Last time, I made a lot of references to the prequel that probably confused people. Also, death!
Let’s look at that picture again:
…I know this is supposed to be super dramatic and I shouldn’t be thinking about this, but once again I am distracted by the logistics. They’re all in the exact same spots they were before, as if they were all killed instantly. And why would the attacker just leave their sword there??? Perhaps you’re supposed to think this is weird and that Donz has super killing powers. I have no idea.
The guild assumes Donz was the culprit, seeing as he was the only other person in the area.
Tezkhra: (“What a disaster. The Watchers, the Cycle, myself… nothing went well for anyone. Still, with the third ‘Pillar’ inactive, they may eventually come for us according to plan…”)
This will be explicitly contradicted a little while from now. Universe hopping!
Unfortunately, with no Mysterious Plot People to make them do things, we return to the adventures of failheroes. Dehl decides to sit here and do absolutely nothing in the hopes that the gods will arrive eventually.
Tezkhra: “This room is not as it seems. I must ask that you report to me if you feel at all unusual.”
Santes: “Huh? Like, what?”
Tezkhra: “I cannot say exactly. This room was never meant to house people such as yourselves.”
This is all he does to dissuade them. Originally I thought this was idiotic of him, but actually, if he truly believes the gods will arrive eventually there’s no reason to be concerned about wasting time. As far as he knows there is no reason to return to the surface, so the time-skipping is not an issue. This actually fits perfectly fine with his aloofness and alien motives.
Everyone says that they actually feel great – no tiredness or hunger. Dehl removes the bodies so they stop creeping people out. (…Where do they put them, though? Do they dump them off the platform, or just leave them outside the room? Stop distracting me with weird logistics, game!) There’s a fade to black.
Tez walks in.
Yfus: “Back so soon? That was fast. Did you find a way to take down that gate?”
Tezkhra: “…ah, no, it is quite secure. I have not the capability to open it from this side… mmm…”
And the game resisted the urge to spew thought bubbles everywhere, hooray! See how much better this works? I can actually wonder about his actions and motives! And what was he doing? He can open the gate just fine, but the ending implies he didn’t investigate the central pillar here. Maybe he poked at the minor pillars?
Everyone makes small talk. Yay character building!
Moke: “Oooh… young master… such horrors! I dislike seeing you in such pain. It is not fair!”
Yfus: “You whine too much, Shra-friend. Sikohlon needs to concentrate now more than ever.”
Rehm: “Yeh, he’s got to keep that cool head on straight if he’s gonna help save th’ day!”
Yeah, give him more pressure, that’ll help!
Ques: “Hmmm… mmmph.”
Sirush: “State your preoccupation.”
Ques: “Just wondering what sort of mischief my sister has gotten herself in to. Since we repelled the Silver Army, I am sure she would try to storm the gates herself.”
Sirush: “Mmm… mmmhmhmhm.”
Ques: (“Was that… a chuckle?”)
Ugh. Why does everyone have to be so nasty all the time? Sirush should be sympathetic, he’s pining after a lost loved one too. But no, these are the cool snarky kids, empathy and friendship are for losers. Other than that this is a pretty good and moving snippet, even if it does remind me of the issues with that plotline.
Santes: “Zargos… we’re gonna be all right, aren’t we? This is all too much. I’m scared!”
Zargos: “Now, dear, everything’ll be fine, so long as we’re together. We’ll be outta here soon.”
Santes: “I wish we could just go home… just settle down! We can’t keep doin’ this forever!”
And the hysterical woman needs her man to hold her, because adventuring is for rugged manly men and not silly wimmins.
Lani: “Well? You ain’t said nothin’ at all since we got outta Do’Sha. Think they’ll be all right?”
Fero: “For a year or so, perhaps. Then, all that we accomplished will be gone and forgotten.”
He makes a very good point. Their accomplishment was a stopgap measure, not a permanent solution. Maybe that was supposed to be the point? The guild only ever makes temporary solutions while ignoring the greater problems, because scope? It’s very muddled if that was the intention, though. There’s too little emphasis on the big picture and too much emphasis on how great the heroes are for their stopgaps. And it never goes anywhere; if that was supposed to be the emphasis, the big wham coming up should be related to their failures, but it isn’t.
Falitza: (“Is it… time? No, not here nor now. Ahh…”)
Not sure what this means. Is she noticing that their perception of time is off? If so I’m going to have to call sue plot fiat again. My alternative theory is that she’s wondering if it’s time to reveal herself, which reminds me that she should really have done so already, given how deep into this she is now.
Eventually Dehl decides screw it, he’s going back. Everyone agrees.
