We’ve passed the point of no return! Still a ways to go, but the end is in sight.
“The lone fear that all of Do’Ssha has felt since its inception has come alive.”
Hm. This implies I was correct in my earlier assumption, and a war has never happened before. This raises the possibility that NORTH KOREA THE UNSTOPPABLE is in fact stoppable and they just don’t realize it because they’ve never put it to the test. All they know about the Silver Army is what their intel gives them, which is nothing but OMG SO UNSTOPPABLE YOU HAVE NO IDEA. (This could be justified if the army is actually quite efficient at oppressing their own people, which is all spies would see.) Having no other information to go off of, they buy into the hysteria and believe they are doomed. Only when the two armies meet on the battlefield will Do’Ssha realize the soldiers are all emaciated wrecks that will crumple in minutes. Interestingly, thanks to Dehl’s interference this never happens, so the fear will continue and this will just happen again. Heroes!
“Who shall speak on behalf of your guild? Step forward and address the crowd.”
[awkward pause]
Yfus: (“Well? Go on, Sikohlon. You don’t want to keep everyone waiting.”)
Dehl: (“But, I am neither a commander nor an orator. Won’t one of your own be better received?”)
Ques: (“Just do it, Squire, lest I drag you up myself.”)
This is really something that should have been worked out before the finale. This is an early step in a character arc, not a final one. The stage fright and “I am not your leader” waffling should have been worked out in an earlier scene where he had to do something similar with fewer stakes, then here he should not hesitate, to contrast with the previous misstep. This is just awkward coming this late in the story. The speech itself isn’t terribly impressive either, just the generic comforting nonsense about how their spirit and resolve will protect them and cannot be broken etc. etc. You know, it would be interesting if he actually bought into the religion and believed that bolstering the people’s faith would have tangible impact. That would make this kind of thing less hollow.
Congregationman: (“Well spoken, d’an. The people must not become fearful, above all else.”)
This would imply that NORTH KOREA THE UNSTOPPABLE truly is unstoppable and they are desperately trying to keep a lid on things.
Fell then arrives and starts ranting about how they’re dooming everyone for unspecified reasons.
Dehl: “If we do not stop Zaka now, then the world may very well perish beneath his boot.”
The what now? We’ve seen no indication this is the case. Only two things motivate them: they want food and they want to kill the Do’Sshans. Sacking the city accomplishes both these goals; they should be mollified at that point. Unless Dehl believes they want to convert the rest of the world as well, there is no reason to think they’ll continue conquering. Even if they do, their victory is far from certain – they’ll have to switch to naval warfare, which they have no experience in, and they’ll be up against two superpowers. I get that the climactic confrontation needs to have high stakes, but the evidence just doesn’t support it. It’s like the game suddenly realized it was the end so it had to scale things up but didn’t notice it never set the groundwork because it kept retreading the minor regional conflict plot. It’s such an easy fix, too! All it would take is a single line of “and after Do’Ssha I will destroy the foreign heathens too, muahahaha” and there you go. Instead this is a total non-sequitor.
Fell: “Mmmph! These political squabbles are not what you must truly fear!”
Dehl: “Then, what?”
Fell: “Do not ask, only obey. It is not within your scope to understand yet, Ilganyag.”
She is not very good at this. However, I do like the idea of the big apocalyptic destiny stuff being at odds with more mundane conflicts rather than everything working out conveniently as is so often the case in fantasy stories. It’d be a good commentary on the real world, too, where there are so many issues of varying scope and importance that must be carefully juggled.
Dehl manages to convince her anyway.
Fell: “Let us hope, then, that the fraying of the thread of time has at last reached a knot.”
Ooh, more cool-sounding pretentious nonsense! I missed these.
In the next scene we get payoff for the events of the previous quest. Mahk chews Dehl out on being a bad pacifist.
Mahk: “Are you certain they were kidnappers at all? Or did you just charge in at the slightest provocation because you had the strength? […] According to Xopi, those men were helping him find shelter for the Night. Nothing more.”
