For Vinny's sake, Cain and Abel were in the Bible. I'm not, like, a bible historian or anything, so I only know the vague sense of it, but Cain and Abel were Adam and Eve's kids? And Cain killed Abel, and it was one of the first times someone did something shitty, in bible-lore? So Cain and Abel, who were characters in the first Fire Emblem game, were named after that whole thing. I think that's the question you were trying to ask.
Also, I've got about 20 ish hours clocked in this game (I'm sick, so I haven't had much else to do since it came out on Friday) and I think it's really rad. I was actually expecting it to feel like a cheap cash-in or something, but I really love the battle system, and the sheer insanity of everything is cool, too.
I wish the Fire Emblem stuff was a bit more pronounced, though. To be fair, Chrom barely had a personality in Awakening, but here, it's even less. I would say the only character who really retains any of their personality is maybe Virion. The Fire Emblem stuff is here kind of in name only. The only other thing that carries over besides the names of things is the rock-paper scissors aspect of the combat: lances beat swords, swords beat axes, and axes beat lances. Bows and wind magic beat flying enemies. The rest is just, like, character, weapon, and ability names.
Also, there's a drink in this game called H-Truth-O and that's the best name for a flouride in tap water conspiracy website I've ever seen.
I was really, really hoping that this game would give me that "I need to play this right now" vibe, which Skyward Sword didn't give me, and it has totally delivered. I HAVE TO ZELDA RIGHT NOW.
What a huge bummer. Hope everyone can find their footing after this. I wonder if this is coming as just as big of a surprise to the devs as it is to us. I hope they find a way to manage.
@stordoff: I do wonder if the Infinity series holds up. Ever 17 was one of the first Visual Novels I ever played, so my enjoyment of it is colored by that. Also, if you do try the series out, either skip Remember 11 or know going in that it's a poor experience and play it for the sake of discussing it. It very much soured me on the twist-driven plot structure as a whole, which probably contributes to my general dislike of VLR.
@stordoff: I enjoyed your reviews quite a bit, by weird coincidence I have also found myself playing those games back-to-back, though I'm still not finished with VLR in part due to my distaste for it. Steins;Gate is wonderful, though.
This is a wonderful review of a wonderful game. I actually have some exhaustion in regards to time travel stories, but Steins;Gate is good enough to get around that.
The character arc of Okabe Rintaro is one of the best I've ever seen in a game. He is practically despicable at the beginning of the game, albeit in a laughable manner. I personally can become mildly resentful when a game asks me to like a character that it had previously asked me to hate; a perfect example of this being done in a frustrating way is Virtue's Last Reward, (light VLR spoilers ahead) where you are asked to sympathize with characters who had attempted to murder you minutes prior, and in some cases succeeded. Steins;Gate managed to sidestep any of the resentment I'd feel about this sort of character development both by having it be so good, and by going to excruciating lengths to help you understand how much Okabe regrets his mistakes.
I've been playing VLR and found that I disliked it very quickly. This is partially due to having a whole lot of baggage in regards to many of the plot devices here; I have played several previous games written by the writer of this game, and I found many of the plot devices here to feel kind of like a mash-up of stuff from the Infinity series, and it didn't feel as though it was being handled quite as well.
Spoilers ahead. Having played through a lot of time-travel related games in recent years (Steins; Gate being one of the best ones) I found that I immediately rolled my eyes on seeing the word "timeline" for the first time in the game. I suppose had I played 999, I would have known that time travel would be a concept explored in VLR, but after the game hinting at about a thousand really terrible sci-fi tropes that can be used as crutches and escapes instead of good storytelling (the game had hinted at/overtly had androids that were indistinguishable from people, clones, and amnesia by that point) I had for some reason not expected yet another big, twist-driven plot device to be in there.
I haven't finished it yet, as progress is slow thanks to my distaste for it, and I actually have a gut feeling that I have a grasp on where the story is going, and I worry that it's going to follow some very cliched time-travel threads. My current belief is that Zero is actually the main character from the future, and that all of his evil stuff is secretly "for the greater good" and will be forgiven, which is a frustratingly simple and easy story to write, I think. I hope I'm wrong, but from what you've said here, it's going to be awful whether or not it goes that direction.
I wish the plot of VLR was more focused, I guess. And I personally dislike the puzzle segments quite a bit, though I imagine if I were comparing them to worse ones, that might not be the case. I just think most of the puzzles revolve around doing exactly the same thing: find something that helps decipher a code, find that code, then find out how to input the answer. Pick up objects and combine them along the way.
I'm looking forward to finishing it mostly so I can feel like it's done and over with, at this point.
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