Humble though Toby Fox gives every appearance of being, there’s not much doubt that his greatest claim to fame, Undertale, is a masterful work at nearly every turn. There’s so much that Undertale has to say to its player, and so much that it can say, and it never wastes an opportunity for that communication, whether through direct or indirect (or both) methods.
You take the initial meeting with the antagonist Flowey, at the very start of the game. Although I’m sure we’re all familiar, the quick rundown is that you’re dropped unceremoniously into the game, within a largely dark and alien setting, and within moments of gaining the ability to move your character, you come across a smiling, cute little talking flower who greets you and offers to let you know how things work down here. Expecting a tutorial at this early stage in the game, the player of course goes along with Flowey’s directions, and catches the little white “friendliness pellets” he tosses the player’s way...only for that pellet to immediately reduce the player’s HP, and to their dawning horror, Flowey’s face twists into an ugly, demonic grin as he tells you that the real way things work is that it’s kill or be killed, and that you’re an idiot for so easily trusting him. He prepares to finish you off, but you are, at the last moment, saved by another, later revealed to be Toriel. But the true damage is already done, as I’ll get into later.
It’s the first, formative experience that the player has with another entity in Undertale, the first moment in which the player has some agency in the game’s events and the protagonist’s actions...this is, essentially, the moment of birth for Undertale’s narrative, that from which every following moment in the entire course of the game will be informed. And Toby Fox uses this incomparably vital, founding event to its utmost! Many a player and critic has lauded Frisk and Flowey’s first meeting for all it accomplishes as Undertale’s opening gambit, and rightly so. It serves as the first taste and tutorial of the gameplay interface, and the pattern of the conflicts to come over the course of the game. It establishes a clear, prominent, and compelling villain to the work, to such a penetrating degree that Flowey can then be absent beyond occasional hints and rumors for 90% of the rest of the game without losing his singular presence when on stage. It grabs the player’s attention with violent speed and effect, drawing them immediately into the game to a degree that many RPGs can’t match with their more basic narrative methods.
But like I said, there have been many players who already have made note of all these ways in which Flowey’s introduction is a very skillful and effective narrative stroke, and let’s face it, most of them have probably done so more eloquently, and all of them have done so with more brevity, than I’m likely to. But there is 1 more way in which Flowey’s introduction is worthy of notice, in my opinion, which I have yet to see made mention of* by Undertale’s fans and philosophers, and so that’s why we’re here today.
Flowey sets a tone of paranoia that makes trusting those who follow him a frightening and difficult task for the player. Now, this by itself isn’t a unique revelation; many have spoken of how effective this is as a way of keeping the looming fear of trusting others present through the whole game. Flowey’s betrayal is sharp in our mind as we meet Toriel, and we have to make an effort to trust her in spite of how clearly kind and loving she is, because Flowey, too, seemed friendly and helpful, at first. Then, once we have allowed ourselves to trust Toriel, a being who clearly wishes only to keep us safe, happy, and loved, we have to re-learn to trust when we leave her protection--the meeting of Sans puts our hackles up again for a moment, for he approaches from the darkness, his intentions unknown, and though we learned to trust the familial Toriel, her warning that there are others out there who wish to harm us, and that we’re going out among them, brings back our memories of Flowey and the fear of others once more.
But Sans is immediately friendly, as is Papyrus, through whom we can learn to trust someone even though they are strangers, and even more, strangers who supposedly are our foes. But then we next encounter Undyne, and she is our foe, and once more the knowledge that there are those who wish to destroy us, imparted so effectively through Flowey at our beginning, brings us to fear this new and unknown person. Yet if we can find it in ourselves to master our fear once more and avoid resorting to violence, we discover that even those opposed to us can, in fact, be made into friends, with patience and understanding. Mettaton ups the stakes once more, a threatening figure who has (we think) not chosen enmity with us, but rather is hardcoded to seek our death, reminding us of Flowey once more (as Flowey posits that the world we’re in is a black-and-white case of kill or be killed, a hardline belief related to Mettaton’s supposed programing). And if we can even manage to put forth the effort to befriend--or at least sidestep--him, we finally face Asgore, the threat of whom we have been warned over and over again since Toriel, and who reminds us a final time of that first, scarring meeting with Flowey by forcing us to subdue him much in the way that Toriel shooed the malicious little dandelion off.
The betrayal experienced at Flowey’s petals early in the game, the distrust it creates within the player, is recalled again and again as Undertale goes on, admittedly with less pull every time (which makes Flowey’s return, at the point at which you believe yourself to have completely overcome the paranoia and perceptions he created in you, all the more jarring and even terrifying). But what I believe, and haven’t seen others comment on, is that this does not just serve to create a lasting, engaging question of trust and fear in terms of the player’s own experience and perceptions. The juxtaposition between the fear of betrayal and the hope for friendship and love created through Flowey’s introduction and all the following encounters in the game also comes back to 1 of Undertale’s themes: the examination of conflict resolution in one’s journey through life, and the creation, mentality, and terrible destructive wake of choosing to kill, of a mentality that chooses to meet opposition with violence, and to delight in doing so.