I’m not buying this. They were Nalians, a group we have seen again and again treat shra like dirt, and who we are explicitly told have been enslaving Do’Sshans. Barring extreme counterevidence, I am skeptical of any claim they were helping a shra out of pure compassion. And let’s look at that conversation again:
Human Smuggler: “Wh-what in the hell?! Who are you?”
Rehm: “What’re you plannin’ on doin’ with the kid, huh? Gonna take ’em back to Nal, maybe?”
Dehl: “Kidnappers. Surrender now, or I cannot guarantee your lives shall be spared.”
Nalian Officer: “Surrender? To you? Are you kidding?”
Dehl: “So be it. You have brought harm to one of my own. This is an unforgivable trespass.”
They acted highly suspicious – they did not deny the claim of kidnapping, or of harming Xopi. They did not even express confusion at Dehl’s order to surrender, just aggression. Dehl made little attempt to negotiate, but they made none. It seems they knew full well why he was attacking them.
This may be the intended reading, though. Despite my earlier misgivings, this is handled with some nuance:
Dehl: “I regret knowing what Xopi is experiencing, yet I do not regret acting as I did. You are welcome, Father Mahk, for being reunited with your son. That is all I can say.”
Mahk: “So be it. You are unfit for nurturing the Sikohlon way of life. No longer may we call you ‘Brother.’ Keep your savagery away from the younglings. […] What would your own Father say if he were here to see this? Hmph. Come, Xopi.”
Dehl takes this surprisingly well – he honestly seems more concerned by Xopi being traumatized than his failure to uphold the Sikohlon values. This actually presents an interesting take on the pacifist hero that’s different from the typical approach of throwing them in a violent situation and calling it a day. It invites the question of what the ideals really meant to him: did he ever really believe them, or was he only ever doing it for social acceptance? It’s hard to say how much is genuine apathy and how much is him presenting a strong face, but I like to believe he’s starting to realize the Sikohlon ideals don’t really work for him and is letting go. It’s probably for the best, honestly; they were more holding him back than anything.
Mahk: “And you, Rehm? You’re Dehl’s elder; surely you would know better? It seems not.”
Rehm: “H-hey, that ain’t fair! We had t’act fast, ya know? We didn’t know what they’d do!”
Also, this is why I don’t like including Rehm in the scene. This feels very token, obligatory, and wooden. It muddles the impact of the scene by distracting us from the central thread without adding anything itself. If Rehm was more relevant, if he either tried to talk Dehl down or supported his decision and drove him to violence faster, his inclusion in the conversation could add more depth while still keeping the focus on Dehl. Instead he’s talking scenery.
The Sikohlon leave. Xopi hangs back to look at Dehl, but runs away when Dehl tries to reach out to him.
Qualstio: “Forget them. No one ever got anything done by standing back and just watching.”
Originally I thought the story was wholly on Mahk’s side and this is supposed to be Dehl’s tragic downfall, but now I’m reconsidering, especially given that Qualstio is always the voice of the author truth. (That “what would your father think” line reeks of dramatic irony, too.) I’m okay with that, since both sides seem reasonable – Dehl did go too far and the pacifists are understandably angry, but at the same time crippling inaction is not a healthy philosophy, and Dehl is starting to realize that.
(This also seems like it might be a jab at the Watchers. Certainly the reason they fail is because Fell refuses to act…)
Like with so many other things, though, this is rushed. There’s enough material for some analysis and speculation, but there’s too little real estate for it to go to proper lengths. It’s crammed in with this other more important plot event that doesn’t give us enough time to dwell on the topic long enough, and the rest of the game doesn’t form a nice even progression either – basically the entire arc took place over this one chapter. We should have had more discussion on what the ideals were and what they meant to him before this – that would have provided more food for thought and made this conclusion more significant. It’s much more coherent than other characters’ plotlines, but it could have gone deeper.
