Trails in the Sky #9 This is the Part Where She Punches You pt.1

RECAP: Would, In Fact, Hit A Child

*unintelligible gurgling sounds*

Estelle and Joshua find the nearest inn to stop for lunch and information. There, the bracers pick up some delicious local cuisine and are advised to go eat on the beautiful cliff overlooking the ocean. As they head outside, Estelle crashes into a girl wearing a Jenis Royal Academy uniform. The two apologize for not watching where they were going and the Jenis Academy student asks if the bracers have seen a small boy wearing a hat. The bracers hadn’t seen the child, so they say their farewells. Joshua spends a little longer watching the girl leave, remarking that he thinks he has seen her before. However, after some light teasing from Estelle the two head to the cliff's edge.

Joshua and Estelle enjoy their Manoria cuisine when they notice a large white bird (that isn’t a mutant seagull) flying overhead. The bracers pass it off, finish their lunch break, and begin to continue along the road when Estelle crashes into someone else, this time a small boy wearing a hat. They tell the little boy about the girl who was looking for them and he swiftly runs off. Joshua then remarks that Estelle is likely missing something, and indeed she has lost her Bracer emblem. The two conclude that the boy probably stole it and begin searching frantically for the little thief. Outside of the general store, a local girl tells the bracers that the boy probably belongs to the orphanage further down the road and will probably turn up there. So an angry and amused Estelle and Joshua (respectively) conveniently continue their journey towards Ruan, but with a slight detour along the way.

Well, it's better than the staff, I guess

The coastal roads aren’t particularly dangerous and the bracers journey across them with ease. And after a short trek, they reach a fork with one road pointing towards Ruan and the other Mercia Orphanage. At the Orphanage, Estelle spots the thief talking with his little friends and immediately starts a Benny Hill-inspired chase while Joshua (more sensibly) tells the other children what happened. As Estelle finally apprehends the junior government official, the white bird from before swoops down and strikes her hand causing her to drop him, and the Jenis student commands her to let him go. Estelle demands that the boy admit to thievery but he snidely plays the fool. The matron of the orphanage steps out as well and with the bracer emblem in hand, convinces the boy to admit fault. He doesn’t apologize however and runs off like a little punk. With the hullabaloo over, the Matron Theresa (real original Falcom) introduces herself and invites Joshua, Estelle, and the Jenis student inside for “a veritable feast of tea and pie.”

The Jenis Academy student introduces herself as Kloe Rinz and relays that she often helps the Matron

*sounds of someone running in the distance*

at the orphanage when she is not in school. She also shares that the white bird is a longtime friend of hers (not pet), though Estelle doesn’t quite grasp what that actually entails. Meanwhile, Matron Theresa tries to soften the bracers towards Luke (the thieving boy) and mostly succeeds. Eventually Kloe, Estelle, and Joshua cordially excuse themselves and head outside to continue their business. Since Kloe and the bracers are both heading in the same direction, Kloe offers to travel with the bracers and lead them around Ruan city for a while. So the gang collectively hit the open road.

[Sidequest?] Further along the way, they notice an eccentric man being cornered by monsters and decide to give him a hand. Sine bracers are still far too powerful for the local fauna they breeze through the hoard, however the man doesn’t offer much thanks or any monetary compensation… and continues along on his merry way alone. The bracers also explore the shallow waters around a cliffs edge and find a torn map in addition to some ancient daggers. They speculate why these are lying around on this shore, but collective pragmatism kicks in and they forge to continue on with their unanswered questions.

After a bit more shark slaying and a bizarre Jabba battle (it was also a sidequest) the kids arrive in the port city of Ruan. Though they say that they should visit the guild first, everyone goes shopping to pick up new gear, and sightseeing before doing anything important like moving the plot forward. They note that it’s apparently “tourist season” and spot several tours around town reviewing the city’s history to the overeager foreigners. So with their expanded knowledge and shiny new armaments, the gang finally walks into the bracers guild…only to find that the receptionist isn’t in. Fortunately, another guild operative named Carna (again, Falcom clearly isn’t particularly clever with names) enlightens them that the branch head is in a meeting and will be available in a little while. So (much to my chagrin), she advises everyone to go and spend some time looking around town.

