descendant-of-truth

[descendant-of-truth]

While I'm of the opinion that the Re:Coded movie that's in all the collections generally does a better job at giving you all the relevant cutscenes than the Days movie, after playing through the DS game myself, I still think it's a shame how much they left out. Notably, the Castle Oblivion section is... extremely nerfed in the movie.

See, when Roxas tells Sora that he can do whatever he wants when talking to the illusions from his past, he means it. You, the player, are presented with different tasks that come with multiple dialogue options, and there are three possible endings for every "world" you enter. You get a different Ending Card depending on how you act; a Normal Card, an Alternate Card, and an Extra Card.

In the movie, instead of providing you with any kind of choose-your-own-adventure routes that lead to different cutscenes, they just. vaguely animate everyone talking silently to each other, and then have the illusions fade away. Which I think loses a lot of the intrigue, but it also means that relatively few people in the fanbase have even seen any of these routes.

I won't go over every single one because that can easily be done by looking them up on YouTube, but I do want to bring up one route in specific because it's really stuck with me ever since - Wonderland's Extra Ending.

So, in Wonderland, you're presented with a series of dilemmas:

Alice can't remember her name

The White Rabbit drops his pocket watch

The Cheshire cat gives you a riddle that requires you to choose the correct box or else fight a Heartless waiting in the wrong ones

One card soldier asks you to deliver a potion to a second card soldier for him

A third card soldier is weakened and woozy

You get the Normal Ending by doing at least one of these tasks correctly, the Alternate Ending by doing all of them correctly, and the Extra Ending by doing everything wrong.

In order to get the Extra Ending, you must:

Tell Alice that she's the Queen of Hearts

Pick up the White Rabbit's watch (causing Sora to lose sight of him, unable to return it; you're supposed to just tell him where it is)

Give up on the Cheshire Cat's riddle

Give the potion to the third, weakened card soldier, instead of its intended recipient (it turns out he was just hungry, not injured, so you didn't help him. the second card soldier would have given you a sandwich)

No matter what you do, at the end of each route, the Queen of Hearts will grab your attention and accuse you of being the thief who stole her memory. She'll try to back it up with proof, and even when you've done everything right (which she acknowledges), she still concludes with an "off with your head!" which Sora implicitly runs away from, ending the world's story.

Except for in the Extra Ending.

After she recaps everything you've done wrong up to that point, she drops this dialogue that I haven't been able to stop thinking about:

Queen of Hearts: "Don't tell me you were trying to be NICE? Cheering that girl up by telling her she was important? Giving things away because you thought someone else needed them more? Trying to... to own up to your failures!? Bah! Go on! Off with you!" Data Sora: "Not 'off with my head'?" Queen of Hearts: The punishment must match the crime! See how YOU like having something NICE done to you!"

It's hard to describe what it was about this that's still so striking to me months later, but it's just... kind of off-putting, in a way?

Having the Queen of Hearts choose to spare you as a "more fitting punishment" is out of character enough already, but the fact that it's the consequence to you actually doing everything wrong makes it feel all the more pointed. This is somehow supposed to be worse than being beheaded, and it kind of works, because it feels so much more personal than her usual schtick.

And it exists in such an isolated incident, too. The level is completed immediately after this dialogue, and nothing else is changed by getting it, it's just. there.

At the same time, everything about it feels so deliberate that I can't help but feel like it either is or will be relevant elsewhere somehow. It could just be overanalyzing on my part, but the first thing that comes to mind is actually that the Queen's final line could parallel the consequence of Sora misusing the Power of Waking?

He did so for a good cause, after all, but it wasn't what he was supposed to do. He broke a taboo of nature in the process. But his punishment isn't a straightforward death; he's just put somewhere else, somewhere he can't see his friends. "Off with you," the universe says, "see how you like having something nice done to you!"

...but that doesn't really feel like it's getting to the heart of the matter, which is that Data Sora did not need to do any of this. He could have told Alice her real name, on account of it being the default dialogue option, and he could have tried to figure out what was wrong with that card soldier before giving away stuff that wasn't his. He could have tried a little harder at the riddle. These were all fairly low-stakes situations - in particular, he really didn't need to lie to Alice.

