Honestly the fact that the game just forgets about Isurd is kind of the most egregious part of the general sloppiness of the ending. They literally give us a character who is singled out as the finest strategist of a generation and the gang doesn't even think to fucking consult him on the whole "storming the stronghold of the final enemy." I definitely think him and Bolearis at the minimum should have been more involved with the ending, especially with how Colony 30 can be set to assist either of them, since Valdi is already working with both of them if you do the sidequests.
My ideal would be that all the Heroes you've done the Ascension quests for before completing the Origin metal scavenger hunt get to sit in on that meeting where Monica, Bolearis and Isurd hash out the plan of attack -- maybe something like the City acting as a spearhead, with ground forces (led by Bolearis and Colony 4) tying up any enemies Mobius send out after artillery (led by Isurd and Colony Lambda) knock them out of the sky. Ideally, all the heroes would be there, but if that's too ambitious, let's narrow it down to Zeon and Juniper (if you've finished "Crusading for Taters") and Teach and Ashera (if you've finished "Festival of War"), to signify that the back-of-the-line support and the front-line operations of the kingdoms have effectively been unified for this one big operation. It doesn't even have to change anything about the ending, I don't mean this to be like Galactic Readiness in ME3 because that's not the point of the Aionios Colony Mutual Aid Network, it would just be a nice symbolic addition.
... I, uh. I may have thought about this quite a lot. Can you tell I've thought about this quite a lot? |'DDD The ending we got just feels like the ending we would have got if we did none of the coalition-building mutual aid stuff, and I can't help imagining what it would be like if the Heroes were allowed to band together the way the main six did, getting over their mutual apprehension to see the humanity of their former enemies.
Also, I think you're right that nobody really gets favoured by the ending, and Noah being suddenly so strongly in the focus doesn't really make his arc... any more satisfying or coherent. For example, I think Crys is one of the most mishandled elements of his story, something that could have potentially been plot-defining for Noah, but it's kind of just dealt with as a consequence of getting to deal with the Keves Castle still not being freed, and needing to get that out of the way so the heroes don't have to fight a two-front war. Mio's new powers never being showcased in any way has the same effect (I still firmly believe that the plan was at some point to make Noah capable of breaking Flame Clocks, and Mio capable of freeing people from the term system). There feels like there's just content missing, and we're getting a weird truncated summary of "all the things that went on" while they were doing the preparations for the final attack, rather than seeing the preparations themselves.
The Moebius themselves seemingly not feeling threatened at all and not feeling any motivation to defend themselves also speaks to this, you're dead-on about that. Like, I straight-up don't know what to make of the fact that some Moebius are significantly older than others, clearly, is the idea there that they're Citizens like Shania? Do Moebius age? Why is the triumvirate of X, Y and Z so completely disinterested in the people they have managing the war for them suddenly dropping off? It's... not well-written, it just drops a lot of elements that are introduced early on in a way that speaks to them getting a mandate to wrap that shit up, either because they didn't want to make any more map to explore or because they didn't want there to be any significant plot points that required backtracking, maybe to commit more of the unique locations in the game for sidequests.
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Re: (Lmao, god. A whole second essay)
Date: 2023-07-17 08:23 am (UTC)From:Honestly the fact that the game just forgets about Isurd is kind of the most egregious part of the general sloppiness of the ending. They literally give us a character who is singled out as the finest strategist of a generation and the gang doesn't even think to fucking consult him on the whole "storming the stronghold of the final enemy." I definitely think him and Bolearis at the minimum should have been more involved with the ending, especially with how Colony 30 can be set to assist either of them, since Valdi is already working with both of them if you do the sidequests.
My ideal would be that all the Heroes you've done the Ascension quests for before completing the Origin metal scavenger hunt get to sit in on that meeting where Monica, Bolearis and Isurd hash out the plan of attack -- maybe something like the City acting as a spearhead, with ground forces (led by Bolearis and Colony 4) tying up any enemies Mobius send out after artillery (led by Isurd and Colony Lambda) knock them out of the sky. Ideally, all the heroes would be there, but if that's too ambitious, let's narrow it down to Zeon and Juniper (if you've finished "Crusading for Taters") and Teach and Ashera (if you've finished "Festival of War"), to signify that the back-of-the-line support and the front-line operations of the kingdoms have effectively been unified for this one big operation. It doesn't even have to change anything about the ending, I don't mean this to be like Galactic Readiness in ME3 because that's not the point of the Aionios Colony Mutual Aid Network, it would just be a nice symbolic addition.
... I, uh. I may have thought about this quite a lot. Can you tell I've thought about this quite a lot? |'DDD The ending we got just feels like the ending we would have got if we did none of the coalition-building mutual aid stuff, and I can't help imagining what it would be like if the Heroes were allowed to band together the way the main six did, getting over their mutual apprehension to see the humanity of their former enemies.
Also, I think you're right that nobody really gets favoured by the ending, and Noah being suddenly so strongly in the focus doesn't really make his arc... any more satisfying or coherent. For example, I think Crys is one of the most mishandled elements of his story, something that could have potentially been plot-defining for Noah, but it's kind of just dealt with as a consequence of getting to deal with the Keves Castle still not being freed, and needing to get that out of the way so the heroes don't have to fight a two-front war. Mio's new powers never being showcased in any way has the same effect (I still firmly believe that the plan was at some point to make Noah capable of breaking Flame Clocks, and Mio capable of freeing people from the term system). There feels like there's just content missing, and we're getting a weird truncated summary of "all the things that went on" while they were doing the preparations for the final attack, rather than seeing the preparations themselves.
The Moebius themselves seemingly not feeling threatened at all and not feeling any motivation to defend themselves also speaks to this, you're dead-on about that. Like, I straight-up don't know what to make of the fact that some Moebius are significantly older than others, clearly, is the idea there that they're Citizens like Shania? Do Moebius age? Why is the triumvirate of X, Y and Z so completely disinterested in the people they have managing the war for them suddenly dropping off? It's... not well-written, it just drops a lot of elements that are introduced early on in a way that speaks to them getting a mandate to wrap that shit up, either because they didn't want to make any more map to explore or because they didn't want there to be any significant plot points that required backtracking, maybe to commit more of the unique locations in the game for sidequests.