Minagho once trapped a man within a blessed fountain of healing waters, and lit a fire under the fountain. The man boiled alive in holy water that continued to heal him as fast as it scalded him, kept in undying agony for days on end. She kept the man’s subordinates prisoner and starving, and occasionally she would take a slice of his cooked flesh off of him, and tempt her ravenous prisoners with it.
Owlcat Games, it is not my place to tell you how to go about your business, but I think it might be a real good idea to do a round of psych evaluations with your writing staff. There is at least 1 guy on your payroll who is not fun to talk to at parties.
Minagho the demon has also taken part in an aggressive war against all of mortalkind, ruthlessly manipulated the emotions of a man into betraying his cause which led to hundreds or perhaps even thousands of deaths, engaged in murderous games of intrigue against her fellow demonkind, and spoken unkind words to others with the clear intent of hurting their feelings. None of which even come close to the vicious cruelty of the boiling holy water thing, of course, but it’s definitely worth establishing that that was not a lone act of evil in her long and industrious career. Hell, we don’t even necessarily know for sure that that was the worst thing she’s ever done, although I frankly can’t imagine what could possibly top it. And if you can, I don’t want to talk to you at parties.
Why am I coming at you with a villain’s laundry list that includes possibly the most sick and heinous act ever committed in an RPG, besides maybe that shit Kevin Winnicot pulled in Xenosaga 3? Because I want to make sure we all know Minagho’s deal, and I’m not gonna be accused of not giving you the whole story so that my position sounds better. Even if she’s actually still only mid-range at best on the evil tier list when it comes to the baddies of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Minagho’s certainly got the greatest individual act of evil locked down, and I’m not about to sugarcoat that fact. While I generally am one to hold my ground on the opinions I post here, Minagho ain’t a hill I’m gonna die on. I wholeheartedly accept and respect anyone who wants to hold this promising candidate for leadership at Ubisoft accountable for her cruelties with her life.
But I, shockingly, actually believe that giving Minagho a happy ending is the best course of action.
This sounds absolutely ludicrous, I know. I’ve ranted and raved against forgiving other villains in the past who aren’t even on the same scale of malice as Minagho, even when they actually do far more damage than she manages. But there’s 4 major considerations in this matter which, when all put together, convince me that the best course of action is for Minagho’s fate to be as good as possible.
Although before we get into them, it’d probably be best to clarify what Minagho’s happy ending even looks like. Basically, Minagho usually has 2 potential fates: she either dies at the hands of the protagonist during their final confrontation, or the Commander spares her, and later on Minagho returns to help fight on the Commander’s side, and dies during the battle.
But, if you’re on the Azata Mythic path, which you totally should be because it's the best one, you actually can enable a much more favorable ending for her. Upon meeting the demon Chivarro, it’s discovered that she and Minagho are associates, and though their association began as hatefully murderous rivals, it gradually has progressed naturally into something that Chivarro seems utterly unable to understand or even identify. But the audience can pretty easily recognize that Minagho and Chivarro have fallen, or at the very least are in the process of falling, in love. Even The Hand of the Inheritor can see it as such, and while he’s a pretty chill guy all things considered, angels aren’t usually the most open-minded and optimistic folks when it comes to demonkind, so that means something. Well, if you’re playing as an Azata and you’ve spared Minagho, there’s a path-exclusive option to tell Chivarro that Minagho’s out there alive but alone, and to urge Chivarro to go to her. Chivarro does just this, uprooting her life on the spot and leaving her highly successful business behind forever for the sake of being there for Minagho (a telling indication in itself of how genuine their emotional bond is). After this, Minagho will not show up later on to fight and die, and instead her ending slide will indicate that she and Chivarro eventually reunited and stayed together forever.
It’s very heartwarming! As long as you try to forget the fact that the last time Minagho warmed a heart, it took on a very different form.
Anyway, now that we know what shape Minagho’s happy ending takes and how, let’s establish why I think she should have it. NOT why I think she deserves it, mind you. Because she doesn’t. But why she should have it all the same.
Point 1: The factors of Nature and Nurture. Now let’s get 1 thing very, very clear: a bad upbringing does not absolve a person of guilt and responsibility for their crimes. And let’s get 1 thing more just as clear: having impulses to do wrong does not absolve a person of guilt and responsibility for submitting to those impulses. As a general rule, even if one’s formative years taught one to act only in self interest and told one that harming others was an acceptable or necessary part of living, the fact of the matter is that, as an adult, a human being almost inevitably has enough exposure to the basic workings of lawful society, not to mention cultural philosophy and foresight through art, media, and interactions both personal and witnessed, to be able to reason one’s one’s way to knowing right from wrong to at least a minimal degree. Similarly, by the time one is an adult, it’s only reasonable for the world to expect one to be able to separate which of their impulses are acceptable from which ones aren’t, and exercise appropriate self-restraint based on that discretion. Mind you, I absolutely believe that matters of justice and sentencing should take factors like bad childhoods and psychological conditions impeding functional moral judgment into consideration when determining both sentencing and avenues for rehabilitation! But those factors are, generally, NOT free passes.
But that’s how it is for human beings, in the real world. In the case of Pathfinder’s demons...it’s a little trickier. The demons in the Abyss exist within a society built upon nothing BUT evil and cruelty and self-interest. There’s no external evidence for them to witness and learn from which could tell them that acts of evil are unacceptable. Rather, every level and function of their world reinforces the idea that ruthlessness, manipulation, and pure power are the only ways to succeed--and cruelty in all of these qualities is the only way to enjoy having that success. The Abyss is the plane of Chaotic Evil; there is no ebb and flow of good and bad within it the way there is with a “normal” world like Golarion (or our own), no havens or foreign lands to find or hear of where things are different and better that could inspire a demon to pursue and explore such an idea. The majority of demons will only ever encounter beings of other planes as invaders, or in the capacity of using them as slaves or partners in wrongdoing. While demon lords have enough power and position that they can observe the rest of the multiverse long and intently enough to learn better, most demons below that top rung simply do not have the option of prolonged exposure to other societies and other ways of thinking.
How can one ethically hold the average demon accountable for her or his crimes on the basis of laws and morality that she or he simply doesn’t even have the opportunity to learn?*
Similarly, demons are the very representations of the concept of Chaotic Evil. Though it is possible for them to have the spark of something more within them, and though it is possible even for them to restrain themselves, the fact is that the overwhelming majority of their nature yearns to do evil at every opportunity, and it is very, very difficult for them to resist that urge. Even when they actually want to! Arueshalae, a succubus who has managed to refashion herself into an honestly very good person, struggles for most of the game to restrain herself from hurting those around her. Her first instinct is still always to do harm, and it’s through conscious effort that this sweetheart does anything else. Planescape: Torment’s succubus Fall-from-Grace, meanwhile, suffers constant torment from her internal war against her nature as she forces herself to be chaste and Lawful Neutral, going so far as to create a quasi-religious order dedicated to redirecting one’s passions from the physical to the intellectual, as a way of further destroying, denying, and agonizing over what every fiber of her being wants her to be. While we may all have both good and evil within us in varying quantities, it’s safe to say that few humans, if any, are as starkly incongruent in their moral instincts as a demon is.
