#but complicated circumstances? I like Dimitri's way of doing things in the sense that he's not just executing all criminals

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

well I'll be. there is Obito trash talk happening on my FE dash. -holds hand over heart and makes the most disgusted, offended Lorenz sound, you probably know the sound-

[lewlthea]

The Actual Thing Going On With Edelgard Von Hresvelg.

 Spoilers: It’s not fascism, nor racism (at least not in the way people think). Also, actual spoilers for the game.

If there has been a controversial character in Fire Emblem Three Houses, it’s Edelgard Von Hresvelg, one of the game’s main three lords, the house leader of the Black Eagles, the princess and sole heir of the Adrestian Empire, and an antagonist in every single route but hers. She has been a polarizing figure within the community: Some people think she’s an irredeemable monster, others think she’s a misunderstood leader. When it comes to Edelgard, theres hardly a grey opinion towards her; She’s either black or white. Today, I wanna talk about Edelgard’s actions towards the 4 routes, what they actually portray, and how and why the entire discourse towards her was caused deliberately by Intelligent System’s incredible mishandling and mistreatment of the character.

I remember Nintendo’s 2018 E3 conference quite well. I was at with a group of friends, watching at one of them’s house because he had a bigger TV. I remember making jokes about how “there was going to be a new Fire Emblem” because loving Fire Emblem when Intelligent Systems is Like That is a living nightmare.

And then this happens.

Words could not express the joy I felt when the trailer was over. It wasn’t just a new Fire Emblem game: We were going to have another lady lord, and an axe-wielding one at that - something the fanbase had been desperately craving since the recent surge in Hector’s popularity - and for once, it was like when I first found out that there would be a new female character in Shadows Of Valentia with Faye, and it was the tipping point for me to finally buy a Nintendo Switch.

Of course, just like Faye, things weren’t that simple.

Because some months before E3 2019, which promised to reveal more info on Fire Emblem 3 Houses, Reddit exploded. All because of someone who goes by the username Thanibomb, who claimed to have leaked info on the game, saying a lot of information about all the characters, some of them very questionable (With things such as Lysithea would die due to her crest complications, and it would cause the major 5-year war, and other things like Claude being the one who shot Dimitri’s eye off), while other info being oddly specific. A part of it that made me particularly chuckle was when such user said that Dimitri would have lost an eye, and would cover it with an eyepatch. I found it so silly and, along with some friends, claimed it to be fake and carried on.

And then E3 2019 happened.

And Dimitri had an eyepatch. 

And still, even after Thanibomb, things remained optimistic. All lords looked nice, they seemed to have their own ideals, their own paths, and no fights were breaking out within the fanbase yet. But then early copies were sent to reviewers. And then 4chan got a hold of one of those. And then the main leaks started. And by the time the game got released, it was too late. The amount of hate comments towards the character was so overwhelming; some calling Edelgard a fascist, others claiming that she was racist, others even saying that she gives racist remarks towards Claude ingame (a blatant lie). A personal favorite comment of mine was how Hubert and Edelgard looked like the perfect alt-right couple. 

(Should I remark that these kinds of comments stopped as soon as they found out that Hubert could A-support Ferdinand, and most of them moved on to fetishize the relationship between the two of them instead. Ironically, before that happened people despised Hubert in general solely because of his unusual appearance and shady behavior, but that was soon seen as ‘nuanced’ the moment he could be paired off with another man.)

And so, a fight between the fanbase begun: (Mostly) Blue Lion fans bashing Edelgard’s character, Black Eagle fans defending her vehemently, and Golden Deer fans between either on any of those sides or just making memes for Joe Zieja’s rally campaign for the GD. Mostly the latter. But that’s beside the point.

A (Kinda) Brief Summary of Edelgard’s Presence In Azure Moon, Verdant Wind, And Silver Snow.

Throughout the game’s second part, unless you’re playing the Crimson Flower Route, Edelgard will always be an antagonist who cannot be spared, and she cannot survive unless it’s in her own route. However, the way she is percieved changes depending on each route you are making, with each route leaving small fragments depicting Edelgard’s past and shaping her character in full scale. 

In Verdant Wind/Silver Snow, Edelgard isn’t the final boss. She is one of the bosses before the big fight. (Nemesis in Claude’s case, Rhea in Seteth’s). She’s one of the obstacles, but not the main one, therefore there is not much insight on her character; However, there is still one element present in those routes that is curiously omitted from Azure Moon that is the reason why she doesn’t really have too much focus, that being Hubert’s final letter.

