Fire Emblem 15 Stray Thoughts

You know, I actually am finding that I really like these mini-rant collections quite a lot.  Most of my thoughts and criticisms about an RPG don’t necessarily amount to a full essay’s worth, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to say my piece about a game nonetheless.  This is turning out to be a really handy way to get this junk off my mind without having to pad it out.  And it’s handy for a game like Fire Emblem 15, a game which is fine, but not remarkable enough that most of my impressions about it have been particularly strong, but also juuuuuust dumb enough at times that I do want to poke fun at it a bit.



- Toward the end of the game’s prologue, Celica asks Mycen if he thinks she’ll ever meet Alm again, to which he responds, “I do.  So long as destiny wills it.”

Uhhh...so if I’m working with an adequate understanding of the definition of the word “destiny,” then what you’re saying, Mycen, is, “Yeah, I think it’ll happen, as long as it’s something that’s gonna happen.”  Yeah, uh, just as a heads-up: literally anything and everything that happens does so because destiny wills it.  That’s how destiny works.


- Nintendo made an interesting attempt in this game to add a more traditional battle encounter system with the incorporation of some (very mild) third-person POV dungeon-crawling.  It...doesn’t really work, honestly.  Generally speaking, Tactical RPG combat systems just make encounters take too long to get through for mundane run-into-enemy fights to feel like anything more than a chore.  Random encounters when you weren’t specifically hoping to grind some levels was easily the most annoying part of Final Fantasy Tactics for me, and FFT, at least, allowed for some proper leveling to come from them, whereas the capacity for unit growth in Fire Emblem games is pretty strictly controlled and thus these little battles generally don’t offer much reward for the time you put into them.  Additionally the actual process of navigating these dungeons is so rudimentary, and the dungeons themselves designed so half-heartedly, that the whole experience is bland and tasteless, even by RPG standards.

Still, it is kind of interesting that it happened at all.  Fire Emblem isn’t given to mixing up its formulaic gameplay elements with anything more than some benign window-dressing here and there, at least from what I’ve seen of it, so this approach did catch my eye.


- Hey, it turned out Mycen was right, the thing happened because it was fated to happen so it did!  What he didn’t realize, however, was that destiny also willed Celica and Alm’s reunion to be written by a goddamn pod-person whose only training at being human was reading tweets between feuding Youtubers.

Seriously, Alm and Celica’s reunion quarrel feels like 2 tabletop players were intentionally competing to see who could fail the most persuasion checks in a row.  I’ve seen incompetent writers artificially heap on the melodramatic short-tempered misunderstandings, but jeez.  We go from Celica tackle-hugging Alm so joyfully that she nearly sends them both tumbling over the balcony to their deaths, to stacking enough spontaneous accusations and truly absurd overreactions within a less than 3 minute conversation that Celica’s storms out in a huff at what a stubborn jerk Alm is, with him basically muttering “Nuh-uh, YOU ARE!” to her back.  If you programmed an AI to write scripts for 1 Life to Live and fed it nothing but dialogue written by George Lucas, this is the scene you’d get.


- Since we’re on the subject, the beginning part of that reunion isn’t handled much better.  Celica ecstatically exclaims that she’s finally found Alm after all this time, and it’s like...what do you mean, found him, and what do you mean, after all this time?  You’re only even on this continent for your own unrelated quest, Celica, you weren’t looking for Alm.  And if you had been, it wouldn’t have been all that hard; up until 2 weeks ago, the kid had been sitting in the same village you left him at for the past 7 years straight!  No “finding” was involved in this matter.


- Clair: “You think you can walk up to a woman and ply her with a few compliments?”
Me: “Clair honey are you aware of which franchise you’re in?”

Seriously, though, it’s a trite, cheap business that even after Clair properly and justifiably rejects Gray’s shallow wish to get into her pants, FE15’s ending tosses her to him like a piece of meat anyway.  Even if the writers want to completely disregard it, I completely agree with Clair’s proudly stated belief that the person she falls for should actually know her as a person before loving her.

In fact, I think I may agree with her sentiments a little more than SHE does, because her immediate, obvious, and skin-deep infatuation with Alm at the moment they met is exactly the behavior that she’s criticizing Gray for...


- They really oversold the whole conflict between Alm and Celica, to a degree so exaggerated that it ought to legally qualify as false advertising.  I mean, the title cinematic opens with Alm and Celica reading a book about how Mila and Duma fought each other, and, in just so natural a fashion, tell each other, “Oh well let’s promise to NEVER fight each other like that, how silly would that be, amirite?” which has never, ever been said by any children who weren’t 100% guaranteed to someday try to kill each other.  And then the game opens with a spoiler of the scene near the end of the game where Alm’s stabbed Celica with the Falchion.  The game’s selling you HARD on the tragedy of war pitting 2 people in love against each other fatally.

And it’s all just leading to this wet fart of a narrative payoff.  Yeah, Alm and Celica have a battle to the death--because Celica is under a villain’s mind control.  Yeah, Alm’s forced to kill Celica during the battle--a death she is immediately resurrected from; I’m talking from corpse to opening her eyes and striking up a conversation in 1.5 minutes.  Nintendo, you tremendous nincompoops, there is not the slightest element of epic tragedy nor irony in Celica and Alm taking up arms against each other if 1 doing it out of mind control instead of choice!  And there is likewise not a shred of weight or pathos to the idea of this fight leading to Alm unwillingly killing Celica if she’s gonna pop back right as rain in less time than it takes Hulu to run a commercial break!  Alm and Celica never willingly clash, Celica recovers from death at a rate of literally, mathematically more than 10,000 times the rate at which I recover from the mere inconvenience of a poison ivy rash, their armies are not marching in conflict with one another, and the one and only time they don’t get along, EVER, is, as mentioned above, so absurdly unnatural that I have to assume that it was actually penned by a bowl of yogurt.  The grand, dramatic tragedy of fate and circumstance turning cherished loves against one another that was implied and as good as promised is nowhere in Fire Emblem 15.


- So Alm and Celica were, at least for a little while, raised by the same grandfather figure.  And when they were reading that story about Mila and Duma’s conflict, their promise not to fight as did Mila and Duma draws a clear symbolic parallel between the pairs.  Similarly, in a few other ways late in the game and in the ending, this idea that Alm and Celica symbolically represent Mila and Duma is reinforced.  Alm and Celica, the main couple who get married in the end.  And Mila and Duma, the dragons, who are brother and sister.

Oh Fire Emblem, you are just incorrigible.  Even when you don’t actually have incest, I can tell you’re thinking about it, you rascal.


- I know that, by this point in the story, Berkut is certifiable for a stay in the looney bin or a stint as the CEO of Gearbox Entertainment, but I nonetheless cannot help but wonder about the logistics of his proposal to hold his and Rinea’s wedding atop Alm’s funeral.  How do you see this happening, exactly, Berky?  You gonna get down in the grave and balance on Alm’s casket, exchanging vows as the pallbearers start shoveling clumps of dirt down onto your tux?  Is there gonna be 1 preacher guy saying “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” while another preacher guy sits on the first one’s shoulders and starts up with, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today,” each of them passing a Bible back and forth between them and hastily flipping between relevant passages?

Or maybe you see yourself climbing up on top of Alm’s funeral pyre--finally got to be king of that hill, buddy, congrats!--and exchange rings with Rinea as the mourners hose you and the pile down with kerosene and toss a match?  I mean you’ve already made Rinea into some eternally-burning witch, so I guess roasting yourself is in the spirit of the whole “what’s yours is mine” marital thing.


- I guess reasoning out how one conducts one’s wedding atop a funeral is a moot point when the intended deceased soundly whups your ass, though.  But at least Alm’s final victory over Berkut gives us this equally stupid gem to mull over, as Alm despairs over having been forced to kill his last blood relative: “Don’t you get it?  I’ve spent enough of my life alone!”

Oh, yeah, buddy, for sure.  Yeah, you were really spending your life alone, alright, what with the grandfather who raised you, and the 4 steadfast friends who were always there for you and even marched off to fucking WAR solely for the sake of supporting you.  Yeah, no, you’re right, I guess none of them fucking count because they don’t happen by dumb chance to share your genetics.  How fucking tragic, Alm, that you only had people who loved you and stood by you in your life, when you could have had Berkut instead.


- Duma’s final words are to advise Alm and Celica to let his and Mila’s “grave mistakes be warnings of where not to tread” as Alm and Celica lead the world into the future.  Um, weren't your "mistakes" just the fact that after enough time had passed, each of you lost your minds?  So...your advice boils down to "don't go violently insane."  Uh, yeah, thank heavens you mentioned it, Duma, doubtless that was at the top of their to-do list.


- Arguably the biggest point of Alm’s character development in the first half of the game is the fact that he’s proving that all men are equal and that social status does not dictate ability, as a peasant who achieves martial and leadership prowess that surpasses the nobles he’s surrounded by.  The game seems very intent on setting him up to be an icon of the idea that greatness is within anyone’s reach, and assuming importance based on circumstances of birth is foolish.

And then the writers go and reveal that he’s actually the son of the Rigellian emperor.  They throw 70% of the development they’ve given Alm over the course of the game, along with every single argument he’s ever made on the matter of merit through ability rather than birth, out the window.  They just rip up their own script, drop it in the toilet, take a big steamy dump on it, and slam their fist down on the flush lever like it owes them money.  There is now absolutely nothing whatsoever to say that all the villains’ sentiments in the game’s first half about nobles being the only individuals qualified to lead were in any way wrong.  Great fucking work, Nintendo, you really brought your goddamn A Game to this installment.


- So Faye is a woman who’s in love with Alm, but she never even stands a ghost of a chance of being with him because when filling out his Generic RPG Hero Application, he checked the “Path of Least Resistance” box under the Love Interest section.  And so this is the ending Faye gets:

“Unable to get Alm out of her mind, Faye returned to her old life in Ram Village. Eventually, she met and married a suitor who claimed he did not mind her pining for the king, though her habit of vanishing without notice for days at a time continued to worry her new family.”

