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rockafstw · 2 months ago

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for a while I was under the impression that the Geneva Motor Show Story happened in Early 1988, and the fact that Senna didn’t want to be proper friends with Prost was something established quickly in their teammateship but noooo. I’ve recently realised this might not actually be the case and Geneva motor show happenings took place in LATE 1988. which kindaaaa does put a new lens on it! for me at least! They had been teammates and title rivals for a season and they worked well together, they were quite friendly with each other. They liked each other, basically. Enjoyed talking to each other. And THEN Senna slams the door shut on the possibility of them getting closer and being friends. and of course competitors not wanting to get too close to their direct competition isn’t uncommon in sport, not at all, because you’re really trying to beat this person, you want to succeed which means, in a sport where only one person can truly win, they fail. it’s fair that some pilots worry about conflicting emotions interfering with this. But I do want to say: just the Way Senna went about it was so strange. It’s a REALLY baffling story and even when Prost tells it, whether that’s five or ten or twenty years ago, or even last year, he clearly still is simultaneously bemused and amazed. truly what was Ayrton’s thought process. like you could’ve just.. declined the offer to go to Prost’s house? instead of going and sleeping on his couch? I suppose in the end it didn’t matter too much considering only months later would whatever relationship they had - friends or simply friendly teammates - disintegrate

#confusing and playing mind games with my teammate by taking a nap in his home #like WHATTTTTT WENT ON.#alain doesn’t seem to have that rule about not being friends with his rivals #he had his own way of separating the competitive from the personal #i assume his thinking was more along the lines of if you’re nice and you’re polite and you don’t keep enemies -#- your opponents are less likely to be hard on you on track or off it.#both of these strategies are rather reasonable to me #i mean ASIDE from geneva motor show happenings. again that’s ?????#but the not being friends with your rivals part #ayrton senna #alain prost #asap

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randomnameless · 3 months ago

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Artbook stuff !

Albion people under the cut ft Baltro !

Given how Albion received less development and screentime than the other regions because of, I suppose, issues that had VW speed the release date, the characters from that place are memorable, even if they have, as said above, less screentime, and less rapport convos.

Raenys, despite sharing her name with what characters from a certain verse, is one of the feathered people, a captain of Albion's guard (or a soldier?) and she's introduced as someone who's leading a resistance force against Zenoira, but she's overnumbered, and the church (BaD) where her allies are recovering is under assault.

I can't say anything about her looking like a "mansion maid" or a "widow", but it sure makes her different and stand out from the other feathered.

Kuddos for Raenys to cheer up Sanation in their rapport convo, as in, she's one who tells him that despite the people of Albion hating him and thinking he colluded willfully with Zenoira, he actually had his hands tied : she understands it and tells him that in that situation, whatever he did had been for the best.

As a unit...

Feathered units can't kill things on their own (save with specific builds) but they are top tier support units and damn nuisances to fight against - Feather bows, like Raenys, can put a "blind" status on foes to make them miss their next strike, even if it was supposed to be a true strike. And given how that "blind status" is an AoE move, basically, if you don't have anti-blindness stuff slapped on your units, it's basically one free turn for them when your units are sitting ducks.

Ummels!

She's the same class as Ochlys, the feathered sword we got way back in Cornia.

I get the devs gave her "droopy" eyes and a rounder hairstyle to differentiate her from Ochlys, but imo that design was translated in the writing about this character : Ummels's droppy eyes can mean that she's looking down/is upset/depressed because, in the game, she fights for Zenoira since they took her younger brother hostage! And the "round" and soft hairstyle could serve as a contrast with how she used to be Scarlett's best friend back when they were kids and, in general, a soft/kind person (which makes Scarlett notice something's wrong with her supposed allegeance to Zenoira).

Unit wise, Feather Swords are less impressive than the other Feathered units, but they're the only ones who can reliably dish out damage, based on the number of bonuses they have.

Being a winged units means they have an advantage against ponies, and when they use their shields to parry, they don't die to the first truestrike arrow thrown in their direction.

Speaking about shields...

Feathershields!

We only have one playable and named unit in this class (but we can recruit generics!) and... I understand why lol.

They are basically a res tank who can deflect magic to return it against the casters (especially funny against witches who have their 'quick cast + blizzard' combo that is supposed to freeze your party at the start of battle), they have more def than other flying units, they can recover their passive points very easily and can even deflect status!

Thing is, they can't attack for shit, unlike the werebears.

I'd say the human version of the "shield unit", the Hoplite can protect a row of allies, is unkillable by physical units (save for breakers!) and can't kill anyone even if they try - the bestral version trades some defence and "protect allies" against reasonable (and ridiculous) damage - the feathered version, unlike the other two, laughs at magic and magic users, can protect allies (but not entire rows!) and has reasonable def, but much like the Hoplite, they can't kill anything.

As for Fodoquir (Fodoquia?) as an unit...

With the limited screentime he got, we learn, mostly in his paralogue, that he didn't accept the Zenoiran conquest and led his city in a resistance movement... only for his own people to be fed up with the fighting, because food shortages and, well, there was no end in sight, so to "convince" him to surrender, they "offered" Fodoquia's own son to the Zenoirans, and to kill his spirit, they were the ones who ultimately killed him.

As expected, Fodoquia abandonned the fight, and took his resentment on his people, basically telling Alain, who comes with his army in tow to "liberate" the city from Zenoira, that the people here don't want to be liberated - when we know it's not true anymore since, surprisingly, after killing a kid, Zenoirans still invaded the city and treated its people like shit.

