Yes, the reason I haven't done any of the promised posts on Suikoden 2 is that I haven't reached the section in Suikoden 2 that I've been so looking forward to.
Instead, Suikoden Tierkreis ate my brain.
The reviews say it's not as good as the other Suiko games, and they're right. This isn't like with Suiko 3, where I looked up and wondered what the heck that everyone was talking about -- where Suiko 1, 2, and 3 are all tied for my "favorite" except when Suiko 2 makes me forget how to breathe. Suikoden Tierkreis isn't nearly that level. It's ... pretty, though. I don't mean in a visual way. I mean that the rhythm of unlocking new trade goods and then carrying them between towns is quite addictive. There aren't any super compelling characters (either in a good or bad way), but there's still plenty of interesting puzzle-type combinations of characters, having only four instead of six helps in a very weird way, and there are at least a couple who I really care about. And there's angst! Okay, maybe not enough angst to keep me happy (but ... ummm ... that's kind of a tall order). But there's been something significant to happen that results in a very real amount of grief with a number of characters, and I'm eating it up. The bad guy is the One True Way, who ... well, it's kind of like all the stereotypes about the Protestant sects of predestination without any of the potential nuggets of truth. Normally I don't like stereotyped religious characters being the bad guys (actually normally that's the easiest way to get me to quit playing entirely). But this is different ... I think because the One True Way is so obviously ridiculous it doesn't have anything to do with the real world, and that gives me a villain who isn't the least bit sympathetic, and seeing the results of the ideas in the Way adds more angst. Oh, and the bit between Chrodechild and Freudegund was my favorite part so far. Ummm... without spoiling, Freudegund was left behind while Chrodechild escaped and Freudegund thought she was dead, so Freudegund turned to the One True Way for the comfort they do offer and had to be talked back from the Dark Side very dramatically. Epic scene involved.
Anyway, I'll be back to Suiko 2 when I finish Tierkreis. Might be a little while longer -- the walkthrough I have isn't in precise chronological order so I don't know where I'm at in terms of plot.
Showing posts with label Suikoden and Xena. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Suikoden and Xena. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Suikoden on Dragons (picture post)
If you're wondering why the hero's name is "Smapy," that has to do with where I stole the footage from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf2Mc8oI8O0&list=PL0FE5DDFF6D24E5E7
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf2Mc8oI8O0&list=PL0FE5DDFF6D24E5E7
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Friday, September 13, 2013
Xena and Suikoden: The Dragons
Spoilers for Futch's arc through Suikoden 1 and 2, and for Xena's Dark Past (which shouldn't be a spoiler).
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So, yeah. First time I cry during my second playthrough of Suikoden 2 and it has to be because the dragon pup is adorable. I'm pathetic. :D
Covering the essential parts of the mythology: The Dragon Knights are a clan the same way a Gypsy tribe is a clan. An essential rite of passage is that each kid bonds with a dragon. The dragons are in our world through the influence of the True Dragon Rune, possessed by the leader of the Dragon Knights, and they are hatched in the dragon caves where the children are also raised. If a child doesn't bond with a dragon by age six, he or she never will and has to leave the tribe (I'm assuming his or her parents come too, or he or she is adopted by an ally clan -- I'm not really sure how that works, the game isn't specific). Maybe it's rare for a child not to bond with a dragon, though. If anything ever happens to a Dragon Knight's dragon, the knight must also leave the clan, at least until he or she finds a new dragon.
So. When we first meet Futch in Suikoden I, he is the Dragon Knight assigned to carry your party to Leknaat's island. He's a smart-mouthed kid who brats off to Ted and threatens to throw someone off the saddle. His dragon's name is Black. Later on, Futch goes to the evil emperor's hanging garden to get a plant which is the second element in the cure for the sleeping curse that the enemy had cast over all the dragons. The bad guy shoots Futch out of the sky. He's found unconscious. When he wakes, you have to tell him that the third element in the cure for the sleeping curse was a dragon's liver, which came from Futch's dragon Black, since Black was already dead when your party found him in the woods. That's where the game leaves it in Suikoden I. Futch leaves with one of your party members, Humphrey, and you assume that he's searching for a new dragon so he can return to the Dragon Knights.
Futch's story picks up midway through Suikoden II when you discover him in a little village south of the Matilda Knights. Futch has a conversation with a kid from the village. The kid is super excited to learn that Futch grew up in a Dragon's Cave and might someday fly in the skies again. Futch eventually promises the kid that if he gets a new dragon, the first person he'll give a ride to will be the kid.