After that, Bit Character from the first quest shows up to give Dehl some shiny magic armor. He’s still totally extraneous. While I do think the armor is important, Dehl could easily get it from the Congregation directly, or maybe Syri.
I like this. It’s a good symbol for Dehl shedding his previous life and becoming more warlike, and the subtle change to a more hardened expression is an excellent touch. The transformation really shows how much he’s changed and how far he’s come, especially since it comes right on the heel of rejecting the Sikohlon.
And now for the main event.
We get shots of the opposing armies beforehand. No points for guessing which army comes from the side with food and which one comes from the side without.
Dehl makes an earnest effort to talk him down – he really seems to be trying, good pacifist hero! Unfortunately Zaka is insane.
Zaka: “I am merely a tool of my own people. It is their will to recover their home. The remnants of Do’Ssha must be gathered in order to sustain the True Believers. The people have been calling for such an end for so long. They must be heard. […] Ample warning was given for the people. So they flee, just as from the True Home.”
Yfus: “Not so. Not a soul among them has refused to stay and defend what they hold dear.”
Zaka: “They remain, despite my warnings? Despite knowing what was to come? I see… …the Kir’Sshans’ plans are set, however, and so long as I stand, they do as well. I harbor no control over their wills, except as tinder for flames of their souls. Isn’t it obvious that such a raging fire cannot be controlled by one man, Yfus? […] I love my people. All of them, great and small. It pains me to see them suffer so. […] If you wish to stop the Silver Army, you have but one target to strike down. I am the beacon, the leader. Each step I take echoes with the soles of a thousand. Do you understand what I am saying?”
Dehl: “Zaka, we have no desire to bring harm to your followers, if you withdraw now.”
Zaka: “And if I cannot? As I have said, I am the Silver Army. […] Shed one life to save thousands. That is my proposition to you, outsiders. Stop me, stop the Silver Army, stop the war. You can accomplish all three, here and now. Come, make this dune my grave! I implore you, strike me down for all to see!”
Well, that was a mess. Let’s go over this piece by piece.
I harbor no control over their wills, except as tinder for flames of their souls. Isn’t it obvious that such a raging fire cannot be controlled by one man?
This is absolutely ridiculous. I mean obviously, be wary of anyone who claims it’s so hard having power, it’s hard and nobody understands. But even beyond that… While there is a grain of truth to this in that going against the will of the people does eventually make them turn on you, leaders are not literally forced to do things. They can – and frequently have to – make unpopular decisions. (Theocracies, in particular, can do pretty much whatever they feel like.) It is possible that calling off the invasion could have the consequence of him losing power afterward, but he is still capable of doing it. Especially after he just said that his death would irreparably shatter the army’s morale – wouldn’t his surrender accomplish the same? This is incredibly forced. There is no logical reason for why he has to be so dramatic about this. The only fanwanking I can do is that it’s as an honor thing, where he would rather die nobly in the eyes of his followers than flee with his tail between his legs. Or maybe he’d rather die than live without power. Still incredibly contrived, though.
I love my people. All of them, great and small. It pains me to see them suffer so.
And this is just patently untrue. Was the Zaka who murdered a dozen outcasts for existing his evil twin or something?
But that’s not the stupidest part. No, this is the stupidest part:
They remain, despite my warnings? Despite knowing what was to come? I see…
This is what makes him change his mind. The heroes march here with the expectation that they will need to work tooth and nail to convince this guy due to the complex stakes involved, and all it took was Do’Ssha’s meaningless suicidal gesture. It even comes right after he says he’s doing it for the resources! But apparently his opponents converting to his nonsensical philosophy impresses him so much he becomes willing to let his people starve on the spot. Either the war is practical and necessary or pointless and dogmatic, pick one.
Come, make this dune my grave! I implore you, strike me down for all to see!