This game deserves some kind of award for
best narration in anything ever

While out and about, this time the gang notices the Verte Bridge connecting the two major districts of Ruan. With this observation, they decide to go and explore the southern district before, according to Kloe, the bridge is raised in a few hours. In the warehouse district however, they find quite a few unsavory characters some of which guard a particular warehouse that is supposed to be empty. They don’t inquire, however, and try to leave as quickly as they came. And of course, the gang is stopped by some crude and blatantly stupid gang members calling themselves The Ravens. The groups trade insults for a while until Mayor Dalmore and his steward, Gilbert, show up. The officials of course try to shoo the nasty looking dudes away, but don’t manage it. Estelle then epically points out her and Joshua’s bracer emblems which finally scares the gang off.

The mayor then exposits that the officials have been trying to hide the local gangs because a representative from the empire is going to be officially visiting and unofficially inspecting the town soon. He doesn’t know who is coming, but still wants the town to be in the best shape possible, crime and all. The group offer their assistance to the mayor if and when he needs it, then decides to head back to the nice side of town the bracer’s guild to see fi the receptionist is done yet. Fortunately for them, he actually is, and immediately introduces himself as Jean before asking the junior bracers to submit their paperwork to transfer branches. Upon doing so the sneaky bastard receptionist immediately saddles the sixteen year-olds with a mountain of work due to the branch being shorthanded (due to the others being out helping the mayor specifically).

The slightly annoyed, yet understanding bracers then head outside, when Kloe points out that it’s time for the drawbridge to ascend. They watch the bridge in all its mechanical magnificence when Kloe astutely asks where the bracers will be staying. Estelle points out that they can stay on the second floor of the bracer’s guild, but would prefer to stay somewhere else, so Kloe then suggests that they stay at the Ruan Hotel.

On Dialogue in Video Games

I.

Clearly, a lot happened this time around. Estelle crashed into some people, we met a whole smorgasbord of new characters, travelled through four wholly new places, almost beat up a small child, and have 3+ single-spaced pages in MSWord to show for it. However, I actually spent less time playing this time around than in the preceding few sessions. This disparity honestly bewildered me (considering that I burned four real-time hours only two sessions ago), so I spent some time after playing speculating why this was the case this time around, and I came to the conclusion that it’s actually due to the combat, or rather the lack thereof.

You see, despite the utterly massive amount of dialogue (colorful though it may be) in Trails in the Sky, the plot actually moves pretty damn fast. If one were to list all of the major events during the pre-prologue for instance, they’d get something that more or less resembles the arrangement below:

- Cassius returns home with Joshua

- Estelle and Joshua go to Rolent to complete their Jr. Bracer exams

- Schera acts as proctor and the bracers pass their exam

- Estelle and Joshua talk to everyone and go back home

- That night, Cassius tells Joshua & Estelle that he won’t be returning for a while

- Cassius sails away and the Rolent Bracers have to do his leftover work

Contrast this with the “pre-prologue” in say Final Fantasy X, a game which despite being short (20-30 hours for anyone who is not <10 years old or grind-happy stupid), moves slower than a quadriplegic sloth with a marijuana addiction:

- Tidus goes to play in a blitzball game that is interrupted by Sin

- Tidus kills monsters with Auron on their way to Sin (WHHHYYY???)