The first time I saw that scene, I just thought it was touching. But knowing what I know of the end of the story now, I could catch Futch's reluctance, his long pauses, his hesitancy to really promise anything. Because -- Futch never wanted a new dragon. He let everyone around him believe that was what he was looking for, but Black was his best friend and that was it, in his eyes. I didn't get the impression that Futch didn't want to return to the Dragon Knights. He did -- just not at the cost of bonding with a strange dragon.
You find this out at the head of a mountain where the kid runs when Futch goes to rescue him. There is a wild dragon egg at the top of the mountain -- something that's not supposed to exist, but does happen from time to time. Everyone tells Futch to go take the dragon, that this is what he's been looking for all this time. Futch confesses that Black was it for him. Humphrey raises his sword to destroy the dragon. You and your whole party are horrified -- how could Humphrey do such a thing? Humphrey explains that if the dragon pup doesn't have a mother or a Dragon Knight to care for it, it'll probably die young, and even if it survived, it'd be a monster that a human knight would have to slay. Either Futch takes care of it or Humphrey kills it. And of course, the pup chooses that moment to hatch, and it is the CUTEST THING EVER, and really, Futch is left with only one choice.
The thing that made me lose it is, Humphrey explains quietly that having a new dragon isn't a betrayal of Black's memory. At the same time, Futch isn't really listening -- he approaches the pup and says "it's okay, come here." He names the little dragon "Bright."
The idea of betrayal is the thing that made me think of the Xena connection, although the two aren't quite parallel. Xena has to "move on" from her past or she won't be able to function. Plain and simple. But usually in day to day life, we speak of letting go of the evil we've done as if -- and I guess it is -- forgiven and wiped out. Usually. But Xena had killed a whole lot of people. That's not something she could or should just let go. We spoke on the boards of how, for pure survival's sake, Xena had to think of the person who did all that evil as a separate person. But at the same time she couldn't forget those she had killed; that would be disrespectful to their memories. So it became a very complicated dance, the tension between Xena recognizing the good she could do in the present moment and avoiding betraying the memories of those she had harmed irreparably.
Covering the essential parts of the mythology: The Dragon Knights are a clan the same way a Gypsy tribe is a clan. An essential rite of passage is that each kid bonds with a dragon. The dragons are in our world through the influence of the True Dragon Rune, possessed by the leader of the Dragon Knights, and they are hatched in the dragon caves where the children are also raised. If a child doesn't bond with a dragon by age six, he or she never will and has to leave the tribe (I'm assuming his or her parents come too, or he or she is adopted by an ally clan -- I'm not really sure how that works, the game isn't specific). Maybe it's rare for a child not to bond with a dragon, though. If anything ever happens to a Dragon Knight's dragon, the knight must also leave the clan, at least until he or she finds a new dragon.
So. When we first meet Futch in Suikoden I, he is the Dragon Knight assigned to carry your party to Leknaat's island. He's a smart-mouthed kid who brats off to Ted and threatens to throw someone off the saddle. His dragon's name is Black. Later on, Futch goes to the evil emperor's hanging garden to get a plant which is the second element in the cure for the sleeping curse that the enemy had cast over all the dragons. The bad guy shoots Futch out of the sky. He's found unconscious. When he wakes, you have to tell him that the third element in the cure for the sleeping curse was a dragon's liver, which came from Futch's dragon Black, since Black was already dead when your party found him in the woods. That's where the game leaves it in Suikoden I. Futch leaves with one of your party members, Humphrey, and you assume that he's searching for a new dragon so he can return to the Dragon Knights.
Futch's story picks up midway through Suikoden II when you discover him in a little village south of the Matilda Knights. Futch has a conversation with a kid from the village. The kid is super excited to learn that Futch grew up in a Dragon's Cave and might someday fly in the skies again. Futch eventually promises the kid that if he gets a new dragon, the first person he'll give a ride to will be the kid.
The first time I saw that scene, I just thought it was touching. But knowing what I know of the end of the story now, I could catch Futch's reluctance, his long pauses, his hesitancy to really promise anything. Because -- Futch never wanted a new dragon. He let everyone around him believe that was what he was looking for, but Black was his best friend and that was it, in his eyes. I didn't get the impression that Futch didn't want to return to the Dragon Knights. He did -- just not at the cost of bonding with a strange dragon.
You find this out at the head of a mountain where the kid runs when Futch goes to rescue him. There is a wild dragon egg at the top of the mountain -- something that's not supposed to exist, but does happen from time to time. Everyone tells Futch to go take the dragon, that this is what he's been looking for all this time. Futch confesses that Black was it for him. Humphrey raises his sword to destroy the dragon. You and your whole party are horrified -- how could Humphrey do such a thing? Humphrey explains that if the dragon pup doesn't have a mother or a Dragon Knight to care for it, it'll probably die young, and even if it survived, it'd be a monster that a human knight would have to slay. Either Futch takes care of it or Humphrey kills it. And of course, the pup chooses that moment to hatch, and it is the CUTEST THING EVER, and really, Futch is left with only one choice.
