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Unless there's a third game and Destiny is calling you back.
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Jan 11, 2015 19:49
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Oh god, this LP just won’t die.  I was struck by the notion earlier that Level-5 still has an entire lore website for the series sitting online still and completely untranslated. This was the site, you might recall, which I found that information nugget that explained who the hell Guido Kantarabe was after he was namedropped and not explained in the slightest in Avatar Story chapter 9. I wondered just what other potential nuggets of world building that, for reasons that still astound me, never made it into the game… or at least the parts of the game that most people could be assed to suffer through. So I’m going to “localizing” them, purely for my own sake and posting them here in the thread. Actually, it’s more for those potential poor unfortunate souls who are going to be reading this on the LP Archive when it goes up there eventually. Though I’m still not quite sure where I’d have these updates shoehorned in once the LP reaches its Final Form on account of them having some pretty hefty spoilers in them for stuff later in the game from where they’d reasonably fit in. Any ideas, thread? There’s 21 of these total, so let’s start this experiment out, shall we. I’ll post more when I get around to translating them / when I feel like it. Watch this space.  From December 10th, 2008 to December 12th, 2009, Level-5 posted a series of updates on a sub-site which linked to both the White Knight Chronicles Japanese webpage and the Episode 0 manga site (which doesn’t actually host said manga online any more, go figure). The updates are written from an in-universe/in-character perspective, that of one of Balandor’s best and  [Pictured: Elise] …I’m actually not even sure if she appears in the game itself. Probably not. I mean, hell, putting undue effort into poo poo that most of the game’s players will never even see sounds like SOP for Level-5 anyway, right? Anyways, she’s no Orren, but she seems to have a decent bead on what’s actually going on on the continent of Nadias, so she’s already a better character that Leonard ever was in this game. Update 1 – The History of Nadias ● Originally published December 10th, 2008 "Hello there. My name is Elise. I’m a historian for the Kingdom of Balandor, and over the next few weeks I shall be discussing the history of the content of Nadias, its peoples, cultures, and artifacts. Today I’ll be covering both the ancient and recent history of Nadias. According to our oldest history books, this continent was once ruled by the mighty King Falcyos over 10,000 years ago. Falcyos was said to possess great magical powers, and his reign was a long and peaceful one. He was hailed across the lands as a great king who unified the land under a single banner, though we know that more from his legend than the few historical records we actually have on the time of his reign. Unfortunately, only a scant few records from that time remain intact. So why are there no records then? Because an age of unimaginable upheaval occurred after Falcyos’s death; modern scholars now refer to this upheaval as the “Dogma Wars.” Unfortunately, many of the records from the Dogma Era were lost in the war. Every surviving record, however, speaks of a war of unparalleled violence and brutality, but we know little more beyond that. Some historians say that it was as if the act of recordkeeping itself had been deliberately abandoned to try and keep future generations from repeating that same cursed history, and to seal the horrors of the war in the oblivion of obscurity. That said, we might just have more in common with our ancestors of 10,000 years ago than we may think. The Dogma War was not the last great conflict to visit this continent. In fact, if our recent history is anything to go by, it looks like we’ve been keeping a few Dogma Era traditions alive in modern times. Ten years ago, “The War of the Two Kingdoms” erupted between the Kingdom of Balandor and the Archduchy of Faria. Were we in danger of repeating the same mistakes that doomed the world of the Dogma Era with our own great conflict? People on both sides of the war grew increasingly fearful as the years dragged on and the fighting continued with no sign of a cease fire to be had. Though as Princess Cisna’s 18th birthday celebration nears, rumors have begun to circulate around Balandor that a host of Farian dignitaries have been invited to attend the celebration. If that’s true, then maybe that means the war might be coming to an end soon. I hope those rumors are true. The fighting has gone on for so long that few remember what the actual cause of the war was, though I still do. The War of the Two Kingdoms began over the artifacts that had been excavated from the ruins unearthed after the Cataclysm of 17 years ago. The artifact removed from the “Dogmahall” ruins due west of Sinca Village proved to the flashpoint of the whole war. Other artifacts have been recovered from the ruins by both sides, mostly combat weapons with complex power sources that even our brightest minds have yet to decipher all these years later. We’ve found so many things, objects reminiscent of flying boats, weapons and armour crafted for Troll soldiers far more eloquent and complex than anything made by Troll hands today, and… something far more mysterious than even that. The civilizations which flourished in the Dogma Era were truly beyond our understanding in terms of their scientific development, and nothing proves that point better than the legendary Incorruptus weapon, which I shall cover in my next update." nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 09:47 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 22, 2015 09:36
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I wish for you to do this, only to see if they continue the trend of Cisna/Mureas being the worlds biggest villain, yet still praised as a hero.