In both routes, Hubert seems to highly respect Seteth/Claude’s prowess in the war and their cunning mind. (Especially Claude; Throughout both Verdant Wind and Crimson Flower, he commends Claude’s tactics and strategies multiple times). In the letter, he gives the location of where Rhea is confined and asks them to eliminate Those Who Slither in the Dark, the game’s true villains and the ones behind most, if not all the game’s tragic events. Even more curiously, though, is the fact that the letter does exist on the Crimson Flower route, and can be seen briefly on Hubert’s B support with Ferdinand, being the reason of their argument throughout the conversation. Not a single mention of the letter exists in the Azure Moon Route. (Of course it would not make sense for it to exist gameplay-wise due to the player having already murdered Arundel/Thales earlier in the game but. It’s still something to be accounted for).

Speaking of Azure Moon, this is a much more trickier route to talk about. Not only due to the fact that Edelgard is this route’s final boss, but also because all of the things we discover about Edelgard within it are never mentioned in any other route, only brief mentions about the time she spent in the Kingdom; nothing more. 

In here, her time spent on the Kingdom is expanded: Both Edelgard, her mom Patricia and Arundel were sent off to Faerghus due to exile, with Patricia being set off to marry King Lambert. There, she meets Dimitri, and they both become fast friends. By the time she has to leave, Dimitri gifts her with a dagger (Which, in Faeghus, are important gifts that mean ‘to cut a path towards a better future’), and she returns to Adrestia. Some time after she leaves the Tragedy of Duscurr happens, caused by Those Who Slither in the Dark. However, due to a misunderstanding caused by eavesdropping on a conversation between Thales and the Flame Emperor, Dimitri mistakenly believes that the Flame Emperor was behind it all, and once the Flame Emperor’s identity is finally revealed to be Edelgard, she is instantly demonized and called a ‘witch’, even though she openly declares how she had nothing to do with it. This goes on until Rodrigue’s death and Cornelia’s reveal that Patricia was the one behind the Duscurr Tragedy so she could return to the Empire and “reunite with her daughter”. (We never find out about what happened to her and she is not mentioned during the Crimson Flower). Dimitri tries to talk Edelgard off their final confrontation, but Edelgard insists that it is far too late for her to back down for their ideals are far too different, and she refuses to live in a world where the Church of Seiros exists. Dimitri then hands back her dagger (Which she accidentally dropped before the timeskip), and they both retreat to prepare for the final battle.

This route’s final boss is an Edelgard who was absorbed direct power from Those Who Slither in the Dark, and adquires a grotesque, corrupted form. No other character in the canon possess such a thing, and only Edelgard can assume such form. Once she is defeated, Dimitri tries once again to spare her, only for Edelgard to stab him with the dagger, making Dimitri realize that she would never give up on her dream, and finally kills her.

An Even More Brief Explanation of What Does All of This Means.

Okay, all of that info was nice, fun, good, yadda yadda. What does this mean and why was it needed.

Well, for starters, let’s ask ourselves a question: After reading the summary, can you say that you know what drives her to seek out the destruction of the church?

What is her reasoning behind the unification of Fodlan?

Do we get anything out of her other than “Scary dictator” or “An obstacle that had to be sadly removed” or “Under better circumstances... We could’ve been Allies (tm)”?

We don’t. Because Intelligent Systems did not bother to show Edelgard’s motivations, despite her being the villain in almost all the routes.

During Verdant Wind and Silver Snow, Edelgard herself does not matter: she’s solely important because she is threatening the church, she is your scary big bad dictator that you have to beat in order to rescue Rhea, only to find out that in reality she was just a stepping stone to the real villains, Those Who Slither in the Dark. (In game it is said that Hubert came up with this name. In my humble opinion Hubert can go fuck himself because this is the shittiest name I have ever seen and I am tired of having to type this five word long thing every paragraph or so). As soon as you read the letter, suddenly Edelgard, the Empire, and all the questions you had as to why she Did It dissappear because now you have another objective, another goal. 

