Tales of Berseria's Artorius's Irritation with Velvet

Great thanks once again to my friends Ecclesiastes and Angel Adonis for their assistance with proofreading and content-checking today's rant.  As always, guys, you are truly awesome!



In a game filled with excellently-written characters and iconic personalities, Artorius holds his own as a villain, being a nuanced, well-sculpted antagonist.  He acts as a conceptual reflection of protagonist Velvet, he’s got a compelling and believable backstory, and he manages to hit that elusive sweet spot of being misguided but rational and sympathetic.*  Artorius is a quality adversary all around, no doubt about it.  And he hits on smaller villain virtues, too, like his overall demeanor.  Artorius possesses an imposing and signature personality and presence that fits his methods and beliefs: rigidly logical, calm, austere.  He consistently embodies the qualities of pure reason and detachment that he desires to impose upon humanity, and he pulls it off really well--more than characters like Cyrus of Pokemon Generation 4, and Shin Megami Tensei 3’s Hikawa, who simply feel inhuman and robotic in their rejection of emotion, Artorius comports himself in a manner that seems genuine, like a real person who has driven himself to be coldly above his humanity.  ToB succeeds where other games fail to create a villainous Spock rather than just a narrative automaton.

Most of the time.

There IS an instance in which Artorius the villain’s** composure breaks which I find quite interesting.  At the end of the game, as Velvet and her team stand before Artorius and Innominat, she steps forward to give Artorius an answer to the question he asked her years before: why do birds fly?  Velvet’s answer is a reaffirmation of who she is and, by extension, who she believes humanity is, a declaration that her nature, human nature, needs no excuse and will not be restrained.  And it’s at this moment that Artorius’s aloofness finally is broken.  His reply to her is not restrained and unemotional, as all his interactions with her (and everyone else) have been prior to this moment.  Artorius is irritated.

“You were always like this.  That sort of foolishness is what creates the daemons, and plunges the world into tragedy and despair.”

He isn’t yelling it.  There’s no more than a disapproving frown upon his face, and if there’s any rage within his eyes, the camera doesn’t deign to rise high enough for us to see it.  And yet, that we can hear the annoyance in his voice at all, that he is actually making a statement that shows that he has taken her stubbornness personally, is more affecting than another villain’s screaming tantrum could ever be.

Artorius is exasperated.  He’s borne Velvet’s desire to kill him, her hatred, her determination to end his ambitions, her threats, her attacks...everything in her opposition of him and her quest for vengeance has been met with unmoved, adamant stoicism by Artorius. Until this moment.  Why?  Why is this, after everything that preceded it, the act that finally gets under his skin?

Well, there’s plenty of possible reasons, of course, and good ones, at that.  It could, for example, be because it is only now in which Velvet finally meets him not as a personal enemy, but as a philosophical one, stating her resistance to him in terms of ideology instead of vendetta, and ironically yet appropriately, the arena of doctrine IS the one which Artorius takes personally.  It could also be that he really doesn’t like his own birds-fly question schtick being thrown back at him, or at least, dislikes that the answer is better than his own.

I wonder, though, if perhaps this moment finally draws real irritation from Artorius because of something else.

Consider this.  While not any official, dedicated tutorship, it’s clear at the beginning of the game that Artorius is the one that taught Velvet at least some of her skills at fighting, back when he was simply Arthur to her.  More importantly, however, he also taught her the discipline of combat, the rules by which one self-governs his or her feelings and decisions in battle to be at one’s most effective.  Velvet can quote the full range of Arthur’s maxims of combat, and does so many times over the course of Tales of Berseria, both in relation to her own actions, and when explaining her knowledge of how and why Artorius acts.  Velvet knows how Artorius fights and she knows how he thinks, because she learned his lessons well.  You cannot deny that she was a good student, in the sense that she learned the material.  But she did not take it to heart, she did not internalize and embrace the maxims and doctrine of Artorius herself, even if she learned it.

Velvet was Arthur’s student, his only protege.  He imparted to her his doctrine of logic and order, encouraged her to embrace it, gave practical examples of why she should.  And yet the lessons never took hold in Velvet’s mind and heart.  It wasn’t a problem of her simply not understanding.  She learned what he had to teach--she simply rejected it, or at least, the part of it that mattered most, in his eyes.  In spite of he himself guiding her, Arthur could not get Velvet to give up her passionate and emotional nature.  Velvet could not be convinced or cajoled to stop letting her feelings dictate her purpose and actions.

And now consider this: for much of the time that Arthur was training Velvet, he was grappling with his despair that humanity could not be saved from its own base instincts and emotions, the ones which caused the Daemonblight which was destroying human civilization.

