Tales of Graces f: DAY TWELVE

[sincere]

Wasted all morning, refused to waste an afternoon that could be spent wasted like this!


Starting from: Heading into Fendel Tower to try to meet Kurt.

Comments

[sincere]

RECAP! High above Mt. Zavhert lives a race of demented geniuses who whisper all their technological secrets straight into the ear of the world's most militaristic nation, because they are incapable of good judgment calls. In order to stop Fendel from blowing itself off the planet, and/or losing all of its eleth by Richarding, we're going to break into the Ministry of Science and beg the CSO to listen to us.

The CSO is also Malik's long lost best friend/rival/nemesis/something. I don't really care that much.

[temples]

Richarding is a great word.

[sincere]

So, Fendel Tower. Hubert has questions about Kurt for Malik. What's he like? (OMG ASKING PERSONAL QUESTIONS? STONE HIM.)

They met at the military academy as young men. They joined a reform movement that wanted to change the Fendelian way of life: which is to say, the masses starved and scrimped, the rich cackled on their piles of money and eleth. But the reform movement was crushed, and Malik fled Fendel. Kurt stayed, wanting to keep fighting.

Oh, are we finally going to answer the question? He was intelligent and determined, a man who would sooner die than surrender his ideals. Malik doubts Kurt will listen to him, considering him a coward.

Asbel is like, "That's cool, but we're going anyway."

[rainfall]

FFFFT

[sincere]

We go up to the entrance and Malik explains that Fermat isn't feeling well, so she sent us to take over for her for the day!

NPC Guard: ...She sent six of you?

Yeah it is a little conspicuous. And one of us is Strahtan military! Hmmm.

Malik: Today's procedure is labor intensive.

NPC Guard: Well, okay!

This game's logic is flawless.

[sincere]

I should mention that I synthesized dualized Malik's joke weapon, which is a fork with a Peep on the end. So everything is like, a thousand times stupider in real life.

[sincere]

SKIT! Malik thinks it's interesting that all the panels in the tower are linked together, so when you step on one, they all move correspondingly. Really? Is interesting the word you want? Not "stupid" or "extreme video game logic with no real world application at work"?

Asbel sadly says that all of Fendel looks like this tower: Impressive from the outside, junk on the inside. Yeeeep.

[sincere]

...This is getting stupid. There's a gimmick on each floor and they're just getting more and more ridiculous.

[sincere]

SKIT! Hubert tells Malik to stop brooding and at least put on a good show of being together, because he's depressing everyone, especially Asbel, who "relies on you with all his heart".

Cute, but in no way shown in the actual script or voice acting pretty much since Malik joined the party.

[rainfall]

--sobbbb.

[sincere]

We found Kurt's office, and he's not here. The party splits up to look around, and then SUBEVENT!

Malik has a flashback to Lorelia being gunned down 20 years ago, back when he still looked 40. Malik effortlessly takes out the guys who killed her, because he's not useless. She hands over the information she collected for him before dying.

The photograph that prompted the memory is of the three of them: Malik, Lorelia, and Kurt, in their uniforms. Asbel gives him vague reassurances that he's not worthless, which work, generically.

[rainfall]

"back when he still looked 40"

/giggles

[sincere]

Here's the information we want: the valkines cryas is in a glacier outside the capital. It's very close to Zavhert. Oh noooo. If it explodes we'll all diiiie. (As we already knew.)

BTW there's a map here of the whole world that really drives home how simple the whole planet is. The continent Fendel is on is just one enormous block of unbroken ice. The continent Strahta is on (which is not very far away from it) is just one enormous block of desert. The continent Windor is on is lush and green despite literally being a stone's throw away from barren arctic wasteland and barren desert wasteland.

...heyyyyy. Does our planet have a name?

[sincere]

Sophie hears someone coming. The door opens and the party is hidden beside the door but ready to attack!

But Kurt is just so super awesome that he already has his weapon at Asbel's throat when the door opens, and it's only Malik's weapon at his throat that stops him from murdering our protagonist.

Kurt doesn't appear to want to punch Malik in the face, despite Malik's predictions, but he doesn't want to chat with us either, he's busy. His experiment is going to fix Fendel!

Look, dude, your experiment is going to blow your horrible arctic continent up.

[sincere]

Kurt is like, lol, explosions. Whatever. I've modified her research!! Because I'm... smarter than the super-smart people who gave me all my technology!

But more importantly, "My country is dying. If we halt the experiment, the plight of our citizens will become exponentially greater. We would be forced to invade neighboring countries merely to survive!"

...Even more than you already are?! Because you are already doing that, homeboy. Also, the other countries don't have much eleth either. Also, do you people not have coal?

[sincere]

Anyway, Kurt tells us to get the fuck out, he'll give us time to escape because he likes Malik, but only if we leave now. "You turned tail and ran once. I suggest you do so again." Buuuurn.

We shuffle sadly out the door.

[sincere]

Malik admires Kurt's determination and tries to ask Pascal if she thinks he might have fixed the research, like he says.

Pascal: NOPE. I JUST KNOW, FROM THE TEN WORDS HE SAID TO THAT EFFECT.

I wish we could discuss this like adults. Like, I don't know, "How about you show me your research, Kurt?" "Why, of course, here it is." "Hmmm, I see, this could work / Hmm, I don't know, here are the flaws I see." Maybe tea could be served.

