Part 112: Nam Cobanda Isle

Sidequesting time!



If you fly around near Zaphias, you can trigger this scene:



The capital?
Aren't there people left in the lower quarter you'd like to see?
There's not anyone I absolutely HAVE to go and see, but okay...

Sure I guess.



Yes... Ba'ul was the one who noticed, actually.
It was probably left behind by Alexei.
So, you want to go and destroy it, Judy?
...Decreasing the imbalance of aer on the planet just a little bit will make it all the easier to go up against the Adephagos, won't it?
...Yes, you're right.
...I'll go too.
Oh, why is that?
If we don't break it and instead take the core...
Umm, do we really have to destroy it? Couldn't we just deactivate them somehow?
That could work...in theory. But there's no guarantee that someone won't come along and try to get them working again. After all, it'll be just as inconvenient to have blastia that don't work as it will to have no blastia at all.



Oh, wait! Yuri, let's go too!
*Sigh*




All of you, wait here.
Huh? I mean, that's fine, but...
I'm going to go with you!
No, you wait here too.
If you and Judith go alone, you'll be captured in no time!
You should give Judy and Rita more credit than that, don't you think?
But it would be so much easier if they didn't have to worry about being stopped by guards! Judith, wait for us!





Yuri, where are you going?
Oh, just for a walk.




Like Yuri said, no matter how much people swear that they're not going to use blastia... ...The temptation is too great. Someone will inevitably show up who wants to use it again.
That's why we have to make absolutely sure that it will never be able to function again.
I see... I guess there's no other choice than to destroy it...
Ah, that's not true, actually.
Really?
If we take away the blastia's core, it won't be able to be used. So we can take the core out, and then use spirit conversion on it. Then we'll be in the clear!
But isn't that stealing...?
Yes, it is. That's why we wanted to do this ourselves...



Whawhawhaaa?!
To make it so they don't know we've taken the core, We should really tear up the warehouse and everything around it. They won't notice the core's missing in all the mess. What do you think?
Whawhawhaaa?!
Good idea. Maybe we can put some scratches on the blastia body as well... I guess this is the only way we can do it.
I have to say, I was quite pleased that you figured out my plan so quickly.
What are you saying? It was a cinch to see what you were thinking of doing. You were trying not to involve Estelle and everyone else, right? Though I guess there's not much point in that anymore...
I-I'm sorry...



You could get things done a lot easier if you would just tell Flynn and His Royal Highness...



Huh? Is someone there?










What's all this commotion?!



Yuri Lowell!
You are no doubt behind all of this! Yet again, I saaay!
Hmmm...maybe I am, indeed.
What? Yuri, you mean...
Urgggh! How insolent! You're under arrest!
Hey Karol, old man. Let's get outta here.








Yes, thanks to you.
Rita, what's in that bag?
Nothing at all!



What! What do you mean theft?
Wait, you knew...?
Ahh, I see. That's a blastia core, then!
How the heck did I become a thief without even realizing it?
I'm sorry, Karol...
Hah hah! Let's get out of here before Leblanc comes back!



That is, uh, thank you. For not destroying that blastia.
Oh. A surprising bit of humility, coming from you.
But why did you do it? You didn't have any trouble destroying blastia before now.
I just wanted you to like me!
N-no way! You're joking, right?!
Yes.
You...
When I was by myself, the only way I could stop them was by destroying them. But now I know that there are different ways of taking care of the the blastia, when I'm with friends. I can count on you, right?
S-sure.




Not like this is gonna matter once we convert all the blastia cores.


Anyway! The recent appearance of Tarqaron on the world map triggered a couple other changes too: Two mountain ranges we couldn't land on before (one near the Quoi Woods, the other near Mt. Temza) are now flat and have a couple unique enemies. Those aren't terribly interesting though; what's much more interesting is the island in the top left of the world map.




Previously, this area was submerged in water, but now we can enter it!









What is this place...?
It's sure gotta weird feelin' to it.



This is your first time here, am I right? First of all, you'll need to buy tickets.
Tickets? We need tickets to go in?



That's all? You've gotta be joking.
Not at all! We're not doing this to make a profit. For us, it's all about helping others have fun.
What's going on here, anyway?
It's not easy to summarize, but basically, it's like a big, fun party! I think the best way to understand what I mean would be to just go in and have a look for yourself.
What should we do?
Thank you very much. Here are your tickets.



