Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
hey omi i gather you've had people going through your backlog giving reactions before, so here's another for you
'Last survivor of a doomed hometown' is obviously a really common heroic trope, and the reasons why the hero survives that incident vary a lot. Sometimes that reason is that the villain's servants couldn't bring themselves to go that final step and commit such a personal act of perfidy, but this is, I think, the first time I've come across a story that's really confronted the audience with that perspective, putting them in the shoes of the goons asked to do something vile, and demonstrating why the characters might have balked long enough for providence (here represented by a twenty foot tall dude with an 8-pack you could grind meat on) to help the heroes out.
What stands out to me is that is also like - just genuinely really good writing? That is, your early posts about FF4 spent a fair few words on going over things that were in the absolute sense pretty basic, but are worth noting as being the first time the series got to use these literary tools. But this, this part right here, is actually like, not just impactful but also relatively novel, and using the medium of video games to really sell the story?Christ.
What an absolute gut-punch.
I mean, what am I supposed to do here? Attack the little girl with all the power of the dark side? Try to stab her with a spear, but, like, non-lethally? What am I supposed to do? Well, the ATB gauge is counting up! Little girl's turn is coming up! Time to decide! Do I just decide to wait and see what she does with her action? Do I just attack and hope that this is treated as my characters 'peacefully' knocking her out? Do I-
DING DING DING
Too late! The bell is ringing!
And it's time for Final Fantasy to remind us that this is anime, and you don't fucking stand around lollygagging while a child with brightly colored hair descended from a dead village of super-wizards is angry at you!
That is fucking Titan right there.
Yeah, this is an instant kill on both characters.
Or, well, 'kill.'
A gigantic earthen mound erupts from the earth on the overworld, closing the way to Mist, and in the destruction Cecil and Kain were separated.
Well.
This was a lot.
'Last survivor of a doomed hometown' is obviously a really common heroic trope, and the reasons why the hero survives that incident vary a lot. Sometimes that reason is that the villain's servants couldn't bring themselves to go that final step and commit such a personal act of perfidy, but this is, I think, the first time I've come across a story that's really confronted the audience with that perspective, putting them in the shoes of the goons asked to do something vile, and demonstrating why the characters might have balked long enough for providence (here represented by a twenty foot tall dude with an 8-pack you could grind meat on) to help the heroes out.
