New area. You know what that means!!!!!!!!
Good to see his paranoia isn’t controlling him for once.
This will be contradicted later because the developer doesn’t seem to care about Lani very much. Also wow, no wonder Do’Ssha’s in such a pickle, they have militaristic crazies breathing down their necks and they can’t even be bothered to train guards properly? I suppose it could play into the religious theme; maybe they’re certain that the Supreme One will protect them because Kir’Ssha isn’t the true faith, especially since the city itself has remained untouched for centuries.
I don’t see why she thinks she’d have any more success with the stuffy religious fundamentalists than she did with the Vulcans. Does the secret agent have nothing better to do with her time, really?
O…kay.
Of course he is.
Yfus throwing any semblance of pragmatism under the bus to cling to the last vestiges of his pride is a good symbol for a representative of Kir’Ssha, and a good contrast with the other, more pragmatic fih’jik in the guild. I like it.
For once Zargos gets to be more miserable than his wife!
I fail to see how this is a bigger deal than any of the other nation-hopping he’s done. He crossed the “farther from home than I’ve ever been” threshold a long, long time ago. A few more miles on top of that doesn’t really have the same effect. A better way to phrase this might be to say that fih’jik culture is much more alien to him than any other place they’ve been to, or that it’s been so long that his sense of childish adventure has finally worn off. This finally makes him realize the magnitude of what he’s done, whereas before he was too wrapped up in it to really notice.
That kind of reflective, meaningful style of narration would actually be a really fitting theme for a final stage like this, come to think of it. A pity the opportunity was missed and most of the flavor text is still standard lightweight stuff.
Aw, this is sweet. It’s always nice to see Dehl happy.
Yay foreshadowing.
Nitpicky, but I feel like a culture that’s traditionalist to a fault wouldn’t change that fast. Ques is pretty old, though, so maybe.
Heh. Although, why would he be accustomed to intolerance? He hasn’t had much contact with humans since his first meeting with them, and he says they treated him pretty well then. He should be more aloof about it.
Sadly, that’s…it. I can’t examine anything but the main characters. This is understandable, as earlier areas had fewer characters and thus a smaller workload (and as the end of chapter 4 has shown, the developer seems to be running out of steam), but it’s still disappointing that the we don’t get much information about this place, especially when it looks like these things should be interactive.
I train characters and get this for Falitza. It doesn’t seem to work properly, as I’ve seen the additional effects popping up for a while before this. (There’s only two, adding/subtracting rush and advancing/breaking the chain.)
Also, I get my first max-rank skill!
Santes has a personal quest here, also. You can tell just from this that it’s going to be terrible.
This is the Blessed Corps, which, as you may recall, Santes is a member of. She wants to visit but the guard turns her away, causing her to fume at the indignity of not being able to barge in on a private building whenever she feels like, because she has the maturity of a twelve-year-old.
Tehgonan: “Hey! Cram it and move it! We just wanna have a look around! What do you care?”
Officer: “Oh ho. Such fervor for a young one. If you shared his determination, perhaps…”
Tehgonan is here to demonstrate this fact, and he’s still looked on more favorably by the officer despite being just as petulant because this game hates Santes. I don’t understand what he’s doing in this scene at all, honestly. Since when does he care what Santes is doing? Qualstio’s his surrogate parent, not her. Even on a metanarrative level he serves no purpose here, since Santes’ voice is almost identical. I guess the developer just liked Tehgonan and wanted to shoehorn him into a bunch of scenes?
There’s more banter and basically Santes isn’t holy enough to be allowed an audience, she needs 70 spirit for that. Tehgonan’s passion apparently fits the bill despite his spirit stat being less than half that because [not found]. Look, game, I know gameplay and story integration is hard, but Tehgonan didn’t need to be there in the first place. You brought this problem upon yourself.
Fortunately I already cranked Santes’ spirit to 70 in preparation for this, so let’s continue.
“The light of the Divine is absolute. It is unending, and unforgiving. So may it be.”
Congregation: “So may it be!”
I love this stuff. The writing has a lot of issues overall but the developer definitely knows how to do freaky religious stuff. I also like how it eerily parallels the warden’s sermon from last chapter, showing that the two absolutes are not so different.
Unfortunately, Santes barges in before we can hear the rest of it. So what, did she just knock out the guard and bash the door in? Apparently she just needed the spirit to use her super strength.
We learn that the Wadassian Blessed Corps branched off from this one, and the Do’Sshan Blessed Corps see it as an unholy aberration because it focuses on actually helping people instead of worshiping God.
Priest: “Divine magic, healing, mending, light… All of it is based in favor from our god! That is the essence of Divine magic! Bringing the powers of the unseen into our world!”