Fodoquia wants to die to join his son wherever he is, but ultimately accepts to go on living again, and to help the Liberation Army.

As for the dev notes... I couldn't understand a thing lol, save for the fact they tried to make him different from the other male characters from the cast, but given how the feathershields are shaped (inverted triangles) I'd say that even with a less square face, Fodoquir'd still be unique enough.

Jerome is a knight, aka the same class as Clive, Renault and Adel.

Interestingly, he is the only named non Cornian knight we can recruit, and is apparently in charge of a city.

The devs designed him as a "what should I do, join the LA or continue siding with Zenoira, what about the people, maybe I should bake a pie" character which can look frivolous - and was mostly designed as such, to bring some comic relief to the otherwise heavy Albion arc.

However, given how the pies are baked for his people, who love him for this, maybe I'm pulling strings but Jerome's basically wondering what he should do, and settles on "doing things for my people/helping them", ultimately accepting his execution at Alain's hands... until one of his subordinates (Lotti iirc!) and the town's people he cares so much about, tell the LA that while Jerome has accepted the Zenoiran conquest, he did it quite fast, so Zenoira would have had no reason to bring the fight to the city/target the city and its people.

It's the... complete inverse of the situation Fodoquia was in, and I miss the lack of rapport convo between the two, or a convo between him and Clive.

His rapport convos have him be quite cautious, and in the Alain one, he basically keeps on worrying about his city.

Nigel and his dong armor!

(don't mind the flash)

Apparently the devs are happy to have designed his armor with fake pectoral muscles, and the armor was actually something Arant took from the Sanctuary and gave him when Zenoira invaded?

The timeline/actions of what happened in Albion is a bit muddy though, but at least it means Arant didn't gave up as I first thought and wanted to fight against Zenoira, before realising that he was going to lose (then he had Nigel in his black armor take Scarlett away?).

I've already wrote a bit about the Albion plot and the role both Nigel and Sanation play which feels, uh, really convoluted, especially regarding Scarlett's involvment, to make the party fight in Albion - but bar that, Nigel's mostly a serious knight who wants to protect the Orthodoxy, who's popular with the people of Albion (both knights and randoms).

Unlike Hermann who has the same play time as he does, Nigel, despite being a NPC, is inserted in the artbook with the playable characters, even if he doesn't have any rapport conversation.

Unit wise, Nigel's dark marquess' variant uses a lot of fire and inflicts burns as a status, but unlike Eligor, when he protects his allies, he doesn't penalise them, instead, he gets another free action.

Sanatio is the boss of the Albion arc, thanks to, again, what I feel is the most convoluted story arc written to "have a boss".

His class, feather staff, cannot resurrect people unlike human clerics, but he can heal a lot of HP and even "overheal", aka give more HP than an unit's HP bar. There are also fun stuff like "preventive healing", aka healing an unit before it takes any damage, but given how late he joins, I didn't have a lot of occasions to use him.

As a character, he wants to apologise and atone for having been deceived by Baltro and turned against Scarlett (even if, again, that plot was... something) and basically becomes the unit to reveal that Alain's the saviour (of Albion or of Fevrith?) which, again, brought the "chosen one" plot to a table that definitely didn't need it.

Lack of diversity in his rapport convos hurt him a lot, save for the Ochlys one where it basically becomes a "childish" contest and the random Melisandre one, it's often centered of him feeling like shit after the Albion arc, and wanting to atone.

Maybe because his most important relationship is with Nigel, who cannot have any rapports? IDK.

FWIW though, I really wanted to like using him, but poor character availability and too few interesting rapport convos at first made me meh, until I noticed some part of the fandom's vitriol against the guy which made me laugh a bit.

Baltro is UO's version of FE's "Gharnef archetype", aka an evil sorcerer who plots behind the "Red Emperor's" back to fulfill his own goals, even if, according to the devs, Baltro's movitations are "for the lols" + "for science" + "why not".

His role as a necromancer is only put to the forefront in the Elheim arc when he revives elves to have them fight for him, but imo, it was teased in the Cornian/Drakengard ones with the "mysterious plagues" he brought there.

(maybe they are the ones protecting him or attacking in his animations?)

I guess the reveal that he was going to betray Zenoira/Galvius was foreshadowed in Elheim when we first fight him, because he doesn't have Zenoira's banner! Much like Alcina, Baltro's in this situation for his own goals, he doesn't have any allegeance to Zenoira himself.

Design wise, I like how eery he feels compared to the other characters, even his animations feel "odd", but I'm glad I noticed in my first playthrough how his "dying" animation is actually his lantern's glow growing more and more dim, until it's finally gone.

#unicorn overlord stuff #artbook stuff #2025 and I still don't know how to take pictures lol #Albion could have been something really cool but the devs ran out of time and money #too bad because the premise of an occupied land with a majority of people not really minding the occupation as long as they can go on #with their business is nice #especially when it's revealed that they do mind they effing hate it but given how the bulk of the Zenoiran army is on their shores #they know that fighting against them with their own army is a lost cause even if some still try #For a nothingburger Jerome actually brings Albion's issues to the forefront #like he Sanatio and Fodoquir's stories really make a compelling argument about what Albion is all about #bar Scarlett returns home takes her dad's role and reveals to Alain that there's a prophecy that foretold he would become the saviour

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