Tales of Vesperia's Lead-Up to Cumore's Death

Is it just me, or do characters in Tales of Vesperia often act just, like, 2 steps away from what’s logical?  They’re not being noticeably nonsensical the way characters are in High Guardian Spice or Xenosaga 3, they’re not saying things that are noticeably non-human the way characters do in the Star Wars prequels or Xenosaga 3 again, but at the same time, events throughout a lot of ToV seem to be propelled by ignoring what makes sense in the current situation.  Take the death of Cumore.  It’s a fairly important keystone in the game’s plot, particularly regarding Yuri’s character and the party’s cohesion and interrelationships, but...why does it happen to begin with?  How exactly did it make sense for the events that lead to Yuri murdering Cumore to unfold as they did?

So, when everything is boiled down to the basics, Cumore dies because Yuri is convinced that if he does not end Cumore’s life now, the aristocratic sleazeball will get off scot-free for his crimes and simply repeat them as soon as he gets the chance.  And that’s a perfectly reasonable assumption, because Cumore has so far shown himself to be both unrepentant of his previous transgressions and a jerk, and there’s more than enough evidence for the fact that he does not see anyone who is not part of the noble class as a true human being.  But, the reason that Yuri believes that this is a now-or-never situation to end Cumore’s threat against the common man is that, upon discovering a few hours prior that Cumore has been abusing the citizens of Mantaic and endangering their lives, the rest of his companions did nothing.  And that’s what doesn’t make sense about this scenario.

It’s wildly out of character for several members of Yuri’s party to find out that there are people suffering and dying as a result of Cumore’s ambitions, and to conclude that the only thing they can do is to wait for Flynn to come and do something about it.  Okay, sure, I’ll grant you that the recent example of Ragou, another evil asshole in the upper echelons of society who used his connections to get off with a slap on the wrist for his crimes, certainly did dishearten the group as a whole.  It was discouraging to all of them, especially Estelle and Karol, that Ragou seemingly got away with his crimes, and there was nothing they could do about it.  And this seems to be the reasoning that the game gives us for why, upon discovering the terrible things Cumore is doing to the people of the town, all our heroes decide that the only thing they can do about it is to wait for Flynn and his knights to arrive and sort the matter out.

Unfortunately, that’s just not consistent with the party’s personality, nor with its history.  Let’s start with the latter first.  While the most recent clash they had with Ragou most certainly puts a sour taste in their mouths, they’ve all been present for multiple incidents in the past in which their decision to oppose bad guys to put an end to the suffering of innocents, without relying on Flynn’s help, had real, demonstrable, conclusively positive results.  Why should their failure to permanently put Ragou in prison outweigh their previous, wider-reaching success at defeating Barbos, for example?  And even if Cumore escaped from their last encounter at Heliord, their having opposed him as swiftly as possible nonetheless decisively cut short his ability to abuse that city’s citizens and reinforced Flynn’s ability to ensure that Cumore’s operation there was fully and totally shut down.  

For that matter, even with the Ragou situation, there would have been at least a pause in his villainy thanks to their efforts (if he had lived, that is; they still don’t know, by this point, that Yuri went and vigilante’d Ragou off a bridge).  Not exactly a victory, but not the total defeat they’re acting like it was, either.  I know you’re far more fond of lifting material from Final Fantasy 9, Tales of Vesperia, but go ahead and ask the people of Spira in FF10 whether or not the temporary reprieve from Sin ravaging their world bought by the Summoner’s journey was worthwhile to them.  A solution to a problem is obviously the best thing, but any idiot knows that if that solution isn’t available, a temporary reprieve is still desirable.  A guy who accidentally shot his arm with a nail gun obviously wants the nail removed more than anything else, but he sure as hell ain’t gonna turn down some Tylenol in the meantime.

