Gengar strikes me as someone who knows he’s a piece of shit and is trying to embrace that. Emphasis on trying. Obviously there’s the fact that he called his group “Team Meanies” and bragged at people’s doorsteps that he was evil and gonna take over the world and stuff. He terrorizes Pokemon into joining his team and doesn’t even seem to respect his own teammates. The entire fugitive arc is him trying to scapegoat the hero for his crimes.
But two things stick out to me.
The first is that Gengar seems to think that being selfish and cruel is human nature.
In the dream eater sequence, Gengar talks about exposing hero and “showing what they’re like inside” purely on the grounds of them being human. I think that’s pretty self explanatory. He thinks that all humans are bad people. He’s speaking from experience, because if HE’S bad then surely all humans are, right?
The second is that Gengar… honestly comes across as self loathing to me, even if he tries to own how shitty he is. Just look at his dialogue during the crowd scene.
This dialogue combined with this expression come across as cracks of guilt to me. He knows what he did and he knows exactly what he’s doing now. And despite everything, I think he hates that. He hates what he did to Gardevoir. He knows it was horrible of him to abandon her after sacrificing herself for him. And he hates that. But he can’t admit it.
I think Gengar trying to take pride in his cruelty is deflection and denial. He couldn’t help what he did to Ninetales and Gardevoir, it was inevitable! He’s human, and all humans are selfish. He can’t change or control that. All he can do is double down over and over while trying (and failing) to escape the consequences. He can’t fathom the idea that a human can be a good person, so he’s not even gonna try to change.
And he hates hero because they are the antithesis to that statement. They want and try to do good wherever they can, and Gengar can’t believe that after learning that they’re human. He projects onto them, insisting that they have to be a bad person, because they’re human. Just like him. He can’t be good. They shouldn’t be good. Because if being good comes so easily to them, then what does that say about him?
And seeing Gardevoir in hero’s dreams talking about how much she cared for him, with sympathy leaking from hero’s heart, shatters that illusion he shrouded himself in.
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im actually going to tear into totk’s dragon’s tears/ memories rn bc i remember feeling distinctly unsatisfied with them when i got all of them so im just going to write some general bullet points about them, about what i dislike or maybe what i do actually like about them, leaving out both master sword scenes and the mummydorf one because i’m here to talk about the stuff in the past not that
- off the bat (i play this game in english btw so all of this is based on the english text and translation i am aware some stuff is slightly different in other languages) im not really a fan of how the descriptions of all of the tears is just a literal description of what happens?? i think my issue with it is that some of the text is a little bit too in depth, as in it just tells you literally everything about the scene. this might be nitpick-y but i personally dont like it
- what’s up with zelda saying ‘but that must mean...!’ at the end of the scene. is it suggesting that she’s made the realization that rauru and sonia are the first king and queen of hyrule? because they literally tell her that like ten seconds before. i guess it’s suggesting she’s realizing she’s in the past but... idk the texts says ‘she’s left startled by a suspicion that she’s heard those names before’ yeah theyre the first king and queen of hyrule?? they tell her that. they tell her their names and that they are the first leaders of hyrule is she just now connecting the dots that she’s in the past? that’s what the next cutscene implies. but all of the surrounding dialogue and the description don’t suggest that that’s what she’s realizing i feel like this was kind of muddled in the translation
- why did sonia elbow rauru he was just standing weird he didnt say anything this isnt a nitpick im just confused. is it because he’s not being very empathetic towards what zelda’s going through? she elbows him and then she goes and talks to zelda why even elbow rauru. ordinarily you elbow someone like that if you mean for them to go do something why elbow someone if you’re going to do the thing you want anyways
- why doesnt zelda offer to help with the purah pad or anything like that. what happened to her sheikah tech fascination from botw. not even as someone actually familiar with the technology who could give mineru some points as to how it works
- what are sonia and zelda doing behind rauru when he shoots that insane fucking beam at the mulduga swarm they’re clearly doing something with their stones but like... are they amplifying rauru’s power somehow?? what do time powers have to do with the beam of light i dont- what were they doing please the text description only mentions him using his powers so are sonia and zelda just... supporting his powers? idk man