The original Sora didn't have much of a choice in what he did. It was either lose his powers and vanish, or leave Kairi shattered and functionally dead. You can't really say he made the wrong decision, or did something immoral for a superficial reason.

So then... will this line remain an isolated slap in the face to completionist DS players, or will there be more to it? Is there already more to it that I'm missing? Where's our parallel to Data Sora "cheering that girl up by telling her she was important"? What are we supposed to make of "see how you like having something nice done to you"?

What does it all mean???

(In conclusion: go check out the DS versions of these cutscenes, they're great)

[descendant-of-truth]

no more “could bes”. It’s gonna be May.

[descendant-of-truth]

I'm finally playing Pokemon Red for the first time and I'm kinda obsessed with the colors on these sprites

[descendant-of-truth]

I love Chain of Memories for a lot of reasons but the real cherry on top is the fact that it's the second KH game to ever release. like. what other game series starts you off with a fun, epic, emotional adventure where you travel to a bunch of different whimsical locales and then IMMEDIATELY follows it up by trapping you in the freakin. Insanity Castle

[descendant-of-truth]

If Yozora's from a "video game" of sorts then what are the odds that his changed appearance is because of a mod

[descendant-of-truth]

Few things drive me insane like the claim that "3D Zelda was getting stagnant anyway, so even with its flaws, Botw was a necessary change for the series"

What stagnancy?? Was 3D Zelda stagnant when they gave Link four separate, unique social standings in his hometowns across each new version? Or when they flooded Hyrule in one game and had it be an undiscovered land in another? Was it when they turned Link into a wolf for half the game, or had him fly around on a bird, or sail the seas, or transform between three different species by swapping out different masks?

Did 3D Zelda effectively showcase stagnancy when it gave every single entry a completely unique, visually striking art style and atmosphere? To the point where even Majora's Mask, famous reuser of assets, is impossible to mistake for its predecessor?

Everything I've heard to justify this mindset that Zelda somehow "needed" such a drastic change falls completely flat in the face of just how much the series was thriving before Botw came out. Every single major 3D release was just nonstop back-to-back bangers, and yet somehow people are acting like they were just OoT copy/pasted several times.

And they always end up reaching for the most, just... inane things to use as evidence for this supposed lack of originality.

"They were reusing too many of the same items!" Yeah because the items were cool and people liked using them. Also they were very much adding new items to the familiar pool each time, so I fail to see the issue here

"The story is always the same! You start somewhere with lots of trees, then you go to the same old locations with water and lava, blah blah blah you're the chosen one and have to go save Zelda and fight Ganon" Hey you know what other game you're describing the plot of. Breath of the Wild

(But honestly it was hard for any of that to feel stale for me when the execution of each of those steps was different each time. y'know. the thing that actually matters in storytelling)

"The intros in Zelda games used to be sooo long, but now I can even run straight to Ganon if I want!" So what you're admitting here is that not experiencing the story is a positive thing for you. In a game series that heavily prioritized its narrative up until now. I mean, based on that statement alone, being able to skip the majority of the game is supposed to be a positive? In a game THIS gigantic?

Also, let's not act like Botw's intro is better just because it can be completed quickly. It doesn't even hold up narratively compared to the others. There's intrigue, yes, but in terms of your immediate activities? Nothing particularly bombastic to write home about.

Ever notice how every other 3D Zelda before Botw has an inciting incident whose consequences are immediately followed up on? But sure, go on, tell me more about how boring they were because they dared to develop things before tossing you to the monsters.

And no matter how you might try to spin it, switching to an open world is not inherently a "natural progression" for the series. It's just something completely different from what it was doing before. That's like saying Battle Network was a natural progression of the original Megaman formula - neither one is bad, but nobody was playing Megaman and thinking "man, if only this was a pseudo turn-based game with a deck building mechanic and my movement was restricted to a grid"

Anyway, join me next time for when I talk about how Botw Link is far and away the worst-written Link despite my personal enjoyment of him, and how sick I am of people acting like this is when he finally "got a personality"

[descendant-of-truth]

Few things drive me insane like the claim that "3D Zelda was getting stagnant anyway, so even with its flaws, Botw was a necessary change for the series"

What stagnancy?? Was 3D Zelda stagnant when they gave Link four separate, unique social standings in his hometowns across each new version? Or when they flooded Hyrule in one game and had it be an undiscovered land in another? Was it when they turned Link into a wolf for half the game, or had him fly around on a bird, or sail the seas, or transform between three different species by swapping out different masks?