Tezkhra: “Since the sequence was interrupted, it… is possible that they have not been alerted.”
Where does this come from? I thought they were already alerted, given that the Watchers didn’t do anything after the heroes arrived. Killing the Watchers after that shouldn’t affect anything, and Donz was carrying out the natural sequence, not interrupting it. This makes no sense.
And as Dehl walks out, we discover that he was staring at the bloodstain the whole time. Clever.
When they return to the landing, they see that all the ladders except one have disappeared, and the remaining one is different from the one they used before. There’s some forced banter about how no one notices the ladder just offscreen even though it’s really obvious, and they descend.
Chapter 5 never officially ended until now, even though by rights it should have after the Zaka battle. I presume this was intended as further misdirection, to make it look like this was the end and there wasn’t a significant portion ahead. In this regard, I believe that telling people there are six chapters is something of a spoiler.
They note that everything’s in really bad shape, and wonder if it’s winter. They proceed to Wadassia, but Tez stays behind for an aside.
(“I should have stopped them from coming back to the surface. This is… my fault.”)
THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU. Letting them trance out with the assumption they wouldn’t need to return is one thing, letting them return when you know it’s a bad idea is another entirely! Throughout this sequence he keeps going on about how this was a horrible idea and they need to go back, but he never vocalizes this concern. There’s no point to having it, it’s just there to look ~mysterious~. But good, at least he finally acknowledges it’s his fault.
Lani: “Is this a slum or something’? It looks like it’s been through two floors of hell!”
Ques: “Wadassia does not have slums.”
Oh come on. Wadassia is the location equivalent of a mary sue at this point.
Everyone flips out. Someone limps up to them and tells them to follow her if they want to live. Dehl starts losing it as he looks at the wreckage and collapses to his knees, then someone else shows up.
Scarred Man: “Where did these people come from? Did they bring any of THEM with ’em?”
Ragged Human: “They were just roaming around outside. We’re going back to Base Seven.”
Scarred Man: “What? They’re carrying weapons! You can’t let them in! We can’t trust them.”
Ragged Human: “We can’t just leave them out in the open! They’ll be captured! Or worse!”
Scarred Man: “I’m going to get the boss. We’ll let him make the call. Keep them quiet in the meantime.”
They ignore the warning and start pelting the woman with questions. She just says that no one’s called the city Wadassia in a long time. The man comes back with someone else in tow, and…
How’d he lose his eyepiece? The glossary says they can only be removed surgically. (Yes that is clearly the most important point here don’t judge me.)
“You came back too late, masters. There is nothing to save now. Nothing to protect. Our cities were wiped clean. So many died. Then, the Lord-God and his army appeared…”
[…]
Tehgonan: “Everyone’s dead…? M-mom…? Dad?!”
Tehgonan continues to be a surprisingly sympathetic character.
He says it’s been ten years. The guild wonders if this is divine punishment for their failure, but they still vow to make things better.
Dehl tenses, and things start shaking.
Alito: “Master, no! They will hear you!”
Alito: “Ahh! We’ve been found!”
Burly Si’Shra: “The Lord-God demands your flesh and your lives! Surrender now, syah hahah!”
“Whaaat? A weapon? Where did you get that?”
Now that is how you show a pacifist hero snapping. This is another reason why I don’t like “The Blackening”: it dilutes the impact of this scene. This accomplishes the exact same goal, but does it so much better, making the waffley “oh no I killed a bad person and now daddy hates me” sequence redundant. The thematic beats should have been split instead of redone – the first scene should focus entirely on his break from the Sikohlon, while this delivers the personal drama.
Still, this is really well done. Despite the limitations of RPG Maker, the art is used to full effect – where the armor only changed his portrait superficially, here the entire model is completely different, reflective of a much deeper change. And the transition is perfect – you know something’s wrong when his portrait shifts like that, but it’s not until he opens his eyes that it becomes clear just how wrong. Drawing his sword, too – much like Vash drawing his gun for the first time in Trigun, it’s a seemingly mundane action granted immense weight as you realize this is the first time it’s actually been depicted. There was clearly a lot of work put into every beat of this sequence, and that makes players sit up and notice.
I think this scene is a critical part of Dehl’s appeal – the shock of seeing his personality do a 180 is simply unforgettable, and it shows there’s so much more to him than we thought. This is where my theory that he has inherent anger issues comes from. The change is too extreme to attribute wholly to his circumstances; what makes far more sense is that he was like this the whole time, but managed to keep a lid on it thanks to his obsession with pacifist doctrine. But Mahk just took that from him, so when he discovers all his work was meaningless, he has no fallback and decides screw it, burn it all and salt the earth. This ensures that all our previous memories of him are suddenly cast in a different light, knowing that this was his true face all along. It rewards analysis of his previous actions and makes us question everything that came before, as a proper character twist should. It also provides apprehension for the future – a previous anchor of sanity and reason has been removed from play, replaced by a chaotic creature whose actions and reactions we cannot predict. Tension!
