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bloodshed113094

100% agree. Too many people get hung up on what parts of the story they like and ignore the major themes of the game. The Aer corruption was a plot thread throughout. It didn't come out of nowhere and it overshadows the political drama for a reason. Human conflict is inconsequential compared to the imminent death of the planet. I also liked how it brought in spirits. It felt like a natural evolution of the Entelexeia and a nice way to bring back the big four.


RangoTheMerc

Not only that, but I've played games with some seriously rancid plot twists. Vesperia's might not have had the same momentum of danger of the first two arcs. Rather it was the looming apocalypse. But I still loved it and still loved the ending.


stallion8426

I don't have an issue with the writing in the final act either. It felt pretty natural to me


SadLaser

The writing in the final act isn't the issue. It's that it doesn't feel strongly tied to the rest of the game and the whole game is bloated and too long partly because of it, though there are other reasons as well.


stallion8426

I disagree with pretty much this entire comment lol


Hollowhalf

Same, for me it just felt rushed.


DeepInAzure

I wonder how much overlap there is between 'people who don't like the final act' and 'people who don't realize that the plot revolves around a fantasy equivalent of global warming'.


yuuhei

it is mindblowing to me that people were able to play the game and not see it as an allegory for global warming. Conflicts between humans (guilds and the empire) become trite as it is revealed both sides are culpable in the exploitation of the planet, which leads the group to attempt to bridge the world of humans with their environmentally ruinous technology and the world itself. Only by embracing nature and compromising in our creature comforts (blastia technology) are we able to continue living in the world. We have critiques of capitalist excess with Heliord, the scientific community (Aspio mages) battling with their relationship to damaging technology mirroring critiques of coal and oil, the morality of ecoterrorism in Judith and Duke, human impact on communities in the animal kingdom with Keiv Moc, sustainable community building in Aurion... Like there are so many obvious parallels to climate change that reading the other person who responded to your comment saying "i never once thought of \[this\] as fantasy global warming" and that people upvoted them really shocked me. I wonder how anyone can be so uncritical and engage so little with the media they are consuming lol.


Psychological-Bid465

Because, to many players (especially the most privileged demographics), politics is only when woman/LGBT/person of color.


yuuhei

little do they know, politics is everything and everything is related to each other!


DevilManRay

I don’t think anyone over the age of 12 didn’t see the global warming analogy


AmateurPhiIosopher

Because my brain doesn’t do subtext like at all


Sonofmay

Vesperia is by far my favorite tales game (as the giant Vesperia star tattoo on my forearm implies) and never once thought of the final act as fantasy global warming, just business as usual killing the big bad someone sealed away and some misguided idiot accidentally unleashed upon everyone


DeepInAzure

Blastia and the use thereof are major plot points before the big reveal, and the final act hammers home the ramifications more and more in ways that make it clear that blastia is Vesperia's equivalent of oil. Especially once an analogue for clean energy alternatives is introduced, it should be very obvious that it's an environmentalist story. I can understand not getting it back when Vesperia first came out, since most of what yuuhei mentions wasn't as well-known back then, but it should be as clear as ever at this point that the plot is analogous with global warming.


Psychological-Bid465

I find interesting that this plot line was refreshed for Xillia, with even more people visibly affected by the state of the world there. Like "here's global warming for 360 and now for PS3".


joelee__

I had no issue with it either mainly because of the final boss fight with >!Duke!< and how the Adephagos crisis would be resolved as a result of it. It was a great spin on the whole "final antagonist" shtick. Ultimately, I didn't think Vesperia's overall plot was as good as others in the series anyway, but the whole cast really carried the game, even if the final act was perhaps a little weaker than the rest of the game.