So yeah, in terms of general rationality, Yuri’s group deciding to just sit on their hands until Flynn comes in to resolve things is weird and dumb.  But it’s also noticeably bad writing for the fact that it runs strongly contrary to several of their demonstrated character traits and personalities.

For starters, Estelle.  Are you seriously trying to tell me that Estelle sees that innocent people are suffering at the hands of Cumore, and she allows herself to be talked into doing nothing about it?  ESTELLE?  1 of the few actual, concrete, beat-the-audience-over-the-head-with-it traits of Estelle’s personality is that she is patently unable to stand the sight, the sound, the very knowledge of another’s suffering!  The moment someone so much as gets a splinter within 5 miles of Estelle, she’s there and hitting’em with a healing spell so potent that the mere splashback from it might cause the splinter to pop out and regrow into a whole new tree of its own.  Estelle is a healer with an aggro range.

So am I really supposed to buy this scenario where Estelle sees that Cumore’s actions are harming the innocent people of Mantaic, and she can be convinced into just sitting it out and letting it go on until Flynn gets there?  Hell, that she would even hesitate long enough for others to make their argument for that to begin with?  Estelle?  Miss Can’t Turn A Blind Eye To A Scraped Knee?  Keep in mind that the VERY NEXT major story event of Tales of Vesperia hinges upon Estelle being so gung-ho about helping others that she literally kills Belius with kindness, casting a healing spell on the wounded Belius so automatically and so quickly that the latter doesn’t have a chance to warn her that the magic will cause Belius to go berserk.  This Cumore tomfoolery goes against everything we’ve seen and everything we will see of Estelle’s character, undercuts the very signature trait of Estelle that the next story beat is built upon!

It’s also very out of character for Karol.  Karol’s still caught up in the fervor of having created his own, brand new guild with Yuri and Judy, and while he’s still sorting out what Brave Vesperia is meant to do and what it stands for, the 1 and only thing that they’ve all established beyond any argument or doubt about the guild is that it will not tolerate injustices to stand.  And yet Karol sees the harm being done to innocents in Mantaic by Cumore, and decides to just sit on his bed in the inn, feel a bit bad for the townsfolk, and wait for someone else to come do something about it?  This kid who is utterly engulfed in his pride and excitement to have a guild of his own is going to go against the 1 and only mission statement of that guild because, what, Cumore might get off the hook like Ragou seemed to?  Because Cumore might later elude punishment, we simply don’t give a shit about whether innocents suffer an injustice for longer than they have to?

It’s a crock of shit with Judy and Rita, too.  Judy’s a part of Brave Vesperia, so she’s supposed to be just as dedicated to seeing justice done as Karol is.  But even if you discount that (which is fair, because Judy’s hard to read, and still engaging in her subterfuges, so it’s dubious to make a concrete assessment of her commitment to the guild), it’s still out of character for her to sit back and advocate doing nothing about Cumore.  Her whole thing for the game’s first half is that she’s fully willing to work outside the law and (secretly) defy what her friends want if it’s for the greater good.  If the well-being of the people of Mantaic matters to her at all, then there’s no one in the entire cast who should give less of a crap about what connections and protections Cumore has which might later save him from punishment.  Rita, meanwhile, does not possess the do-gooder’s instinct like most of the others, but she also is the type to act entirely upon her own in-the-moment instincts, brashly disregarding whoever and whatever may be opposed to her at that time.  So the fact that she herself doesn’t like what Cumore’s doing should have her out there throwing fireballs around in a tantrum, not sitting on an inn bed rationalizing why they should all just move on.*  Hell, it doesn’t even feel true to Patty’s character; she makes it clear she doesn’t like the situation here, either, and she’s really not much less impulsive than Rita or Estelle.**

Why the hell are they all so damned convinced that Cumore’s going to elude justice the way Ragou did, anyway?  Granted, Cumore is an extremely rich noble with a high position in the military, but Ragou was a member of the council that rules the Empire who’d had decades of opportunity to collect favors and form illicit connections to his fellow council members that would protect him.  There’s a world of difference between how well Ragou could use his resources to evade justice and how well Cumore could, with both Flynn and Princess Estelle herself against him.

