descendant-of-truth

[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

[descendant-of-truth]

So I beat Re:Coded for the first time the other day after previously knowing its story from the movie and novel versions, so you know what that means. It's time for more Data Sora Thoughts(TM)

Plenty has been said about how he serves as an interesting comparison to the original Sora, which makes sense as that's kind of the point of him existing. You're supposed to take notice of how he's different, despite all their similarities. He's kind of an idealized version of Sora, which makes sense as he's the Sora that Jiminy wrote. Jiminy doesn't know the depths of Sora's insecurities or his flaws, so Data Sora is almost unnaturally good-willed and pleasant.

But what stood out to me while playing it for myself is how much the game is just... not supposed to be about him, and how much it still is despite that.

Nothing exemplifies this more clearly than his journey through Castle Oblivion. The whole reason he's even there is to be tested, to see if "Sora" is ready to take ownership of all the pain that's inside him. But they're not testing Data Sora, the person, they're testing what they think is just a representation of the original Sora.

So, when Data Sora resolves himself to face the pain head-on and not run away from it, even learning that it can help him connect to people, no one thinks this is unique to him. They just go, "great! that means Sora's ready, too!" with absolutely zero awareness of the fact that they can't really treat him like this now that he has his own heart.

Which, is kind of insane?? Data Sora is provided a consistent level of support and guidance that even the original Sora didn't get, he develops a heart of his own because of how effectively he was nurtured by his friends, and yet. None of them have ever seen him as HIS OWN person. Even Data Riku, who introduces himself as "zeroes and ones that look like somebody you know," is incapable of separating himself and Sora from their originals.

Data Sora is surrounded by people affirming his personhood while in the same breath denying his individuality. It's an interesting position to be in, to say the least.

That said, the characters may think the test is all about the original Sora, but narratively? It's absolutely about Data Sora, too.

You know how he was surprisingly at peace with the fact that the journal resetting meant that he'd lose his memories? He seemed pretty content with the knowledge that his friends would be able to remember their journey for him, even if he got a little choked up about saying goodbye. It's easy to think, while seeing it for the first time, that because he's already accepted everything with a smile, that his character arc is over by then.

Yeah, Data Roxas comes into the story swinging with "hey, idiot, you have no idea how much forgetting your friends is going to hurt you in the long run. Why don't you do that a couple more times and then maybe you'll get the idea"

Because it's true, I really don't think Data Sora was prepared for the pain of amnesia in the slightest. He has this habit of going along with whatever anyone says without much thought, so when Data Riku told him that everything had to be reset, I think he was just kinda like. well darn. guess I can't do anything about that

(This is the same guy that went "I'm good with that" when he considered that doing what Mickey says will just blast him off into the unknown repeatedly, so it checks out)

I love that the game refuses to end where you'd expect it to, and instead forces Data Sora to reckon with the pain of what was just unfairly taken from him. It treats him with just as much respect as it does with every other character in the series, and gives his feelings the weight they deserve.

Of course, the way the test is set up is... kind of cruel. It bludgeons him over the head with the pain he just went through repeatedly until he figures out exactly how it works and what he's going to do about it. And it's like this because it wasn't set up with a real person in mind; Data Sora's supposed to be acting like a first draft for something the original Sora's going to do later.

But he can't. Because they're different people.

So when you get down to it, he arguably doesn't really fulfill his purpose? He gets everyone the answers they need, sure, but he proves absolutely nothing about Sora. And not just because he became his own person, but because the premise of the test was flawed from the start. Jiminy's perception of Sora is meaningless in the face of the real thing, so it was never going to have accurate results no matter what they did.

It's a story that's undeniably relevant to both Soras, but I still hope we'll get to see Data Sora again so we can finally address how everyone in-game expects them to be like each other. It's a mindset that affects both of them in different ways; Sora has this impossible ideal to live up to, and Data Sora - despite being that ideal - is forever just "another version" of someone else.

And they haven't even met each other. When is that going to happen

[descendant-of-truth]

Actually I think we need to be talking about Darkside more. Why have we as a fandom (as well as myself specifically) been neglecting Darkside when it's the most consistently recurring boss in the whole franchise

Literally the first boss we fight and it's this thing that rises up out of Sora's shadow in his dreams, and that still looks like Sora for a few seconds before it transforms into the version we fight:

This is Sora's dark side, quite literally. And what just so happens to be there at the destruction of Destiny Islands?

Man, with a thing that big and powerful, it's probably responsible for most of the damage to the islands all by itself.

Hey, what was that thing Zexion said to Riku, again? "It was you who destroyed your home"? Boy I sure am glad that the truth is what we hear and not what we see with our eyes--

Oh. Hm. That's a rather pointed dream sequence for you to be having, Xion.

Guys, I don't know why it took me so long to put these specific pieces together, but I'm pretty sure Sora's darkness was what actually destroyed the Destiny Islands. Whoever opened the door to darkness is still responsible for letting it out - it seemed otherwise occupied in Sora's dreams - and that's an interesting puzzle, too, because we're told that Riku did that even though Kairi was the one closest to the door, but that's not a mystery this post is here to solve.

My question is, what the HECK was going on with Sora for him to have a darkness so potent that it manifested outside of him before he had even been on any adventures? The guy's got insecurities for sure, but at this point in the series, they're kinda... normal ones. Feeling overshadowed and jealous of his best friend who's always better at everything than him, always stronger and cooler, it's not nothing but it doesn't make sense for it to be that. If Sora was going to have a darkness that strong, I'd expect it to come from a later point in the series, maybe around KH3 when the number of Terrible Things that have happened to or around him has reached truly insane levels.

But... the Darkside comes from the Realm of Darkness, right? Where time doesn't exist, and if you walk through it, you can be hit with people's emotions from the future?

So, I dunno, maybe it's a conglomeration of Sora's darkness from various points in time, though it still doesn't explain why his in particular gets to become something so giant. But it's definitely a Sora thing, because in Coded, the record of Sora's Heartless develops into a Darkside, as well.

But how can it be Sora-exclusive when there's so many of them down there??

Well, it might not be... but I'm not ruling out the possibility of time loop shenanigans, either. If Sora can live through the Keyblade Graveyard stuff at least four times (five if you consider the theory of KH3 in its entirety being a second loop from the get-go), then who's to say that doesn't double up on the number of Darksides in the Realm of Darkness?

Sora's already got a narrative history of reliving his past, after all. CoM has him going through his memories of his first adventure (albeit altered), Coded has another version of Sora going through his first adventure (altered again), even DDD has him revisiting Traverse Town and re-meeting his friends (in different ways than he originally did but it still counts).

I'm just saying, the heart remembers what the mind doesn't, and that can surface in a lot of ways. A Sora that's been time-looping a bunch but doesn't remember it probably would be having weird prophetic nightmares and thoughts about whether any of this is "for real" or not.

But honestly, even with the time loop theory I ended up going with in this post, the main thing I wanted to get at is that the Darkside is weird and unexplained but suspiciously tied to Sora in the narrative. These are just the connections I've put together on my own, but there could be a lot that I'm missing! I want to know what this thing's deal is, and I welcome anyone who wants to share their take on the matter.

[descendant-of-truth]

Somehow, I managed to go through an entire turf war match without getting splatted a single time?? AND I got in six splats of my own??? Truly I've reached my peak

Of course, special shoutout to my teammates who were really active and definitely kept me safe throughout the match! Couldn't have accomplished such a feat without them!