The thing that made me lose it is, Humphrey explains quietly that having a new dragon isn't a betrayal of Black's memory. At the same time, Futch isn't really listening -- he approaches the pup and says "it's okay, come here." He names the little dragon "Bright."
The idea of betrayal is the thing that made me think of the Xena connection, although the two aren't quite parallel. Xena has to "move on" from her past or she won't be able to function. Plain and simple. But usually in day to day life, we speak of letting go of the evil we've done as if -- and I guess it is -- forgiven and wiped out. Usually. But Xena had killed a whole lot of people. That's not something she could or should just let go. We spoke on the boards of how, for pure survival's sake, Xena had to think of the person who did all that evil as a separate person. But at the same time she couldn't forget those she had killed; that would be disrespectful to their memories. So it became a very complicated dance, the tension between Xena recognizing the good she could do in the present moment and avoiding betraying the memories of those she had harmed irreparably.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Xena and Suikoden on sympathetic villains
Okay, you guys, I was up half the night attempting to code this spoiler cut ... if it doesn't work, you will hear the sounds of things being thrown from this direction.
This contains spoilers for the opening of Suikoden II, the identity of the villain in Suikoden III, and seasons 3 and 4 of "Xena."
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Just got a fanfiction.net personal message that I can't wait to read in its entirety. One of the things the author mentioned was that she was afraid that she'd made everyone sympathetic. I wonder if that isn't the way of the world, though. Very, very few people consider themselves to be evil.
A good example of an unashamedly evil character in Suikoden is Yuber. He's not human (actually, up to the point I'm at, I'm not sure if we ever learn what he is ... some minor creation of a rune, I guess?) He strikes me as more of a Chaotic Evil character from Dungeons and Dragons -- he wants chaos for chaos' sake. He likes screaming and bloodshed and anything that makes the world less ordered. He doesn't have a sympathetic side.
Alti is the "Xena: Warrior Princess" equivalent. No one sympathizes with Alti. She says things like "I want to reach into the heart of darkness" and goes around in black eyeshadow reaching into the spiritual realm to dredge out the things that will cause the most pain possible. I've had a few people on the "Xena" boards comment that season 4 lost something because it didn't have a believable villain. The thing is, though, I think Alti is a good example of a very real danger out there -- when power becomes so much an end in itself that nothing else matters, that is what you can become. But there's no saving Alti. (Weeeelllll... that's not entirely true. I know a heck of a lot of "Xena" fans who think you can save Alti by putting her in a hot tub with Callisto. But it's very hard to take them seriously.)
The absolute coolest thing about the opening to Suikoden II is that you're on a completely different side than you were on in Suikoden I. So some of the heroes you knew before become villains now, and vice versa, without anyone switching sides. This seems to me to be the embodiment of the way that sometimes it is simply impossible to tell which side is "right" in a conflict. This isn't a spoiler since it happens at the very beginning of the movie -- at the beginning of Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal, Kenshin is instructed to stay with his sensai even though he has the skills to start fighting already because he does not yet have the wisdom necessary to choose a side. Your character in Suikoden II, Riou, starts the game on the Highland side, but completely gets roped into the City-State side. His adopted father (you learn later) initially started on the City-State side but has been on the Highland side all of Riou's life, and was not a traitor. The backstory is intriguing, and it just gets more so with every playthrough.
Callisto is easily the most popular villain in "Xena." (That may have something to do with Hudson Leick, who is just all-around brilliant -- who can be wise and insecure and slightly scary and little-girl all at the exact same time.) Callisto's my favorite, too, and not only because of Hudson. The concept behind Callisto is that she started out as a normal girl. Xena's army burned her village, and (contrary to Xena's explicit instructions) started a fire that got out of control to kill women and children as well as warriors. Xena didn't deny it; she just had other things on her mind. Callisto dedicated her life to becoming good enough in combat to take Xena out. At least, that's what she says, but (unreliable narrator) -- it's possible (and I think) that Callisto just wants to die in battle and she wants Xena to be the one to kill her. She does some truly horrible things. I think that blaming it all on Xena the way she does is unjust, but there's always still that nagging thought: "who would Callisto be if Xena hadn't done what she did?"
Everything was destroyed, including the soul of one young innocent girl, who'll never be able to reclaim her childhood and will never know what the Fates had planned for her, if not for me.