Wow, awesome.  So Faye never gets over her love of Alm, lives a life so joyless that she frequently has to call in sick to her own marriage, and as a bonus, the innocent sod who married her gets to live the rest of his life knowing that he’s what his wife settled for--and it’s a transaction she regrets.

Faye wasn’t even in the original Fire Emblem 2, you know.  She was made exclusively for this remake.  Nintendo made the conscious, specific choice to invent Faye just so she could be miserable forever.


- You know, on that note...a lot of people criticize the direction that Fire Emblem has gone with its character interrelationships, making the games a veritable fleet of possible ships where each cast member has multiple potential romantic mates for the player to choose among.  And to be sure, it’s crassly indulgent pandering, it’s usually skewed unrealistically heavily and often even unfairly in favor of heterosexual pairings, it in large part caused the catastrophically idiotic Deeprealms Babysitters Club of FE14, and it frequently becomes a very troubling Eugenics 101 course for its audience.  Critiques of turning the series into the equivalent of a preteen giggling and mashing her dolls and action figures into each other in pairs according to whatever mad whimsy enters her head are quite fair.

But I’d like to point something out here: giving the player no agency over the romantic destinies of the cast of Fire Emblem 15 sure hasn’t done Clair, Faye, or Rinea any favors.  Especially Rinea, Jesus Christ.  I mean, not for nothing, but a more pandering Fire Emblem title would have meant that the player potentially could have saved Clair from a guy, one whom she’s outright and fervently said she has no romantic interest in, managing to brute-force his way into an off-screen marriage to her.  There might, after all, have been some options for Clair with someone whose romantic history with her could be summed up by more than just “Durr priddee gurrl hurr” and “Durr priddee gurrl yell at me and say she no like me? Even better!”  And excessive fanservice might at least have meant that Faye would get some love interest options written by an intern or a janitor or a guy who accidentally wandered into the wrong room or something, just anyone in the building who wasn’t a writer whose ex-girlfriend by suspicious coincidence also happened to be named Faye.

Rinea, not being an actual party member, would of course still be completely screwed and stuck in 1 of the Worst Romances in RPG history.  Look, it’s not a perfect solution.  But still, multiple romance options, even if motivated solely for juvenile and pandering reasons, at least means less chance of a decent character having her romantic fate railroaded without recourse by a writer whose subconscious resentment toward women seems to underscore a lot of the game.


- Let me see if I’ve got this right, Nintendo.  So in addition to everything else that makes Edelgard just truly, sincerely awful...you’re telling me that she’s not even a character in her own right, but rather a more gullible knock-off of Emperor Rudolf, from the Fire Emblem that directly preceded hers?

Shin Megami Tensei 5's Neutral Figurehead

Maybe I should be more fucking careful what I wish for.

You may remember that after playing Shin Megami Tensei 4-1 and SMT Devil Survivor 2, back when each was still at least a relatively recent release, I wrote a rant in which I expressed dissatisfaction and concern with the fact that Shin Megami Tensei seemed to be headed in a direction of mistaking Neutrality for Indecision.  Isabeau and Daichi, the representatives of the Neutral faction in each title, were both irresolute hand-sitters completely paralyzed by an inability to make a decision or formulate a plan of action to further their cause.  In a series which takes pains to make its Neutral story path a distinct option unto itself rather than a middle-ground, this kind of figurehead for the faction is even less appropriate or satisfactory for Shin Megami Tensei than it would be for any other given game with plot routes based on diametrically opposed philosophies.

Well, the good news is that Shin Megami Tensei 5 has put that fear to rest!  Guess I got what I wanted.  Its Neutral Hero is by no means a sufferer of indecision!  This guy knows exactly what he wants to accomplish, and doesn’t hesitate for a moment to pursue that goal.  No wishy-washy whining like with Isabeau, no helpless navel-gazing like with Daichi.  THIS Neutral figurehead knows from the start what he’s about.  Because this time around, Shin Megami Tensei has chosen its Neutral representative to be...

Yakumo.

Yakumo is the one that Shin Megami Tensei 5 puts in humanity’s corner.

Yakumo.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

Okay, Atlus.  Let’s just...let’s just review something here.  The Neutral path in Shin Megami Tensei?  It’s the one whose motivations are necessarily founded on the concept of doing what is best for humanity as a whole.  It’s the side that recognizes that human free will should not be trampled by the forces of an overbearing God, and also recognizes that a human’s life has value even if he/she isn’t powerful and ambitious enough to compete against demons.  That’s why Neutral is generally all about finding a way to successfully spurn the forces of both Heaven and Hell, so that humanity is able to both govern itself with its own laws, and also possess the freedom to pursue its joys and desires without paranormal competition.  You can argue the potential virtues of Law and Chaos to the interests of humanity in the long term as much as you like, and that’s fine and good and interesting--but at the end of the day, Neutral is the only Shin Megami Tensei faction that by definition has to prioritize the welfare of human beings first and foremost.

So do you see, Atlus, why making fucking YAKUMO of all goddamn people your Neutral Hero is a really boneheaded move?  Tell me you get this.  Please.  Please tell me, Atlus, that you can, at least in retrospect, understand why it was stupid to make the hero of humanity a guy who has said, and I quote, “Listen, without the will to fight, the will to live is meaningless.  If someone can’t fend for themselves, they’re better off dead anyway.”  

Sure, that’s the guy I want leading Team Humanity.  Yup, yup.  I want a guy who thinks the life of a therapist or a retail worker or a plumber or a farmer or an artist is worthless because this average untrained, peaceful human being doesn’t want to be forced into a battle for his life against a 7-foot-tall bipedal leopard dual-wielding broadswords.  Yeah, I think that the best person to put in humanity’s corner is the man who thinks that cerebral palsy is no excuse not to be out on the battlefield, personally exchanging blows with a chimera the size of a tour bus.  Stop lazing about, Nana, you think that just because you’re a 94-year-old retired social worker, you’ve earned the privilege not to be locked in brutal combat with Chernobog, Slavic god of evil and death?  No special treatment, you doddering layabout, trade that walker in for a battleaxe and be useful!

As incredibly boring and stupid as Isabeau was, as much of a disgrace as she was to the Neutral faction that she supposedly represented, at least I believed the game’s claim that she actually cared about her fellow human beings and wanted what was best for them.  All of them, not just the ones who would be personally useful to her cause.  Isabeau, at least, is not a person who I could see brow-beating an orphanage about the fact that its residents weren’t all out on the front lines of a war, being horrifically incinerated by a towering fire giant.  Atlus, you made the narrative guardian angel of humanity a man whose philosophy resents infants because they aren’t coming out of the womb clutching an AK-47 and demanding to know where that son-of-a-bitch Lucifer is.  What the actual fuck.

Hey, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t we have an entire long, meandering chapter in this game that was founded on what a terrible thing it was that a girl had been bullied so much that she’d been easy prey to the temptation of the demon Lahmu?  I seem to remember that when this weak girl, Sahori, had been harassed to the point that she finally did something to fight back, it ended in violent tragedy for absolutely every single person who got involved--Sahori, her friend Tao, the bullies, probably several students who just happened to be in the building at the time, and Lahmu himself all died at the end of this venture, and even the protagonist only survived because the chick he was standing near just happened to be the goddess of Tokyo.  I’m sorry, was the overall agreed-upon takeaway of that entire situation somehow not the fact that it was terrible and tragic that Sahori was bullied?  Were we not intended to feel sorrow for the weak and innocent girl who was cruelly driven into a corner where she finally lashed out, to the destruction of everyone?  And yet, after taking a clear stance of sympathy with the downtrodden and passive, Shin Megami Tensei 5 then offers us a hero of humanity who would have done no more than sneer at Sahori for not being strong enough to fight off her bullies by herself.

Oh, and it only gets worse if what his page on the Megaten Wikipedia says is true.  See, it’s like this.  This callous, shitty perspective on the value of human life that makes Yakumo a considerably worse person than a substantial number of the demons and angels he scorns?  It’s only relevant because his Neutral faction plan is to destroy God’s throne, so no one can ever control the laws of existence again.  This means that no one can abuse the power of the position and impose their will upon all of existence, but it also means that no greater Law- or Chaos-allied power is gonna be able to come riding in to save humanity from the existence of living in a postapocalyptic world inhabited by innumerable powerful and frequently hostile demons who usually view humans as no more than resources or collateral.  So of course, in this scenario of Yakumo’s success, humanity will no longer be subjugated by the will and whimsy of an all-powerful higher being, but it will also have to scrape and claw for survival in a violent, inhospitable world.  A fact that doesn’t bother Yakumo morally, though, because as we’ve established, he’s the kind of guy who’d look at the corpse of a 6-year-old who got caught in a crossfire, and sneer that it’s the kid’s own fault for not being strong enough to fight back.  What an asshole.

BUT, this incredibly stupid and obscenely immoral philosophy might not even be genuine.  Now, full disclaimer: I do not recall seeing the following information in the game itself, and given that I moronically played that pile of crap enough times to have seen all of its endings, I doubt it’s something I missed.  I am assuming that the Wikipedia page is drawing on other canon sources like developer notes, or manga tie-ins, or the like.  It’s not something I can verify myself, at any rate.  We’re going to proceed with the belief that the page is accurate, until given indication otherwise.

So like I was saying, Yakumo’s shitty ideology may not even be honest.  Because, according to the Wikipedia page for Yakumo, he and Nuwa’s original plan was not to destroy God’s throne, but to use it themselves, and decree a world for humanity alone, with no gods or demons in it whatsoever (as seen in the “true” ending of the game).  In this scenario, humanity as a whole would be protected from these external paranormal threats to its freedom and welfare.  There wouldn’t be a long, bloody war for humanity’s survival and freedom; the weak and the peaceful would be safe and content inasmuch as humanity itself would allow them.  But Yakumo later changed his plan to the throne-breaking one with the every-man-for-himself rationale, because he and Nuwa fell in love, and since she’s a creation goddess from Chinese lore, wishing for a world without any demons and gods and whatnot would mean a world without her, too.

