Saturday, May 9, 2009

A Despair-filled Farwell

It's really not the same thing as playing the game for the first time yourself, I would imagine, so do us a favor and click only on those links I've provided to you (and not additional links which Youtube recommends to you) if you've never played the game before.

But if you absolutely must, then I'd like to show you one of my favorite songs in the game which, by coincidence or not I do not know, also happened to feature in my two favorite boss battles of the entire game, those against Colossus #5 (Avion, the flying bat-bird-pterodactyl at the lake) and Colossus #14 (Cenobia, the stone lion-jaguar-boar at the Aztec ruins-like city).

If you go to around 3:04 in this movie file of Wander fighting Avion, which is ~1:20 in this song file, you'll reach the specific part of the song that I just love. The 0:57 mark in the song is approximately the same as the 5:50 mark here in this video of Wander fighting Cenobia.

Fighting with Cenobia (the stone lion) is so much fun, but I always feel so, so rotten every time I jump on her back and drive my sword right through it and into her heart. Poor thing wriggles just like a real cat trying to shake me off. :(

That's actually one of the many exquisitely-executed hints in the game to the player as to the nature of Wander's mission. In other words, hints that what you're doing prooooooooooooobably isn't a good idea! lol I guess he (Wander) either really doesn't care that what he's doing is wrong, in which case he deserves whatever he gets, or else he's quite possibly the dumbest-and-yet-most-ingenious hero I've seen in a story, ever. Because, I mean c'mon: you can't figure out how to defeat these 16 Colossi's weak points and successfully execute the process of defeating all 16 without being one hell of a man, both in body and in mind; and yet Wander didn't even notice that the moment he met Dormin that Dormin's henchmen/fragments of himself (no idea what those are for sure yet) were only too happy to attack Wander until he took out the holy sword from his scabbard and scared them away! I mean, how could he not notice this unless he was the most thickheaded swordsman of all time? or how could he not notice that every time he slays a Colossus, he is attacked by dark energy tentacles that bear a striking resemblance to Dormin's own dark shadows? Amnesia be damned, you'd think he would have noticed himself growing weaker, or feeling like his body is no longer his own, or something. Some clue that he is either dying (his life in exchange for Mono's) or is being taken over by Dormin (i.e. Dormin is taking advantage of Wander's naivety and desperation both in order to get his dirty work done so that the 16 seals which sealed him away can be broken).

Maybe I'm wrong though. :) Maybe all this speculation is way off. After all, I still haven't beaten the 16th boss yet (I KEEP FALLING OFF OF HIS SECOND HAND!) and I've managed to avoid spoilers pretty damn well. (The only thing which I've been spoiled on at all was accidentally seeing the tip from one gamer to use your sword on #16's second hand, even though it has no sigil, because doing so causes him to raise his arm up high, flatten out his hand, and examine it for boo-boos, allowing you ample altitude to jump from and ample time to restore your cling-meter. Whoops. But besides that (and seeing the Youtube video about Boss #1 which got me to buy the game in the first place), I've done everything on my own, scout's honor! :o)