Revelations from Patch 6.2: Buried Memories

[Cleretic]

MSQ general feeling: Really good, even if it is mostly setup!

This one's not gonna be a favorite after all is said and done because it doesn't really have any big moments in terms of revelations or spectacle, but it's pretty good. I love the use of Scarmiglione to actually show the whole 'yeah voidsent literally cannot die' thing; I knew they'd use his undead nature, but I didn't guess that would be how.

I am EXTREMELY thankful that nobody guessed right on how Zero would be handled at all; she's a far cry from anything expected, and far better for it. I'm calling it, we're getting her hat-tip emote someday, but it'll be either mogstation like /snap or limited-time reward like /determined. Still, looking forward to the Scions' further adventures with the only person they've ever met that knows what a paycheck is!

Similarly, moving Barbariccia in to be so early does a great job of knocking our expectations off-kilter; I think a lot of people were landing on very typical expectations of the story based on what we know is coming both in story and in content load, so much like the 'wait Zodiark is the first trial' beat, we're finding ourselves quickly rewriting expectations.

Very happy with Golbez just being an unrepentant conqueror with no noble aims. The potential double meaning of 'redemption' gave people the idea he might be more noble, and it's fun to see that... yeeeeeah, by 'redemption' he meant 'we deserve better, let's take it'. I've seen the assumption that he might be an eidolon that's been kept going because, unlike their primal cousins, they don't need extra fuel in the Void and will just keep coming back, and I buy it.

Also: the hilariously on-the-nose reference game is something I'm a fan of. Not even trying to be subtle.

The one downside... I don't think we needed Adult Varshahn for Trusts. Not only does it lose the whole 'Vrtra is a kid by his species' standards' thing, but it doesn't even look that good. To borrow the Mulaney bit: he doesn't look older, he just looks worse. Get some rest, tall child!

Similarly, Abyssos takeaways: Honestly a bunch of this should've been in P1-4, because it addresses all my problems with Pandaemonium, but came way too late for those problems to actually be solved.

Hooray, we have an antagonist, stakes, and a reason why this might affect the rest of the game! ...probably could've used implementing them earlier, because it took most of a year before I was given an answer for the question of 'why is this supposed to feel worth doing'.

Fun to see that their angle for how to make a sympathetic Lahabrea is 'introduce a worse Lahabrea, and then introduce someone even worse than that Lahabrea'. There definitely seems to be a general acknowledgement among the writers that trying to make us sympathize with someone as psychopathically evil as Lahabrea of all people is a lot to ask, and frankly I think may not have been worth it, but I do appreciate that pretty much every dialog choice we have about him has an option to call out that he becomes an abject monster who should not be trusted. Just because we can't kill him, doesn't mean we have to be nice, and I like when the game gives you choices to make tit clear you don't have to accept the atonement/redemption/sympathy play they go for.

While I don't think I was right or that it's going to be made a thing, it did occur to me during the fight that Agdistis might be something of a precursor example to what Zero talked about of voidsent consuming others leading to a loss of self; that similarly, she'd been crammed with the essences of so many creatures that she was losing her sense of self.

In talking about this stuff before release, I landed on calling two particular figures 'Proto-Carbuncle' and 'Shadow Lahabrea' just out of convenience. ...I didn't expect to be right, though; not only was Proto-Carbuncle actually called that, but... uhm, yeah, that is straight-up Lahabrea's shadow in the Jungian sense, that is literally that. P5-8 was just a Persona dungeon in another game. Incidentally, as an FFV fan, loved Proto-Carbuncle's whole fight revolving around bouncing magic off Reflect.

Finally... do we give P8 the reward for 'most elaborate asset reuse'? Between the music being a mashup of Without Shadow, Shadows Withal and Thunderer, the cameo by Phoenix, and all three of his forms being reused skeletons, I'm genuinely impressed with how far they stretched it.