Finally, this annoys me. We just had an entire scene about how killing is wrong and the protagonist has all sorts of pacifism issues and how he has to be ready to kill this guy, then the villain conveniently goes oh no problem I’ll kill myself, no skin off your back. The hero never has to take responsibility or make any hard choices, everything’s just conveniently dealt with for him. Even at the climax, the protagonists are leaves in a river who get the solutions handed to them on a silver platter. This also makes the resulting battle nonsensical – if he’s trying to lose, why does he put up such a fight?
Because put up a fight he does. I hesitate to call this the absolute hardest battle in the game (the warden gives him a run for his money), but it’s still a brick wall that requires specific strategies to overcome.
(And yes, he brought four mooks with him for his suicide charge, because he loves his people so very much.)
He always starts the battle with this technique, allowing all the lackeys to get the first turn. The savants aren’t much of a problem (my mind defenses are pretty good by this point), but the sentinels can do this:
This is the biggest obstacle in this battle. If you’re very unlucky and the sentinels spam Blistering Radiance, it’s easy to get stunlocked to death. (On this run, for instance, I actually got stunlocked so bad Zaka did a second Charge Call before I got a chance to act.) It disables, too, so what few turns you do get aren’t going to accomplish much. The outcome of the battle is usually decided by how often they use this ability.
This is Zaka’s breather attack. It stings (~16 damage) but it’s nothing I can’t handle. I’m pretty sure there are no other body attacks in this battle so it’s pretty safe, especially with full-party regeneration from K.
Falitza finally gets a reading on him (300 body and mind, 350 soul), and things are looking pretty good. I’ve already taken down one mook and I’m at stage 2 rush. I think I have this in the bag.
…Or not.
This is Zaka’s gimmick. If he reaches the front line, you lose. The Threshing is an autokill against anyone without heavy armor who isn’t Tez, unless you do some crazy body stat grinding. I actually get off pretty lightly due to all the heavies in my party (that last-minute armor upgrade really comes in handy for Dehl), but there’s no hope of me winning now that I’ve lost Sirush so early, so I restart.
This is a pretty clever idea. It uses the rush mechanic against you (advancing the front line makes Zaka reach it faster), but at the same time the player isn’t totally screwed because many upgraded abilities have respectable knockback. This is good for making knockback relevant in general – throughout most of the game it’s pretty pointless since all it does is push enemies outside of your range, but here it may be your only chance at survival. In addition, having this ace up his sleeve makes Zaka dangerous even after you deal with his lackeys – even the warden was manageable once I took out the mooks, but here you have to stay on your toes the entire time, which is unusual for boss fights in this game.
However, I do find it underhanded. No other enemy has any kind of special trigger for an attack, and you’re given absolutely no hint that Zaka will do this. The Do’Sshan agents don’t give you any warning before the fight, no “don’t let him get close” or anything like that. Most players will just be battling normally then whoops, game over! Perhaps the idea was that’s okay because there’s no quest beforehand (so you can just jump back in), but it still strikes me as cheating. Like with the tatzylvurm, there’s no way to prepare for it.
…And I just realized that could be a really clever analogy for the Watcher’s experiences or video games in general. You’re constantly thrown curve balls and the only way to survive is to go through the battle once to see what you’re up against before losing. Maybe if you never actually gameovered but your total number of defeats were recorded, and the Watchers acknowledged this…
(Storywise it’s also dumb; he’s trying to lose so why does he go all out? Just what is he trying to accomplish here, take some irrelevant foreigners with him?)
Anyway, as much as it pains me, Falitza is just too useless in this battle to be wasting a slot. I swap her out for Lani the invincible.
This is all she will be doing for the entire battle. This skill, Knockout, is useless in all other circumstances but perfect for this battle. It stuns, disables, and inflicts knockback, all of which are valid methods for neutralizing Zaka. If you disable him on the front line he’ll actually just stand there and do nothing! I picture him looking like a sad, confused kitten. I will admit that Tez is also uncharacteristically useful; his full-party disable and stun skills are quite useful for managing the early battle, and provide a backup if Knockout fails.
