Dream Drop Distance Something about the new games

Discussion in 'Kingdom Hearts HD II.8: Final Chapter Prologue' started by Sadden Blood Warrior, Jun 12, 2012.

  1. Sadden Blood Warrior Lost in the mind! Help help me god!!!!! Their afte

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    Ok, so I've been looking into 3D a lot lately, trying to make money to get it and all that good jazz. But there has been something that has been bugging me about 3D, and even Birth By Sleep. I honestly think that Kingdom Hearts is starting to take itself too seriously. When I say that I mean to say that it's kinda like going more serious than it should. This all started my belief back when I first played Birth By Sleep, When you where doing the Mark of Mastery(At least I think it's called that, haven't played the game in forever). Honestly, from the first game to CoM, to 2, it was all about trying to save Kiari and Riku and exploring different worlds and them kinda living out their dream. 358/2 Days, Gives us a little back story on Roxas, why he did what he did, how he joined the organization, just a detailed background on him, which I believed was a great idea. Then you got Re:Coded, Continuation of the series, but I honestly don't really see how everyone thought that the bottle from Kingdom Hearts 2, in the ending, has anything to do with this game. But either way, this has to be one of my least favorites, it's kinda like eh, the story is interesting on how they must repair jiminity's journal. All in all that game just depends on my mood. But then you get to BBS and 3D, Both wayyy too serious for their own good. Birth By Sleep showing that you need to be a master of a keyblade? The F-, that is definitively not like the Kingdom Hearts I grew up with, KH1, he's chosen for the keyblade, and now he whoops ass. And now Sora and Riku have to go through the MoM test also? My point is, is that I believe that the games are definitively starting to take themselves too serious.




    What do you guys think? I want to hear your opinions.
     
  2. Ars Nova Just a ghost.

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    Oh boy, this argument. *sigh.*

    First off, not a single reliable source confirms that Sora and only Sora was the chosen wielder of the Keyblade. It's funny how often people fail to translate to fiction the unreliability and the tendency to gloss over details characteristic of myths, legends, and rumors in non-fiction. In fact, the prophecies are clearly contradictory from the start! Triton mentions in his version that the Keyblade wielder "shatters peace and brings ruin," but this conflicts with the savior story everyone else holds to; the reason being that there is more than one Keyblade, more than one Keyblade wielder, and more than one direction for that power to take. Getting mad that there are so many Keyblade wielders now strikes me as not having paid attention to the first game.

    Second, no one has to master a Keyblade; it's never been a prerequisite for wielding one, even as far as BbS canon. The sole requirement is a strong heart. That's it. But the difference between holding a weapon and being proficient with it cannot be ignored, especially in the case of an unorthodox weapon like the Keyblade. Eraqus is not passing out Keyblade licenses, he's training Keyblade professionals. The mark of mastery is, at best, an artificial measure of skill, and I expected something like that to come along well before BbS was released.

    To address the original question: Is it taking itself too seriously? Hardly. Kingdom Hearts has drawn some hard lines it refuses to cross; there will never be a CoD-style recount of the Keyblade war, where people are beating each other bloody or violating their enemies' women to weaken their hearts or any of that gobbeldygook. Is it becoming more serious? Yes, somewhat. A series that runs long enough has trouble avoiding that without coming off as unseemly or lazy. Think of Pokémon for an example of this.

    If Kingdom Hearts is guilty of any crime, it's that of becoming too complex, or of adding on too many superfluous details. But even that is highly subjective; I, for one, welcome the development of dark characters like Xehanort and Riku and I wish Nomura would take that concept further, instead of consistently presenting the light as infallibly good and the dark as irreparably evil. Only briefly has he flirted with the idea, with things like Eraqus attempting to kill Ventus.

    What does bother me is the addition of new kinds of enemies over and over, most of whom have only enough in-universe justification to last a single game, and the fact that Xehanort has essentially been retconned into a master strategist whose dark tendrils are in every reach of the story, where he began as a mere blip on the radar. I also found the entire Χ-blade plot absurd. Those are hardly enough to keep me from enjoying the series overall, though, much less because it's taking itself too seriously.
     
  3. Misty gimme kiss

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    This was the only thing I found objectionable in your post (rest was solid, A+ work). I think that is a legitimate concern to have! Forgive me for the parallel but I'm going to use Star Wars as an example here: in Episodes IV - VI, Jedi were made out to be the warriors of yore; all but extinct in the galaxy and so on. Finding out that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke's father (then unnamed, I believe?) were Jedi was impressive. When Luke began training to be a Jedi, you really got the feeling that it was something special, a huge responsibility and honor. And then the prequels happened. They have all sorts of other faults and that's obviously not the point of this thread, but one thing they did was make the Jedi common. By Episode II, there were literally hundreds of Jedi just running around. Obviously it's a different time period in the Star Wars timeline & everything, but still, it became far less impressive to actually see a Jedi. Seemed like anyone could do it.