How can one ethically hold the average demon accountable for acting on her or his evil instincts when she or he effectively has no other impulses to choose from?
This doesn’t mean that Minagho or other demons should just be forgiven out of hand and allowed to do whatever the hell they want, nor that they deserve kindness or reward. But at the same time, both rationally and ethically speaking, there is only so far that we can hold a grudge against them for their evil before our desire to see them punished is for no higher purpose than our own personal gratification. The demons still are enemies and need to be fought and stopped, usually through lethal means--even Ember will freely admit to this, and she’s basically Pathfinder Jesus--but it’s significant to understand that for this act to be righteous and not just gratuitous, it must be to prevent the demons from committing more evil, not as retribution for the evil that they’ve already wrought. Minagho sure as hell may not deserve joy, but if we look at the circumstances of her existence objectively, it’s only fair to concede that, once convinced not to continue attacking humanity, she also does not necessarily deserve punishment.
Before we move on to Point 2, we should probably clarify that Minagho’s happy ending is not just a case of her finding a pleasant fate for herself (and Chivarro) postgame. It’s also representative of a potential for Minagho to ascend higher than the limitations of her demonic nature. Because this is a new beginning for her (and Chivarro) that is defined by Love, an emotion that is supposed to be impossible for demons to experience and one which is most frequently and significantly tied to the Good side of the moral spectrum, it is, I think, only reasonable to see this moment as the first step on a path to redemption and ascension. Whether she (and/or Chivarro) will be capable of continuing the journey past that first step is unknown, but that first step is the most monumentally difficult to make for a demon, the true breaking through of the barriers of her/his own limitations, so it’s damned promising. Arueshalae herself speaks during the game’s course about the fact that Good is a far more powerful, tempting force than people credit it to those who have never known it before--it might even be, in Pathfinder’s judgment, nearly inevitable that the journey out of Evil will be completed once it’s begun.
Also, as a side note, if Point 1 hasn’t convinced you that Minagho shouldn’t be fully and completely punished for her egregious crimes, I do want to just add, now that we’ve established that her happy ending is also potentially the first step toward ascension, this thought: Arueshalae never suffered greater pain for the evils she had committed than she did when she was far enough along her journey to Good to feel remorse. No typical demon will regret the evil they’ve done, not even at the moment you plunge a spear through their heart in retribution. But the nightmares of what she’s done will always be Arueshalae’s burden to bear, because she’s become good enough to understand her wrongs. If you truly can’t be convinced otherwise that Minagho (or any other demon) must be harmed for what she’s done, then at least consider that redeeming her, opening her mental state to the concept of regret and empathy, might very well be the only way of truly punishing a demon at all.
Anyway, on to the next major point.
Point 2: The factor of Our Own Hypocrisy. For most players on the Azata route--really, for most players as a whole, I should wager--in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, to deny Minagho the chance at ascension that her eventual life with Chivarro represents is to be a hypocrite to our own actions. After all, provided we’re pursuing her story to its intended, Good ending, we not only extend that very same courtesy to Arueshalae, but actually assist her along the way! Arueshalae’s involved character subplot is a story of her struggling to overcome her instinct to be evil with her desire to be good, to complete the journey to ascension that the goddess Desna put her on and to find a dream for herself. If we’re willing to give Arueshalae a chance of happiness and a future of personal fulfillment, how can we then turn around and arbitrarily say that Minagho doesn’t deserve the chance to go on a journey of betterment of her own? Yes, Arueshalae is a darling sweetheart cinnamon roll who must be protected at all costs while Minagho is, uh, a little less sympathetic, but we’re only seeing Arueshalae halfway through her journey of ascension. While our scope of knowledge of the old Arueshalae is limited, she was, by all accounts, a monstrously wicked being responsible for all manner of corruption and torment. I don’t know if Arueshalae’s got any evil act in her history quite the equal of Minagho penning a new recipe for soup, but when you go walking around the Abyss in the game, Arueshalae’s a well-known figure on a first-name basis with just about everyone of any note you meet. You don’t exactly get to be the Norm Peterson of Hell’s meaner big brother through kindness and generosity.
Not to mention that finishing Ember’s personal quest involves more of the same. If you’re willing to support Ember’s beliefs and help her in her goal for a better universe, her simple but charismatic entreaties to her enemies winds up convincing a generous handful of demons to switch sides and give the ways of love and kindness a chance. Much like Desna did for Aruehsalae, Ember has gifted these random demons the chance to become better and find a better existence, kickstarting them on their own paths to ascension. While it’s doubtful that these rank-and-files have had the opportunity to give someone the worst kind of bath like Minagho did, they’re still beings defined by the evils they’ve done being given an opportunity they haven’t earned to become better.
If you can believe in Arueshalae’s right to ascend, if you can support Ember’s simple, indiscriminate kindness and belief in good...hell, if you can even just admire Nocticula someday becoming the Redeemer Queen through sheer determination to ascend from demon lord to outright goddess...then surely it’s not reasonable to shut Minagho out of a similar opportunity.
Point 3: The factor of Thematic Consistency. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is a game with a constant, powerful theme of transcendence, of the capacity of people to be more than the sum of their components and rise above what is supposed to be possible for them. From Arueshalae working hard to shed her evil nature, to Ember convincing evil beings to do good through nothing more than caring about them, to Areelu’s reason for creating the Worldwound, to Regill the Lawful-fanatic employing guile and sacrificing his own position for the greater good, to Nenio becoming something out of nothing, to Anevia having been able to become what she was meant to be regardless of what she was born as, to Galfrey’s capacity to relinquish her duty for the sake of her love...and I could keep going with so many more examples...PWotR is absolutely filled with representations of this theme, both overt and subtle, as it underscores and defines the game’s greater plot and purpose, the majority of its substantial characters, and the very concept of its Mythic paths. For the simple sake of symmetrical elegance, the fact that Minagho has the opportunity to perhaps one day follow in the footsteps of Arueshalae, Fall-From-Grace, and Nocticula, and ascend to be more than she was born to be, means that it’s our duty as witness and participant to this overarching symphony of ascension to permit her to pursue that path.
Also, we should consider what’s consistent to the path of the Azata, here. After all, for all the inflated importance and time this rant is giving it, this option to give Minagho a future with her lover IS exclusively an act of a protagonist who has chosen to be an Azata. And I would definitely say that it’s in character for an Azata to cut Minagho a break. As an entity of Chaotic Good, an Azata really doesn’t get hung up on orderly systems like karma and justice--what matters to an Azata protagonist is what’s good and right in the here and now and in the future, and the freedom necessary to pursue that good. The wrongs of the past matter nothing before what rights can be wrought now and in times to come for an Azata. The act of allowing a demon the chance to live in love, the freedom to defy the bonds of her nature in order to explore something good and wholesome? That’s definitely right up an Azata’s alley. And it’s especially appealing to a being of Chaotic Good that betting on a demon’s ability to transcend her Evil nature is to act against the cosmic order and hierarchy that dictates what demons are meant to be. So in terms of the game as a whole, and the path in which this option presents itself, giving Minagho her best ending thematically lines up.
