Part 8: [Title Card] (Part 2)

Oh why are you not dead yet? What, does dumbass need to throw you through a couple of houses before it sticks?

…Because I think that’s what he’s going to do next if someone doesn’t stop him.

Poor Rapacci, he’s just sitting there in his wine shop right now, wondering where the hell Leonard, Yulie, and Orren have gotten off to. There’s probably a couple of Magi corpses piled up on the floor with a sword of some sort through them from when they made the mistake of bursting into Rapacci’s domain uninvited. He’s minding his own business (literally)… When suddenly Leonard comes bursting clean through the building, suplexing Pyredaemos through the wall and killing him inadvertently.

You know, that would make this game so much more interesting if they actually did something like have Leonard go all Akira or Xenogears or Chronicle and just cause massive unintentional damage to a major population centre using powers that he didn’t earn and therefor doesn’t respect and are of a scale that they dwarf him as a character and he has to either live with the guilt of all the unintended blood on his hands and try his damndest to make amends for it in some way or spiral further into narcissistic, power-enabled madness until someone else comes along and stops him.

But alas, no. This is what happens when you’re terrified by the true scope of your premise’s potential: you play it safe and boring.

Instead, we have a titanic battle with only three real casualties: Valtos, Dalam, and Dignity.


Third time’s the charm, right?


And the puny mortals come out to watch the throwdown. Because if there’sanywhere that these people should be right now, it’s within 50 feet of a feral beast capable of belching flames from every orifice on its body and a 20 foot tall suit of armor capable of bodyslamming said beast into anything with enough force to completely destroy whatever it just threw it through.


Yulie: Leonard!

He doesn’t need you distracting him right now, dear.



Cisna: If you’re done breaking everything, please. …I need to figure out how to mass produce these things. Like yesterday.


Dragias: Don’t mind me…


Nefarious villain is nefarious.






And back to combat.

Leonard: How can this thing still be moving?

Plot. That’s why.


Leonard: Is it trying to kill me, or just cook me?




Again, same strategy: stab the fucker until it finally dies.

Leonard: This is the armour’s power?


See you in hell, Pyredaemos! Thank god I’ll never have to fight you again…

…Why is the game laughing at me again?


CUTSCENE: Pyredaemos Defeated ~ The Kidnapping of Princess Cisna

Seriously, that mask thing in its head reminds me of those super creepy floating head things from Super Mario Bros. 2.




Pyredaemos roars one final time and collapses dead, leaving its massive corpse behind in the castle bailey.

Great, now Cisna’s got two weapons of mass destruction for her scholars to reverse engineer…




Leonard: Huuh.


Mysterious Man: The lad did it.
Yulie: You sound kind of surprised. …You’re totally right to be, by the way.










With the battle over and the crisis seemingly averted, the White Knight kneels down as a strange energy washes over it.






It disappears into the ether, leaving Leonard behind no worse for ware.






Leonard: It’s over.


Leonard: But how did I… Where did I…?
Cisna: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!


CUTSCENE MUSIC: “Scar” (Disc 2, Track 13).

Anyway, everyone turns around to see Cisna is somehow not there any more, despite her just moments ago standing right beside Mr. Sheffield and in front of Cyrus.

Again, the cutscene blocking in this game is the shits.














Oh for god’s sake. Really? This is the game’s plot? Super Mario Bros.? Well no wonder she looks disturbingly like Princess Toadstool, the game was just telegraphing this moment to the player subconciously.






Anways, a giant fuck-off anchor suddenly falls from the sky and crashes into the castle steps, somehow leaving Cisna, Dragias, and Bowser-citane completely unharmed despite them being mere feet away from a collosal, traumatic impact.

Because physics only works in this world when it’s plot-relevant.

Cisna: Oh what the fuck? REALLY?!




So there we go. As Ashsaber hinted, this is probably (but not actually) how General Dragias managed to parachute onto the roof of Balandor Castle.

Great, these assholes have an airship too. Oh, sorry, my mistake, they’re called monoships in this world, for whatever reason.

