T w e n t y S i d e d
In this week’s entry Rocketmaaaaa-an! talks about the scene where Basch meets with Ondore, the Marquis,Based on my time with Mike Tyson Adventures, I’m convinced you’re all wrong and “Marquis” is actually pronounced “Marcuth”. the narrator guy, or whatever the game is calling him at any given moment.
Ondore meets with Basch, but then he says something ominous about needing to “keep up appearances”. Basch draws his sword, some imperials charge in, and we cut to the next scene.
We’ve been belaboring how little sense things make in the story right now, and I worry that this argument is going to wear out its welcome long before we get to the end. So let’s give that a rest and talk about the odd cinematography.
Back in 2007 I claimed that Basch ran out of the room after drawing his sword. But no, said the fans, I just wasn’t paying attention. On a second viewing, I can see that he’s still there. He’s just standing behind Balthier.
This is really strange. Basch is the focal point of this scene. They’re having this meeting because of him, and the guards are here to arrest him. He should be standing center stage in this final shot. Ideally you’d have the resistance on the left, the empire on the right, Basch in the middle, and Ondore – who plays both sides – should be just slightly to the right of Basch and a little further from the audience. Instead Ondore isn’t in the shot and Basch is behind a character that really doesn’t have anything to do in this scene.
I know the above “ideal” composition sounds horribly contrived when I describe it in print, but [good] movies do this sort of thing all the time. It usually doesn’t come across as “contrived”. Instead of feeling artificial and staged, it feels like the camera just happened to land in the perfect spot to make the situation nice and clear for us.
In fact, Final Fantasy X has a pretty good example of This Exact Thing:
Square is usually really good at this sort of thing, but this scene between Ondore and Basch has the blocking and framing of a student film.
It’s confusing because we don’t understand why Basch is drawing his weapon. If he’s going to use it on the guards, then why doesn’t he? It’s not like stormtroopers are an insurmountable force in this game. Is he planning to stab Ondore? No, that doesn’t make any sense. Is he showing off the sword that Dalan gave him? No, his pose is wrong for playing show-and-tell. Is he… is he going to stab Vaan just to see what sounds the little wretch makes?
Because I’d be down for that.
After watching this scene multiple times, I’ve finally decided that Basch draws his sword as a means of committing a crime, so that Ondore can call the guards and have the group arrested, for the express purpose of having them rescue the princess.
The problem is that this makes no sense.
In multiple ways.
Is This Confusing on Purpose?
I know I said that I wanted to take a break from these sorts of complaints. Look, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m trying. Talking about this scene means, you know, describing what happens in it. If I do so without comment, then you’re just going to be confused and assume I’ve described it wrong or left out important details.
Basch draws his sword in response to Ondore saying he needs to “keep up appearances”. Which, on first viewing, makes it sound like Ondore had to turn you in order to protect himself and his position. Which makes this feel like a betrayal. But then after the escape, Basch talks about this in terms of this being part of a premeditated plan to rescue the princess. So the setup appears to be deliberately confusing, with the dialog misleading the player as to the cause and intent of this arrest.
Ignoring that, Basch doesn’t need to draw a sword on the Marquis to get arrested. All he needs to do is be Basch Fon Ronsenburg, which he’s already doing. He’s a super-famous imperial fugitive. This is like the Unabomber pulling a gun on the mayor so the police will arrest him. This step is not required, because the Empire has issued you a free “Go Directly to Jail, Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200” card with no expiration date. Just walk up to the nearest suit of armor and introduce yourself.
But not only does Basch seem to think he needs to commit a crime to get arrested, Balthier seems to be on the same nonsensical wavelength. He shouts “Wait!”, apparently realizing that Basch is about to pull steel and get them all thrown in the pokey.
The plan seems to be:
- Basch pulls out a weapon to get himself arrested. (Incidentally, holding a sword is a terrible idea. It just increases the odds that the guards will resort to “stab first, ask questions later”. At least DROP IT when the guards enter, both to make this safer and to help the audience understand what the heck you’re trying to accomplish.)
- Everyone else also gets arrested, for some reason. I mean, the Empire has reasons to lock them all up, but none of them have anything to do with Basch waving a sword around. If they suddenly recognize us as the famous fugitives from Dalmasca, then why didn’t they recognize us while we were dicking around in town in front of the guards? And why don’t they recognize us when we come back later and stand in this same goddamn room? Damn it, game. Are we famous criminals or not?