    I would say that the Kingdom Hearts series is in similar danger, though it's not gone to the extent of Star Wars. When Sora became the wielder of the Keyblade, you were impressed. I do fear that, if future games feature dozens upon dozens of Keyblade wielders, you will start to find the weapon less impressive. However, they also have the Keyblade Master title, which we've seen many strong characters fail to attain, like...
    Terra and Sora
    ... so even if we lose the previous weight placed on the Keyblade, there is still the Master title.

    That said.

    I do understand the concern with the series taking itself too seriously, but I would agree with Nova that the convolution is a far greater issue. As any series continues, the universe it is set in must expand; I think that's what is happening with Kingdom Hearts. However, with all the new worlds, characters, enemies, plot points, etc., we begin to lose focus on some of the extremely interesting foundation that has already been lain. And the good thing about all these spin-off games is that you don't actually have to play them, if you don't want to. I haven't played a game since Re:Chain of Memories but, thanks to the Kingdom Hearts community, I've been able to keep up to date on all the details etc. But that's just me--if you don't want to go that far into the stories, you don't have to! If/when Kingdom Hearts III comes out, right now it seems that Xehanort will be the "final boss" of sorts, the main enemy. All we really need to tell you is that he's returning for real. You don't need the details, if you don't really care about them! You can still enjoy the games for their basic story, fun gameplay (arguably, lol), crossover qualities, and so on.
     
  4. Ars Nova Just a ghost.

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    I can only counter this with a logical argument, the exact nature of which doesn't strike me as particularly effective where natural selection is replaced with creative selection, but here goes:

    A hundred Jedi. Out of billions of people. Less than ten Keyblade wielders. Out of billions of people. Fictional works have a tendency to suffer bottleneck effects like that since, let's face it, rarely can a writer make you want to watch, read, or play from the perspective of an ordinary guy when there are extraordinary folk about. But that doesn't change the fact that the effective sample size is drastically small and ostensibly skewed. Of course, people are not naturally wired to process numbers like that, nor is it entirely sound in the case where an author, not some immutable force of nature, is calling the shots. As I said, flimsy argument, but technically sound.

    I think people are just holding the Keyblade wielders up on a pedestal. Rather, one a bit higher than it ought to be. Conventional swordsmen in our own history numbered in the hundreds, and perhaps thousands at one time, yet the art is and was no less revered for those numbers, and a trained or master swordsman is still nothing to scoff at. It strikes me as a certain sub-set of "missing the forest for the trees" which is perhaps more accurately characterized as "missing the splitting of the atom for the sawing-a-woman-in-half trick;" people have to believe that something is special, but the only reason they don't is because they examine it from an awkward perspective, lacking acute details. They end up dishonoring what's really special about it by demanding the elimination or mucking-up of these details, directly or indirectly. People want less Keyblade wielders; inherent in this is the generalization of Keyblade-related skills and a loss of intricacy, which makes the art less impressive. Or, to come full-circle: The higher the pedestal, the more we can fantasize, but the less clearly we can see the object. People ought to learn to appreciate what they can observe before we chase all the detail out of the universe.
     
  5. Misty gimme kiss

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    The problem I find here (it's late and my head is a bit fuzzy so I dunno if I'm missing the majority of your points xD) is that, in the Kingdom Hearts universe, there really aren't that many characters. The Disney characters are indeed significant--some more than others--but out of the truly original characters? All of them are wielding or have wielded Keyblades. When Kairi is just handed a Keyblade out of nowhere, you tend to get a little feeling of "but I thought I was special B("
    ... Or at least, I do, haha.
    I felt that the games--especially the first--taught us to do that? Sora tramping around with the Keyblade was a big deal. Many people noticed and cared and commented upon it. Leon remarked that he was shocked that the honor of wielding the Keyblade was handed to Sora, a mere child; Organization XIII pursue Sora because they want the Keyblade in their corner, so to speak.
    I think that might be a little beyond the thought process I had, hah.
     
