I always enjoy it when I come across a game whose cast is just the right mix of dumb but interesting that they can make 1 of these Characters rants work. Not as much as I enjoy playing a game whose cast is just actually good, mind you. But an easy, fun rant is pretty decent compensation, at least.
Yuri: There’s a lot of things that Namco-Bandai wanted Yuri to be memorable for. The way he represents the darker side of justice, for example. Or the nuanced character arc of his grappling and coming to terms with the sins he’s committed for the greater good in a world where ideals aren’t enough, all of which Namco-Bandai forgot to actually include in the game, but sure as hell proceeded as though they had. There’s also the way his flippant and irreverent attitude really wants to be Grandia 2’s Ryudo but can’t even get close, and the way that The Gay just wafts off his body whenever his boy Flynn is around.
Unfortunately, the only thing about Yuri Lowell that will stand the test of time in this player’s mind is the silly-ass way he carries his sword around. Yes, too “cool” to just keep it hanging at his side or strapped to his back or any other method that would actually guarantee its reliable use, Yuri opts to haul his sword around by hand. Willy-nilly he runs across the globe for 60 hours of game time, looking like a 5-year-old flaunting the fact that Mommy let him carry 1 of the bags of groceries like a big boy. Thank heavens every single villain in existence is polite enough to give Yuri time for his little LOOK HOW COOL I AM FELLOW KIDS maneuver of tossing the weapon up, catching it, and throwing the sheathe aside before they attack him.
Repede: Remember that little feature in Dragon Age 1 where you could have your dog pee on a landmark in each map to mark his territory? Remember how it was a slightly funny and enjoyable little feature? Well, ToV’s developers don’t know jack shit about the concept of subtlety, because they decided that if a light touch of the doggy piddle joke was mildly funny, then hitting the player with the force of a fucking train with it would surely therefor be hilarious. Thank you, Tales of Vesperia, for making the 1 and only sidequest that revolves around the already-desperate-for-character-development Repede a long, frustrating trek to fucking drown the globe in urine.
Flynn: This character was basically created with the sole purpose of making Yuri look good. That, and yaoi-baiting...which is arguably just part of the first duty anyway.
Estelle: Estelle has a role and matching personality of Extremely Stereotypical Plot-Crucial Magical Girl, and a “Who am I and what do I want for my life?” character arc so halfhearted and uncompelling that I now realize that what I thought was a crappy version of it in Alisha’s DLC from the later Tales of Zestiria actually represents a huge improvement for Namco-Bandai’s writers. It doesn’t add up to a very interesting or memorable character, and unlike Yuri, she can’t fall back on a try-hard failure to be cool by carrying her weapon around in a little sling like she’s trying to rock it to sleep. As a result, probably the most interesting thing about Estelle is that, as a princess who approaches a rogue running amok in her castle and requests that he kidnap her so that she can obtain the freedom she needs to meet with and assist an important political figure on the side of good, she was the first of many indications to me that the creators of Tales of Vesperia were prone to softly plagiarizing Final Fantasy 9 here and there.
Rita: You know those Star Trek engineers whose primary role in the story is to spout a bunch of vague, entirely made-up techno-babble vocabulary as a way of explaining what’s going on without actually explaining anything at all? Rita’s basically what would happen if you made 1 of them a violent tsundere.
Raven: The fact that Raven isn’t the worst case I’ve seen of a spontaneous betrayal with transparently inadequate rationale for the sole purpose of artificially stirring drama because the writers had no idea what else to do at that point means that the writers of Tales of Vesperia owe a deep debt to The Last Story.
Karol: Real talk? Karol should’ve been the protagonist of this game. He gets more in-depth AND more varied character development than anyone else in the cast, said development actually is fairly sensibly paced and explored in general, part of his character arc is his coming to terms with his worth as a leader and how to enact his ideals of justice, and while his character arcs certainly are influenced by his interactions with his companions (as they should be), the writers didn’t have to invent an entire other-side-of-the-coin character like Flynn to make any part of Karol’s personal journey work. Karol absolutely has a multi-faceted character arc more suited to being protagonist than anything Yuri can present. All that, and he doesn’t carry his weapon like some stupid dork hauling his suitcase as he hurries to make a train that’s about to leave.
Judy: Oh, NO! We created an appealing character that engages the player and interacts with the rest of the cast in a way which both draws out their better traits and highlights how likable this person is...but we accidentally made this person a woman! Quick! Undercut every single thing about her by putting her in a bikini and having the lecherous old guy hit on her all the time! This is Tales of Vesperia; we can’t have a female with a personality!