Qualstio: “Whoa, hey, take it easy. We can’t just go on a rampage. We need to make a plan first.”
But of course none of the other characters even blink because everyone except Dehl is made of cardboard. I remember Qualstio being more freaked out, but nope! Oh yeah, my best friend who used to be a nice soft-spoken pacifist just turned into a crazy berserker, NBD. Can you tell how deep and relatable these characters are?
They retreat to Alito’s hideout. Infodump time: Two years after the guild’s disappearance, the ocean levels rose abruptly, destroying Wadassia, Nal, and the Berylbrine outpost. The ocean eventually receded, but then Fortifel erupted, destroying the city and blackening Do’Ssha. Has it never erupted before? Anyone who lives on a volcano should really prepare for this kind of thing. Yfus wonders if this is still part of the test. Qualstio, being a sue, instantly figures out that these disasters were triggered by the pillars, and that it was what the Watchers planned all along. I have no idea where he’s getting that from.
Tezkhra: (“Just the first two were triggered. If the third one is activated while I am on the Surface…”)
This makes it totally unnecessary anyway – for once the game’s refusal to stop reading Tez’s mind could have actually worked in its favor! Everyone could just be really confused normally, with enough hints to the truth provided without anyone actually figuring it out, but if you recruited Tez he confirms it. He would provide an actually meaningful story reward. Instead he’s just redundant, and once again I want him to shut up.
Alito continues. Just when it looked like they were getting back on their feet, the “Lord-God” appeared, commanding an unstoppable si’shra army that enslaved and murdered their way through just about everybody. They also took tools and weapons, thus preventing the survivors from fighting back. At first glance this makes sense because real-world feudalism worked that way…but this is a fantasy world, where magic adds another wrinkle. How did they deal with the casters? They can’t be disarmed so easily. You could fanwank this by saying the casters all died in the initial disaster (most of them were in Wadassia and Fortifel, after all), but that’s so boring and they should still be something to take into consideration regardless. Once again, why so little magic? If the developer didn’t want to do anything interesting with it he shouldn’t have included it at all.
“The Spire is the center of their world now, and He, the Controller who sits atop it.”
This game really likes its capital letters, doesn’t it.
The survivors start flipping out about the guild abandoning them.
Lani: “We had a duty! The gods told us to come, so we did! What were we sposda do?!”
Ragged Human: “Huh! You all just wanted more power too, didn’t you? All you fighters are just the same!”
Once again, I wonder if this is supposed to be RPG playstyle commentary. The game brushes against that theme a lot throughout the story, but never really commits to it so it’s hard to be certain.
Dehl doesn’t take this indictment well, and says he’s going to grab a boat and take on the lord-god himself. Alito says they had two steamships, but one was stolen recently and the other is being kept as a last resort in case they need to evacuate.
Dehl: “There shall be naught to run from once I’ve satiated my hands with His blood.”
Why is he using capitalized pronouns? Doesn’t that indicate respect?
Alito agrees to let them use the ship.
Ques: “Alito, everyone… thank you for your understanding. This is indeed our calling.”
Ragged Human: “Takin’ our only ship outta here… what are we going to do when you fail to kill Him?”
Ques: “Mmmph. You’ve got enough rowboats left. Start paddling now, and maybe…”
Santes: “Hey, that ain’t funny, Ques! Look, lady. If you don’t want us to help, we won’t! We’ll march right back up that ladder and wait for them gods like we’re sposda do!”
[…]
Qualstio: “So I guess asking for your continued support is out of the question?”
[…]
Ques: “So be it, then. We shall go by ourselves. Keep hiding in your hole in the ground.” […] “T’was a pleasure to meet you all.”
Before they leave, the heroes decide to spit on the ragged survivors and mock their very reasonable concerns, because they’re nice so long as you prostrate yourselves before them, but otherwise you are scum who doesn’t deserve the time of day. Ques’ platitudes are particularly striking; given his reaction to someone going off script, he’s only doing it to to look good. These are horrible people. And to add insult to injury, they take Alito. Well, Alito goes with them, but still. They’re really ensuring these people suffer as much as possible if they fail.
But those other people, screw them.
