There’s a lot to say about Tales of Berseria that’s positive. It’s an engrossing, terrific RPG with a fresh take on a bread-and-butter RPG story concept, starring a protagonist who is absolutely excellent in both her personality depth and her character development, a striking and perfectly reflective antagonist to her, and a likable, strongly-characterized supporting cast whose hundreds of interactions are unfailingly engaging. It’s got great plot twists, it knows when to be heavy and when to pour on the charming humor, it makes you think, it has so much to say about the human condition and about finding and embracing one’s personal truths and individuality...and it even manages to do all this, and tie itself with masterful care and startling frequency to its predecessor, Tales of Zestiria, making the mediocre latter seem better simply by association. Tales of Berseria is a magnificent RPG for so, so many reasons.
And I have no interest in talking about any of them today.
Because my ranting whims are fickle and utterly ineffable, what we’re here today to laud about ToB is instead just a minor little moment of its epic span, a pleasant quirk that doesn’t really make a whole lot of difference overall, but which I still liked and took note of. In my defense, you can find people to wax adoration of the important stuff about the game in all sorts of places. But for a dissertation on tiny details which would otherwise go completely unnoticed? That’s my specialty, baby.
So, to whit: I think that the battle cutscene at the end Tales of Berseria, as the good guys* engage in combat with Artorius and Innominat, is really awesome, and more than that, refreshing, as final battle cutscenes go.
The scene is a pretty simple, straightforward one overall: Velvet and her team of misfits approach Artorius and Innominat. Some of your standard final confrontation dialogue is exchanged,** then the two sides begin fighting for a bit in cutscene form, before eventually transitioning into the actual battle system.
But simple as it is, it’s really quite awesome. First of all, on the basic level, it’s a really cool fight. The action flows quickly but intelligibly, and is varied enough that the party members’ diverse fighting talents are shown off well; you get to see swordplay, magic, fisticuffs, spear...play? What’s the word for spear-fighting? Well, anyway, you get to see the whole gamut of their talents at work, and it’s cool.
I also appreciate it for the fact that this fight cinematic even exists to begin with. Most of these final boss confrontations only amount to the party approaching the ultimate villain and exchanging their last-battle speeches, then jumping immediately into the battle screen. You don’t usually get to see any narrative representation of the fight itself, save perhaps a few lines delivered here and there during the fight. Cinematically, final confrontations in most RPGs aren’t significantly different, once they get started, from any given random encounter. The fact that Tales of Berseria was willing to put some extra flash into Velvet’s final battle with Artorius by letting a fully-choreographed, exciting fight scene play out as the first part of the battle is an example of Namco’s willingness to go all in on the quality of this title.
That’s not to say that this sort of thing is never done, of course. Tales of Berseria didn’t invent the practice of amping up the idea of a final battle by actually having, well, battle. But in the already rare case that you get some unique visual action in an RPG’s final confrontation, it’s uncommon for it to be this good. I mean, remember Wild Arms 5’s showdown with its major villain, Volsung? Yeah, you got a pre-battle cutscene with action...but that action was Dean riding that stupid fucking monowheel down a hallway avoiding some lasers, and then trying to use his vehicle as a club against Volsung. Yes, after that point, there was like 30 seconds of some fighting between them that was actually cool, but it was completely overshadowed by the sheer, mind-boggling anime-brand camp of what had come before it. And also by the stupidity of Dean just holding his gun in Volsung’s face for like 10 seconds straight without pulling the goddamn trigger. Point is, even when a game treats the player to some final battle action, it’s rarely as good as Tales of Berseria’s is.
More than the fact that it’s just a high-quality fight scene as a whole, though, it is so, so, so refreshing to see a major confrontation in cutscene format that actually uses the entire party in the battle. Voyeuristic Paralysis Syndrome is an RPG pandemic, and if this were a more typical, lazier RPG, this scene would just be of Velvet and maybe Laphicet stepping forward to do all the fighting themselves while the rest of the party idles about like they’re having a fucking picnic. That’s sure as hell how it goes down over and over again in Xenosaga 3, and a myriad of other RPGs. But instead, the characters decide to take this culmination of a months-long journey to decide the fate of humanity seriously, and actually all join in the fight! They’re willing to prioritize the victory of their ideals over the possible ego of their leader, and not just leave the most important battle in all history up to just a single representative. Miracle of miracles, the party members of Tales of Berseria treat this conflict with enough gravity to pool all their combat resources together--it’s almost as if they have a desire to win.
What a sorry state RPG storytelling is in that I can actually be impressed by an RPG’s willingness to treat its major characters as more than just notaries to its grand conflict. Nonetheless, that’s how things are, and so I think it’s worth giving Bandai-Namco some kudos for making a final battle cutscene that is of exciting high quality, and which possesses enough basic intelligence to involve all parties present within it. Really wish we could see this sort of narrative flare and common sense more often.
* I mean, sort of. They’re also the villains. Tales of Berseria is fun like that.
** Standard in the sense that it is, as you expect, a reaffirmation that each side is firmly set in their beliefs, and are ready to throw down to the death over it. Don’t get me wrong, though, the quality of what’s actually said is, as with everything in ToB, quite above average.
I didn't really remember the cutscene, so I skimmed through it on YouTube. I appreciate that the final battle doesn't have too much preamble before the fight, although I still would have preferred it if the characters talked even less and moved on to the fight sooner. One day, I'd like to see one of these talkative RPGs have a final battle without any dialogue before it. It could even be like the Berseria one, with some cinematic fighting choreography; I just want to see the heroes and villains start fighting without talking.
ReplyDeleteI think I've played too many games like, say, Xenoblade 2, where the characters talk forever before fighting.
There does tend to be far too much chatting prior to final battles (and story-significant battles during the course of the game, too, for that matter). With that said, though, I think that in most cases, something would be lost in a standard RPG without some pre-final-battle face-off dialogue. While having characters sensible jump straight into the action would/does work in some RPGs, like, say, Mass Effect or The Witcher, due to their casts having a stronger dose of realism to their plans of action, there are some benefits to a reasonably brief bit of dialogue before a last confrontation. In some cases, it's important for certain good guys to make a final appeal to the villain to change his/her ways, showing that the good guys kept trying to resolve matters peacefully to the very end. Occasionally, a villain's inevitable retort to this overture is also a beneficial piece of story or character development--take Tales of the Abyss, for example. During the pre-battle discourse, the heroes claim (very reasonably) that Van doesn't have to keep doing his villain thing, that the world has already been ejected from its oppressive shackled destiny by the events of the game thus far. Van, however, counters that one could still look at all that has happened during the game's course as fulfillment of the plans of fate, and so he needs to keep going to truly create a free existence. This is an important exchange, because without it, most players won't understand why Van's still going full steam ahead with the villain plan since it appears what he's striving for has been achieved.
DeleteYou're absolutely right that RPGs have a persistent problem of characters and villains talking for too long before they go into the final battle. The industry has got to work on tightening that shit up, streamlining it to say what it needs to without going for long enough to be silly and boring. But getting rid of it altogether will lessen the dramatic power of a lot of these confrontations, and eliminate certain important opportunities to reaffirm the protagonists' morality, clarify the perceived need for the villain's refusal to submit, and do other useful narrative housekeeping.