Did 3D Zelda effectively showcase stagnancy when it gave every single entry a completely unique, visually striking art style and atmosphere? To the point where even Majora's Mask, famous reuser of assets, is impossible to mistake for its predecessor?

Everything I've heard to justify this mindset that Zelda somehow "needed" such a drastic change falls completely flat in the face of just how much the series was thriving before Botw came out. Every single major 3D release was just nonstop back-to-back bangers, and yet somehow people are acting like they were just OoT copy/pasted several times.

And they always end up reaching for the most, just... inane things to use as evidence for this supposed lack of originality.

"They were reusing too many of the same items!" Yeah because the items were cool and people liked using them. Also they were very much adding new items to the familiar pool each time, so I fail to see the issue here

"The story is always the same! You start somewhere with lots of trees, then you go to the same old locations with water and lava, blah blah blah you're the chosen one and have to go save Zelda and fight Ganon" Hey you know what other game you're describing the plot of. Breath of the Wild

(But honestly it was hard for any of that to feel stale for me when the execution of each of those steps was different each time. y'know. the thing that actually matters in storytelling)

"The intros in Zelda games used to be sooo long, but now I can even run straight to Ganon if I want!" So what you're admitting here is that not experiencing the story is a positive thing for you. In a game series that heavily prioritized its narrative up until now. I mean, based on that statement alone, being able to skip the majority of the game is supposed to be a positive? In a game THIS gigantic?

Also, let's not act like Botw's intro is better just because it can be completed quickly. It doesn't even hold up narratively compared to the others. There's intrigue, yes, but in terms of your immediate activities? Nothing particularly bombastic to write home about.

Ever notice how every other 3D Zelda before Botw has an inciting incident whose consequences are immediately followed up on? But sure, go on, tell me more about how boring they were because they dared to develop things before tossing you to the monsters.

And no matter how you might try to spin it, switching to an open world is not inherently a "natural progression" for the series. It's just something completely different from what it was doing before. That's like saying Battle Network was a natural progression of the original Megaman formula - neither one is bad, but nobody was playing Megaman and thinking "man, if only this was a pseudo turn-based game with a deck building mechanic and my movement was restricted to a grid"

Anyway, join me next time for when I talk about how Botw Link is far and away the worst-written Link despite my personal enjoyment of him, and how sick I am of people acting like this is when he finally "got a personality"

[descendant-of-truth]

A film major would probably be more qualified to talk about this, but I can't help but feel like the whole "live action remake of something that was originally animated" trend is, weirdly enough, kinda disrespectful to the live action medium as well?

Or, well, I don't know if "disrespect" is the right term exactly - the trend only took off because of live action being viewed as the more respectable of the two options. But by viewing live action as the default film medium, it ends up feeling like no one's considering what actually makes it good, or unique, or suitable to a story.

It's not a one-size-fits-all medium, you can't expect to put something like AtLA into live action and make it work just because it used real life martial arts for its inspiration with bending forms. A key part of what made it most suitable to being animated is the way the elements react as extensions of the characters, and that's a lot easier to pull off when you're drawing both the person and the element at the same time.

It's a fantastical magic system, one that's best brought out with snappy, exaggerated movements, not dissimilar to a Smash Bros attack. The main character can use the air around him to lift himself off the ground as if it's the air itself that's choosing to act upon him; that's just going to look smoother in animation.

(The style of comedy they wanted to do is also animation-based of course, but I wanted to talk about the bending more)

That's not to say that you can't do telekinetic stuff in live action and have it look good, it's just... it was conceptualized in animation first. If you're going to change the medium it's in, putting it in a different, more limiting visual medium is not the way to go. Put it in a comic or a book or something.