Point 4: The factor of the Miracle. To decide not to nurture Minagho’s ability to love Chivarro, and vice-versa, feels like a waste of something significant. I mean, these are 2 demons who have on their own manifested the capacity to love each other, and unconsciously taken their first steps toward ascension. It took the intervention of a goddess to bring Arueshalae to the point that she could recognize, appreciate, and desire any non-evil act or emotion. Ember’s demons have only been able to dip their toes into a greater world of Good because they were lucky enough to have the Overcooked Elf Girl equivalent of Jesus sermonize in their direction. But Chivarro and Minagho have somehow, miraculously, begun to feel love for one another entirely on their own, without any guidance from benevolent divine or charismatic external forces. Even the Hand of the Inheritor recognizes and is slightly awed by the revelation that the redeeming light of love could independently bloom within demons in the middle of the Abyss--and while Pathfinder angels are generally less stringent and self-righteous than the ones over in Shin Megami Tensei, the shocked approval of an archangel for anything a demon does is an endorsement I’m loathe to disregard.
And beyond the fact that you shouldn’t just go sticking your nose up at miracles, allowing Minagho and Chivarro to embrace and advance their love is important for the precedent it sets. The belief that demons can’t feel love is such a universally accepted one that Chivarro herself still clings to it in denial even as she struggles to explain how her feelings for and connection with Minagho could be anything but. Giving Minagho her happy ending has implications beyond just her and Chivarro’s happiness and redemption--it allows them to be an example to the rest of their kind that such aberrations from the norm the universe expects of demons are possible. The more examples like Arueshalae, Nocticula, the demons Ember converts, and Minagho and Chivarro, the more chances there are that other demons who learn of them can be inspired to follow their paths.
Jesus Christ I just realized I’ve spent 6 pages talking about whether or not a second-tier villain should be redeemed by an action that’s only available to players on 1 of 10 different story paths.** I thought this was gonna be a quick rant. Look, those are my points of argument, take them and do what the hell you will with Minagho if you even have the option to begin with. In my estimation, there is little to be gained by insisting that Minagho pay for her crimes, the concept of justice isn’t really satisfied by punishing a demon for being the only thing she ever could have been to that point, and denying her the potential to someday ascend is inconsistent with the other actions most typically taken by players not to mention against the theme of the game and the path in question. Instead, letting her have her happy ending may actually wind up adding some good to the world--it’s probably the only way to derive any kind of good at all from her having existed, really. There you go. This rant and I both have clearly gone off the rails and it is way past time to end this thing.
I have GOT to get this nerdy wordiness thing under control.
* Now, to be fair, Minagho’s role in the fall of Drezen means that she had to have at least a little non-combat interaction with the alien, non-Evil culture of Golarion over the course of her seduction of Staunton Vhane. So she’s not quite as ignorant of alternatives to the Abyss’s ways as, say, a minotaur fresh out of the labyrinth. Still, she probably wasn’t traipsing down main street hand-in-hand with Staunton every day for a year, delightedly taking in the sights and sounds of these quaint human folk as she set to manipulating his heart for her own purposes, so it’s still fairly safe to overall judge Minagho by the standards of moral ignorance that apply to most demons.
** Although admittedly Azata is totally the best Mythic path in the game and you absolutely SHOULD be playing it. I mean there’s some great and fun content for several of the other paths, and the dedication that Owlcat Games had to making this a very different game if you’re a piece of shit Lich or Swarm is impressive, but it’s clear which route the writers had the most fun and devotion to. The rest of them are fine and fun options for subsequent playthroughs, but if you’re only gonna play Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous once, it should be as an Azata. If for no other reason than the fact that Aivu is a treasure.
Friday, April 28, 2023
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous's Minagho's Ending
Tuesday, April 18, 2023
General RPG Lists: Stupidest Weapons
Goddamn, is this rant actually 14 freaking years old? What the hell am I doing with my life?
Anyway, while this isn’t exactly a high-priority subject, it’s certainly high time we update and expand this list a bit. There have been ever so many advances in the world of stupid weapons technology, after all. And honestly, some of the existing entries could’ve been a bit more involved, anyway. And thus I present to you the new, the improved, the still completely pointless, Stupidest Weapons List!
If there's one thing I could say is the most varied and creative part of the RPG genre, I would probably say it's the cast. You get just about every conceivable kind of person in RPG casts sooner or later. Some games kind of go crazy with it (ever look through the list of party members for Shining Force 1? Actual human beings are outnumbered something like 2 to 1; hell, there's about as many centaur characters in that game as normal people), but most have at least one quirky cast member that stands out.
But the second thing I would say is the most varied aspect of RPGs is definitely the weapons. Be they modern, futuristic, or of the past, weapons are everywhere, pulled from cultures across our globe. And not just actual weapons, either. Even humanity's impressive ingenuity for creating implements of death in the real world can't seem to satiate RPG creators' thirst for creative ways to smack people, so you quite commonly see even regular objects never intended for battle being used to kill stuff, and encounter weird weapons the RPG creators thought up themselves.
While this does give us a more varied RPG experience in general than just seeing a random hero poke stuff with a sword thousands of times in every game, it also means that we come across a great many characters armed with items that are just ridiculous for use in combat. Some are clearly just shitty, ineffective weapons, some are just cringe-inducingly idiotic in concept or appearance, and plenty are both. These are the dumbest RPG armaments!
15. Keyblades (Kingdom Hearts Series)
Oh, Keyblades. You’re just always the exact right way to start this list.
Ignoring how dopey it is to be hitting things with a large key to begin with, look at the general shape and way that one holds a Keyblade. These things seem to be weapons that you grasp like a sword, with a similar heft and architecture, but they have the limited damaging area of an axe. The handle is at the bottom and only the bottom, and it seems relatively lightweight, but the actual part you want to hit enemies with is usually a small, damaging area near the top. So...basically, it is an Axe-Sword. You get the lighter weight and limited handling area of the sword, which lowers how much force you can apply to your swing, and also the very limited range of the axe, which lowers both how versatile it is and how dexterous you can be when using it at close range. All the negative parts of both axe and sword, with none of the positives!
14. Books (General RPGs)
I can almost understand a mage being armed with a magic book if they're shown to need to read it before casting a spell, but:
A: Most of the characters who use books as their physical weapon don't actually seem to look in the things at all for their spells.
B: What would be the point of having to flip through the damn book to the right page every time they wanted to use a spell, anyways? Even with bookmarks, that's a waste of time in battle.
C: It really wouldn't kill them to keep a knife or something in a pocket. Even a freakin' paring knife is going to be more effective than trying to bludgeon someone to death with bound paper.
I'm not asking for RPG mages to suddenly become great physical fighters or anything, but could we at least be given the impression that they're TRYING to defend themselves?
13. Knife on a String (Paulette, Arc the Lad 4)
Paulette’s out here, surrounded by people armed with swords and bows and guns and claws, and she’s just sincerely whirling around a steak knife she taped to a length of fucking yarn with all the confidence in the world. Like she somehow hasn’t noticed that what she’s using to survive life-or-death combat situations is just a meaner version of that nickel yo-yo thing that old-timey cartoon characters use to cheat coin slots.