- dragon tear #5 is a whole can of worms with its worse-than-oot reenactment of that one scene from oot. why the focus on sonia and her tear btw. i mean yeah she dies to motivate rauru and zelda but like. why not aim for the new girl who probably doesn’t know how to use it as much and is probably more likely to be separate from the king who can shot insane lasers. im really not a fan of this scene for how strongly the game sides with rauru and zelda being passive and judgemental but ganondorf is literally the best part of it there’s a lot of character in just how he picks up his sword and stands up to leave
- putting memories 6 and 7 together just because of how there was just. no fucking care put into the idea of zelda learning to use her time powers. memory 6 zelda talks about wanting to use her time powers and sonia gives her tips on how she could use it and visualize the use of it and then in memory 7 she can just use it perfectly with great control and timing. why even bother talking about her nothing yet understanding how to use it when the very next scene she just uses it like it’s nothing. how much time has passed we get nothing to show us zelda trying to practice this power just. nope. she’s good she can use it perfectly. also more awkward dialogue sonia saying ‘what a picture zelda paints of him’ as she is. looking directly at zelda. change the line to like, ‘what a picture you paint of him’ she is literally looking right at zelda so why would she say it like that
- generally i feel like memory six should have been before 4 and 5 (4 being where she uses some power to... support??? rauru and it being before memory 5 so that there isnt this weird break in between the memories concerning ganondorf.) memory 6 does not have anything to do with memory 4 or 5 so just put it earlier so there isnt a weird shift in focus between the two big ganondorf scenes
- good god they introduce the idea of sonia and zelda being aware of ganondorf using a fake zelda but theres literally nothing about it having been a problem or them having experience or like. anything. they just TELL you that they know and suggest that it’s been like. a thing for a bit??? also obligatory ganondorf’s face model rigging is fucked comment he’s still the best part
- the pacing of these memories is just weird in general, memories 7 and 8 being separate but the same scene is strange when other memories are long as fuck but cover one event each, plus theres clearly barely any passage of time between memories 7 and 8 it almost feels like they were split up to fill space or just because otherwise it’d be... too long? man idk
- ‘queen sonia needs you!’ girl she is DEAD good fucking luck doing anything to help her
- ganondorf’s horse and its armor both look sick as fuck i really wish you got to see more of it outside the memory it appears in
- everything about the original sages honestly sucks. they aren’t characters they’re just walking macguffins. they have no names and are not relevant or mentioned or make any appearance until they are needed by the story. why does the zora sage talk about getting word about the attacked gerudo village in this scene when like. they’ve all met up and have clearly. been together for a bit. when she gives them the news it’s clearly the first they’ve heard of it... but... why would she wait until this moments to give this info unless for the benefit of the player watching the scene. why does the ZORA sage have this news and not... the gerudo sage?? what’s with the masks. they’re all made of zonaite or whatever sure theyre gifts from rauru but like. i hate that it kind of denotes them being subservient and lower than him and the zonai. honestly i really hate this scene in general mostly because of the uncomfortable showing of how rauru absolutely holds power over them and despite them being leaders as well they are expected to be wholly blindly loyal to him. rauru only gives them these stones when he needs their aid and they swear loyalty too him soon after but you also see that sonia and mineru have stones, too, so they’re clearly withholding these things despite it being kind of reasonable for him to give each race their own secret stone as further proof of their pact? there is so much shit to be said about the imperialistic themes or whatever in this fucking story and i really hate it
- i do kinda like how the next scene shows you that the one rock in the corner of that first hidden room in the forgotten temple is sonia’s grave
- zelda’s phrasing and description of how she and link found ganondorf is weird to me ‘he’s still alive’ ‘he lives on’ girl that was a mummy. he was not moving until you got there. he’s undead at best as far as you know. this is def a nitpick but eh. also the reliance on link is a... bit odd when zelda does not actually know that link is safe until she gets the master sword. its fine but still. also her shell-shocked expression after rauru talks about her being in the past for a reason is a bit... it doesn’t fit her emotion it’s kind of similar to the expression she had when sonia was killed
- the memory about the imprisoning war starts with practically the whole story up until now being repeated back to you by mineru with a decent amount of bias on mineru’s part and while it’s fine because of some of the extra stuff you learn but it does a lot more telling rather than showing when it comes to the actual imprisoning war and... idk the whole thing about their ‘fight’ kind of falls flat when you don’t actually see any fighting you just see that the sages have gotten their asses beat. i think it would have been a little interesting if in the god-awful repetitive sage-awakening scenes they had actually showed you the og sages fighting ganondorf instead of just. slow-mo freeze-frames for whatever. once again ganondorf if the best part of the scene