And actually, on that note, this whole situation is kind of illogical even from the perspective of Cumore himself.  Why the hell does Estelle’s position have so little importance to him?  Putting aside the fact that Estelle being the second most important, high-ranking human being in the entire Empire doesn’t seem to really matter to anybody for some indiscernible reason...theoretically, Cumore should cease his villainous shenanigans the moment she tells him to in Heliord.

I mean, think about this.  Cumore may be a military officer and have aspirations of climbing the ranks to the top, but I think it’s safe to assess him as defined far more by his high social status than his military career, yes?  Narratively, the military rank is mostly there just to give him the ability to impose upon others his desires and personal convictions based on his being at a higher social stratum than most other people.  So why wouldn’t he very seriously consider obeying Estelle’s order that he cease exploiting the people of Heliord?  Everything that Cumore truly believes about the way the world works should lead him to view Estelle, as an inheritor of an even higher position than himself, as a superior being even to him, or at the very least, one who he must, by laws of hierarchy, respect.  For him to intentionally oppose and even try to harm her would be to invite the possibility that those lower than himself likewise have the right to do so against him.  And even if you want to disregard his being self-aware and intelligent enough to consider matters like that, the simple fact is that it only makes sense for Cumore to consider Estelle a higher power than Alexei, who is only Cumore’s military superior.  For one who defines himself by the currency of social standing and money, NOT effort or achievements, there should be far, far more tangible benefits from currying the favor of a princess than a general.  Frankly, everything in Cumore’s shallow character and history indicates that when Estelle says jump, his only response should be to ask whom milady wants ground-pounded.

All of this adds up to a situation wherein Estelle’s disapproval of the situation in Heliord should have been enough to have Cumore sycophantically shut down his operation there, and as a result, give Estelle and company confidence that he would do so again when confronted in Mantaic (and they would be correct in this assumption).  Cumore’s stubborn opposition to the princess’s wishes makes him just 1 more example of out-of-character behavior that had to be forced in order to make his death possible.

I can't believe Tales of Symphonia actually handled this scenario better years before, in the scene in Palmacosta where the heroes intervene to save that lady from hanging.***  How do you narratively start at Symphonia and then go down?

It’s not like I’m against Cumore getting his just rewards.  Not to mention that the immediately resulting interactions between Yuri and Flynn that come from this event are some of the few scenes in the game that I think are genuinely good and well-written.  And I certainly understand why this event has to occur for the sake of the overall story and the direction that ToV is ineptly trying to take Yuri’s character in.  But there had to be a better way to accomplish all this than to have half a dozen characters act contrary to their established personalities and/or convictions, for reasoning that’s clearly and even ridiculously flawed.













* The reasoning that she shouldn’t even be giving at the moment happens to also be pretty dumb, too.  Rita convinces Estelle (which shouldn’t even be possible, I’d like to again note) that they should just move to their next destination and worry more about what they themselves want to do than get mixed up in the affairs of others.  But Mantaic is a tiny town and Cumore’s only got so many soldiers stationed here--it would take the party, I dunno, an hour at most to put an end to Cumore’s villainy and take him into custody, then be on their way.  If they’re worried about him escaping after they’ve left, they can just bring the douchebag with them: their next destination is the last place they saw Flynn and there’s only 1 route he could be taking to get here, so they can just hand him over to Flynn when their paths inevitably cross.


** Seems mildly sexist that the 3 most impulsive characters in the party are all women, now that I think about it.


*** Thanks to Ecclesiastes for reminding me of this scenario, as it's been, thankfully, quite some time since I played ToS.  Honestly, Ecc's steel trap mind for RPG details and scenes probably makes him more worthy of my monicker than I am.