I’m not saying that she was an instrumental part of Arthur’s descent to become Artorius.  Obviously the major factor in his losing himself to despair over the hopelessness of humanity was the loss of his wife and child, as shown in the game.  But all the same...could it be that Velvet played an unwitting role in Artorius’s decision that humanity must be changed by force?  Here she was, a willing student, a learner who would listen to his counsel voluntarily, and yet she would not change!  The guidance of the enlightened one himself, given to a learner who wanted to receive it, and still Velvet could not and would not cease to be a person ruled by her instincts and emotions more than her rationality.

Considering that...even if she wasn’t the core cause of Artorius coming to the conclusion that humanity could not be saved from itself without force, did Velvet help convince him that said conclusion was right?  Was her example proof, to Artorius, that even a well-meaning human being with the right knowledge could not help themselves but to indulge in the many facets of human nature that would lead to daemonhood?  And proof that no matter how revered he might be when he became the world’s Shepherd, his own example would still not be enough to inspire humanity to rise above itself as he had?

Is the vexation that Artorius shows with Velvet’s affirmation that human beings cannot and will not cease to behave as human beings simply a case of an old, long-felt disappointment finally being shown?  Is this aggravation with Velvet’s eternal inability and refusal to live any differently an old wound, a personal failure that still galls him?  Is Artorius so frustrated because Velvet does not understand that she is what convinced him that there was no other way to begin with?
















* More than any other medium I’ve come across, RPGs seem to struggle with creating decent villains whose motives are misguided attempts to do right by the world.  I mean, I know writing a solid character isn’t necessarily easy, but I swear for every 1 Artorius, there’s a solid 20 or more bullheaded, irrational, outright stupid jackasses like Fire Emblem 16’s Edelgard, Pokemon Generation 3’s Teams Magma and especially Aqua, Enzea from Conception 2, Wild Arms 5’s Volsung, Hilda in the first half of Stella Glow, the Light Deity in Asdivine 4, Linear in the second half of Evolution Worlds, Caesar in Fallout: New Vegas...morons who wouldn’t know a rational solution to their problems if it bit them in their pompous asses are a dime a dozen in this genre.


** By which I make the distinction of the period of time after Laphicet’s sacrifice and before Artorius’s defeat and death.  Before he committed himself fully to his path to save the world, and once he has failed and can release his hold on his own despair and grief, he’s shown to feel emotions.  But for most of the story, we see him in the role of emotionless savior to the world and villain, and that’s the period of time I’m referring to.

The Shadowrun Series's PC Titles' Running

Just as a warning, today's rant has not had the benefit of having been proofread by my sister.  She was quite ill recently, and I didn't want to worsen her condition by exposing her to my ramblings while she was in a weakened state.



Picture this: you’re playing an isometric RPG where more or less every action and interaction is handled by selecting stuff with the mouse.  You want to choose your response from a list of dialogue options whilst having a conversation with a random bystander?  Select it with the mouse.  You want to bring the pain to some security goon so pathetically stricken with Stockholm Syndrome for his corporate overlords that the last thing he was doing before this fight broke out was defending Diablo Immortal on Twitter?  Make with the clicky-clicky on the bullet icon in the menu, then another clickety-clicker on the Kotick apologist.  You want to get from 1 side of the map to the other?  Scroll on over and plant that pointer right where you aim to be.

So you’re doing this.  Playing the point-and-click game, and doing it like a pro, or an amateur, because let’s face it, putting a cursor over something and hitting a button has a very low ceiling for mastery so there’s little discernible difference between an expert and a first timer.  In the first scenario, your character delivers a witty 1-liner to the NPC, and the conversation moves along.  The second, you fire a round into the corporate stan, and now Wyatt Cheng’s back to ineptly fighting his own battles. And in the last, you start making your way to your destination, sprinting so fast that an observer might think they’re witnessing a SquareEnix executive fleeing in terror from a good idea.

All’s well, right?  Expected results all around.  Great.  But oh, hey, here’s a fun idea.  Having efficiently run from 1 side of the map to the other as speedily as I move toward most things that involve ground beef, let’s now set our sights on a destination just about, say, half a screen away.  Considering the brisk pace at which we traversed the full scope of this entire area, it’ll surely be the work of a moment to cross a distance equivalent to the average driveway, right?

Wrong.  Because for some reason, any time you want to get somewhere that’s actually close by, this game reduces your pace down to about as fast as I move toward most things that don’t involve ground beef.

The game?  Shadowrun Returns.  And Shadowrun: Dragonfall.  Also Shadowrun: Hong Kong.  Basically, every PC-based Shadowrun.  They all run on the same engine, and thus all regulate your party’s sprinting based on how far away the destination is from them.