This is even more offensive during Azure Moon because she is the focus, the final boss, but it doesn’t matter why she did all of this nor what her ideals actually are despite them being the reason why she cannot be spared. The game would rather focus on getting reactions out of the player when the intimidating big meanie does something that makes Dimitri go angry than actually focusing on the clashing of Dimitri and Edelgard’s ideals, why they cannot go back to what it once was, what happened to her to change this way, why did ‘El’ actually die. All you have is a dictator in red which does things for no reason other than “I will destroy the Church and unify Fodlan so I can govern over all of it”. Nothing more, nothing less.

....Of course, you do realize that I have avoided to talk about a certain thing.

So, About That Crimson Flower Route...

If there is a way to truly understand a villain, one must walk on such person’s footsteps. Most people criticizing Edelgard were the ones who hadn’t played her route yet, or had only played Azure Moon and was led to believe that all of Edelgard’s actions are unwarranted or pure nonsense. 

There is a reason why people sing their tune differently as soon as they experience the Crimson Flower.

For starters, to be able to fight for Edelgard, you have to first have her support up to C+, go with her to Enbarr once she asks of you, and then defend her from Rhea at the Holy Tomb. The reasoning behind that is so that you fully understand what Edelgard has gone through and the reason why she cannot agree with the existence of the Church.

The Azure Moon route tells you of Edelgard before she returned to the Empire.

It never tells you what caused her to change after she went back.

Edelgard was part of the crest experimentations caused by Those Who Slither in the Dark, alongside all her siblings. Her father, the emperor, was unable to do anything about it, as the real people in control of the Empire were Arundel/Thales and Duke Aegir. Being the sole survivor of such things to return to society and see how everything is defined by whether you have a crest or not and finding out that the Church, who instead of breaking down such system to favor equality would rather turn the creatures who run it into figures to be worshipped is. Something.

There’s another reason for Edelgard’s sudden betrayal, a more sinister one, and why she feels like everything needs to be done in a quick pace. In her C+ you find out she has a second crest, The Crest of Flames, just like the player. People who bear two crests have a shortened lifespam, however.

When Edelgard declares war against the Church, and to unite Fódlan, it’s not solely because ‘Church bad’: She declares war against the unfair crest system, against the hypocrisy of Rhea’s dragon entourage, and of course, to destroy Those Who Slither in the Dark later on the road.

  However.

Just because Edelgard’s behavior is justified, does not mean she is 100% in the right. She herself admits that the path she follows is one drenched in blood. But there are several times in the game that makes you stop and think for a second that she can still make bad decisions, and that sometimes her decisions might have horrible consequences. One of them is for example to never take away Brigid’s status as a vassal to the Empire and return it back to it’s former glory as an actual country, which shows how the entire Brigid kerfuffle is something akin to colonization. We should also point out that when she unifies Fodlan, in some endings she remains the Emperor, completely missing the point of what she fought for.

Another case that shows one of Edelgard’s biggest flaws is with the Silver Maiden incident.

Edelgard had just conquered Arianrhod, the Silver Maiden, and due to murdering Cornelia, enrages Ariandel/Thales, whom causes the situation above out of a show of power. She knows it was Those Who Slither in the Dark, but she needs to give explanations fast and she can’t reveal their identity or else they would slip away and it would be impossible to locate them and destroy them. So what does she do?

She says it was Rhea who did it, actively lying to her closest allies, one of them being the Prime Minister of the Empire.

For Edelgard, the ends justifies the means, and as long as she gets the results she wants, she will do what it takes. Even by alienation. And that’s a dangerous way to go on.

...So, where do I want to go from here? Who is to blame for the hatefest Edelgard is receiving?

Intelligent Systems Kind of Didn’t Know What To Do With Edelgard.

Now hold on. That sounds a bit too harsh, don’t you think? She was the first lord shown in the E3 2018 trailer, they have placed a very big emphasis on Edelgard everywhere hell the game’s main theme is about her, why would you claim that??

Well, first and foremost, I should start by saying that Crimson Flower is the game’s shortest route, with the total of 18 chapters. From those 18 chapters, there is only one cutscene, with most of the route’s major events being shown with either the game’s basic models or still images.

For comparison, Verdant Wind has the total of 8 cutscenes, counting the final one before the timeskip, with 3 of them being unique to its route.

Azure Moon has the total of 5 cutscenes, 3 of them being unique to its route. 

Silver Snow has 4 cutscenes, having 2 unique ones to its route.

The other two main lords have several support options with people outside of their respective houses; Edelgard only has one.

