exists

      So.. .. may as well take it, and hope you won the genetic lottery and turn into an ubermensch, rather than a giant tentacle monster?

    2. BlueHorus says:

      Wait a minute…

      …there’s no mention of FFXIII in this post!!!

      (Click here for reaction)

      1. Chad+Miller says:

        I’ll bite: as ludicrous as this whole sequence is, it somehow makes more sense than the ending of FFXIII, which goes something like:

        A) The heroes already know the villain wants to be killed by them, because he told them so
        B) Despite (A), they plan to kill him anyway
        C) Despite (B), he spends the entire last chapter doing increasingly mustache-twirlingly evil things to goad the heroes into killing him
        D) They kill him, following his master plan to the letter
        E) The heroes win, roll credits

      2. Mye says:

        So at the end of FF13 the big bad guy fuse with what’s essentially just a generator that can’t move or do anything but is keeping the island every human live on floating. He does this because he want the hero to break the generator and he know our hero are so bloodlust craze that he know they’ll stop at nothing, not even killing the entire human race. At that point, if the hero were to just walk away its very possible that the bad guy plan would fail, since by fusing with the generator he might be stuck immobile there forever. Our group of hero don’t even bother considering that possibility and instead immediately decide to kill him.

      3. BlueHorus says:

        Thanks, guys. But sadly, you’re not Dreadjaws…

        We were so close to completing the challenge.

        *Sad face*

        1. Thomas says:

          We’ll tell him to go back and comment on this thread next time he’s around

  6. Syal says:

    So Gabranth decides he’s going to give his life to defend Larsa, despite him demanding in the previous dungeon that we nuke the ground Larsa walked upon. It’s probably obvious how badly this scene falls flat, but it feels good to kick it anyway. It’s a weak, contradictory conclusion to a weak, aimless villain. Maybe if Gabranth had had a plan earlier, and we stopped it, and this was his flailing attempt to find secondary meaning in a post-plan world, this would have been improved; but I’m pretty sure it would still be bad.

    And Venat, the Ghost Satan who has so far possessed Mjrn, Bergan, and Cid, only to stand idly by while two of them were killed by this very party, decides that Vayne is worth dying for. Right before the transformation, she basically acknowledges the two of them are going to lose and die and this is just for the sake of pride. Where was your pride when we took down Bergan, Venat? Or Cid, the guy who brought you into the fold and seemingly was your best friend the entire time? And what the hell was up with possessing Mjrn, that made NO SENSE!

    I guess Ghost Satans can still get the Hots. That’s the only thing that makes sense here. This final bossfight transformation is the Occuria equivalent of “you don’t want to die a virgin do you?”

    1. Lasius says:

      To be fair by that point Venat had not completed their plan. So they couldn’t yet afford to die for the sake of pride.

      1. Thomas says:

        And let’s not think about the actions Venat took to complete her plan, which seemed to be spending a lot of time on a totally different project that goads her enemies into doing the one thing she doesn’t want them to do, but then when they get there, after taking a long series of actions that didn’t make much sense but were necessary for this plan, they do the thing she wants to do instead.

  7. Damiac says:

    And here I had always assumed that if I looked hard enough, under all the cliches and nonsense there would be a skeleton of a story that made some sort of sense to this game.

    How wrong I was…

    1. bobbert says:

      It feels to me that the writing team of the game is two men, who each have a good (though incompatible) stories to tell, and a third guy who is a maniac. They all just keep stealing the pen from each other, which is why nothing is consistent.

      That said, I do like Bosch stealing his dead brother’s identity for the ending. I wish they would have done more with Vicountess Penelope. It was one of the most interesting plot threads, and I never really appreciated it the first time around.

      1. damiac says:

        Lol maybe they wrote the story and used an early version of the AI dungeon AI to help fill it out. That would explain a lot.

        I think you’re probably right though, probably they had to weld together some not so compatible story ideas due to time/budget/sanity constraints.

        Or, and this is what I really hope for, this exact nonsense was someone’s lone vision, and to this day he still thinks the story is a masterpiece. Probably unlikely but that’s the funniest and therefore best option.

        1. bobbert says:

          The funnier question is, “What story did the maniac want to tell before he was forced to compromise with the two normal men?”

