LogFAQs > #962390587

I knew full well you guys would be rushing in because this was the big payoff of the slow burn that the game was building toward. That entire sequence had more interesting stuff happen than in the entirety of Graces, and it's close to Vesperia with that too (that game at least had Yuri's assassinations and Alexei going "I am bad guy I do bad guy things!" - but Artorius is a substantially better Big Bad).

Part of what's making Artorius a capable villain is that the Grand Vizier is a diabolical scheming pile of shit... like a Grand Vizier usually is. Melchior really planned things to a T to get his wishes. And Artorius wants to have a world free of emotion as well. No, it's not just pain they're getting rid of. With that, they're getting rid of free will. They're getting rid of happiness. You can't know what pleasure feels like if you can't feel pain. He's trying to numb everyone into being zombies, and it's a thoroughly evil scheme.

Mewtwo59 posted...

That Innominat fight should've been a forced loss rather than being a timed battle, given how strong Insubstantiality is and how fast he can cast it. I struggled with that more than most fights, and you weren't even supposed to win this one.

Yeah, the fact that I lost the battle in one second shows that it wasn't designed correctly. Think like in Abyss, with the first fight with Asch in Yulia City - you CAN actually win the fight with wizardry on a later playthrough, but it's nearly impossible and not worth the effort because it doesn't change the end result.

NBIceman posted...

Ah yeah, here comes the really good stuff soon. I've been looking forward to this part since very early in your writeups, because I think you missed a couple details early on that are about to get cleared up pretty unequivocally.

Also because the next ~couple of hours alone contain most of the best character moments in the game.

I find Oscar and Teresa to be pretty unremarkable antagonists for the vast majority of the game, but the events leading up to and including their demise really send them out on a high note. Berseria does a lot of somewhat-indirect musing on the idea of people largely becoming whatever the world makes them, and the siblings manage to be a solid example of that from outside the party by the time all is said and done.

I always miss a few little things, sometimes because I get focused on OTHER things. It's those details you tend to pick up in later playthroughs when you know what's gonna happen.

I do agree about Thug Oscar and Villain Teresa - they were generic "getting in the way" baddies who didn't really have anything going for them, but that final stretch for them really humanized them in ways that the other villains have yet to have. The world did shape their views - in part because their older brother got all the attention, so they wanted to do something "good" for everyone. And they became corrupted by their idealism, not realizing that they were actually causing great harm to everyone. It's these things that make you think and I love the game for that. It's actually making me think instead of having a straightforward "save the world" story. We ARE saving the world from certain ruin, but it's asking a lot of questions:
1. Are the heroes really all that different from the villains? - There's some idealism there, but Velvet went out for revenge and is now caught in a crossfire. She has to finish what she started. She has to kill Artorius for manipulating and using Laphi, and making him Innominat's vessel. So they're quite different. Velvet is more humane and reactive. Artorius is a proactive diabolical fiend.. Velvet killing Oscar was very different from Artorius and Laphi. One was elaborately planned while the other was self-defense. But there are more layers to it than that.
2. Is revenge really a quest worth pursuing? - Velvet's motivations are selfish. She's hellbent on avenging someone who apparently didn't want to be avenged, simply because that was her perspective. As you know, everyone is the hero of their own story. Artorius sees what he's doing as noble, even though he's even more selfish than Velvet. He wants to be a god. He will pay for this with his life. But the vengeance isn't worth it: Saving the world from ruin is. After all, the true Lord of Calamity is Artorius, and he's shepherding the sheeple to be his cattle full-time. That is what "Shepherd" means. His livestock are sheeple, much like certain real-world villains try to do. I am like Velvet in that I resist it and it pisses me off to see people eating up the nonsense.
3. What truly is insanity? - It's very clear that Velvet has become wholly unhinged. She isn't thinking clearly. Her distorted desires are blinding her to rationality. There is a very good chance she dies, giving her life to kill Artorius. But she's insane simply because the world made her so. A dirtbag used her brother. All her family was killed. She rotted in a prison cell for three long years. She lost her sense of taste. She got to go back to the way things were for a day, only to find out it was an illusion, which only further drove her hinges flying off. The world really shapes people. I know my opinions and the rationality of thoughts in my head were shaped by the exclusionary nature of people in my life. I learned to resent daemons myself. The game does do a good job of making people... people.
4. Is Innominat... the entire planet? - Yeah, I really wanna know what an Empyrean truly is, and what would happened if we killed one. Using the planet as a vessel is... big yikes.

I was also anticipating Artorius revealing that he'd sacrificed Celica but that's probably going to come shortly. I don't know what else I was going to say here because so much happened... but that was so good that I'm gonna boot this up and play now. This will be in a separate post because this one's gone on long enough!