- We somehow know that the entire party will be taken to the same flying supermax prison ship. We know ahead of time that the Imperials aren’t just going to stick Basch in another birdcage over a chasm like they did last time. We also seem to be pretty confident they’re not going to just stab him. I hear brutal occupying military forces do that sort of thing now and again.
- Not only that, but we know that the entire party will be taken to the same place where Ashe is being held.
- Next, we improvise. With no plan, no backup, and no special knowledge, we’ll break out of our bonds, overpower the waves of stormtroopers, rescue the princess, commandeer a vessel, and escape.
All three men – Ondore, Basch, and Balthier – seem to arrive at this same ludicrous conclusion, without needing to say anything about it or make any plans. It’s not like the cat dude rolls out a map and says, “Okay, here’s how this prison break is going to work. Here are the keys you need to get out of your bonds. We’ve bribed some guards to leave you with your weapons and we have an escape ship fueled up with the engine running if you can somehow reach the launch bay.”
No. Ondore just assumes that Basch will be able to bust out of prison, even though the last two years proved that prison breaks are not his strong suit. As it stands, he was only freed by happenstance and monkeyshines on the part of Vaan.
WhatEVER, Man
Now, ridiculous and improbable prison breaks are a staple of the series. The problem is that the writer has shifted away from a world that runs on pure sentiment and anime harem comedy logic and is instead filled with House of Cards style backstabbing, politicking, and intrigue. Fine. That’s cool! I’m totally here for it.
But they want to keep the cartoonish tropes where six people can bust out of a flying prison because they’re the heroes, and Ondore seems to be aware of this and can even make plans based on it. And of course, we already did an implausible escape from a cartoon prison earlier in the story.
I just flat-out do not believe in this world. It’s too silly to take seriously and it takes itself too seriously for me to turn my brain off and enjoy it emotionally.
Footnotes:
[1] Based on my time with Mike Tyson Adventures, I’m convinced you’re all wrong and “Marquis” is actually pronounced “Marcuth”.
Punishing The Internet for Sharing
Why make millions on your video game when you could be making HUNDREDS on frivolous copyright claims?
Twelve Years
Even allegedly smart people can make life-changing blunders that seem very, very obvious in retrospect.
What is Vulkan?
What is this Vulkan stuff? A graphics engine? A game engine? A new flavor of breakfast cereal? And how is it supposed to make PC games better?
The Biggest Game Ever
Just how big IS No Man's Sky? What if you made a map of all of its landmass? How big would it be?
Chainmail Bikini
A horrible, railroading, stupid, contrived, and painfully ill-conceived roleplaying campaign. All in good fun.
Me but for almost every Square Enix JRPG.
Imperial Soldier 1: “Hey’s that’s Basch Fon Rosenberg! Man, it sure was an oversight not killing him when we had the chance. Caused us all sorts of trouble.”
Imperial Soldier 2: “Welp, that’s easily solved.”
Basch: “No no wait, this wasn’t part of the plaAAAAARGH!”
– Also: I like how Fran always seems to have such a serious look on her face. For a character who has done roughly 0.01 useful things for the plot, she always seems so…intent in screenshots.
Usually the unnecessary side characters in a Final Fantasy game are y’know, lighthearted. Fun. Like the dancing moogle, or the slobbering frog creature, the Cloudcuckoolander or Genki Girl…
But not Fran. Despite being useless, despite being dressed like…that, she’s always got this brooding expression on her face and her arms crossed.
…maybe she’s trying to keep up with the story?
EDIT: Curse you WordPress! You led me to believe that this WOULDN’T be a reply to Vowl’s post…
From what I saw, Fran’s playing into an archetype of ‘wise, but quiet & aloof, and a bit otherworldly’. She knows what’s going on, but is content to follow Balthier in these matters.
It’s interesting because her costume is very much playing against type. And I like it. I how the Viera look, paired with their rather grounded and sensible nature.
After the whole rigamarole of having Vaan going around proclaiming himself as Basch to random townies, how hilarious would it be if the guards rushed in, shouted “That’s Basch, get him!” and then proceeded to stab the shit out of Vaan instead?
In all seriousness, Basch supposedly died a few years ago in a faraway land where photographs don’t appear to be common.
Why WOULD anyone know what Basch looks like?
I mean, probably not like Vaan who, according to a wiki, is 17 at the time of game whereas Basch is 36.
