Tales of Graces f: DAY SIXTEEN

[sincere]

Do you know what time it is?!

Yeah, that's right

I reread my liveblogs

and I dug up this stupid game from a year ago

and I am going to finish the adult era if it's the last thing I do



Starting from: Who the hell knows? Er... After going to Fodra, before heading to Lastalia. This is supposed to be Sidequest Tiem.

Comments

[sincere]

Recap: Okay, so the people (aliens?) on Fodra (another? planet) found this monster called Lambda and they did things to it (what things??) and eventually they let it loose on our tiny planet (is it a planet??) and it has possessed Richard. We're going to fight it before it can eat Lastalia, the core of the world, and destroy all life, because that would suck.

[rainfall]

:|a I see, I see.

[sincere]

I found and fed the last hungry cat in the world, and it teleported me to Katz Village. Naturally, this was the most important thing I could think of to do once I picked up the game again.

Katz Korner is a pastel trippy-looking school play kind of place with some ludicrous carnival props in the background.

[sincere]

Absolutely none of the Katz can speak anything other than "Meow", so I really feel like my time is being well-spent here.

[rainfall]

I don't really get why we can understand REAL ANIMALS ALL THE TIME but not Katz.

[sincere]

Discovery: Catnip!

Cheria and Pascal have a conversation about which members of the party are like cats and which are like dogs, and Pascal misassigns everyone, dubs herself a cat, and then barks. It is entirely possible she just doesn't know which ones are cats and which ones are dogs. You see -- because she's super smart.

[rainfall]

The most intelligent fucking character in the entire game.

[sincere]

The one actual person in this place tells us about a "secret location", so I guess we should go there.

[sincere]

When I search there on the super annoying non-world-map situation we have going on instead of an actual world map, I uncover the Cat Crazy Coot's House, and then I teleport there. We talk to the same exact dude we met in Katz Korner, who gives me a device that will allow me to communicate with the Katz, so that was definitely worth a trip and there's every reason in the world he couldn't have just given me that when I spoke to him in Katz Korner.

But, hey, why critique a sidequest where Pascal attempted to get into a booger war with a deranged old man? This is obviously not content intended for critics.

[sincere]

Planted a dozen seeds as Sophie in Lhant. She's very happy about it.

[temples]

I had to read this sentence three times to realise that, no, you're not planting seeds in Sophie.

[sincere]

We enter the Ghardia Shaft that will take us to Lastalia, and have a pretentious pre-final battle conversation about trusting each other and doing what must be done blah blah

It's a giant metal corridor with glowy tech stuff on it. There's a skit where Pascal theorizes that she thinks this is the passage where she thinks the Fodrans placed the Lastalia into the heart of their planet. Wait, what? When did that happen? Why did that happen? What is up with your tiny satellite planet?

[rainfall]

I feel a bit underwhelmed by the design of the current dungeon, what with its general "suspended glowy geometric platforms" motif, and I've been blaming it on how common it is for one dungeon to look like that in Tales Of, but to be honest I think I'm projecting.

Silent Hill: Book of Memories has given me three motifs so far and two of them were "floating platforms suspended above a bottomless pit", and even in the third area there were still parts where you could see through the floor boards of the area to the bottomless pit beneath it. So I think I'm kind of over that design aspect at the moment, but it's not really this game's fault.

[sincere]

It's a lot like almost every last Tales of dungeon, so it's not really impressive on my end either.

[sincere]

Eventually my party encounters a transparent shimmery wall in their path and they can't get past. Aww, sads.

But Sophie can just waltz right through it. She announces that they can pass if they work together, and the party just sort of shrugs and walks up to it, because who needs explanations or logic, I guess? Then there's a flare of light and we enter a flashback

[temples]

What.

[sincere]

We enter a flashback where tiny little boy Lambda is playing with his block, and Director Cornell teaches him to smile. Big, cheesy, Sora-tastic smiles.

Emeraude comes into the lab (in a wheelchair? was she in a wheelchair when I actually met her in this game? I didn't think so...) and criticizes him for trying to teach Lambda things instead of just observing his abilities, because it's unethical!

Cornell thinks Lambda's body is making him more human and he wants to teach him to be human. He can become a new kind of being!! Our future personified!! He should live just like a human, healthy and carefree!!

Emeraude is not thrilled.

