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More thoughts on Ouroboros
Dec. 14th, 2020 12:45 pmAmiel really is a microcosm of everything wrong with this game.
Pre-timeloop Amiel is a white mage who sucks at anything to do with offense. She loves flowers, cooking, and her childhood best friend. In a word, she's inoffensive.
Post-timeloop Amiel is ten pounds of unresolved rage issues in a five-pound bag. She wants to set fire to and/or have sex with everything in her vicinity, not always in that order. She despises her "naive" former self, takes no pleasure in any of the things she used to like, and is mainly looking for someone to enable her extended tantrum.
I'm not saying her characterization is bad in and of itself. The path from point A to point B makes sense. But in a game where the main characters tend to focus on supporting each other's mental health and well-being, nobody ever points out that her old self wasn't really that bad. They can't, because pre-loop Amiel was a cliche the dev doesn't like, and all such cliches must burn. And it's like this with everything! Cute mascots are cliche, so you have to kill the cute mascot. Companion affinity meters are cliche, so you can kill the character who sells items that raise the non-hidden fake meter, even though doing so raises the hidden affinity meter the game unironically has. It's all about taking down, and none of the stuff it puts up to replace any of it is compelling enough to make up for it. (And of course it's only the stuff the dev doesn't like--there's never a takedown of how the game uses the "bisexual thief who thinks the main character is hot" trope, and that's so cliche there were three of these characters in Dragon Age Origins alone.)
Pre-timeloop Amiel is a white mage who sucks at anything to do with offense. She loves flowers, cooking, and her childhood best friend. In a word, she's inoffensive.
Post-timeloop Amiel is ten pounds of unresolved rage issues in a five-pound bag. She wants to set fire to and/or have sex with everything in her vicinity, not always in that order. She despises her "naive" former self, takes no pleasure in any of the things she used to like, and is mainly looking for someone to enable her extended tantrum.
I'm not saying her characterization is bad in and of itself. The path from point A to point B makes sense. But in a game where the main characters tend to focus on supporting each other's mental health and well-being, nobody ever points out that her old self wasn't really that bad. They can't, because pre-loop Amiel was a cliche the dev doesn't like, and all such cliches must burn. And it's like this with everything! Cute mascots are cliche, so you have to kill the cute mascot. Companion affinity meters are cliche, so you can kill the character who sells items that raise the non-hidden fake meter, even though doing so raises the hidden affinity meter the game unironically has. It's all about taking down, and none of the stuff it puts up to replace any of it is compelling enough to make up for it. (And of course it's only the stuff the dev doesn't like--there's never a takedown of how the game uses the "bisexual thief who thinks the main character is hot" trope, and that's so cliche there were three of these characters in Dragon Age Origins alone.)
