Part 83: Some Last-Minute Clean Up Work


OVERWORLD MUSIC: The Continent of Nadias (Disc 1, Track 15)
For this pen-penultimate chapter of the Avatar Story were returning to Faria one final time. Or rather were returning to the Lost Forest one last time because Level-5 didnt want to animate anything taking place inside the Farian capital anymore.
Still, at least we get to see Miu one more time before we finally stake this game in its heart.


EPISODE EIGHT Between Life and Death
After rescuing Framboise from the world beyond and defeating Azel in the process, things appear to have settled down once again on Nadias for the time being. But a few days after Orren and Framboise returned to Balandor, a Farian envoy arrived at the castle and informed Queen Cisna that a Magi assault on the Archduchy appeared to be in the works.
The entire Magi remnant appears to have gathered in the Lost Forest, and to make matters worse, another massive rift appears to have opened inside the forest. Cisna mobilized the Balandor army to march to Farias aid and a final battle to annihilate the threat of Yshrenia once and for all began.
Are we going to be fighting this battle at all? Is this going be Orren vs. a thousand Magi troops? Are we going to one-man/Knight-army this bitch up? Are we going to see some more awesome cutscenes of great battles between clashing armies like there were in the first two actual games?
FUCK NO!
Seriously? Did you even hold out a glimmer of hope? Or have my various rhetorical tropes finally gotten so stale that you were already shouting NO!


No, children, we instead get to happen upon the aftermath of the titanic battle. Because Level-5 is all about that




Joining Orren for this chapter are a pair of figments of his traumatized imagination resembling Yulie and Kara. Because Yulies always desperate to get away from Leonards stupid shitass now that hes constantly being left behind in Rapaccis basement, and Kara explicitly says at one point in the Live Talk when youre wandering around Faria that shes adopted the Archduchy as her new homeland after Father Yggdra revived her and she spent a year posing as Scardigne. So it only seems natural that shed rush to the defense of her adoptive homeland.
I can only imagine that Caesars off somewhere else doing badass Iron Man stuff, because he just seems to do that kind of crap as a hobby.
Eldore, meanwhile, is sleeping in a gutter somewhere.

AREA MUSIC: The Lost Forest (Game 2 OST, Track 3)
So first of all, we need to go talk to Framboise, whos standing there on the same cliffside we rescued Miu and Kara from the Red Army on at the start of the second game.









Yep, it just wouldnt be White Knight Chronicles if we didnt have one final scrum with a generic mook Gigas.

Because the games got a stranglehold on this tired trope and its not letting go of itdoubly so now that rigor mortis has set in.

Remember when Gigases were a shit-your-pants thing in this game? Oh how far weve come























And now its time to head into the actual forest for the most bullshit, terribly designed quest of the Avatar Story. Though well get to just how much this quest sucks in a short while.

So like I said, we just sort of blunder into the aftermath of a battle between the Yshrenian remnant and the Alliance. Magi, Farian, and Balandor corpses are strewn across the forest almost everywhere you go. Man, this battle would have been pretty cool to have seen, but then Level-5 has a stadium naming rights lease to pay off, so you cant expect them to pour even ¥1 more into this game.

Well, at least Miu was able to give as good as she got in this battle. Our little goat girls all grown up.






[MEANWHILE, AT THE FARIAN ENCAMPMENT]



The entrance to the Farian capital is blocked off for the moment. The guard standing before the gate is wounded, but remains vigilant.





So around the bend a little bit, we come across Mius forward operating base.

















You received a first aid kit.



Aces.

This dude just says the same stuff we already heard from Miu and the soldiers.

Lets get going then.

This guy says the more of the same. I guess Level-5 thinks theyre players are as dumb as Leonard is, so they plopped down a bunch of NPCs in your path whose sole purpose is to remind you about what the hell youre here for.

Theres the usual spate of enemies in the Lost Forest, and by that I mean fucking EVERYTHING. The only giant enemies that appear in this level are four dragons and a Black Knave Mk. II, though once you take them out theyre gone for good. The smaller enemies however will respawn after a certain amount of time.

First up here in the Spring quadrant of the forest is a Fire Dragon.


Once the areas clear we can talk to our first refugee. There are ten in total, spread out across the Lost Forest, and because Level-5 ran out of money again, it couldnt afford to pay for objective markers for them, so you need to scour the area for a bunch of NPCs who for the most part are either cowering in bushes, wearing colours that blend into the environment, or tucked away around blind corners.
Of all the things we could be doing for this, the third-to-last iteration of this games story, and were once again running around rescuing people.
This is what 80% of this mission is comprised of: running around clearing out enemies, and then chatting it up with NPCs who say NOTHING relevant to the overall plot of this Avatar Non-Story.