Shin Megami Tensei 5's Downloadable Content

Oh goody.  DLC for Shin Megami Tensei 5.  So let’s see, that’s...an add-on, an add-on for a JRPG, an add-on which was made by Atlus, and an add-on that’s part of the SMT series.  Yeah, I’m sure this is gonna be great.



A Goddess in Training: It’s not worth the price.  In fact, here, Imma save you some time and tell you right upfront: NONE of these things are worth the cost.  None of them are even close.  Columbus was closer to finding India than SMT5’s DLCs get to being worth what they cost.  Fallout 76 is closer to being a Fallout title than these things are to being a worthwhile purchase.  Kanye West is closer to being a human being who deserves to be listened to than these add-ons are to providing an adequate return for your investment.

So anyway, A Goddess in Training basically has you pay $5 to do the following:
- Walk up to Artemis, Greek goddess of the hunt
- Tell her you killed the Hydra
- Go kill a Quetzacoatl to judge whether it’s strong enough to provide training to her
- Since Quetzacoal wasn’t up to snuff, you get to be Artemis’s sparring partner instead
- Recruit Artemis once you’re done kicking the crap out of her as the next part of her training

That’s it.  That’s all.  For $5 you get to engage in 2 fights and get a single new, slightly-more-helpful-than-average medium-low level Pokemon demon, attached to a “story” about how some chick wants to train and will now do so.  I’m not even sure it qualifies as a story; there was greater conflict and purpose to the process of brushing my teeth this morning than A Goddess in Training.  The throwaway "deliver x number of items to me" sidequests in SMT5 are more involved and significant, for fuck’s sake.  It has taken me longer to write this review than it took me to play this DLC from start to finish.  It may have taken you longer to read it.


The Rage of a Queen: This is somehow even shorter than the last one.  You get the quest, you go where Cleopatra is--this, the previous, and the next DLC all take place in the first area’s map, by the way, so the process of actually getting to the quest marker is more or less instantaneous; don’t go thinking there’s any kind of new territory to pass through or anything--she decides you must be there to kill her, you fight her, and you either let her kill herself or stop her from doing so, either way allowing you to add her to your ranks.  That’s it.

It’s $3 for nothing.  Generic level-up dialogue lines express more individuality and character for the demons speaking them than this DLC provides for Cleopatra.  The Rage of a Queen is phoning it in by the standards of Shin Megami Tensei 5, a game that is already half-assing it as an RPG.


The Doctor’s Last Wish: Oh wow look how unexpected, another DLC in which you get a quest, beat a demon up, and call it a day.  Another DLC that, not counting the commute from quest-giver to quest-target and back, can wrap itself up in less than 10 minutes.  For $3.

As expected by this point, what minuscule content you get from this add-on isn’t all that great.  Basically, you track down a scientist who makes proto-fiends like Aogami, and it turns out that he’s stayed alive and youthful for a while because he made a deal with Mephisto.  This deal stipulates that Doc Dumbass gets to keep kicking until he creates a proto-fiend with a human heart and soul.  Mephisto then makes the claim that the contract is fulfilled, pointing to the protagonist as evidence.

Which I don’t think really makes any sense, by the way.  First of all, the fact that Aogami happened to fall face-first into his compatible human knowledge counterpart is an act that Professor Putz had little to nothing to do with.  It’s not like he specifically designed Aogami with the theory or hypothesis that Aogami would be capable of it; it in fact sounds rather like this guy didn’t really know about the whole Susano-o thing at all.  So can this really, contractually qualify as Scientist Stupidface achieving that which he set out to do?  Og the Caveman can’t claim to have invented fire just because the lit match I drop happens to fall into his stick pile.

Secondly, how does anyone look at the protagonist of Shin Megami Tensei 5 and see anything that remotely resembles a being with a human heart and soul?  SMT5’s hero is more of an automaton than any actual robot I can immediately recall having seen in an RPG.  He makes Fire Emblem 16’s Byleth look positively emotive!  Doctor Dipshit should’ve seen the protagonist and felt like he’d moved further from his goal.