You may very well be aware of that, but final fantasy tactics, sorta related to this game, very much pull off the “take itself seriously part” and it even has a bit of heart to it.
Square-enix was never able to replicate this feat (maybe vagrant story?).
I’d disagree there. The other games in general are fairly decent at taking themselves decently. When they want to. It may not be the entire game, but they all have a good amount of time dedicated where things are serious, and they’re hoping to get you to enjoy it too. FFXII is a special kind of game though.
Eh, don’t worry about it, they’re probably dead of old age by now.
(Also, holy cow were embedded images low-res back in 2007)
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain…
I think he meant 2007 AD, not BC.
There’s a recent movie (whose title I won’t mention because the whole thing is impossible to discuss without this being a spoiler) also involving a prison break, but then a twist at the end reveals one of the prisoners got themselves arrested on purpose. Except that nothing makes sense that way. There’s no way to know they’d both end in the same prison, let alone the same cell. No one else is in on it, so there’s no external aid to help with the escape plan, which basically has to be improvised on the spot, and also means their very own survival is left to chance, since no one will be protecting them. And yeah, the excuse given is that one of the prisoners is very good at escaping, but wouldn’t that mean that they’d be given more surveillance? Of course, they escape without a hitch, at the expense of making even the slightest bit of sense.
Plots that run almost exclusively on luck yet try to pretend the characters are being smart test my patience. I know people love Civil War, but this is one of the reasons I hate it. Every step of Zemo’s plan depends exclusively on chance, yet the audiences keep treating him as a bloody genius.
I guess that’s true
On the other hand, I also watched the show Prison Break.
In that show, to rescue his falsely accused brother, a man gets himself sent to the same prison. He’s read the statute and knows exactly what degree of illegal his crime needs to be to make this happen. He knows how to break out of his cell, because he worked for the firm that renovated the prison, and has seen actual plans. He can’t remember everything, so he literally tattoos the escape plan on his body, apparently encoded in a way only he can read. Super elaborate setup.
And then the plot winds up involving a romantic plot with the prison doctor who also just happens to be the governor’s daughter, a search for buried treasure ex machina, and a whole host of other contrivances in support of a loony toons conspiracy theory story that are too dumb to remember.
A well founded prison break does not necessarily result in a non-crazy-pants story…
I agree. I also feel the same about Loki’s secret plan in The Avengers. His basic plan is to open the sky portal to get the Chitauri involved. But then he engages in an action to intimidate a bunch of Germans so the Avengers will show up and he’ll surrender. *Since he has a long history with the Avengers and knows their personalities and their resources including a sky carrier, his master plan is to leave his scepter (which he is intimately familiar with) near them to cause agitation, which in turn will cause Banner to Hulk out, no one will be able to stop the Hulk, and Loki will be freed while his enemies will have defeated himself.
Except everything after the * is fake. He has mind-controlled Clint and has been seen infiltrating SHIELD, but a lot of the facts above only Fury would know, and most of it is conjecture. His plan is contingent on Banner being recruited, but how does he know that will happen? How does he know exactly how much irritation Banner can take? For that matter, if Banner does turn into the Hulk and smashes up the carrier, how does Loki know that the whole carrier won’t crash with him still in his cell?
I have a slightly different irritation with Civil War as well. The MCU has a kind of Schrodinger’s World status where events dramatically change the world, and yet leave it recognizably the same (for the audience’s benefit). I know we had a post here about Civil War when it was released, and about which side you would support. For a world that’s supposed to be like ours, I would definitely be on team Iron Man. A group of mercenaries engages in a completely open fire fight on foreign soil and innocents are killed. This would have HUGE political consequences in our world, and nations should be able to have at least some sense of sovereignty over their borders.
But this is not exactly our world. Aliens have invaded several times by this point. The Avengers are no longer operating under SHIELD (after it collapsed), but they just seem to be a private entity now? How does all of this work? The audience is never explicitly told. So, it’s really hard to actually pick one side or the other because the framework of the question is on quasi-defined ground.
Pretty sure the Sokovia Accords subplot in Civil War was essentially just for the marketing and the actual story was focused on Steve’s relationship with Bucky and Tony. The Avengers were really only there (and in Spider-Man’s case, to secure a deal with Sony) because they needed to acknowledge that Age of Ultron ended with the Avengers becoming an actual organization that Cap led and not just a temporary group the heroes form every once in a while.