[sincere]

The party burbles incoherently about the most basic elements of what they just saw ("WAS THAT... EMERAUDE? :Oa " "HOW COULD WE ALL SEE THE SAME THING? :Oa ") and then pretty much shrugs it off without devoting any of their extremely small reserves of brainpower to it. Just as well. They may need that for conversing with people later.

[sincere]

/the slightest bit mean maybe

[sincere]

SKIT! Hubert mentions being surprised to see Lambda smiling, and Pascal is all, lolz, I was all Smiles McGee when I was a kid, so no surprise for me! Hubert says that he NEVER smiled as a kid.

Pascal: You never smile now, either.

Touche. But he doesn't understand why Lambda smiled! And I'm just sitting here going, well, Cornell literally told him to smile, and was instructing him on doing so, so maybe that's why...?

Anyway, Pascal explains that she smiles when she sees people smiling, because it makes her happy.

Hubert: Does that mean... you'd like to see me smiling?
Pascal: No, not really.
Hubert: I had a feeling you'd say that.

Good. Let's agree to shake ways, part hands as weird friends, and never ever suggest feelings are happening. Okay? Good.

[temples]

THIS CONVERSATION ABOUT SMILES HAD TO HAPPEN, KAY. IT DID.

Even if the context or situation did not set it up properly at all. Geez, I thought you used to RP!

[sincere]

Oh, another transparent wall of convenient memory-making! In this one Emeraude has Lambda in a tube and Cornell is super pissed off about it. The board decided to... scrap him, I guess.

They injected a bunch of animals with Lambda's cells, and then when they tortured Lambda, those animals turned into monsters and started attacking people, so obviously Lambda is evil. Cornell is like, "Bitch, you did this to him!" and she's like, "Haha, you're being arrested, too! Suck it. You wanted to turn Lambda into a new Lastalia, didn't you?"

And he goes, "Maybe, but do you know why I put so much effort into raising him as a human being? IT'S BECAUSE--"

Conveniently the explanation is cut off, and Emeraude puts Lambda to sleep, where darkness rises out of him while she smirks.

[sincere]

After this obviously rife with meaning scene, we have no actual conversation, but we do have a SKIT!! wherein our characters conclude, in a way that they will probably have forgotten about the moment the actual game catches up to us, that Lambda sounds like he was... you know, kind of innocent, and not like an evil monster at all.

[sincere]

SKIT!

Cheria: The Emeraude in those visions was very different than the one we knew.
Sophie: The one we knew was probably a humanoid robot that she transferred her consciousness into.
Cheria: Oh. Well, she was so determined to protect her planet, and committed to her cause! Not like what we originally thought of her at all!

Me: ...what?

Sophie: Well, her methods were still... kind of wrong, even if her intentions were good.
Cheria: I guess so. I'm just surprised she had such conviction when it came to protecting her planet!

Me: But why
Me: Did I not write down the part where you all originally thought she was a lazy creep who's spent the last few decades eating Cheetos in her mom's basement?
Me: When did we ever think she was a wishy-washy character who had no convictions
Me: Do you mean back when you all thought she was like, a pure-hearted butterfly who could never do anything wrong, while she repeatedly screamed about how Lambda was a monster who had destroyed the planet and had to be put down? I kind of thought she had conviction to protect her planet then, too.

But, hey, let's admire Emeraude, I guess. At least she didn't do it because she was obsessed over a man! :D

[rainfall]

"But, hey, let's admire Emeraude, I guess. At least she didn't do it because she was obsessed over a man! :D"

You don't know that.

I kind of think she hated Lamda because Cornell paid too much attention to him.

[sincere]

One more shimmery wall to just waltz through and get memories implanted straight into our brain for no reason because of!

In this one, we see Lambda sobbing and screaming and breaking some machines, having just murdered a bunch of people. Cornell stumbles up to him and promises to protect him, "just give me one more chance", and Lambda stands there paralyzed.

But not paralyzed and cringing like when Emeraude comes in to "handle things herself". Emeraude's Sophie-model humanoid robots attack them while Lambda and Cornell get in a shuttle, Cornell injured protecting him, and they take off, heading to our planet. Cornell's dying words are for Lambda to "find Ephinea's Lastalia, and live on".

Lambda screaaaaams and cries and crashes on our little planet but apparently he took those words to heart, hooray.

[sincere]

SKIT! Asbel is having wibbly feelings about how Cornell was willing to sacrifice himself for Lambda. He must have been Lambda's only true friend.

Do you see, Cheria? This is appropriate. We admire Cornell for being a good person, not Emeraude for being willing to kill and arrest and torture everyone to get her way.

