Thursday, June 30, 2016

Ponderables: Ever Wonder Why?

  • On the title screen, what place is that?
  • Where does Ark get all that gel for his hair?
  • Isn’t it boring in Crysta? What do people do all day?
  • Where to all the people in Crysta sleep?
  • Why can’t Ark hand the cooking lady the pot she asked for?
  • How come Ark has to equip his clothes at the beginning of the game? Is he naked?
  • Why can’t Ark carry more then nine of each item?
  • And why can he buy more than one of each spear or armor? You never uses more than one!
  • Why are there incan statues on the Underworld towers?
  • Why do monsters explode?
  • Are Cadets male or female?
  • Why didn’t the fortuneteller or the merchants in Crysta freeze?
  • For that matter, why did only humans and chickens freeze? What about the butterflies in the snowglasses (or whatever those tiny things are) or the pumpkins or the trees or even the grass? Aren’t they living beings? Haven’t they got a soul?
  • Why doesn’t anyone notice that half the city is frozen?
  • What is Elle weaving for the Elder in Chapter 1?
  • Why hasn’t anyone left Crysta before Ark? I mean, they could go through the forest… or go down the river…
  • In the continent ressurection scene, there’s a part where the screen zooms out of the world map… Well why is everything just a little bit different? And why is Mu there, if it hasn’t been ressurected yet?
  • Who tied the rope that leads to the King of Kingbirds’s nest?
  • How does grass grow so quick in Zue?
  • Why are the nomads so paranoid with not talking to strangers?
  • How do cities expand so fast?
  • Why don’t the pictures in Sylvain Castle match their description?
  • On the ship from Litz to Freedom, where does the crew sleep?
  • How does Keinz get to every town before you do?
  • How does Ark navigate his boat and fly his plane without a crew?
  • How does Ark use the 3-Part-Rod like a normal everyday spear?
  • Why does Mosque have an airfield?
  • Why didn’t the monsters in NeoTokio die from the Asmodeus?
  • Why didn’t LEIM die from the Asmodeus?
  • Why didn’t Dark Gaia save Beruga?
  • Did Royd and Fyda survive the airship crash?
  • Why does Ark say, in the ending sequence, that Yomi came with him on his entire journey if he only had that Yomi (Light Yomi) with him on the last chapter?
  • Why do they call it a “Time Bomb” if it’s switch-activated?
Source

6 comments:

  1. I have some possible answers to these.

    Q: Why hasn’t anyone left Crysta before Ark? I mean, they could go through the forest… or go down the river…
    A: Most likely, the idea never occurred to them.

    Q: Why are there incan statues on the Underworld towers?
    A: Actually, they're only in one tower - specifically, Tower 2, which resurrects South America. In fact, all of the towers are decorated in a style based on the continent they resurrect.

    Q: Why didn’t the monsters in NeoTokio die from the Asmodeus?
    A: They might have been created by the Asmodeus.

    These are just my thoughts, though. Feel free to agree or disagree with them.

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    1. Super late reply~
      The answers make a lot of sense, I really like them. Thanks for pondering the questions!

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  2. On the title screen, what place is that? - Part of the underworld with the Gaia Stone floating in the middle as the "sun".

    Where to all the people in Crysta sleep? - There's a sequence where you go out at night and you can see some of them sleeping in their beds!

    As for what the Crysta people do all day and why they never try to leave, or why the salespeople are not frozen, it's because they're little more than puppets. The freezing was just a ruse by the elder to get Ark to leave the village, the shopkeepers weren't affected because they are necessary for Ark to buy supplies and do what the elder wants him to do. The people in the village probably don't really have free will.

    If you've seen the new Twin Peaks season, the Crysta people are basically like the tulpas from that show, evil doppelganger copies of real people.

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    1. Thanks for pondering these questions! I have found them on a dead fansite (the Source is there, the site is no longer live sadly) and I think they're great, some easier, some more subjective. I really like the tulpa reference!
      PS. The tumblr is more active but I didn't really had time recently for any text posts, it's just pictures/videos. If you have any content you'd like to contribute feel free to Submit it as a post on tumblr. We really need some good new posts, theories, etc.

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  3. Thanks! It's good to see people still have an interest in this game. I don't have a tumblr account but I've made a few observations about the game over the years that you are free to post anywhere:

    - The game is obviously inspired by Buddhist philosophy, specifically the concepts of Samsara and Nirvana. Samsara, in Buddhism, is the cycle of eternal return whereby living things act on the desire to persist in their existence and acquire things that they want, which never satisfy them and which causes suffering. This is reflected in the scene where humans are resurrected in the game, which shows a sequence where living beings kill eachother for sustenance set to a Buddhist prayer wheel and what sounds like a chanting mantra.

    The opposite to Samsara is Nirvana, which literally translates to "extinction", not in the sense of killing but in the sense of eliminating the will and desire that sustain Samsara. Ark's mischievous character is supposed to be a sign of his fundamental goodness, since he just lives in the moment and acts impulsively and without much desire to do anything. It's the Elder who encourages him to be more "serious" out of a desire to save his girlfriend from turning into an ice cube, perpetuating the cycle of death and rebirth. Ark's desire to save Elle is not unlike Meilin's desire to jump Ark's bone later in the game, both are a form of desire (eros) which end up causing suffering.

    - Beruga is obviously on the "side" of Samsara since his goal is to create everlasting life and thereby, everlasting suffering. He seems to be an amalgam of several real world figures, Hitler is the most obvious one since they're both social Darwinists. The fact that he's from Russia and has a cult of personality also brings to mind Stalin. Meilin's desire to sustain the life of her family and town indefinitely similarly brings eternal suffering, although she's obviously just a kid and learns from her mistakes.

    - The Asmodeus attack is a clear reference to the Sarin gas attack by Aum in Tokyo, which occurred during the game's development. Aum was a cult of essentially evil Buddhists who thought they could become part of a group of special enlightened people by following their leader, a crazy guy with a beard. Interestingly, Aum had a large following from Russia, and the cult leader's broadcasts were relayed through there, which may be the reason Beruga in the game is in Russia as well. It's also obviously similar to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but these are very common references in Japanese media, so not so surprising to find them here as well.

    - The English translation of the game has sort of racist dialogue in Yunkou, where the Chinese girls can't really speak English properly. This doesn't seem to be in the Japanese version, where they speak (as far as I can tell) ordinary Japanese.

    - The sewers in Tokyo really exist, in a way. Generic videogame sewers are always unrealistic since real life sewers are rarely big enough to walk around in, but Tokyo actually has a massive storm drain system with aqueducts and cisterns that is similar to what's seen in the game.

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    1. Nice! I'll cross-post these on Tumblr and make a reply when I have some free time. AFAIK the Japanese original does poke fun at the way Chinese speak, as the NPCs in Yunkou speak a broken Japanese written in katakana, but I'll have to replay that part to be sure.

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