Patty: Good LORD do I wish this kid would blink more often.
Alexei: Oh goody, a villain who’s evil for the sake of being evil because the plot said he was evil. Don’t have enough of them in RPGs already. Don’t have enough of them in the Tales of series already. Don’t have enough of them in this game already.
Duke: As bad as the franchise’s original villain Dhaos was, Alexei and Duke are even worse because they’re basically just Dhaos split in half. Alexei is the part of Dhaos which was generic diabolical grandstanding and roundabout, inefficient world-conquest schemes, while Duke is the half of Dhaos that’s a completely inadequate, tacked-on-right-at-the-end, undeveloped sob-story motivation for his villainous deeds. Yeah yeah, humanity isn’t fucking perfect, boo hoo hoo, an entire planet’s worth of human beings don’t all change their minds and habits overnight, I had a bad meal in a Taco Bell once so now I’m gonna nuke Mexico, blah blah blah get fucking over it you whiny prick. Jesus Christ RPG villains suck.
But I still give Duke a partial pass. Because as shitty as his lost-faith-in-humanity schtick is, it’s still possible that it was, in some small way, a progenitor for Artorius of the later Tales of Berseria’s extremely skillful and successful use of the same villain basis. Yes, I know that’s a bit of a stretch, but I gotta be honest with you: most Tales of games are a hell of a lot more tolerable for me when I view them through the lens of being nothing more than fumbling practice runs for the eventual excellence of Tales of Berseria.
Thursday, September 8, 2022
Tales of Vesperia's Characters
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"There’s a lot of things that Namco-Bandai wanted Yuri to be memorable for. The way he represents the darker side of justice, for example. Or the nuanced character arc of his grappling and coming to terms with the sins he’s committed for the greater good in a world where ideals aren’t enough, all of which Namco-Bandai forgot to actually include in the game, but sure as hell proceeded as though they had."
ReplyDeleteThis part about Yuri's arc stands out to me because when I replayed the game around three years ago, I really noticed how misplaced Yuri's edgy vigilantism is in the world of Vesperia. The game is not a world of dark morality, so the plot never grapples with the implications of Yuri murdering people very effectively. So what if he killed some noble who was a jerk? That guy was a jerk and basically deserved it. Tales of Vesperia doesn't flip the script and later show one of Yuri's victims as, say, a caring father, thus causing Yuri considerable guilt when he sees the victim's devastated children and prompting the player to further question Yuri's actions. Honestly, the cast of Tales of the Abyss gives Luke a lot more grief for his ignorant actions (and said actions do end up causing some major problems) than Vesperia's cast gives Yuri for coldblooded murder.
But I was most astonished by how bland Tales of Vesperia's main plot is when I replayed it. The Tales series has mostly focused on party member interactions in the form of skits for a long time, starting around Tales of Symphonia. When I first played Tales of Vesperia over a decade ago, the meandering nature of the main narrative just didn't stick out to me as much (the second act, in particular, does little to develop a story, I thought). Duke is especially emblematic of the main narrative's poor construction and might be the weakest main villain in the series (of the games I've played, at least). Duke is not intimidating; he doesn't a good motive to be a villain; he has no strong connection to Yuri, either. He's just there since the player has to fight someone at the end.
I still like Tales of Vesperia, though, due to its world, character interactions, and various sidequests. I definitely do not view a main narrative as all important; I think I didn't notice the main plot's issues as much the first time around since I was more distracted by the character interactions.
Completely agree with you on both Yuri and Duke. Most of the Tales of series's villains have not impressed me, but Duke is definitely bad even by their standards. I could only say that maybe the villain of Tales of Destiny 1 is worse, and I say that only because I legitimately don't even remember who he/she was in any capacity so I don't know if they were worse or better than Duke.
DeleteI can't believe that Tales of the Abyss happened before ToV, where Luke is concerned. As you say, his companions chide him for his poor actions far better than anyone in the ToV party speaks to Yuri about his own. But more than that, Luke's opening character arc regarding the dilemma of killing people is very well done and believable--and yet the only indication whatsoever that we have of Yuri suffering any pangs of conscience for the same action is the dialogue of others hastily reassuring us that he must be. TotA and ToV were only separated by a mere 3 years; how did Namco-Bandai so thoroughly forget their own success that they couldn't even make an attempt to replicate it?
I think it takes a very carefully constructed RPG where the main narrative is not an important factor in its quality, but I do agree that it can be done. Unfortunately, with all the side narratives being careless and surface-level little ventures and a subpar-at-best main cast, Tales of Vesperia is far, far away from being able to survive its dull main plot and its failure to effectively explore the concepts and themes therein.