- the rest of the memories are fine idc
i get the feeling that the japanese-to-english translation was either all-around rough or somehow rushed, because some of the phrases in the game as well as some of the dialogue is really awkward and... could have been better. i don’t know how it works but it feels like a lot of it was very literal, direct translation and no one at noa thought that it ought to be tweaked just a little bit
these memories also do a fuck-ton of telling rather than showing and it really is like they don’t really trust you to connect the dots, and some of it does come off like they either didn’t want to make more memories or ran out of time or something. i felt like the memory of ganondorf just summoning his monsters and riding on his cool horse could have been a bit longer to actually show us the forces of hyrule fighting him and having a hard time with it
a lot of the character animations doesn’t have a whole lot of personality to them, ganondorf is the character who had the most distinct and interesting movements. rauru and sonia had their... singular movement (rauru putting a hand to his chin and sonia taking zelda’s hands) and zelda was kind of just... standing around and reacting to stuff, and neither mineru nor any of the other sages had any really interesting animations asides from mineru’s coughing fit in memory 16 (plus her reclining chair that was a nice touch). very few of their movements really express anything about the characters besides some really baseline values or traits.
the ordering of some memories is kind of odd, the excessive flashbacks in memory 17 are a bit much, the telling rather than showing, the sometimes awkward dialogue, a lot of the scenes are characters just... talking at each other, you don’t actually see very much of hyrule in the past or any characters beyond the main four, and it really did nothing to actually get me to care about these characters at all.
tldr i dont like totk’s dragon tears
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was gonna wait til i finished act 2 before posting my nightsong thoughts but actually i want to get my first impressions out to see if they change but…currently i’m pretty disappointed by it because from an rp perspective i literally don’t see a single reason why the pc would let shadowheart kill the nightsong if they weren’t already allied with the absolute.
from a practical perspective your whole aim is to get rid of ketheric’s invulnerability - i guess killing the nightsong might achieve that purpose but to me at least the implication throughout the gauntlet is that if you kill the nightsong as part of the dark justiciar trial she doesn’t actually die. (never mind the fact that aylin seems far too important to both ketheric and shar for her to be sacrificed if an ordinary selûnite would do). obligatory disclaimer that i didn’t let shadowheart kill her so i don’t know what happens in that instance, but that doesn’t really matter in this case because i’m talking about how the choice is presented to you, and to me at least it did not seem like killing aylin would be in any way strategic.
in which case it’s not really a choice because a) practically you are strongly encouraged to let aylin go and b) morally your tav has to justify the murder of a defenceless woman for…what, shadowheart’s career goals? even if you’re romancing shadowheart (which i am) convincing her requires a straightforward persuasion check, the mechanics of which thus far have meant you convince her that your position is correct - there’s not much in the way of lasting relationship consequences in that she won’t get so mad at you she leaves the party because you’ve already convinced her you’re right.
all that is to say that i think this is reflective of bg3’s overall binary attitude towards its major choices - there’s a good route (save the grove, defend isobel, free aylin), and a bad route (destroy the grove, ally with marcus, kill aylin). a lot of those choices compound, as well - other people have talked from actual experience about how allying with minthara will lose you a huge amount of content and allies, thus railroading you into picking a side from both a narrative and gameplay perspective. you’ve a huge amount of freedom in how you go about achieving any of those things - stealth, persuasion, combat etc., but the objectives themselves are pretty static.
so when you then have a companion’s personal quest tied to intrinsically to the plot it negates a huge amount of player choice. thematically, the companion quests are binary because they can either break or perpetuate cycles of abuse - that’s an instance in which binary choices can be very compelling. but the thematic concerns of shadowheart’s very intricate and heartfelt personal quest are totally undercut by the necessities of a pretty straightforward choice. i can’t play a hands-off tav and let this be shadowheart’s decision without to all appearances letting ketheric win. this isn’t a truly grey choice like the decision to sacrifice isolde or go to the circle in dragon age origins. it feels like that’s what bg3 was trying to do here by combining shadowheart’s quest and the main narrative, but because that main narrative is actually relatively inflexible, it just means shadowheart’s quest suffers by comparison.
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