It’s 1 of those gameplay ideas that looks deceptively alright on paper, like the Tales of series’s cooking feature, or Pokemon’s HM system.  I mean, it sounds completely reasonable in theory: make the characters in the game move the fastest when they’ve got more ground to cover, and a “normal” pace over short distances.  That’ll make the travel time relatively equal each time you want to move somewhere, and equality is a good thing, right?

Unfortunately, in practice, it’s just frustrating and makes the process of moving through these games seem plodding for no reason.  First of all, the majority of your non-combat movements in the PC Shadowrun trilogy are generally going to be over more moderate distances--while crossing the entirety of the map is certainly not uncommon to be doing at any given time, most of the time you’re gonna be moving towards spots that are much closer, so the majority of your experience with your characters’ running speed is gonna be of the slow variety, so the balance of paces for which the developers seemed to be aiming is skewed noticeably, and not to the player’s benefit.  

Secondly, the glaring divide between the paces of the fastest run, and the “normal” speed, does not help matters.  Even if the majority of your commute wasn’t spent on crossing small distances and thus going at the slower jog, it’d still be at least a little annoying to see the sprinting that the game CAN provide, and yet have it frequently deny that pace to you for basically no reason.  I’M the one playing the damn game, so why am I not the one deciding how much hustle to apply to any given situation?  You’ve shown me that you CAN move my characters faster, so why am I not allowed to?

Third, I gotta say, even outside of the perception of slowness created by the first 2 issues, the basic pace of Shadowrun characters is objectively too damn slow.  I feel like the game industry moves toward ethical standards of conduct faster than a Shadowrun protagonist crosses the street.  These damn games take place in major urban centers, in the gritty, fast-paced setting of cyberpunk corporate dystopia; where the fuck is the hurried, frenzied lifestyle that this setting implies?  For the love of Kofusachi, I’ve seen characters in slice-of-life animes glorifying the relaxed, peaceful existence of rural Japan comport themselves with greater overall speed than these constantly endangered urbanite mercenaries do in Shadowrun!

And fourth, beyond these errors in execution, the whole idea is honestly just flawed from the start.  I don’t want equity in travel times in my game.  The time it takes to get from downtown to the city limits shouldn’t be comparable to the time required to cover a city block.  Players crossing larger distances in a game expect and accept that it’s going to take a longer time because that’s how distance works.  Lowering that travel time via use of a running feature is certainly encouraged and should absolutely be mandatory, but that shouldn’t come at the cost of making other traveling longer!

There are ways to work around this whilst playing, I admit.  When playing Shadowrun titles and mods for them, I’ll generally just quickly scroll over to whatever side of the map is in the general direction that I want to go in, and let the game think I’m telling the protagonist to emulate Forrest Gump’s cross-country trek, then just have the characters cease their Usain Bolt-ing when they get to the spot I actually want them at.  But am I really supposed to be less annoyed by this situation because there’s a work-around?  Now I’m spending the entire game dragging my pointer to every corner of the map and back like I’m trying to reenact 1 of those stupid Family Circus strips following Billy’s path while also being drunk.  The fact that I can counteract 1 inconvenience by engaging in a less severe inconvenience isn’t an excuse.

Like a lot things I rant about, this doesn’t really matter, of course.  The important things about Shadowrun’s PC trilogy are their stories, characters, purposes, themes, explorations of their setting, and so on.  And on those terms, the trilogy is decent, great, and pretty good, in that order.  Still, it IS annoying, and also, just honestly really weird.  It’s not some oversight; it requires conscious effort from the developers to code a system like this, and more of that effort, for that matter, than it would have been just to create a damn run button, or a single sprinting pace.  They chose to do this, and I don’t get why, because it couldn’t have taken very long into the testing phase for it to become clear that this wasn’t a very functional system.

Shadowrun?  More like Shadowstroll.  Shadowmeander.  Shadowtoddle.

The Suikoden Series's Night Before the Final Battle

The Suikoden series has several positive, stand-out signatures.  They can be larger, broad-reaching narrative qualities, such as its ability, for example, to effectively walk the line between a very personal adventure of the individual, and a grand story of the conflict and community of entire cultural groups.  And they can also be smaller, endearing quirks, such as the feature and dynamics of the Castle HQ and its community.  It’s 1 of the latter traits that I want to laud today: Suikoden’s signature night before the final battle.

