Last time, I (once again) complained about the lack of plot. Today, the plot finally arrives!
Syri has finally decided to take matters into her own hands and tell the guild what’s going on, with or without Ques’ approval. This is a rather abrupt change from “I’m so mysterious and won’t tell you anything~~”, but it does make sense if you interpret this whole mess as her initially wanting to win over Ques and enlist his help instead of outsourcing to some foreigners. It’s only after he solidly rebuffs her that she realizes this is her only option.
Her family is made up of spies who gather intel on Kir’Ssha, which is how she knows about the attack. I still wonder where Tocita was getting her information if this is top-secret spy stuff. Everyone is all OMG A SPY WE CANNOT TRUST HER but Dehl ignores them and is all business, which I like. It’s a subtle yet effective way of showing how monofocused he’s becoming, as well as his increasing detachment from everyone else. I do have some reservations about this portrayal, but they will come later.
Syri explains that she’s seen the Silver Army preparing for war – recruitment surges, training drills, the whole lot. Dehl realizes the mercenaries must have seen this too, which is why they had to book it on such short notice. This connection is nice, but also makes me think “End of Days” would have really worked better as a first quest.
Dehl then makes a Join Party offer, which Syri declines, surprisingly, saying she works alone. I like this on the principle that Join Party Solves Everything! has been too overused throughout the game, though it comes at the cost of playing the stock “mysterious female loner spy/informant” cliché disappointingly straight. According to the developer, in the original draft she did join the party later on, which is actually a clever way of subverting that. Pity it was cut.
Everyone decides they need more information before they can make a game plan, so we’re going to do the noir-esque travel to the underworld for info thing. Syri explains there are a group of outcasts from both cities who are neutral in the conflict and who might know some juicy rumors, so that’s our next quest. The gimmick is that I can’t take any humans or Fortians with me with the explanation that fih’jik, especially these downtrodden ones, are highly xenophobic and distrustful. This works, and I think it may be a practical move since the next quest is flavor-text-heavy and has a good deal of unique lines depending on who you pick. This late in the game, I can understand the developer wanting to continue writing that stuff but needing to curb combinatorial explosion for the sake of his sanity.
There’s a shot of this before the quest starts. It’s a bit odd since there’s nothing like it anywhere else, but I like it. I believe it’s supposed to foreshadow the coming of the Unstoppable Night in particular, but even just on a symbolic level, the image of a sunset helps convey the feeling of tension and impending doom.
This is interesting. The characters in your party will actually participate in the conversation occasionally, and depending on who you picked you can get different lines. This is a welcome departure from previous quests, where they had to be mute. It’s a small touch, but I like the feeling of my actions having some small impact, plus it provides additional characterization and flavor text, which is always nice. It feels a bit like a precursor to IMTS’ chatty (and therefore far more lively) missions, where no one’s excluded so the game’s free to do whatever it wants without fear of combinatorial explosion.
Unfortunately, the answer to this question involves more crazy people aren’t people, with possible bonus misogyny:
Syri: “[Sa’ansharu are] women who have been expelled from their homes in Kir’Ssha for violating the Truth. They wander the wastes until the sun claims their clothes and their minds. Some may attack without provocation, so, please end them quickly if you must.”
We never find out what “the Truth” is, but given the religious oppression overtones going on I doubt it’s anything good. It’s especially disturbing that women are specified here. Many religions are really weird about women and tend to use their doctrine as an excuse for oppressing them. This is a very problematic area of religion and one that deserves critique – I’d even argue it’s more relevant to an American audience than the safe and uncontested message that holy wars are wrong. This could have provided good fodder for the game’s story and been an interesting avenue to explore, and instead the game just uses its victims to fill generic enemy slots.
And just to really hammer in how weird this game is about the mentally ill, Alito then says “Human bandits… the Wracked Fortians… blood-crazed Shra… and Sa’ansharu. Is there no culture who refuses to cast their own out into the wild?” Why yes, there sure have been lots of crazy people enemies, plus bandits who are probably just desperate. Why are we the heroes, again?