- Tidus and Auron are consumed by Sin

Granted, you can complete the above sequence in FFX noticeably more quickly than that of TiTS (15-20 mins compared to 30-40ish), however this is largely due to there being almost no dialogue in it. At the beginning, Tidus talks to some fans (which is optional btw), but immediately afterwards you go to the blitzball stadium, watch a cutscene where no one talks, then do a bunch of fighting, again, with very little actual dialogue between Tidus and Auron. [their conversations can be summed up as; Tidus: “I don’t know what’s going on!” Auron: …]

In complete contrast, at the beginning of Trails in the Sky, Estelle, Joshua, and Cassius talk for a bit revealing that Estelle is a clever tomboy, Joshua is kind of emo, and Cassius is THE MOST INTERESTING MAN IN THE WORLD a master of discourse and frequently absent father. When Estelle and Joshua meet in the morning, you learn that Joshua plays the harmonica, which becomes a recurrent symbol throughout the game. After first arriving in Rolent, through talking to the citizens you learn that there’s a lot about Estelle that Joshua still doesn’t know. And so on and so forth; both during and between every major event there’s a host of discussions that occur, shedding light on the characters, environment, lore, or plot. Even though Trails in the Sky can occasionally make Leo Tolstoy look like Ernest Hemingway, none of the dialogue is superfluous. And to put the icing on the freshly baked glazed donut, the writing both refracts reality and is consistent with each character.

To clarify, in the “real world” conversations usually begin from a point of reconciliation and

I feel you brudda

understanding. People will usually listen to what others have to say (for a while at least) and will temper their speech so as not to wholly piss the person/people they are speaking to off. Why? Because, it’s a form of coercion that’s effective for getting what we want or giving others a good impression of ourselves. There’s probably an altruistic reason or two in there somewhere, but the point is that conversation has functions that encourage people to be tolerant and afford others some allowance when making statements they disagree with.

In a typical JRPG, none of this exists. The characters are a concatenation of anime stereotypes (not merely tropes) that make them immediately recognizable to the audience and easy for children (typically young boys) to understand. The dialogue between the characters is extraordinarily predictable, often coldly solidifying/reinforcing the character’s stereotype as opposed to advancing the plot in a logical or sensible fashion; it almost exclusively operates on a sort of meta-level divorced from the narrative in which it attempts to elicit a certain emotional response from the reader that guides them to an intended interpretation of the plot points. As an English major, it strikes me most prominently as the text trying to do my work for me; it analyzes itself and just spits the conclusions out instead of creating some breadth that requires some exploration to unearth. Basically, it lacks depth.

Calling the hot-blooded protagonist out on her
unjustified trustworthiness? SACRILEGE!!

Yet, while FFX (and most Final Fantasy games, really) sticks to this template to a T, Trails has the balls to deviate and says “ya know, let’s try this real-ish dialogue thing out.” Reconciliation and understanding are the unspoken canvases on which most conversations are based, not exposition for the player. The conversations in Trails actually lead somewhere as a result of the characters adjusting their speech, not random eccentricities or vacuous exposition on the part of NPCs. Both PCs and NPCs hold ideological positions when conversing, and they may shift by the end of the talk. The conversations thus feel organic instead of merely utilitarian.

And yes, I’m aware that I’ve written along these lines in previous updates. However, what I didn’t notice (that is also outlined in the FFX example above) is that nearly all of the story progress in an RPG happens in the dialogue, not the gameplay; the action is in the dialogue not the combat/fight scenes. While I’m sure that any aspiring film student could have told me that even as a child, the implication for RPGs, especially classic JRPGs like Trails and FFX, is that the combat’s purpose is solely to break up the action; it helps establish the game’s pacing by providing an engaging way for the player to fill in the jump cuts*; to play through the sequences where nothing of consequence happens.

And on that cliff-hanger, I’ll stop because for the first time ever, this idea will be continued in the next update this Thursday. Look forward to it, don’t forget where we left off (or just push the little Previous link at the bottom of the page next time), and as always, here’s some more awesome empty chest text to help you leave with a smile.

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NEXT: #10 This Is The Part Where She Punches You pt.2