Yes, that’s right.  Yakumo didn’t decide to plunge humanity into a brutal, prolonged battle for survival against horrible odds because of an earnest belief in fending for oneself; that was only a convenient stupid doctrine he adopted after the fact.  He didn’t pursue a path which would result in the loss of countless innocent lives, and ultimately cost our species its capacity for gentleness and civility as only the strongest and most vicious emerge from the constant battles, because he actually believed it was the best course of action for humanity.  No.  It was decided to condemn countless people to violent ends and countless others to a harsh life of constant toil and struggle because Yakumo didn’t want to stop getting his peepee waxed.

Now again, I need to point out that this information on Yakumo having changed his life goals based on whether or not a snake woman was gonna be around to suck him off is based on what I read on the Wikipedia, not on what I have witnessed myself in the game.  It’s possible that this isn’t canon, but rather some wiki-user’s educated and highly believable theory.  On the other hand, the users of the Megami Tensei Wiki also have a purview of many more official sources than I do, and it’s not exactly unbelievable that this pretentious absolute turd of a human being would sell out his entire species for a handy.  I see no reason to doubt this is part of Yakumo’s canon.

But it’s still worth remembering that even if that Wikipedia page is full of crap, even if Yakumo didn’t decide that human lives would have to end in pain and terror so that he could get laid, he’s still a man to whom human lives have no inherent value.  Sociopathic simp or not, Yakumo is still an apathetic, pompous dick who proudly boasts a belief that a human being’s worth begins and ends with his or her willingness and ability to leap into lethal combat with monsters and demons.  And rather than making him 1 of the less sympathetic spokespeople of a Chaos route, or the face of some shitty Meritocracy faction like SMT Devil Survivor 2’s, or a natural selection Reason like Chiaki in SMT3...Atlus had this loser be the representative of the Neutral faction.  The faction that’s supposed to first and foremost be about doing right by humanity, ALL of humanity.  Brilliant work, Atlus, you’ve actually made me miss fucking Isabeau.  Just truly amazing stuff, you absolute fucking wads.

Final Fantasy 6's Separate Group Control Feature

Final Fantasy 6 introduced an interesting gameplay feature in the form of occasional sequences during the game’s course in which the player would separate the cast into multiple parties, and control these parties semi-simultaneously to accomplish a task through cooperation.  In some instances, there would be an invading group of enemies on a map, and the player would direct multiple teams of the heroes to intercept the attackers, while other uses of the mechanic involved multiple teams exploring a larger dungeon whose puzzles required cooperation as each team opened up new paths for the other(s).  It was a neat idea, and surprisingly well-executed considering its newness.

But the way the game implemented this feature is really weird, too.  Cuz, like...we can all agree it’s a fairly memorable aspect of Final Fantasy 6, right?  The last dungeon is a cooperative venture between 3 parties, and the battle for Narshe is 1 of the most signature elements of the game as a whole.  This multi-group control feature is definitely 1 of the things you strongly remember as a part of the experience of playing it.  And yet, this distinctive feature of Final Fantasy 6 occurs a mere 4 times in the game’s entire course!  That’s the initial Narshe fight with Locke and his team of deus ex machina moogles defending the sanctity of Terra’s naptime, then the climactic Narshe battle between the reunited heroes and Kefka’s invasion force, then later the cooperative exploration of the Phoenix’s cave, and finally the triple-team tower takedown at the end of the game.  The developers went to all the trouble of inventing, coding, and nearly flawlessly implementing this feature, just to only ever actually use it 4 times.  That’s like once every 10 hours, give or take.

And it’s even more a weird waste than it initially appears from those numbers.  Because that initial Narshe battle is basically just a tutorial for the system, not a sincere iteration of it.  It occurs extremely early in the game, and with the moogles doing all the heavy lifting, it’s hard to screw up so badly you lose.  And story-wise, the scenario would have been accomplished just as well by having Locke, Mog, and a couple backup moogles face down a couple pursuing enemies as a single fighting unit the way the rest of the game is handled.  So this really is just a tutorial session for the multi-group control dynamic.  A tutorial...for the single, solitary instance to follow in the game where you’ll be participating in a multi-group battle.

Which is another oddity of integration of this feature: the climactic multi-team combat aspect of it is only ever used half of the time it comes into play, even though it was this particular focus which the tutorial specifically trains the player for.  And it’s over and done with so early in the game!  The battle for Narshe is, what...30% of the way into Final Fantasy 6?  A third of the way through the game, you get your first real test of cooperative fighting as a group of teams against an enemy force, and it’s also the very last time.  Everything involving this feature past that point is just cooperative dungeon exploration.

And that’s pretty peculiar, too.  Because first of all, the first time it happens is a good, what, 80% of the way through the game?  Potentially more; getting Locke back on the team could very well be the final sidequest the player engages in before heading to Kefka’s tower for the finale.  So that’s a weird time to be dropping the fact that there’s a whole other application of this multi-group control feature which by this point the player has possibly forgotten about altogether.  And while the game would certainly be incomplete without having Locke around to finish the journey, it IS technically completely optional to even go through this cave to begin with, so there’s also every possibility that the joint venture through the final dungeon will actually be the first time the player deals with this avenue of the feature.  Not that the player needs a trial run or anything, the feature’s very simple to figure out, but still, it seems odd.

I mean, it’s not like there couldn’t have been more instances in FF6’s story where this feature was implemented.  The Magitek lab is a large enough dungeon that a little tweaking could’ve made it a good initial foray into the joint dungeon exploration.*  And the Floating Continent’s size, layout, and position in the story (coming into play just as the full team reunites and gains new members, at the most pivotal moment in the plot) is begging for a test-drive of the 3-group dungeon exploration that’s featured at the game’s end.

Meanwhile, a multi-group battle scene in which the team defends a town from an attacking band of monsters would have been a great opportunity to use the mechanic to further underscore the harsh realities of the new world in the game’s latter half.  It could be really cool: Celes arrives in town, the monsters attack, and the player has to direct 2 teams of fighters, populated by only Celes, Sabin (if he’s been recruited), and some woefully underpowered NPCs, to fight off half a dozen or so monster units.  It’d further hammer home the desperation of existence in this world, show how outclassed the survivors are against the beasts running amok, and even give an opportunity for Celes to develop her character; it could’ve reaffirmed her hope and her devotion to the cause of good by showing her that there’s still real, tangible good she could accomplish in this world, and people who needed her to do just that.  Phunbaba’s second attack on Kohlingen would’ve been another good opportunity for this feature; have the jerk bring some buddies, have the player use a couple teams to engage the attacking demons, make a proper epic battle out of it.  He still could’ve blown away the majority of the combatants after the rest of his allies had been beaten, given Terra her chance to shine, but the whole scenario would’ve been kicked up a notch.

The way that FF6 handles its multi-group scenarios just seems odd to me.  There’s so few of them for such a notable feature, and the way they’re paced is truly puzzling.  There were definitely other opportunities over the course of the game for additional instances of multi-group battles and dungeon exploration which would have made sense and been fairly easy to incorporate.  It’s certainly not a negative for the game, of course, but it seems like there was a lot more opportunity for the feature to be a positive than was realized.  In spite of its placement in some key scenarios, this feature winds up only being a fun and interesting novelty in Final Fantasy 6, when it could have been an iconic signature like, say, the army battles of Suikoden, or the ship combat of Skies of Arcadia.













* It would’ve made more sense from a plot perspective, too.  I mean, if you’re gonna invade the Empire’s own home turf, you’d think you’d want your full team on that.  Yeah, protecting the Esper in Narshe is important and all, but with Figaro as a buffer to the southwest and with the Empire’s initial attack force having been demolished with a long and complicated process to build up a new one in South Figaro, if it can manage to at all, Narshe is pretty well protected.  Hell, it’s basically now the heart of Returner territory.  Keeping 2 of the Returners’ best agents behind to protect the Esper at this time doesn’t make sense; it’s like benching 2 of your all-stars during a championship game so they can protect the gatorade cooler.

Also would’ve been more sensible from a gameplay standpoint.  Taking 2 (or more) party members out of the player’s hands for the entire sequence of raiding the Magitek factory is a bad decision to begin with, particularly when they’ve likely already been absent for a while given how inconvenient it is at that point in the game to backtrack and change party members.  And it even would’ve numerically added up basically perfectly - 2 groups with a maximum of 4 characters means a total of 8 spots that can be filled by 6 regular characters to choose from (Celes, Sabin, Edgar, Cyan, Gau, and Locke) and a seventh part timer in Shadow (if you’ve hired him), with the last slot being open for upcoming addition of Setzer.

Shin Megami Tensei 5's Nahobino Fusion Scene

As awful as the ending of Shin Megami Tensei 5 is, it’s worth noting that the preceding events of its finale are disappointing garbage, too.  Case in point?  The Nahobino fusion scene.

So, in the Empyrean, the final dungeon (if a linear path with no real detours containing a total of 5 fights altogether can be called such), you reach a point, towards its end, at which you catch up with your faction’s allies (Atsuta and Koshimizu if you’re Chaos, Dazai and Abdiel if you’re Law, Yakumo and Nuwa if you’re Neutral), and your faction’s enemies.  When you get there, you find that your comrades have managed to get their asses kicked by your foes.  And I mean that your buddies got thoroughly wrecked; they’re down on their knees, barely keeping it together, while their foes don’t look to have suffered a scratch.