You may think that this question is an acknowledgement of how problematic this portrayal is and how we should feel bad about killing crazy people, however token it may be. Haha, nope!
Rehm: “Rough. Well, ain’t no use tryin’ to talk ’em down, I reckon. Gotta do what we gotta do.”
Kulkumatz: “Then we hunt! They fight for control over their wild territory… and we shall oblige!”
Moke: “An unfortunate outcome. Let us at least be merciful in our retaliation.”
Tezkhra: “To maintain order, it is necessary to separate the flawed from the perfect within a set.”
Tezkhra’s reaction in particular stands out to me. Just, first of all, he comes from a post-scarcity society where they have an entire industry dedicated to accommodating defects and ensuring peoples’ quality of life regardless. But there is also the elephant in the room of him being one of those “flawed” himself, only granted life because of his cybernetic treatments. If these people can accept and fix horrible deformities and injuries without batting an eye, why don’t they see mental illnesses in the same way? Even our crappy present-day society has made great strides in treatments and acceptance for the mentally ill, I’m sure in a thousand years when they’ve fully mapped the brain and the genome there will be virtually no issues. The IMTS society in particular seemed very much in favor of accommodation rather than eugenics, so their therapy and psychiatry services should be darn near perfect. For all we know it’s entirely possible the characters in IMTS had debilitating illnesses, but they have super future antipsychotics with no side effects or perfect neurosurgery so it’s not an issue. Coming from such a position, Tezkhra should be appalled at their barbaric treatment of these individuals. You can still have his views be flawed by framing it as a “they only view these people as problems to be fixed” issue if you want, but it just doesn’t make sense for him to be all PUT THEM TO THE WALL.
But I don’t think the developer was thinking that deeply about this. Talk about racism or physical disabilities and he’s totally got your back on how important those issues are, but when it comes to mental disabilities, well, it’s a terrible shame and we should feel bad about it but ultimately these people need to be put down for their own good. It’s the hard choice but the right choice.
…
Anyway, gameplay.
The main gimmick to this quest is occasional sandstorms. They make it hard to see, but also allow you to sneak past enemies. Fortunately, this means I don’t have to kill any Sa’ansharu. Sneaking past everything is tricky, but I manage it and reach the camp.
I control Alito, who has to talk to NPCs to gather information. I really like this sequence, and I supsect it’s inspired by some of the old adventure games the developer cites as a major influence on his design. There are some social puzzles, contrived-but-you-roll-with-it actual puzzles, and ALL THE FLAVOR TEXT, ALL OF IT. It’s beautiful.
But there is an issue: there’s a time limit. You can increase it if you’re fast in the previous sequence, but I still feel like it’s too constrictive. It’s virtually impossible to learn everything in time unless you know the most efficient path to take, practically requiring that you waste one run just figuring out what you have to do; but more importantly the timer doesn’t stop for dialogues, disincentivizing you from reading all that wonderful text! I feel like that’s a major blunder – the entire story justification for this is supposed to be gathering information, yet you’re punished for actually reading the important tidbits. I think freezing the timer when text appears (while maybe unfreezing it during dialogue choices) and balancing the time limit around that would have worked far better, though admittedly I don’t actually know if RPG Maker is capable of doing that.
Tez continues to be a straw Vulcan inconsistent with his later characterization. Did he faint upon seeing IMTS’ black market and I just never noticed?
Everyone else has unique lines too, but this time I won’t subject you to them.
The game tries to make the intel varied and interesting, but mostly it’s just variants on “Welp, we sure are screwed!” I found this noteworthy, though. Apparently Kir’Ssha is racist. This makes negative sense. They’re the more devout group, and supposedly the motive for treating shra better was religious. They should be the ones kissing shra feet while Do’Ssha is more reserved, not the other way around. Shra are also strong, resilient laborers, which are probably in short supply there. (If Rehm’s despair montage is any indication they can go a long time without food too, which should be a highly favored trait in a starving hellhole.) Politically, economically, and religiously, they have no reason to hate shra and every reason to welcome them. I feel like this is just there to make Kir’Ssha look extra evil.