Undertale allows the player to play in 1 of 3 ways: Pacifist, in which they take care to never kill anyone;*** Neutral, in which the player opts to kill opponents at least once during the game’s course; and Genocide, in which the the player goes out of their way to murder every single possible opponent, even hunting them down to do so. Of these methods, however, it’s safe to say that only Pacifist and Genocide have particular significance to us and to Undertale’s messages, with Neutral seeming to exist mostly to urge you to pursue the Pacifist route. In each of these 2 more important routes, the game examines not just the results and mindset of resolving one’s problems with either violence or peace, and the difficulties therein for each, but also the formation of the kind of person who chooses to never repay violence in kind, and, more significantly, the formation of the kind of person who kills, casually, frequently, indiscriminately, habitually, and most importantly, remorselessly.
While Undertale examines the formation of such a psychopathic monster in multiple ways, the opening encounter with Flowey represents its best attempt, in my opinion. See, ultimately, that which keeps a person from solving their problems with others with violence is empathy.**** To have an immediate, strong compulsion not to harm others as a means of resolving conflict, one requires the ability to understand another’s feelings--to recognize their capacity to experience the pain you could inflict upon them as the same as your own capacity for suffering--and the ability to see other people, even initially hostile ones, as people that you can personally connect to in a positive way. Without the ability to view others in the same way as you view yourself, there is no possibility for regret for your harmful actions towards them, and there is no possibility for respecting their life.
And that’s what Flowey damages: the player’s ability to empathize. Flowey being our first and arguably most memorable formative experience in Undertale attacks our ability to trust anyone we meet after him. And trust is foundational to empathy: without trust at its most fundamental level, the ability to trust that another could possibly not be a threat to you, the ability to trust the world enough to recognize the capacity of any other being to be a source of anything but danger...well, one cannot empathize if one cannot allow for the possibility that others will not, sooner or later, be a threat to one. By making such a strong attack on our ability to trust every character that follows him, Flowey’s introduction by extension makes the same attack on our ability to empathize with them, and thus pushes us in our paranoia strongly toward a killing mentality, where otherwise we might have had a far easier time choosing to be peaceful from the start.
And through this scenario, Undertale examines the creation of a killer. Flowey’s introduction and its effects upon the player are allegorical for the cause--or a cause, at least--of a mindset of violence. So much of who and what we are as individuals is formed upon our early experiences, the perceptions of our world and its other occupants that we first gather--and Undertale argues, through Flowey and his influence, that an initial lesson that the world is threatening and contains dangerous falsehoods will strongly push a person to respond in kind for the rest of their life, even if subsequent positive experiences can eventually break that paranoia’s hold. An early experience bereft of love, nurturing, and security can damage our perception of the world in ways that will be felt forever--and can easily start us down a path of mistrust, then apathy, and finally violence.
* Which doesn’t mean that no one has thought of this, of course; it’s not like I scour the internet all day every day for every single comment and video made on the game,** so I certainly could have missed someone else figuring this out, as well. But I at least am confident that if I haven’t seen this observation made yet, most other people probably won’t have, either.
** Not to say that I’m doing anything better with my time, mind you. In fact, since I am at the time of writing this playing yet another Kemco game, I’m pretty sure I spend my time on far worse activities.
*** Jerry notwithstanding. But, I mean, it’s Jerry.
**** Yes, logic should also be a deterrent against violence, as any long-term understanding of social forces will inevitably show that peaceful resolution is the superior approach in the vast majority of cases...but let’s face it, interpersonal problems are called interpersonal for a reason, and that which is personal triggers our emotions, not our rationality.
Saturday, March 28, 2020
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Guest Rant: Cyclical Time in Japanese RPGs, by Humza
I'm absurdly pleased today to bring you yet another engrossing and thoughtful rant from the esteemed Humza! As you all are by now well aware, Humza has brought guest rants in such quantity and quality to this blog over the years that I'm relatively sure one could very safely argue that he's done a hell of a lot more for the intellectual integrity of Thinking Inside the Box than I have. Today's another fine set of musings and observations by the good fellow; check it out below! As ever, thank you for reading and ranting, Humza!
Disclaimer: I don't own Humza's writing, but rather post it here with his gracious permission. I also don't necessarily agree or disagree with his opinions and observations here. But I think it's safe to say that I do think they're pretty rad, or I wouldn't have been so eager to share them with you all!
Cyclical Time in Japanese RPGs
Humza
November 6, 2019
"But time flows like a river… and history repeats..." - Secret of Mana*
The idea that time is cyclical, that events are fated to repeat themselves endlessly, is a pretty common one across different RPGs, and especially in Japanese ones (although the idea occasionally finds expression in Western RPGs, too°°°). It's also a general idea that is/was pretty prominent in various cultures around the world**, so chances are that it's a bit more recognisable to us when we see it than other ideas rooted in Japanese culture/tradition.
With most RPGs (aside from time travel ones like Radiant Historia and Chrono Trigger), time isn't treated as a very notable concept: you have your basic past, present, future, and that's it. This is an appealing view, too, because it allows for a strong version of human will. In Stocke's words, "My fate is mine to carve". And there's the possibility of a happier ending, in which the future is implied to be better than the past, not just for the cast, but for humanity as a whole.
