It's difficult for me to know what I like. It's as though my opinion is a giant glass cylinder that's all fogged up, and when I go up to it and ask, "Did I like Crank?" a bored and barely audible voice from inside replies, "I guess."
Maybe I'm objectively-minded. Maybe I'm dumb. Maybe after so many years of being told that I don't know what I'm talking about, I've sealed my opinion into a magic crystal, split it into eight pieces and scattered those pieces throughout the land to protect myself and those I love. Regardless, I have a lot of work to do in regaining my opinion and embarking on the arduous journey of learning how to defend it.
My first experience with a tri-Ace game was Star Ocean 2. I started playing it, and as soon as my character crashed onto a planet full of swords and magic, I felt gipped. It's called "Star Ocean". Outerspace is on the cover of the box. One of the main characters is in a space fleet. So why isn't this the sci-fi adventure I expected it to be? Was it my fault? My fault for expecting something different?
I tried to like it for what it was, but I didn't think that was terribly impressive, either. The combat system tried to be something more "attack-magic-item", but the only difference was that instead of automatically running towards a monster to attack it, you had to do it yourself; and why risk the almost-guaranteed failure of item creation when you could just BUY what you needed? I never saw one of those 80 endings.
But this isn't about Star Ocean. This is about tri-Ace's next game, Valkyrie Profile, and its sequel.
The protagonist Lenneth, like Claude of Star Ocean 2, is a fish out of water, exploring a world that is not her own - the mortal realm of Midgard. But she's not some bright-eyed adventurer who can't wait to bomb some dodongos. She's a valkyrie; a hardened war-god, referred to by mortals as the Battle Maiden, sent by Odin on a mission to Midgard to gather troops and arms for Ragnarok, the last war between the Aesir and the Vanir of Asgard.Ragnarok draws ever nearer. For every visit to a town or dungeon, a unit of time passes - that means you're on the clock! Fortunately, you're equipped to meet the challenge. You don't need to slowly traverse the world map with your legs; you can fly faster than the wind. Instead of walking into shops to buy puny human goods, you can manifest your own divine weaponry. You technically can't die, either - though you can lose the energy necessary to retain your material form, ejecting you to the world map and costing you precious time. The point is, you're no mere mortal.
Lenneth's main objective is to draft einherjar, fallen warriors, into the fight against the Vanir. During your tour on Midgard, you dungeon crawl throughout the land in search of powerful artifacts and weapons, training your einherjar all the while. Once you feel your einherjar are strong enough - or if you just get sick of them - you can send them to Asgard to join the cause and participate in each major battle. If he is pleased with your einherjar's efforts, Odin rewards you with various artifacts that will make your next dungeon crawl more bearable - and you will surely need them once the game's difficulty suddenly spikes.
Before recruiting a soul into your party, the viewer is treated to a vignette detailing the events leading up to that person's end. These sequences portray a wide variety of characters dying a wide variety of deaths: tortured, glorious, dignified, desperate, sudden, selfless, senseless, and always inevitable. These episodes are sometimes slow-paced, but are unfolded with powerfully decent voice acting (often hampered by what seems to be load time - I hope they addressed that in the PSP version) and arguably the most impressive 2D visuals on the Playstation. In as little as four minutes a piece, these tragically poignant vignettes manage to create and destroy a character's world, quickly garnering sympathy for both the deceased and the loved ones they leave behind.Though Valkyrie Profile is indeed inspired by Norse mythology, the game expectedly deviates from the established conventions of those myths: the Aesir are supposed to be fighting the Jotun, not the Vanir; the god Frei is bearded and male, not nubile and female; Thor is, frustratingly, nowhere to be seen, despite being the god of battle; and as far as I know, valkyries didn't do a whole lot of vampire hunting. Mostly, these changes seem to be for the sake of simplicity and dramatic effect.
The most interesting deviation from mythological standards is in the game's view of death. Vikings believed that dying in battle was a pretty great thing to happen to someone, that it was the greatest glory attainable. In Valkyrie Profile, death is decidedly bleaker. Though most characters come to accept it, nearly all of them die regretfully, leaving someone behind or leaving something undone. As the player, you begin to see the inhabitants of Midgar as your valkyrie avatar does - humanity struggles through a sad, thorny existence, and then they die. And instead of being granted reprieve from the harshness of existence, they are drafted as soldiers to fight for a cause that is beyond them. In a world were old gods reign, there seems to be no respite for mere mortals. How pitiful humans are!
And yet, even though you take the role of a god, the humans are the most important aspect of the game. Their deaths are the centerpieces that set the tone for the story, and your success is decided by their growth. Despite their being so weak and death prone, the gods NEED them. They're the whole point.Depending on your progress through the game, the game either laments or celebrates the wonderfulness of life, with less Roberto Bengini and more dragon zombies. Like Kevin Spacey or Dr. Manhattan, the divine Lenneth comes to see the phenomenon of human existence as a dazzling spectacle to behold. Whether or not it's ultimately worthwhile is all up to her, and to you.
SEVEN YEARS LATER...