Remember when I said that one of Edelgard’s main enemies are Those Who Slither in the Dark? The game never lets her deal with them personally. You never truly fight them during Crimson Flower.

In a way, the game feels as if while Edelgard is the focus, you shouldn’t side with her. It really makes it feel as if someone at Intelligent Systems just snickered and said ‘Hey wouldn’t it be cool if we could let our players side with/date our villain?�� without even considering or respecting such villain’s motivations, her ideals, and what truly makes a character unique.

In the end, all they truly cared for was if Edelgard was romanceable enough for the player, not if she made sense or was appealing as a character, whether as a villain or a savior.

And considering how the fanbase is behaving towards Edelgard, they succeeded. 

[koalaguru]

Character Analysis: Part 1: Sly Cooper

I’ve had a Sly Cooper-themed Tumblr account for awhile now and I have yet to post anything of note. After years spent lurking and reading the wonderful text posts many fans have made analyzing the shit out of this wonderful series, I felt like it was finally time to throw my hat in the ring of this small but large in passion fanbase because I love analysis as well. So I figured, what better way to get started than by doing a kinda series thing where I post lengthy thought posts on the different characters of the series whenever I get the chance? This won’t be something simple like stopping after doing the main three plus Carmelita...no, I’ll be talking about every major boss and character in the series, so buckle in.

The main goal here is to simultaneously share my love of this series and write analysis pieces while also highlighting what I think of each character and where the games went right (or wrong, in...some cases...) with portraying them. Where better to start than with the main character himself: The Guru Sly Cooper!

Sly Cooper is a very complicated character to get right. I don’t mean just him, I mean the idea behind a character like him. He shows so much arrogance and a flippant disregard for safety precautions in so many scenarios that if these weren’t balanced by the excellent writing of his other personality traits he’d be downright unlikable. Luckily, he’s in the hands of Sucker Punch. But that’s also why, when taken out of Sucker Punch’s hands...things tend to get a bit messy.

Sly Cooper, Nick Wilde, Nathan Drake, the list goes on. They are all similar characters. Cunning, romantic, a bit dangerous, and easily interpreted as uncaring in some instances. That is why it is important to establish a solid background to make it clear why they are the way that they are, and it is equally important to show where their limits lie. Nick Wilde for example could have easily been an annoying character. Judy Hopps is positioned as the main character of Zootopia, and so when audiences see this smug con artist making her job harder, they sympathize with her and demonize him. But the irresistible charm to his personality and the later revelations about his past lead to a satisfying arc that makes him a fan favorite. He is such a smug and cunning asshole because society never gave him the chance to be anything more, and so when Judy gives him that chance, we see who he truly is.

But enough about Zootopia...I’m talking about Sly Cooper. And if I’m being honest, I think the character of Sly Cooper should be the prime example anyone who tries to write this kind of character looks to in the future, because Sucker Punch knocked it out of the damn park.

Starting in Sly 1, we are once again faced with the potential problems of this character archetype. Sly is hard to figure out. We get a solid sense of the rest of the main cast. Bentley is the geeky and cowardly man in the chair, Murray is the clumsy oaf who often makes things more difficult, and Carmelita is the rigid woman of the law: clearly not the main threat, but a definite complicating factor that players will need to work around. Sly, meanwhile isn’t really given any exaggerated traits. In fact, he’s full of many traits that would seem to be at odds with each other. He compliments his friends and thanks them one second but then insults them the next. He flirts with Carmelita, but it’s unclear if this is just for distraction or if there is actually something there. He displays a clear cockiness with his athletic moves, but his inner monologues display a vulnerability that he doesn’t let show to the public.

Sly Cooper is a character built on contradictions, and many if not all of his arcs throughout the series center on him resolving those. In Sly 1, he ends up making his inner thoughts on his friends and himself match what he outwardly displays. He states that both of his friends stepped up to the challenge and really helped him out, matching the respect we often hear him internally communicate. His journey of earning back the Thievius Racoonus piece by piece finally let’s his inner monologue become more proud of his own abilities like his outward cockiness often shows. We get some confirmation that he does truly care for Carmelita, but never lets it go too far out of the knowledge of their opposing fields of work. 

