Part 4: Gaius, the Third Colossus
Blip - With commentary (Polsy) | No commentary (Polsy)
Youtube - With commentary Part 1, Part 2 | No commentary Part 1, Part 2
Gaius' location on the map: E-2
Artwork/Pictures -
Gaius Centerfold, left page (Artbook)
Gaius Centerfold, right page (Artbook)
Gaius (Artbook)
Gaius (Artbook)
Gaius (SotC Teaser Poster. And tagline
)Gaius (Concept Artwork)
Gaius' Lair (Concept Artwork)
Gaius ("Realistic" Model)
Dormin's Hints -
"The armor it wears seems brittle..."
Notes -
- Gaius is a Knight! He stands roughly 97 feet (29m) tall.
- The name Gaius is derived from the feminine name of Gaia, which could mean Worldly, or Of the Earth. I put his title as Earthen Knight because Earthen Truth didn't sound, well, right for his title. Maybe Veritas has some double meaning that I'm not aware of?
- Our battleground for this fight (which is pretty freaking cool) seems to be an arena or ring of sorts. The metal ground in the center could be seen as a center-point marker, or the top of a structural centerpole of sorts. The lake that it sits upon most likely resulted due to some drastic change in local geology, after its abandonment. We'll come across other shrines later on that water somehow claimed from the land.
- In the background throughout this fight, you will see a couple of pillars of light off in the distance. Those are scars left on the land by the colossi we've slain, so to speak. Sounds a bit too poetic, don't it? We'll touch on this subject some point in the future.
- The save points/praying shrines have names for the regions they are found in. Through this, we can find out the actual names of areas on the map (they'll be listed beside the save data). These regions more or less boil down to the size of a map quadrant, but a few quadrants have multiple shrines with different area names. The one we made use of is called the Ravine Entrance, whereas there's another one in the same quadrant, which is called Round Stone Hill.
- On a technical note, I did two different things in this episode:
1) Transition fade. Not too happy that I used them, but given how my numerous runs went against this guy, it was good for taking out some of the fluff in the "best" video. I hope to avoid doing this mid-fight as much as I can in the future, but this guy was just a special case
2) Per Meat's recommendation (and an earlier one by someone in the Sandcastle), I trimmed off the black bars (the ones that were a result of the recording) and resized to 640x480. Should've done this sooner, but I'm still kinda learning how these things work. I saw it as "just some blank space off to the sides, not a problem". I just keyed in on the side bars and was wondering what the big deal was; thought it was just being cosmetic (yes, I'm not as savvy in this stuff as some regulars here). After several pointers from jawbroken (and a bit of staring at it in VirtualDub), I finally saw the issue causing the slight stretch: the top and bottom bars. About 33 pixels of wasted space combined from the top and bottom. I heard some rumblings that folks assumed I was being lazy, following my initial reaction in the Support thread, but it was just a bit of misunderstanding. It's closer to bumbling than lazing, guys
Anyhow, apologies. I went back and fixed up all of the videos EXCEPT Valus (lost its original recording).Something to discuss...
So, we've talked about Wander. Mono we'll get to later on. How about the Forbidden Land, then?
It's littered with ruins and ancient structures. It's pretty clear that back in its hay-day, this place was quite busy. At the center of it all, we've got the Shrine of Worship. O'course, this is a shrine for Dormin. The other shrines are a bit of a boggle, though. Were they dedicated to the colossi? We'll get to this some other time.
The land is rather diverse, putting it mildly. Further North along the high-up bridge that leads to the Shrine of Worship, we can see desert-like terrain. We've also come across mountainous terrain, grasslands, and will later see a few forests in passing.
In regards to population? It's, well, nill. The land is forbidden, and it seems that getting there is incredibly hard, and/or people have the fear of god instilled in them enough to keep away from Dormin's stomping grounds. Oddly enough, there is also a remarkable lack of critters here. In passing, we'll see birds, turtles, and a few other smaller animals. Outside of those, though, there isn't anything else. This is strange, though, because the land itself is so lush and diverse. You'd think that some sort of sophisticated biodiversity would've cropped up by now, but that's not the case.
Moving back to an earlier point, now: why is the region deserted? You can definitely tell that humans inhabited the area in the past, but they just up and vanished. Adding to that, it has the stigma of being "Forbidden", and, as indicated by the opening cutscene's speech, it ain't a lovely place to spend the weekend (according to Religion X). We can't see remains of people or mass graves of any sort to infer a genocide of sorts ("the victor writes history", and all that jazz). Maybe they just up and left at one point, as a result of Dormin doing something in particular?
With Wander, we had enough dots to get things figured out with some confidence. In my opinion, though, this is one of the many topics that just doesn't have much substance to stack up with it. I can't think of many ways to shoot down or raise one idea relative to others.
So, in closing: what happened to this place? How did you guys approach this, in your logic? What was your general stance on what happened? Or, at the very least, somehow explaining the items mentioned above.