For heaven’s sake, it’s not even attached to something sturdy like a chain or a rope or something. Nor is the knife large enough to have any decent heft; if she doesn’t hit her target dead on, exactly on the point, it’s just gonna glance off them and cause maybe an unpleasant cut at most. At least with, like, a flail or a kusarigama (those ninja-y blades on chains), there’s some mass and surface area. Even a yo-yo can be weighted and deal decent blunt, breaking damage, without requiring a perfect bullseye. And what happens if you DO get a perfect, straight knife stab in someone with this thing? If it’s going deep enough to cause any real damage, the blade’s probably gonna get partly caught in some flesh or bones or something, making yanking it back a pain in the ass. Even more of a pain since the shoelaces that Paulette’s tied to the knife don’t exactly look sturdy to begin with, so the line’s probably gonna break after a few good enough tugs. This was deemed better than just carrying around an extra few knives and throwing them?
12. Blitzballs (Wakka, Final Fantasy 10)
...Fuck it. I’m done fighting this. Alright, internet, you’ve convinced me. I accept it. Blitzballs are fucking stupid as a weapon.
Are Wakka’s weapons of choice capable of dealing significant damage to an opponent? Yes. At least, some of them. That’s the reason I defended them for so long. Plenty of Wakka’s armaments have blades running along them that’ll slice something to ribbons, or spikes studding the things on all sides. These are not like Paulette’s butter knife lanyard; these things would cause definite harm when thrown against an enemy by a reasonably athletically fit guy.
But Wakka’s holding these stupid spheres close to him, cradling each near and dear to him with the same nurturing instinct to keep it warm and safe that I assume all athletes express towards their Freudian sports equipment...which means that the man should basically be plunging serrated blades through his ribs and spikes through his arm from wrist to shoulder every single time battle breaks out. And let’s not forget, he attacks by throwing the ball into an enemy, then catching it on the rebound; he should realistically be impaling or amputating his hand probably at least 20% of the time he attacks.
For that matter, these balls shouldn’t be rebounding to begin with. If they’ve got all kinds of sharp sticky-out bits, then they ought to be getting stuck, or at least moderately impeded, whenever they make contact with the enemy, not smoothly bouncing back. And for the ones that don’t have the sharp stuff to get in the way of this, well, then you’re just attempting to use a goddamn volleyball to protect yourself from bloodthirsty beasts and monsters--if I could live through getting hit in the head by a stray soccer ball in Phys Ed as an adolescent, you’d better believe it’s not gonna do much against a hostile sea titan the height of half a dozen men. Unless the non-bladed variants of these things are supposed to be super heavy, but then they probably wouldn’t be bouncing back to Wakka, and I’d sure as hell include “A Cannonball But You Throw It And Also It’s Got A Soft Exterior” on this list, anyway.
Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden gets a pass for its basketballs because it’s going for comedy, and Omori gets a pass for Kel's basketballs because the combat's all happening inside a kid's dream fantasy land. FF10, though, plays this ridiculous concept straight, in the real world, and I’m out of excuses to make on this, so Blitzballs’ place here is earned.
11. Nunchucks (General RPGs)
Oh, yeah, that’s what I want. Yeah, I want a tool that’s slightly more likely to seriously damage me than it is to hurt the guy I’m fighting. I want an armament that simultaneously needs clear space immediately around me to maintain its necessary momentum and rotation, and is so incredibly short-range that there’s about a 3 inch difference between “Within Attacking Range” and “Too Close To Attack; Just Surrender Now And Save Us All Some Trouble.” I want to spend as much time as it would take to thoroughly master a different weapon just to reach a point of no longer being a danger to myself with this one. Fucking sign me up, baby, it’s time to trade the most fundamental, basic tenets of function in for the chance to tap someone with a stick that’s going just a bit faster than it otherwise would be from simply manually swinging it! Booyah!
10. Gunblades (Final Fantasy 8)
Hey, here's a great idea: stick a sword onto a gun handle. This way, you'll have to specially learn how to swing it, since the weight and holding angle are completely different than a sword, it'll be more complicated and less usable in close combat than just a regular sword, and you'll have a lot of trouble using it for long-distance battling since your aim's thrown off by the fact that there's a solid metal blade on your barrel both adding tremendous weight and disrupting vision. Sure, you'll need twice as much training to use it competently than you would to totally master using a sword or a gun separately...but hey, it's a gun that is a sword, so it MUST BE COOL, AM I RIGHT MY FELLOW ADOLESCENTS?
I'm really just waiting for webcomic Adventurers!'s joke about combined weapons to come true with SquareEnix, at this point. After key sword-axes and emo pistol-swords, you just know the Sword-Bomb is inevitable.
9. Musical Instruments (General RPGs)
Look, I'll be the last person not to acknowledge how painful bad sound can be. I’ve heard Maroon 5, same as the rest of us. I’m aware that Jason Derulo exists. Hell, I hail from the dark years of the early 2000s, the heyday of t.A.T.u. But you know what? If some talentless Russian chick imitating a cat being drawn and quartered by unlubricated robot tigers running on a chalkboard with their claws out can't inflict physical wounds on me, then some bard managing to hurt a monster by plucking on a harp is stupid.
And using musical instruments to inflict physical trauma is even worse. I'm not anything even approaching knowledgeable about the things, but I'm still fairly certain that instruments are meant to be reasonably delicate tools relying on careful balance and structure to produce their sounds correctly, so taking your guitar and smashing people over the head with it is going to ruin it for its intended purpose of creating music,* and if you don't want to use it for music, then why the hell would you carry it around instead of a club or dagger or something?
8. Ridiculously Huge Weapons (General RPGs)
If you can’t lift it then it’s not a weapon.
Hell, even if we allow for the fact that RPG characters inexplicably CAN actually wield swords and boomerangs and whatnot that are as big or bigger than they themselves are, these things are still usually pretty stupid. I mean, take that absurd inferiority complex that Final Fantasy 7’s Sephiroth is swinging around. It may seem dangerous for just how much length it’s overcompensating with, but realistically, it’d be unwieldy to the point of uselessness in half the environments we see him use it in as it bounces off of, or worse, gets stuck in, walls and general decor. And frankly, even in an open area, something like that’s easy to block with a shield or other sword, since, once you’re within 15 feet of the idiot, it can really only come at you in wide arcs. If Nomura didn’t simp so goddamn hard for his bishy dreamboat, any halfway decent combatant with a sword, shield, tonfa, gauntlet, spear, bo staff, or a number of other weapons with blade-stopping capacity, would be able to easily get up in Sephiroth’s space and wreck his shit thanks to his inferior weapon. Because, crazy as it sounds, human weapons might just be sized appropriately for human use for a reason.
7. Dolls (General RPGs)
Despite what the horror film genre would have us believe, dolls are not very menacing. They're small, they lack flexibility in their limbs, and they're usually made of either very soft or very breakable materials. If an evil doll is trying to kill you with a knife or something, you really shouldn't have all that much trouble with surviving. Just kick the damn thing away as it stiffly toddles up to you and then go somewhere else. Simple.
