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    Dust: An Elysian Tail

    Game » consists of 11 releases. Released Aug 15, 2012

    In the fantasy world of Falana, a mysterious swordsman named Dust, armed with a living sword called Ahrah and a quirky companion named Fidget, seeks to free a village from oppression while uncovering the truth behind his past.

    Story telling redundancy? (major spoilers)

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    vhold

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    #1  Edited By vhold

    I'm not sure if anybody else has brought this up, but I had one major problem with the way this story is told, and it made me wonder if I missed something. 
     
    When I'm up in the snowy village where Jin's sister meets you, and you learn of your whole dual spirit identity.. it's a pretty good reveal and it's totally consistent with all the story telling up to that point.
     
    But then, when you encounter Garius (sp?), you seem to go through the whole discovery process all over, as if you are shocked -again- to discover you have these two souls inside of you, even going so far as to be shocked by the Cassius name, yet again.  For me it was very anticlimatic to have the major final confrontation have this totally redundant story telling element.  It even goes through some of the exact same beats where Fidget questions who you are exactly, again, in almost exactly the same way.   It felt like they wrote the ending parts first, then shoehorned in the extra exposition in the middle, but never made the two fit well together. 
     
    Am I alone on this?

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    brehonia

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    #2  Edited By brehonia

    I agree, both of those scenes came off really weird to me. It's almost like there was going to be some kind of branching storyline where you decide to be the good guy or the bad guy, and that part at the end is how it would play out if you'd decided to become Jin.

    I mean, I thought the whole point was supposed to be that Dust is a new person regardless of his origins, but whenever I tried to adhere to that in dialogue choices the game got all weird about it. Like, my answer to "who are you exactly" was "Dust" but everyone reacted like I'd picked "I don't know, I'm a total idiot" and explained everything again. Talking to Ginger after that, I specifically told her "Jin's dead and you have to get over it" but then the finale had everyone referring to Dust as Jin.

    Oh well. The story wasn't really the draw for me anyway!

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    Smokay

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    #3  Edited By Smokay

    The way I thought of that scene in particular was that Cassius was a very good friend of the general so it made very good sense that he woud feel conflicted again when he has to kill him.The same thing happens when you meet Ginger,Dust feel compeled to proctect her but he is unaware of who she really is.What im more concerned about in the story is that we never get the reason why Gaius strated the war agaisnt the moonbloods in the first place.

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    Campion

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    #4  Edited By Campion

    @Smokay said:

    The way I thought of that scene in particular was that Cassius was a very good friend of the general so it made very good sense that he woud feel conflicted again when he has to kill him.The same thing happens when you meet Ginger,Dust feel compeled to proctect her but he is unaware of who she really is.What im more concerned about in the story is that we never get the reason why Gaius strated the war agaisnt the moonbloods in the first place.

    I'm gonna have to agree with this guy. I get the vibe that there is no underlying reason for Gaius's desire for the moonblood genocide other than thinking of them as an impurity and maybe attacking them out of cowardice. This kind of mindset is far from implausible IMO given history, and in that way I feel it gives the plot and situations a lot more gravity over something so petty. These things actually happen, and it effects entire groups of people in major ways. At least that's my view anyway, maybe I'm looking at it too deeply.

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    UitDeToekomst

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    #5  Edited By UitDeToekomst

    disagree with the OP. I didn't get a feeling of shock coming from Dust, but rather one of awareness or awakening. the "discovery process" happened twice because each event was the awakening of one of the personalities that Dust is made of. that's my take. made perfect sense to me.

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    Ares42

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    #6  Edited By Ares42

    Can't remember any specifics, but seem to remember there were several points that were like this. But then again I wasn't playing this game for the super-fantastic story. The writing wasn't the greatest when it comes to the over-all story, but there was several moments where I found myself smiling or laughing over what was being said.

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    deactivated-5be09b084ef21

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    The big problem I had with Dust's identity is that at the start of the game you are told that Jin killed Cassius. At the snow cabin you're told that Cassius killed Jin.

    Don't Jin and Cassius both need to be dead for Dust to exist? So who killed who exactly?

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    AssInAss

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    #8  Edited By AssInAss

    I think it was more that Gaius specifically saying Cassius triggered more personal connection with that spirit? Yeah it was really weird, I felt like I was playing the game out of order. Dust should've been more assertive that he's more Jin than Cassius instead of being shocked at being called Cassius.

    Amnesia is a hell of a drug.

    @MuftyRiots said:

    The big problem I had with Dust's identity is that at the start of the game you are told that Jin killed Cassius. At the snow cabin you're told that Cassius killed Jin.

    Don't Jin and Cassius both need to be dead for Dust to exist? So who killed who exactly?

    They both killed each other I thought, like a samurai movie thing.

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    capthavic

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    #9  Edited By capthavic

    While its decent at connecting everything together I think its obvious the story could have been much better. There are just lots of things that are never explained or fully developed that would have made me really feel for the characters.

    • What happened to the Moonblood civilization? Did their religion/magic have something to do with it?
    • Why did General Gaius want to kill them all? Was it because of something the Moonbloods did to him?
    • What was Cassius like in life and what was his friendship with Gaius like? They seemed to be very good friends but we never learn why.
    • What was Jin like in life? Okay he was a nice guy but is there anything else to him?
    • How did Jin kill Cassius? We never get to really see that, its just kinda glossed over.

    Those are just a few things that if they had been better explained or developed it would have gone a long way to making a world and characters that felt alive and could be identified with, rather than just feeling kinda flat and one note. And yes I thought both of those scenes felt a little off.

    Despite those narrative miss-steps I still greatly enjoyed the game and it's certainly a huge achievement for (mostly) just one guy. Kudos to him :)

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