Thoughts on Overture (morning after remix)
Jan. 8th, 2008 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopAs promised, a bit more of a run down of what we actually got out of Overture once the story mode hit the web.
The not-so-good
Much as I try to claim I'm never in a fandom purely for the yaoi, it's hard not to feel let down. I mean, I'm sure no-one would ever expect the Sol/Ky thing to get full canonical confirmation, but we *know* they've been deliberately playing it up over the years - very likely just to draw in the yaoi-fan audience, so this was seriously out of the blue. I don't know how many people have bothered to watch that particular video, but believe me when I say that hearing Ky declaring how deeply in love he was with... er, what's-her-name, didn't do my fangirl heart any good. ^^;
It all gets pretty messy from then on in. We've got a major character romantically involved with someone who probably isn't someone we know, in a storyline that probably is an AU. Some interviews apparently support the AU theory, but people can play right through the game without knowing for sure one way or the other. I was originally working on the theory that GG2 wouldn't be strongly connected with GGX/GGXX but probably set chronologically after - so maybe they'd wrap up the PWAB plot in the X timeline then move on to finish off That Man with Overture, right? But if GG2's entirely AU but GGXXAC+ is still promising to include That Man's plans into its plot, then they appear to be trying to resolve the same plotline in two places at once, and that could get ugly. Awkward. Very awkward.
Eh, while I'm at it, I'll get the rest of my complaints out here before I move on to the positive stuff.
If That Man really was unmasked as promised, I must've blinked and missed it or something. We do see him fight, but he has a completely different voice and seems to be in a completely different form to usual. More confusion.
The explanation for why Ky no longer uses the Fuuraiken is about two sentences and implies it happened last week. How he got a new weapon so fast I don't know, it didn't seem well thought out. There's not so much as a hint as to where the Fuuenken's gone.
Still don't like Sol's new voice actor. He's tolerable, but quite apart from him not being what I'm used to, he doesn't even seem to be able to act as well as the rest of the cast. Sol may not have much emotional range, but some of his lines felt a bit flat. What worries me even more is that if they couldn't get his usual Story Mode VA for Overture, I don't really like our chances of them getting him for AC+.
The antagonism between Sol and Ky is gone - and I'm really not sure where. Ky clearly knows all about Sol's past, he doesn't even blink when Dr Paradigm starts calling him Frederick. I'd probably be all in favour of this if they'd given us the slightest clue when or how. Clearly, they must've made up well before Ky entrusted his son to Sol, but that's not much of a clue, and I really wouldn't count on the Overture series ever bothering to go back and clear that up. If this is meant to be a sequel to the original GG, they must've skipped a hell of a lot in the middle. Really, if the whole world is set in some complete AU where Sol never stole the Fuuenken and left the Order at all, it would explain a lot more.
The not-so-bad
All that's a bit of a shame, really, because up until the middle I was really enjoying the story. There's a lot of interesting stuff in it about the nature of magic, the Gears, Justice - and there was quite a lot more interesting stuff towards the end too, now I've found some proper translations. It's just a bit hard to know whether any of it applies to the GGX universe, which makes me that bit more uncomfortable about it.
I did really like the new characters too - though Valentine didn't make much impression on me. Sin spends a lot of the latter half of the game acting like a moody teenager. He's got some kind of issues with Ky which I couldn't fully make sense of, but I still did like him overall (hell, he probably *is* about in his moody teen phase in Gear years).
And, y'know, considering that they married Ky off to some faceless, nameless source of ongoing confusion, a lot of parts of that side of the story were actually handled surprisingly well. It may have come out of the blue, but in their (limited) defense, it was obviously supposed to have done. Izuna and Dr Paradigm nearly had heart attacks when they found out. And while we never find out much about what's-her-name, they did put some decent effort into underlining just how important she was to Ky and Sin. Not enough to really mitigate having this sprung on us, but it doesn't hurt. I do wonder whether we're actually going to see anything of her in later installments to the series. The funny thing is, I wouldn't actually count on that either...
Overall... well, really quite disappointing after all that build up (on the sales front as well, apparently). And there's no helping that I'm still stuck on the issue of Ky's new girlfriend. Sol/Ky fandom's never been exactly huge and a plot development like this isn't going to help any, and I'm selfish enough when it comes to wanting new fanstuff to enjoy that that irritates me. =P
Guess we'll just have to wait and see what Accent Core Plus has in store.
But hey - no sense being all gloomy about it. So here's an off-the-top-of-my-head list of what you can re-interpret out of Overture from the Sol/Ky perspective.
1. The game has added a lot of support to any interpretation where Sol and Ky have gotten over their antagonism, told each other all their secrets and are generally Getting On with each other.
