Why is this whole intro piece cooler than the rest of the game? I wish there were more games in Valendia with more glowniggering around as some VKP agent. You have all these mysteryniggas at the start, being all backlit by lightning menacingly and I'm pretty sure it's never revealed who any of them are. Probably nobles or something.
>Why is this whole intro piece cooler than the rest of the game?because you're a simpleton
>>12113596Now that I think about it, it's crazy to think that Ashley walks in as a highly trained but otherwise regular human fighter, and in the span of a day walks out as a demigod of combat and magic.
>>12113727tbf he had subconsciously suppressed his killer abilities because of his trauma, he wasn't exactly regular human
>>12113142Didn't they have to cut a bunch of story or something? But I agree, when you're under the impression that it's a political thriller, like some cheeks out Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with dragons instead of talking, it's a lot more interesting. When you learn that it's just amnesia story and one dude wanting to be god lah de dah, loses a lot of interest, in the story at least.
>>12113757Apparently the original plan was for Ashley and Callo to share a dual protagonist role, hence why she's featured so prominently on the front cover despite spending 95% of the final game as a hostage. Callo's side was cut at some point in development, but if you use a cheat device to turn the player character into her she has a near full set of custom attack/movement animations and female combat grunts.
>>12113757the last third of the game was clearly cut short
>>12113142>Why is this whole intro piece cooler than the rest of the game? I wish there were more games in Valendia with more glowniggering around as some VKP agent.I mean, you're basically asking for Ace Combat or Armored Core but in medieval setting. Not retro, but Astral Chain also fits the description of "dog of the military".It's just the game ended up about something different - Matsuno wanted to make a story where the main question doesn't have an answer (and IIRC either he or Sakimoto - the composer - took inspiration from X-Files) and I'm just glad that he added magic bullshit right from the prologue so it didn't feel forced by getting enough time and presence in story (unlike every other game by him where it starts with politics and humans vs humans but ends with magic, demons and pseudo-god as final boss, which drops the quality of otherwise good stories with such shift).>You have all these mysteryniggas at the start, being all backlit by lightning menacingly and I'm pretty sure it's never revealed who any of them are. Probably nobles or something.They're just inquisitors and VKP higher-ups. I don't think they'd ever get a proper development because Matsuno was never good at handling huge cast of NPC politicians and either killed them shortly after introduction or never used them more than once during the story.>>12113727That's literally what Lea Monde does - huge buffs to your stats (physical and magical) from magic pool while you're in it but you're going to fuel the very magic pool once you die (even if you're no longer in Lea Monde).>>12113757>Didn't they have to cut a bunch of story or something?Rozencrantz's motivation and relationship between Bardorba and Sidney were cut heavily, but you can still connect the dots from what's still left in the game. It just requires replaying the game several times and reading interviews and Ultimania content to figure out the missing gaps.