Duke just seems to have nothing going for him. The writers were perhaps aiming to have a nuanced villain, but he lacks interesting nuance. Since he isn't particularly evil and lacks connections to the party members, he's forgettable (in the ten-year gap between my first and second playthroughs, I essentially forgot about him). In Duke's case, presenting him as an example of what Yuri might become could have made Duke more interesting. I dunno. Almost anything could have made him better.
DeleteMy favourite "bad" villain in a Tales game is Gaius from Tales of Xillia. I consider Gaius a total failure since I agreed with him far more than I did with the heroes, and I actively rooted for him over my party members. I haven't played Tales of Destiny so no idea about its villain (I've been waiting for the Director's Cut version to get a good fan translation before checking it out).
Tales of Vesperia and Tales of the Abyss are good games to compare since they share a lot of the same development staff. I just find it odd how much criticized Luke gets for his actions since I find that doing something bad out of ignorance is not nearly as immoral as doing something bad deliberately. But I suppose Yuri gets more slack since he's "cooler" or whatever, although I think that Abyss has much stronger character development due to the cast's friction with one another.
On main narratives, I meant that they're not necessarily the most important measure of quality to me. I like Vesperia's cast, but the game isn't the best example to use as a case where I don't care that much about its main narrative (for one, I did care about it some when replaying it, and, for another, other games are better at demonstrating other strengths). I think that I exaggerated the weakness of Tales of Vesperia's main plot in my previous post, though. I don't think that the story is really bad; it's more dull, or boring, if anything, since many of the events and plot points are so perfunctory. I was much more bothered by the main narratives in other Tales games (namely, Tales of Graces and Tales of Xillia), which I found offensively bad at times.
In fairness to Yuri (even though I'm not exactly thrilled to defend him), Luke's bad actions and decisions get innocent bystanders hurt, while Yuri is generally punishing bad guys, so the results make it a hell of a lot easier to criticize Luke. Although on the other hand, Luke's motivations are also generally not malicious, at the very worst bratty, while Yuri has made the conscious choice to outright murder some guys, so...I dunno. It does indeed feel bizarrely disproportionate between them.
DeleteYeah, although that circles back to my earlier point about how I find it problematic that Yuri never makes a mistake when he murders a bad guy. Generally, the problem with being a vigilante is that people are prone to making errors when they take the law into their own hands (that's part of why countries develop elaborate legal systems to handle justice); Tales of Vesperia doesn't really confront the issues of vigilantism, aside from some superficial gestures to it, which is a far cry from Tales of the Abyss (which is brutal to Luke for acting out of ignorance) or Tales of Berseria (which revels in the idea that Velvet perhaps shouldn't kill Artorius, but she does so, anyway).
DeleteUnfortunately, ToV is very much like a David Cage venture in this way--it's managed to fool itself with its own illusion of depth, without actually possessing the substance that it pretends to. Having the actual, real moral issues and pitfalls of vigilantism confront Yuri might damage how try-hard "cool" he appears, so Namco-Bandai are gonna keep it nice and surface-level from start to finish.
DeleteI see that the commenter Elm mentioned it already, but I was going to say that Namco's emphasis on making Yuri cool was certainly successful with the series' fans, since he often topped character popularity polls. I like Yuri, but I wish he was in a story that better examined him as a character. I think it was refreshing to have a protagonist who isn't so nice and murders people, but Tales of Vesperia opts to treat Yuri as though he's hardly any different than a standard Tales hero like Cress (Phantasia) or Reid (Eternia). That's the part that doesn't work for me.
DeleteObviously, based on Yuri's popularity, plenty of fans from the series do not share my misgivings.
And, on another topic, I've long thought about how the casts of Tales games can feel very samey since Namco keeps reusing the same archetypes:
ReplyDeleteThe Male Protagonist (Yuri): he is the main character who saves the world and so on (he almost always fights with a sword).
The Female Protagonist (Estellise): she helps the hero save the world and may get kidnapped a few times, and she is often also the Male Protagonist's love interest.
The Kid (Karol): the Kid may be either male or female but is almost always precocious and learns various, valuable life lessons over the course of the game. The Kid usually looks up to the Male Protagonist. Male variants of the Kid will want to be like the Male Protagonist some day, while female variants may develop a crush on him.
The Old Man (Raven): the Old Man is someone who is over 30 years old and, therefore, the butt of many jokes. He is far more experienced than the youthful Male Protagonist, and there is never a female variant (sometimes, a female character might be an elf or some other immortal, but she cannot look old).