So I’m justifiably annoyed from the start as I roll up on this debacle, cuz like...really?  You assholes couldn’t have at least softened them up a little for me?  I’m already clearly gonna have to clean up your mess here anyway, but you couldn’t have at least landed a goddamn punch beforehand for my benefit?  There isn’t even a speck of dirt on our mutual foes, guys, these fuckers look immaculate and I know that that’s not from any association with the Virgin Mary. I know because she’s in my party and I checked with her.  She says she had nothing to do with it, y’all just weak as shit.

How the hell did my allies lose this fast, for that matter?  I entered the portal to this place, like, 30 seconds after everyone else.  These fuckers must have been speedrunning defeat!  Forget being brought down by their foes--there shouldn’t have been enough time for them to kill themselves, for Nocticula’s sake!

But at any rate, the horses you’ve backed are getting turned into glue when you find them in the Empyrean.  So you show up, and you find that you’re just in time to watch the victors of this off-screen skirmish decide that now’s the time to finally fuse together and become the Nahobino they were meant to be.  And watch you most certainly do, because Zon Kuthon forbid the protagonist of Shin Megami Tensei 5 ever, ever not indulge in Voyeuristic Paralysis Syndrome whenever he’s given the opportunity.  Make even the slightest attempt to stop his enemies from merging together to form a real, actual fucking god?  Nah, not when there’s more important stuff for the protagonist to do, like standing motionlessly and staring emotionlessly.  More on THIS little bad habit in a forthcoming rant, believe you me.

So yeah, with nothing stopping them, your faction enemies do their little fusion thing, and...fuckin’ hell, just thinking about this is giving me an aneurysm because it’s so goddamn stupid.  They fuse together, and your allies are killed by the Dragon Ball Z power-up winds that result from it.  I mean for fuck’s sake, guys.  It’s not enough for you assholes to make record time at getting the shit beaten out of you off-screen, you have to make the cherry on top dying to a breeze?  Jesus Christ, your faction allies in this game make Shin Megami Tensei 3’s ISAMU look less pathetic by comparison.  At least when HE decided to up and die even when his faction was the winning team, he did so from the wounds he received from his off-screen battle.  He wasn’t murdered by lethal hype.

Hey, here’s a question: where the hell was YOUR wave of destructive power-up wind, huh?  I’m talking about way back at the beginning of the game, when the protagonist first joined with Aogami to become the Nahobino.  Didn’t see any radiating burst of power then!  And it would’ve been handy, because the circumstances for that joining was that our hero had run afoul of a handful of minor tutorial monsters and Aogami was trying to protect him from them.  Why do a couple of secondary characters becoming a Nahobino release such a shockwave of raw power that it kills off experienced demons and demon hunters, but when the blasted protagonist does it, it doesn’t even lightly nudge a single level 3 experience-fodder enemy?

The whole thing really devalues and cheapens the characters you’ve allied with, too.  Let’s say that you’ve chosen the Chaos route, for example.  Doing so means that the very first and only time you see Koshimizu in any kind of combat situation, it’s specifically to watch him get trashed.  Isn’t this the same joker who’s been talking up how much better it’ll be if Tokyo is protected by a posse of local gods like him?  Not instilling a lot of confidence in that future with your career win-loss record of 0-1 there, Champ.

And it’s even worse if you’ve sided with Law.  Because the last time you saw Dazai and Abdiel, Dazai was showing off the fact that his baseball cap was apparently weighted training clothing and taking it off quadrupled his power level.  More importantly, Abdiel achieved the climax of her character arc and went through a cool, intimidating transformation, becoming a fallen angel as she embraced the need to defy God in order to achieve His goals.  So we go from the culmination of Abdiel’s story, the impressive and perhaps even chilling fall she undergoes to become a terrifying dark avatar of blasphemy, to...colorful wind disintegrating her after an enemy effortlessly beat her off-screen.  

Yeah, I sure do love it when a character goes through a whole personal arc to achieve a higher state of being for absolutely no goddamn reason whatsoever.  “My gods, the power!  The POWER!  I’ve never felt anything like it!  By my estimate, I am now strong enough...to bruise my enemy’s knuckles a little as he beats my ass into the pavement!”

Objectively, I also recognize that this sequence is bullshit if you picked the Neutral path.  I have to admit, however, I find it more difficult to be affronted by this scenario, because getting to see that sneering, arrogant fuckwit Yakumo get his self-important ass handed to him like the sad weak little shit he wants to pretend he isn’t...well, it's better for my mental state than professional therapy.

Even just the fact that any of this is happening at all at this point in the game is dumb and makes no sense.  Why the fuck were these 4 idiots all battling normally before you show up, anyway?  Everyone’s in the Empyrean with the intention of taking God’s throne because each pair can become a Nahobino, and only a Nahobino can actually use said throne to dictate the nature of the world.  So why the ACTUAL FUCK did NONE of them choose to power up BEFORE this moment!?  If you find yourself battling against enemies who are of comparable strength to you, and everything is on the line, wouldn’t your first move be to transform into your ultra-powerful god form to gain the advantage?  Actually, rewind.  If you find yourself in a race to get to God’s throne and use it before your competitors, wouldn’t your first move be to transform into the Nahobino form that can actually make use of said throne, so that you don’t have to waste time doing so once you’ve actually made it there?

No, actually, rewind even further--why not just transform into one’s god form before even entering the damn Empyrean realm to begin with?  What benefit was there in not just doing it from the get-go?  If we go by the example of the protagonist, there’s no time limit on the Nahobino fusion, , no stated plot restriction preventing them from doing so.  It’s not even like it’s an irreversible process; we’ve seen Aogami and the protagonist separate multiple times at will.  Atlus, if someone gains the ability to become an honest-to-themself god, with no downsides whatsoever, there’s no one alive who isn’t gonna DO that immediately!  Especially if they have something very important to accomplish which such a transformation could help facilitate!

It gets even more idiotic when you realize that the losing pair in this scene are also just as capable of transforming into a Nahobino.  It’s dumb enough that the victors wait until AFTER their success is guaranteed to unleash their secret weapon, but your faction allies basically have just chosen to die, because they’ve refused to play their trump card even as they get absolutely demolished.  It’s like people who refuse to use up their best healing items during a game’s final battle, only somehow even more moronic.

Jesus Christ this game is garbage.  On the rare occasions it actually deigns to DO something with its story, this is the kind of stilted, irrational, careless schlock that results.  And I’m still not even done with taking Shin Megami Tensei 5 to task for its failures yet!  There is more, significantly more, to come!  You wouldn’t think you could write more sentences about how bad a game is than there are in the game’s own script, but I’m pretty sure I’m gonna get there, if I haven’t already!

Shin Megami Tensei 5's Ending Sucks

You may have intuited from certain subtle clues I’ve dropped here and there over the course of this year that I’m not a huge fan of Shin Megami Tensei 5.  But just in case I was being too coy about the myriad ways in which the latest installment of the mainline SMT series is disappointing, let’s talk about the ending.

First of all, it’s dull and empty.  You beat the final boss, the Nahobino briefly exchanges nods (because dialogue would have required someone at Atlus actually doing their job that day) with the dead Hero and patron of the path he chose in a white void, he finds himself in this empty space-y expanse with planets and frozen celestial beings and a really, really ostentatious New Years ball in the center, and he starts walking nonchalantly through the extra-dimensional emptiness as the narrator tells, not shows, what the results will be of the protagonist taking or breaking God’s throne for a whole whopping 2 minutes (and the narrator isn’t exactly rushing through his lines, either), and then it goes to the credits, which play over a scene of the Nahobino continuing to just walk in a straight line with someone’s very pretty Deviantart landscape in the background.  Finally, once the credits are done, the stroll concludes with the Nahobino walking up to God’s super special disco ball and the screen fading to white.

And that’s it.  That’s all!  That’s the ending.*  That’s your reward for forcing yourself to play Shin Megami Tensei 5 for 40+ hours: a lack of dialogue from the characters who matter, a minimal narration-dump, and trudging through an atmospheric but thoroughly empty void.  Well, it may be garbage, but I suppose you gotta give SMT5 credit for being consistent to the bitter end.

I suppose there’s an argument to be made that the endings of most of the previous mainline SMTs are also a bit, shall we say, sparse.  I certainly can’t deny that point, any more than I can deny the fact that character development in the same games has likewise been on the low and understated side.  But as with the depth of the cast, prior SMT games have maintained an approach throughout their course that makes it clear to the audience that their endings’ stoic minimalist-leanings have been a matter of storytelling design, something chosen and planned for, rather than just a consequence of not having spent enough time and effort on the game.  In previous games, the span and scope of the plot (whether good or subpar) has possessed enough substance and artistry that a somewhat austere and spare conclusion feels acceptable (and aesthetically appropriate), while with Shin Megami Tensei 5, the scanty approach to its finish just feels like more of the same inadequacy that’s plagued the game’s entire narrative to this point.  Even if the result is superficially similar, there’s a big and discernible difference between a landscape artist who paints a desert out of a wish to capture the sensation of sprawling starkness it invokes within him, and a landscape artist who paints a desert because it has fewer features and he’s lazy.

So yeah, Shin Megami Tensei 5’s ending is empty and half-assed.  And yeah, it’s hardly surprising; watching SMT5’s story unfold is like reading a book printed with only a single sentence on each page, with an epilogue scribbled on a sticky note taped to its back cover.  But--and this is also, sadly, not surprising for SMT5--what little material IS there in the ending also manages to disappoint in its own right.  Because every ending of this game seems kinda determined to leave you dissatisfied, or at the very least tell you that you’re a stupid jerk.