2. The game has stated quite clearly that Ky has no compunctions - religious or otherwise - about making it known what he's been doing in private with someone he's not married too but still in love with. XD
3. Turn it how you like, Sin still has two Dads. Sol is obviously very much part of the family.
4. C'mon, how much can we be expected to care about a relationship between a lead character and someone they're so very determined not to tell us anything about, huh?
I'm also coming up with all these terrible ideas for 4-koma parodies of certain scenes, but they're not going to be much good until the full contents of the story mode are a bit more common knowledge >.>
The not-so-good
Much as I try to claim I'm never in a fandom purely for the yaoi, it's hard not to feel let down. I mean, I'm sure no-one would ever expect the Sol/Ky thing to get full canonical confirmation, but we *know* they've been deliberately playing it up over the years - very likely just to draw in the yaoi-fan audience, so this was seriously out of the blue. I don't know how many people have bothered to watch that particular video, but believe me when I say that hearing Ky declaring how deeply in love he was with... er, what's-her-name, didn't do my fangirl heart any good. ^^;
It all gets pretty messy from then on in. We've got a major character romantically involved with someone who probably isn't someone we know, in a storyline that probably is an AU. Some interviews apparently support the AU theory, but people can play right through the game without knowing for sure one way or the other. I was originally working on the theory that GG2 wouldn't be strongly connected with GGX/GGXX but probably set chronologically after - so maybe they'd wrap up the PWAB plot in the X timeline then move on to finish off That Man with Overture, right? But if GG2's entirely AU but GGXXAC+ is still promising to include That Man's plans into its plot, then they appear to be trying to resolve the same plotline in two places at once, and that could get ugly. Awkward. Very awkward.
Eh, while I'm at it, I'll get the rest of my complaints out here before I move on to the positive stuff.
If That Man really was unmasked as promised, I must've blinked and missed it or something. We do see him fight, but he has a completely different voice and seems to be in a completely different form to usual. More confusion.
The explanation for why Ky no longer uses the Fuuraiken is about two sentences and implies it happened last week. How he got a new weapon so fast I don't know, it didn't seem well thought out. There's not so much as a hint as to where the Fuuenken's gone.
Still don't like Sol's new voice actor. He's tolerable, but quite apart from him not being what I'm used to, he doesn't even seem to be able to act as well as the rest of the cast. Sol may not have much emotional range, but some of his lines felt a bit flat. What worries me even more is that if they couldn't get his usual Story Mode VA for Overture, I don't really like our chances of them getting him for AC+.
The antagonism between Sol and Ky is gone - and I'm really not sure where. Ky clearly knows all about Sol's past, he doesn't even blink when Dr Paradigm starts calling him Frederick. I'd probably be all in favour of this if they'd given us the slightest clue when or how. Clearly, they must've made up well before Ky entrusted his son to Sol, but that's not much of a clue, and I really wouldn't count on the Overture series ever bothering to go back and clear that up. If this is meant to be a sequel to the original GG, they must've skipped a hell of a lot in the middle. Really, if the whole world is set in some complete AU where Sol never stole the Fuuenken and left the Order at all, it would explain a lot more.
The not-so-bad
All that's a bit of a shame, really, because up until the middle I was really enjoying the story. There's a lot of interesting stuff in it about the nature of magic, the Gears, Justice - and there was quite a lot more interesting stuff towards the end too, now I've found some proper translations. It's just a bit hard to know whether any of it applies to the GGX universe, which makes me that bit more uncomfortable about it.
I did really like the new characters too - though Valentine didn't make much impression on me. Sin spends a lot of the latter half of the game acting like a moody teenager. He's got some kind of issues with Ky which I couldn't fully make sense of, but I still did like him overall (hell, he probably *is* about in his moody teen phase in Gear years).
And, y'know, considering that they married Ky off to some faceless, nameless source of ongoing confusion, a lot of parts of that side of the story were actually handled surprisingly well. It may have come out of the blue, but in their (limited) defense, it was obviously supposed to have done. Izuna and Dr Paradigm nearly had heart attacks when they found out. And while we never find out much about what's-her-name, they did put some decent effort into underlining just how important she was to Ky and Sin. Not enough to really mitigate having this sprung on us, but it doesn't hurt. I do wonder whether we're actually going to see anything of her in later installments to the series. The funny thing is, I wouldn't actually count on that either...
Overall... well, really quite disappointing after all that build up (on the sales front as well, apparently). And there's no helping that I'm still stuck on the issue of Ky's new girlfriend. Sol/Ky fandom's never been exactly huge and a plot development like this isn't going to help any, and I'm selfish enough when it comes to wanting new fanstuff to enjoy that that irritates me. =P
Guess we'll just have to wait and see what Accent Core Plus has in store.
But hey - no sense being all gloomy about it. So here's an off-the-top-of-my-head list of what you can re-interpret out of Overture from the Sol/Ky perspective.