  8. BlueHorus says:

    what

    This. This, a thousand times over. I felt like my mind was fraying while reading today’s article.
    What the devil is going on? Why is Vayne the final boss fight, when the party has barely even met him? The final boss should clearly have been Cid.
    Also, we’re doing what Venat wants – we’ve already done it, in fact – so why are they bothering to oppose us?

    (…did Rocko alter the dialogue between Basch and Gabranth, because it makes zero sense. Like they’re aliens, who are also on drugs.)

    1. Check my work!

      I’m sure heavily compressing the tête-à-tête loses some of the meaning, but on my honor I mean only to represent faithfully my reaction to this scene as I played it, and then again as I re-watched it several times for due diligence.

    2. Mye says:

      So the entire game was heavily bastardize in development, but the end of the game must have been extra rushed. A lot of corner cutting become apparent, the bahamut, which is shown to be absolutely massive in cutscene, is the smallest dungeon by far (can’t even really be called one).

      Gabranth entire things makes no sense, he shouldn’t have been able to show up there (died in the cyst explosion and can’t reach a flying fortress) and his motivation are all over the place. My guess is that early in the game production Gabranth was actually multiple different character that all got combined into one (one was probably Basch brother/secret traitor and another Larsa bodyguard).

      And what can you even say about the occurian/Venat plot, can’t even say it went off the rail since it was never on them in the first place.

  9. Joshua says:

    As a nod to our host, this whole vacillation of the NPCs between what they’re wanting to do (and hence what they want the PCs to do) reminded me of this strip:
    https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1163

    1. Cilba Greenbraid says:

      This strip ruined Movie Eowyn for me. I cannot see her appear on screen without thinking of this strip and cracking up. Dammit, Shamus.

  10. Retsam says:

    Through most of this travelog, I’ve been kind of playing the devil’s advocate – not so much an intellectual exercise, but because I honestly think there’s interesting ideas and good moments buried in this game amidst the overall jank.

    … but honestly, for this finale, I’ve really got nothing. The game is trying to cash in on three separate plotlines that were ostensibly the main plot, but it largely forgot to develop them: the Venat/Occuria stuff, the Vayne/Larsa stuff, and the Bashe/Gabranth dynamic.

    Arguably the Venat/Occuria stuff is the least bad – Venat has at least a somewhat coherent goal and has achieved it, if you don’t stop to think about the fact that it was seemingly achieved entirely despite of all of Venat’s efforts instead of because of them. Suspicious Eldritch Crystal Entities work in mysterious ways, I guess.

    The Vayne/Larsa stuff, much less so: Larsa at least I can see the intended arc: he’s supposed to have gone from a naive trust in his home country (i.e. his early game conversation with Penelo) to having a “are we the baddies” moment… which kind of happens, except that it seems to happen entirely within this final cutscene, and fails to make any lasting impact.

    Vayne is even more mysterious – his whole interesting initial introduction of being the “unloved, but efficient administrator” seems to have gone nowhere. We never see this play out and he just plays the straight imperial expansionist villain. Clearly the “I don’t care if you hate me, but I’m going to do the best for you” idea was supposed to do something: you can only assume that somehow Vayne thinks what he’s doing is best for humanity, but I don’t think he ever really explains.

    Maybe the Behemoth was supposed to be such a powerful weapon, hanging in the air like a Sword of Damocles, that the mere threat of it would end war bringing humanity into a golden age of peace, and if turning himself into the villain is what it takes to achieve that th… hang on, I’m just reading from Code Geass’s script again.

    And, yeah, Gabranth and Basch is like a total loss – I have a hard time salvaging anything from that: with how the game opens with Basch being arguably the most central and important (surviving) character, and how Gabranth is like the mascot for the game… yeah, we sure don’t actually ever get anything from them. You might have been able to wring some tension and even some tragedy from the idea of these two brothers constantly opposing one another, but the game never really bothers to explain how or why they’re on opposite sides… or even has have the meet before the big climaxes.

    As is my overall thesis, I think the biggest issue of the game is just that we don’t have more – none of these ideas are fatally flawed, but to say that these ideas (and particularly the stuff with Vayne, Bashe and Gabranth) were “undercooked” is gross understatement.

