#lets play?

[lazodiac]

So, let’s say you’re an RPG protagonist in a middle-tier PS2 era game, and you’ve been given a choice. You can either sit and be happy with your false happy ending, or you can risk it all and decide to Do Something About This.

This is the scenario Lyner Barsett finds himself in, at the end of Act 2 of Ar Tonelico.

It’s a weird thing for him. He’s spent the entirety of the game going around the world trying to solve the one(1) task his dad asked him to do at the start of the game, and one thing led to another and now he’s helped a cyborg magical girl pop idol put an ancient super virus being (who is also definitely a cyborg magical girl pop idol) to sleep. However, the consequence of this is… a third, only somewhat related cyborg magical girl pop idol was put to permanent sleep (believed to be death) to do so.

This is interesting for a couple reasons.

First and foremost is that hey; this is the first time Lyner actually makes a choice in his entire adventure! He’s given a happy ending and an implied idyllic life and all he has to do is let a character who is sort of important to him (she was his boss, much like his dad, but nice instead of a jerk) stay dead. And if that doesn’t sit right with him… well, it’s time to get up and Do Something About It. There’s something really interesting about that to me, that our hero is finally given some agency and the choice is to… potentially make things worse, because he just doesn’t want someone he knows to die.

It’s got that classic RPG vibe that I do like, and the implicit fact that there IS a choice to have that false happy ending really helps build on that false feeling. As you may have seen in another post, the “false” happy ending is actually pretty solid. Everything is solved and the only sacrifice is one(1) magical singing robot girl, and also all of the actual singing magic is turned off. Feels like a decent trade to save the day; hell FF6 did that and everyone loves that one! But by having it be a Choice, by telling the player “you can choose this, or not”, makes the false happy ending feel that much more unsatisfying, because you know it's not the true ending.

So Lyner chooses that no, this isn’t the way things should go. Aurica, the love interest (in the route we took anyway) is willing to help. Lyner’s her man and damn if she’s not going to help him do whatever. She taught him how to have agency in her life, so she’ll follow him to the ends of the earth. Dear ol’ Dad reveals there is a way to do it, we just gotta find a specific hymn crystal that’ll do it- with the implication that it’ll wake up the ancient virus lady as well but hey that’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get to it.

So, we go to pick up our friends to help us out. Sure it’s been a couple months, but they are our buddies and helped us save the world and junk, so why not right?

Radolf is busy being bishop. He’d love to, but… church, man.

Krusche is busy building an airship for her new employer. She’d love to, but… job, man.

It’s fascinating looking at this. Two of the three non-magical girl characters DO want to help, but not enough to upend their own happy endings. That’s interesting! They also assume Lyner’s “news” is that he and Aurica are getting married, implying they’re busy thinking about the future. And why wouldn’t they right, the world is at peace. They’re in their happy ending. And they don’t even really KNOW Lady Shurelia, the one who sacrificed herself to save the world.

This is… disappointing, for Lyner, so we go and find the final of our party members, Jack, who has been touring the world with Misha, the alternative love interest and second magical girl of the party. Jack is the one most likely to join us; after all, he’s an adventurerer. A wandering gunslinger. He’d absolutely be game for this sort of thing.

The conversation starts similar, Jack having presumptions about the news, and Aurica interrupting his interruption to cutely scream “NOOOO!” to the expected “are you getting married” thing.

Except Jack is confused. He was gonna ask if we had a new ruin to explore.

Then, when we tell Jack our plan, he tells us straight up that he “does not want to bring Shurelia back” and then fucking books it before we can get a word in edgewise.

Huh. That’s unexpected isn’t it. The one most likely to assist with this has literally less than zero desire to help, while the ones who have less reason to help DO want to help… but can’t.

There is something genuinely interesting about all this to me. This feels pretty counter to what I expected of a “let get the gang back together to get a proper golden ending” sort of scenario. Jack’s cageyness as well is pretty compelling- of the party he’s only non-magical girl who’d realistically have a chance to MEET Shurelia, it wouldn’t be impossible for him to WANT to save her, and as a wandering gunslinger type it feels like his kinda jam… and yet he doesn’t. Not only does he doesn’t, he explicitly is AGAINST it.

My read is that he’s made the realization I did above; waking up Shurelia puts us right back where we were at the end of Phase 2. Mir, the virus, very alive and very trying to kill us and not able to be stopped. There’s some, problems if that’s the case, so it could be something else but… who knows.

Either way, this is pretty interesting! I’m curious where this’ll go next! RANDOM SIDE TIDBIT: During this sequence if you revisit the old man who teaches you how to do the game’s crafting mechanic, he just screams “GRATHMELD” at you and nothing else. It’s really funny to me (see below).

[foreignemotion]

blah blah blah colour theory but jayce went from piltover’s pure and golden boy dressed in white to being in mourning black for all that he’s lost (“my partner died in that room”)…

[cheddar-baby]

heres my advice to any followers i have who are young. Don't delete things when you think you've outgrown them or they're cringy. If you make youtube videos just private them don't delete them. Save your files, you can bury them in multiple sub-folders if you think they're cringe now but DON'T DELETE THEM! It doesn't feel like it now but years in the future you will look back fondly at who you were and wish you still had those things.

[desertowlet]

Anya would probably play some of her music during the more difficult days on the ship, good thing the Captain Curly has taste at least.

[k-eke]

LET ME PLAY!!!!

[citrispace]

Let's go together!

[featherfangart]

'Not now, not in front of--'

[duckysprouts]

if you were at your worst, if you’re a villain or a screwup or whatever, there is a goth man dressed as a giant bat who keeps coming after you, bothering you. he sabotages your journey of self destruction over and over. ur ready to give up but he won’t let you. you think, today he won’t come. today he will give up on me too. he never does.

[cringengl]

if we look at the original timeline (aka annabeth and percy being born in 1993) then 2009 was a big year for annabeth bcus not only did the battle of manhattan take place and she finally started dating percy, but also minecraft came out and i think that would be a big deal to her

[artistmarchalius]

I had this dumb idea going ‘round in my head so I let it out as a quick comic.

NEXT

[fermentedrice]

[durgestarion] kissing the murder puppy 🐶

[draculings]

an incredibly sensitive instrument.

[humming-fly]

The 2D vs 3D contrast of the sonic and shadow generation hubworlds cracks me up the more I think about it

Bonus:

[bkbeemz]

Let's play Piñata (Caine Piñata)

[catmask]

does anyone have like an anti aesthetic. like something you look at and can recognize as a complete fashion/interior design/artistic movement and understand it but it makes you shudder seeing it. i am not talking like “its morally bad” “its poorly structured” like just sheerly devoid of joy for you actually invites a repulse response.