Tales of the Abyss 3DS - LIVEPLAYYYY

[sincere]

Yeah yeah. You know the drill. I will make comments as I go through. They probably won't be awesome or insightful comments.

It's okay to leaves spoilers in this one, guys.

Comments

[lynndyre]

I feel like maybe I'm the odd one out - I only really got to like him as short-haired Luke. I have a lot more appreciation this time around, but I can see why other party members wouldn't.

Tear spent ages with Legretta having it drilled in how to be not-a-girly-wuss, so she doesn't automatically have sympathy for a guy, who's older than she is, being quite this incompetent. Debateable how much of an excuse or reason that is - but she's also just had to give up her pendant to get them a ride, and he's contributing nothing but additional trouble.

Natalia... has the fact that Luke isn't the boy she fell in love with. She's spent years wanting that person back, and Luke hasn't really cared about her expectations or memories, because he doesn't share them. So for me, Natalia's frustrations with Luke made a lot of sense. Not his fault, but understandable?

I don't think it's the same as kicking a puppy- a puppy looks like what it is, and you can probably judge its training level. Luke looks like he should be old enough to know better, and for the first third of the game they don't know he's a replica. Plus, they do discuss the outside world in front of him in the Fabre Manor, and he's completely dismissive of it. He doesn't care who the fon Master is, just about being able to practice with Van.

He improves once he's out in the world, but he's still really rude to everyone for a long time. I got the impression the 'let him get arrested' thing Tear pulled was more about his attitude than his knowledge base.

From inside Luke's pov, you can tell when things are his fault and when they aren't, but it wouldn't be that clear to the rest of the party. I don't think they're being pointlessly mean.

[rainfall]

I think we played TotA in a very awkward way. We started it, got through to short-haired Luke, and then restarted the game, already much more sympathetic to him, and the reception he got from other party members just didn't quite work.



Tear, I just find really inconsistent. She's apologetic to the point of almost-tears one moment, suddenly snapping at him the next. (seirei made a really good attempt to defend that on the first page of comments. I wish any of that were in the TEXT of the actual game instead of having to be filled in by the headcanon of intelligent players plus unreleased side materials.) And of course, as sincere pointed out elsewhere, Tear's attempt to 'teach Luke a lesson' was completely ineffective (which Tear never really reacts to or even acknowledges -- making it seem like it was never that big of a deal to her, since the results or lack thereof aren't worth a word of commentary), and really unfair.

The problem is that later on, Tear realizes that Luke really doesn't understand anything and apologizes to him because she was being so unfair; and she has no EXCUSE for not knowing Luke didn't understand anything earlier, because Luke was very explicit, multiple times, about the same thing Tear just suddenly "realizes" later. So, was Tear ignoring him? Even just a line of dialogue to the effect of, "I guess I wasn't paying attention when you were talking earlier, because I was really distracted," would have fixed that problem.

I could buy it as being purely a moment of revenge for the loss of her pendant, but again, that's not actually in the text. The game shows us the inside of Tear's head dozens of times during the intro sequence -- for example, to tell us that she thinks Cheagles are super cute -- but it doesn't give us anything about her pendant, let alone the kind of rage that could make an ostensibly mature, rational character do something out of spite.

So, whether or not Tear was theoretically justified in being a jerk to Luke during that scene, she herself says she wasn't, undermining that idea. Again, inconsistency is a Tear problem. She tends to get mad at Luke for things that deeply, truly AREN'T his fault and which any reasonable person could SEE aren't his fault -- and apologize meekly when she shouldn't.

As for Natalia, your point could make sense, but, while it's been a while, I never really got that vibe off of her. She's really never struck me as being explicitly disappointed that Luke isn't Asch, so much as that he doesn't remember proposing to her. (Which is why I ship Luke/Natalia loads.) For the Akzeriuth incident, she was just disappointed with him as a person.