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Tales of the Abyss is the first game I played where the protagonist shows regret after killing a random grunt (open spoilers)
- Thread starter SteelBeast6Beets
- Start date
Thats my memory of him, lol, it was very cool to hate on Tidus back in the day. I should probably replay X
Been replaying Abyss over the past half-year and it's a wonder how relatable Luke's arc is even today -- as an Aspie who's grown up with the daily struggle of comprehending basic societal norms and common sense, Luke was a delightful bag of fresh air in grappling with the *common knowledge dictating the world beyond his teeny-tiny manor. He's hardly the first "sheltered" character malleable to world-building, but the fallout from the
and wrestling with the fact that he's different instantly rendered him an sympathetic protagonist I could root for -- even if he started out as a bit of a prick! (And hey, how about the fantastic journal recaps offering a peek into his psyche?)
It's a shame the rest of the series never reached the levels of those two for me, although Symphonia means more to me personally; regardless, it means so much to me that Abyss's held up. (Although, having started most of the sidequests for the first time, it is a tad irritating most of the sidequests don't get interesting until the third act.)
*Of course, I say this despite Abyss getting too carried away with its technobabble nonsense; really, I'd be lying if I said I understood the science behind Auldrant -- I'm just there for the themes.
replica revelation
It's a shame the rest of the series never reached the levels of those two for me, although Symphonia means more to me personally; regardless, it means so much to me that Abyss's held up. (Although, having started most of the sidequests for the first time, it is a tad irritating most of the sidequests don't get interesting until the third act.)
*Of course, I say this despite Abyss getting too carried away with its technobabble nonsense; really, I'd be lying if I said I understood the science behind Auldrant -- I'm just there for the themes.
I like Yuri, I wouldn't say he's a favorite of mine but he's a nice even tempered adult protagonist. You don't get too many of those in JRPGs.
I've only ever played the first few hours of this game, but I must post this wonderful remix of the intro:
www.youtube.com
Final Fantasy VII Animation
OMG!! So many animes in this year... after all this time, why it hasn´t been done something like that yet?! :P Música "カルマ", de BUMP OF CHICKEN Tales of the ...
www.youtube.com
Tidus is pretty much the optimist of the group (mainly because he's ignorant as to what's really happening a lot of the time). He's definitely no prick. He's pretty much the polar opposite of Squall.
Luke was a very interesting character at first, but like some people mentioned, post haircut, he became less interesting. It was too sudden and not gradual. Not to mention how everyone's constantly reminding him of his guilt(especially Tear), those skits and scenes play out the same usually with the reminder of his acts and Luke saying "yeah... yeah I know".
I mean, I understand he's regretful, but never in the games I've played in my life have I had so many guilt scenes thrown at my face. If they were better written or less repetitive, they would've worked better, I think.
Tales of the Abyss has the same pacing problems almost all of the Tales games I've played have - it started off absolutely amazing, but towards the second half, it's all about going in circles, the party being absolutely terrible at stopping bad guys, but amazingly good at letting them go away for X reason after seeing them commit crimes (That's why Yuri was amazing in the first story arc of Vesperia). I actually lost interest, stopped playing it, went to play and finish Tales of Rebirth, Tales of Destiny Remake (SO GOOD), and other GBA Tales games and then came back to Abyss to finish it.
I am in the minority but I thought Tales of Destiny 2 (PS2, sequel to the first game) had a surprisingly solid pacing.
The characters very rarely revisited places they've gone through before, due storyline purposes and there is always a sense of urgency to the game that doesn't involve revisiting an old location to see some event, with the party doing nothing but just react, then going to another place for the next same thing. It always seemed that there was something happening and the characters did something about it actively.
Kyle's character arc was very different from Luke's where it's the typical "I wanna be a hero", but it somehow works because of the absolutely amazing supporting cast (minus maybe Reala who went from frigid to sympathetic way too fast).
I mean, I understand he's regretful, but never in the games I've played in my life have I had so many guilt scenes thrown at my face. If they were better written or less repetitive, they would've worked better, I think.
Tales of the Abyss has the same pacing problems almost all of the Tales games I've played have - it started off absolutely amazing, but towards the second half, it's all about going in circles, the party being absolutely terrible at stopping bad guys, but amazingly good at letting them go away for X reason after seeing them commit crimes (That's why Yuri was amazing in the first story arc of Vesperia). I actually lost interest, stopped playing it, went to play and finish Tales of Rebirth, Tales of Destiny Remake (SO GOOD), and other GBA Tales games and then came back to Abyss to finish it.