Anyway, Mephisto demands the guy’s soul, main character steps in to stop it, fight ensues, the dude dies anyway because it was Mephisto keeping him alive, and you’re done.  How fucking thrilling.


Return of the True Demon: Oh good, Atlus is now shamelessly leveraging your nostalgia as a cheap, crass selling point.  Congratulations, Atlus, so great to see you’ve finally joined the Dignity’s Rock-Bottom Club.  Leon’s Charizard will take your coat, Todd Howard will show you to your table, and if you need anything, SquareEnix is tending bar.

So basically, Return of the True Demon lets you take on the classic Fiends of Shin Megami Tensei (like you did in Shin Megami Tensei 3), and once you’re done with that, you’re given the opportunity to fight...SMT3's protagonist, THE DEMI-FIEND!!!  OOOOOH WOW HOLY SHIT THE DEMI-FIEND WOOOO YEAH BABY HOW EXCITING, ET CETERA!  As if that’s some big fucking deal.  Serph already curb-stomped Demi-fiend in SMT Digital Devil Saga 1, and considering their substantially greater accomplishments and feats of power, it’s hard to imagine that SMT2’s Aleph and SMT4-2’s Nanashi couldn’t also whup his ass pretty tidily.  But fanboys are known neither for their capacity for rational thought nor for the accuracy of their memory, so the Demi-fiend is still the SMT main character that draws the most attention, and Atlus is looking to cash that shit in.

Now credit where it’s due: you get to interact with each of the Fiends as you encounter them, and they do share a bit of mildly interesting lore stuff regarding the SMT main series’s timeline and cycles.  A lot of the other stuff they say is just pandering hype for the Demi-Fiend and for SMT5’s protagonist, but hey, how else would we know just what a super special boy the Nahobino is if SMT5 didn’t squander its extremely limited narrative presence on constantly telling us so?  Regardless, it’s at least SOMETHING slightly interesting, and even a tiny morsel is delicious to the starving man, so what one might take for granted in a well-told RPG stands out in Shin Megami Tensei 5.   Also, even if it’s obviously fanservice, it is fun to see that the Demi-Fiend is still hanging out with his Pixie, and it’s cool that she even gets lines as the Tatl to his Link.  So yeah, I guess that in spite of how shameless this DLC is in its premise, Return of the True Demon is probably the best of these add-ons.

But it’s also 10 bucks for 10 fights and about 5 - 10 minutes of dialogue.  The fact that this is the best cost-to-content ratio of SMT5’s add-ons doesn’t make this a smart buy--it just highlights what a fucking scam Atlus is running here.  So yeah, while I’d like to match the original Uber-Pixie against my latest home-brewed version of the tiny titan, my pride as a man, and more importantly as a Megaten player, will manage to survive not purchasing this DLC.  Maybe if you see this thing go down to, I dunno, $1, it might be worth your time, but otherwise, give Return of the True Demon the same hard pass as all the others.



Well gee, what a surprise, the company with a history of bad and overpriced add-ons has made some bad, overpriced DLCs for their bad, overpriced game.  Would it kill Atlus and Nintendo and all the rest to prove me wrong every now and then?

Tales of Vesperia Stray Thoughts

Okay, guys, so...you know how, in my last few Annual Summary rants, I’ve had a little section for notable (by my estimation, anyway) little thoughts and reactions I’ve had while playing RPGs that year?  I just realized that I have like over half a dozen of those things all specifically for weird and/or dumb moments in Tales of Vesperia.  And that’s simply way too much stuff for that part of the already gigantic Annual Summary rant...but it IS probably enough that I could cobble together a little mishmash rant out of these pieces and leavings.  Think of it like a rant meatloaf: a bit of the stuff you actually want to eat, mashed together with some tasteless filler sentences, to the point that it’s close enough to the real thing that you may not notice until your next meal just how lesser the meatloaf really was.