In contrast, RPGs conforming to cyclical time might have difficulty in constructing as satisfying a journey or ending because the future necessarily reflects the past. What our heroes have done, will be done again (and were also done by others prior to them). The future will be just as happy and just as sad as the past. Individuals may lead better lives at some point, but the same cannot be said for people collectively (at least not in a way that avoids qualifying the improvement by its temporary quality). These reasons and others may explain partly why modern stories in general (and RPGs in particular) don't often implement the idea (or at least don't do so thoroughly).
From my observation, RPGs tend to use cyclical time in two*** ways: either the cycle is implied to repeat endlessly (like Terranigma and probably Secret of Mana if the epigraph is any indication) or the cycle is broken by the protagonist and his/her friends (like Terranigma**** and Energy Breaker). These subcategories may perhaps come with different intended messages.
The intention with the former seems to be to make it as if the protagonist is "enlightened" by the end, having grasped a profound truth about the world (and so it might be a way of promoting the writer's beliefs). A limited view of human will (permitted by the cyclical view of history), in which one has the ability to change their lives to some extent while lacking significant influence beyond that, seems to describe the situation many of us live in today, having little choice but to spend five days a week working. The routines many of us have in our day-to-day lives certainly give the impression that (in most cases) each day is similar to the last.
With the latter, those previous comments about how appealing the "standard" view of time apply, because revealing the cycle to be false, to be breakable with enough will, there's hope that the future will be better than it currently is (although it may invite from some people a pessimism that the future will be worse, as some currently anticipate with climate change). Above all else, it would change how people think about the world because the removal of a constraint previously thought of as impossible to overcome would lead to people imagining the removal of other constraints, questioning their inherited knowledge and becoming more ambitious in their future aspirations (because who's to say what really is and isn't possible to achieve?).
The ubiquity of the general idea makes it easier for people who, like myself, haven't studied Japanese culture to recognize and understand (although, assuming the RPG we're playing invokes them, some details unique to this specific conception of the idea will still be lost on us), but some other ideas commonly invoked in Japanese RPGs unfortunately don't fare as well when Anglophones play them, like the correlation between one's character and the temperature of their hands*****.
That's it - the main point of this post was to point to a concept used in quite a few RPGs and slightly push to learn more about cultures outside of our own. The RPGenius already read a book about Buddhism for beginners, so he probably doesn't need this encouragement (I might need it more than him), but other readers might find it a useful suggestion.
* From the game's opening, after the name entry screen. I haven't actually finished the game (and don't plan to), so I have no idea how relevant this line is to the story. (Maybe the protagonist's journey is one of many cycles in which a particular event involving the Mana Tree/Sword is done?)
°°° The RPGenius Says: War. War never changes.
** Cyclical time is an important part of Hinduism and Buddhism (both having their origins in India and the latter later becoming an integral part of Japanese culture), and has historically been a part (albeit a less important and more widely contested part) of the Western and Middle Eastern cultures (see Ecclesiastes 1:9 for an example applying to both, Oswald Spengler for one mostly confined to the former and Ibn Khaldun for one originating in the latter). Needless to say, there are significant differences between each of these (and putting all of them under a single category might seem a bit questionable to some).
*** Actually three if you count those games where it's part of the game's setting but seems to have little relevance.
**** I've listed Terranigma in both categories because (*SPOILER ALERT*) the game actually invokes both. For example, at one point in the game, Ark is told "Human fate is a fixed loop. What one seeks is not always found. You are different. You exist outside the loop of fate." and yet, at the end, Elle tells Ark "if we are bound by fate, we will meet again in time, somewhere." So Ark apparently has the power to break the loop of fate and is part of it. (My memory tells me that there's a more significant contradiction with Terranigma's cycles, but it's been more than five years since I last finished that game, so that's not too reliable.)
***** For example, see http://wwwthinkinginsidethebox.blogspot.com/2018/02/general-rpgs-characters-preoccupation.html, which expresses the confusion most of us must feel. There's almost certainly a reason for the trope's existence, whether good or bad, and it might be wise to suspend judgement until hearing it. We might even view it as an invitation to learn more about the region the game we're playing comes from, and this last point of course applies to RPGs we play outside of Japan, too.******
****** It's a common position taken in blogs and interviews about localizing games and other media that the team should strive to make the original text sound natural in their own language, obscuring and eliminating the need for foreign concepts. This might increase the target audience's enjoyment (and it shouldn't be forgotten that the profitability of a translated work somewhat depends on this), but it also lessens the motivation/opportunity to learn. Rudolf Pannwitz (quoted in Walter Benjamin's "The Task of the Translator") makes a compelling case for learning through translated works:
"Our translations, even the best ones, proceed from a wrong premise. They want to turn Hindi, Greek, English into German instead of turning German into Hindi, Greek, English. Our translators have a far greater reverence for the usage of their own language than for the spirit of the foreign works. The basic error of the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue. ... He must expand and deepen his language by means of the foreign language."
Disclaimer: I don't own Humza's writing, but rather post it here with his gracious permission. I also don't necessarily agree or disagree with his opinions and observations here. But I think it's safe to say that I do think they're pretty rad, or I wouldn't have been so eager to share them with you all!