Basically, it goes like this.  Eventually there comes a time in each Suikoden title, at which the final major conflict of the game is clearly set to take place the next day.  This means the final boss battle, of course, but that battle is also inevitably preceded by the last major military battle between the protagonist’s army and that of the enemy’s.  This essentially means that everyone in the heroes’ castle (or mansion, or stupid crappy slow ugly ship) is preparing for the next day’s warfare, and their own role in it, not just the main party combatants.  And at this point, during this evening before the final conflict, wherein every character and NPC is engaged in preparation both practical and mental, the game allows the player to make rounds about the castle (or manor or dumb clunky unwieldy awkward boat) to speak to each and every 1 of those characters, and several non-named NPCs representing the whole of the army.

I love this moment in the game.  I love it each and every time.  Yes, even for Suikoden 4.  This is such a good narrative device, and Suikoden just does it so well!  In this moment, every character in the game gets a chance to weigh in 1 last time upon this grand venture that they’ve been a part of, assert their personality and character development arc 1 last time, and remind you through their preparatory work of their value and contribution to the army and story.  It’s an opportunity to have the characters you love best in the cast say their final farewells to the player, and an opportunity for the player to feel that he or she has paid the same respect back.  It’s a great illustration of the scope and community of the war effort, an additional characterization of the nation as a unified entity of individuals, which is a major part of Suikoden’s storytelling approach.  And it’s a great example of a poignant, heavy moment in the narrative that reiterates the weight of the events that have transpired, and those about to come, drawing the player in with its gravity while (thanks to the late hour and the great staple musical piece that always plays over it) instilling a calm, hopeful tranquility.

Don’t get me wrong: this is not fully unique to Suikoden.  A lot of RPGs contain a similar moment of significance before the final battle is engaged, in which the protagonist has a chance to speak to her/his companions who have been along all the way for this adventure, and are ready to stand with her/him to the very end of this last fight.  Sometimes it’s in a similar night-before scenario, as with Marine’s final conversation with Jeanne on the night before the tournament in Millennium 5, while at other times, it’s a last-minute heart-to-heart that occurs directly before heading into the fated combat, such as Shepard’s final rallying speech within the Collectors’ base in Mass Effect 2, or your conversation with your teammates in Dragon Age 1 as you launch your counterattack on the Darkspawn who have invaded Denerim.  Either way, it’s almost always a good moment in the game, so long as your audience has any emotional investment in your cast and/or the adventure as a whole.

Hell, even when a game is completely inept at providing this final party pow-wow, it still usually winds up being a pretty decent moment.  Dragon Age 2, always a shining beacon of clumsy writing, pulls 1 of these final parting words things that doesn’t actually make any logical sense, in-game.  Because, yeah, from the player’s perspective, the story is about to conclude as Hawke and her/his friends prepare to face the final battle, but the nature of DA2’s story is such that, from the characters’ own perspectives, this isn’t the conclusion of some long conflict or grand quest.  It’s a major battle they’re facing, and to some degree a culmination of many past events, but by and large DA2’s last battle isn’t, to the game’s heroes, some pivotal and long-awaited moment of destiny and resolution. So I dunno why everyone’s suddenly caught up in a shared urge to spill their emotional guts to Hawke as if it is.  And yet, in spite of this--and in spite of how awful a pile of dogshit Dragon Age 2’s finale is as a whole--it still manages to be a positive moment of touching closure.  So yeah, this is just a generally effective narrative tool to employ as a whole.

But Suikoden’s night before the final battle is a real cut above.  First of all, the atmosphere in general is just perfectly suited for this kind of moment.  As much as I like these last-moment character heart-to-hearts in general, the fact that they usually take place right outside the final dungeon, or just minutes before the final battle is engaged, etc., is a slight detriment.  The impact of a scene of loyal, heartfelt comrades saluting one another and finalizing their place in the story and your heart is one of sentimental, unhurried connection, and so it meshes better with a scenario like Suikoden’s, where these exchanges occur during the dead of night, when the final conflict is still many hours away, than they do just moments before the last fight, which is usually an instance in which time is running out, or at least quite precious.  There’s no rush, just the natural expression of the characters’ hearts and thoughts.  So Suikoden’s at the top of the game because it’s framing these final conversations correctly--and the mood is only set all the better by the quiet, emotive signature music for this moment.

Also, I think it’s cool with Suikoden’s night before that the protagonist generally isn’t the focus of the attention.  In most other titles, these final conversation moments are very clearly, directly protagonist-focused--the rest of the cast are deliberately, transparently making the effort to speak their final piece to the game’s main character (and no one else, regardless of how close they may also be to their other companions).  Hell, in Dragon Age 1, it felt like these folks were just lining up at Senpai’s Grey Warden Con table for free glomps.  And don’t get me wrong, again, there’s nothing wrong with this approach--but even if it doesn’t hurt the moment, it feels put on just enough not to really help it, either.