Seriously, there’s really just no pleasing ending to this game.  So let's say you choose Chaos.  What happens?  Why, what happens is that a mere 3 sentences into his monologue, the narrator makes it a point to let you know that the new world you’ve chosen of multiple gods and an ever-changing society has been difficult for some people to adapt to and find happiness within.  That’s the first reaction he speaks of; the fact that there are plenty of people who thrive in the new world of Chaos is only something he mentions AFTER he shows you your 1-star reviews.  And then a mere 2 sentences later, this pessimistic prick’s back on the complain train as he informs you that, shocker of shockers, a bunch of competing divine narcissists (and 1 actual Narcissus) is naturally a recipe for, and I quote, “immeasurable conflict.”  The ending narration then talks about how sad the Nahobino is to witness his reality completely plagued with war, but that he holds firm to his belief because of some sloppy, shaky philosophy about how people should be able to choose for themselves rather than have things chosen for them.

First of all, this is a fucking stupid statement and correlation all on its own.  The Choose For Yourself ship has already sailed for the people of Chaos’s world because the fact that the world is this way was a choice the Nahobino made without consulting every other person in existence, or any of them, for that matter.  All they’re getting in exchange for never-ending violence is the ability to choose which powerful being to obey because they’re powerless themselves.  And also, even if this idea that people are self-determined in this world was legitimate, you’re saying that the trade-off for having any choice in your actions and the direction of your life is constant war.  Free will may be inseparable from the potential for, and eventuality of, conflict, but there’s no rational way you can argue that the reasonable price of it is or should be a never-ending turf war between insanely powerful deities that makes the entire human species a reluctant participant and casualty.

Secondly, and more importantly, what kind of shitty way is that to end your game?  There’s only 7 fucking sentences of narration in this ending to reward the dozens of hours you put into this garbage, and of them, 3 are devoted to admonishing you for your choice.  And sure, Chaos IS a dumb choice to make in Shin Megami Tensei 5 and anyone who couldn’t see bickering godly gang wars being its result is probably as facile an unquestioning a moron as Atsuta himself, but that’s still excessively negative to a degree that feels mean-spirited.  The writers seem to actively want you to feel bad about having played their game.

And lastly, let’s not forget that the whole reason that Atsuta becomes the game’s Chaos Hero is because he’s told by Koshimizu (and because he unquestioningly, blindly believes this statement) that Chaos’s world of multiple gods will be the best way to protect Tokyo and its people.  And by siding with him, you’ve wound up bringing about a world where the people are caught in constant, inconceivably devastating warfare from which they can never be safe.  I’m getting flashbacks to Wild Arms 4’s ending with Jude, Mr. Codependent Everyone Let’s Be Friends Forever And Work Together And Never Ever Let Each Other Out Of Our Sight becoming a goddamn forest ranger hermit who lives completely separated from his friends and the entire human species.  Just as it was with Jude, for Atsuta, this conclusion is the opposite, the exact polar fucking opposite you understand, of the single solitary overplayed trait of his 1-dimensional character.

You might think that maybe this poor showing of Chaos, the latest in a whole game’s worth of instances of this route’s lesser quality, might just be a case of SMT’s preference for the Neutral path being taken a little too far.  But the fact is that both Neutral endings, though not quite as poorly reasoned and inconsistent to their figurehead’s stated purpose, are equally unsatisfying.

The ending in which you destroy the throne involves what’s-his-name, the monk guy who decided out of nowhere right at the last second that he was gonna be some important lofty observer entity, outright talking about what a foolish decision you’ve made, so right off the bat you have a tidy little bit of narrative disapproval for your actions even before the other endings get their chastisement.  Then when you get to the regular ending narration, the game makes sure you know that plenty of people will perish in the efforts to resist and stand free of the influence and control of demon-kind.

Granted, Neutral Hero Yakumo, who is basically what happens when you decide to base your entire personality around your Resting Bitch Face, has made it clear that any human being who can’t personally stand up to malevolent godlike beings and beat them in hand-to-hand combat doesn’t, in his opinion, deserve to live.  So this ending gloating about how many people will be casualties in the world you’ve created isn’t as thematically opposed to its representative as Chaos was.  And at least this time around the game doesn’t tell you that even the protagonist himself is disappointed with the results of his choice.  But it still is an example of SMT5 going out of its way to use its extremely limited ending summary to make damn sure you know that the ending you got was really bad for a hell of a lot of people.  The very people, in fact, that you presumably chose this path with the intention of doing right by--the deities and demons certainly don’t benefit from breaking the throne, and the Nahobino doesn’t gain God’s power with it gone, thus presumably you could only be choosing this path because you genuinely believe that it will be in the best interests of humanity as a whole.**  So thanks for making sure to hammer home the fact that the players who have made this decision for the good of the people have, in fact, fucked those very people over, SMT5.

It’s not even like it’s a sure thing that those sacrifices are even toward a greater good.  The narrator ends his stunted little spiel by expressing certainty that humanity will, in the future, come out on top against the demons and gods that would control them, but he doesn’t actually state it as fact.  Even the underwhelming, disappointing ending for the Black Eagles route in Fire Emblem 16 at least made it pretty unambiguous that the long, bloody war with Those Who Slither in the Dark, a costly and prolonged conflict that would have been quickly and relatively painlessly settled had the player possessed the brains and/or human decency not to back Edelgard,*** would end in an eventual victory.  In SMT5’s first Neutral ending, the best we get is a “surely” that humanity will eventually be able to stand on its own and win its right to freedom from the machinations of higher (and lower) mythological beings.

But okay, sure, that’s the lesser Neutral ending.  If any conclusion in the game is gonna be crappy, it’d be that one.  Surely**** the True Neutral ending is reasonably satisfying, right?

Well I’m talking about it right here and now in this rant about how the game’s endings suck, so I guess you can probably tell from context alone that it isn’t.  Hell, we’re talking about a component of Shin Megami Tensei 5--that should be all the information you really need right there.

So yeah, the “best” ending of SMT5 is also unsatisfying.  Now, this time around the game is at least kind enough not to gleefully make all the myriad people who are going to be miserable and dead because of your decision the most memorable takeaway.  And there’s even more content besides, with a more enthusiastically positive reaction from Tao and I Refuse To Bother Learning Monk Guy’s Name Because Holy Shit What A Forgettable Character, and a more involved talk and confrontation with Lucifer.  No, rather than the game forcing unnecessary admonishment into the ending text, the dissatisfaction of the True Neutral ending comes from qualities inherent to its nature, thanks to the incompetence of the game’s writers.  The disappointment of the True Neutral boils down to 2 points.

First of all: it’s an emotional betrayal to everything that the game has shown us.  See, in the True Neutral ending, the Nahobino takes God’s throne and uses his power over creation to decree that there will be no more gods or demons, that Earth is for humanity alone, because SMT’s Neutral faction always has such a boner for telling all mythological entities to get the hell off humanity’s lawn, as though we aren’t the ones who created and invited them to start with.  And in most Shin Megami Tensei titles, that’s fine, justifiable, and emotionally consistent, as gods and demons and the like are the source of most of humanity’s problems in the game.  But while that’s still true in SMT5, what’s also true is that pretty much every noticeably positive character relationship that the Nahobino has over the course of SMT5’s events is with a demon character.

I mean, think about it.  The most (inexplicably) loyal and supportive character in the game to the protagonist is his partner Aogami, who can’t seem to speak 3 consecutive sentences if at least 1 of them isn’t affirming that he’s gonna protect the protagonist at all costs and make all his dreams come true and wuv him and cuddle him and give him head-pats.  Then the runners-up behind Aogami are his companion Amanozako, who helps the Nahobino off and on for most of the game and who is weirdly sort of a half-assed love interest for him or something, and his friend Tao, who may start as a human but is resurrected as a goddess who outright pledges to help him become God because he almost made a mild effort to help someone one time (more on that in a later rant).  All 3 of the only people in this game who demonstrably have a positive character connection to the main hero are demons.

Additionally, most of the outright moral and decent people you meet in the game are likewise inhuman.  Khonsu, for example, is devoted to saving the life of the sickly Miyazu to a self-sacrificial degree.  In fact, Khonsu shows way, way more active concern and affection for Miyazu, not to mention expends way more effort in trying to help her, than her own brother Atsuta does!  And lest we forget, Atsuta is the clown who’s supposed to be entirely defined by his wish to protect her!  Meanwhile, the fairies under Oberon and Titania’s leadership graciously take in the lost, wounded, and helpless kidnapped human students in Chapter 2, treating their injuries and providing a safe haven to them for the entire rest of the game’s course, completely without complaint or expectation of reimbursement.  Hell, they didn’t even need to be asked to do it--Fionn mac Cumhaill just started bringing hurt human beings to the fairies to care for, and they set right to it.  And speaking of, Fionn, a mythological entity himself, just up and takes it upon himself to go around saving the students from their captors, again for no discernible reason beyond the desire to help the helpless.  And then there’s various minor sidequest demons like Idun and Demeter and Hua Po who are friendly and generally decent individuals.  Hell, the Neutral faction itself is much more likable for its demonic patron Nuwa than it is for that human jackass Yakumo.

I’m not saying that all or even most of the demons in this game are good people, but there’s pretty much no denying that all of the likable and nearly all of the morally decent members of this game’s cast are gods and demons, and definitely all of the Nahobino’s own positive friendships are with these supernatural entities.  So the True Neutral ending really sucks and betrays whatever emotional weight the game has managed to create, and makes the Nahobino look like a complete tool, because you’re basically turning on every individual who’s extended meaningful friendship to you and disintegrating them.  What was the point of protecting Amanozako, helping her with her search to find her soulmate, if a mere couple hours after she finally achieves what she needs to lead a happy and secure life, you force an abrupt conclusion to that life?  Why make a big deal about Tao being reborn if she’s just going to re-die the next day?

As with Atsuta’s criticism of Law, the writers of SMT5 clearly just paid absolutely no attention whatsoever to what they themselves had been doing.  They’ve made a story wherein the “best” ending involves killing every single character in the game who isn’t a jackass!

