Summary
: This is going to be an optional update, because I want to show you what this game’s cutscenes would be like if I wasn’t skipping half of them.
: There are two ways to the final area of the game. If you’re doing the glitch to keep Farris, you need to walk all the way back to Talewok and then walk to the final area.
: The teleporter dumps us back where Shamsuk’s tower was.
: Is it just me, or does that look a lot smaller than the tower was?
: All the bisexual leaked out and it shrank.
: If you head due south from Shamsuk’s tower, you reach the desert. As soon as we do, there’s a cutscene. I am going to transcribe this 100% just so you can see what it’s like.
: This cutscene took me like ten minutes of mashing A on fast forward to get through.
: If you’re wondering why Alaron has a spear, so am I. By the way, this is one of two times the camera moves in this cutscene. The other one is a close-up of Farris doing the same idle animation every time a text box pops up.
: I’m surprised anyone trusts him with a sharp object.
: “Come closer. I’ll show you.”
: “And let you take the Staff? No thank you, friend! We’ll talk quite well like this…”
: "The Staff is mine!’
: “Hold on, squire. It’s of no use you [sic]. You need to know a lot to use a weapon like this. You’d need to understand much more about the plane and about yourself. And about places like this one..”
GRAMMATICAL ERROR COUNTER: 1
: “Terminor’s a special place, squire. You take these hills, for instance. History began here once, and then it stopped, and now it waits to start again. A lot went on here..”
: No, I don’t know what the deal is with this writing.
: “Such as?”
: “You sound interested. Do you know why you are?”
GRAMMATICAL ERROR COUNTER: 2
: I’ve seen people praise this game for its “deep and engaging story”.
: “All right, I will. A battle was fought here long ago. Right on this spot… on one side was Zaratas..”
: “The Jundar emperor?”
: For context, the Jundar are basically the Na’vi from Avatar. They’re blue people who are kind of vaguely orientalist.
: “Yes. Against him stood a human king. His name was…”
: “Lir, the great-great-grandsire of Phelan.”
: “This happened many ages ago. How do you know the name of the king?”
: “A book somewhere? Maybe I heard it in a story.”
: “I don’t think you did, squire. Lir was a great king. Shrewd enough to out-think Zaratas, and strong enough to fight him. But the Jundar had one advantage no human could overcome, the ancient star alliance with the dragons.”
: “And when Zaratas marched into battle, Rooughah was usually close behind. Together they conquered land after land. Lir knew it would take more than armies to defeat the Jundar. It would take magic as well.”
: Rooughah is the Jundar’s guardian dragon. Shamsuk mentions that he’s dead in the cutscene I skipped most of. Now, I need to show you what this looks like in game.
: If you’ve ever worked in TV before, or have ever taken a class on TV production, you know that there’s a rule regarding captions like this: they should never take up more than the lower third of the screen.
: That’s not to say you can never break that rule for artistic purposes, but this clearly isn’t artistic purposes.
: “This was the first Council of the Schools. Together they unraveled the secrets of naming magic and the awesome power of their True Names. They explained this to Lir and the King decided this was the only skill that could ever match the Jundar in battle.”
: This reads like the writer wanted to write a fantasy novel and not a game.
: “Lir ordered the training of human namers immediately. He knew of the Jundar alliance with Rooughah but, trusting in this new human power, he planned his attack…”
: “Trusting?”
: METAL GEAR?! No, seriously, this isn’t how you write dialog. Even I fucking know that and I was trained in non-fiction writing.
: “They weren’t sure the magic would work. They had just discovered it.”
: “But..”
: “Nothing was certain that day. Not even Rooughah himself. Unwittingly, he was to play a part he would never live down…”
: I don’t think I know what they’re talking about either.
: “Don’t you? Why pretend any longer, squire. It’s inside you, like the magic itself. This is who you are.”
: Is he talking about magic, or is he talking about anal beads?
: “You’ve heard one too many stores, Farris.”
: “Have I? Let’s look at the sea. Do you like the water?”
: “I never thought about it.”
: “I’m not surprised. You have a wonderful ability to forget.. to cast moments off into the trackless unknown.. let the staff guide you back, squire…”
: This is the point where you’d expect them to cut to a flashback, only that never happens.
: “Yes. Go back.. through ghosts, through time. Find what is dead..”
: “He.. Rooughah flew!”
: “Do you see it, Alaron?”