I am in the minority but I thought Tales of Destiny 2 (PS2, sequel to the first game) had a surprisingly solid pacing.
The characters very rarely revisited places they've gone through before, due storyline purposes and there is always a sense of urgency to the game that doesn't involve revisiting an old location to see some event, with the party doing nothing but just react, then going to another place for the next same thing. It always seemed that there was something happening and the characters did something about it actively.
Kyle's character arc was very different from Luke's where it's the typical "I wanna be a hero", but it somehow works because of the absolutely amazing supporting cast (minus maybe Reala who went from frigid to sympathetic way too fast).
I think people are giving Luke's development way too much credit. Dude had a character arc, he goes from being a dick to being a massive wimp. It was from one extreme to another. When he was a dick he didn't let anyone push him around and was at least interesting, when he changed he let every single person push him around non stop and just became nothing. Luke didn't have to become a complete pushover to show he changed.
That game had so many shitty characters.. Anise, Jade... hypocrites. Hell the whole party knew who he was, they didn't tell him and then had the audacity to get angry at him for trusting Vaan the only person who was honest with him. The game had bad writing and good writing at the same time.
The game has a lot of bad character writing but regardless of that, the game and characters were great. They just so many jarring issues that I guess can be overlooked.
Yuri is the best Tales of protag by far.
That game had so many shitty characters.. Anise, Jade... hypocrites. Hell the whole party knew who he was, they didn't tell him and then had the audacity to get angry at him for trusting Vaan the only person who was honest with him. The game had bad writing and good writing at the same time.
The game has a lot of bad character writing but regardless of that, the game and characters were great. They just so many jarring issues that I guess can be overlooked.
Yuri is the best Tales of protag by far.
A huge chunk of Abyss's plot makes me extremely uncomfortable due to the way this was handle. It gets worse when the circumstances surrounding Luke's decision are revealed.
Even the one person who was best friend from the beginning of the game reveals that
He became employed at the royal residence with the intention of assassinating Luke as revenge. It's insane how quickly the game just glosses over that.
The party* relentlessly dogpiling him afterwards is bad enough, but
Jade of all people doing so when (by his own admittance way later in the game) he had already sussed out Luke's true nature and the circumstances behind it by that point is extra shitty. If he had pulled Luke aside and let him know, there's a faint chance Luke wouldn't have been so easily manipulated by Van, if at all.
(*Though FWIW, Guy doesn't go as hard as everyone else. Probably a combination of actually considering Luke a true friend by that point and the skeletons in his closet too.)
I think what really gets me is that near the endgame, Luke reaches a point where he's basically suicidal and the party has to constantly tell him not to sacrifice himself.
Countless video games past and present are casual slaughterfests where the player and by extension the protagonist mow down countless people. It's so mind-numbingly callous that the extremely rare case where someone actually freaks out over killing someone or seeing someone killed it's very refreshing. There are two instances of where this jumps out to me, Luke from Tales of the Abyss and Joel's daughter Sarah in the intro to The Last of Us.
With Luke in particular I think it's interesting because his fear and hesitation is present in a game, a setting and a genre that doesn't typically encourage or accomodate that kind of behavior in its characters, and it remains with him the whole game. Even beyond the initial cutscene where he fights his first humans in combat, in the post-battle victory animations if the battle was against a monster he's cocky but if there were humans he was fighting, even if they were the dumb generic bandit enemies you could encounter in the overworld, he's pretty solemn and says "I'll do whatever it takes..." So many protagonists of JRPG's are typically young, ignorant and innocent, but once they pick up a sword they're happy-go-lucky killing machines and I think to have a character like Luke who is similarly young, ignorant, and innocent to actually react to stabbing a human in the chest with horror is very poignant in a game that isn't particularly adult, or realistic in character.
This element of emotional realism and others like it are large contributor to why I love this game and its characters so much. Though it is indeed flawed and puts its foot in its mouth, and stumbles on occasion, Tales of the Abyss displays an amount of emotional complexity in its characters that is rare not only in JRPG's but games in general and for that it is special to me.
With Luke in particular I think it's interesting because his fear and hesitation is present in a game, a setting and a genre that doesn't typically encourage or accomodate that kind of behavior in its characters, and it remains with him the whole game. Even beyond the initial cutscene where he fights his first humans in combat, in the post-battle victory animations if the battle was against a monster he's cocky but if there were humans he was fighting, even if they were the dumb generic bandit enemies you could encounter in the overworld, he's pretty solemn and says "I'll do whatever it takes..." So many protagonists of JRPG's are typically young, ignorant and innocent, but once they pick up a sword they're happy-go-lucky killing machines and I think to have a character like Luke who is similarly young, ignorant, and innocent to actually react to stabbing a human in the chest with horror is very poignant in a game that isn't particularly adult, or realistic in character.