This also has a really easy fix: say their super regeneration requires them to eat like pigs instead of having them be magical starvation-immune sues. There, suddenly Kir’Ssha simply can’t afford to keep them despite the benefits. That would also be an excellent example of politics muddying religion and vice versa – maybe even have this shra say that everyone in Kir’Ssha claimed to love them before but now the priests have suddenly reversed their stance, and Alito realizes it’s because of the food shortage. This would have the bonus of humanizing Kir’Ssha by showing they’re suffering too, which I don’t think the game really commits to enough.
(Something else that might be interesting is if Kir’Ssha actually treated shra better, either genuinely or as a political stunt, allowing them to claim the moral high ground and potentially drawing neutral shra to their side, or even fomenting rebellion and dissent among Do’Ssha’s shra population. That last part would be particularly relevant in the version of the story with an actual plot centered around Skint’s revolution.)
This is also interesting, and once again makes me wonder how a religious society where the priests have actual magic would work. Do miracles really happen just through prayer? Are the divine casters secretly pulling the strings and manipulating everything? Is there a conflict between casters who earnestly believe their power comes from faith and those who are faking it? Does prayer give casters power boosts? How does the placebo effect interact with magic? Why do I always demand stories turn into sociology courses to cater to my interests? The world may never know.
When time runs out, the Silver Army arrives.
Desperate-Sounding Fih’Jik: “Commandant Zaka, please! We’re but traders and resting folk! We are no threat to Kir’Ssha!”
Ragged Kir Devout: “Consume all threats to the True Home in burning glory! Dal’kai-la, Supreme One!”
Zaka: “It takes but a single loose stone to collapse a temple; do you not agree? This camp is a loose stone. And, so close to our – and your – True Home, no less.”
Ragged Kir Devout: “Loose stones! Loose! Unfit for life! Destroy them all! Dal’kai-la, Supreme One!”
Zaka: “Your camps breed disarray, disorder, doubt. One by one, they must be plucked free. The Supreme One shall judge those guilty when the Unstoppable Night descends. Until that time, it is the duty of Her True Children to fulfill Her will. […] Sentinels. Savants. When I give my word, raze all that remains between these dunes.”
He gives them an opportunity to run, but they beg for him to spare the camp because they have nowhere else to return to, and the protagonists escape just before he slaughters everyone.
Like the scene with the warden, it’s well-done, genuinely intimidating, and I don’t really have much to add. I will say that the contrast between Zaka’s cold ruthlessness and his supporters’ mad fervor was effective writing. On a higher plotting level, I like how quickly the villain has acted this time. Previously, virtually all the plot had to happen at the end because that was the first time the villain was really confronted. Here we see just what we’re up against early on, and it’s utterly terrifying. It’s all the power, cinematic direction, and religious creepiness of the warden scene, but properly integrated into a full plot. For all my complaints about this chapter’s slow start, things are finally kicking into high gear.
Alito: “I’ve checked the numbers twice-over! They do not lie! We’ve achieved Rank 28.”
The guild convenes at the hospital to discuss their findings. Supposedly something changes depending on how much intel you found, but I didn’t notice any difference throughout my multiple runs. Dehl figures out his next step regardless: head to Kir’Ssha.
“I wish to know what sort of condition the people face that would warrant a migration. If their lives can be improved, then perhaps they will see an invasion is not necessary.”
Yes! This kind of creative and holistic thinking is exactly what I want from this kind of story. Dehl is truly thinking like a nonviolent activist. Instead of sticking his head in the sand and refusing to participate like a stereotypical pacifist hero, he’s actively looking for alternative, peaceful solutions to a complicated political conflict. He’s not willing to go on a murder spree until he’s exhausted every other option, because he understands his enemies are people too. That isn’t something you often see from jRPG heroes. Of course the game is going to totally undermine the whole thing for cheap drama in a few quests, but I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.