[sincere]

I just noticed that Asbel is fighting with a... with a giraffe.

[temples]

...what.

[sincere]

I am now in the center of the shaft, and I can teleport back there at any time, so I leave, to do some crappy sidequests!?! Because otherwise I might... finish the game.

Anyway, BATHING SUITS!

[temples]

SCREENCAPS.

[sincere]

Beach resort! Discovering the Sunscreen Rangers figurines, which Hubert dorks out about, discreetly, when he thinks no one is looking. Sophie catches him and then he lies to her flailingly about how they're... A BRANCH OF THE STRAHTAN MILITARY, YES.

DEFINITELY NOT KID'S TOYS.

[sincere]

So at the beach resort I choose to go to the pool, where we go in our loaned bathing suits. We each get to pick our own, apparently.

Some of the party members.
Hubert is wearing a pair of tiny tight skin trunks and a swimming cap.

Malik and Hubert are first out! Malik picks on Hubert wearing his glasses with his swim trunks, because a man wearing a fucking Speedo with a lifevest has room to comment on anyone's anything.

Then the girls come out, and we get a dramatic pan over Cheria's pretty butterfly teddie bathing suit, Sophie's silly black bathing suit with the cat tail, and Pascal's... yes.

[sincere]

Cheria: How do we look? I'm embarrassed!
Hubert: Why? You don't wear much more than that normally.
Cheria: 8|

Pascal: Glug glug grgl
Malik: Why am I dressed so strangely? ...Riiiiight back at ya.
Pascal: /STOMPS
Cheria: Yeah, I told her not to wear that. But doesn't Sophie look cute?!
Sophie: "Meow, Hubert. Meow, Captain."

omg too cute.

Hubert cleverly identifies her as a cat, to which Sophie replies...

Sophie: I'm a sexy cat.
Hubert and Cheria: sdlkfjsljg
Sophie: Oh, I meant to say kitty cat.

Those words don't sound alike in English, localizers...

[sincere]

We are told that we were allowed to keep the suits, but someone has... stolen them from the changing rooms and scattered them across Strahta, because anything to create a few more stops on our journey to the end of the game!!

[rainfall]

Noooo you aren't really nooooooooooo!!!!

[sincere]

I puttered around doing things I don't care about that don't matter, before getting bored.

Here's one: we find a data recorder with Cornell's memories of Emeraude, detailing that she lost the use of her legs in an investigation accident and he blames himself.

We also discover that Emeraude had lovey-dovey feelings for Cornell that he ~didn't dare~ return. He did, however, name the boy thing "Lambda", and started pushing her away, and Emeraude blamed Lambda for everything and hate hate hated him and wanted to get rid of him, and created Sophie expressly to destroy her rival for Cornell's attention.

Good to see rainfall and I were correct in our initial impression that Emeraude wanted in Cornell's pants, because it was a real shame to think for a moment that there was a female character in this game other than fucking Pascal who was not wholly ruled by her emotional dependency on men!

[rainfall]

So hilariously deeply gross. Feminist critique of this game would cause whoever wrote it to burst into flames.

[sincere]

Back to Ghardia Shaft, to resume our steady trek toward the end of the game!!

[sincere]

/runs obnoxiously back and forth, moving platforms
/sighs

[sincere]

Acquires the Cheria armor "Fatal Attraction", worn by lovers who eventually fell out of love and killed each other.

Cough.

[rainfall]

........

[sincere]

Time for one more memory flashback of creepiness.

The giant hideous Lambda shadow monster from the intro is looming above some villagers who are trying to attack it while it silently begs them to stop. Sophie appears to attack him like the little machine she is.

Lambda: you again! why won't you leave me alone, do you hate me that much

He attacks her, and then everyone is kind of dead afterward. Then we skip forward to when Richard wakes up as a child. He's hurt, and dying, because he's been poisoned by his uncle Cedric. But Lambda urges him to live on, and possesses him, thus... helping him out.

[sincere]

SKIT! Everyone is super depressed now because it doesn't seem like Lambda was ever actually trying to hurt anyone and he seems kind of tragic in retrospect. Asbel remembers tiny Richard's tiny bitter jaded words, and older Richard's anger at his uncle, and he thinks, ohhh, I get it now. They shared that anger, and that desire for revenge.

What would have happened if Lambda had ended up with me when I was isolated instead of Richard?

Because of his feels.