In Sly 2, the storytelling took a leap forward and so did the characters. Something that I have noticed about Sly 2 is that many of the arcs are somewhat retreads of arcs we saw in Sly 1, but not really. See, we still have Sly getting humbled, Sly realizing his friends’ value, Sly reaffirming his status with Carmelita, etc. However, Sucker Punch managed to repeat these similar beats with entirely new circumstances to both strengthen the communication of the ideas and make it feel like a continuation rather than a repeat.

We start with Sly once again showing a bit of displeasure with his friends. He chastises Bentley for letting his nervousness get the better of him and refuses to use the code names Bentley has provided for him. He tells Murray he’s used to going it alone when the hippo can’t follow him further into Dimitri’s nightclub. However, the first important thing to note is that Sly’s development from the previous game is not forgotten. He congratulates his friends when the do well, he no longer refers to Murray as a burden, he’s generally a lot more of a team player. The second important thing about this is that the writers gave the team a new point of tension: Bentley and Murray are now out in the field with Sly. In the first game, Sly argued with Bentley because he clashed with his sense of careful planning and lack of danger when being briefed on jobs. Here, he is clashing with Bentley because he is now relying on the turtle in the field to get the job done, and he wants to keep his friend safe. If Bentley freezes up, the job is busted. Same with Murray. Where previously Sly was frustrated because he was having to make up with Murray’s mistakes as a clumsy and naive guy, now he is simply adjusting to a loud and boisterous partner for his more subdued and silent nature.

We also have the deeper storyline being developed with Carmelita. We get more instances where Sly openly admits to loving Carmelita, possibly prompted by his developing romance with Neyla. I said when talking about Sly 1 that by the end we saw that he did care about Carmelita but knew it couldn’t work due to their differing positions. But with Neyla he finally sees someone who is a viable option for him. She is a cop, but she is also less black and white than Carmelita can be, giving him hope that things can work out. And so that is why, as many have said before, the fourth and fifth chapters are such a turning point for Sly’s character in this game.

We see Neyla, the woman who gave Sly hope that he could eventually have real love, reveal that everything Sly thought she was was an elaborate lie to lock him away. We see Sly have to rely on Bentley to break out of jail, fully recognizing his contributions to the group and accepting his differing way of going about things, using Bentley’s code name at last. We see him have to break Murray out of a jail that is force feeding him drugs, making him fully realize the concern and care he has for his friend, and later the respect for his strength when he has to tangle with Murray who is in a blind rage. And we see Sly save Carmelita and help her escape for the cops, once again giving him some hope for a possible relationship.

Now one would think that resolving all of Sly’s ongoing arcs this early in the game is a mistake. After all, that just leaves an unchanging character until the end, and that will make Sly boring. But don’t you worry. It’s Sucker Punch we’re talking about. And so it quickly becomes clear that the resolving of these particular arcs has only led to more questions to come up in Sly’s mind. He has a whole new set of contradictions to consider, and these ones are much deeper set into who he is to himself and those around him.

He loves Carmelita and wants her to be happy. But he seemingly can’t have both. To start a relationship with Carmelita, she’d have to remain on the wrong side of the law, which would make her unhappy. But to make her happy and get her job back, they would not be able to be together. What should he do? He truly cares for and respects his friends, but he keeps placing them in danger. All of the hardship they have encountered so far is due to his family history and only applies personally to him. His friends may end up being better off without him. What should he do?

The ending stretch of Sly 2 aims to answer these questions, but not fully. It does end up with a solution for the time being, but it doesn’t seem to be the best one. Murray and Bentley do end up going off on their own, leaving their gear behind. But it is only because Bentley was paralyzed and needs medical attention and Murray is mentally devastated. Sly ends up making a choice about Carmelita and getting her job back, but then he escapes from her and the chase starts all over again. He’s back to square one. (Carmelita isn’t, but that’s for another day).

Sly 3 is an extremely personal journey. This game’s story is often viewed as lesser than Sly 2′s story due to its seemingly lowered stakes and less connected progression. In Sly 2, you were travelling the world to take down the members of a gang one by one and gather the parts of Clockwerk. All of this was to stop one giant, interconnected plan that would result in the entirety of Paris being driven into a hypnotic rage and Clockwerk being revived. Sly 3, by comparison, does seem like less of a big deal at first. Sly needs to get into his family’s vault, and to do so he needs to gather a team. This means he is traveling the world to get new members and stopping one-off villains while he’s at each location. If he fails, all that will happen is that he won’t get to see the inside of the vault.