You can go and come as you please, so just have a good time and don't worry about anything! You'll need to use chips for everything while you're here. Make sure to go and exchange your Gald for chips in the Gymnasium.


Nam Cobanda (obviously a reference to Namco and Bandai) previously appeared in Tales of the Abyss as well, although with a completely different design, and is more or less a love letter to all things Namco. You can run around and spot several things from other Namco games.

Also, as far as I remember, Abyss was released before the Namco-Bandai merger in Japan, so the place is only called Namcot Isle in Japanese.






I definitely don't recognize everything here, but I'll try to mention what I recognize.





Rappigs are from Tales of the Abyss, small pig-like creatures.











Katz are from pretty much every Tales game since... I wanna say Eternia? Maybe Destiny too. They're pretty much people dressed in cat costumes, for whatever reason.
Harold is a main character in Tales of Destiny 2.
Mieu is Luke's little Cheagle from Tales of the Abyss. Most people dislike him, although I don't, as you might be able to tell from my Youtube avatar.



Maybe I should rip the textures from this place so it's easier to tell if there's more Namco stuff around here.



This is a Taiko Drum, from the Taiko no Tatsujin series. The US got exactly one game from that series, named Taiko: Drum Master, for the PS2. Europe never got a game from the series. Japan has a ton of them.







And here's another Abyss reference.




The first time I played Vesperia I was really confused about this place, since there didn't seem to be anything to do apart from looking at Namco stuff, and the Gymnasium was blocked off by some random old man. Turns out there's a second entrance I totally overlooked.






Are you here on some business with Fortune's Market?
Unfortunately, not quite. I just learned of this island, so I decided to come and have a look around.
So have ya figured out what sorta place this is yet?
It's a kind of...playground. A paradise where people can come to forget the troubles of their day-to-day lives and just have fun.
It doesn't look that way to me--
See for yourself. I think you'll see what I mean. You can exchange your Gald for chips here. You might as well do it sooner rather than later.
Yes, we'll do that.
Well, have a good time. I'll talk to you later.
So then, you want to try exchanging our Gald for chips?
Yeah, good idea.




Yes.
In order to enjoy yourself here, you'll need chips. You won't be able to use Gald. You can exchange either Gald or Grades for chips. Since it's your first time, here's a little something on the house, to get you started.



If you're clever and/or lucky, those five free chips are all you ever need. You'll see why.

Play lots of games to save up enough chips to exchange them for marvelous prizes! Just talk to the Ant Lion Man next to me for exchanges. Enjoy yourself!




The prize exchange has a couple great items, most of which can only be bought here.

You can also abuse it fairly easily to get a bunch of money. I'll get to that later. As you can see, they nerfed the shit out if this in the PS3 version. It's a shame, too, as combined with another change it just makes it tedious as hell to a) get everything here and b) get money for sidequests that require money. I dunno why they felt the need to change it. Oh well.



Welcome to the Capsule Corner! Ready to get your capsule on?
What do you mean? What's a capsule?
You put in a chip or two, and the machine turns round and round, and what pops out is a capsule, full of love and dreams!
What's inside these capsules, exactly?
Big dreams, little dreams...all sorts of dreams, really!
So in other words, it could be just about anything?
Sounds like a pretty big gamble ta me.
Dreams are always a gamble, my friends! From right to left, the machines require 1 chip, 10 chips, 100 chips, and 500 chips! The more chips required, the better the dreams! Go to the machine you like, and get your capsule on!
Gotta love the capsules ♪ Round and round and round...
Heh, gotta love the capsules indeed...


These capsule machines just give you random assortments of items, mostly usable items, ingredients, and synth materials. It's usually not worth it to blow chips here since it's much less random to either buy them or get them from world map search points or monsters.




Wow... Everything here is something I've never seen before.
These aren't blastia, are they?
Correct. No blastia at all. We made everything here by hand. How about that? Pretty nice, huh?
Ya mean ya little tykes made all this by hand?
Of course! We worked our butts off, hey!
Wow, that's great. But what is this?
Seeing is believing, my friends! And you won't see it until you play it!
Play it? We don't even know how.
No worries, no worries! You'll pick it up quickly. Allow me to pick one of you to give it a test-run! Hmmmm... All right, let's go with Ms. Bouncy-bouncy Krityan.
Me? I don't think I'd be very good at this...
Don't worry about it! That just means it'll be more fun for you! All right, right this way, then. Okay, just stand there for a sec... And now... Cha-ching!