[rainfall]

There is no tea in Tales of Code Geass, only war and magic.

[sincere]

So we decide to go to the valkines cryas site! Even though it will mean fighting Kurt and possibly all of Fendel! Yay.

[sincere]

SUBEVENT! We went to give Fermat's research pass back to her so she can, you know, get into Fendel Tower, but she says she doesn't need it anymore.

Because...

...wait for it...

...her boyfriend proposed!! :D Now she doesn't need to do all this crappy science anymore! She's going to be a housewife! :D

Now she's going to help Pascal pick out a man. By studying the party's male specimens.

[rainfall]

I have so many bad feelings about this, I can't even express them without sputtering.

[sincere]

I am going to attempt to recover from that subevent and head out to the valkines cryas, but it is not easy.

[rainfall]

/cuddles and cheers for!

[sincere]

I'm wandering back and forth through Glacier Road trying to get the Estelle card, and I realized that why the hell are they letting me through? There are totally guards here. Shouldn't they be, I don't know, stopping me from going into the area that I was told they were very strict about letting nonauthorized people into?

The guards only say, "Are you here for the experiment? Then you should hurry, the chancellor is already there!"

[sincere]

omg the quote on Estelle's carta is from her ghost story. "The voices of corpses buried beneath the tree..."

(Yuri's is "Intend to?" with the second half of the quote being "I already have." Rita's is "You thought you could win?" I don't have the second half for either of the girls yet.)

[rainfall]

Best quotes.

/loves on Estelle's ridicuquote X333

[sincere]

Fendel Glacier Ruins!

It's very quiet and pretty here and the music is lovely.

[rainfall]

IS IT TECHNICALLY A DUNGEON? Is it a dungeon with music that doesn't suck? COULD IT BE?

[sincere]

Oh my god it's a BLOCK PUZZLE

A REAL BLOCK PUZZLE that might take me more than a peanut-sized brain and six seconds to solve!

[sincere]

...okay, no. It's almost a block puzzle, and it took twelve seconds with a peanut-sized brain. Still, that's progress!

[sincere]

My entire party stops to gape at -- something -- and then Pascal points and says "Look! Over there!" and now we gape at -- something else!

[sincere]

rainfall: Is it just me, or are valkines cryas the most phallic things to ever phallic?

Commentary here about massive phallic symbols dominating a game with such poor representation of women.

Commentary here about Richard draining the eleth from massive phallic symbols.

[sincere]

BOSS! Holy shit, Kurt is a huge pain in the ass. He dual wields gigantic weapons that spin around him in all directions almost constantly. Even with repeated dodges I was getting hit all the damn time. That is just cheap.

For some reason we are mournfully silent after this fight, no end battle commentary, not even "That guy was a huge pain in the ass!" The way we were with Richard. No. Fighting crazy!out of his mind!Richard was a tragedy. Fighting this dude is just inevitability.

[sincere]

Kurt pauses to tell Malik that he is super strong now and they are no longer equals, which is provably untrue, because it was my team of level 40 warriors vs Kurt and some disposable flunkies. (Also, Malik wasn't in my party.) (Hey, remember in those other games, when the game made you put plot-relevant characters into plot-relevant battles? Good times.)

[sincere]

The valkines is exploding, obviously. A minion apologies to Kurt, saying that Chancellor Eigen ordered him to use maximum output. Because of his cartoonish evil!

In addition to cartoonishly evil, this is also a wholly unnecessary element. Pascal already established with her plot contrivance powers that the experiment wouldn't work. Why did some power-mad moron we've never seen before need to be here to fuck it up when it was already not going to work? Are we going to discuss the fact that it wouldn't have worked anyway, or is Pascal going to concede that Kurt really is smarter than all the Amarcians combined and he did manage to fix the unspecified unfixable problem?

[sincere]

The chain reaction leading to explosion has started. Use the emergency shutdown! Wait! The emergency shutdown isn't working for some reason!

But Pascal can stop... the chain reaction... by destroying the main outflow pipe? Why? How?

Pascal is ready to sacrifice herself to do so, since it's all indirectly her fault, but Kurt will do it, because he's The Man. He attacks the valkines cryas and gets electrocuted but everything stops going horribly wrong. Cheria heals him, but he dies, begging Pascal to finish her research and find a way to fix the valkines and save Fendel, and leaving the revolution in Malik's hands.

Sadface.

[sincere]

/aw yeah, looting Kurt's body

/I mean... this is a very sad occasion

[sincere]

sob, Sophie doesn't understand that Kurt is dead.

Sophie: Kurt isn't moving...
Sophie: Come on, Asbel. We have to cast a healing arte on him.

/ten times sadder than Kurt being dead

[sincere]

Sophie is disturbed to learn that Kurt is dead. She finds it really unfair that he was reunited with Malik only for Kurt to die... Malik tells her that it's okay.

Chancellor Gargamel goes, hey, what's that?

Is it time for our Richarding?!

[sincere]

Aww yeah, here comes Richard, purring at the valkines ("come to me, you beautiful thing") in a way that is kind of hilarious after our earlier conversation.

[sincere]

The chancellor tries to arrest all of us, but Poisson is here. She's here as the Amarcian Overseer's representative, and she requests that the party be handed over to her. King Richard's actions aren't all about you, douchebag. The Overseer is going to devote all her resources to dealing with his threat.