And you know what? For the most part, I have this opinion about changing something that was live action into something animated, too.

I can't speak on its quality of writing because I haven't watched it, so maybe this is unfairly biased, but Star Trek: the Lower Decks immediately threw me off when I discovered it was a cartoon. And I love cartoons! With all my heart! But that's not what Star Trek was made to be.

Everything about how Star Trek is designed relies on it being live action. The aliens are often so human-like because they need to be played by human actors; putting them in weirdly-shaped suits just to look "more alien" is not conducive to a good acting performance, nor is it practical for a long series. Heck, the fact that they were able to regularly put such elaborate and extensive makeup on the alien cast like Worf and Quark for each episode is an impressive feat unto itself, an art form completely separate from animation that deserves to be appreciated in its own right.

Same goes for the set design, the costume design, etc. Just because you could argue that it could be "done better in animation" doesn't negate how good and worthwhile the craft they went with was.

But by putting Star Trek into an animated context, a lot of its visual design elements that were cool in live action become kind of just... weird. And it feels like it's not using the medium to its advantage, all of a sudden.

You're telling me there's an animated show with a bunch of aliens in the main cast and they kinda just look like normal people?? "Where's the creativity," you would ask the animation team, "where's the biological diversity?" It feels like a waste to put it into a cartoon if you're not going to take advantage of it being a cartoon.

At the same time, though, if you do take advantage of it being a cartoon, you're gonna lose what made it feel like Star Trek to begin with. Do you see how this issue is starting to go both ways?

I mean, just think of all the resources we're putting into these projects that are imitating animated stories, instead of working on something that's made from the ground up to work in live action. The result is that these movies are just not good for anyone, not the fans of the original and not the people being handed a watered-down version of the story.

All this is doing is creating further resentment between live action fans and animation fans. People who already didn't give cartoons much consideration are being given "justification" to do so, because if they can get that same story in their preferred format, why bother with the cartoon? And people who prefer cartoons are now being given "justification" to think that live action is Stupid and Bad because it's being used as a weapon against them instead of the fellow art form it rightfully should be.

But refusing to watch live action stuff is just as closed-minded as refusing to watch animated stuff. The divide this whole "trend" is creating is ridiculous, neither of these mediums are better or more worthwhile than the other. They just have different strengths, weaknesses, and required skillsets.

Honestly, I feel bad for the people who are really into live action stuff, because they are NOT getting what they deserve out of this, either. They're just getting echoes of stories haphazardly trying to be something they're not, made out of disrespect, instead of something that knows exactly what it is, made out of genuine passion for the art. Both "sides" deserve better than this.

(Also if any film majors see this and feel like I've missed something crucial, feel free to add on to it)

[descendant-of-truth]

Since it seems we're all in agreement that Square Enix wants to release Missing Link when the weather is nice for walking, this now begs the question:

(You can specify your location if you want but please be general/vague about it for the sake of online security)

[descendant-of-truth]

Since it seems we're all in agreement that Square Enix wants to release Missing Link when the weather is nice for walking, this now begs the question:

(You can specify your location if you want but please be general/vague about it for the sake of online security)

[descendant-of-truth]

(^tags from @thetwilightroadtonightfall)

Honestly wasn't expecting to wake up to such kind, thought-provoking responses on this post, I gotta say

I made it at 2am after hours of writing a much bigger script for what I hope to be a YouTube video on Re:Coded as a whole, which also meant lots of rewatching cutscenes to get everything right. So I was writing it at a point where I was already tired and a bit spent on deciding what lines to put a pin in for later, and seeing that this line was changed meant backtracking again. Which was annoying but also kind of funny

I didn't want to let my observation go to waste, so I still made the post, but you guys make a lot of good points here! Just because it wasn't the original line doesn't mean I can't have fun extrapolating on it, or that the addition wasn't still intentional. And either way, an unintended meaning is still a meaning worth looking at.

Because I enjoy being thorough, I'll still double check the original scripts when analyzing stuff, but I'll include it more for the sake of clarity or further analysis rather than to debunk my points, unless the contradiction is like. A really big deal.

