#like ToX2 sort of sidelining the former characters even if at least they took the opposite route to ToS2 that never give a fig about the new

[randomnameless]

Re about humans and other weird beings living with them, I remember I really liked the Tales of Xillia duology’s take on this -

You start with the female protagonist who is not a human but a Spirit/God, and has an important mission, and has to travel with a human for plot reasons but we see how out of touch she is with various human idioms, customs, but also morality...

Is it because Milla is a spirit?

But later on, we see her being insecure, jealous, prideful, teasing, forming friendship bonds, supporting people, being kind... while still thinking of her mission -

And well, plot happens and it’s revealed Milla -

isn’t a spirit at all, but a human construct by the real “God” who made her to act as a bait in a plan to, hm, get rid of people who want to use Spirits as fuel/fodder for their tech.

At the same time, when Milla shows more and more “human” emotions, we are introduced to her “sister”, Muzét, who is a bona fide Spirit.

And lo, Muzét, on introduction, is also aloof, doesn’t understand idioms, is apparently here for a “mission” and doesn’t interact much with the party (even if there’s the bazonga joke).

When plot happens, Muzét, the Spirit, is revealed to have a cruel and mean streak, mocking the male protagonist - but also a buttload of other emotions as she also realises the God who created her actually... doesn’t give a fuck about her. Muzét feels anger, jealousy, ire, despair, sadness, a crap load of abandonment issues, latches on the first guy with a giant sword around just to have someone to “follow”...

And we later learn, through sidequests that she’s also someone who can be kind and considerate and who can also be shy and has a lot of insecurities.

Both Milla and Muzét, despite not being born as humans (and Muzét never having been one) have a long... list of feelings, that definitely mark them as humans, as in not biologically humans, but as human as Jude or the rest of the cast is.

Come ToX2 and we learn there was not 1 God but 3 ones, who were pissed at humans for, iirc, mistreating spirits or something to do with a reincarnation cycle, so they made a bet/trial, if some humans managed to reach a door before a certain time, the world won’t be destroyed, otherwise, the God in charge of the reincarnation process will stop doing his stuff and the world will be destroyed.

Pretty simple as in “whims of Fate” simple, right? But then, we learn little by little, but especially at the end, how one of those Gods rigged the Trial so humans would lose, because he doesn’t want his pal, the God who oversees the reincarnation cycle, to continue overseeing this cycle (because it apparently hurts him or something). And the God from the first game (the asshat who created Milla and Muzét) also apparently fell in luf with a human, a long time ago. 

Well, just to say that despite posing Humans and Spirits as two pretty different entities, the Xillia games - in both opuses - takes time to tell (and to show!) the player how they are actually quite similar, especially regarding their feelings. The losers who wanted to continue using spirits as fuel for their magitech have a semblance of “morally earl grey”, that quickly disappears because 1/we see spirits dying and the cast doesn’t treat it as wind on a windmill 2/it’s treated lightly, but it’s also the reason why the male protag develops new magitech for those people that won’t need to kill Spirits to work.

The Tales series always (at least from the games I played!) had two different factions/races being at war/in opposition (spirits and humans, humans and elves and half-elves, clones and originals, etc etc) but the party always finds a way to make them accept to live together, or at least acknowledge that the other isn’t “something” but is “someone”.

So to see the FE franchise - that is of course very different in its story telling, I know! - utterly fail with the Fodlan verse and continue treating their pointy eared “humanoids” as “others” without anyone telling the local specist that, no, people can live with you even if their ears are pointy, is really a disappointment.

#random post #tales of #Xillia stuff #this duology did a lot of things that were completely bleh #like ToX2 sort of sidelining the former characters even if at least they took the opposite route to ToS2 that never give a fig about the new #cast #reducing some characters to tropes or joke pissed me even if their story chapters were at times cool #old fart maxwell was an ass #but thing is spirits are depicted as weird and not human like at all #they have their own morals and reasoning and stuff #and lo they're pretty similar #there's even a joke about them eating the same sweets humans do #and there's no 'but their ears are pointy so they're bad" nonsense #FE16 #sort of