Also side note but does else anyone realize that Winter Soldier and Civil War should have switched titles with each other? I mean Winter Soldier is more about a literal civil war within S.H.I.E.L.D. and Civil War centered more around the Winter Soldier.
I hated the Sokovia Accords because they wouldn’t actually solve the issue they were supposedly created to address (people died because Scarlet Witch needed bomb disposal training, having the Avengers deploy when the UN tells them to instead of when they feel like it does nothing to reduce that kind of impossible-to-predict collateral damage) and they could have made an interesting tension out of “the bureaucracy is stupid” vs “we have to comply or the bureaucracy will crush us”, but none of the characters even seemed to notice the problem.
I think they could have cut the Accords plotline entirely and just gone straight to making it about the Winter Soldier or some other material case of the responsibility theme the script kept vaguely gesturing at: the Authorities want the Avengers to hand someone over for punishment, the Avengers are divided, fights ensue.
Over time Civil War has become one of my least favourite Marvel films, because it’s pretending to be something it isn’t.
All of the civil war angle feels a marketing illusion to suggest it’s taking on a famous storyline, and that there will be stakes and thematic conflicts, but there’s nothing to any of it.
Just do the standard Marvel fun ride, I’ll have fun and it won’t ring so hollow.
Realistically, it might not have made much a difference, as the Nigerian(?) government would have had ample reason to complain even if the mission had gone well; the fact that there was collateral damage just makes it easier to argue their case in the court of public opinion.
Thematically, it does seem to be a problem.
I really don’t like the “Heros! The villains, who are not related to you in any way, have competently enacted a plan which would kill millions of people. You tried your best and put your lives on the line to save people. But a hundred people still died, and we will hate you forever because it’s 100% your fault. Yes, it’s 0% the villains fault, because you failed. Now we’re going to hunt you down and also by the way the villains got away and nobody cares because this is 100% your fault.” storylines. It’s not every superhero series, but it’s come up a few times.
I’d even be fine with nuance that asks who’s exactly responsible for what and doesn’t necessarily let the heros get away scot free. I’m not asking to live in the opposite naive fantasy either. X-Men kinda seems to dabble with this too, in a way that probably works better in the comics (and in the 1960s) than it does now.
(And yes, in the case of Civil War Tony has some responsibility, but I don’t think everyone else does, nor is that even the time that necessarily triggers all this.)
The Incredibles 2 opening had a good version of it; the villain is just a bank robber, and the heroes confronting him is what causes him to use all his weaponry and destroy multiple blocks of the city.
Don’t remember much of Hancock, but I think that’s the case there too, where the hero is legitimately doing more damage than would be done if you just let the villain go.
The problem is, the happy ending of Incredibles 2 is superheroes being legal/popular again, so that acts against the intended message.
At no point does it really make the case that superheroes are a good thing. Everything in that story is ‘superheroes cause more damage than they prevent’, ‘people die in tragic backstory because they rely too much on superheroes’, ‘someone turns to crime in order to make superheroes legal in order to then make superheroes illegal again even though that doesn’t make sense’, and ‘mind-controlled superheroes endanger everyone’. No-one is better off for superheroes existing.
I mean, Red Notice was a hilarious movie that wasn’t supposed to be taken seriously in the first place. Just a fun action movie featuring typecast antics of The Rock, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Godot.
I seriously wonder how much easier it would be to forgive this scene and the ensuing sequence if Yellow Cat Guy had told Basch “Boss wants to see you” and surreptitiously handed him a note.
All the note really has to say is “Draw your sword and you will be taken to the princess’ prison. I will aid your escape.”
Is there something wrong with the formatting? After the first image, every single anchor text isn’t bolded, and neither are the subheadings. I also checked it on my phone (also Chrome), and I still have the same issue.
Whoops. Yeah. There was a problem. Should be fixed now.
Yup! Everything’s OK now!
Maybe mistake or maybe I don’t get the word play but is belaboring from the “We’ve been belaboring how little sense things make in the story right now” a typo?
Nope, common usage.
Ah my bad, I was thinking it was a typo/auto correct gone wrong for elaborating (on) somehow.
“Why is Fran standing center stage? She doesn’t even have any dialog!”
I’ll be honest with you Shamus, I wouldn’t mind if she was center stage in every shot, even scenes she has nothing to do with
I thought that Basch wasn’t in on the plan; he just found out about it after Vossler springs you all and tells him. So the reason he drew his sword would be that he planned to fend off his attackers before he remembered that he’s in a cutscene where that wouldn’t be a trivial fight.