And it's not even like RPG characters who use attack dolls do so as competently as the stupid horror film ones. Lulu of Final Fantasy 10 just has her diminutive, cute plushie tackle an enemy. Yeah, because a cotton-stuffed foot-high muppet wannabe is really gonna meet with success when body-slamming a dragon. I know mages are meant for magic, but come ON. And Shadow Hearts 2's Gepetto's no better. If you're gonna have your damn doll do your attacks for you, ARM it with something; don't just change its dress and pretend that makes a difference.
6. Scrolls (Rita, Tales of Vesperia)
Scrolls. As weapons.
Not implements of strangulation, mind. Rita isn’t out here garroting her enemies. No. She is using scrolls and sashes and ribbons as melee weapons. When Rita aims to strike her foe, she reaches for a scarf. When she’s fighting for her life, the tool she wants in her hands to meet her opponent’s blade is a piece of parchment. When it’s time for the party to upgrade their implements of death and destruction, the rest head to a blacksmith, but Rita? Rita hones in on the nearest Jo-Ann Fabrics.
Isn’t Rita supposed to be the smart one in the group? She’s arming herself with a weapon that has less damage output than just not having a weapon at all.
5. Figure-Skating Mecha-Pegleg (Serina, Conception 2)
I refuse to believe I have to elaborate on why this is here.
4. Headdresses (Red XIII, Final Fantasy 7)
Seriously? You have a lion dog wolf thing with claws and teeth, and the way he inflicts damage is...hitting people with his headdress? I mean, it’d be idiotic no matter what character were using it, but they gave it to a combatant that already has his own built-in weaponry!
The funny thing is that even FF7 seems to know that there’s no possible physical way you could make a headdress an effective weapon without also making it a self-inflicting concussion machine. I mean, look at how they have Red XIII attack with it! He leaps forward and does a double somersault roll in midair against the enemy, because the only way to even pretend that a headdress can cause significant harm is apparently to buzz-saw it against someone while telling the laws of gravity and inertia to fuck right the hell off.
3. Twin Fenrirs (Dean, Wild Arms 5)
The blades of Dean’s pistols are coming out of the handle and going downward. As idiotic as a gunblade is, at least both the gun and the blade are pointed at the bad guy! And if you’re gonna have the blade of your silly combination weapon pointing somewhere else, why the hell would it be down!? Especially when they’re so damn long! Not only is it an awkward position with which to mount an offense using them, but all you’d have to do is push Dean’s arms down a little and his blades would get stuck in the ground! No fucking wonder he holds these things up and at an angle all the time during battle; he’s probably afraid that if he actually pointed his guns properly at an enemy, he’d stab himself in the foot. And what happens if his hand slips downward just a bit? There’s no guard separating the handle from the giant fucking razorblade jutting down out of it. A little jolt throws off his grip at all, and Dean’s gonna slice his hand down to the bone.
He doesn’t even USE the gun part as part of his regular attack for some reason, even though that’s the only part that can be easily and immediately brought to bear against any enemy that isn’t a fucking mole. And you can’t even imagine that he uses the impractical blades because they do more damage somehow, the way people theorize that Squall does with the gunblade, because Dean’s critical hits show him firing submachine-gun-style, and doing huge damage as a result. Yeah, no shit, dumbass, turns out you can do more damage if you stop stiffly banging a sword pointed the wrong way into your enemy and actually PULL THE FUCKING TRIGGER.
2. Tales of Legendia Mage Weapons (Grune, Shirley, and especially Norma, Tales of Legendia)
A future edition of this list might separate these, but for now, I’d really hate not to have keyblades on here, so we’re lumping ToL’s mages’ insistence on not being able to physically defend themselves all together.
Grune is going at people with an urn. I mean, I get a minor background character in a movie grabbing a vase in a pinch to get a sneak attack on some goon while otherwise unarmed, but this ain’t a weapon of circumstance. Pottery is Grune’s weapon of choice. And that’s even stupider than it has to be, because these are implied to be the ceramics in which Grune is keeping the seeds of the summoned spirits until she finds the right place to plant them. Remember how I said it was dumb to go using a finely-tuned, sensitive musical instrument to inflict blunt trauma? Now imagine if instead of future performances of Wonderwall, you were jeopardizing the fetal states of the beings that maintain the forces of nature itself. Grune’s just here bashing the flowerpot containing the balance of reality against some guy’s skull and it doesn’t bother her in the slightest.
...Well, I guess that DOES seem true to her character, actually.
Shirley attacks people with writing implements. Do you really need me to explain why brandishing a quill against some dude with a battleaxe is a dumb idea? And I swear to Urgathoa, if 1 of you assholes even THINKS about cracking wise about the pen being mightier than the sword...
And lastly there’s Norma. Norma walks around knowing that at any given hour of the day, there’s a good chance she’s going to be accosted by armed soldiers, wolves, bears, and heaven knows what else, and with that in mind, she chooses to bring a drinking straw with her for protection. Who fucking wakes up in the morning knowing that they’re going to be attacking a goddamn dragon later that day, and thinks, “Well, as long as he gets close enough that I can blow some bubbles on him, I should be golden”?
Jesus Christ, do magic-users in the Tales of series just not WANT to live, or something?
1. Trumpet Gun (Lyude, Baten Kaitos 1)
One is a firearm that propels objects at lethally high velocity at a target to penetrate its defenses and fatally smash its internal workings apart.
The other is a comparatively high-pitched member of the brass family of musical instruments, known especially for its prominent role in classical and jazz music.
Together, they are
TRUMPET GUN.
Seriously. It's a gun. That is a trumpet. Trumpet Gun. A trumpet that shoots things as a gun. Trumpet. Gun. A gun that is also a trumpet.
Why have you forsaken us, God?
Dishonorable Mention: Fatman and Experimental MIRV (Fallout Series)
Okay, now, this one kind of doesn't count as a stupid weapon, because, well...the Fatman and Experimental MIRV in Fallout basically fire small nuclear bombs. So unlike the rest of the attack tools on this list, they're actually extremely effective weapons. I mean, if you want to kill stuff, and you don't mind a hintof overkill, you won't find many better options than tossing a nuclear weapon at someone. It's usually the most destructive attack in the game, as it sure as hell should be, and I daresay most people who play Fallout have plenty of fun with it (myself included, I fully admit).
The stupid part that puts them on this list in some way, however, is that these weapons' throwing range barely qualifies them as grenade launchers. They seem closer to kids' slingshots, really. So basically, someone developed a weapon that would launch a nuclear bomb to land about 20 feet away from the holder. Raise your hands if you can think of a reason why this wouldn't work out so great, class!
* So, for that matter, will stuffing a rocket launcher and flamethrower inside of it. You and your stupid guitar weapon, Shadow Hearts 3's Ricardo.
Anyway, while this isn’t exactly a high-priority subject, it’s certainly high time we update and expand this list a bit. There have been ever so many advances in the world of stupid weapons technology, after all. And honestly, some of the existing entries could’ve been a bit more involved, anyway. And thus I present to you the new, the improved, the still completely pointless, Stupidest Weapons List!