Watch the game!













That was...Ba'ul, wasn't it?
What you were imagining in your mind showed up on that very screen! I feel like that adds a bit of a game-like quality to it, don't you?
I don't get it at all.
Ya mean...if someone else's doin' the thinkin', something else'll show up on the screen?
Sorry, that's all for now! That was the last game machine that wasn't in use.
Aww, what a buzzkill!
Hey, no big deal, right? We can come back here some other time and play, right?
Yes, come whenever you'd like. You'll have your very own game machine, just for Ms. Bouncy-bouncy and her friends. Oh, but the next time you play, don't forget that you'll need chips, too!

This is just a silly little minigame, not much more to it.


Skit: From Mind to Game
...What sort of technology is this...?
I can't understand how it takes the image of Ba'ul from our heads and turns it into a game...
Well, well. So there are things not even our genius mage understands!
You know, this whole town is full of stuff we don't understand.
*Woof*
So what? If it's fun, it's fun!
Maybe that works for happy-go-lucky Raven, but I need to understand what's around me.
I think there's some truth in what Raven's saying.
Even if you can't unravel certain mysteries, it doesn't change the fact that what's fun is fun.
Ya see! Ya see?! Judith darlin', unlike *someone* here, you sure know what's important. You and me, we're on the same wavelength!
...I wonder what would come up on the screen if it showed what the old man was thinking?
*Whine...*
I don't even want to imagine it. In fact, I'm sure we couldn't imagine it if we tried...




Hm, what's this back there?



Hey, haven't seen him in a while. He gives us the Vichyssoise recipe:






To the very left, we can find this:





Excuse me, is something the matter?



Hey, why are you looking at us like that? You creep, learn some manners!
O-oh, pardon me, I apologize. I'm a member of the actors' guild, Showtime.
We never asked who ya were...
Ever since that strange monster appeared in the sky, the other members have stopped coming to perform... Please! Take their place on stage! All of you are just the right height... I think their costumes would fit perfectly on you.
Oo, this sounds like fun!
At this rate, we'll lose all our credibility and our guild will be through! Please! Help us! I beg you!
How could anyone turn down someone in such obvious distress? But...I wonder if we can really pull it off..



The show will be starting soon, so please go and change, and learn your lines as fast as you can! Men are this way! Women are that way!




So these are the costumes... Wow, Rita, yours is so cute!
Ugh! Do I really have to wear this piece of trash? No way! I'm not doing it! Ngah, you can't make me wear that!!



At least you're better off than I am. They even seem to fit your personality a bit...



Well, since it seems I blew the auditions on this one, I might as well go an' find me a seat in the audience.
Woof!






(thinking) Oo, looks like she means business!





Today you will meet your maker! Prepare yourself, heroine Estelle! Karol, my minion! Get her!





Take this! Yaa!





Now it's my turn!





Audience: Oo, the action scenes are great this time around!
And now for the fatal blow!







Time to spice things up a bit.







Audience: Wow! The choreography is excellent! That minion's acting was great, too.
He wasn't actin'...





You need to learn some humility, human!





(whispering) Yuri, let me beat you like it says in the script!
(whispering) Nah, this way is more exciting. Let's keep fighting a bit.
(whispering) Oh, okay. Maybe that's even better.



Audience: Wow! This is great! Amazing!



Audience: Oh no, the princess suffered a direct hit!









...Why'd you have to hit me too...?



The end.

This scene really should have been voiced! It's not voiced in the PS3 version either, for the record.



If you ever get another chance, feel free to come and act in another one of our shows!
You've gotta be kidding me.
Come on, dontcha think it was a nice change o' pace?
Yes, it was very fun.
I had a great time.
I think I've had enough acting for a long time...



We'll work hard to have even better performances!



Brave Vesperia isn't an acting guild...

And yep, we get all those costumes. Except for Karol's we'll be wearing those for a while.









We also get the prop sword and shield Estelle used:





They aren't very good stat-wise and offer no skils, but hey, still neat.

Next time: More stuff in Nam Cobanda!