I’ll be that guy: It’s “Unabomber”, not “Unibomber”.
Just mentioning Imperial troops are one of the few enemies to drop straight cash, and we are absolutely collecting $200 in this trip to jail.
I think you’ve got that scene backward; Basch draws his sword as visual shorthand to show he doesn’t know what the plan is. He figures it out when the other factors are revealed during the escape. Balthier may or may not already know; that’s Balthier’s whole schtick.
Knowing where they’ll end up isn’t too hard; the Imperials are only visiting this city, so anyone they take has to go back on the Ambassador’s ship. Although that begs the question why the Princess is on the Ambassador’s ship, despite having been arrested by a different Judge, in a different city, sometime between two hours ago and last month.
One quirk of this story is that it starts out with a bunch of political dithering, but we’re about the hit the point where that mostly falls away and it transitions back to being something more like a traditional JRPG plot. This will not make the game any better, but we’ll at least soon have one nonsensical goal rather than the writers trying to explain a social game they clearly don’t understand. Only mostly because the writers will keep trying to cut back to the political plot which basically never matters again.
One issue is the lack of world-building, partly a consequences of having a very visual storytelling design. The game doesn’t explain Dalmasca; they show it. This is a big advantage of visual media but it can cause problems with invisible connections, which are basically what societies are build on. And that matters in political stories.
To clarify: Game of Thrones shows the visual differences between locations and uses those to support the cultural contexts of each place. We what Winterfell looks like, how it makes sense as an extension of the Starks in particular and the North in general, and can easily contrast that to King’s Landing physically, culturally, and politically. To some degree, this is visual simplification as we don’t really expect physical space to always reflect cultural tropes or stereotypes in real life, but it’s almost necessary as a media shorthand.
[Getting to the relevant idea] FF12 has an issue where so much of the game’s time is taken up by trying to figure out what actually matters. This is a world where people can summon up Gods and throw fireballs and have fighter jets and aircraft carriers, so you might expect the plots to be wildly over-the-top, but instead its deeply understated political machinations. Yet it’s never made clear why. Does Archadia* need popular support, or not? Whose support actually matters?
The game claims there’s all this political stuff going on but it really seems that the world’s fate is decided by who can punch the the other guy into the stratosphere with their ancient elemental god-powers. Which the remainder of the game will emphasize. When characters are one-man armies, why do we having mass armies? Much of these incongruities were covered-up in the old games, because you don’t expect as much realism when you’re dealing with 16-bits of highly representative graphics. When airships are unique one-offs rather than everyday tools, you don’t need to integrate them into the world design. And nobody really cared about the Dwarf Kingdom’s economy because we knew the key question was they said “Lali-ho!” or “Rally Ho!” and the people all loved the Dwarf King because, why wouldn’t you? (He’s awesome.)
I could build a plot structure to make the events as described more or less function. For example, Ondore here has a really nice opportunity to look loyal-ish while really putting the screws to his Archadian “allies”. he can, like a good ally, turn over Basch and friends while making sure they’ll have the opportunity to escape later. Meanwhile, he can easily expose that Archadia almost certainly murdered the King of Dalmasca** by literally just saying in public that he accepts that Basch is innocent and asking Archadia to respect this. In one stroke he’s given them no offense and looked extra-loyal while also demolishing their public image, which wasn’t great to begin with. All it would take is Basch and Ondore, with some interjections from Balthier, to discuss this plan. Vaan and/or Fran could be confused by it without breaking established relationships, and if you need to make Vaan has relevance, well, he’s a thief. Ondore’s loyal retainers could slip him something to escape with, knowing that Vaan isn’t really on Archadia’s radar.
*Despite having read this series at least twice already and played the game, I literally had to go look “Archadia” up because the major factions are so ill-defined and un-memorable.
**I only remembered that name because Vaan idiotically shouting “I’m Basch von Ronsenburg of Dalmasca!” is burned into my brain.
It’s amazing how much the dwarves and all other factions in FF IV are so quick to forgive you when you ONCE AGAIN screw up and fail to protect their crystal.
……Which is as it should be. The game’s plot of nonstop failure would be intolerable if all of the NPCs were pointing out how incompetent your team is.
I think in part that is because the party warned them, and the party was the last line of defense after the rest of the nation, rather than the first or the only.
