#and since it wasn't wrapped up in the nightmare 5d chess that this thing was it worked fine

[firestorm09890]

FUCK what I said about the majority of significant changes to dialogue in Re:CoM being to adjust Axel's characterization, the most egregious change is actually this

(GBA CoM)

(Re:CoM)

if I had to guess, the reason for this change was because in GBA CoM, The Superior was a spooky, unknown being at the head of this Organization we had very little knowledge on, and for Vexen, the guy who runs his mouth constantly about how much better he is than the others, to be terrified of him, he must be some pretty scary dude. But then after kh2 we know him, it's Xemnas, he's very dramatic, he likes to talk to the moon, and the effect of your mind filling in the gaps about what "The Superior" must be like is gone. So it wasn't really necessary anymore, right?

(rest under cut because it's long)

Except... the way they changed it is so weird. In the GBA version, what's happening is pretty clear:

Marluxia tells Vexen that his project is a failure

Vexen demonstrates that he does not give a shit about Marluxia's opinion

he does care very much about The Superior's opinion, though, and Marluxia uses this to blackmail him into eliminating Sora- an action which is nonsensical, as the entire point of what they're doing needs Sora alive, making it clear to everyone in the room that he is deliberately sending Vexen to die

and then after that, when Vexen shows up to fight Sora, he goes "if you want to fight me for real you've gotta do it in the memories from the other side of your heart lol bye" and Sora goes "huh? other side?" and then it cuts to a scene on the top floor:

and then this gets more into subtext but here, Vexen has realized he's totally fucked and his only hope is to mess directly with Marluxia's plans (well, they were the Organization's plans, but it's pretty obvious by now Marluxia's abusing his power for his own purposes) by giving Sora more information than he should know. This does get the traitor gang worried enough to send Axel to go kill him (as opposed to just letting Sora take care of him, which was presumably the original plan)- he very specifically cuts Vexen off to keep him from saying too much (this is retained between the original and the remake)

Anyway, what happens in Re:CoM sort of follows the same order of events, but everything is changed slightly in a way that just makes things more confusing.

Marluxia tells Vexen his project is a failure and Vexen demonstrates that he doesn't give a shit about Marluxia's opinion, as before

Marluxia threatens Vexen with a weapon, rather than threatening to tell the Superior

this, notably, does not seem to faze Vexen very much. he continues to run his mouth while having the scythe pointed at him.

Xemnas is still leveraged- Marluxia points out it was the Superior who entrusted him with the castle

...even though reasonably Vexen would already be aware of this, and has still demonstrated that he has zero respect for Marluxia despite it

the lines about betraying the Organization being a capital crime are retained, probably because it's super relevant later, but then that line of thinking is abandoned in favor of Marluxia and Larxene just taunting Vexen instead

The part where Marluxia says "do it. you won't" could be seen as a sort of threat... if not for Axel's line: "You give a challenge like that to Vexen and he'll seriously want to eliminate Sora." It frames it all as though Vexen went to fight Sora out of some sort of pride.

And look, Vexen may have a temper and a superiority complex, but he's not stupid. They're obviously baiting him. Plus, what happened to him seeing himself as above the others and countering things he doesn't like with "well actually I'm higher ranked than you and also you're an idiot"? Is he that insecure in his fighting capabilities? I could deal with characterization changes doing him dirty if it didn't also make no sense in the context of the plot.

So now we have Vexen going to try to kill Sora, something that really makes no sense to do, out of pride. What was the purpose of sending Sora to Twilight Town? Also pride, over the fact that he managed to get that information? Giving the writing the benefit of the doubt, I could say that these nonsensical actions can be explained as evidence that Nobodies can have hearts and people with hearts do strange and rash things, but that just feels like a reach, which is bad because what they had in GBA CoM worked perfectly fine and made sense without any reaching for the "idk emotions make you do strange things" explanation.

It continues. After Vexen gives Sora the Twilight Town card in Re:CoM and Sora wonders about what the "other side" means, this is that version of the conversation the top floor members have:

...what? "If Sora disappears, that would mess up the Organization's plans"? what are you worried about? the only reason Sora would disappear is if Vexen killed him. there's no way they think Vexen being in Twilight Town would give him an advantage, right? they know he's a pathetic fighter. "Vexen has clearly committed a treasonous act against the Organization" HOW? HOW IS IT CLEAR? they don't express any worry about Sora learning too much, up until Axel says "I came to stop you from talking too much" when killing Vexen- and that being there makes it seem like they were worried about Sora learning to much, but if that's the case, why would they replace the perfectly serviceable lines in the above scene? it's just... baffling that they would want to lean into the narrative that Vexen going to kill Sora (which he'd been goaded into doing) is the problem here, because it just makes so little sense compared to what it was originally.

once again giving them the benefit of the doubt: Marluxia's real plan was to take over the Organization, and he saw an easy way to pick off one of the members, so he took it. the motive for stopping Vexen doesn't actually matter.

buuuuut it's the same as with Vexen earlier. Marluxia may be too self-absorbed and power-hungry to notice Axel is scheming against him, but he, too, is an intelligent man. he's plotted for a while, getting into Xemnas's good graces in order to be put in charge of the Castle. this is incredibly sloppy for him. I guess it could be said that getting so close to his goal would make him sloppy, but again, if they'd just left things the way they were in GBA CoM, I wouldn't even have to be saying this

in conclusion: GBA Chain of Memories' intra-Organization strife subplot is so tightly woven with calculated moves on all sides that Re:CoM changing certain things without taking into consideration the consequences makes certain parts of the plot fall flat and become far more confusing than in the original story