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Jan 22, 2015 09:44
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Jesus Christ, Crow. at this point, i seriously think you need an Intervention! It Seems this game has your mind in an Iron Grip :O that said, just do it in die Archive, like you do it here, put them at the end of everything. anyone, who reads trough the entirety of this LP, is so stupefied at the end, he wont stop here E: Onmi posted:I wish for you to do this, only to see if they continue the trend of Cisna/Mureas being the worlds biggest villain, yet still praised as a hero. Also, this.
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Jan 22, 2015 09:47
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I want this LP to never end, but at this point I'm worried for your health and sanity, crow. 
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Jan 22, 2015 10:32
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I think creating a new table of contents for these reports is needed.
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Jan 22, 2015 16:55
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Is this why there wasn't a Prince of Persia video this week? This? For shame, crow. 
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Jan 22, 2015 17:01
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Oh boy! Now the winners will write the history books!
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Jan 22, 2015 20:53
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● Originally published December 17th, 2008 Update 2 – The Incorruptus “Hello there. This is Elise again, here with another update on the history of Nadias. Today, I will be covering the weapons known as Incorrupti, or as they’re more commonly referred to, Knights. The murals we found in the Dogmahall ruins boasted of overwhelming powered wielded on the battlefield by warriors dressed in gigantic suits of armour: the Knights. Known in the history books as an Incorruptus, or Incorrupti, the Knights stand some seven meters tall (four to five times the size of an average human). The Knights were said to possess the power of several hundred, possibly even several thousand soldiers concentrated into a single gigantic being. The Knights closely resemble Trolls, a species of similarly sized giant humanoids native to Nadias, in many ways, and we know now that many Trolls fought against the Knights in the Dogma War. These clashes with the Knights are still a key element of Troll history and culture, as many murals drawn by and stories passed down through the Troll tribes center around the Knights. Every Troll tribe in every corner of Nadias has its own legend of their ancestors’ battles with a Knight. Furthermore, one particular Troll from Frass Chasm has been almost deified by the Papitaurs of Baccea in their local lore. Legends speak of Sir Thalmus, the One-Eyed, a brave Troll who fought entire armies of Knights as the guardian of the Chasm. And though he fell in battle against the Knights, the Papitaurs who call the canyon home have enshrined him in their culture and still pray to him to this day. Though even if you believe everything about Thalmus’s legendary exploits is true, I’d advise you against setting out for Frass Chasm to confirm it for yourself. If the Greavers don’t get you, the Papitaurs just might themselves, like they nearly did me. When I heard the story of Thalmus, I said to my team, “Let's go to the Baccea and investigate!” and, all I can say now is that if you ever find yourself saying something similar… please don't. I learned first-hand how territorial the Papitaurs are about their home turf. I barely escaped with my life, but some other archaeologists who’ve gone to Baccea after me have gone missing now. I hope they’re alright. Take it from me, please be careful if you ever find yourself in Frass Chasm. Papitaurs aside, there is another type of being that exists similar to the Incorruptus called the Gigas. While the Troll tribes that inhabit the continent are native creatures, Gigases are not, in fact, they are actually demonic beasts not even native to this world. The Gigas species hails from an alternate dimension, a hellish place of magic and monsters hostile to human life. They can only be summoned to this world through a contract with a human host, though the toll such a pact eventually takes on the packtmaker is considerable. Though they gain the mighty power of the Gigas, over time their health, sanity, and eventually their identity is eroded by the Gigas until only a mindless, bloodthirsty beast is left in their place. These infernal summoning rituals happened with terrifying regularity during the Dogma War, as soldiers of the ancient Yshrenian Empire sold their souls to gain powers that could rival those of a Knight or a Troll, though thankful the specifics of the ritual have mostly been lost these days. Though it’s rumored that the Magi, a group claiming descendancy from the Yshrenians, still practice Gigas summoning among their members. …Or so I've heard. There’s been so few properly recorded examples that we really don’t know what the process entails specifically. We’ve had little opportunity to see it in anyway in in the modern era, and honestly, I hope it stays that way.” nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Jan 22, 2015 |
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Jan 22, 2015 21:31
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So they at least tried a little bit of world building, even if what we've seen so far is just the Cliff's Notes version of the plot, but still managed to crap out the wonderful story that these games have? Like with all things related to the game's setting, they had the right elements to make something good, but no idea how to use any of them.