Unfortunately Knockout has a random success rate, and I slip up here. Sirush gets taken out and I realize Santes is the only other one with a mind attack. Fortunately Sirush did enough damage for me to whittle him down with Sanctify and pull through.
…Okay, I know this is supposed to be really serious and dramatic, but all I can think is that looks exactly like my cats do when they stretch, which is the most adorable thing ever. It’s been kind of hard to take this plotline seriously when all the participants are modeled after adorable domestic animals. Games with more detailed graphics can get around this by modeling cat anthros after wild cats to make them look more fearsome (The Drop, where a new character artist came on, actually does accomplish this), but RPG Maker graphics can’t really cut it.
And huh, that blood sure is purple. Maybe that NPC had the right of it after all.
Upon witnessing Zaka’s death the army retreats, just as he said. So now they’re going to starve to death, but it’s okay because the side the heroes liked gets to keep the city they don’t care about. Good end! And once again NORTH KOREA THE UNSTOPPABLE seems really pathetic if this is all it took to crush their morale. They don’t even try to avenge him, even though they’d surely win against such a small group! This feels like a parody of fundamentalism rather than a realistic depiction. “Oh no, our leader is slain! God has clearly forsaken us so let’s just sit down and die instead of doing anything about it! Religion is just so kooky, don’t you know?”
Yfus calmly reports that Zaka suicided (so why was that battle so difficult), then walks away without so much of a second glance at his brother’s corpse because he is a stone cold sociopath. This is why I never connected the dots until the developer explicitly told me; even if they were estranged, they shouldn’t be this apathetic about murdering each other. Yfus acts like he just killed a stranger, not someone he knew intimately for his entire childhood. There’s no indication that this is just him burying his true feelings either, because the mask never slips. Either he should be more conflicted or the relation should be explicitly revealed so he can explain why it won’t affect his actions – the closest we get to that is like two lines in “Silver Opportunity” when Yfus tells his dad he’s a-okay with fighting Zaka without providing any explanation why. Honestly, his relation to Zaka is kind of important information and it’s irresponsible of him not to bring it up. I can understand initially when he’s not very invested, but according to his sidequest he cares deeply about stopping the war by this point. This could have been good plot fodder and used to make this endgame character more relevant, but instead it’s just sort of there, and not even handled well enough to be a proper mystery.
…So! This chapter was a mess, but at least stuff actually happened! For once there was consistently stuff to properly criticize instead of my usual fare of “why no plot I hate everything” on loop. How would I fix it? Well, to begin with, I wouldn’t make it in the first place. As I said at the end of chapter 4, the final chapter should be a true climax that breaks out of the mold and integrates all the setup that came before. This is just more of the usual fare, and it’s honestly pretty extraneous to the greater plot. Skint’s already laid the groundwork for a war plot with more relevance to the themes, the si’shra have the creepy religious angle covered, and the last-minute revelation that there’s a safe haven for shra derails the previous setup without actually going anywhere. It only seems there to de-legitimize Skint – see, shra aren’t oppressed absolutely everywhere, he’s just an extremist reactionary! But assuming this is in a vacuum…
I’ve already outlined most of my plot rewrite in part 59, but there were a few bits I didn’t cover. First and foremost, cut “Sanctuary” – its only unique contributions are Weso, who as I’ve already established is extraneous, and the personal shrines thing, which doesn’t go anywhere and can be relegated to a minor NPC explanation somewhere. “End of Days” works fine as an intro quest, though if we really want to expedite the plot they can meet Syri at the beginning and do a task for her as the intro quest. Expanding the early scenes to establish Syri’s character more strongly would be wise, and the backstory discussion should happen before “The Blinding” so it’s not awkwardly dumped in the middle of a plot scene. More detail is given on how Ques screwed up and his feelings on the matter. The revelation that he got the murder spies killed throws him, and this provides the basis for him warming up to Syri and admitting his wrongdoing. I also think the stakes should be played up – instead of this being a secret thing only the heroes know, the entire city is on edge and everyone’s playing into the NORTH KOREA THE UNSTOPPABLE hysteria. Also, there’s either a reason for why the citizens can’t flee the coop, or an exodus is foreshadowed as the final solution by going into Do’Ssha’s history more. That would be a truly clever and subversive resolution.