Cyclical Time in Japanese RPGs
Humza
November 6, 2019
"But time flows like a river… and history repeats..." - Secret of Mana*
The idea that time is cyclical, that events are fated to repeat themselves endlessly, is a pretty common one across different RPGs, and especially in Japanese ones (although the idea occasionally finds expression in Western RPGs, too°°°). It's also a general idea that is/was pretty prominent in various cultures around the world**, so chances are that it's a bit more recognisable to us when we see it than other ideas rooted in Japanese culture/tradition.
With most RPGs (aside from time travel ones like Radiant Historia and Chrono Trigger), time isn't treated as a very notable concept: you have your basic past, present, future, and that's it. This is an appealing view, too, because it allows for a strong version of human will. In Stocke's words, "My fate is mine to carve". And there's the possibility of a happier ending, in which the future is implied to be better than the past, not just for the cast, but for humanity as a whole.
In contrast, RPGs conforming to cyclical time might have difficulty in constructing as satisfying a journey or ending because the future necessarily reflects the past. What our heroes have done, will be done again (and were also done by others prior to them). The future will be just as happy and just as sad as the past. Individuals may lead better lives at some point, but the same cannot be said for people collectively (at least not in a way that avoids qualifying the improvement by its temporary quality). These reasons and others may explain partly why modern stories in general (and RPGs in particular) don't often implement the idea (or at least don't do so thoroughly).
From my observation, RPGs tend to use cyclical time in two*** ways: either the cycle is implied to repeat endlessly (like Terranigma and probably Secret of Mana if the epigraph is any indication) or the cycle is broken by the protagonist and his/her friends (like Terranigma**** and Energy Breaker). These subcategories may perhaps come with different intended messages.
The intention with the former seems to be to make it as if the protagonist is "enlightened" by the end, having grasped a profound truth about the world (and so it might be a way of promoting the writer's beliefs). A limited view of human will (permitted by the cyclical view of history), in which one has the ability to change their lives to some extent while lacking significant influence beyond that, seems to describe the situation many of us live in today, having little choice but to spend five days a week working. The routines many of us have in our day-to-day lives certainly give the impression that (in most cases) each day is similar to the last.
With the latter, those previous comments about how appealing the "standard" view of time apply, because revealing the cycle to be false, to be breakable with enough will, there's hope that the future will be better than it currently is (although it may invite from some people a pessimism that the future will be worse, as some currently anticipate with climate change). Above all else, it would change how people think about the world because the removal of a constraint previously thought of as impossible to overcome would lead to people imagining the removal of other constraints, questioning their inherited knowledge and becoming more ambitious in their future aspirations (because who's to say what really is and isn't possible to achieve?).
The ubiquity of the general idea makes it easier for people who, like myself, haven't studied Japanese culture to recognize and understand (although, assuming the RPG we're playing invokes them, some details unique to this specific conception of the idea will still be lost on us), but some other ideas commonly invoked in Japanese RPGs unfortunately don't fare as well when Anglophones play them, like the correlation between one's character and the temperature of their hands*****.
That's it - the main point of this post was to point to a concept used in quite a few RPGs and slightly push to learn more about cultures outside of our own. The RPGenius already read a book about Buddhism for beginners, so he probably doesn't need this encouragement (I might need it more than him), but other readers might find it a useful suggestion.
* From the game's opening, after the name entry screen. I haven't actually finished the game (and don't plan to), so I have no idea how relevant this line is to the story. (Maybe the protagonist's journey is one of many cycles in which a particular event involving the Mana Tree/Sword is done?)
°°° The RPGenius Says: War. War never changes.
** Cyclical time is an important part of Hinduism and Buddhism (both having their origins in India and the latter later becoming an integral part of Japanese culture), and has historically been a part (albeit a less important and more widely contested part) of the Western and Middle Eastern cultures (see Ecclesiastes 1:9 for an example applying to both, Oswald Spengler for one mostly confined to the former and Ibn Khaldun for one originating in the latter). Needless to say, there are significant differences between each of these (and putting all of them under a single category might seem a bit questionable to some).
*** Actually three if you count those games where it's part of the game's setting but seems to have little relevance.
**** I've listed Terranigma in both categories because (*SPOILER ALERT*) the game actually invokes both. For example, at one point in the game, Ark is told "Human fate is a fixed loop. What one seeks is not always found. You are different. You exist outside the loop of fate." and yet, at the end, Elle tells Ark "if we are bound by fate, we will meet again in time, somewhere." So Ark apparently has the power to break the loop of fate and is part of it. (My memory tells me that there's a more significant contradiction with Terranigma's cycles, but it's been more than five years since I last finished that game, so that's not too reliable.)
***** For example, see http://wwwthinkinginsidethebox.blogspot.com/2018/02/general-rpgs-characters-preoccupation.html, which expresses the confusion most of us must feel. There's almost certainly a reason for the trope's existence, whether good or bad, and it might be wise to suspend judgement until hearing it. We might even view it as an invitation to learn more about the region the game we're playing comes from, and this last point of course applies to RPGs we play outside of Japan, too.******
****** It's a common position taken in blogs and interviews about localizing games and other media that the team should strive to make the original text sound natural in their own language, obscuring and eliminating the need for foreign concepts. This might increase the target audience's enjoyment (and it shouldn't be forgotten that the profitability of a translated work somewhat depends on this), but it also lessens the motivation/opportunity to learn. Rudolf Pannwitz (quoted in Walter Benjamin's "The Task of the Translator") makes a compelling case for learning through translated works:
"Our translations, even the best ones, proceed from a wrong premise. They want to turn Hindi, Greek, English into German instead of turning German into Hindi, Greek, English. Our translators have a far greater reverence for the usage of their own language than for the spirit of the foreign works. The basic error of the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue. ... He must expand and deepen his language by means of the foreign language."
