Tales of the Abyss Playthrough #3

[heliokleptic]

Abandoned Factory, Baticul

-Natalia visited a battleground in northern Chesedonia to encourage the troops. The same battle, I imagine, that Jade and Cecille were at.

-Natalia gets to join the crew by blackmailing Luke about hearing his plans with Van. She only heard the parts about Van being the one to kidnap Luke, and their plans to run off to Daath together.

-Natalia didn’t know Luke pinky swears seriously, so that means someone else taught him to pinky swear. …Guy?

-Skit: Keeping Secrets

-Skit: Natalia, the Seventh Fonist

-Skit: The World in the World?

-Skit: The Princesses Cooking Struggles, Part 1

-Skit: The Princess’ Guards

-Guy talking in HIGH SPEAK TO PRINCESS does not translate well in English and just sound sort of hilarious.

-Skit: Natalia? The Leader?!

-Tales of Setting Fire to Barrels Full of Oil Fuck Yah

-Skit: Be Careful!

-Skit: Can’t we just get along?

-First puzzle dungeon! Note to self, Luke gets +10 plumbing comprehension after this memory.

-Natalia has Luke and Asch's headstrong traits. FOR THE GOOD OF THE PEOPLE, LET'S RUN HEADFIRST INTO EVERYTHING.

-Oil Spider Boss! Jade notes that it may have mutated through fonon activity and feeding on the oil.

-Natalia: “Guy, you go down first. Catch me if I slip.”
Guy: “You’re telling me to do that knowing full well that I can’t, right?”
I love Natalia’s random brutal “Guy get the hell over your phobia so I can properly abuse you once I’m queen” moments. Of course SHE COULD just be planning to have threesome with him and Luke and is irritated that is not yet possible.


Field, East Aberrian Plains

-Luke meets Asch!

-Natalia: “What does this mean?”
Jade: “By the way, they took Ion and left.”
So Luke is busy throwing up because he has an evil twin, and when Natalia asks what the hell, Jade immediately changes the subject! GG Jade.

-Even years later, I am STILL stunned by how much the party just sort of ignores this. WHELP, Luke has an evil twin! Anyway, the mission!! Even though they weren’t that much of a hurry to get things done before, when Luke did not have an evil twin. It is obviously mostly Jade pushing things along. “Oh, we better hurry. Oh Luke, make decisions! Oh we can’t find out anything about Asch without talking to him so point in bothering with it now!” Still. Everyone just. Shrugs it off. And they wonder why Luke steadily starts to become a huge bitch…

-Skit: Asch Revealed

-Oh yay, the part of the game where the world map takes forever to load.

-Skit: Ion’s Safety


The Desert Oasis

-Asch first contacts Luke at the Oasis. He's very demanding!

-Asch tells Luke that they are at the Zao Ruins "Don't blame me if something happens to Ion."

-Skit: Where are the Zao Ruins?

-Skit: Jade Knows Everything

-Gee knows who Guy is by his name. I'm guessing Guy has rumors of his existence and safety going around among the people who used to serve his father and survived. Or maybe just among the Arcane Artes Council.

-Luke just sort of gets used to Jade’s dickery and ignores it…


The Zao Desert

-Skit: Asch’s Voice

-Skit: Showers Are Awesome – Guy Talk!


Zao Ruins

-Skit: The God-General’s Plan

-Luke tries to touch shiny things without wondering if they might be dangerous |D

-Luke is still confused about what fonons are at this point in the game.

-Also, Jade notes that where the crystallized Second Fonons are is most likely a fon slot, so I suppose the earth ahs them too?

-Tear on Fonons: "Every structure and living thing has its own intrinsic vibration and emits a corresponding sound. Those are divided into six fonons. Tiny differences in their vibration and connections distinguish individual matter.”

-The crystallized fonons carved a fon verse into the Sorcerer’s ring to grant it new power. Makes you wonder what would happen if it was carved with some of the first fonon, or the sixth.

-Jade: "One does not develop a well rounded personality until their fourties. I'm working to develop a memorable character to be remembered throughout the ages. To that end, I'm dedicating myself to driving you youngsters crazy."

-Skit: Hurry to Akzeriuth

-Skit: A Memorable Character

-Asch is pretty eager to tell all with Luke, but Sync stops him... infact every time Asch is about to blab SOMEONE shuts him up. I wonder how used the rest of the god-generals are to covering for Asch's headstrong temperament?

-Sync: "Let's make a deal..." Guy: "We won't need any deals if we just wipe you out."

-Skit: Ion Rescued

-When Luke doesn't act like he cares about saving Ion is when Anise first starts to really lose patience with him.


Chesedonia

-Guy's getting progressively more worried about Luke's headaches. He even insists on Luke resting after the most recent one.

