Tales of Graces f: DAY FOURTEEN

[sincere]

Not going to play The World Ends With You. Going to play this instead.


Starting from: the-- even the place name is probably spoilery. On Fodra.

Comments

[sincere]

RECAP! Sophie is a Richard-seeking missile in humanoid form, but she's broken! Now how will we guarantee the planet's suffering?!

...something like that.

[rainfall]

XDDDD

/sits with c:

[sincere]

Video games, I know you love flying cities and shit, but it will never cease being impractical.

In other news: into the Humanoid Research Center! It has annoying music.

[rainfall]

Well, it IS a dungeon in this game.

[sincere]

SKIT(S)! Since the game thinks the player has an idiot ball in their other hand while they play, Hubert and Malik are repeatedly having skits to explain what requires very little thought.

I guess I couldn't figure out on my own that if a door is locked, something nearby might open it, or that if an elevator won't work, maybe the nearby charged battery would help.

[sincere]

Oh boy. You can only carry one battery at a time.

This is going to involve some running back and forth, huh?

[sincere]

SUBEVENT! Has it been a little while since the game attempted to convince me to ship Hubert and Pascal? e.g. the time when she sneezed on him? Yes! Now let's have a scene where he randomly feels compelled to tell her all the feeeeeelings he's been having for the last seven years while she says random things.

I think I could replace all of Pascal's dialogue with "KAJIGGER" and "BOINK" and I would probably like her better, not to mention this pairing would probably not be worse in my mind.

[rainfall]

Sobbbb why is that so true.

In particular when he said he was testing his heart and she said he was testing something else but she won't ~tell him~

sdflkdsj

what is this bullshit? Why is she randomly psychic? And why is she an all-knowing serene character for him, when in other scenes she struggles to understand the very simple fact that her sister might have resented her while they were growing up.

Pascal shouldn't have brilliant insight into the human heart, and certainly not Hubert's specifically.

Also her calling him "Little Bro" does not help anything.


But yeah. So far every interaction they've had that was 'shippy' has required one or the other of them to be really OOC. This time it was both, with Hubert having to talk to her about his feelings for no reason and her being 'wise' at him in response.

[sincere]

Compare his sober story interrupted by "They say that mother is the necessity of all invention!" to "BOINK!" and the clear victor is the latter.

I can't believe that Hubert just poured out all his feelings in an utterly random subevent at no provocation, that was so pitiful. I've been noticing this whole damn game that he's stubbornly refused to talk about himself -- he won't even talk about the gem-polishing woman and how he knows her. But apparently all it took was finding a motor while Pascal was standing nearby and he vomited words all over the place.

I haaaaate this pairing.

[rainfall]

Sob it probably would be.

Ugh ugh ugh. That's a really good comparison and it just makes me more irritated. Whyyyy do some people like anything as long as it's 'canon'? >_>

[sincere]

Nothing is worthwhile unless it's canon, Li.

[rainfall]

:( :( :( :(

[sincere]

Stumbled onto the plot? The machine here looks a lot like the one beneath Wallbridge. It preserves visual recordings of research targets, Emeraude tells us. Pascal sneaks up to stare at what she's doing and recognizes the word Lambda.

Emeraude tells us that Lambda may as well mean "nightmare". It's a lifeform they discovered researching Lastalia. It can hatch monsters from its body, which are the reason why Fodra was destroyed. Then it fled to Ephinea.

Wait, if Lastalia is on Ephinea, then why did Lambda have to flee to Ephinea from Fodra? Wasn't Lambda already in Ephinea to begin with? Did they bring Lambda from Ephinea to Fodra? Maybe to medically torture it or something?

They created Protos Heis to combat it, but Sophie couldn't kill it, so they sealed it off in Ephinea in the hopes of containing Lambda. In other words, they consigned your planet to die, characters. No? No interest in that? Okay.

[sincere]

But the cocoon wasn't created by Lambda, it was created by Richard. So is Lambda disguised as Richard? Asbel refuses to believe Richard and Lambda are the same.

Hey, it's time to distract ourselves with Sophie's condition and end this conversation before we talk about anything relevant.

[rainfall]

Good timing, everyone!

[sincere]

Sophie suddenly starts shimmering. Her particles are breaking down, Emeraude informs us. But now Asbel, Cheria, and Hubert are also shimmering.

They're synchronized with Protos Heis's particles, Emeraude observes. She's implanted her particles into them: and Emeraude can't explain why she would have done this, because it's ridiculously dangerous and she basically would never want to. So the question is: why did she have the ability to do this? You programmed her! Why give her the ability to do something that was not recommended and self-destructive?

[sincere]

Anyway everyone is fluffy because Sophie was with us the whoooole time.

[sincere]

SKIT! Amarcians are engineers who maintained Fodran technology. They were just a union. Also, Pascal is ridiculous, surprise surprise.

[sincere]

We reach the room, and Emeraude begins the procedure of repairing her. We all hover anxiously, and then Sophie starts to wake up and starts screaming. Some gibberish is happening!

WAIT, PASCAL WILL HELP! With her powers of knowing nothing about this technology and being ridiculous!

Then light flows out of Sophie and forms into... another Sophie, and a Pascal. Emeraude says that the particles are flowing... backwards out of her blah blah nothing that makes this make remote sense. The imaginary Pascal chases the imaginary Sophie around until she's panting for breath, and then imaginary Sophie goes over to help her.

Are we seeing Sophie's feelings??

Sure, why the fuck not? Who would want to limit the game to logic at this late stage?

[sincere]

Imaginary Sophie and Imaginary Cheria are having adorable hand-holding times. /ships it a tiny bit

[sincere]

--WAIT, I only get to see ONE?

/reloads, picks another party member

[rainfall]

She was inside us all along!

[sincere]

Imaginary Asbel is tiny D:

It looks like it's Imaginary Asbel waking Imaginary Sophie up in the field of flowers. Awwww.

I am really disappointed that the game only lets me pick one, and the reaction appears to be the same no matter what. Put a little effort into this shit, come on. We're looking at her feelings for us, remember? That's what you told me.

[sincere]

Imaginary Malik is doing battle poses and Sophie is copying him.

Imaginary Hubert (who I did last because no, I was not going to end on Malik, but no, I did not want to reload an extra time so it could be Asbel) is walking along, and Sophie hurries to catch up to him. He pauses to give her a hand and help her up, and then looks away. Tsunnily.

[sincere]

Then there's another glowy light, and Imaginary Richard appears!

--Wait, and then I can go check out the rest of them. Damnit! All my reloading for nothing. If only the game hadn't organized that stupidly by making Richard appear after the first one, making it seem like shit was going to happen.