But even if you don’t give a shit about any of that and just hate them dadgummed durned demons for the hell of it, the True Neutral ending’s still unsatisfying.  Because it, in all its special Trueness, gets a special post-credits scene of the new (but basically just the same as the old) world you’ve created, and the narrator, as well as the golden-eyed putz sitting on a bench, strongly imply that this humanity-for-humanity-only world is not gonna last because the Mandala universal will thing cannot be denied or escaped.  So yeah, after all that rigamarole, after sacrificing everyone who demonstrably gave a shit about you in the game, it turns out it was probably all for nothing.

Honestly, compared to the rest of these, the fact that the Law ending only insults your intelligence probably makes it the least disappointing of all of them.  Sure, the narrator’s clearly relishing the opportunity to hammer home the idea that people who follow Law can’t think for themselves (a stupid claim that has been soundly proven wrong by the game’s own cast), but at least humanity is safe and generally happy, the Nahobino himself is pleased with the result, and it’s stated flat-out that the future is prosperous.  Frankly, I’ll take a clumsy attempt at an insult over any combination of being told that countless people suffer and die in war, being told that even the protagonist himself hates what he’s done, the assassination of the only people we’ve seen capable of being nice, and being told that my actions didn’t accomplish the 1 thing they were meant to.

Honestly, between this and the fact that the Law faction is the only one with anything approaching actual character development, I’d be tempted to think that SMT5 is actually intentionally favoring Law...if not for the fact that Dazai spends 85% of the game wearing a baseball cap that says “SUCKER” on it.

Make no mistake, though: even if the Law ending is the least unsatisfactory, the game’s still sneering at you for picking it.  The facts of the matter are, that all of the endings are careless, empty after-thoughts in a story that’s as barren and abandoned as the wastelands it takes place within, and that 3 of the 4 endings leave a player feeling unsatisfied, with the other one still goes out of its way to make you feel like you made the wrong choice.  SMT5’s endings are the perfect crappy way to cap off a crappy game.














* Well, there’s an extra scene for the “true” Neutral ending tacked onto the end.  But it is nothing beneficial, as we’ll see in a moment.


** Or you might just be simping for Nuwa, I guess.


*** Well, not Dimitri either, since the bad guys actually effectively win in his route.  But he, tiresome and dumb edgelord though he is for most of his route’s narrative, is at least not a gullible, amoral dingus like Edelgard.


**** See, SMT5?  See how effortless it is for “Surely” to be linked to an ironic opposite?

Fire Emblem 15's Royal Treasury

So...a treasury that only allows in those of the royal family.  How much use is that, exactly?

Think about this.  The royal treasury of the empire of Rigel in Fire Emblem 15 can only be accessed by those of royal blood.  So...doesn’t that mean that any time anyone needs something from the vault, whenever some relic or parchment in there is necessary for the sake of state business, they have to petition the emperor himself to haul his ass down to the basement to fetch it?  And it’s a good bit of a walk, too: this vault’s sitting smack dab in the middle of the final dungeon.  The emperor’s gotta clear his whole schedule and make a morning of it any time someone needs a particular national treasure for some reason or other.

And this uppity storage unit ain’t kidding about only opening to royalty, either.  This isn’t some situation where His Royal Highness can just show up, open the door, and get back to his business while some servants head in to procure whatever’s needed.  He really is the ONLY one that can go in.  No cargo-haulers, no dignitary from a neighboring nation that the emperor talked into helping him move this weekend, not even a goddamn intern with a dolly is following him in there.  Meaning that Emperor Amazon Fulfillment Center has to haul out anything he wants from the vault all on his own.  Yeah, that’s definitely what I want as ruler of a nation, alright--I want to keep important shit I might need in an emergency within a warehouse I have to drive 30 miles to get to, where I get to be a 1-man warehouse worker union.

And is it really such a good idea to keep Falchion in this vault?  Falchion, the god-slaying sword given to humanity as a safeguard against the day that the continent’s dragon overlords turn against their people?  The one weapon that gives humanity the capacity to defend itself against an otherwise theoretically unstoppable force?  You’re keeping Falchion in a treasury that only a tiny handful of very killable human beings can get into.  A tiny handful of very killable human beings who traditionally all congregate in the same palace, meeting with the same people, hanging out in the same throne room, eating at the same table!  The sword that represents the great and final hope of the human species is 1 really poorly-cooked fish dinner away from being lost forever to an uncooperative doorknob.

You know what would be a great way of keeping the stuff in your vault secure, but accessible to a highly reasonable degree?  A fucking key.  Just get some magical lock made that only recognizes a special royal crest or whatever--don’t pretend that’s gonna be less feasible than a goddamn DNA-scanning teleporter--and use that.  That way, the most important human being in the entire nation doesn’t have to lug himself through the catacombs every time Royal Gardener Harry needs the legendary +3 Vorpal Hedge Shears because those damned briars in the back are getting uppity again.  He can just give Harry--or a duly appointed designee, never put too much trust in a guy who has a wisteria as his emergency contact--the royal crest key thing, tell him to bring it right back afterwards, and get on with his day.

Hm?  What’s that?  Oh, “What if the Falchion falls into the wrong hands?”  Hmm, yeah, you know, I guess you’re right, it WOULD be pretty bad if someone were to kill the emperor, steal the key, and make a withdrawal of $God-Buster.  Yes, that’d be a real disaster!

But hey, you know what would also be pretty bad?  If instead of killing the emperor and getting the key to the vault, someone were to kill the emperor and there was no key and now no one can have the Falchion.  I mean, if we’re gonna suppose the possibility of a bad guy offing the emperor, I’d sure as hell rather run the risk of having to foil a villainous plot to abuse the power of the Falchion than to run the risk of the only defense against a malevolent god becoming eternally and irreversibly beyond anyone’s grasp.  Frankly, if it means not having to worry that humanity’s fate is 1 loose patch of carpeting on a palace stair away from sealed, I’ll happily run the risk of the royal treasury key being snatched up by any old pickpocket, some 2-bit usurper, or even just an intern who got mixed up and handed the emperor back the bathroom key by mistake.  A single detour from the main plot is all that’s required to fetch the damned key from a mortal holder.

But as the royal treasury stands now, a round of flu breaking out at the capital--or hell, even just a sole royal heir who doesn’t feel like walking all the way down there--is all it’ll take to make every single thing in that vault inaccessible forever.  Deus Ex Machina devices aren’t usually icons of intelligent thinking, but Fire Emblem 15’s royal treasury is a cut below nonetheless.

...And yes, I know that this is 1 of the least important things I’ve ever ranted about.  I’m not apologizing.

Chrono Trigger's Party Members' Pseudonyms

Aliases are not exactly an uncommon phenomenon in RPGs.  I mean, they aren’t in all of fiction, really, but they prevail especially often in this genre.  And that fact isn’t terribly surprising, either.  RPGs have the usual array of story-related reasons for characters to have multiple names and identities to go by which inevitably work their way into a plot twist later on--taking on a new name to go undercover (like a guy named Ryu beating the shit out of some hermit minding his own business named Baba so he can steal Baba’s identity because damn it all he’s gonna get those backstage passes 1 way or another), or making a clean break from the past (like a guy named Clyde taking on the name Shadow because he wants to avoid the messy business of child support checks), or deceiving the heroes into believing that their new best buddy is not actually a complete shitbag using them for nefarious ends (like a guy named Ghaleon deciding that his name just wasn’t sus enough and to begin moonlighting as the Magic Emperor), among many other examples.

But RPGs are also inordinately fond of of both the Plot-Induced Amnesia and the Rebellious Princess tropes, far more than most other narrative ventures, and these story paths are almost always accompanied by pseudonyms, since the schmucks in question either can’t remember their own names or view being known as royalty as a hindrance to adventuring (hell, sometimes it’s a 2-for-1 schmuck like Legrand Legacy’s Finn doing both routines).  It doesn’t always make a lot of sense--I really don’t know who Tales of Vesperia’s Princess Estellise thinks she’s fooling by choosing “Estelle” as her codename, that’s like someone named Jonathan going undercover as Jon--but it certainly does happen a lot all the same.

Oh, and also, goddesses who have reincarnated as humans and don’t remember that fact.  Holy fuck do RPGs ever love playing that card.  You can even get bonus pseudonyms out of that one--Erim from the Lufia series and Althena from the Lunar series each have (at least) 3 separate named identities, and can you imagine how many different monickers Hylia would’ve collected by this point if she didn’t just keep getting slapped with “Zelda” every time?  Woman would have so many aliases that the FBI would put her on a list just out of reflex.

Even considering how prone to pseudonyms the genre is as a whole, however, Chrono Trigger is a peculiar case.  Because while other RPGs might be content with 1, maybe 2 major characters who have separate names for substantial plot-related reasons, over half of Chrono Trigger’s main characters are known by pseudonyms!  There are, after all, only 3 characters in the party whose names are genuinely their own (Ayla, Lucca, and Crono), while the remaining 4 are known by adopted monickers.  Marle is actually Princess Nadia, Magus is actually Janus, Frog is actually Glenn, and Robo...well heck, Robo ought to count double, because he’s actually R66-Y AND Prometheus.*

And I can’t help but wonder: thematic, or a coincidence?

I mean, it’d be a hell of a chance occurrence to have 4 characters’ arcs all substantially involve adopted names in the same game, without the writers having intended the concurrence for any higher purpose.  Particularly since CT’s writers were all quite competent--it’d be out of character for this to just be a case of some oversight.

And it’s worth recognizing that each character’s pseudonym has different context and reason for its existence, but all could be seen to share a narrative purpose.  Marle chooses to be Marle, for positive and self-affirming reasons.  While the choice to hide her identity of Nadia might have briefly, at the start, been a matter of convenience (as she didn’t want Crono to treat her differently due to her status), after that point, being Marle is clearly a decision she makes for her own sake--”Marle” is who she really is, while “Nadia” is a restriction imposed upon her by people and circumstances she despises.  And while she does reconcile with her father and (presumably to some degree) her position as a princess, she and her character’s arc have made it clear that she’s not giving up the name she gave herself.  “Marle” is an identity, her identity, and “Nadia” a castoff that, at best, she won’t object to being called when her royal life does have to crop up.

