As you’ve said, it’s never really made clear why he sticks with the group or why they want him to. Even Mizuti, odd as she is, set out from her obscure village on a heroic journey to save the world. As I’ve mentioned, pretty much everyone in the party has a JRPG ready backstory. Kalas has always seemed a little off, like he didn’t belong in his role. For a moment I thought that I’d screwed up a choice somewhere along the way, the game was over, and I’d have to retrace my steps to find the spot where I’d gone wrong.Īs shocking as it is, though, the moment makes sense immediately. It’s a shocking scene, and because of the expert staging, the first time I hit this moment, I almost believed that really was it. The scene even ends with the sound of a CRT powering down, as if the game has just turned off your TV. In a fourth-wall cracking speech he declares that the game is over and kicks you out of the world. Only Melodia has been the mastermind all along and Kalas betrays everyone. Then at the end, Melodia saves the day by bringing the army to destroy the monstrous Geldoblame… Geldoblame absorbs the power of the End Magnus, transforms into the biggest, creepiest boss yet, and then gives a stiff challenge in battle thanks to his instant-death power. That confrontation is staged like a finale. They also seem like the culmination of our protagonist’s personal arc, getting that out of the way just in time for us to end Geldoblame’s plans once and for all.
Giacomo’s apparent death and the destruction of the Goldoba bring us full circle to the events of the first continent. It first does away with a major plot point and secondary antagonist, as Kalas and company infiltrate the Goldoba and defeat Giacomo, Ayme, and Folon in combat in one of the game’s hardest boss battles. The moment comes after the disc swap, so it seems plausible that you’re reaching the end of an unusually short JRPG. What defines a great twist for me is that you don’t see it coming, but once it comes, you realize you always saw it coming.īaten Kaitos stages the twist really well, too. What the hell is even going on in Reverence with its papercraft landscape and angry bubble people I couldn’t possibly say. The village of Parnasse, made of pastry, would quickly come to have the world’s worst mold problem, never mind the structural issues that would arise over time as hungry children and/or Gibari consumed the walls. Whoever came up with these locations didn’t really care if they made sense or could exist in any plausible reality. That certainly doesn’t describe Mira, a continent that, even in the generally bonkers setting of Baten Kaitos, stands out for its sheer absurdity. Instead of fantastic landscapes, we keep getting settings that are drearily plausible. As the ability of computers to render virtual worlds realistically has increased, the magic seems to have drained out of those worlds. This is sort of endemic to games in the HD era and Western games specifically. I’m also currently playing the latest Witcher game, and while its graphics are certainly accomplished, they seem to have been bent solely to the purpose of recreating a specific misremembrance of medieval Europe. I love Mira, all the more because it seems like the kind of place videogames can’t bring themselves to portray anymore. Who should appear to lead us out of this strange predicament but the weirdest member of the party, Mizuti, who shows up in a skull-decorated boat, singing a perhaps unintentionally creepy song.Īfter we shmup our way out of trouble, we come to my favorite continent. As our slugboat travels down the rainbow road to Mira, it gets shot down by the Goldoba and crash-lands in an alternate dimension where Baten Kaitos is a shmup. This week, we visit the land of illusion, traverse a labyrinth of mirrors, and experience one of the most epic twists in gaming. In these letters, we will be discussing in-depth the GameCube RPG Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean as we play through the game together. Baten Kaitos Letters is a correspondence with our Rebekah Valentine and Sparky Clarkson of Ludonarratology, and originally posted there.