    Part of that is just, as I’ve pointed out in the past, the overall cutscene time is surprisingly short: shorter than FFX and trying to tell a story that’s an order of magnitude more complex. Simply adding more runtime to the story may have helped a lot… but also they needed to trim some fat – Vossler and Gabranth and Ondore have a lot of overlap in “close friend/relative of dubious loyalty”, and Reddas… well if I had a nickel for every ex-Archadian judge atoning for past mistakes who joins our party, I’d have two nickels. (Actually, counting Gabranth in the final battle, I guess three nickels). And those bounty hunters from Act 1, and probably that whole “Penelo is kidnapped bit”….

    I do think this game was hurt by a short runtime (probably because this game is a lot more gameplay focused than a lot of FF games)… but it also wasn’t particularly economical about how it used the runtime it did have.

    1. bobbert says:

      The Vayne/Larsa stuff, much less so: Larsa at least I can see the intended arc: he’s supposed to have gone from a naive trust in his home country (i.e. his early game conversation with Penelo) to having a “are we the baddies” moment… which kind of happens, except that it seems to happen entirely within this final cutscene, and fails to make any lasting impact.

      Surely the standard structure would be: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. He ends up hating his brother’s methods, but seeing the need for them.

      Vayne is even more mysterious – his whole interesting initial introduction of being the “unloved, but efficient administrator” seems to have gone nowhere.

      Yeah, it is sad they didn’t do more with this; it is one of their best ideas. It wouldn’t have been hard to do more with. Show the soldiers, that were shaking down merchants, now on their best behavior with the fear of God in their eyes, after Vain becomes governor. Show the Senate being a cesspit before it is dissolved. After his purge have him exercise unchecked power, not as autocrat, but as regent for his more popular brother (The game may do this one; I forget).

      you can only assume that somehow Vayne thinks what he’s doing is best for humanity, but I don’t think he ever really explains.

      It is pretty clear the plan is to destroy the enemy fleet, then use the chaos to annex enough of a powerbase to be unchallengeablly strong (putting an end to the warring states period). They should have made the most important ship Leviathan for Hobbes points.

      1. Syal says:

        Surely the standard structure would be: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. He ends up hating his brother’s methods, but seeing the need for them.

        Only if we want him to be a villain. Larsa is following Ramza’s arc from FFT; “my family loves this country” to “my family is destroying this country for their own ends, I have to talk them down”, to “I have to stop my brother by force.” Which works, but here it isn’t very exciting.

        They should have made the most important ship Leviathan for Hobbes points.

        They blew up the Leviathan already. (The maniacs.) It was Ghis’ ship, and he blew it up with the ol’ “nuclear bomb in the coal shaft” prank.

        1. bobbert says:

          Only if we want him to be a villain.

          I disagree. The big themes of Tactic Ogre: Cling were, ‘You need to be willing to stain your hands in order to accomplish anything worthwhile'(You aren’t getting out of Chapter 1 without an unpardonable sin, though you get choose which) and ‘You can’t save everyone’. Plus, Vain got where he is with callous calculated betrayal; it would be a fitting way for him to go out – doubly so if his innocent little brother is the only one in the world he doesn’t have the heart to betray.

          How much fun would the ending be if “Vain escapes wounded with his body-guards and Larsa. At Larsa’s signal they cut him down. He then pulls out of his pocket a mutually agreeable treaty with Rosaria – negotiated in secret. In unrelated news, he is engaged to El-Cid’s sister.” The credits could roll over a big fancy wedding in Dalmsaka.

          They blew up the Leviathan already. (The maniacs.) It was Ghis’ ship, and he blew it up with the ol’ “nuclear bomb in the coal shaft” prank.

          Then they should have switched the names! You don’t let your big symbolically named thing-a-ma-jig go out with a wimper in act II; it’s against regulations.

          1. Syal says:

            How much fun would the ending be if

            Going to say “not very”. It sounds like an ending to The Wire. Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics make a point of ending with every known conspirator dead or dying. To have a faced conspirator still standing is a different tone.

      2. Retsam says:

        It is pretty clear the plan is to destroy the enemy fleet, then use the chaos to annex enough of a powerbase to be unchallengeably strong (putting an end to the warring states period).

        You’re probably right that this is what they were going for – but I don’t think the story really comes across this way:

        For one, it doesn’t feel like a “warring states period” where there’s a long period of squabbling states and constant chaos until one power becomes strong enough to unite them. Instead, it seems like there was a long period of peace that was ended by the aggression of the Archadian Empire the defensive alliance of Dalmascia/Nabradia in order to fight its rival, Rozzaria.