The Foreigner (Judith): the Foreigner comes from some other country or planet with different customs than the rest of the main group. The Foreigner may or may not have troubles speaking the same language as the rest of the group. Due to the need of the cast to have a balance of male and female characters, this character is usually female. Sometimes, Namco has the Female Protagonist as the Foreigner and love interest! (Not in Tales of Vesperia, though).
The Magician (Rita): one character in the party will be exceptionally good at magic, often functioning as a convenient source of info dumps. This archetype can overlap with many others (such as Female Protagonist, the Kid, the Old Man, and the Weird Girl) but never the Male Protagonist.
The Weird Girl (Patty): to add variety and fill out the cast, there is usually a Weird Girl in Tales games. Unlike the Foreigner, who is weird due to having different customs, the Weird Girl is weird for no particular reason. Technically, the Weird Girl could be male, but I don't recall that ever happening in the series. The Weird Girl may overlap with other archetypes, like the Kid or Magician (Note: Rita doubles as the Weird Girl in the original version of Tales of Vesperia, which didn't have Patty).
The Guy (Flynn): with so many archetypes being the domain of females, a Tales game usually needs another male character to fill out the roster. This character is the Guy. The Guy could be the Male Protagonist's brother or rival and, in Tales of the Abyss, is literally named Guy (okay, I probably could have defined this character as the Rival or something else; I just really wanted to make that joke about Guy's name).
The Traitor (Raven): by far, my favourite Tales archetype is the Traitor because it never makes sense. Hidden among the various Tales casts is someone who will betray the Male Protagonist at some point, and the Traitor can overlap with most of the aforementioned archetypes. I do not understand why the Male Protagonist forgives the Traitor, but he always does instead of banishing the Traitor forever. Tales of Xillia has the most egregious Traitor, in my opinion.
The Mascot (Repede): there is some "cute" animal or creature that hangs out with the gang. The Mascot is usually not a party member and is likely to be the most annoying character in the game (Repede is far better than the likes of Mieu, in this respect).
Not all Tales games use these archetypes as much as others, and I wouldn't be able to slot all Tales characters into one of these archetypes. However, from around Tales of Eternia to Tales of Xillia, a surprising number of Tales games use these archetypes consistently (with Abyss, Vesperia, Graces, and Xillia pretty much all using every single archetype I listed here). I don't know if Tales of Zestiria uses these archetypes or not since I never played it. I remember thinking when playing Tales of Berseria that Namco did a good job getting away from these archetypes (even if I didn't necessarily love the entire cast in the game; at the very least, they were refreshing).
DeleteCompletely agree, but I do have to point out that this is just as much a list of extremely common JRPG archetypes as it is for Tales of specifically. The Tales of series, while certainly having plenty of distinct traits that allow you to easily identify a title in its line, is probably the series that most consistently produces titles that more or less symbolize and represent the style, method, ideas, and approach of JRPGs as a whole, since probably around the Playstation 2 era (prior to that, I'd say Final Fantasy was the most representative of the genre). While you're absolutely right that the ToV party covers the favorite archetypes of this series which make up at least 50% of any given title's cast, I think it's hard to say exactly how much of that is series-specific, and how much of that is just the overall trends of the genre as a whole.
DeleteInterestingly, much like its successor Berseria, Tales of Zestiria DOES largely move away from this list, too (Protagonist Sorey and The Guy Mikleo are the only ones that definitively fit into your philosophy here)...but unlike Berseria, ToZ's cast and plot still manage to mostly feel generic and unremarkable. Except for Rose. She's pretty unique, and I really liked her.
Certainly, other series abuse archetypes like the ones I listed. I just think that the Tales series became way too attached to these types around Tales of the Abyss, without putting in much effort to subvert the archetypes after Abyss (not until Tales of Zestiria, based on what you say). I found it especially noticeable in Tales of Graces and the first Tales of Xillia (Tales of Xillia 2 adds three party members to the first game's cast).
DeleteTales of the Abyss? My good man, Namco-Bandai was hooked on these archetypes long before TotA. Your list there covers the entirety of Tales of Phantasia's cast; they were hooked from the start.
DeleteFunny thing is that whatever they were going for when creating Yuri sure worked marketing-wise, because he and Leon from Destiny 1 topped the periodic official "Tales of" character popularity polls so much and for so long that they don't even get included in them anymore.
ReplyDeleteAnnoying, but I can believe it. Often the appearance of substance rather than the actual presence of it is all that fans need, and more importantly, he looks and acts bishounen-cool, so of course no one's gonna do the 3 minutes of mental calculations to realize how empty and silly Yuri is as a character and aesthetic.
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