If there's one thing I could say is the most varied and creative part of the RPG genre, I would probably say it's the cast. You get just about every conceivable kind of person in RPG casts sooner or later. Some games kind of go crazy with it (ever look through the list of party members for Shining Force 1? Actual human beings are outnumbered something like 2 to 1; hell, there's about as many centaur characters in that game as normal people), but most have at least one quirky cast member that stands out.
But the second thing I would say is the most varied aspect of RPGs is definitely the weapons. Be they modern, futuristic, or of the past, weapons are everywhere, pulled from cultures across our globe. And not just actual weapons, either. Even humanity's impressive ingenuity for creating implements of death in the real world can't seem to satiate RPG creators' thirst for creative ways to smack people, so you quite commonly see even regular objects never intended for battle being used to kill stuff, and encounter weird weapons the RPG creators thought up themselves.
While this does give us a more varied RPG experience in general than just seeing a random hero poke stuff with a sword thousands of times in every game, it also means that we come across a great many characters armed with items that are just ridiculous for use in combat. Some are clearly just shitty, ineffective weapons, some are just cringe-inducingly idiotic in concept or appearance, and plenty are both. These are the dumbest RPG armaments!
15. Keyblades (Kingdom Hearts Series)
Oh, Keyblades. You’re just always the exact right way to start this list.
Ignoring how dopey it is to be hitting things with a large key to begin with, look at the general shape and way that one holds a Keyblade. These things seem to be weapons that you grasp like a sword, with a similar heft and architecture, but they have the limited damaging area of an axe. The handle is at the bottom and only the bottom, and it seems relatively lightweight, but the actual part you want to hit enemies with is usually a small, damaging area near the top. So...basically, it is an Axe-Sword. You get the lighter weight and limited handling area of the sword, which lowers how much force you can apply to your swing, and also the very limited range of the axe, which lowers both how versatile it is and how dexterous you can be when using it at close range. All the negative parts of both axe and sword, with none of the positives!
14. Books (General RPGs)
I can almost understand a mage being armed with a magic book if they're shown to need to read it before casting a spell, but:
A: Most of the characters who use books as their physical weapon don't actually seem to look in the things at all for their spells.
B: What would be the point of having to flip through the damn book to the right page every time they wanted to use a spell, anyways? Even with bookmarks, that's a waste of time in battle.
C: It really wouldn't kill them to keep a knife or something in a pocket. Even a freakin' paring knife is going to be more effective than trying to bludgeon someone to death with bound paper.
I'm not asking for RPG mages to suddenly become great physical fighters or anything, but could we at least be given the impression that they're TRYING to defend themselves?
13. Knife on a String (Paulette, Arc the Lad 4)
Paulette’s out here, surrounded by people armed with swords and bows and guns and claws, and she’s just sincerely whirling around a steak knife she taped to a length of fucking yarn with all the confidence in the world. Like she somehow hasn’t noticed that what she’s using to survive life-or-death combat situations is just a meaner version of that nickel yo-yo thing that old-timey cartoon characters use to cheat coin slots.
For heaven’s sake, it’s not even attached to something sturdy like a chain or a rope or something. Nor is the knife large enough to have any decent heft; if she doesn’t hit her target dead on, exactly on the point, it’s just gonna glance off them and cause maybe an unpleasant cut at most. At least with, like, a flail or a kusarigama (those ninja-y blades on chains), there’s some mass and surface area. Even a yo-yo can be weighted and deal decent blunt, breaking damage, without requiring a perfect bullseye. And what happens if you DO get a perfect, straight knife stab in someone with this thing? If it’s going deep enough to cause any real damage, the blade’s probably gonna get partly caught in some flesh or bones or something, making yanking it back a pain in the ass. Even more of a pain since the shoelaces that Paulette’s tied to the knife don’t exactly look sturdy to begin with, so the line’s probably gonna break after a few good enough tugs. This was deemed better than just carrying around an extra few knives and throwing them?
12. Blitzballs (Wakka, Final Fantasy 10)
...Fuck it. I’m done fighting this. Alright, internet, you’ve convinced me. I accept it. Blitzballs are fucking stupid as a weapon.
Are Wakka’s weapons of choice capable of dealing significant damage to an opponent? Yes. At least, some of them. That’s the reason I defended them for so long. Plenty of Wakka’s armaments have blades running along them that’ll slice something to ribbons, or spikes studding the things on all sides. These are not like Paulette’s butter knife lanyard; these things would cause definite harm when thrown against an enemy by a reasonably athletically fit guy.
But Wakka’s holding these stupid spheres close to him, cradling each near and dear to him with the same nurturing instinct to keep it warm and safe that I assume all athletes express towards their Freudian sports equipment...which means that the man should basically be plunging serrated blades through his ribs and spikes through his arm from wrist to shoulder every single time battle breaks out. And let’s not forget, he attacks by throwing the ball into an enemy, then catching it on the rebound; he should realistically be impaling or amputating his hand probably at least 20% of the time he attacks.
For that matter, these balls shouldn’t be rebounding to begin with. If they’ve got all kinds of sharp sticky-out bits, then they ought to be getting stuck, or at least moderately impeded, whenever they make contact with the enemy, not smoothly bouncing back. And for the ones that don’t have the sharp stuff to get in the way of this, well, then you’re just attempting to use a goddamn volleyball to protect yourself from bloodthirsty beasts and monsters--if I could live through getting hit in the head by a stray soccer ball in Phys Ed as an adolescent, you’d better believe it’s not gonna do much against a hostile sea titan the height of half a dozen men. Unless the non-bladed variants of these things are supposed to be super heavy, but then they probably wouldn’t be bouncing back to Wakka, and I’d sure as hell include “A Cannonball But You Throw It And Also It’s Got A Soft Exterior” on this list, anyway.
Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden gets a pass for its basketballs because it’s going for comedy, and Omori gets a pass for Kel's basketballs because the combat's all happening inside a kid's dream fantasy land. FF10, though, plays this ridiculous concept straight, in the real world, and I’m out of excuses to make on this, so Blitzballs’ place here is earned.
11. Nunchucks (General RPGs)
Oh, yeah, that’s what I want. Yeah, I want a tool that’s slightly more likely to seriously damage me than it is to hurt the guy I’m fighting. I want an armament that simultaneously needs clear space immediately around me to maintain its necessary momentum and rotation, and is so incredibly short-range that there’s about a 3 inch difference between “Within Attacking Range” and “Too Close To Attack; Just Surrender Now And Save Us All Some Trouble.” I want to spend as much time as it would take to thoroughly master a different weapon just to reach a point of no longer being a danger to myself with this one. Fucking sign me up, baby, it’s time to trade the most fundamental, basic tenets of function in for the chance to tap someone with a stick that’s going just a bit faster than it otherwise would be from simply manually swinging it! Booyah!
10. Gunblades (Final Fantasy 8)
Hey, here's a great idea: stick a sword onto a gun handle. This way, you'll have to specially learn how to swing it, since the weight and holding angle are completely different than a sword, it'll be more complicated and less usable in close combat than just a regular sword, and you'll have a lot of trouble using it for long-distance battling since your aim's thrown off by the fact that there's a solid metal blade on your barrel both adding tremendous weight and disrupting vision. Sure, you'll need twice as much training to use it competently than you would to totally master using a sword or a gun separately...but hey, it's a gun that is a sword, so it MUST BE COOL, AM I RIGHT MY FELLOW ADOLESCENTS?