So yeah, in FF4 you fail to stop the baddies, but so does the nation you warned about the problem, often in a way that shows the party as more competent than said nations military.
It’s contrived, for sure, but FF4 is an avalanche of terrible writing and contrived plot conveniences. The only reason I’m as fond of it as I am is nostalgia, pure and simple.
I think the cinematography is definitely an intentional stylistic choice – it’s not that FFX has “good” cinematography and FFXII has bad cinematography, it’s that they’re both going for very different styles. FFX is more traditionally “cinematic”, with smooth camera motions and more sweeping shots and “gods-eye” views, but those sort of shots are rare in FFXII (with some location establishing shots and a few scenes like Vayne’s speech being a notable exception).
Instead, FFXII almost always has its camera in the midst of the scene, often using explicit POV shots that move with a character, (such as the scene Shamus is analyzing – it’s a moving shot from the POV of the guards who are running into the room), and even when not, the camera is consistently close-in on the characters, rather than filming from “outside” (and often above) the scene, like FFX commonly does.
It emphasizes this by often having people or things pass right in front of the camera – it happens multiple times in this scene – Ondore walks in front of a shot of Bashe and the party, a shot of Ondore is disrupted by the guards hauling the party out, and our view of Cat Person #2 opening the door to call the guards is obstructed by a potted plant – it trades a degree of clarity for a sense of “presence”: the player is meant to feel like a participant – or at least a bystander – in the scene, which means not always having the ideal point of view on the action.
And I think each style fits the game pretty well: FFX is a “grand adventure” kind of story, so the more distant “cinematic” feel works for it. Whereas FFXII is trying to be a lot more “grounded” and low-level “political thriller”, and the “intimate” cinematography style reflects that, too.
Granted, there’s room for subjective preference here – just look at all the debate over “shakeycam” and stuff like Bourne films – but I wouldn’t call it “student film” quality.
Okay, this does actually change the whole article here, because viewing the video, you’re absolutely correct, and it makes Shamus’s takedown of that framing seem really bizarre to me.
I’ve never played the game, and when I saw the screenshot at the top of the page before I started reading, I thought it was a reaction shot of the group as someone bursts into the room from Vaan and Fran’s side. That’s what the framing and body language are saying, and I’ve seen that sort of shot 1000 times in other games and movies, so it read that way immediately and intuitively.
But then Shamus describes it in completely different terms, never mentioning that shot is… exactly when the guards burst in, so I was like “yeah, that is a really weird nonsense framing.”
So now I see the scene in motion, and sure enough, it’s exactly what It looked like before I read the article: a reaction shot of the group from the POV of someone bursting into the room on Vaan and Fran’s side. This isn’t chaotic “film student” framing, this is literally as much a legitimate and well-worn framing as the alternatives he suggests given what’s happening at that moment.
I’m left wondering what happened on Shamus’s end. Did he only see screenshots, maybe confusingly out of sequence? Because how is that moment not reading clearly even in the just the one frame (as it was for me with no prior knowledge of the scene?). It’s really hard for me to imagine seeing the that shot and being confused by it without some outside factor muddying things.
Is his issue with the blocking, not the framing, and he’s getting these terms mixed (framing is how the camera is pointed, blocking is where the characters are placed)? That would make a little more sense. If Basch and whatsisface were positioned on the door side of the room rather than Vaan and Fran, you’d have the same shot while also largely satisfying his complaints. Though the “empire on the right” still suggests he wants a static wide shot, framed like a stage play. That would make sense for the shot immediately following this one, but for the moment the guards burst in, this shot makes perfect sense. It communicates a sudden spike in tension as the party is surprised by the guards.
This blocking communicates that the characters are being caught by surprise more prominently that it would if Basch and whatsisface were front and center instead of Vaan and Fran. The fact that the rear of the group is “front and center” relative to the guards emphasizes the unexpectedness of the action. It’s communicating what I think it’s meant to.
I have watched the scene, multiple times.
You’re right that it’s often a valid thing to show the scene from the POV of a character entering the room. My problem is that, on first viewing, I did not understand why characters were doing the things they were doing, or what anyone’s intentions were.
So Ondore says something ominous.
The Balthier says, “Wait!”
Then Basch pulls out his sword.
Then Ondore calls the guards.