--Xena, "A Necessary Evil
Luc has become my favorite character in the Suikoden universe. He is a clone created to house the True Wind Rune. The Rune reveals to him that the earth is on a path toward perfect order (which means a quiet, sad world without people). Luc decides to do something to throw the world toward chaos: destroy the True Wind Rune itself (blowing up an entire continent in the process, including himself). He's the one you work to stop throughout Suikoden III. And he's someone you know from the very first game, a friend at whose side you have fought. His intentions aren't evil, even if he has to be stopped from, as Leknaat puts it, playing God and throwing away the lives of millions.
One last similarity: I think in the end, both Callisto and Luc achieve forgiveness. Not through dying, but ... maybe ... they couldn't have learned what they needed to learn in order to make the final choices they did without having died. One of my favorite lines in all of Suikoden is Leknaat saying to Luc at the end that he is her human child and can rest.
This contains spoilers for the opening of Suikoden II, the identity of the villain in Suikoden III, and seasons 3 and 4 of "Xena."
expand
Just got a fanfiction.net personal message that I can't wait to read in its entirety. One of the things the author mentioned was that she was afraid that she'd made everyone sympathetic. I wonder if that isn't the way of the world, though. Very, very few people consider themselves to be evil.
A good example of an unashamedly evil character in Suikoden is Yuber. He's not human (actually, up to the point I'm at, I'm not sure if we ever learn what he is ... some minor creation of a rune, I guess?) He strikes me as more of a Chaotic Evil character from Dungeons and Dragons -- he wants chaos for chaos' sake. He likes screaming and bloodshed and anything that makes the world less ordered. He doesn't have a sympathetic side.
Alti is the "Xena: Warrior Princess" equivalent. No one sympathizes with Alti. She says things like "I want to reach into the heart of darkness" and goes around in black eyeshadow reaching into the spiritual realm to dredge out the things that will cause the most pain possible. I've had a few people on the "Xena" boards comment that season 4 lost something because it didn't have a believable villain. The thing is, though, I think Alti is a good example of a very real danger out there -- when power becomes so much an end in itself that nothing else matters, that is what you can become. But there's no saving Alti. (Weeeelllll... that's not entirely true. I know a heck of a lot of "Xena" fans who think you can save Alti by putting her in a hot tub with Callisto. But it's very hard to take them seriously.)
The absolute coolest thing about the opening to Suikoden II is that you're on a completely different side than you were on in Suikoden I. So some of the heroes you knew before become villains now, and vice versa, without anyone switching sides. This seems to me to be the embodiment of the way that sometimes it is simply impossible to tell which side is "right" in a conflict. This isn't a spoiler since it happens at the very beginning of the movie -- at the beginning of Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal, Kenshin is instructed to stay with his sensai even though he has the skills to start fighting already because he does not yet have the wisdom necessary to choose a side. Your character in Suikoden II, Riou, starts the game on the Highland side, but completely gets roped into the City-State side. His adopted father (you learn later) initially started on the City-State side but has been on the Highland side all of Riou's life, and was not a traitor. The backstory is intriguing, and it just gets more so with every playthrough.
Callisto is easily the most popular villain in "Xena." (That may have something to do with Hudson Leick, who is just all-around brilliant -- who can be wise and insecure and slightly scary and little-girl all at the exact same time.) Callisto's my favorite, too, and not only because of Hudson. The concept behind Callisto is that she started out as a normal girl. Xena's army burned her village, and (contrary to Xena's explicit instructions) started a fire that got out of control to kill women and children as well as warriors. Xena didn't deny it; she just had other things on her mind. Callisto dedicated her life to becoming good enough in combat to take Xena out. At least, that's what she says, but (unreliable narrator) -- it's possible (and I think) that Callisto just wants to die in battle and she wants Xena to be the one to kill her. She does some truly horrible things. I think that blaming it all on Xena the way she does is unjust, but there's always still that nagging thought: "who would Callisto be if Xena hadn't done what she did?"
Everything was destroyed, including the soul of one young innocent girl, who'll never be able to reclaim her childhood and will never know what the Fates had planned for her, if not for me.
--Xena, "A Necessary Evil
Luc has become my favorite character in the Suikoden universe. He is a clone created to house the True Wind Rune. The Rune reveals to him that the earth is on a path toward perfect order (which means a quiet, sad world without people). Luc decides to do something to throw the world toward chaos: destroy the True Wind Rune itself (blowing up an entire continent in the process, including himself). He's the one you work to stop throughout Suikoden III. And he's someone you know from the very first game, a friend at whose side you have fought. His intentions aren't evil, even if he has to be stopped from, as Leknaat puts it, playing God and throwing away the lives of millions.
One last similarity: I think in the end, both Callisto and Luc achieve forgiveness. Not through dying, but ... maybe ... they couldn't have learned what they needed to learn in order to make the final choices they did without having died. One of my favorite lines in all of Suikoden is Leknaat saying to Luc at the end that he is her human child and can rest.
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