This thing has tons of guns on it. Why didn’t they use it to attack the castle and blow the hell out out of everyone while Valtos was was boring the crowd with his sixth straight digression about his dead wife? Outside a lone, inactive Incorruptus, Balandor had nothing in its arsenal to counter a game-changing weapon of this magnitude.

This is huge. The Magi have flight capability (weaponized flight capability, no less) in an otherwise (thus far) ground-based world. This is a giant, flying “I win” button for this world in its currently technological state. And here its just played off as a triviality.

I bet this night would have been over a hell of a lot sooner if they opened with the giant black, magic-powered airship of doom, no?

Again, Belcitane is a moron. He just happens to be the least moronic person in a world populated by even bigger morons.

Ergo: he wins tonight.






Cisna: You idiot! Transform again and save me!


Belcitane: Colour me surprised. Who would have thought a mere child could control the Knight? This puts a kink in our plans.
Dragias: I would call this much more than a kink.

Holy shit, you’re capable of talking? Like for real? I don’t have to use itallics for you any more? Sweet.


Belcitane: He’s… not bad, I’ll admit. But so what if he got the Ark. We can sort that out in due course. And we did achieve our other objective.
Dragias: Indeed.


Belcy looks at Cisna all creepy and evil, becoming nothing less than the avatar of unsubtlty.

Cisna: You sons of bitches have NO idea who you’re messing with. I am going to murder the both of you if you don’t let me go right now!
Belcitane: Give me ONE good reason, my sweetling.
Cisna: I have a bloody human tank on my side. You have a giant smoking corpse that’s crapping up my front lawn. Do the math.
Belcitane: I only see a boy down there. A boy with a stupid hair cut.
Cisna: Oh for GODS’S SAKES! Will you just TRANSFORM you idiot!
Leonard: I don’t know what I’ve been doing for the last 10 minutes! Is there some kind of manual on this thing?!
Cisna: Aw, fuck it. I’ll just jump.


Dragias: Be my guest.
Dragias: Time has prooven there can be no peace without wise leadership. With their rulers dead, these two nations are bound to pick up arms once again and return to their pointless war.
Cisna: Hey, any war that ends with me winning is never pointless.
Dragias: You’re not getting this whole ‘kidnapped’ thing, are you, Princess?
Cisna: Queen. You made it happen, at least use the proper terminology now.
Dragias: Wait, I did what now?


Belcitane: Yes. The world we seek is close, General.

Any kind of hint on what sort of world that is, Belcy?

Anything?


You’re just gonna leave us hanging?



Does it involve killing Leonard? Because that’s a world I’d want to live in.


Oh, screw you then.


Cisna: Okay then, fine. So what’s your next move? Because if it’s anything other than throwing yoursleves on the idea of my supposed mercy and swearing to serve me, then I promise you it will end in your brutal deaths. It still might even if you DO, but at least there will be a chance of it maybe not happening.
Belcitane: Is there another member of your family that I can have killed to get you stop talking again?
Cisna: Oh godsdamnit! SARVAIN! CYRUS! NEW CYRUS! Your Queen is speaking! I’m declaring war on EVERYONE! Muster the army! Institute a draft! Suspend everyone’s personal liberties! Execute everyone who had a hand in this debacle! And for the love of all that’s holy, stay the hell off my throne until I get back!
Sarvain: Yeah, I’ll get right on that one, ‘Your Grace’. Pfft.


Leonard: Princess!


Cisna: Use the Knight, you idiot! I mean—
Cisna: Leonard!






Leonard: CISNAAAAAAAAAAAA!!
Ghost Valtos: FLORAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINE!

Not even death can claim this joke.


Cisna: You. Fucking. IDIOT!


Cisna: You have super powers now! USE THEM!






Instead, he just ineptly watches the monoship tear away into the night sky and off over the mountains.


Yes. Hang your head in shame, you useless fuck up.

