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.