Much in the way that Silent Hill 4 is based on an article the player can find in Silent Hill 2, Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria is a prequel/sequel centering around the fate of the tucked-away kingdom of Dipan, which was levelled by the gods in the first game for being so ungodly.
You again take the role of a valkyrie - sorta. The titular valkyrie, Silmeria, was sealed by Odin inside the soul of the princess of Dipan, Alicia, arguably the REAL protagonist of the story. Though Odin apparently has practice in this kind of thing, there is a fluke this time, and Silmeria awakens within Alicia. Silmeria convinces the weak-willed princess to find a power to defy the gods themselves, and Alicia really has no choice but to comply. Like the einherjar of the first game, Alicia is at the whim of the gods - in no time, she appeals to the players sympathies much more than Lenneth ever did.
So, you're not a god this time; you're just a mortal again. The problem with this is that many of the features that distinguished the first Valkyrie Profile from other RPGs is lost. You have to walk between locations, you have to travel to particular stores to buy particular items, and without the aid of the mystical Experience Orb from the first game, you have to grind in order to level up your new characters.
If you care to, that is. The magic of gathering einherjar has completely vanished in the sequel. You approach a glowing artifact, use your limited valkyrie powers to manifest the energy within, and bam, one of two to three einherjar are randomly chosen to be in your party. Who is this person? Why should I care? The game doesn't give you a reason to. It doesn't tell you how any of these people died - though you are able to READ a less-than-exciting summary of their personal histories in the menu screen.
The only time the game itself actually does any work of developing these characters is when, on the off-hand chance any of the characters in your party knew each other in their previous lives, at the start of a battle, one of them may shout, "Zunde! Thanks to your bravery, my family was able to survive the attacks on Solde!" This only ever happened to me once, and it was mildly confusing. It's hard to like any of the einherjar when every three of them look the same and most all of them have stupid names. About halfway through the game, once you're tired of teaching the same skills over and over to every new recruit, the einherjar become a nuisance. Seluvia joined the party! Ehlen joined the party! Woltar joined the party! Lwyn joined the party! Great! Get in the dugout!So, the story pretty much has nothing to do with the einherjar; it's all about Silmeria, Alicia and their band of heretics. The interesting thing about this story in Silmeria is that instead of working for the gods, you're rebelling against them from the get-go. Just as being a valkyrie gives the player a pitiable perspective of humans in Lenneth, focusing on a human protagonist in Silmeria also colors the player's view of the gods - namely that they must be dumb as hell. Several indications are given that Odin and company KNOW that Silmeria has awakened, and they automatically assume what she is planning. So why can't they just stop her? Why do they have to send a character to go in undercover and STILL fail? Aren't they GODS? Can't Odin just throw a lightning bolt at her? Maybe I just missed something; some bullshit plot point that explains how Silmeria has cloaking powers or whatever. She can elude the gods of creation, but she STILL can't fly.
I got tired of justifying the story when it didn't even make any effort to do so itself. Minor characters suddenly become important, while seemingly important characters sort of fade away. Your einherjar are supposedly "reincarnated", but are instead brought back to life at the same age they died, retaining all their memories of adventuring with you. Some characters die, but are later resurrected. Some characters transform in order to conceal their identity, and some transform by accident. Some try to transform into other characters, but can't because those characters have already transformed into themselves. Some characters lay dormant in other characters, and some characters are actually the same character split into alternate personalities. Souls and personalities are flying all over the place. Like a foreign algebra teacher with no tenure, the story ignores things you want to know more about and keeps telling you things you don't understand.
Some writers think hard about how a story should unfold. They consider motives, how actions fit into the tone of the story, about what is possible within the fictional world.
But you don't need to do that all that work for a JRPG. Make the story go where ever you want! If you want to justify why a former ally betrays the main character, just say they were possessed! Got a cool character but don't know how to introduce her? Just have her drop in from the future! You don't even need to develop her as long as she LOOKS cool enough! If anyone is unable suspend their belief, just bullshit an explanation and make it sound really serious! "Gasp! Soul transfusion!" OF COURSE! SOUL TRANSFUSION!
And even if any of it were to make sense, it still wouldn't change anything. The story spends so much time focusing on what is HAPPENING - which never really matters, because if something goes wrong for either the heroes or the villains, someone will come along and invoke a Spirit Transferrance or the Sovereign's Rite to fix/ruin everything - that it neglects to say what the game is ABOUT. What does it say about gods and humanity? That, no matter how great either is, they're both ultimately at the whim of silly plot devices?
Through all the twists and turns that were so unpredictable in their predictability, the clunky combat system and the 40 one-dimensional characters on my party - more than double the size of the pitifully lovable cast of the first game - the competent voice acting and fantastically detailed visuals made Valkyrie Profile 2 tolerable enough to finish.
I finished, and I wondered.
Have RPGs always been like this? Characters being absurdly serious about the silliest stuff? The pointless party management and the numbers upon numbers? Have I not noticed? Have my tastes changed? Have I grown up? I considered never playing another RPG.
Last month, I finally finished Dragon Quest VIII. Now I'm certain I never want to play another RPG.
Once I finish Final Fantasy XII.
1 comment:
Interesting to know.
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