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Jan 22, 2015 21:44
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Yeah, and that's the thing. These first few updates are just reiterating stuff we've already learned in the game so far. The real interesting poo poo starts around the 4th update, including explaining how the hell Bigelows work in-universe, and exploring the histories of Madoras, Mureas, and the original Pactmakers of the  ).
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Jan 22, 2015 21:58
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I'm gonna update Prince of Persia, I swear I will... ● Originally published December 25th, 2008 Update 3 – The Empire of Yshrenia and the Kingdom of Athwan “Today I shall be tackling the Dogma War a little more in depth than my previous report covered. The Dogma War was the largest, most cataclysmic conflict the world had ever witnessed, though that much is well known by now. No one knows exactly how many years passed between the death of King Falcyos and the end of the Dogma War. Some scholars believe the war lasted several hundred years, at least. As the war dragged on, the people grew increasingly despondent and tired of the constant conflict. Entire generations lived and died in that unending hell of battle, and though many tried to hide or escape from the turmoil, few ever did for very long. Even a solace as small as the uneasy cease-fire we now have between Balandor and Faria would have been a distant dream to those poor souls. The while the exact cause of the fighting has been lost to history, the war began as a bilateral conflict between the two superpowers on the continent of that era, the Empire of Yshrenia, and the Kingdom of Athwan, which quickly spread across the entire land. You can’t find either of these two great powers on the map now, but they both possessed a much more advanced civilization than any nation that exists today. It was even said that the Yshrenian capital city of Vellgander was capable of floating in midair. In fact, the origins of much of our current machinery can be traced by to technology originally developed by Yshrenia. The Kingdom of Athwan’s legacy, meanwhile, was one of great magic and thaumaturgy, and the coexistence between nature and civilization. The ruler of Yshrenia at the end of the Dogma War was Emperor Madoras. Madoras was hailed as the greatest emperor in Yshrenian history, unsurpassed by all his predecessors in terms of military prowess and intelligence. The Knights I spoke of in my previous report were constructed by Yshrenia, each of them built on Emperor Madoras’s order. The ruler of Athwan at this time as well was Queen Mureas. Mureas was a powerful sorceress, and was claimed to be the most beautiful and well-loved monarch in Athwan’s entire history. As the war between the two empires raged on, she proved herself time and again to be a fitting match for Madoras. Under Mureas and Madoras, the Dogma War went through a vicious cycle of escalation and stagnation with no end in sight. The Knights quickly changed that. Yshrenia’s invincible warriors devastated every battlefield, no one had the means to counter their power, and the equilibrium between the two empires, which had been locked in a stalemate for several hundred years, suddenly tilted towards Yshrenia. As Athwan faltered under Yshrenia’s relentless assault, those closest to Mureas in the Athwani capital began to prepare for the inevitable: the complete destruction of Athwan. However, before that could happen, the war turned suddenly again in Athwan’s favour and ended abruptly in an Athwani victory, despite them being completely outmatched. It proved to be a pyrrhic victory, however, as most Athwan was already devastated from the war, and their final gambit to end the war wounded themselves as much as it did Yshrenia. Still, how does a nation like Athwan eke out a victory over the overwhelming dominance of the Yshrenian Empire? And why did so many nations have to perish to see it come to pass? Is this harrowing account of the last days of an empire really true? The records have so many gaps, and historians still debate the issue themselves, no less. Everything we have to work with is fragmentary at best, but we’ve managed to stitch together a plausible narrative from what we’ve been able to find in ruins, history books and folklore. But there’s still a deeper history to the Dogma War than even that, one which I plan to elaborate on very shortly.” Yeah, so this one blatantly contradicts Cisna's claim that Mureas began the Dogma War herself, but whatever, it was probably more of Mureas's war criminal boasting. If nothing else, be sure to click the link to the article to see what Mureas and Madoras originally looked like pre-bullshit resurrection gambit. nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Jan 23, 2015 |
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Jan 23, 2015 06:26
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nine-gear crow posted:
fixed that for you
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Jan 23, 2015 06:37
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So... neither Madoras nor Mureas started the war? it was already hundreds of years old by the time they began ruling? Maybe Mureas just means she flared it back up again from its stagnation.