Syri shows up and agrees with Dehl, though I feel like they’re having two different conversations, as she keeps talking about “invading” Kir’Ssha. Ques whines about how dare she keep bothering him with her petty concern of averting genocide and she retaliates by dropping the drama bomb that Ques is a murder spy too. Everyone is surprised despite the fact that she just said their family profession is murder spy last scene. Try to keep up, guys. Everyone gets their hackles up over how big a deal this is despite the fact that they already let a currently-practicing assassin into the guild without anyone batting an eye. Once again, the story just makes more sense without Sirush.
Syri gets pissed too because apparently all the murder spies got picked off after Ques booked it, so now she’s the only one left. (Also he was the bestest murder spy ever even though he hated it because everyone in this game is a sue.) She says “Without a leader, our group fell into chaos!” because everyone knows how rigid and unadaptive spies are. Why on Earth didn’t the government’s hand-picked assassin team have contingency plans and rules for succession? How on Earth did such a fragile organization survive this long?
In theory this is a good idea in that it gives Ques something to mope over, adds conflict, and ties into the scope theme – it’s important for these hero fantasies to acknowledge that what’s good for one person isn’t necessarily good for everyone, and that actions can have unintended consequences. I just feel like it’s handled poorly. A better way to do this might be to say that he chickened out in the middle of a job that turned out to be more important than he thought. The murder spies didn’t realize something went wrong until it was too late, and so they were blindsided by the next attack and wiped out in one fell swoop. Saying everything happened at once is unrealistic in its own way, but I think condensing the time frame and giving specifics makes this kind of thing work better.
Syri storms off and Ques’ only response to all this is to roll his eyes and say “She will calm herself in time,” because women are just so crazy and emotional like that. He seems far more concerned about what the guild thinks of his profession, but Dehl only cares inasmuch as the fact that Ques’ murder spy training can get them into Kir’Ssha.
“You are a man of many skills, and it would be foolish to not use them to our advantage. I do not wish to pain you into relying on those talents you’ve shunned away. However…”
I think the implication is supposed to be that he’s going too far with his silly obsession of preventing genocide, but I really can’t argue with this. Anyone actually listening to Ques can tell he is not a secret psycho, and right now the situation really is dire and they need to use whatever’s available to them if they’re going to help anyone. This might be a little manipulative but I don’t think it’s an unreasonable analysis of the situation.
Ques says he can totes work out a plan with Syri no problem, because apparently he just tuned her out two minutes ago. I’m sure that’s going to be a fun conversation.
Ques: “A-and, thank you for not casting judgment upon me. I’m not the man I was 15 years ago.”
Qualstio: “Hey, don’t worry about it. We all did stupid stuff when we were younger.”
I find it fitting that Qualstio is the only one who doesn’t take issue with murder. However, I would like to point out that assassins are actually pretty ethical in comparison to other methods of warfare. The idea of it somehow being less moral to knock out the top brass who actually have a stake in things instead of cutting through the probably conscripted soldiers to get to them is a very antiquated, aristocratic idea based on the premise that war is honorable. It isn’t. Assassination in peacetime is murkier, but if Syri is to be believed they were actually keeping a lid on things and it’s only after the murder spies stopped murdering that the conflict spiraled out of control.
Mahk and Xopi return too because this cutscene will not end, and bump into some Nalian slavers who have apparently just gotten word that shra exist here. The locals seem to have no idea how to deal with them, so apparently slavers haven’t poked them in the many years since the plague because [not found].
They do appear on the map to stalk the Sikohlon, which is a nice touch. Hooray for updating game worlds.
So wow, that was a big one. A little too big, I think; there’s a lot of information compressed into one scene that could have been doled out more evenly. This would also have allowed bits I had issue with like Ques single-handedly destroying the murder spies with his departure more space to breathe and go into greater detail. The story would have flowed better if Syri’s confrontation had happened at least partially in the previous quest so it could take the spotlight instead of awkwardly being crammed into the “what do” discussion. (This would also fix the plothole of people being surprised at Ques’ murder spy status after she already told them.) Also seriously how have they not dealt with slavers before now.