But Sly 3 is intentionally more downplayed, because this conflict isn’t any bigger than Sly and his legacy. Everything he goes through is internal, and his own continuing story is the thread tying the adventure together. Sly has been through a lot. He seemingly finally managed to solve all of his internal struggles only to have them replaced by worse ones. And now it all seems worse than ever before. Bentley is paralyzed, Murray has left for a life of meditation, and Carmelita has hired a group of mercenaries, more determined than ever before to take Sly down. The dangers that come with living life on the wrong side of the law are more prevalent in his mind than ever before, and he feels like everyone he loves is paying the price for it.

Simultaneously, Sly is starting to feel like his time is up. He did it. He learned from the Thievius Racoonus. He pulled off great heists. He defeated Clockwerk twice. He’s done more than his ancestors ever could. And as the number of people in his gang grows the less he is needed in the field. He still takes on the majority of jobs, mind you, but there are more frequent instances where he can’t do something alone. Only Bentley and his tech can break into Tsao’s computer. Only Panda King’s fireworks can take out the hopping vampires. Etc. All of the signs are pointing to the idea of Sly finally retiring, but he doesn’t have any life set up to retire to.

All of these fears and hopes and desires culminate in the final assault on Kaine Island, where Sly learns the truth about his father. Dr. M, the villain of this game, is the way that he is due to his partnership with Sly’s dad, and so he is the representation of everything Sly is worried about with his friends. Has he been too selfish by dragging his friends into his family struggles? Has he not given enough attention to their own contributions? Does he even know what it means to share his life with someone? And as he draws closer and closer to the Cooper Vault, a new fear joins in with the rest. What does he have to contribute to the Cooper name?

That last bit is a question that fans have asked for years. Every Cooper was given some special move or technique that they were the master of and added to the Thievius Racoonus. But all Sly does is learn their moves and perform them. Here Sly is, running through representations of his ancestors’ history, and the only real thing he’s decided on is telling Carmelita he loves her if he sees her again. He also decided to bring Murray and Bentley into the vault with him...only to discover that it was a somewhat empty gesture since they couldn’t follow him beyond the entryway. 

So Sly gets to the inner sanctum and comes into contact with Dr. M, and when once again faced with his father’s mistakes he has a realization. His father, according to Dr. M, never gave as much thought to his friends’ interests. Sly’s conflicts over how he is treating his friends, his back and forth internal debate over their own well-being, his desire to have a life outside of thieving, all of that is his contribution. His respect for those outside of the Cooper Clan. He doesn’t have the mechanical skills to match Otto. Murray is the mechanic. He didn’t truly defeat Clockwerk, at least not without the help of Carmelita. Everything he’s done has been with the help of his friends in ways big and small. Sly finally resolves his inner contradictions by realizing that he himself is a contradiction of every Cooper before him.

So, with this knowledge in mind, Sly defeats Dr. M, gives up his thieving life to be with Carmelita (a way for both of them to be happy), and leaves the Cooper Vault and Thievius Racoonus to non-Coopers. And while this could easily be a sad ending, with the family we spent three games with breaking up and Sly seemingly giving up the focus of the games, it is played as a happy one. Because as we see in the ending, Sly is truly happy. He knows who he is, he knows who his friends are, and he’s finally made the right choice.

...And then...Sly 4...I dunno...It’s...a game...

Okay. I did say at the start of this that I would be using my analysis of the character to look at exactly where Sly 4 went wrong with the characterization. And I think if you’ve read this far and played Sly 4 you already know.

Sly drops his life with Carmelita just because he wants to steal again and doesn’t really care all that much about the situation. He finds out that his history is being erased and still spends the entire adventure throwing out quips. He frequently underplays his friends’ accomplishments. He breaks Carmelita’s heart and doesn’t understand why she’s angry, only thinking it’s hilarious that he got her so angry in the first place. Remember at the very start when I said that Sly is a difficult character to write? Very easily moving from charming to annoying? Yeah, I said all that because of this game. He has all of the humor and wisecracks with none of the deeper level stuff. It’s a fine line to walk and Sanzaru unfortunately couldn’t keep their balance.

But at the end of the day, I hope the rest of what I said was interesting to you or just a fun read. I love these games, and the main character is a big reason why. He’s had a great journey, and one less than stellar portrayal doesn’t ruin that.