This element of emotional realism and others like it are large contributor to why I love this game and its characters so much. Though it is indeed flawed and puts its foot in its mouth, and stumbles on occasion, Tales of the Abyss displays an amount of emotional complexity in its characters that is rare not only in JRPG's but games in general and for that it is special to me.
Absolutely. Close second would be Symphonia.
The losers would be Vesperia and Graces.
Seriously. Just a PC port a la Symphonia would do the trick. Even if it was barebones the community could fix it from there.
I had a blast replaying it several years ago emulated with Japanese Voice Acting (yay, no more silent skits) and increased clock speeds to fix the world map framerate. It's a shame the game is now locked to the original PS2 release or the 3DS edition.
Vesperia cast is awesome. Graces on the other hand is true trash.
Unfortunately all I can remember about the game was the annoying mascot, the annoying little girl, and the annoying guy with a phobia of women.
*Played in English dub
*Played in English dub
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Yeah, I always thought Luke was one of the best and most understandable Tales protagonists. I put just as much blame on his friends for the things he does in that game, but that didn't make them bad characters either. Everyone just had a lot of problems to deal with.
Compared to something like Graces f or Xillia 1 the character arcs in Abyss are such a breath of fresh air.
Compared to something like Graces f or Xillia 1 the character arcs in Abyss are such a breath of fresh air.
Where are most of you in the past when people were bashing on ToA and Luke. Ever since it got released, I always though TOA was one of fantastic games in the franchise. Luke had the best protagonist development so far as I played so I'm slowly catching up with last four new games
Right here since day 1. I've been defending Abyss for almost 15 years now!
Me too! TotA was what made me a Tales fan. I had tried Symphonia before that but couldn't get into it.
As much as I've shat on the cast, they're still one of my favorite casts in the genre. It's all the dysfunction of FFVIII's cast cranked up to eleven, and I unironically love them for that.
Tidus and Zidane were not portrayed as pricks, Zidan's catchphrase is literally "You don't need a reason to help people"
Asbel lhant is the worst! Tales protagonist I Dont Care ! I ain't debating it
Although I still enjoyed the game to some extent, I can get behind that statement. Sorey is close though.
I remember that moment all these years later. It hit HARD.
Basically everyone going "you should have known better" all the while just going along with him knowing full well he barely knows shit about how the outside world works. Of course hes going to listen to the person that he looks up to most in the world and was practically a second father to him in some ways beyond being his teacher. Luke is a dick through sheer ignorance (and the fact that hes a clone of a person twice his age since he is literally still a child), what the fuck is their excuse?
Seriously. I'll give you Squall and maybe Cloud, but Zidane? No way, he's one of the most likeable and chill protaganists I can think of.
We'll, she is approximately 1000000000000000% better in combat than Luke so I'll forgive her. Luke is pointless because Guy exists. His existential dread is warranted lol
It took me a minute I was like who lol. God the newer tales don't leave much of an impression anymore do they? Velvet was alright I guess
There is nothing to debate.
That game is an amazing combat system, everything else is trash.
Thanks to this thread I now know that Abyss was ported to 3ds. Just bought it to replay it again. Thanks Era. Also I really loved Abyss when it launched and only Vesperia was better than Abyss. Graces, Xillia and Zesteria was all meh compared to those two IMO.
Still rubs me wrong way to this day lol.
he kinda doesn't and that's okay. But Yuri is blessed with what 90% of other jrpg protagonists don't have which is common sense and logic. He usually gets things way before the party figures it out. His only flaw was him trying to take the more serious matters in the game on his own and everyone telling him he doesn't have to.
I can't tell you what character growths Yuri had, but Yuri is still a good protag in his own right for being more of an anti-hero character before it was cool. And he's like 21, or 22, an "old man" JRPG protagonist that sets him apart. In a vacuum, he's nothing amazing but compared to the series or JRPG as a whole, he's just a likeable fellow who doesn't experience much change from the plot.
Edit: Yuri Hyuga is the superior Yuri tho
Edit: Yuri Hyuga is the superior Yuri tho
You punched them out of existence unless there's a cutscene afterwards proving otherwise. Maybe people shouldn't be included in the Bestiary.Wait the random mooks you fight in Tales of games are killed??
You telling me my boy Jude punches people to death?!