Sunday, March 8, 2020
Fire Emblem 16's Random Final Bosses
This rant randomly references a thing on the internet I like watching. No, I don’t know why I suddenly felt like doing this. I’m weird. On the plus side, you can play the game of trying to figure out what it is, I guess?
It’s an annoying, but sadly not entirely uncommon practice in RPGs to have a random-ass bad guy suddenly appear at the game’s end to serve as a completely spontaneous and frankly inexplicable final boss. The most famous example, of course, would be Necron from Final Fantasy 9--after experiencing a massive, 4-disc-long story which has carefully and skillfully established Kuja as the ultimate antagonist to overcome, you finally triumph over him...and then, out of absolutely goddamn nowhere, this big self-important god-thing shows up, starts waxing Hot Topic about death and fear and such nonsense, and suddenly now HE’S the game’s final boss.
Necron has not once interacted in any capacity with the 60+ hours of storytelling in Final Fantasy 9. Until the second he appears, there is not the slightest indication that he or any entity of his nature exists. He has no place in the game’s events, which have been, as stated, very clearly set up with the idea of Kuja being the final, all-important foe to defeat. The edgelord bilge that Necron is spouting has no greater connection to the themes, messages, and character focuses in Final Fantasy 9 than it does to any other given game. And we’re never given the slightest understanding of how and why he’s shown up, what he is, his origins, what relation he has to Kuja and the events of the game that would cause them to awaken him--the only thing I understand less than Necron is why SquareEnix put him in the game! Because their decision to do so doesn’t add anything positive to the game whatsoever, and instead only confuses the audience in regard to the story’s message, lessens Kuja’s weight as the game’s antagonist, and causes an overall sense of puzzlement so great that it breaks the player’s immersion.
I’ve mentioned before, mostly when talking about Mass Effect 3, that the instinct possessed by certain writers who think themselves entirely too special and clever, and thus to add some bizarre curveball to the ending of the game that comes out of left field and completely changes everything, is a very, very bad one. That is not what an ending is for. Endings are the cap to your creation, the final seal on your product that should perfectly conclude and contain all the events and ideas and such that have come before them. And while throwing a totally random final boss at the player isn’t nearly so destructive as Bioware’s decision to poorly plagiarize an Asimov story and clumsily tape it to the tail end of a completely different kind of science fiction, Necron is still a violation of this narrative commonsense guideline.
Sadly, though, Necron is only a representative of these random-ass final bosses, certainly not the lone specimen. Wild Arms 5, for example, has Volsung the whiny-ass lamer set up as its ultimate antagonist, but after you kick his ass, the game drops some random poppycock on you about him being possessed and/or merged with a dark ghost of sad race relations or something so THAT’S the true villain in all this. Secret of Mana, meanwhile, decides it’s got to jam a syringe of Artificial Drama into its ending by making its final boss not Thanatos, the evil jerk that the entire game has been devoted to stopping, but rather your furry airship-analogue Flammie, because of some contrived, last-second drivel about magical mana energies or whatever making him go berserk. It’s a crass bid for poignancy by subpar authors who couldn’t get the job done without cheap emotional manipulation.
This crime’s worst perpetrator, though, isn’t Flammie, nor is it Volsung’s possession by Malcolm X. Nor is it Wild Arms 1’s Zeik Tuvai, Phantasy Star 1’s Dark Force,* or Mana Khemia 1’s Vayne’s dark side or whatever that crap was. It's not Necron, believe it or not...and it isn't even that stupid fucking magic tree in Suikoden 4! Because, you see, what all these inexplicable out-of-nowhere final bosses have in common is that there’s only 1 per game.
Fire Emblem 16, on the other hand, is not content with anything less than 3 completely random Final Bosses.
I dunno what the deal is with Fire Emblem: 3 Houses. Maybe the people making it never had any real idea what they were going to do to end it, and once they got to that point, they just went with the first thing that came to mind. Whatever the case, though, 3 of the 4 paths to the game end with random-ass last enemies. And it’s stupid.
First of all, let’s talk about the Necron of the group: Nemesis. On the Golden Deer route through FE16, the final conflict comes in the form of a necromanced return of Nemesis, the jackass from the game’s opening cinematic whose freaky fetish for gluing cervical plates together in the shape of a weapon luckily just happened to pay off when it came to dragon bones.
How did Those Who Slither in the Dark manage to get the dingus back on his feet again? Unclear! Where did he get a second loli-spine sword? Unclear! Why did TWSitD not wake his zombie ass up sooner, considering that he and his ghost army are a way more effective force of destruction than their current stooge, Edelgard, can muster? Unclear! Why do they only resurrect Nemesis on the Golden Deer route, even though the events of the Church route play out the exact same way in regards to defeating Those Who Slither in the Dark? UN-FRIGGING-CLEAR. You beat the actual villains of the game, he’s just here for the hell of it, so just enjoy the cool post-battle cutscene and get off Nintendo’s back about this.
