indigozeal

- Your party's resident dweeb has returned to the home he left in the evil empire he fled - the same evil empire that is hunting the party as wanted criminals. His enlisted siblings unsurprisingly track him down, demand he turn in his comrades, and, when he refuses, ready their firearms to execute him. What do you do? Well, if you're Baten Kaitos, you have Lyude's middle-aged nursemaid show up with a freaking assault rifle, take a potshot at his loyalist siblings, and warn them that "next time, I won't miss." I'm afraid my thesis regarding intentionally stiff voice acting didn't survive entirely, as the voice actor kind of muffed Lyude's angst surrounding said nursemaid's death scene, but goddamn if that wasn't glorious. There are characters who've headlined entire games who haven't done as much to distinguish themselves (ahem, Terra and Celes) as this lady.

(Incidentally, in the scant web searching I dare to do on a title I haven't yet finished, I've seen Lyude's story derided as "emo angst." I know my tastes are different, but I kind of like "emo angst." I like it when characters have emotional reactions to things. That's what fiction's for, right?)

- On the other hand, I appreciate Savyna's cool and focused attitude regarding the non-revelation (that'd been heavily hinted previously) that she led the death squads that besieged the poor mining town where the fifth Macguffin is held. She clearly regrets and acknowledges her crime but wants to keep focused on acting in the present to right it. It's a necessary change in perspective, given that Lyude's highly-emotional backstory involves the same incident and you don't want both tales to hit the same note, but it's a intriguing and rather original attitude for a character seeking redemption to take.

- The pacing on the whole Giacomo storyline in the end is exceptionally odd. He and his cronies show up for their boss fight, and just before the conflagration, Giacomo launches a "hey, join me" offer at Kalas, the hero. (Kalas storms that why would he join someone who's killed members of his family, to Giacomo rejoins, "keep your eyes on the past and you miss out on all the future has to offer" - which is an excellent line, from a villainous point of view.) Post-defeat, Giacomo launches into a whole spiel about how he was "meant to inherit" Kalas's power and claims that the man Kalas knew as his grandfather (whom he, Giacomo, killed), was actually his, Giacomo's, father. There's surely more to come on this, but it seems that these plot points could've used room to breathe. The whole "come join me" thing alone could've been fodder for more than it was - almost the first we see of Kalas, he's looting dead bodies, after all. He's kind of #1 with a bullet on the game's Playable Characters Most Likely to Turn list. It would've been nice had these revelations been...revealed before Giacomo had been mortally wounded, when he and Kalas could've actually interacted regarding them.