        It feels more Cold War with two feuding mega powers, (and the “stones as nukes” metaphor doesn’t hurt) and everyone else caught in the crossfire. And by the end, it seems even Rozzaria is largely forgotten and Vayne’s big battle at the end is just trying to put down this rebellion.

        And that’s kind of the second problem – it doesn’t even feel like the Behemoth is actually a big enough threat to be credible bringer of “Pax Archadium” – the final battle is not a blow-out in favor of Archadia, even before the protagonists do their thing, and isn’t Dalmasca just supposed to be the small roadblock on the way to their real enemy, Rozzaria? If you’ll forgive the real-world comparison, Vayne ends up feeling more like a current-day Putin than a Qin Shi Huang.

        1. bobbert says:

          Agree 100% that some of the writers wanted to tell a Cold War story and others wanted something more like Romance of Three Kingdoms. They tied the story to two trains going to different cities, and it got mangled in the process.

          It is weird how little Rosearia show up in the story. The opening crawl talks about how they have been Tunder-dome-ing their way up from the south in a way similar way that Arcadia has been from the north. The
          game talks about, a few times, how throwing in with Rosearia, even in victory, is likely to result in Meet the new Boss…. Other parts of the story want it to just be: Rosearians are the good-uns, and Arcadians are the bad-uns (this is a problem in the Ogre Battle games too).

          The big fleet battle is a mess. I feel like it changes scene-to-scene whether the Arcadian fleet is fighting the combined fleet to a standstill, while charging its Yamato Cannon, or just Ondoor’s fleet. I agree the second is much lamer.

          I feel like the game says that many (most?) of the ship in Ondoor’s fleet along with their crews are on loan from Rosearia, but I could be mis-remembering.

          1. Chad+Miller says:

            I feel like the game says that many (most?) of the ship in Ondoor’s fleet along with their crews are on loan from Rosearia, but I could be mis-remembering.

            Yeah, this was mentioned a couple posts back. A lot of “Ondore’s” fleet is actually Rozarrian ships not flying Rozarrian colors for, I dunno, plausible deniability. This is also likely why these particular ships don’t mind collateral damage to Dalmasca so much; they’re keeping the conflict away from home.

    2. Thomas says:

      Even the Venat / Occuria stuff is so far away from being a good story though. What we got in the game was basically the 5 line pitch of that story.

      If you start at the end, you want the player to feeling _something_ when Venat says her plan is already complete (and already we’re in a tangle here because this event is taking so long after the place where that plan was complete and ideally you’d like to line those two up instead of telling people the game ended half an hour ago). It’s not even clear what we’re meant to feel – fear, joy? Fear doesn’t work because her plan seems to be good for humanity. Joy doesn’t work because we’d already rejected the Occuria and destroyed their thing and Venat and Vayne are still fighting us and doing bad things. But let’s assume we’re going with joy and that we readjust the plot so the player doesn’t know the Occuria have been defeated, and the timing issue has been fixed, and that this climax is not a fight with Venat / Vayne, or if it is, we understand why.

      Then to elicit that emotion we need to establish that what the Occuria do is bad and do something with the player that has them emotionally engaged with that. So far all we have, is the dry reporting that the Occuria led the world into a golden age in the distant past. This doesn’t establish them as bad, as is as emotional and engaging as cardboard. So you need to create a whole series of events which the player doesn’t like which the Occuria revealed are responsible for. And then as you want this story to be entertaining, you probably want that reveal to be a disguise.

      This is so far away from what the game does, we’ve already essentially discarded the entire story of FFXII and are writing a new one. And even this would only be a pretty cliched average story. To make it interesting you would have to add a whole bunch of complexity on top (show why this conflict is ambiguous, give both sides bad events, show the cost of doing bad things for a good goal etc.).

      Really that’s, aside from a few scenes, that’s the whole of FFXII. A bunch of 5 line pitches thrown together, that if you squint could possibly become other better stories if you added in the actual story.

      1. Retsam says:

        I think a lot of the issue over the Occuria is the question of how central they’re supposed to be to the story. What you’re suggesting is basically that the Occuria would be the main plot, and like you say, it’d basically be an entirely different story, and not the story FFXII is actually trying to tell.

        And, yeah, it’s kind of weird to introduce supernatural entities that are apparently pulling strings, and not have them be the main point of the story… but I do think that’s what FFXII is doing here. I think it’s intentionally focused on the mundane world and only interested in the supernatural as it intersects with the story at hand.