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Jan 23, 2015 06:37
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Onmi posted:So... neither Madoras nor Mureas started the war? it was already hundreds of years old by the time they began ruling? Maybe Mureas just means she flared it back up again from its stagnation.  Athwani Chancellor: Congratulations on your coronation, Your Grace. Might I take this time to suggest your first official act as Queen be to accept Emperor Madoras's peace envoy? Your father's reign saw a remarkable downturn in the tensions between our nations, and now would be the perfect opportunity to begin healing the scars of this great, pointless wa-- Queen Mureas: BOMB THE poo poo OUT OF 'EM! Athwani Chancellor: 
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Jan 23, 2015 06:43
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I've gone back and updated the OP character profiles to a pre-game perspective in preparation for eventual archival. See if you can spot the cruel gag on anyone who will be reading this LP for the first time on the Archives when it eventually goes live there.
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Jan 27, 2015 10:55
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nine-gear crow posted:
the fact that, reading it like this, this seems to be a interesting story? with interesting and wonderful characters(beside caesar)? Or the fact, that you not once hinted at how actually terrible all of the Toad interactions are? i am intrigued.
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Jan 27, 2015 14:13
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Onmi posted:So... neither Madoras nor Mureas started the war? it was already hundreds of years old by the time they began ruling? Maybe Mureas just means she flared it back up again from its stagnation. It'd be so easy to fix too. All they'd have to do is let Mureas/Cisna seem repentant for all the pointless death and destruction of the Dogma Era after having a good ten thousand years to think about it and vow to do whatever is necessary to atone for it. Meanwhile, Madoras can keep doing what he does, but have his motivation include more bitterness than generic evil. Then have the two monarchs talk to each other, Mureas trying to appeal to whatever remains of Madoras' humanity to stop dragging the innocent into the ancient war that neither of them wanted to inherit. Madoras could then reject it (maybe hesitantly) because it seems hypocritical coming from his old enemy and all the old wounds are just too deep. There. One of the big problems of the story fixed in four sentences and shows both of the sides as people instead of just mindless archetypes. It's not quite making Leonard stop being an incompetent goob, addressing the fact that the leads themselves are survivors of the era, or having the Avatar exist in-story, but it's a start.
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Jan 27, 2015 15:07
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nine-gear crow posted:See if you can spot the cruel gag on anyone who will be reading this LP for the first time on the Archives when it eventually goes live there. Dash Rendar?
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Jan 27, 2015 17:02
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The character profiles make this out to be a good game with an intriguing plot and backstory.
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Jan 27, 2015 19:08
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Brony Hunter posted:The character profiles make this out to be a good game with an intriguing plot and backstory. No, Marcell's included as a "main character" in the indexing. Anyways, I've finally uploaded the remainder of the boss battles for the game. They're all uncommented on except for the Final Boss Gauntlet, because that one was special enough (in ever sense of the term) to deserve me and Blind Sally jawing over it. I've also decided "gently caress the Elise Reports", they're mostly garbage anyway only really tell you minutely interesting stuff related to the background of the duology, and are largely focused on the lovely rear end PSP game anyway and they tell you a bunch of things you already know anyway. Mureas was a manipulative war criminal, Madoras was a power-mad monsters, the Dogma Era Pactmakers were as big of a group of schmucks as the modern ones, they all died, and then this game happened, the end. I'm loving done with this LP. I'm gonna finish up the copyediting on it in the next week or so and then fire it off to Baldruk to enshrine on the LP Archive for all time. So if anyone has any final thoughts they want to air on the game, the series, the plot, characters, or just life in general, now's your time to do it because this thread is getting padlocked by mid-March.
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Feb 27, 2015 09:23
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I finally traded the game in for cash on Monday. Got £5 for it. It would have been £6 in store credit and their selling price (assuming their website is up-to-date) is £10. Good luck with that, CEX!
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Feb 27, 2015 12:45
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A happy ending, indeed 
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Feb 27, 2015 14:21
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nine-gear crow posted:I'm loving done with this LP. Make this the last update.
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Feb 27, 2015 19:52
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So what you're saying is that your schedule is now all freed up for another dumb time travelling RPG?
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Feb 27, 2015 19:59
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Artix posted:So what you're saying is that your schedule is now all freed up for another dumb time travelling RPG? 
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Feb 27, 2015 20:04
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You heard it here first, folks, crow is going to do another guest run on Chrono Tragger SL 1 New Game +++++++.