I’m sure it helps that even my regular rants probably wouldn’t manage to get USDA approved anyway.

So, without further ado, some of my stray thoughts about Tales of Vesperia!



- I’m not saying that the rest of Tales of Vesperia prior to this point has been lacking in moments that are slightly nonsensical or outright dumb, but I nonetheless have to scratch my head at the fact that, when the Imperial fleet is sailing to attack the giant battle fortress Heracles, all the knights aboard the ship are in full plate armor.  Like...you guys know that ship-to-ship naval engagements don’t involve much face-to-face combat, right?  There ain’t much reason to be in full combat regalia unless you manage to board your foe.  And if your ship gets sunk before that happens (which is implied to have happened to quite a few of the Empire’s vessels in this encounter), well...you’re not PCs; you can’t magically swim in armor that weighs 100 pounds.


- Since we’re on the subject of the Heracles...I’m sorry, Tales of Vesperia, did you just say that this giant, mobile battle fortress was built in secrecy by “a handful” of skilled engineers?  A handful?  Really?  A 6- to 10-story moving armed metal battle fortress the size of a few city blocks...constructed from scratch by a handful of skilled engineers.  In a world without substantially established industrial manufacturing or power tools.

Really.


- The Heracles incident seems to be 1 of the least rational parts of this game.  So lemme get this straight, Alexei.  Your plan is to use your giant, canon-studded mobile superweapon as a decoy--great use of your resources by the way, but hey, I guess it must not have been too much trouble to cobble together if it took no more than a handful of engineers--as you make it attack the city of Zapphias.  Meanwhile, as this attack is occurring, you pursue your true goal, a matter which requires you to be...in the city of Zapphias.  The one that you’ve sent your titanic battle fortress, which possesses a canon that can annihilate with a single shot a significant portion of the city, to attack.  The city that YOU are currently IN is the one that you are, at this moment, directing your fantasy world weapon of mass destruction to do everything in its power to eradicate with heavy artillery.  Truly a spectacular display of strategy and cunning, Commander Fuckwit.


- Look, I know that donating to a good cause isn’t about what you yourself are getting out of it.  Absolutely do not want to give even the slightest impression that I believe otherwise.  Charity is about helping another, not satisfying yourself or gaining anything material back from the giving.  100%, no arguments, end of the debate.

But even still, if I’m gonna hand over 500 grand to an orphanage, I feel like I ought at least to have the right to actually go inside the damn building.


- Why is it that when Yuri visits his room partway through the story, a kid he knows, Ted, comes in and talks about Yuri and Flynn’s long history and relationship as though the kid has seen it in its entirety?  This kid’s talking about how when Yuri and Flynn were younger they had to share everything because they were poor, including their practice sword, and so on and so forth, and it’s like...Yuri and Flynn start this game at the age of 21 years old each.  Ted looks to be, like, 9.  What, was he just very perceptive from inside the womb?


- Even good ol’ Since We’re Not Related It’ll Be Okay Syndrome is stretched near its limit when minor sidequest NPC Karen outright calls the man she aims to marry “Big Brother.”  To his face.  Come on, RPGs.


- I can’t believe I’m actually implying that Tales of Symphonia did something competently, but...why is it that back in that game, we had an entire small plot arc to explain to us why Presea, who was trapped in the body of a preteen, had enough super strength to swing around a giant ax roughly equivalent to her entire body mass, and yet 5 years of narrative evolution later, Tales of Vesperia feels not even the slightest urge to rationalize why Karol can do the exact same thing?  He’s no less in the Disney Channel’s focus age demographic than Presea appeared to be.