1. The game has added a lot of support to any interpretation where Sol and Ky have gotten over their antagonism, told each other all their secrets and are generally Getting On with each other.
2. The game has stated quite clearly that Ky has no compunctions - religious or otherwise - about making it known what he's been doing in private with someone he's not married too but still in love with. XD
3. Turn it how you like, Sin still has two Dads. Sol is obviously very much part of the family.
4. C'mon, how much can we be expected to care about a relationship between a lead character and someone they're so very determined not to tell us anything about, huh?
I'm also coming up with all these terrible ideas for 4-koma parodies of certain scenes, but they're not going to be much good until the full contents of the story mode are a bit more common knowledge >.>
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This is getting to be way more of a hassle as it goes...
Date: 2008-01-09 01:28 am (UTC)I've recieved short little summaries of what happens later in the game and it gets even more confusing, trust me. You bring up a lot of good points about the game's plot holes that obviously need to be fixed. I'm not sure if you've seen it already, but the promotional video for the game's out. And boy, does that contain some confusing clips >_>
I really wonder how and if at all some of these blatant questions will be answered at any point. (your SolKy interpretations are very useful, by the way XD)
Re: This is getting to be way more of a hassle as it goes...
Date: 2008-01-09 02:13 am (UTC)Ironically, most of the list is stuff I'd originally thought sounded like interesting plot developments and was really looking forward to having explained - if only they'd actually bothered to explain it. But if it's AU we can't count on the X series to ever fill the gaps, and if they didn't feel like clearing anything up in the first installment to the series, I'd be surprised if they bothered to come back to it.
I have a hunch that promotional video is a last ditch attempt to get the game some publicity. Its sales figures have been miserable so far.
(your SolKy interpretations are very useful, by the way XD)
*g* I do my best. (I'm sure I'm guilty of getting a lot of people expecting a lot more from the game than we got, so I think I have some sort of duty to make up for it. >D)
Re: This is getting to be way more of a hassle as it goes...
Date: 2008-01-09 02:13 am (UTC)Re: This is getting to be way more of a hassle as it goes...
Date: 2008-01-10 12:17 am (UTC)Yes, that is the one MAJOR question that falls into the 'What the hell happened during the 5 years!?' category. I mean, war hero to king is not an ordinary change in occupation. If they're going to fill in the plotholes (although I highly doubt it), it would either be in: the later installments (which wouldn't make sense) or in a prequel sort of game, like Crisis Core for FF7 (which would make sense with marketing strategies and all, but it's just stupid).
The fans of the franchise are enraged about this change, so I agree with you that they're trying to make the clips as enticing as they could to spark their curiosity. It's very sad that they're still trying, really. They kinda disappointed us in the beginning anyway when they pulled all these plot twists on us.
And yes, you truly make up for the disappointments that the game made. As a SolKy supporter, you made me very happy ^_^
Re: This is getting to be way more of a hassle as it goes...
Date: 2008-01-10 01:30 am (UTC)Well, they have sunk a lot of money into development, so they'd be doing whatever they can to make back their losses. Unfortunately for them, it looks like they fell right into the trap I mentioned in one of my pre-Overture posts after all - old fans alienated by the new battle system, new fans alienated by connection to a series they're not interested in. (But if you really want 'sad', 'sad' is the part where they've taken down part of their Accent Core site and redirected it to their GG2 one. Now *that's* getting desperate.)
There *is* rather a lot in that game to make up for, but I think I still have some more... re-interpretations left to play with yet.
Re: This is getting to be way more of a hassle as it goes...
Date: 2008-01-12 10:05 pm (UTC)My god, they went that low? Honestly, that's very frustrating. Besides, the only parts I found slightly humorous are when Sol keeps smacking Sin for some reason (especially after the fight at Ch. 15. That one I seemed to like more than others). Other than that, Overture really disappointed. People shouldn't have to think THIS MUCH about what happened during the previous game and the current timeline. It's not worth the brain power.
And re-interpretations are always fun. I'll leave that to you since you're so good at it. (While I'm on that, may I ask if you plan on continuing Pants On A Stick?)
Re: This is getting to be way more of a hassle as it goes...
Date: 2008-01-13 01:43 am (UTC)Well hey, so did the Overture writers. ><
I'm not too surprised they're getting desperate. Overture must've cost a ton to produce and its sales are so low - well, smaller games companies are known to go under altogether after flops that bad (not that ArcSys seems to be in quite that bad a position yet, but it makes you worry). Honestly, there was a decent amount of stuff in Overture I enjoyed, but the timeline problems are far too much of a hurdle for them to expect the fans to clear.
Preparing something to post to the
Re: This is getting to be way more of a hassle as it goes...
Date: 2008-01-13 01:55 am (UTC)Heheh, crack theories for the win