Tales of Graces f: DAY FIFTEEN

[sincere]

Let's finish this bizns. I think I'm close to the endddd. And then -- I think I may take a break before trying the future era...


Starting from: Leaving Fodra with mah derris bit.

Comments

[sincere]

RECAP! We just twelve seconds ago learned that Richard might be possessed by Lambda, a 120% evil monster-birthing monster of monsters, even though anyone with half a brain knew that Richard was possessed by Lambda about six game hours ago. So that naturally precludes our cast. Sophie super ultra hates him now and wants to kill him, but this hurts her.

Pascal is still a plot device and Malik can go eat a bag of dicks.

[rainfall]

M-- Malik... XDDD

I don't understand why he was so CHEAP. He's nothing like that in normal battles, but dude. You beat Sophie and Hubert on your first tries, even though Hubert was a little bitch about it. What is wrong with Malik...

[sincere]

SKIT! Cheria relentlessly hints that Pascal is probably in love with Hubert while Hubert is disgusted and Asbel is clueless. All Sophie hears is "Hubert will do anything if Asbel asks nicely". I want to be Sophie.

[sincere]

rainfall: I hate how she basically admits that it makes no sense.
rainfall: Cheria said "Young girls like Pascal can be surprisingly attracted to bossy overbearing guys," hint hint, Hubert.
rainfall: ...Isn't Pascal older than Cheria?

Yeah, by like, five years. Ughhh.

[sincere]

So we attach the derris bit to the shuttle while everyone twiddles their thumbs. Asbel and Cheria go observe Sophie brooding off to the side. Sophie says she's just -- thinking of what they've all been through together.

Asbel gives her headpats and they go into the ship. Which is now, right before the final dungeon, our transportation. Hooray.

[sincere]

Emeraude: It's my DUTY to bring Lambda to JUSTICE for what he's DONE.
Emeraude: Sooooo, take me to your planet? Pleeeease? I hate this empty rock.

Everyone agrees, because why not.

Asbel is still troubled about Richard's actions, because he doesn't understand what possession means. For god's sake, Asbel, we talked about this. It may or may not be true, but how stupid do we have to be.

Asbel: I believe in Richard, and I believe he can be saved.
Asbel: ...WELP, let's go back to Ephinea.

[rainfall]

Seriously. I'd understand if Asbel were skeptical about the existence of possessions, or something, but he just seems to be not absorbing the simple words we've used to explain this situation. He just seems to keep insisting that Richard would never choose to do these things, completely ignoring the fact that if any of what they've discussed is true, Richard wouldn't and isn't.

[sincere]

So we take off for Ephinea in our spaceship. We blast through the aquasphere, why does that exist! and then we slam the shuttle right into the cocoon. Hooray! Here we are. In a cocoon. Just like I always wanted!

[canavasary]

Also, you WOULD need a break before the future arc. Nearly everything sans Richard and Sophie annoys the hell out of me in it. I await for your reaction to everything!

[sincere]

That's what I was afraid of. XDD I saw your description of it as Everyone Gets Together Cheria/Asbel and Pascal/Hubert and I didn't click but I was like "No, go fuck yourself, gaaaaame!!"

I want more Richard in my life. But I fear for the future arc.

[sincere]

Emeraude decides to take an Evil Time-Out and pause to contemplate privately how much life Lambda possesses, he's evolved beyond her wildest dreams, and how awesome would it be if she could harness his ability to create?

...yeahhhh.

[canavasary]

SURPRISE. Bet you didn't see that one coming.

[rainfall]

I just want to pipe up to say that I wish Emeraude weren't loudly broadcasting her evil intent to the player and only the player.

It can be REALLY effective to make the player feel powerless to prevent bad things. I would point at the opening of Downpour as a nicely-effective example. But that was different in a couple of respects, not least of which was that my character wanted to do the thing and it was ONLY me who felt helpless.

In this situation, we're just alternately making players omniscient by projecting Emeraude's thoughts at them and making our protagonists idiots when Emeruade gets evil all over them.

I would love it if the game would actually try to surprise us with... anything, honestly, because in a way our scenes with Richard talking to Lambda have been doing a similar thing: here's the plot twist, we're going to roll it gently to you now...!