- What benefit was there in making Estelle a princess?  No, really, tell me.  Her position never causes any bad guy to hesitate at all when she orders people to stop their various villainies.  Flynn and other military officials already have reason to follow Yuri’s group around since he’s a wanted criminal.  The other heir to the Empire is the one who winds up taking charge of the nation and fulfilling the friend-in-high-places role whenever the plot actually needs that.  It’s not even a slight hiccup in how Estelle’s friends see her when they find out.

Just about the only things that come of her being royalty are A, a lore connection with the founders of the Empire being the same magical plot people that she winds up being, and B, her character arc of having to decide for herself what she wants to be in life.  But Point A is so easily altered it barely counts; she could just as easily be a descendent of a long-lost illegitimate child of some royal or something (which could have opened up decent avenues of character development for her to boot), or even just not have it definitively explained to start with.  No one cares about hereditary Magical Plot Importance the way writers think they do.  And as for Point B, it actually hurt my sensibilities to refer to Estelle’s brief flirtation with the question of career autonomy as a “character arc” because it’s so half-heartedly touched upon that it may as well not even be there.  Hell, ToV would’ve gotten more mileage out of a scenario where Estelle HADN’T been anyone socially important, and has to grapple with the prospect of what she wants to do with her life going forward now that she’s discovered that she was the living plot mcguffin around which the world would revolve for a moment.

But nah, much easier to just tick off the “Have a princess” box on your RPG trope list and never think about it again.


- What was even the point of Zagi?  It’s like if you mixed the contentious, obsessive antagonism of Pokemon Generation 2’s Rival with Final Fantasy 9’s Black Waltz 3’s schtick of only existing for the purpose of killing, and added Fire Emblem 16’s Death Knight’s inability to EVER SHUT THE FUCK UP about that fact.  Only, you then forgot that all 3 of those characters actually served some kind, ANY kind, of narrative purpose.  You could write him out of Tales of Vesperia entirely and change not a single solitary thing.  The only difference would be that there’d be 4 or 5 moments in the game that the player would find a little less tedious.


- You know, I appreciate the fact that there’s a conversation skit in Tales of Vesperia in which the party questions how it can be that there are still rank-and-file soldiers who have sided with Alexei and continue to aid him even though he’s shown his true colors as a tyrant and traitor.  The fact that major villains in RPGs always seem to have legions of disposable minions, ones who are self-aware and intelligent beings who have to have made a conscious choice to ally themselves with a douchebag, is not questioned nearly often enough.

Unfortunately, Namco-Bandai chose THIS moment to raise that inquiry, with 1 of their villains for whom this blind minion obedience is the least explicable.  The party comes to a conclusion of it being something of a result of Alexei’s cult of personality and a belief within the rank-and-file troops that he’s best qualified for leadership, but the game has shown us essentially nothing to explain why any of his subordinates, direct or distant, would feel that way about Alexei.  There have been no scenes prior to this of Alexei’s having taken any interest in or done anything especially respectful/considerate towards his lower underlings, there’s been no situation shown in which he displayed any leadership skills above what you could expect from an assistant manager at a Denny’s, he’s not in possession of any memorable personality, and the game sure as hell hasn’t felt any obligation to have Alexei prove the validity of, or even adequately explain, his attempt to control the world.  As with numerous other factors and nuances of characterization and motivation, Tales of Vesperia’s just telling us to take this explanation on faith, rather than go by the actual, observable evidence in the game, which would imply that the contrary should be true.


- Why do RPG bishounen always have such a hard time adequately living up to the extremely simple, straightforward wishes/spirit of their dead friends/family members?  Duke wants to fulfill the wish and will of his departed friend Elucifer.*  Elucifer's dying wish?  To protect the world and for there to be peace for all living things.  Duke's solution?  Suck the life out of every human being on the planet.  I know RPG villains are absolutely terrible at even the most fundamental levels of basic logical reasoning, but Jesus Christ, dude, come on.

















* Whose idea on the Namco-Bandai staff was it to give this guy this name?