And then the screen fades out and he disappears, teleporting to the refugee camp that one soldier mentioned earlier.

This update is going to be filled with a lot of Lost Forest beauty shots, because this place is the one spot in the game outside of the Van Haven Waste at night thats interesting to look at.




The parenthesised text then said He appears to be wounded and unable to move.
Youre then given a prompt about where to use the first aid kit on him. And of course, youd be A) an asshole and B) unable to complete the chapter if you said no, so we patch him up with the kit.





I said way back at the start of the second game that Id show off all of the major landmarks in the Lost Forest, and here, finally, is where were gonna do it.
First up is the old growth nursery in the Spring quadrant. This massive moss-covered stump is located in a pond just before the refugee camp. Astute readers may remember this place as part of Ban Loriass staging area during the fight to retake the Farian capital from Ban Nanazel.

You can run across the natural bridge here and actually go inside the tree.

Inside is this neat little Disney-esque alcove which you really cant explore beyond the ground floor of, because its Level-5 and


Still, theres butterflies fluttering about and it looks pretty and in a better game made by a more competent studio this probably would have been something cool, but here its just there.

So on to the refugee camp then.





So scattered around the camp are the people youve already rescued and some additional NPCs. Some of them you can chat with, most of them you cant. Also, Framboise is here, no doubt conducting sadistic experiments on the survivors for science purposes.



















See? Even Framboise gets more character development than Leonard does!

We also happen upon an argument between one of Farias minority human citizens and a Farian soldier.





Again, thank you, Level-5. The sifting through aftermath of this madness is SOOOOOO much more enthralling that actually maybe being a part of it ourselves.

Whatever, heres some more Lost Forest beauty shots.





Good news! We found another refugee.

Farian Civilian: Uuuh.
She appears to be too wounded to speak.
So we give her medicine from the first aid kit.
Farian Civilian: You helped me. Thank you! Thank you so much! Ill be okay now, honest. Please, go help the others now, theres still more of us out there.

And then shes gone.



So then we encounter the Ice Dragon near the waterfall in the Autumn quarter.

Heres the landmark for the Autumn quadrant, the massive waterfall with the grape vines growing all over it.

Theres also this massive beehive-like thing up on top of it for some reason. It kind of reminds me about that giant wicker thing all the monsters in Spike Jonzes Where the Wild Things Are built, before they all go insane and self-destructive.
Man, that movie was fucked up.




And were on the move again.

This is where this chapter gets REALLLY bullshit-y. Youre locked down to a specific portion of the map because every route to the northern section where the Winter quadrant is is blocked by a conveniently placed dead body.

Im talking every fucking exit.


Theres a lot of pointless running around trying to figure out where to go and how to get there. Even in Japanese, this was a really shittily designed quest.





Well, I think we finally made it. We have officially arrived at the Ive made a huge mistake part of this translation attempt.

I have no regrets about LPing White Knight Chronicles. This game is stupid, infuriating, and embarrassing to the Nth degree, but making fun of it as much as I have has been an absolute hoot.
Im regretting tacking this non-story DLC garbage and if it werent for the sense of obligation I have towards doing it, I probably wouldnt have even bothered.
So far, everything has been boring as shit, inconsequential, and underdeveloped. Its physically tiring translating this shit just because its so uninteresting. At least when Leonard was fucking up and getting people and things accidentally killed or destroyed I would gladly stay up till 4 in the morning scripting things out when I had work the next morning because I FUCKING LOVED IT.
This shit?



Can we get through this way?

No? Fuck.

Eh, lets kill a Wind Dragon.


And heres the landmark for the Summer quadrant, the Palm Goddess tree. Its a palm tree that vaguely looks like a woman, with wooden boobs and everything. This one was briefly glimpsed in the epilogue of the second game where Miu was praying before it.








Bye! Also, not only are the Magis corpses blocking our way around places, now theyre goddamn machinery is too.

You can go back to the camp and check in on the refugees weve rescued. The purple haired Farian we saved turns out to be this boys mother, and he tearfully thanks us for saving her and reuniting him with her.
Feels.

And then near the end of searching for these idiot refugees we finally begin encountering live Magi soldiers. Well holy fucking shit.



Theres also a Black Knave stomping around here, but I mentioned that earlier didnt I?





And heres that Earth Dragon too.

So theres all four dragons.





Another one of the refugees is in this waterfall cave back here.

And I just had to get this screenshot because it reminded me of the Disneyland Jungle Cruse backside of water joke. If youve never heard that joke, then youve never been to Disneyland, and if youve never been to Disneyland, your parents never loved you.








And then hes gone.