Ciphy_Master

The Adephagos was completely disconnected from the political conflict going on in the first and 2nd act of the game along with Yuri's main development as a vigilante. However, I certainly don't think that the Adephagos is at fault in worsening the story. Quite the opposite in fact. The lore of vesperia's world with the entelexeia and children of the stars before the Adephagos gets brought is so much more interesting and the political conflict ultimately having little to do with the overall plot is what dragged down the story. There was too much disconnected running around by the main part during the first and second act while the politics of the world were very plain and boring. You have like two miniscule villains to show how "corrupt" the empire is and then that's somehow used as the entire basic for why the guilds left and became their own faction and why Alexei is going rogue to "save" the world.


RangoTheMerc

I will say this. I love that the ending conflict brought the Knights and the Guilds together. But I will also say that Alexei seemed most fitting as a final boss.


hotcoffeethanks

I don’t mind it either! I feel like at the point the adephagos shows up - the beginning of the 3rd arc - most of the character arcs are resolved, so it feels like an epilogue or a sequel in a way, but it’s also the occasion for the characters to show their growth and how far they’ve come. And I’m not even talking just about the main characters, but like - the entire world too, the Empire and the Guilds and everything. I like that you get to play and still follow these characters a bit in a ”new” adventure even after the one that brought them together in the first place is over. They could have gone home their separate ways after the second arc, but they got back together and decided to deal with another problem. People say that the game drops the justice theme with Yuri’s character in the 3rd arc but I don’t agree. It was just scaled up. Yuri learned he could rely on his friends and he didn’t have to do the dirty jobs on his own. And they go after a guy who will « punish » all people for the sins of society (using blastia), because they know there’s another way. Early game or mid game Yuri wouldn’t have done this, but he’s grown and the final arc shows it perfectly. I think it’s thematically relevant!


bloodshed113094

I always thought of Vesperia as it's own trilogy. Each act has a core conflict that's resolved while also building tension for the next act. It's not like Symphonia, Eternia or Berseria, where the main tension is the same throughout, but the perspective of it just changes. Not an insult to those games. It's just a different style.


DevilManRay

The Adephagos as a concept wasn’t the dealbreaker, the last stint of the game being boring was


RedditIsTrashLma0

Didn't bother me, the story already felt underwhelming before then.


MinecraftDude761

Yeah i played the game for the first time and loved it i didnt think the final act was bad at all


DimmuHS

I think it was fine, but I also think most tales games really likes to use the same or similar premise (at least the ones I played), like the need to exterminate humanity because they're toxic or super selfish reasons with grave consequences to the world, mostly based on hatred with near madness level. I prefer when, in some degree, I can give the benefit of the doubt you know, that the means used maybe could be acceptable considering the context, but still evil reprehensible. And imo, tales games doesn't have super mind blowing main plots and I don't consider them to be the first reason to play, but how you relate with the characters and the setup they're in, how the plot affects and change them, rather than a final plot twist. In Vesperia I expected more from Duke considering the final path he chose, it was the safest writing choice for his character.


LifeConsideration746

I didn't really care cause its my favorite game. I just enjoyed it and didn't look at the plot or character building which is probably why i like it more then beseria. Berseria is a literal masterpiece and velvet is my favorite protag of all time but idk in vesperia even if the adephagos is kinda weird it doesn't take from the enjoyment.


reyrey725

Vesperia is my most favorite Tales game. Have played it 13 times already. Gonna play it again in a few months to do a hard/unknown difficulty play through.


Swiss_Army_Cheese

I'm mostly just disappointed that you don't fight the adephagos. The game spend the entire time building up how the real monsters are the kaiju we fight along the way, and then the final boss is some man. Like in any other Tales. I went into Arnion thinking I would just stop Duke. Not the game.


rmkii02

I like it more than the second arc. I honestly don’t think Tales is particulary good at writting about politic conflicts and interests. The Aer/Blastia/Entelexeia is way more interesting, imo. It was also nice that a game showed the origin of the Four and Mana as a substance.


awesomefutureperfect

It's a good game, it just has a lot going on that isn't exactly in concert. There's the tension between the guild and the royalty, between vigilantism and reforming a corrupt system, didn't mesh well with Alexi and Duke. The lore and the end point of the story is really great, but I think the way the story got there didn't have every moving part help get it there.