        I actually don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing – on the list of things I’d like FFXII to flesh out, Venat is a low priority and the rest of the Occuria, even lower. The Occuria serve a few specific roles in the plot – most notably providing Ashe’s temptation to the Dark Side moment – and give the hint of a bigger story that we only see a part of, but I don’t think they needed to become the main driver of the plot.

        (Straying a little outside my lane here, but this may be an East-vs-West thing: in the West, our general focus on capital-G “God” means you can’t really ‘casually’ introduce higher entities in the story, but a more traditionally Eastern cosmology this kind of “there’s higher order beings oying around with us, don’t worry about it” may be a lot more normal)

        [Again with my half-joking theory that Code Geass and FFXII shared some writing staff – Code Geass also introduces a supernatural plotline involving gods and the free will of mankind about 3/4ths of the way into the show, spends about an episode on it, resolves it, and goes back to the actual plot about mechas and politics and superpowers. Seems to work out okay for that story]

        1. Thomas says:

          But if that’s true, why has the parties objectives mostly been focused on the supernatural side throughout the game? We spend all our time chasing stoned and swords instead of learning about the political situation and the people of the world. The second half of the game has barely advanced any other story.

          FfXII lacks the most basic interactions of: you go to an area, and you learn how the people in the area feel about the thing the game is about. Pretty much all the world travel is, at best, devoted to giving some atmosphere to the supernatural side. You never visit Rozarria, but you do visit Raithwall’s tomb. The Garif care about the supernatural stuff but barely seem to make sense in terms of the geopolitics. You go to the capital city and there is essentially _nothing of relevance_ to either the political story as a whole or Vayne as a person.

          If you wanted to make the Vayne stuff work as a story you’d still have to essentially throw out the entire story of FFXII and rewrite it from the ground up. I just picked one angle, but this game doesn’t flesh out any of the other angles either. For the political side you could keep more cutscenes, at the expense of redoing most of what you _do_ in this game.

          1. Retsam says:

            I don’t get this argument, because we always pursued stones and swords for political reasons – we want the stone to prove our lineage, then we want the stones power to defend Dalmasca, then we want the sword to counter the threat of the stones that Archadia, and destroy the Sun-Cryst because strange crystals floating in the sky distributing magic stones is no basis for a system of government, or something.

            It’s always the mundane, political situation driving the plot. Even once we meet the Occuria, everything still stays largely focused on the mundane: the crux of Ashe’s temptation isn’t really about the Occuria themselves, but just her temptation to basically commit genocide on her enemies to save her country.

            You could honestly remove the Occuria from the plot with very small tweaks – all you really need from the end of the Great Crystal is something that Ashe can take to the Lighthouse and use to destroy Archadia. Some ancient Maguffin left by the Dynast-King would work just as well, without the giant talking crystal people.

            But the Vayne/Arcadia stuff is far more central to the plot. It is the plot really. You could remove Vayne himself, I guess, but the game needs some personification of the Archadian empire.

      2. bobbert says:

        Really that’s, aside from a few scenes, that’s the whole of FFXII. A bunch of 5 line pitches thrown together, that if you squint could possibly become other better stories if you added in the actual story.

        No, that’s Xenogears. FFXII is a little better.

        If Xenogears is a sack full of sand, FFXII is a sack full of gravel.

  11. Dev Null says:

    Wait, sorry, but didn’t the whole story wrap up like 2 episodes ago? I’ve never played this game, so while I’m enjoying the travelogue I’ll admit to not particularly following the story, but: aren’t we done here?

    1. Syal says:

      Two episodes ago was Zanarkand*. Now we’re fighting Sin. If Sin was a completely ordinary guy with fancy hair.

      *(Zanarkand out of nowhere. Sudden Zanarkand.)

      1. Kathryn says:

        I was going to say that the ordinary guy with fancy hair is Seymour, but then I remembered the vein things on his face and chest, so never mind.

        True fact: I was once in training with a girl who, I swear, had used blue eyeliner to paint lines on her eyelids exactly like the ones on Seymour’s. And everything else in her look (hair, clothes, shoes, the rest of her makeup) was 100% conventional. It was very distracting because all I could think was WHY ARE YOU WEARING GUADO MAKEUP but I couldn’t ask because I knew there was basically no way she actually was trying to look like Seymour.

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