: “Yes! Farris! I see!”
: “The sun?”
: “Yes!”
: If you’re bored by this point, so am I. That’s why I’m setting this entire cutscene off to the side.
: “The chariots in the sand?!”
: “I see them all! I…”
: “Remember! The trap has been set. In our tents that evening, we wait for Zaratas. We practice our spells over and over. One of the Council..”
: I don’t think the game ever explains what the fuck Farris’s deal is, but it feels like the writer saw Harlequin in Shadowrun and went “I gotta have that”.
: “Your father!”
: “Yes. He is certain the magic of names will be enough. And he repeats the ritual preparation..”
: Aidyn Chronicles, brought to you by the writers who read Dune.
: “Very good. Zaratas has one hundred thousand spears amongst his Jundar.”
: “Some are slaves.”
: “This does not count the Minions of Rabisat. Cavalry, slingers, infantry.”
: “All come for us.”
: “We have…”
: “Forty thousand. Freemen all. My hands are slipping as I hold the spear.”
: “Look at the sea…”
: “Blood…”
: “From gripping your spear all night. Now see the dawn! See the sun over the water!”
: “I see it!”
: “Let the Staff show.. Zaratas has marched all night.”
: “Hoping to catch us asleep! He’ll be disappointed!”
: “My father and I wait in the rocks behind the riverbed..”
: “I can see you both!”
: “And Rooughah!”
: “I see him!”
: “His red scales…”
: “Like fire!”
: “He soars..”
: “High above us! Hide!”
: Talk about “tell, don’t show”. I’m sure there was probably a memory limit they were hitting, but this scene could’ve been done probably without dialog at all if they had the space to model the dragon.
: I mean, imagine if Final Fantasy had done this. You boot up FF8 and when you get to the parts with Laguna in them, it’s a cutscene where Squall and Ellone sit around smoking weed and LARPing.
: “Hide!”
: Thankfully, this is almost over. Transcribing this is bringing me back to the YIIK days and I don’t want to revisit those.
: “Our magicians conjure a fog…”
: “The sand is so wet! My shield!”
: “We advance..”
: “Trickery! Lir! Do you see?”
: “Move now! Into the waves!”
: “The second rank tilts every spear… and we appear as the porcupine to the Jundar ranks.”
: “They are ordinary fighters!”
: “Demons…”
: “Where are the blue skins?! Where is the enemy?!”
: “Blue-skinned monsters…”
: “I can’t kill ordinary men and boys!”
: “My father is yelling…”
: “Is he yelling for me?”
: “Find the immovable spot..”
: “Speak the words of my father’s incantation.”
: “Blood!”
: “It’s just blood…”
: “I hear it!”
: Seriously though, what the fuck is this writing?
: “What?”
: “There it is again!”
: “Swing your sword!”
: “Like music!”
: This reads like the script to a Youtube Poop in a world where Aidyn Chronicles had voiceacting and supplanted the CDi Zelda games.
: “The red one…”
: “Eyes!”
: “Where is he..”
: “The spot! But.. I’m alone! Rooughah is searching for me!!! Run!!!”
: “No! I have the Staff…”
: “Another rider falls!”
: “Speak the words…”
: Alaron is menstruating in battle, I guess?
: “Say them!!! Let magic surround you..”
: “Where is my father?”
GRAMMATICAL ERROR COUNTER: 3
: “The music again!”
: “Do you see it…”
: “The Horn!”
: “Where?!”
: “At my feet!”
: “Yes…”
: “It glows! I pick it up!”
: “Are you sure?”
: This game is the only thing that blows around here.
: “And thy words will echo…”
: “In the minds of demons! I am drifting. Face up on the waves. The sun is high.”
: “Where is the music…?”
: “And Rooughah?”
: “Listen! Beautiful…”
: “Squire!”
: “What is it? Where am I? I was walking. You followed me. You said something about a king…”
: I thought about LPing In Stars and Time, but I think someone on SA already did it. I played around 10 minutes of it and decided I hated it.
: “To what was dead.”
: “You have seen the battle that was.. the struggle that ended the Jundar rule…”
: “It made Lir king..”
: “You have remembered your part. The sun and the sea.. the red one..”
: “Even the horn..”
: “What they say of you is true.”
: “The staff! Farris!”
: And then Farris fucks off again. I’ll get to work on recording the actual update soon.