I’ve outlined Kir’Ssha already, but for some more specific ideas: An emphasis is placed on how the Kir’Sshans are suffering too, and Dehl realizes their army is so pathetic that a conflict would just annihilate both cities. More interesting information and more Kir’Sshan defectors in “The Blinding” would help this. Zaka is not a poor, misunderstood dictator, he’s a cruel monster and Dehl kills him not just to stop the war but to liberate Kir’Ssha from his tyranny. (He is also a caster because seriously why so little magic in this.) There is hope there: Stopping this single incursion just delays the inevitable, but destroying their power structure could lead to longer-lasting change by eroding their toxic fundamentalism.
Integrating the Sikohlon stuff is harder because it’s just so divorced from the rest of the plot. There’s a thematic connection of cult-like dogma and the spineless pacifists make a good backdrop for a story about activism and war, but…eh, I dunno. The events of “The Blackening” are redundant; Mahk should flip out over Dehl killing Zaka instead, which shocks Dehl as he realizes how close he was to letting the berserker inside him loose (maybe guilt over Syri/Ques’ death also hits here). At the same time, he realizes the Sikohlon philosophy isn’t as perfect as his rose-tinted glasses remember. It’s missing the forest for the trees, and Dehl decides he has to look at a bigger picture (scope!) to make moral decisions in the future. That’s basically what we have already, but it should be expanded into a longer scene and made more explicit.
But that’s not all. We finally got enough information this chapter to get into the fun stuff: worldbuilding! My biggest concern was the impossible ecology, and I advocated a mundane solution to that earlier. But this is fantasy – we don’t have to constrain ourselves to a solution as boring as the disaster made it harder to grow stuff but not so hard they can’t grow anything. There’s magic – divine magic, at that – and it would be a waste if we didn’t play around with it!
What if we took a page from Dungeons & Dragons and said the priests can create food and water magically? Probably really bland food, probably not enough to feed everyone all the time, but it could conceivably sustain a state with no natural food sources. That alone is an interesting concept, but add in the religious element and suddenly the worldbuilding writes itself. No wonder these people are so dogmatic – they are literally kept alive by the grace of God alone, or so they believe. There could be a vast church conspiracy going on between the true believers and the manipulators who know “divine” magic is a load of crap. One of the Kir’Sshan quests could be infiltrating them, even! This would also explain why Kir’Sshans believe they are favored by God – something that always baffled me in the game, where they suffer while the heretics and heathens prosper. The constant diligence required by the priests would also make them leagues more powerful than Do’Ssha’s casters (or you could just say there’s a natural magic boost to the area, since the black sand comes from Fortifel that would actually make sense), providing an explanation for how they could conceivably pose a threat. Bam, there, a sustainable but crappy ecology coupled with a terrifyingly powerful elite constantly reinforcing theocratic logic. It’s perfect. (As a bonus, this makes Ques’ Fortian education relevant – he would know how to combat high-level casters and debunk their propaganda, something that could earn him Syri’s respect.) More should be done with the religion too; right now it’s just your generic Christianity clone, none of the interesting weirdness of the si’shra religion.
If you want a catalyst for the war instead of the leaders just being dicks, say something destroyed what little food Kir’Ssha could grow. This real food went to the wealthy elite, and now they’re pissed that they have to eat ectoplasm like everyone else. This would mean the war is truly unnecessary with only a veneer of practicality, so the end product of averting it is no longer and then all the Kir’Sshans starved to death. Everything works out in the end, both on a small scale and on the bigger picture the game is supposed to make you look at.