So I wrapped up the Dam sequence for... I dunno, the tenth time probably. And I got to thinking about the kind of committee bullshit going on in the fiction.

(oh yeah, spoilers)

Let's look at this pragmatically. You can say it's all about the ultimate evil's ultimate plan, but the game establishes there's a lot of politics and mismanagement happening behind the scenes. Decisions are being made. It boils down to: the Motavian security force is hunting the protagonists down, failing miserably until they get to the last dam, at which point the security force has to say "fuck it, we're shipping these assholes to space prison!" At which point the problem becomes someone also decided to crash the space prison into Palm, because fuck that whole planet (play 3 & 4 to find out why).

There's a really great outline of what the PS2 plot almost was, so we're teetering on the brink of fan-fiction here. Having that many plot holes is helpful, certainly.

I have the PS2 PS2 remake. I guess I should really play that for my eleventh time to see if there's better exposition for this sequence.

Also it was rather good that the Oh Dam achievement pops when you get captured. They did put some thought. ;)

@Brackynews said:

At which point the problem becomes someone also decided to crash the space prison into Palm, because fuck that whole planet (play 3 & 4 to find out why).

Wait, what did Palma have to do with Phantasy Star III? Wasn't that game so disconnected from Phantasy Star canon that Phantasy Star IV took some time out of its plot essentially to say "fuck Phantasy Star IV"?

@Video_Game_King: Palma is referenced specifically in one of the four PSIII endings, the one that reveals the world ship Alisa III is of Palma origin. ;)

Depending on if you go by the English or Japanese canon, III takes place concurrently with IV or 1000 years after IV. There's also some time travel involved... a profoundly dark hole to go down. ;) III is certainly disconnected from the Algol system, and the multiple endings are an easy way to fudge the canon. But they have still used the fate of Palma canonically in other games, including PSO. Just like the truth of PSII has been long forgotten by the inhabitants, the current generations always seem to lose touch with their true origin for plot purposes. Generally all the regular humans in the franchise have roots in Palma. It was the political capital of the Algol system.

Really, there shouldn't ever be a direct-sequel fifth game. They moved on before it got even more paradoxical. But the plot theories are fun.

@Brackynews said:

Really, there shouldn't ever be a direct-sequel fifth game. They moved on before it got even more paradoxical. But the plot theories are fun.

I blame Generations of Doom for that, even though End of the Millennium got freaky with that Profound Darkness stuff and floating space castles. But yea, Phantasy Star ended where it should have. (The non-Online stuff, at least.)

I don't know dude we are talking early 16 bit days here. RPG's back then were not exactly the most profoundly written things in the world and for it's release time PSII was practically worthy of a pulitzer. The plot holes really aren't too terrible unless you try to factor in Generations of Doom. And if you do it gets uh.... interesting. Though Generations is basically what serves as the plot basis for the first PSO at the very least.