But yeah. I really don't need Emeraude's thought bubbles. She's been giving off "shady" ever since we met her. Isn't that already more than enough? XD You've made no attempt to convince us that she could be a decent human being, or genuinely interested in helping our protagonists, so it's just going to be like ARGH FINALLY when she betrays us.

Was that your goal? No? I didn't think so.

[sincere]

SKIT! Now that the plot is ready for us to be suspicious of Emeraude, Malik and Hubert are suspicious of Emeraude, but mutually agree to not tell anyone about their concerns.

[rainfall]

My initial reaction was THANK GOD because at least we aren't all holding our breath waiting or somebody to stop being a total moron, but.

Yeah.

I don't really approve of the plan to keep letting her do what she wants while waiting for her to 'reveal' herself. It seems awfully dangerous.

And then of course there's the rest of it, whereby we only have this conversation after Emeraude is here, as opposed to taking Asbel aside back when we could have stopped her from coming with us......... because that might have prevented the plot.

[sincere]

SKIT! We're going to save Richard.

SKIT! Sophie is going to kill the crap out of Lambda.

Let's get on with this.

[sincere]

Okay. We're deep in the cocoon, and here's... a thing. There's glowy darkness ahead. Richard is cosplaying demon Riku right now or something. He's mostly naked and demonized, but thank god he still has his glorious thigh-high boots on!!

BOSS FIGHT.

[rainfall]

dfskdlfjslkj XDDD

Someone had a fetish. I don't blame them.

[sincere]

Okay, Asbel is pretty upset that we defeated Richard, but Sophie stops him. Lambda's little ball of darkness emerges from Richard, leaving him normal and in his own clothes again, and a tiny humanoid thing forms from the ball of darkness.

Time for Sophie to destroy Lambda -- and herself!!

Oh wait no

We were betrayed

Shockingly

By

Emeraude?!?!?!? SURELY NOT

[sincere]

I can't believe that we are spending so much time talking about how mutual destruction means mutual destruction. You guys, we already established that. Let's move on to the next topic of conversation, like Emeraude's sudden but inevitable betrayal.

[sincere]

So Emeraude wants Lambda to possess her now because her whole perspective on Lambda has changed in the last ten minutes of gameplay. Now Lambda is hope and life and the savior of Fodra!!

And it's time for Emeraude to start cackling about the puny part that we played in helping her realize her cunning plans.

Megalomania blah blah now she thinks she's a goddess, this is retarded.

[rainfall]

Tales of Graces, you can't be the stupidest game ever. That was Final Fantasy XIII-2. You'll just have to settle or second-best.

But hey, if you wanted, you could try to take a tiny step towards not completely and totally sucking...........

[sincere]

Emeraude is not doing so great, but Lambda brings her back and heals her, the same way he's been doing for Richard. Blah blah lightning she's kicking our ass with her crazy Richard eyes. Blah blah goddess--

Hahaha Lambda starts talking through her body, calling her a fool and telling her she can't control his power. Only Richard was Lambda's special friend, I guess. Now she's being electrocuted, and she -- explodes. Cheria whimpers about how horrible her turning into powder is.

[rainfall]

I enjoyed it, not gonna lie. I'm not sure whether "smugness" was really the emotion the game was going for, though, given Saint Cheria's response.

[sincere]

Lambda is there now in the darkness, floating. Richard gets up and reaches out to him, calling out. "I'm right here. Come to me, Lambda!" He looks sad. And Lambda drifts over to Richard and there's red darkness and stuff again.

Richard is surrounded by darkness again in an anime cutscene and now he's demoned again! He destroys the floor, opening the path to Lastalia, Sophie tells us.

Richard spares Asbel one glance before going into the glowy green, and Asbel stops Sophie from suicide attacking him.

The cocoon is crumbling, and in the most convenient act to ever convenient, the shuttle comes falling straight out of the sky and lands intact and usable right next to us, so why not, we fly out on it.

[rainfall]

I hate that it did that.

I just hate it.