-Skit: Luke’s Headaches

-HEADACHE
Asch: What’s wrong, that’s not the way to the inn.
Luke: Shut… up..!
A: Hah, hah, look at you. You’re connected to me. You ARE me!
Mieu: Master, are you all right?
Tear: Luke, what’s wrong?
A: Let’s see, what’s next… Turn your sword on that woman!
L: Shut up! Stop controlling me! [Points sword at Tear]
T: Luke! What are you doing?!
L: It… it’s not… me! My body’s just..! S-Stop!!
Then the lights fade and Luke loses consciousness. NOT YOUR MOST SHINING MOMENT, ASCH.

-Anise: "Health problems, huh? If I have to nurse someone I'd be better off with a rich geezer who's ready to kick it ♥"

-When confronted with "what's wrong with Luke?" Jade more or less frankly says that he won't tell them yet because Luke should be the first to know. BUT THEN HE DOESN’T TELL LUKE ANYTHING ANYWAY AND AKZERIUTH IS BLOWN UP. GOD. JADE!!!!

-The Ant Lion Man is a weird part of Auldrant's folklore. A merchant-thing that throws your shit into a hole and gives you something in return that may or may not be worth what you handed over. IT'S LIKE A GRAB BAG.

-Van got to Kaitzur Port before the party got to Chesedonia. He sent a carrier pigeon saying that he planned to proceed to Akzeriuth with a vanguard unit.

-Ion on curse slot: "It's a Daathic fonic arte applied to a person's fon slots. It reads information from the brain, using the person's memories to control him. The power of the curse slot varies, depending on the proximity of the user."


Kaitzur Port

-Skit: Guy’s Injury

-Guy is totally depressed about the curse slot right after it happens. Probably because baw I felt bad things at Luke 8(


South Rugnica Plains

-Skit: What we can do for Akzeriuth

-Skit: Mohs and the War

-Skit: Akzeriuth’s Ore

-At this point, Tear still trusts Mohs but has given up standing up for him.


Deo Pass

-And now begins the Luke is a horrible dickbag portion of our game.

-Skit: Careless words

-Skit: The road to Akzeriuth

-I shamelessly love attacking trees for treasure chests and am going to assume Luke does too.

-Skit: The way to a man’s heart

-Skit: Jade, Back in form

-One fon slot seal costs about 10% of Malkuth's yearly budget >D God, Jade. INCIDENTLY they were planning to use that on Ion. Which makes NO SENSE since they want Ion to open the Sephiroth. Unless he doesn't need fonons for that, or else it's such a low level thing to do? But in that case, Sync should be able to do it.

-Anise's first hint that she's on Mohs' side "If the score shows the future, then it's best to live as it says..." she doesn't do much more of this until later on when the party starts going against the score.

-Basically every cut scene after Asch and Luke meet has Jade being like “HM IT SEEMS LIKE LUKE IS REALLY A REPLICA, I SUPPOSE I WON’T TALK ABOUT IT….”

-Of course in this case, it’s partly Ion’s fault too.

-Jade is Not Happy. "Was it Dist?" "What does it matter? The die has been cast, Necromancer!" "Over my dead body!" I echo Anise here "Colonel... you're actually really angry." After this point, Jade downplays his opinions on fomicry quite a bit. But right here, when he first finds out for sure that it has been started again, he's really, really, pissed.

-Luke's pretty frustrated about being ignored.

-One of the things I actually really like about Abyss is how much ISN’T talked about. Like. LET’S TALK ABOUT FEELINGS AND MOTIVATIONS is very Tales of. But at the same time they skip over things very realistically. Right here, during LUKE IS A BITCH time, he actually has pretty legit reasons for being a total dick. He is frightened and confused and trying to act like what he thinks a leader/hero does, but is total balls at it. In the mean time, EVERYONE is CONSTANTLY talking over his head, which is pretty fucking dickish too! But after this, Akzeriuth happens, and Luke pretty much loses the right to ever complain about anything ever again. As much as an asshole Luke is here, the fact that the rest of the party is significantly to blame for his ignorance of the situation and lack of trust in them goes completely unmentioned. YET, you can see the reasons for Luke’s actions in the progression of the script, so it is intentionally written in there.


Field, South Rugnica Plains

-Skit: Stop making fun of me!