I'm really just waiting for webcomic Adventurers!'s joke about combined weapons to come true with SquareEnix, at this point. After key sword-axes and emo pistol-swords, you just know the Sword-Bomb is inevitable.
9. Musical Instruments (General RPGs)
Look, I'll be the last person not to acknowledge how painful bad sound can be. I’ve heard Maroon 5, same as the rest of us. I’m aware that Jason Derulo exists. Hell, I hail from the dark years of the early 2000s, the heyday of t.A.T.u. But you know what? If some talentless Russian chick imitating a cat being drawn and quartered by unlubricated robot tigers running on a chalkboard with their claws out can't inflict physical wounds on me, then some bard managing to hurt a monster by plucking on a harp is stupid.
And using musical instruments to inflict physical trauma is even worse. I'm not anything even approaching knowledgeable about the things, but I'm still fairly certain that instruments are meant to be reasonably delicate tools relying on careful balance and structure to produce their sounds correctly, so taking your guitar and smashing people over the head with it is going to ruin it for its intended purpose of creating music,* and if you don't want to use it for music, then why the hell would you carry it around instead of a club or dagger or something?
8. Ridiculously Huge Weapons (General RPGs)
If you can’t lift it then it’s not a weapon.
Hell, even if we allow for the fact that RPG characters inexplicably CAN actually wield swords and boomerangs and whatnot that are as big or bigger than they themselves are, these things are still usually pretty stupid. I mean, take that absurd inferiority complex that Final Fantasy 7’s Sephiroth is swinging around. It may seem dangerous for just how much length it’s overcompensating with, but realistically, it’d be unwieldy to the point of uselessness in half the environments we see him use it in as it bounces off of, or worse, gets stuck in, walls and general decor. And frankly, even in an open area, something like that’s easy to block with a shield or other sword, since, once you’re within 15 feet of the idiot, it can really only come at you in wide arcs. If Nomura didn’t simp so goddamn hard for his bishy dreamboat, any halfway decent combatant with a sword, shield, tonfa, gauntlet, spear, bo staff, or a number of other weapons with blade-stopping capacity, would be able to easily get up in Sephiroth’s space and wreck his shit thanks to his inferior weapon. Because, crazy as it sounds, human weapons might just be sized appropriately for human use for a reason.
7. Dolls (General RPGs)
Despite what the horror film genre would have us believe, dolls are not very menacing. They're small, they lack flexibility in their limbs, and they're usually made of either very soft or very breakable materials. If an evil doll is trying to kill you with a knife or something, you really shouldn't have all that much trouble with surviving. Just kick the damn thing away as it stiffly toddles up to you and then go somewhere else. Simple.
And it's not even like RPG characters who use attack dolls do so as competently as the stupid horror film ones. Lulu of Final Fantasy 10 just has her diminutive, cute plushie tackle an enemy. Yeah, because a cotton-stuffed foot-high muppet wannabe is really gonna meet with success when body-slamming a dragon. I know mages are meant for magic, but come ON. And Shadow Hearts 2's Gepetto's no better. If you're gonna have your damn doll do your attacks for you, ARM it with something; don't just change its dress and pretend that makes a difference.
6. Scrolls (Rita, Tales of Vesperia)
Scrolls. As weapons.
Not implements of strangulation, mind. Rita isn’t out here garroting her enemies. No. She is using scrolls and sashes and ribbons as melee weapons. When Rita aims to strike her foe, she reaches for a scarf. When she’s fighting for her life, the tool she wants in her hands to meet her opponent’s blade is a piece of parchment. When it’s time for the party to upgrade their implements of death and destruction, the rest head to a blacksmith, but Rita? Rita hones in on the nearest Jo-Ann Fabrics.
Isn’t Rita supposed to be the smart one in the group? She’s arming herself with a weapon that has less damage output than just not having a weapon at all.
5. Figure-Skating Mecha-Pegleg (Serina, Conception 2)
I refuse to believe I have to elaborate on why this is here.
4. Headdresses (Red XIII, Final Fantasy 7)
Seriously? You have a lion dog wolf thing with claws and teeth, and the way he inflicts damage is...hitting people with his headdress? I mean, it’d be idiotic no matter what character were using it, but they gave it to a combatant that already has his own built-in weaponry!
The funny thing is that even FF7 seems to know that there’s no possible physical way you could make a headdress an effective weapon without also making it a self-inflicting concussion machine. I mean, look at how they have Red XIII attack with it! He leaps forward and does a double somersault roll in midair against the enemy, because the only way to even pretend that a headdress can cause significant harm is apparently to buzz-saw it against someone while telling the laws of gravity and inertia to fuck right the hell off.
3. Twin Fenrirs (Dean, Wild Arms 5)
The blades of Dean’s pistols are coming out of the handle and going downward. As idiotic as a gunblade is, at least both the gun and the blade are pointed at the bad guy! And if you’re gonna have the blade of your silly combination weapon pointing somewhere else, why the hell would it be down!? Especially when they’re so damn long! Not only is it an awkward position with which to mount an offense using them, but all you’d have to do is push Dean’s arms down a little and his blades would get stuck in the ground! No fucking wonder he holds these things up and at an angle all the time during battle; he’s probably afraid that if he actually pointed his guns properly at an enemy, he’d stab himself in the foot. And what happens if his hand slips downward just a bit? There’s no guard separating the handle from the giant fucking razorblade jutting down out of it. A little jolt throws off his grip at all, and Dean’s gonna slice his hand down to the bone.
He doesn’t even USE the gun part as part of his regular attack for some reason, even though that’s the only part that can be easily and immediately brought to bear against any enemy that isn’t a fucking mole. And you can’t even imagine that he uses the impractical blades because they do more damage somehow, the way people theorize that Squall does with the gunblade, because Dean’s critical hits show him firing submachine-gun-style, and doing huge damage as a result. Yeah, no shit, dumbass, turns out you can do more damage if you stop stiffly banging a sword pointed the wrong way into your enemy and actually PULL THE FUCKING TRIGGER.
2. Tales of Legendia Mage Weapons (Grune, Shirley, and especially Norma, Tales of Legendia)
A future edition of this list might separate these, but for now, I’d really hate not to have keyblades on here, so we’re lumping ToL’s mages’ insistence on not being able to physically defend themselves all together.
Grune is going at people with an urn. I mean, I get a minor background character in a movie grabbing a vase in a pinch to get a sneak attack on some goon while otherwise unarmed, but this ain’t a weapon of circumstance. Pottery is Grune’s weapon of choice. And that’s even stupider than it has to be, because these are implied to be the ceramics in which Grune is keeping the seeds of the summoned spirits until she finds the right place to plant them. Remember how I said it was dumb to go using a finely-tuned, sensitive musical instrument to inflict blunt trauma? Now imagine if instead of future performances of Wonderwall, you were jeopardizing the fetal states of the beings that maintain the forces of nature itself. Grune’s just here bashing the flowerpot containing the balance of reality against some guy’s skull and it doesn’t bother her in the slightest.