I don’t understand why Basch has his sword out. Did Ondore call the guards because Basch pulled out his sword, or did Basch pull out his sword because he realized Ondore was about to call the guards? More importantly, are these two characters cooperating, or are they in conflict? (Cooperating seems the less likely of the two, but then later dialog reveals this to be the case.) And this question is kind of important, since it’s the entire point of the scene.
So then I’m looking at this shot to try and figure out what’s going on. The character I want to see is Basch. I wannt to see his face, and I want to see what he’s doing with the sword, and I want to see his reaction to the guards. But instead he’s behind Vaan, not moving, and we can’t see his face or his sword.
So yes, it’s totally valid to show a POV shot when someone enters the room, but in this case I can’t see the important details I’m looking for.
You can call this a problem with the blocking or framing if you like. I don’t know which to blame it on since I honestly can’t tell what the storyteller was trying to convey here.
To add to Shamus’s comment here, why is the viewpoint of the generic guards significant in this scene significant? They’re not really seeing anything distinctive or important, nor is the scene dramatic in any way. The whole thing is apparently a deliberate ploy by all involved, so the there’s not really any need for a fakeout anyway. In addition, the muted colours of the scene means that the characters don’t really “pop” in any sense so it’s very visually muddled and the important elements are hidden or almost camoflauged behind others.
The game does have some good cutscenes. This one is people doing strange fake accents talking in extremely elliptical ways about complex political machinations in a dim environment for unclear purposes that ends with a muddled action.
The POV of the guards isn’t “significant” – it’s just a useful way of showing the action: guards rush in and the party is surprised by this. Like Shufflecat said:
And I’m not sure what you mean by this scene is “not dramatic in any way”. You go to someone for help and they betray you to the enemy (at least seemingly) seems pretty dramatic to me, and it’s certainly framed as dramatic by the cinematography. The fact that later events reveal that it may have been part of a plan doesn’t make the scene retroactively not-dramatic.
I don’t think it’s a problem with the blocking or the framing or the cinematography at all. I actually think this scene is meant to be somewhat ambiguous, and it communicated everything it intended to: Ondore he’s going to turn Bashe in (albeit, buried a little in this game’s flowery dialect), Bashe draws a sword, guards arrest everyone.
I actually think this is pretty much exactly what it looks like. My read of this scene is that Ondore is betraying us, and if he has a plan, Bashe isn’t in on it, and he’s actually drawing that sword for the reasons you’d expect, if someone just said they were going to betray you, while standing within stabbing range.
But if the scene is a bit more ambiguous, that works too. I do think you’re meant to be unclear about Ondore’s exact intentions here. And I think that’s fine.
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The issue, IMO, isn’t with this scene at all, but just that the game forgets to actually clarify this later. When you come back with Ashe, there should have been dialogue one way or the other.
If Ondore was only “betraying” you as part of some plan, then some line like “I’m sorry for the misdirection, but that was the only way to get you onto the Leviathan to have a hope of rescuing Ashe”. And if it was actually a betrayal, then some line like “I’m sorry, but I need to stay on the Empire’s good side, and I couldn’t be seen to do nothing after some asshole ran around yelling to everyone that Basch fon Ronsenburg was back”.
(And if it really was pre-arranged beforehand between some combination of Bashe, Ondore, and Balthier – though I don’t think this was the case – then some dialogue that indicates that)
Either way, I think this scene would work, as is. Ambiguous is fine, it becomes problematic because it’s left ambiguous and never clarified.
I don’t understand anything about that story, but I love the screenshots. The characters look so serious but also so stupid! It’s like what you’re describing storywise, they obviously take themselves seriously but really shouldn’t. Especially that two third naked scowling bunny lady.
You need to know to turn your brain off and on at the right times./s
I’m more interested in the lighting of that first screenshot: is the Marquis’ official office (or wherever he’s meeting people that he can call in guards immediately) light by a two candles and a firefly up near the ceiling? I can barely make out anything, except for some architectural elements which seem to be either self-luminous or reflecting a light that’s not reaching the characters. If this is, as mentioned above, a POV shot of the guards bursting in, were they outside in full sunlight and are having their eyes adjust to the dim interior? Like, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a dark scene, it just seems out of place for where the action is ostensibly taking place.
*lit by two candles, wow.
Busting out of an Imperial prison twice in one afternoon really makes it hard to take them seriously.
Eventually the prisons stop even being levels and you start breaking out of them in cutscenes.
Because she lost half of her bondage costume and they want you to keep an eye on her in case she get cold.