Yay, magic lore. It’s fitting that they cling to this explanation when it’s patently untrue, though it’s a bit odd that Santes doesn’t bring up the obvious debunk of how she’s able to use divine magic just fine despite not worshiping the Supreme One. I’m now more curious than ever where divine magic originated and why it’s called that. I presume the first practitioners were fih’jik, and by the time it started manifesting in other people they had already solidified it in the public perception as holy magic. Now they probably just denounce non-fih’jik divine magic as somehow false. Come to think of it, wouldn’t they assume that all magic comes from their god? Surely that’s how healing magic was labeled “divine” in the first place. It makes me wonder if divine innates are more common among the fih’jik population, and what happens to non-divine casters. It’d also be nice to see some tension with Fortifel, since I imagine they debunked “divine” magic a long time ago and there’s got to be bad blood over that.
Unfortunately we never get to learn any more about this because Santes is an idiot:
Santes: “Blessings, Divine magic… I don’t know what all that really is! And I won’t pretend I do!”
Yes, this is the great conclusion of her character arc: she doesn’t know anything about her own profession. Santes: achievements in ignorance. I’ll admit that “it doesn’t matter, ~go with your heart~” is a fitting rebuttal to the fih’jiks’ blind adherence to traditional teachings (and creates a nice internal vs. external faith dichotomy), but in the greater context of Santes’ character it’s irritating. This doesn’t take her anywhere, it just validates her childish beliefs. She doesn’t learn anything. And, well, combined with the game’s track record on portrayal of women, it just looks plain bad that all the men around her are allowed to be competent but she isn’t allowed to have any knowledge base. Did Santes never pick up a book on her own subject before? Surely she should have at least assimilated some practical knowledge while, you know, in a war? A better way to do this would be to acknowledge the textbook teachings but show how her personal experiences have diverged from them – something like “Sure, that’s what I thought once, but I know in my heart that’s not what divine magic is really about, because…” That way she would be forced to reflect on her own experiences and opinions, and her conclusion could actually build from what she’s learned, like a proper character arc. This, on the other hand, doesn’t build from or towards anything, it’s just reasserting her out-of-the-box characterization.
Santes keeps going on about how the two organizations really want the same things deep down even though they clearly don’t, and why can’t we all just get along? The priest eventually throws the Wadassian civil war in her face and, shockingly, Santes gets to act like a real person for ten seconds:
Santes: “That’s a line you DON’T wanna cross with me, little man. You go that? […] Have you ever seen a dead body in your life? Dragged a screaming child out of a riot? Seen your own lover bloodied and beaten, and suffered alongside him all day long? You guys… don’t know how to do anything! All you can do is pray and beg for help!”
Yes! Santes fought in the war too, she’s not all incompetence and wacky comedy. This should have been a part of her character the entire game instead of inexplicably relegating all the war stuff to Zargos. Instead it’s just used as a shocking trump card here and never spoken of again. As a result it feels incongruous with her previous characterization (which is a really bad feeling to elicit during a character arc conclusion), and it’s only shocking because the game purposefully kept it hidden against all reason. It’s fumbled due to the past events it’s supposed to be cashing in on.
She then gets an awesome Skint-esque moment – “You all just hide up in here, safe and sound, while we’re riskin’ our necks for all y’all.” – which inexplicably makes the priest recant and beg her forgiveness. No, really, he goes from “You dare shame intervention of the Supreme One herself? It is Her will to save us!” to “Wait… just a moment. You must understand, ours are a simple people. The Divine is all they have left. The Humans are blessed with the gift of assimilation, and courage, and ingenuity.” just from one retort. I think the idea is that he secretly felt this way all along and was just blustering to cover up his own insecurities, but Santes doesn’t do anything to draw him out, he just abruptly shifts his demeanor all on his own. In theory it works, but once again the execution is fumbled. It’s too sudden.
Anyway, they’re impressed by her willingness to question authority, because we all know that’s a quality conservative fundamentalists value highly. They agree to share knowledge and everything will be happy and wonderful from now on. I…guess it works with this chapter’s theme of compromise and reconciliation, and it’s a happy ending, but it’s pretty forced. At the very least have some hint that the priest feels the same way but has been too scared to speak out and thus she’s a role model or something. Having her solidly rebuff her former idols and go her own way would also work, and might even be a stronger statement for her character growth.
Regardless, Santes has released an inner fervor she didn’t even know she had so she plugs her noxious weakness and gets a heap of exp, even though the dialogue seemed to imply that the BC’s magic secrets would be responsible for her powerup. Whatever, personal powerups work better.
Alito: “Hmm, Rank 25! Had you ever imagined we would one day come so far, Master?”
This unlocks some more sidequests. I guess they happen in multiples of 5.
Next time,
For real this time.