Like Marle, Frog chooses his pseudonym--but for him, it’s clearly for negative reasons.  The name is a way of hiding within his cursed form, avoiding acknowledging his past failure as Glenn and hiding that truth from the world, particularly those he loves and respects, like Queen Leene and King Guardia.  While “Marle” is an identity of self-affirmation and freedom of individuality, “Frog” is one of shame and/or fear, an identity created to coincide with the cursed body that serves as a physical representation of Glenn’s failure and loss.  In terms of the identity of “Frog,” Glenn’s story is one of coming to terms with his past and an identity built on its consequences, and bringing honor and self-value back into his life as Frog.  While “Marle” is a positive identity to start with, “Frog” is one in which a healthy self-attitude must be grown--and even then, it’s almost certain that the identity of “Glenn” is the preferable one and would be who the man seeks someday to be again.

Robo, meanwhile, is an interesting variation.  Unlike Frog and Marle, Robo doesn’t choose his pseudonym, instead being dubbed such by Crono, who apparently either has no creativity whatsoever or just didn’t give half a shit.  “Robo” is the name of the character who develops from essentially nothingness from the moment that Lucca repairs him.  Unlike Marle and Frog, there’s not really any conflict of identity for the majority of the game for Robo--he doesn’t remember his previous life the way they do, and he isn’t given a chance, when meeting his assembly line brothers, to decide whether he wants to exist as Robo or as R66-Y, as they turn on him automatically.  While being called a defect distresses him and of course he doesn’t particularly like getting the crap kicked out of him, the incident never offers a choice to Robo regarding which identity he wants--by the end of it, the beings who have saved him are the ones who named him Robo and there’s nothing else left for him as R66-Y, so of course he’s going to be Robo going forward.  The choice only comes late in the game, and unexpectedly, as Atropos reveals that he had another identity as Prometheus before, and that he’d been meant to be an infiltration unit of sorts.  It’s a questionable claim, actually, given that Atropos herself is only being all genocide-y because her programming’s been tampered with by Mother Brain, but at the time said claim is made, Robo has no particular reason to doubt it.  Either way, the identity of “Robo” is the one that’s been given the time and opportunity to grow, and given things and people to cherish, while “Prometheus” is still just a theoretical that can’t be remembered, so the choice, while still significant, is nonetheless probably easy for Robo to make.  Though it was a name given to him, Robo has grown into his identity as such, and now chooses to be that self just as much as Marle does.

Magus, of course, is grumpy and not a team player even when it comes to narrative tools like character development, so we can’t really say for sure what the emotional circumstances are that tie him to his current name.  Maybe it was a name given him by Ozzie that he grew into like Robo, or maybe it’s something he wears because he’s ashamed of what he was as Janus like Frog, or maybe he legitimately only ever started feeling like a person in his own right once he was away from everyone who knew him by his former identity like Marle.  There’s a good chance it’s none of the above and more an edgy new-name-for-a-new-identity-of-VENGEANCE sort of thing.  Could also be something else entirely.  Regardless, we can’t say for sure exactly what the story of “Magus” is, only that he willingly keeps it.  But the absence of an answer is an answer too, in the sense that the mystery still makes it a different case from the other pseudonyms, from our audience perspective.

So the story of each character’s pseudonym is different, but they all clearly work toward similar purposes of showing identity as something consciously chosen.  Marle, Magus, and Robo all arrive at a destination of voluntarily embracing these identities, and even though Frog’s story is a bit different, it still revolves around him using a name to undergo an emotional journey to come to terms with and accept himself--it’s just that in his case, he’s arriving at an acceptance of “Frog” and more importantly a willingness to return to “Glenn” someday.  So there’s certainly a theme to be read here, one of the human will to choose their own self and to consciously defy or own the identity given to them by others.

I just don’t really know if this theme that you can find was actually intended.

I mean...yeah, okay, when the majority of your cast run in the same thematic circle, most often it’s for a reason.  Look at Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, after all.  The theme of ascension, of rising above the restrictions placed upon you by the universe, is all over the place in its cast’s stories, with succubi overcoming the Evil in their natures, and Hell Knights subtly working outside Law’s methods to achieve success, and broken PTSD-suffering fallen paladins being nurtured back to believing that a day might come when they’ll be okay again, and so on and so forth.  It’s all over the place; there’s very few major characters that don’t tie to this ascension theme in 1 fashion or another.
 
But at the same time...well, ascension is a theme that exists within and permeates PWotR far beyond just the main cast.  The story as a whole plays with it, the main villain ties to it, and it’s the very purpose itself of the true ending.  By contrast, as far as I can see, this concept of self-determined identity represented by pseudonym isn’t a part of Chrono Trigger as a whole.  Human will and potential is a major theme of the game, and I suppose that’s at least somewhere in the same ballpark as self-determined identity, but I think it’s a bit of a stretch to assume they’re intended to be connected, particularly since the method of the latter (the pseudonyms) doesn’t appear in any other significant part of the game.**

So...I’m inclined to say that the peculiar prevalence of pseudonyms in Chrono Trigger’s cast might, indeed, be more coincidence than contrived.  Maybe it was intended to tie to the game’s ideas on existential will and potential, but I just don’t see enough evidence of it.  Maybe the writers didn’t somehow overlook the fact that the game had so many main characters running around with aliases, but just recognized that what they’d made still works and wisely decided not to mess with it.  Anyway, the point is that I have fully wasted my time and yours considering a question no one was asking, and arriving at a conclusion that requires no shifting of one’s perspective on the matter in the slightest.  Aren’t you glad you read these things?




















* I mean I guess Frog also has a second pseudonym of Mr. Toad thanks to Crono’s mom, but just because all these amphibians look the same to her doesn’t mean that we should humor her blatant and disgusting racism.  Why, she was even shocked that one of Frog’s kind could articulate himself!  Truly disgraceful.  I ask you, where were Nintendo’s censors that day?


** Yes, Lavos is given a name by Ayla (like how Robo was named by the party), but it’s no pseudonym, because it’s the only name he ever possesses, nor is it part of any story of identity.  And yes, Gasper’s name is only revealed late in the game, but until that point he only has a title (Old Man), not an actual alternate alias.  And again, it isn’t used to explore any concept of identity.

Shin Megami Tensei 5's Incompetent Critique of the Law Route

Boil the art of debate down long enough to get to its rudimentary basics, and you find 2 elementary strategies that are employed when trying to persuade an audience: talking up your own side of the issue, and discrediting the opposing viewpoint.  Because we’re a contrary and, let’s face it, oftentimes stupid species, it can often be the case that convincing someone that your side is right is not nearly as effective and reliable as simply convincing them that the other sides are wrong.  If you want an example, look no further than the United States’ presidential elections, which have, for the entirety of my lifetime and far before even that, had their outcomes determined less by citizens voting for a candidate whom they believe in than by citizens voting against a candidate whom they despise.  If we ever as a collective nation decided to vote solely based on which political asshole we most believe in rather than which one we think has the best chance of beating the political asshole we hate, this 2-party nightmare we’ve been locked into for most of a century would be dispelled lickity-split, and we’d all be better off for it.  But because we’re easier to manipulate with enmity than with unity, that’s unlikely to happen.

The Shin Megami Tensei series has naturally made use of both basic sides of debate when its advocates for Law, Chaos, and Neutrality make their arguments to a game’s protagonist.  Even though Shin Megami Tensei 5 is reluctant to perform even the most minimal narrative labors expected of it, the game nonetheless does manage to halfheartedly go through a few motions of its philosophical emissaries making their cases for their faction and against the others.  And it’s on this point that we see not only that SMT5 is, as I have accused, barely written at all, but also that what stunted scraps of storytelling it does possess are often, as I have also previously accused,  poorly written, too.  Because Shin Megami Tensei 5’s Chaos advocates’ criticism of the side of Law is completely and clearly incompetent.

Atsuta, the flat, emotionless, shallow, pea-brained dipshit that SMT5 has the audacity to put forth as its Chaos Hero, makes the claim that Dazai, the hapless helpless hopeless goon that SMT5 has the audacity to put forth as its Law Hero, only believes that the world needs God Almighty because Dazai has stopped thinking for himself.  And under normal circumstances, this is the easy slam-dunk go-to criticism that the Shin Megami Tensei series is fond of leveling against its Law faction.  While I would argue strenuously that it’s a grossly oversimplified misrepresentation of 1 of the major motivations for choosing to side with Law in SMT, it’s at the same time quite impossible to argue in most of the titles that there’s not at least some merit to this accusation.  Many of the major Law figures in the series are basically hard-coded to follow God’s will, and the Heroes who partner with them are frequently doing so in large part out of a trust in and reliance on The Big Man to know what’s best for all.  Hell, I can’t even deny that my personal favor for Law over Chaos in SMT may be at least in some small part influenced by Christian concepts impacted upon me during formative years in my childhood.  There’s a fun and intelligent debate to be had about the line between mindless obedience and healthy and laudable faith as they apply to a character’s and one’s own choice to side with God and His Law, and I myself certainly see it as much closer to an admirable and reasoned display of faith than dull subservience...but it’s still a vulnerable chink in SMT Law’s armor.  Atsuta and his patron may completely lack the inclination and the logical capacity to actually explain why their version of Chaos is a good idea (or even makes any sense at all), but they at least can levy the golden standard personal attack against their ideological opponents.

Except that this time, it’s not accurate.  In fact, the claim that Dazai only advocates for Law because he’s stopped thinking for himself is blatantly incorrect to the point of exposing just how incompetently, stupidly ignorant the game’s writers were of their own damn work.  Because Dazai is literally the only character in the game who we actually SEE contemplate, in even the smallest regard, the world’s situation and what path must be taken forward!