So after weve rescued a certain number of refugees, the actual objective of this mission appears on the map screen. This is our boss fight. But weve got a few more hoops to jump through to get there.

Another objective marker appears on Mius base camp.

But weve got a couple more refugees to save





This next guy is a bitch to find because hes, now check this out, hidden around a blind corner, on a raised outcropping that you cant access from ground level, that you need to run around a five minute long detour to get to, and then drop down from the upper level onto a narrow ledge just to talk to him.
Fuck you, Level-5.


And then we heal him and were back on our way.




And thus the last guy we need to do something for is this bugger. Hes our side-quest for this level.





So basically this sub-quest literally boils down to walk about 20 feet over that way and then kill a dragon.
Wow. You know, after wandering aimlessly around this forest for literally an hour and twenty minutes because Level-5 just gave the fuck up on helping you through this, I applaud this sudden burst of laziness on their part.

Oh hey, look Kara! Its your old friend the Ancient Dragon. Or rather the bounty pallet swap of it, Argyros.

Its a good thing that whole dragons aggressively hunt those who kill their kin thing Eldore shat out way back at the start of the first game was never* followed up on because this is going to be the fifth dragon weve murdered in the past 90 minutes.
* One encounter with the Dragon Matriarch notwithstanding.

Well, whatever. Its time to go all Dovahkiin.

Speaking of Skyrim, be sure to check out Puttys 100% LORE FRIENDLY LP of Skyrim mods. I go to space with Putty and Blind Sally.


And what so you know, Kara scores the deathblow on this dragon too. With a Shoryuken Uppercut no less too!


After the boss fight, theres a glowing thing on the ground.




You found an engagement ring.






And thats it, thats finally fucking it! Were done with the pointless rescue bullshit part of the quest, now were off to the boss!

When the screen fades to black were teleported back to Mius basecamp, as we need to talk to her to proceed with the mission.





So Miu gives us her holy writ and were back underway. This is also, by the way, the last time Miu shows up in the narrative.
Godspeed Miu.







And then were warped up to the northern section of the map.

The path to Cyrus, Framboise and the boss battle is now pretty much cleared ahead of us.



After some more running and fighting generic monsters, we come across Framboise whos just standing out there in the middle of the snow like a durrf.





We enter our pre-boss cutscene in the midst of a battle. Magi and Allied corpses dot to frozen wastes and the icicle tree, the main landmark of the Winter quadrant of the Lost Forest, is engulfed in a massive portal.

And Cyrus clashes with an ogre.

CUTSCENE MUSIC: The Trap (Unreleased Track)
Well, now Im glad I went back and recorded all the unreleased music from the game because theres a couple of tracks not on the soundtrack that get some play in the closing chapters of the Avatar Story. You might remember this one as the ambush theme that plays when Ban Nanazel transforms into a Duke Gigas at the end of the Chapter III of game 2.





Its so weird seeing the Avatar in anything even remotely resembling an action role in this game. I got so used to just seeing them as a board-stiff manikin that disappears entirely when the action begins to unfurl that stuff like this always takes me by surprise.

Heres another moment of screenshot providence. Orren looks simultaneously bored and annoyed that he has to rescue Cyruss stupid ass yet again. This is probably the only moment in-game where LP Orren slips out in the animation.




But of course, this is Cyrus were talking about, and even though hes not voiced by NOLAN NORTH anymore, he still has some of Nolans residual awesome in him, so he tools this one ogre like the badass motherfucker he is in this game.















Their moment to regroup is short-lived, however

As even more ogres surround them from all angles.
















STOMP

Yep. Cyruss attempt to be all Nathan Drake-like summoned another Duke Gigas from the games FUCK YOU! engine. This things running overtime for this mission.



Hey there big guy. Guess what YOURE getting for Christmas?
A GIANT HAMMER TO THE FACE!






So Kara and Yulie rematerialize now that weve got ourselves a boss to fight. And weve also got Cyrus in our party too one final time. This is, in essence, the final escort mission of the duology, in terms of the storyline at least.

Same rules apply, if Cyrus dies its game over, but we dont need to worry about that.


So heres a bunch of uncommented on screenshots showing some stuff weve already seen, just not at the same time: the Arc Knight and a Duke Gigas.




























Once again, Orren almost redeems what Leonard makes look absolutely pathetic.











CUTSCENE MUSIC: Scar (Disc 2, Track 13)














He sighs, knowingly.














Things were grim. Just take my word for that one. I know we dont have the budget to show that anymore. But still. We had to hold on to whatever hope we could. I trusted Cyrus, as loopy as it sounds to say something like that, given his history, but oh man did he ever deliver.
Wed have to venture far north to find it, though. Farther than I ever thought wed go. To finish the Dogma War once and for all, we needed to do it on its home turf