And since we’ve talked about the Golden Deer route, let’s move on to the Church route, since that’s basically just “Golden Deer Except No Claude (But to Make Up for That, Go Ahead and Marry That Hottie Who is at the Same Time Both Your Mother Figure, Your Grandmother, and Sort of Also Your Daughter...Go Ahead, it’s Fire Emblem, We All Know This is Why You’re Here).” Apparently, even though, as previously noted, everything that led to Nemesis being resurrected in the GD path will also occur on this route, Nintendo felt that the Church route had to have an entirely different final boss. And instead of just having a more advanced fight against Thales, which would be appropriate for this route since his bunch of jerkwads are the most narratively juxtaposed to Rhea and her religion, the writers decided that it would be better to have Rhea spontaneously go apeshit in the midst of delivering an exposition dump--like, seriously, she goes berserk in the middle of a sentence--and force you to put her down. If Nemesis was Necron, then Rhea is definitely Flammie (she’s even a white dragon thing, to boot), but with even less credible magic plot bullshit to explain her going berserk.
How does being in a weakened state from torture and catching missiles in her teeth cause Rhea to suddenly release her full power? I don’t know! What purpose is served in frustrating players by forcing them to attack and potentially kill the character whom this entire story path is specifically geared toward rescuing and being loyal to? I don’t know! Why does Rhea never lose control and transform due to her injuries and weakness in the Golden Deer story, especially considering that she is ostensibly even more weakened in GD since she’s implied to die after the game’s over in that route whereas in this one it’s possible for her to live on? I don’t know! Or alternately, how is it that Rhea can have suffered the exact same damage on both the Church and Golden Deer routes, yet have a chance of surviving only in the former, even though this one also has her getting whaled on by the strongest people in the world for 5 - 20 turns of combat? I don’t know! If Rhea losing control also causes various high-positioned church officials to turn into monsters because she gave them her essence, why doesn’t it happen to Catherine, who would surely also have received this treatment considering her position and importance to the Church and Rhea personally? I don’t know! If losing her self-control and turning rabidly aggressive is what triggers her high-up church members to become monsters, then why don’t we see that happen in the final boss battle of the Black Eagles route, where Rhea’s surrounded by her best and most loyal warriors and has clearly been driven to hostile insanity? I DON’T FORKING KNOW. You beat the actual villains of the game, Rhea’s only flipping out to pad the run-time, so just enjoy the chance to sex up a dragon and get off Nintendo’s back about this.
So you may be wondering, now, who the third bemusingly impromptu final boss is of FE16. After all, it makes sense for Rhea to fill that spot on the Black Eagle route, and obviously Edelgard is the right person for the role for the Blue Lions. Well, I’ll agree with you on the former point,** but in spite of Edelgard being the right call for Dimitri and company’s last challenge, she still manages to be a pretty random final boss, this time in the Volsung way, by just up and getting ultra-powered with evil out of nowhere. Supposedly turning into this big demon-thing is something she can do by unleashing the power of both her crests at the same time, a fact which is never mentioned or even hinted at prior to this moment or in any other route.
Isn’t it kind of stupid for her to only unleash this power now, after her enemies have completely disrupted her armies, liberated territories from her control, and killed the majority of her best and most devoted soldiers, even though she’s had multiple opportunities before to go all out like this when it might have made the difference between her empire’s life and death? Oh, whoops! Doesn’t it make no sense for Edelgard to only use this ability in the Blue Lions version of this battle, even though the circumstances of this battle in the Church and Golden Deer paths are equally dire for her cause? Whoopsy! Doesn’t this ability undercut the idea of Edelgard’s determination to win at any cost (her 1 and only real character trait), when she apparently won’t use it in her own Black Eagles storyline even in a desperate battle against an out-of-control dragon in the midst of a raging inferno? WHOOP-FREAKING-SY. Try not to think about the actual villains of the game you’re unable to deal with, giving Edelgard superpowers was the path of least resistance to make this final battle interesting, so just enjoy your conclusion to a path that has no relevance beyond its own borders and get off Nintendo’s back about this.
I just don’t get it. This whole nonsensical out-of-left-field final boss stuff already seems utterly ridiculous to me under normal circumstances--it’s so much of a hassle to throw Necron and his ilk into an RPG’s finale to begin with that it seems like it should be impossible that someone wouldn’t stop to think for the 4.2 seconds it takes to realize that it’s a dumb idea and decide against it. But thrice in the same game!? How the hell does this happen? How do you just decide to throw your cares to the wind and put all your money on sensation instead of substance with your final foe 3 times in a row?
* Wow, this is actually a super old trope, isn’t it?
** Although, you could make an argument that there’s still an element of the unexpected and inexplicable in the Black Eagle route’s last battle, in the sense that it even is the finale to begin with. The actual villains of Fodlan, Those Who Slither in the Dark, are a threat that Edelgard is well aware of, and has outright stated she intends to take down, once she’s done stupidly venting her misplaced fury on Rhea...and yet the game never pursues this. It just ends. “Congrats, you won, Edelgard’s empire revolutionized the social system,” with a little footnote of “o ya also dey all fite ppls hoo slithur in dark lol,” that’s all you get. In the GD and Church routes, you don’t even KNOW about TWSitD and somehow still wind up tracking them down and wrecking their shit, but in the path all about the 1 faction who actually is aware of the true villains, where following through with this plot would have been super easy, barely an inconvenience...nothing happens.