Oh, sure, there’s a little bit here and there in Dazai’s dialogue over SMT5’s course that tells the audience that he’d rather be a follower to a leader better equipped to make decisions than to have to give input on future actions.  There’s even a conversation he has with the protagonist in which he hallucinates that Koshimizu ever asks his subordinates for their opinions on his orders, something which never happens nor is even hinted to be consistent to Koshimizu’s personality and leadership style, and Dazai laments that he’d rather not have to be a part of such a discussion when he doesn’t feel personally qualified to be.  The preference for following instead of leading is definitely shown to be there in Dazai.

But the fact of the matter is that of Atsuta, Dazai, and that shortsighted laughable clown Yakumo--not to mention the Nahobino himself--Dazai is the ONLY faction representative in Shin Megami Tensei 5 to actually be seen weighing his options, stressing out about what needs to be done for the world, and taking the steps to come to the conclusion that his faction is the best course to follow.  Yakumo will haughtily deign to briefly outline why he believes in his cause, and his partner Nuwa will later neatly deliver the brusque, inadequate little sob story of how Yakumo became such a violently sanctimonious prick, but he’s long since determined his stance on the world by the time of the game’s events.  Atsuta, meanwhile, doesn’t do the audience even that small service, instead just going along with Koshimizu’s Chaos plan without questioning it or himself even once.  But Dazai we see express concern about the future of Tokyo and the world, debate with himself what to do to bring the order he thinks the world needs back now that it’s confirmed that God is dead, and persuade Abdiel to defy the letter of God’s law (which dictated that there would be no more Nahobinos) in order preserve its spirit, talking her into becoming a fallen angel to accomplish God’s will in ways she could not as the champion who outlived Him.  It may still be rushed and it may still be laughably over the top and the origin of Dazai’s boner for YHWH may still be a mystery, but at the very least we do SEE Dazai actually think about the cause he’s going to champion before committing to it, he can explain (albeit simplistically) in his own words why he believes in his cause instead of just parroting Daddy Koshimizu’s propaganda, and he can point to his experience with a practical example of the Chaos faction’s goal as evidence of why it won’t work.

And not for nothing, but the way Dazai goes about pursuing his goal of restoring God’s order is not something you could call thoughtless.  Sure, most of the time, pulling for Law in SMT does just boil down to “Do what the angel says and shut the fuck up,” not exactly a course of action that necessitates an inventive mind.  But after thinking about his position, Dazai does enough creative thinking to conclude that God’s function and value can still be restored by replacing Him with an equal rather than getting stuck on the fact that He was killed, and then is innovative enough to conceive and propose a plan to Abdiel to get her to join him in this pursuit, and argue for that plan well enough that the archangel of God’s will embraces the need to betray God’s law as the only way to serve it.  The mere idea of a fallen angel being the only one who can do right by God’s memory is by itself a clear case of thinking outside the box, for that matter.  Wouldn’t the act of defying God’s expressly stated command for the sake of restoring God’s big picture be the very opposite of what Dazai would do if he weren’t thinking for himself?

And it’s Atsuta who has the gall to make this claim.  Atsuta, the eternal lapdog of Koshimizu, who never gives the slightest indication that he possesses the basic human capacity to think critically about his actions or the orders he’s given.  Atsuta, the guy who’s the exact same character at the end of the game as he is at its beginning, blandly defined by the trait of a dogged determination to protect Tokyo and an equally unrelenting determination not to consider for himself how that goal should manifest.  He’s accusing someone else of choosing thoughtless obedience.

I’m not even really all that annoyed with Atsuta, honestly.  He just isn’t even human enough to warrant it; the guy’s closer to an inanimate object than he is a facsimile of a person.  I might as well get upset with a napkin.  But I certainly can get frustrated with the creators of the game for this blatant, blindingly-obviously boneheaded criticism of Dazai.  The “you don’t think for yourself” criticism is, as I mentioned, the go-to for the Chaos crowd in SMT, and because Atlus simply couldn’t find it in itself to actually do its job, it just grabbed the fall-back and didn’t consider the matter any further than that.  A single, passing glance at the script for SMT5 would have been enough to realize, for the writers--if there really were any--that the scenario they had in their gross sloth created was the exact opposite of one in which that criticism would have been applicable, but they just couldn’t be bothered to give even that glance.  It’s not like there was all that much there to have to reread!  I’ve seen more verbose manifestos on the back of some cereal boxes than certain entire chapters of this game’s script can boast.  It’s like Shin Megami Tensei 5 is a parody of itself--its authors threw out a pre-made criticism that used to mean something in the series, they did it reflexively and without a thought, and it turned out to be a condemnation of that very action.

Octopath Traveler 1's Language

Well, I may be back to boycotting SquareEnix, and even more enthusiastically than the first time for that matter, but if someone goes and buys 1 of their games and gifts it to me, then the damage is already done and I may as well let myself enjoy the game.  If that’s possible, that is--this is SquareEnix we’re talking about, there’s like a 5% chance of anything they publish being even remotely close to passable.  But Octopath Traveler seems to be that rare roll of a Natural 20, and I’m thankful that the money spent on this generous gift to me was at least in support of an actually good game.

Anyway, enough of my excuses for owning a modern SquareEnix title and my grumpy reticence to give the company its extremely rare due accolades.  On with the rant.



A few years ago, I made a rant about how much I enjoyed Bravely Default’s elegant and smooth use of older, uncommon language.  Well, I figure it’s only fair that I also point out and applaud Octopath Traveler 1 for doing the same, particularly since it might actually be even better than Bravely Default at it!

Octopath Traveler 1 (and probably its sequel, but I’ve only played the first) is a game whose translators clearly delighted in the elaborate and elegant past of the English language.  As with Bravely Default before it, OT1 liberally employs a slew of interesting, extravagant language more at home with centuries’ past than with our own modern age of communication, to the end of better selling its medieval-to-Elizabethan-era settings.  And it’s quite successful at doing so--the skilled, natural way that Octopath Traveler 1 employs its grasp of the old, ornate side of English merges perfectly with its artistic style to draw the player into the olden-style towns and villages.  Additionally, again much the same as Bravely Default, OT1 approaches this linguistic task fully with its modern audience in mind.  It’s not like reading Shakespeare, which requires from a present-day reader some development of reading technique that can decipher the bard’s elaborate but daunting prose and poetry into modern meaning.  It flows easily for a modern reader/listener and the meaning of characters’ words is always clear enough from context, at least as far as I can tell.

Now, the fun thing about Octopath Traveler 1 is that it also goes an extra mile in a couple of ways that I don’t remember Bravely Default doing (although, in fairness, it’s been a few years since I played the only real Final Fantasy game that SquareEnix has allowed to be made in 2 decades).  The first is that OT1 uses a wider social net for its older English terms.  Yeah, you’ve got plenty of characters using the higher-brow language and phrases, your “augurs” “naifs” and “mollycoddles” and verb versions of “warrant” and the like, as seen in BD...but Octopath Traveler 1 also has no qualms whatever about slumming it a bit when the common man is speaking, either.  It’s just as comfortable bandying the cruder vernacular of the peasantry around as it is with the fancy stuff.  And I’m a simple man--I see a game that can casually, authentically throw “summat” around, and it gets my approval.

It’s even got archaic profanity in it!  I let out a squawk of delight when I saw the villain of Olberic’s story exclaim “God’s teeth!” in frustration at Olberic’s unrelenting nobility.  There’s also a “‘swounds” or 2 to be found, too.  Honestly, it’s a damn shame we didn’t have translators this knowledgeable and talented working at Squaresoft back in the 90s, because there’s no way Nintendo’s famously enthusiastic censors of the era would have been able to keep up.

And the other avenue in which Octopath Traveler 1 ups the game from the high standard Bravely Default set is with its regional dialects.  Not satisfied just with showing off their well-earned degrees in English Linguistic History with uniform speech patterns, the writers/translators of OT1 also vary the manner in which characters and NPCs speak by region and town.  Olberic, Cyrus, H’aanit, and Primrose, for example, all clearly have their own distinctive speech patterns, as do the regions of their origins, which stand out as different iterations of older English just as clearly as modern-day accents distinguish themselves as separate versions of the same contemporary language.  I love H’aanit’s heavy Chaucerian olde English especially; the woman is speaking it more thickly and constantly than Frog, Cyan, and Dynaheir all rolled into one.*  I mean, okay, granted, her dialect is, when I look it up, apparently not 100% correct/accurate/consistent, but it’s certainly still pretty solid all the same, and more than convincing and consistent enough for most players to enjoy and find interesting and appealing.  And these regional accents are even appropriately selected for immersion’s sake in some cases--the most noticeably dense dialect of old English is that of H’aanit’s village, and that tracks, because they’re the 1 community of the bunch that’s the most isolated from the rest of Orsterra’s population, so it makes sense that their speech patterns would remain the most unchanged by contact with other communities.

It’s a minor virtue, but Octopath Traveler 1’s skill and creativity in employing earlier terms and conventions of the English language is the kind of characteristic that adds flavor to an RPG, flavor that makes it stand out amongst its peers and develops a distinctive personality for it.  Octopath Traveler 1’s writers and/or translators deserve recognition for their work just as Bravely Default 1’s did, more even, because it elegantly takes what BD did even further.  Well done, Acquire Corp!













* And unlike those 3, the culture of her origins actually also speaks the way she does.  I mean, okay, I think we never actually saw where Baldur’s Gate 1’s Dynaheir came from, and you can maybe pass Chrono Trigger’s Frog off as having intentionally adopted a different manner of speaking to further hide his identity as Glenn (or explain it away as a peculiar side effect of Magus’s curse)...but what the hell was the deal with Final Fantasy 6’s Cyan, at the very least?  “Mr. Thou” indeed.