-Skit: A kind teacher

-FORESHADOWING. Luke bitches about Tear not explaining anything and Tear says "You're just a puppet who can't do anything without my brother around?" Personally it seems a little out of no where to me. I don't think WANTING PEOPLE TO EXPLAIN STUFF qualifies as being a puppet. But then she goes on to "you better start thinking for yourself, or one day you're going to do something you can't undo."
Additionally, in that skit Luke mentions "Master Van always explained things to me if I didn't know." It's actually kinda... both sad and cute to realize how much of Luke's life has compromised of NOT KNOWING STUFF. I have lots of vague memories of being a young kid, and not being able to put two and two together because I was missing the second two, and everyone else had it. For Luke, who probably developed faster than a toddler does (or else he wouldn't be able to act his age half the time in only seven years of growth) it must've been a pain to deal with that constantly.


Akzeriuth

-"Natalia stay away from them, they're dirty, you might catch something." While this is a REALLY CRASS THING TO SAY it occurs to me that Luke probably has zero familiarity with the concept of this kind of suffering. I wonder how much of it is selfishness and how much is just ignorance?

-Skit: What can I do?

-Early on in canon, Guy really is trying to be more of a servant than a friend, I think. Later on, Guy definitely would’ve beaten Luke over the head for his insensitivity, but at this point he really just takes more of a “You don’t really think that, right? Come on..” approach.

-Skit: Tragedy

-Skit: The mining town, Akzeriuth

-Skit: The pain of Akzeriuth

-‘Miasma Toxicosis’ what you get from the miasma that kills you!


Akzeriuth Mine Shaft 14

-Skit: Into the Depths

-Asch contacts Luke to yell "DON'T TAKE ANOTHER STEP". If only Asch were clever enough to realize HEY HE DOESN'T TRUST ME MAYBE I SHOULD TRY EXPLAINING Akzeriuth might NEVER HAVE HAPPENED LIKE THIS.

-Skit: Where’s Master Van?

-Skit: As the Goodwill Ambassador. Gosh, he even manages to upset Ion in this one.

-And again "Don't go any further! Stop, before it's too late! Listen to me!!"

-The Ion opens the Daathic Seal to Akzeriuth. REALLY PRETTY MUCH THE ENTIRE PARTY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR BAD CHOICES THAT LEAD TO AKZERIUTH BEING DESTROYED.

-"Stop, damn you! Don't go! Are you trying to destroy Akzeriuth?!"

-Skit: Master Van will know!

-The Vanguard that Van takes to Akzeriuth is destroyed by Oracle Knights who have orders to take Tear away.

-Asch runs through the tunnels with griffons chasing him, shooting fire at him >D It's... actually pretty hilarious.

-"Now... 'Foolish replica Luke' unleash your power!" 8(

-One of Van’s regained skills would be ‘Brainwashing nubile young boys’.

-"When I order you to release your power, you will open every fonslot in your body and unleash a hyperresonance."

-Van: "You've finally proven useful, replica."
Luke: "Van...?"
Asch: "Damn! We didn't make it!"
Van: "Asch! Why are you here?! I told you not to come!"
Asch: "...Too bad.
I also brought the sister you tried to save!"
Van whistles for the grphyons, one picks up him, the other picks up Asch.
Asch: "Let me go! I'm going to die here, too!"
Van: "I'd intended to save Ion with that, but now I have no choice. I can't afford to lose you."
Tear: "Van! I knew it! You've betrayed me! You said you were going to preserve these Outer Lands! What about the people of Akzeriuth? The Oracle soldiers in the Tartarus? They'll all be killed!"
Van: "...Mysterica, some day you'll come to understand the folly and ugliness of this world. I want you to live... At least long enough for me to see you come to your senses. You have the fonic hymns. Use them..."
Jade: "Damn! The tunnels are collapsing!"
Tear: "Everyone, come close! Hurry!"
Guy carries a half unconscious Luke toward the rest of the group and Tear sings the second fonic hymn.

-I still don’t understand what Van needed Asch for… But it’s kind of cute that Asch clearly intended to die there for, no obvious reason.


Qliphoth

-Skit: What happened…?

-The little boy who was visiting his father from Engeve is the one who dies, stuck under his father's dead body. His name is John =\

-Even Jade doesn't know about the Qliphoth

-Skit: Van’s True Intentions

-Early on, Luke actually STILL believes in Van, claiming that he and Van were just trying to stop the miasma and wtf are you talking about!!! Later, he’ll shovel all the responsibility on Van.

-Only maestros and above know the story about the Outer Lands and the Qliphoth.

-Though as much as the large arc of the story is LUKE’S REDEMPTION. Actually, up until he tries to deny all responsibility for Akzeriuth, no one was blaming him at all.

-Of course, when he asks if they are saying it’s his fault, no one reassures him either 8D;

-I kind of love that at Luke’s worst moment, the only person who sympathizes with him legitimately is Mieu.

-Skit: Responsibility

-Luke pretty much DOES accept that it's his fault right after that, because in the next skit he says nothing at all. Only Guy defends him "Don't talk about Luke like that. We don't have time for that now.”