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Feb 27, 2015 20:22
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Blind Sally posted:You heard it here first, folks, crow is going to do another guest run on Chrono Tragger SL 1 New Game +++++++. Yesssss Best LP on the forum
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Feb 27, 2015 20:54
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Blind Sally posted:You heard it here first, folks, crow is going to do another guest run on Chrono Tragger SL 1 New Game +++++++. No silly, he's going to do the PSP prequel game!
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Feb 27, 2015 21:10
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Now that this LP is done, I think it's a good time to re-watch the very first trailer we saw of this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEXvnoY-KoU That was what we were promised and this LP showed what we got.
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Feb 28, 2015 14:15
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Crystalgate posted:Now that this LP is done, I think it's a good time to re-watch the very first trailer we saw of this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEXvnoY-KoU Yeah. That's the thing that still baffles me to this day. Even for a bunch of pre-rendered bullshit, that's still all stuff the PS3 was capable of doing live. So how the gently caress do your finished assets end up looking worse in every possible way than your beta material?  Even the loving lighting system is worse in the final game. The only thing the final game does better is the look of the White Knight itself. But that's it. It's stuff like this that makes me shake my head in disgust at Level-5. They're like a kid who promised their teacher a 10-page book report on The Great Gatsby and showed off a really cool title page and opening sentence as a proof of concept, then panicked as their due date creeped up on them, scrapped everything they had, and then wrote a three-page summary of Baz Luhrmann's movie without ever reading the book at all. I've still got Ni no Kuni sitting on my shelf in my backlog. I'm resistant to even putting it in my PS3 at the moment because Level-5 has poo poo all over their brandname in my view after WKC.
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Feb 28, 2015 21:44
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Everything I can find on Ni no Kuni is that it was actually really good.
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Feb 28, 2015 21:49
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I've heard it peaks in the first hour and that everything after is a shallow pokemon clone that is super grindy but it expects you to give it a pass because Studio Ghibli.
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Feb 28, 2015 22:05
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Mors Rattus posted:Everything I can find on Ni no Kuni is that it was actually really good.
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Feb 28, 2015 22:07
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Well its got a steep hill to climb to win back my trust. Blind Sally told me the other day that seeing how terrible White Knight Chronicles was in action has retroactively soured his opinion on Jeanne D'Arc, which was a well done game made Good Level-5TM, not Akihiro Hino's F-Team.
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Feb 28, 2015 22:07
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nine-gear crow posted:Well its got a steep hill to climb to win back my trust. I especially liked a late-game side quest where an NPC hands you over a mediocre "pokemon" and just tells you to bring it back when it gains another ten levels.
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Feb 28, 2015 22:28
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I handled Ni no Kuni like I did with WKC, by watching a YouTube playtrough of it. Ni no Kuni was less disappointing than WKC, it promised less and delivered more, but it was still a disappointment. The biggest problem I noticed was the AI. Personally, I don't think it's the IA alone that's the problem so much as the game relies on it way to much. There's no good way to order a certain character to use a specific skill. The game should have allowed the player to hotkey a few skills. Then the interface should also have been designed so that the player can easily order an AI-controlled character to execute a certain command. You should not have to switch to a character just to give it a single order. I think the same goes for WKC. If you have a party, the interface should be designed so that you can control said party at least decently well. Heck, Final Fantasy XII does that. Other than the gambit system, it's also easy to manually give the AI characters a single order. If I'm controlling Vaan, I can order Penelo to do something without switching to her. Why can't you at least do that in Ni no Kuni and WKC?
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Feb 28, 2015 23:31
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Blind Sally posted:I've heard it peaks in the first hour and that everything after is a shallow pokemon clone that is super grindy but it expects you to give it a pass because Studio Ghibli. Might explain why it got great reviews - what reviewer is going to put too much time into a JRPG when they're on a deadline?
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Feb 28, 2015 23:34
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Because the PlayStation3's Quad Core Processor™ can only handle so many calculations per second. And plus, programming battle systems is hard guys, just don't worry about the other two characters, okaaaay. Is it break time yet?  </level-5>
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Feb 28, 2015 23:37
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| # ? Jun 9, 2024 23:45 |
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Did that "big announcement" from Level-5 happen yet? I'm not as up to date on gaming stuff as I'd like to be, but I do remember a lot of talk about it a short while ago.
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Mar 1, 2015 02:16
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