It’s an annoying, but sadly not entirely uncommon practice in RPGs to have a random-ass bad guy suddenly appear at the game’s end to serve as a completely spontaneous and frankly inexplicable final boss. The most famous example, of course, would be Necron from Final Fantasy 9--after experiencing a massive, 4-disc-long story which has carefully and skillfully established Kuja as the ultimate antagonist to overcome, you finally triumph over him...and then, out of absolutely goddamn nowhere, this big self-important god-thing shows up, starts waxing Hot Topic about death and fear and such nonsense, and suddenly now HE’S the game’s final boss.
Necron has not once interacted in any capacity with the 60+ hours of storytelling in Final Fantasy 9. Until the second he appears, there is not the slightest indication that he or any entity of his nature exists. He has no place in the game’s events, which have been, as stated, very clearly set up with the idea of Kuja being the final, all-important foe to defeat. The edgelord bilge that Necron is spouting has no greater connection to the themes, messages, and character focuses in Final Fantasy 9 than it does to any other given game. And we’re never given the slightest understanding of how and why he’s shown up, what he is, his origins, what relation he has to Kuja and the events of the game that would cause them to awaken him--the only thing I understand less than Necron is why SquareEnix put him in the game! Because their decision to do so doesn’t add anything positive to the game whatsoever, and instead only confuses the audience in regard to the story’s message, lessens Kuja’s weight as the game’s antagonist, and causes an overall sense of puzzlement so great that it breaks the player’s immersion.
I’ve mentioned before, mostly when talking about Mass Effect 3, that the instinct possessed by certain writers who think themselves entirely too special and clever, and thus to add some bizarre curveball to the ending of the game that comes out of left field and completely changes everything, is a very, very bad one. That is not what an ending is for. Endings are the cap to your creation, the final seal on your product that should perfectly conclude and contain all the events and ideas and such that have come before them. And while throwing a totally random final boss at the player isn’t nearly so destructive as Bioware’s decision to poorly plagiarize an Asimov story and clumsily tape it to the tail end of a completely different kind of science fiction, Necron is still a violation of this narrative commonsense guideline.
Sadly, though, Necron is only a representative of these random-ass final bosses, certainly not the lone specimen. Wild Arms 5, for example, has Volsung the whiny-ass lamer set up as its ultimate antagonist, but after you kick his ass, the game drops some random poppycock on you about him being possessed and/or merged with a dark ghost of sad race relations or something so THAT’S the true villain in all this. Secret of Mana, meanwhile, decides it’s got to jam a syringe of Artificial Drama into its ending by making its final boss not Thanatos, the evil jerk that the entire game has been devoted to stopping, but rather your furry airship-analogue Flammie, because of some contrived, last-second drivel about magical mana energies or whatever making him go berserk. It’s a crass bid for poignancy by subpar authors who couldn’t get the job done without cheap emotional manipulation.
This crime’s worst perpetrator, though, isn’t Flammie, nor is it Volsung’s possession by Malcolm X. Nor is it Wild Arms 1’s Zeik Tuvai, Phantasy Star 1’s Dark Force,* or Mana Khemia 1’s Vayne’s dark side or whatever that crap was. It's not Necron, believe it or not...and it isn't even that stupid fucking magic tree in Suikoden 4! Because, you see, what all these inexplicable out-of-nowhere final bosses have in common is that there’s only 1 per game.
Fire Emblem 16, on the other hand, is not content with anything less than 3 completely random Final Bosses.
I dunno what the deal is with Fire Emblem: 3 Houses. Maybe the people making it never had any real idea what they were going to do to end it, and once they got to that point, they just went with the first thing that came to mind. Whatever the case, though, 3 of the 4 paths to the game end with random-ass last enemies. And it’s stupid.
First of all, let’s talk about the Necron of the group: Nemesis. On the Golden Deer route through FE16, the final conflict comes in the form of a necromanced return of Nemesis, the jackass from the game’s opening cinematic whose freaky fetish for gluing cervical plates together in the shape of a weapon luckily just happened to pay off when it came to dragon bones.
How did Those Who Slither in the Dark manage to get the dingus back on his feet again? Unclear! Where did he get a second loli-spine sword? Unclear! Why did TWSitD not wake his zombie ass up sooner, considering that he and his ghost army are a way more effective force of destruction than their current stooge, Edelgard, can muster? Unclear! Why do they only resurrect Nemesis on the Golden Deer route, even though the events of the Church route play out the exact same way in regards to defeating Those Who Slither in the Dark? UN-FRIGGING-CLEAR. You beat the actual villains of the game, he’s just here for the hell of it, so just enjoy the cool post-battle cutscene and get off Nintendo’s back about this.