...Well, I guess that DOES seem true to her character, actually.
Shirley attacks people with writing implements. Do you really need me to explain why brandishing a quill against some dude with a battleaxe is a dumb idea? And I swear to Urgathoa, if 1 of you assholes even THINKS about cracking wise about the pen being mightier than the sword...
And lastly there’s Norma. Norma walks around knowing that at any given hour of the day, there’s a good chance she’s going to be accosted by armed soldiers, wolves, bears, and heaven knows what else, and with that in mind, she chooses to bring a drinking straw with her for protection. Who fucking wakes up in the morning knowing that they’re going to be attacking a goddamn dragon later that day, and thinks, “Well, as long as he gets close enough that I can blow some bubbles on him, I should be golden”?
Jesus Christ, do magic-users in the Tales of series just not WANT to live, or something?
1. Trumpet Gun (Lyude, Baten Kaitos 1)
One is a firearm that propels objects at lethally high velocity at a target to penetrate its defenses and fatally smash its internal workings apart.
The other is a comparatively high-pitched member of the brass family of musical instruments, known especially for its prominent role in classical and jazz music.
Together, they are
TRUMPET GUN.
Seriously. It's a gun. That is a trumpet. Trumpet Gun. A trumpet that shoots things as a gun. Trumpet. Gun. A gun that is also a trumpet.
Why have you forsaken us, God?
Dishonorable Mention: Fatman and Experimental MIRV (Fallout Series)
Okay, now, this one kind of doesn't count as a stupid weapon, because, well...the Fatman and Experimental MIRV in Fallout basically fire small nuclear bombs. So unlike the rest of the attack tools on this list, they're actually extremely effective weapons. I mean, if you want to kill stuff, and you don't mind a hintof overkill, you won't find many better options than tossing a nuclear weapon at someone. It's usually the most destructive attack in the game, as it sure as hell should be, and I daresay most people who play Fallout have plenty of fun with it (myself included, I fully admit).
The stupid part that puts them on this list in some way, however, is that these weapons' throwing range barely qualifies them as grenade launchers. They seem closer to kids' slingshots, really. So basically, someone developed a weapon that would launch a nuclear bomb to land about 20 feet away from the holder. Raise your hands if you can think of a reason why this wouldn't work out so great, class!
* So, for that matter, will stuffing a rocket launcher and flamethrower inside of it. You and your stupid guitar weapon, Shadow Hearts 3's Ricardo.
Saturday, April 8, 2023
Ara Fell's Heroes Get Subdued Too Often
I really like Ara Fell, and I certainly do recommend it as a solid, classic RPG. But I have to say, I think the game’s heroes get bailed out of trouble too much.
The unexpected rescue is a staple of storytelling when it comes to just about any adventure, and for good reason. It creates a situation that demonstrates how formidable the villain(s) of the piece is/are by showing that he/she/they can surpass the heroes. It provides an easy and exciting opportunity to introduce new characters (someone’s gotta come and haul the good guys’ butts out of the fire, after all). And it moves the story forward, creating new goalposts and giving the main characters direction on what their next move should be as they react to the threat they just escaped from and whatever the villain accomplished at that time. There’s a lot of substantial benefits that this narrative tool can provide--but it still needs to be used in moderation, or it starts to devalue the stars of the tale. And unfortunately, Ara Fell does, I think, cross into this territory.
Now, make no mistake: there are many clear, shining points in AF's sequence of events in which Lita and her friends win real, demonstrable victories. There is a good, functional give-and-take in the plot’s course in terms of whether good or evil has the upper hand; never do you feel like the game’s heroes are completely powerless to accomplish their goals. This is not Xenosaga 3.
But still, there’s an awful lot of occasions in which Lita and company are fully overcome, helpless before their foes, and only survive by the good graces of miraculous circumstance or the arrival of an unexpected ally. The main villain has to be a big deal, I know, but it starts to get disappointing when he’s able to get the better of the hero every time! The fact that Lita and company are so frequently subdued, and have to be bailed out by an unexpected ally or event, lessens how reliably heroic and impressive they seem to the audience, and it starts to feel like a narrative cop-out past a certain point.
It’s honestly irritating at times. In particular, 1 instigator of these situations* is that the game’s main villain, though not talented at destructive magics, specializes in a spell that paralyzes his targets, and Lita’s team has no counter to this problem. And what’s annoying is that they never try to find one. Multiple times do they acknowledge that he’s got an edge over them in this regard, and recognize that this advantage has very nearly led to their destruction, and yet never once does Lita, Adrian, Seri Kesu, or Doren ever think, “Gee, maybe we should figure out a way around this problem.” I mean, if there really is no defense possible against this spell and tactic, no counterspell/ward or way to devise one, no protective amulet or method of creating one, no adjustment of approach or tactics that could help them get around it, then fine, I guess that’s something the audience must reluctantly accept--but the heroes never put enough thought into the matter to be able to come to that conclusion anyway! It’s not just that they can’t save their own bacon in the moment of danger, they also don’t take any adequate steps to prevent that moment to start with!
And it’s further irritating that this problem persists right up to the game’s end. At the moment of Lita and company’s final victory, they once again get taken unawares by this immobilizing spell, just as easily as the first time, to disastrous consequences as the villain achieves his goal now that the path to his desired plot mcguffin is clear. He didn’t have to up his game, didn’t have to adjust his tactics whatsoever to do it, just did the same thing as he’s done multiple times before: got the drop on them while they weren’t expecting it, and disabled them. By the game’s end, no one’s left to rescue Lita’s crew, so this time the story HAS to allow them to overcome the spell’s effects in the space of time it takes the antagonist to accomplish everything else, but it’s still a bit frustrating. All the more so when even in the final battle the heroes can’t finish the job themselves; eventually they get overpowered and have to rely on Lita praying for enough deus ex machina to win. Yeah, that’s not an unheard-of trope for the final conflict of the game, but it becomes kind of grating when the preceding narrative makes it less a moment of a heroic higher power’s triumph than it is just 1 last iteration of a bad habit of lucky breaks.
Now look: Ara Fell, as I mentioned above, is not Xenosaga 3. I’ve never, ever seen this problem so harmfully pronounced as it is in Xenosaga 3. The main characters of that game arguably almost never achieve a victory against any narratively significant adversary that is both clear and has substantial importance. The Xenosaga heroes are completely ineffectual in the third title; their problems are resolved exclusively through circumstance and melodramatic faux-intellectual angst, never through the main characters’ merits and actions. By contrast, there are, as I said, plenty of moments in Ara Fell’s narrative when the heroes accomplish what they needed to, when there’s cause for celebration, when they take down an earnestly powerful foe whose position in the plot is significant. Even if Lita and her group don’t feel as powerful and competent as they should, they at least are a far cry from being demonstrably impotent accessories to the events of their own story like the Xenosaga 3 bunch.
But it's nonetheless still a problem with the game's story that lessens the player's view of the tale's heroes, and inhibits the satisfaction the story provides. Ara Fell is still a good RPG that I enjoyed and recommend, but it would have been well served had its writer(s) given more thought to creative alternatives to subdued-heroes-getting-rescued trope here and there.
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