("I believe in you" vs "You don't believe that," anyone?)

So, in honor of your guys' supportive tags, I'll add onto this by saying: it's also notable that Data Sora only introduces himself this way after Data Riku explains to everyone that the two of them are just copies, and that they're all in the datascape. Whether he intuitively knew he was data or not, it's finally been said outright.

And in true Data Sora fashion, he doesn't mind. Even if he just looks like someone his friends know, he never once doubts that they are his friends. And they call him Sora! To a boy with a still half-formed heart, that's about all the identity he needs.

Arguably, transitioning from "I am this" to "my friends call me this" is a sign that he's becoming more human; the second one provides a personal reason for that to be his name, as opposed to just "that's how it was written." He's seemingly more aware of the dynamic between them now, even though he's still just as content with it. That non-committal aspect is still there, it sticks around for a long time, but there's a small shift in his mindset that's implied here, unintended as it may be.

Thanks so much for the insight! They're genuinely some very helpful perspectives on this, and it made me excited to return to both this post and my video project as a whole

I swear, every time I think I'm onto something about characterization in this series, I double check the Japanese script and my point is immediately invalidated

Just now, I was about to be like "the fact that Data Sora introduces himself here by saying his friends call him Sora, instead of saying it's his name outright, shows how non-committal he is about his own identity and his tendency to go along with whatever people tell him about himself"

...but in the original script, he literally just says "I'm Sora." The phrasing was more than likely changed because it needed to fit the lip syncing. Why must they do this to me

[descendant-of-truth]

I swear, every time I think I'm onto something about characterization in this series, I double check the Japanese script and my point is immediately invalidated

Just now, I was about to be like "the fact that Data Sora introduces himself here by saying his friends call him Sora, instead of saying it's his name outright, shows how non-committal he is about his own identity and his tendency to go along with whatever people tell him about himself"

...but in the original script, he literally just says "I'm Sora." The phrasing was more than likely changed because it needed to fit the lip syncing. Why must they do this to me

[descendant-of-truth]

Give it up for the people shouting at the heavens for everyone to actually give these games the time of day, despite their lack of availability or controversial gameplay mechanics

[descendant-of-truth]

Here's the prologue of a new Megaman X fanfic I've been working on!

Summary:

After X is rescued from an unknown organization, he's fully repaired of physical injuries but wakes up without any memory of who he is or what happened to him. There to help him pick up the pieces of his identity is Zero, who never leaves his side, along with the rest of Maverick Hunter HQ - when they're not on secret missions like Axl is, anyway. As he's reintroduced to friends, coworkers, and his role in society, three questions weigh on everyone's minds: What did that organization want with X? Can his memories be recovered? And perhaps most strangely of all: why has he lost his ability to speak, long after the repairs have finished?

Rating: T

No archive warnings (currently, at least)

Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Amnesia, Ethical Dilemmas, Pre-Game: Megaman X8, No Romance, Trauma, Nonverbal X, Canon Compliant (for the most part), Identity Issues, POV Second Person

This chapter's word count: 834

Hope you guys like it!

[descendant-of-truth]

I was talking with my friend about how different Nagito's character comes across between the Japanese and English dubs of the game, and then I had a thought:

People tend to either love or hate this guy. But I wonder if the dub language they played initially had any impact on that? Is one generally considered more likeable than the other?

So, now I gotta ask:

(Note that this is about the voices, not the text)

[descendant-of-truth]

Don't let everything else in the Z-A trailer distract you from the fact that this is our first female player character whose default outfit has her wearing pants. Not leggings or tights with an extra skirt or pair of shorts on top, but full-length, honest to goodness PANTS.

I'M SO PROUD. IT TOOK THEM 24 YEARS BUT THEY FINALLY DID IT

[descendant-of-truth]

I'm just never gonna adapt to the name Tepig, huh. I watched the Legends Z-A trailer when I woke up today and was all "hey look Pokabu's here!" "I wonder why the other two starters are from Johto and then there's just Pokabu in the middle"

Legit forgot that it even had a different name in English until the narrator said it out loud