Suikoden, on the other hand, doesn’t make the protagonist’s presence the central factor of the night before’s cast interactions and preparations.  When Riou, Chris, Freyjadour, or whatever other protagonist you’re controlling wanders around the headquarters and meets with allies, he or she is, sensibly enough, the outsider approaching a character who’s occupied.  Some individuals are getting in a little last-minute training, others are finalizing the gear and supplies the army will be taking with it, still others are found mentally preparing themselves for the life-and-death combat they will engage in the next day.  Doctors prepare their clinics, tavern owners serve soldiers what may be the last spirits they ever imbibe, strategists and generals review battle plans 1 final time, cooks work through the night to prepare the provisions whose energy might be the difference between life and death for some of tomorrow’s warriors.  And of course, a myriad number of these allies and comrades are engaged in these preparations with each other, or simply spending time in friendship together through the night, reflecting appropriately their personal lives and relationships.  The protagonist is always met and received as an important presence, but it’s clear that the characters of the cast all have their own duties, interests, and preoccupations on this fateful night, as an army and a force of friends, and there’s a refreshing realism to that.  Speaking their final, lasting thoughts to the game’s protagonist is important to them, but it’s not the end-all be-all of their night.*  And that feels authentic, helps to further individualize the men and women of the army as their own personalities, and deepens the realism of the whole night before scenario.

A couple final merits to Suikoden’s handling of this narrative tool?  Point 1: it’s laudable that the writers and developers are dedicated enough to do this at all in the first place.  They’re not just plotting out the placement and dialogue of a standard 5 - 8 member RPG party.  Suikoden’s night before the final battle allows you to do a final check-in with the entire cast of 108-or-more individuals!  And there’s usually a few NPCs thrown in there, too.  While this is a level of commitment that the games demonstrate throughout their course, that doesn’t make it less of a feat of effort and persistence on their part.  And second, the night before scene is beneficial to the game in that it encourages the player to explore the entirety of the army’s HQ 1 final time if he/she wants to engage with every possible character.  This final stroll through the castle isn’t just a great way to capture the feeling of belonging and affection for the cast--it also creates and utilizes these same feelings for the setting itself.  The Suikoden castle (even when it’s a mansion or a sluggish horrible lousy boring canoe) is a major, sentimental feature of the series, and itself represents and embodies the culture of cooperation and unity that the Suikoden army inevitably is built upon.  As much like saying a fond farewell to your family as Suikoden’s night before the final battle is, it’s also like saying a fond farewell to your home, too.

A relic of the days when Konami knew how and cared to make a video game,**** the Suikoden series has a narrative sack full of notable virtues and beloved signature elements, and its night before the final battle tradition is definitely 1 of the shinier ones.  The final dialogue exchange with allies is a great trope, and RPGs rightly make regular use of it--but the golden standard to which they should all aspire is definitely Suikoden.

















* In fairness, I think I should mention that Suikoden isn’t the ONLY RPG with this deft touch.  Mass Effect 3, for example, strikes an adequate and realistic balance during the battle for Earth when Shepard and company are making preparations for the final push through Reaper territory.  Shepard’s allies are each engaged in their own last-minute activities (Wrex, for example, can be found rallying the krogan troops, while Liara is occupied with caring for some wounded, and EDI takes part in Anderson’s strategizing), which makes sense given the situation.**  They’re still extra eager to give Shepard more than a moment of their time for some conversation, but given that this IS Mass Effect, to some degree that’s just a given.


** Although admittedly a bunch of Shepard’s past allies, like Zaeed and Grunt, can just be magically contacted immediately on the holo-phone, even though they’re also fighting on and beyond the front lines.  I’ve let my own family wait longer for me to pick up than Shepard’s buddies take to answer,*** and I’m pretty sure that the biggest crisis I’ve faced in those situations is “really didn’t want to be hurried through my enjoyment of a burrito,” which I strongly suspect ranks a few tiers lower in urgency than fighting in the midst of an apocalyptic future-war.

Not complaining, though.  The last chats with Samara, Jacob, and the rest were great, and it wouldn’t have felt right not to involve them.


*** This is 1 of the rare parts of my rants that will NOT be given to my sister to proofread.


**** Besides Suikoden 4.  And Suikoden 5.  And Suikoden Tactics was only kinda okay, if we’re being honest.  Look, Suikoden games are like Star Wars movies: it's 1 of those series where it’s just kind of a given that when a positive discussion about it breaks out, you’re really only talking about the first 3 installments.  And maybe Tierkreis and Rogue 1.