[I’m still not familiar with the names of locations, so I’ll be sidestepping them throughout this post. Ideally I’ll have the relevant ones memorized by the next update.]
RECAP: A Fresh Take on a Familiar Beginning
The game opens on an eleven year-old girl with
large pig tails named Estelle waiting for her dad Cassius to come home from a
dangerous request from the Bracers guild. Moments later, he walks through the
door carrying a wounded boy (about Estelle’s age) with raven black hair and
amber eyes. Estelle chastises her father, and the boy wakes from the ruckus
with a surly demeanor towards them both. She then jumps on the boy for a while,
pointing out his ungratefulness. After which the two ask the boy for his name
and the opening credits roll before he can answer.
Fast forward 5 years.
Estelle and the raven-haired boy, who was apparently adopted by Cassius and is
called Joshua, are about to complete their training for the Bracers and earn
their junior licenses. Cassius bids them farewell and tells the two to go and
pick up the newspaper while their out. The two arrive at the Bracers guild
branch and receive their final test from a young, but clever woman named Scheherazard:
to go to the orbalists, learn about orbals, and how to use their facilities,
then enter a sewer and retrieve a pouch from treasure chest. With their mission
complete Scheherazard, reveals that the treasure they delivered was actually
their junior bracer badges and bestows them to Joshua and Estelle as a reward.
She then steps out of town to attend to her own guild business.
With their test
completed and badges in tow, Joshua and Estelle pick up groceries, as well as
Cassius’ newspaper and begin to head home. But, just as they are about to leave
town, Aina the guild receptionist tells them that there is an emergency and they
are the only bracers in town at the moment to handle it. Two small boys were
seen heading along a dangerous trail populated with monsters. Since the two
young bracers are the only ones left in town (and because they know the boys
personally), they accept the mission and immediately search the trail. After a
while of searching and slaying several dozen monsters, the two finally catch up
to the children at an ancient tower. The boys find themselves cornered, and
about to be attacked by a pack of monsters. Estelle elects to coordinate an
attack with Joshua (instead of charging alone) and the two successfully save
the boys. However, as she is scolding one of the boys for acting foolish a
monster sneaks up behind her and begins to attack. Just in the nick of time,
Cassius appears and strikes the monster down. He then takes all of the credit
for saving the boys and tells Estelle and Joshua to handle the guild paperwork
(which Estelle gripes about all the way home).
Back at home, Estelle
hands Cassius the newspaper as well as a message she received from Aina while
filling out the guild paperwork. Cassius, Estelle, and Joshua then sit down and
have a family dinner. At which point, Cassius tells the two that he’ll be going
away for about a month on guild business. Estelle is extremely displeased, but
accepts that he has to do his job. Cassius then asks the two to take over his
handful of current jobs in town, to which Estelle accepts and Joshua agrees to
help. At nightfall, Cassius shares a moment with Joshua and tells him that he
is actually going to investigate the Erebonian(?) empire, because they appear
to be preparing for war. He then asks Joshua to watch over Estelle should anything
happen to him.
END of Pre(?)-Prologue
First Impressions
I feel as though I stepped into a time machine and woke up
in 1999; when my sense of wanderlust was strong and gaming was a wholly
escapist form of entertainment. Perhaps it is because I read going into it that
Trails in the Sky has a slow start,
but nothing about this introduction offended me in the slightest.
It opened with a scenario that I can personally relate to (having
a parent that was never around); introduced a cast of (surprisingly) likeable characters (yes, including
the NPCs, especially the impetuous children) in a low-pressure environment that helped fill in the narrative gaps
regarding our protagonists relationship with the town; tutorialized the basic
gameplay mechanics by forcing me to practice with them firsthand, rather than
merely telling me what they are and expecting me to figure it out at my own
discretion; and offered me several decisions that let me slightly color Estelle’s
personality and steer the gameplay where I want it to be. I’m still unsure of
how significant my choice to accept Cassius’ work was, but surprisingly, I don’t
feel compelled to see what the other choice would have yielded. The decision I
made is part of my canon.
And as opposed to some other childhood gaming experiences that were actually terrible in hindsight,
my awareness of videogames being crafted experiences helped me appreciate the
subtle guidance that I would have completely missed as a child; help such as
the game restricting my shopping capabilities so that I could not accidentally
waste all of my septium on superfluous quartz or buy an assortment of abilities
that would be useless in the upcoming set of battles.
Most importantly, I want to continue playing this game, not
because I need to know what happens next before I can render a judgment on the
whole, but because I am enjoying my time with it without reservation. This is
the most fun I’ve had with an RPG (that I haven’t
played before) in several years. I only wish there was a journal that recapped the story events in it (ala the Tales of series), so that I could spend more of the future posts talking about more small events that light up my heart.
Sidenote: Oh and I couldn’t possibly ignore the most amazing
thing about this game thus far: treasure chest flavor text.
No comments:
Post a Comment