And since we’ve talked about the Golden Deer route, let’s move on to the Church route, since that’s basically just “Golden Deer Except No Claude (But to Make Up for That, Go Ahead and Marry That Hottie Who is at the Same Time Both Your Mother Figure, Your Grandmother, and Sort of Also Your Daughter...Go Ahead, it’s Fire Emblem, We All Know This is Why You’re Here).” Apparently, even though, as previously noted, everything that led to Nemesis being resurrected in the GD path will also occur on this route, Nintendo felt that the Church route had to have an entirely different final boss. And instead of just having a more advanced fight against Thales, which would be appropriate for this route since his bunch of jerkwads are the most narratively juxtaposed to Rhea and her religion, the writers decided that it would be better to have Rhea spontaneously go apeshit in the midst of delivering an exposition dump--like, seriously, she goes berserk in the middle of a sentence--and force you to put her down. If Nemesis was Necron, then Rhea is definitely Flammie (she’s even a white dragon thing, to boot), but with even less credible magic plot bullshit to explain her going berserk.
How does being in a weakened state from torture and catching missiles in her teeth cause Rhea to suddenly release her full power? I don’t know! What purpose is served in frustrating players by forcing them to attack and potentially kill the character whom this entire story path is specifically geared toward rescuing and being loyal to? I don’t know! Why does Rhea never lose control and transform due to her injuries and weakness in the Golden Deer story, especially considering that she is ostensibly even more weakened in GD since she’s implied to die after the game’s over in that route whereas in this one it’s possible for her to live on? I don’t know! Or alternately, how is it that Rhea can have suffered the exact same damage on both the Church and Golden Deer routes, yet have a chance of surviving only in the former, even though this one also has her getting whaled on by the strongest people in the world for 5 - 20 turns of combat? I don’t know! If Rhea losing control also causes various high-positioned church officials to turn into monsters because she gave them her essence, why doesn’t it happen to Catherine, who would surely also have received this treatment considering her position and importance to the Church and Rhea personally? I don’t know! If losing her self-control and turning rabidly aggressive is what triggers her high-up church members to become monsters, then why don’t we see that happen in the final boss battle of the Black Eagles route, where Rhea’s surrounded by her best and most loyal warriors and has clearly been driven to hostile insanity? I DON’T FORKING KNOW. You beat the actual villains of the game, Rhea’s only flipping out to pad the run-time, so just enjoy the chance to sex up a dragon and get off Nintendo’s back about this.
So you may be wondering, now, who the third bemusingly impromptu final boss is of FE16. After all, it makes sense for Rhea to fill that spot on the Black Eagle route, and obviously Edelgard is the right person for the role for the Blue Lions. Well, I’ll agree with you on the former point,** but in spite of Edelgard being the right call for Dimitri and company’s last challenge, she still manages to be a pretty random final boss, this time in the Volsung way, by just up and getting ultra-powered with evil out of nowhere. Supposedly turning into this big demon-thing is something she can do by unleashing the power of both her crests at the same time, a fact which is never mentioned or even hinted at prior to this moment or in any other route.
Isn’t it kind of stupid for her to only unleash this power now, after her enemies have completely disrupted her armies, liberated territories from her control, and killed the majority of her best and most devoted soldiers, even though she’s had multiple opportunities before to go all out like this when it might have made the difference between her empire’s life and death? Oh, whoops! Doesn’t it make no sense for Edelgard to only use this ability in the Blue Lions version of this battle, even though the circumstances of this battle in the Church and Golden Deer paths are equally dire for her cause? Whoopsy! Doesn’t this ability undercut the idea of Edelgard’s determination to win at any cost (her 1 and only real character trait), when she apparently won’t use it in her own Black Eagles storyline even in a desperate battle against an out-of-control dragon in the midst of a raging inferno? WHOOP-FREAKING-SY. Try not to think about the actual villains of the game you’re unable to deal with, giving Edelgard superpowers was the path of least resistance to make this final battle interesting, so just enjoy your conclusion to a path that has no relevance beyond its own borders and get off Nintendo’s back about this.
I just don’t get it. This whole nonsensical out-of-left-field final boss stuff already seems utterly ridiculous to me under normal circumstances--it’s so much of a hassle to throw Necron and his ilk into an RPG’s finale to begin with that it seems like it should be impossible that someone wouldn’t stop to think for the 4.2 seconds it takes to realize that it’s a dumb idea and decide against it. But thrice in the same game!? How the hell does this happen? How do you just decide to throw your cares to the wind and put all your money on sensation instead of substance with your final foe 3 times in a row?
* Wow, this is actually a super old trope, isn’t it?
** Although, you could make an argument that there’s still an element of the unexpected and inexplicable in the Black Eagle route’s last battle, in the sense that it even is the finale to begin with. The actual villains of Fodlan, Those Who Slither in the Dark, are a threat that Edelgard is well aware of, and has outright stated she intends to take down, once she’s done stupidly venting her misplaced fury on Rhea...and yet the game never pursues this. It just ends. “Congrats, you won, Edelgard’s empire revolutionized the social system,” with a little footnote of “o ya also dey all fite ppls hoo slithur in dark lol,” that’s all you get. In the GD and Church routes, you don’t even KNOW about TWSitD and somehow still wind up tracking them down and wrecking their shit, but in the path all about the 1 faction who actually is aware of the true villains, where following through with this plot would have been super easy, barely an inconvenience...nothing happens.
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