What have we accomplished tonight? King Valtos is dead. Archduke Dalam is dead. Balandor and Faria are headed back for war. Princess Cisna has been kidnapped, ensuring that the continuity of Balandor’s government is effectively shot to hell, because everyone around her sucks at protecting her. Most of the citizens of Balandor are also dead thanks to the Magi ambush. Balandor’s financial future is in jeopardy as well thanks to the majority of the nobility being slaughtered at the castle. Balandor’s homeguard army is also in tatters now thanks to the Magi. And Balandor Castle itself has suffered catastrophic damage thanks to both the Magi attack and Leonard’s gung-ho stupidity.


Cyrus is also about to kill himself now, as his job description is “protect the leadership of Balandor” and he’s pulled off a fuck up hat-trick between Valtos and Dalam’s deaths and Cisna’s kidnapping.


But oh, hey, Sarvain survived after all. So there’s that.

Wait, where the hell were you during all this madness anyway?


And with that, Cisna narrates us out of the chapter with a handy voice over worhty of the Inheritance Cycle in terms of its empty feigned grandiosity.

Cisna: On that day, souls once parted came together again. It seemed like mere coincidence. But softly, sadly, the wheels of a cruel destiny began to turn…

And what a better way to sum up “cruel destiny” than by cutting directly to the title card of the game. It’s like the game is trying to tell you something itself. If you’d only listen to it.


CUTSCENE: Title Sequence [Remake Version]
CUTSCENE: Title Sequence [Original Version]
CUTSCENE MUSIC: "The Travellers (English Version)" (Game 2 OST, Track 20)

God damn, we made it.

From here, the game slam cuts to what I can only describe as an anime-style opening sequence that introduces all the main characters and previews some of the things we’ll be seeing, all to the tune of a bunch of meaningless word salad lyrics written by Akihiro Hino himself and valiantly sung into something resembling a song by a female vocal artist. You can see it in the cutscenes section if you really want to subject yourself to it. It does contain minor spoilers for things yet to come, though.

But other than that, that’s it for Chapter IV.

You think we’ve hit peak stupid? Hang on.

It gets worse.

(Also, if you play the enhanced remake of WKC I using the game 2 disc, it throws up game 2’s title card instead for whatever reason, despite showing game 1’s intro movie. I've posted both the game 1 and game 2 version of the intro here regardless. Game 1's intro is the instrumental version, while game 2's includes the actual English lyrics to The Travellers. We'll see game 2's title screen once we get to it… assuming my sanity holds out that long.)


Yeah, I don’t know what to say about that part, only that I wasn’t there for it, so you can’t pin it on me at least.

Hell, I survived the night, otherwise I wouldn’t be here telling you about it, now wouldn’t I? Unless I’m actually dead or something and this is just purgatory or wherever ever the hell it turned out they all were on . But I’m not that creative a storyteller.

I made it back to Rapacci’s place early in the morning. The Magi had pulled out of Blandor, and he was just sitting there on a pile of dead Magi troops, drinking a flagon of wine and just covered in blood and guts and other vital fluids.

I told him what happened, but he seemed more angry that Leonard had screwed up the delievery than that we’d been invaded. He told me to go back to the castle and bring the kid back, or failing that, bring back his corpse. I told him he had a deal if he tore up my contract with him.

And so there I was, trudging back to the castle, tiptoeing over corpses and around still-smoking craters, praying to every god of every land I’d passed through in my travels that everyone was dead up there. The old man told me what had happened while I wasn’t there when I arrived.

I discovered that night that it was possible to get so angry you that could actually black out.

• 4.1 - Beneath Balandor
  
• 4.i - Beneath Balandor Gameplay
  
• 4.2 - The Incorruptus
  
• 4.3 - The Ghost in the Machine
  
• 4.ii - Phantom and Pyredaemos Boss Fights
  
• 4.4 - Verto!
  
• 4.5 - Fighting Pyredaemos
  
• 4.6 - Pyredaemos Defeated ~ The Kidnapping of Princess Cisna
  
• 4.iii - Title Sequence ("The Travellers") [Remake Version]
  
• 4.iii² - Title Sequence ("The Travellers") [Original Version]
  
• 4.iv - "With the-- Wait, What?"
  
• 4.v - Sailor Moron

BENEATH BALANDOR CASTLE & INCORRUPTUS VAULT



SONG LYRICS