Like, okay, I get that they still need a save point and Alito rejoining them is super meaningful and all, but this is just so callous. The heroes take everything they want from people who already have nothing, but it doesn’t matter because they’re just faceless NPCs. From the survivors’ perspective, what difference is there between them and the lord-god, really? I can understand Dehl reacting this way given his current emotional state, but the others don’t have that excuse. When push comes to shove, this is who they really are: selfish, condescending jerks who use their few good deeds as a shield to deflect criticism. When people don’t play by their script, the kind face is dropped to reveal a snarling monster. It was never really about doing the right thing, but the rewards they would get for it. Very Harry Dresden. (Or Gamergate.) But the story never acknowledges this; they’re the heroes so of course they deserve everything, those ugly starving wrecks didn’t really need their last chance at survival. Scope, eh?
I really want to know why this type of protagonist is so popular. It’s a recurring trend in the books on this blog, and you see it in movies all the time too. My best guess is that authors hear being snarky and edgy is all the rage these days, then they go through the motions without understanding what actually makes edgy heroes interesting. Or maybe it’s just an ALPHA MALE thing. Possibly this specific instance is a disconnect between plot and characters – they started as aloof, quirky, and comedic, which works fine in lighter times but reads as sociopathic when they’re thrown into a serious situation. They can’t adjust.
The way this should work is to make Dehl the only selfish one, with the other heroes calling him out on his behavior and desperately trying to do damage control. This clearly establishes why they are heroes worthy of our support: they recognize it’s not just about them. And with the previous moral center of the team emotionally compromised, it’s finally their time to shine, to show that they can be heroes even without Dehl’s influence. This could even contrast with their sociopathic behavior at the beginning, inverting the initial dynamic and showing how far they’ve come. Alternatively, if for some reason you really want to make a story devoid of hope and joy, the basic structure already in the game is fine, you just need to acknowledge their flaws. Their edginess should not make them cool and dominant, but used to demonstrate just how hopeless the situation is, that even these saviors are selfish monsters and no true heroes remain – that without Dehl to keep them in line, they are free to show us the monsters they always were. What we have currently is just another shallow power fantasy pretending to be deep and mature.
Off we go.
Dehl’s newfound rage has triggered an additional shift inside. His Element is now “Cold*” (no longer weak to Heat attacks).
Hm. Interesting to see an element upgrade portrayed negatively for once.
The very tip of the Lord-God’s Spire appears on the horizon, but hours pass before we reach the shore where The Drop once was. We shall be wading through an infinite Si’Shra horde, breaching an impenetrable fortress, and scaling the path to the summit. Everything we once knew and loved has vanished from this world. We are the only surviving chance for reconstruction.
I like this passage, even if the sudden narration is a bit out of the blue. The tone and stakes are firmly established, and we’re promised something actually exciting instead of rescuing cats from trees this time.
So that was certainly something. Turns out the developer knows how to write after all! Why didn’t the entire game have this level of plot and action? To be honest the game would have worked better if it was mostly just this condensed piece rather than a fillery epic. Virtually nothing from the main plot has any relevance to this, and what little is necessary could have been delivered in a fraction of the space. It’s pretty incongruous, honestly; all previous events are rendered meaningless by this game changer and none of them have any relevance to the transition point, much less the current state of things. We could have skipped everything after Wadassia (or Nal if we’re being generous) and it would make no difference to the plot. You do need to get players attached to the world for its destruction to have any meaning, but spending 30 hours on the “getting attached” phase before going WHOOPS that was a total waste of your time in the last 2 is not that. To be honest, we’ve spent so long on the previous plot that if I actually liked it I would be very annoyed here – it would feel like a kick in the shins done for no other purpose than to look dark and edgy. Instead we have the opposite, where I actually really like this turn of events but only because the prior section was so boring, in which case why is it there at all?
A climax should logically build off of the events before it, but this is just a diabolus ex machina completely divorced from the characters’ actions and experiences. Dehl’s breakdown is pretty much the only thing cashing in on previous narrative investment. If the two segments were connected, perhaps if the Watchers didn’t have killswitches and the people blew it up on their own with the heroes discovering that the stopgap measures they congratulated themselves on so much actually just made things worse, this would be a very meaningful and humbling conclusion relevant to the scope theme. This is just “crap happens”, which is fine as a catalyst but means the bulk of the plot should be focused on the post-crap section, since that’s the most interesting part.
This is related to what I talked about in Ever17 and what Act has ranted about when discussing Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors: You have to be consistent about what your story is. You cannot string your audience along for 90% of the story and then go loljk. Not just withholding the real plot but switching to a different genre entirely at the very end for cheap drama is not a plot twist, it’s dishonest and exploitative writing.
But at the same time, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. This is leagues better than the previous slog and, in a vacuum, very exciting and enjoyable.