"Should we take three seconds and write a sequence where players run out of here on a timer? We did one in Abyss where getting there too late permanently killed a character! :D"

"Naaaaah. Let's just have the ship fall on them during the cut scene. That's not stupid at all!"

[sincere]

Asbel and Sophie argue about her suicide mission for a while. You can't exist just to destroy Lambda because that means you exist just to die! And Asbel refuses. He wishes she hadn't gotten her memories back.

This is a slightly hilarious impassioned argument where one side is shouting "I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DO IT. BECAUSE I SAID SO." and the other side is shouting "NO, THERE'S ANOTHER WAY. BECAUSE I SAID SO." and no one has an actual good argument but both sides accuse the other side of not having a good enough argument.

[sincere]

Okay, I'm in a shuttle now and I have a worldmap.

[sincere]

I went to Lhant and spent way too long fussing in shops, and now Bailey is happy to see us alive. Fourier has been helping them fight off monsters.

[sincere]

SKIT! So... it sure looked like Richard intentionally merged with Lambda, huh?

Asbel: Lambda must be manipulating him...
Sophie: That's why I have to destroy Lambda!
Asbel: WE DON'T NEED YOU TO BLOW UP TO SAVE HIM!
Sophie: NO ONLY BLOWING UP CAN SAVE HIM!
Cheria: Okay, you two, there's enough Richard for both of you to save, shut up

[sincere]

Cheria drags Sophie off to try and explain to her why being alive is happy and being dead is sad.

Cheria: Everyone would be sad if you died.
Sophie: Even Asbel?

Yes. Even Asbel, who has been raging constantly about how sad he would be if you died, would be sad, if you died.

[sincere]

Cheria's discussion here about how she tried to deal with Asbel the first time Sophie died makes me feel good about her, except for the part where she was too stupid to realize he was hurting too.

[sincere]

Meanwhile, it turns out nobody was capable of having a conversation without the two of them there. It seems like maybe you could have at least gotten started, instead of sitting in a circle, staring at each other.

[sincere]

SKIT!

Asbel: I have to make Sophie understand that destroying Lambda could never be worth sacrificing her life!

Well. Uh. Game. I'm just saying. Lambda is hypothetically going to destroy all life on the planet. So...

...I hate when Tales of games get really stupid moralizing about main character death. /gives Vesperia more props, as usual, for having the balls to make it a possibility

[rainfall]

/cuddles Vesperia foreverrrr

[sincere]

Cheria bullies them (cutely) into talking. She told Sophie that she, like Asbel, is kind of bad at expressing her feelings. (Thus making her a man. :( ) Asbel reluctantly agrees that they're both very stubborn and stupid. lol.

He explains to her all the reasons why he wants her to liiiive. She has so many things left to see and do... And she warms to it a little bit. ("Oh good. I thought you were angry at me." He blushes and is awkward. "Cheria says you get angry when you're sad. ...I want you to always be happy.")

They're very cute. And they're going to save Richard. Happy.

[rainfall]

I wish it were a true connection, but Asbel is Suzaku. As such, when he's sad, he gets... sad. 90% of the time, sadness results in him being crushed under the weight of his depression with that sad faceplate in skits to top it off. He really only got angry this time out of desperation.

Now, as a chibi, maybe Asbel was less honest with his feelings and more prone to explosions of anger when confronted with sadness.

But Cheria's observation here is pretty consistent with her closeness to and her opinions of Asbel mostly being in the past-tense. And I certainly don't fault Asbel for saying she's right, because he's easily steamrollered by other people's opinions of him.

Lalalala, and then I made their interaction during this kind of depressing to meeee.

[sincere]

Okay, plot.

Malik: Let's start by establishing what we know.

Well, I know that you guys is morons, so I anticipate this list will be depressing.

[sincere]

They don't actually talk about what they know at all, which is also an accurate way to summarize what they know. There is nothing to summarize.

[sincere]

In the meadow. Sophie is going to absorb the eleth and ruin the meadow, and then she'll share it with everyone else! That way they can unLambda their minds. We have a slow pan over, for some reason, just the Lhant trio. Do Malik and Pascal still not get any? Buuuurn.

(They are getting some, I don't know why it was just them, other than their being the only relevant characters.)