  6. What? 『 music is freedom 』

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    One must look for the justification, I suppose. In my opinion, the difference between your aforementioned Star Wars analogy and the presence of an increase of keyblade wielders is in regards to the plot background. The reason the Jedi felt so "common" in the prequels was because we simply had no backstory to them that was given to us within the film. Many of these Jedi were quite literally random strangers that were put in a position of power on the basis of being Jedi - a role that, we know through the exposition of the original trilogy, to be fairly powerful and prestigious. But besides their status as Jedi (which gave viewers a simple idea of the type of people they were), and perhaps the interesting qualities of their respective species, viewers knew little about these characters. This may be considered the reason why Jedi reveals in the original trilogy were more powerful - we at least had a backstory to these characters. We had justification. In Kingdom Hearts, the characters would thus have some sort of justification for their reveals as well, perhaps. For example, Kairi at least holds a major role as a Princess of Heart. The quality of the justification is another topic, but it is justification nonetheless. We have backstory to support this reveal, and as long as the justification is sensible, in my opinion the reveal should be quite acceptable. The special qualities of keyblade wielding do indeed appear to be diminished because there is a greater proportion of people wielding keyblades, but personally I do believe this would not diminish the significance of the keyblade. Even per keyblades, keyblade wielder attitudes, and keyblade powers, uniqueness exists. One could compare it to the usage of different coloured lightsabers, to return to the Star Wars analogy.
     
  7. Ars Nova Just a ghost.

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    As I admitted, an author's choice to focus on a certain set of people implies a certain aesthetic. But the Kingdom Hearts universe can hardly be said to be populated by less than fifty people, no matter how many or how little or what sort of characters are in focus. There are clearly average joes; you can find a few in Traverse Town. This implies the existence of more, and further implied is that there are probably still way more average joes than Keyblade wielders. Case in point: Quite a few of those joes don't even know what the hell is a Keyblade.

    Another point I must reiterate: You are special. Just because a bunch of people know how to do something doesn't mean it's not a difficult art to master, or one that makes the practitioner unique. Again, consider the swordsmanship example. If all Keyblades were replaced with regular swords, would you not think those swordsmen special? If not, then you underestimate the rigors swordsmanship demands, and the technical intricacy of the art.

    To use another example... Misty, you're one of thousands of forum administrators. Don't you think that's special? Some misguided idiot might think any old shmuck can keep a forum running, but doubtless the job demands some programming know-how, a sense of good graphic design, experience in negotiation and mediating, the ability to make and enforce rules fairly... or, at the absolute least, the connections to assemble a team with that combined skill set. It's no small feat, even if quite a few people have done it. And you can do it all at only 12 years old!

    Of course they taught us to do that. We just did it way too much. :v
     
  8. Misty gimme kiss

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    Huurrr.

    But really I do see & understand your point, and agree with it. Just, I understand where Sadden is coming from, complaining about the rampant Keyblade ownership of recent games, and I don't think it's uncommon or incorrect to generally think that something only a fraction of the population does is something inherently difficult. And I'm not sure wielding a Keyblade in itself is all that difficult--Sora picked it up rather quickly, it seems, though he did have years of swordsmanship training from Destiny Islands. Kairi, on the other hand, while she is obviously not terribly effective when she's briefly shown fighting Heartless, still manages to dispatch a few--however, we have no reason to believe that she's ever held a weapon before the age of 15. Your swordsmanship parallel is solid but I'm not sure that Keyblade wielding, at least within the standards of the Kingdom Hearts universe, is a complicated skill.

    ... I feel like we're going in circles xD
     
  9. Ars Nova Just a ghost.

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    It's not a complicated skill, perhaps, but the very ability to hold one does bar usage from many—potentially millions. And, once again: Holding a sword is not the same as knowing how to use it. So, on top of actually holding one, there is the skill to be learned of wielding it effectively. Kairi is not yet skilled, but she, along with the others, is still quite special.

    That's ok, it gets us more post count-*brick'd*
     
  10. Loxare Hollow Bastion Committee

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    I hate to break into your argument, it feels like an intrusion, but I have a point.

    Mild spoilers, for those who live under rocks.

    At the Keyblade Graveyard in BBS, we see hundreds, perhaps thousands of Keyblades. Considering Keyblades normally have only one Keyblade, we can assume that there is a similar number of Keyblade Wielders. In the rest of the Kingdom Hearts games, there are perhaps a dozen people who can hold the Keyblade (Terra, Aqua, Ven, Sora, Riku, Mickey, Eraqus, Kairi, Vanitas, Xehanort, Roxas, Xion). Of those, three had one because they were connected to people who had them originally, Sora got his for sharing his heart with Ven (presumably) and Riku got his from Terra. Twelve people, out of the thousands of people who used to own a Keyblade. Sure, there are billions of people who don't have a Keyblade, but there used to be thousands who did. Suddenly, the number of Wielders seems smaller.
     
  11. larxenex Merlin's Housekeeper

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    I think that some of the games from Kingdom Hearts are getting too serious too, which makes some of them like Kingdom Hearts:Re-Coded a bit boring for me because of its background story. I have no idea why Square Enix has to make serious background stories for the KH games... The serious background stories are a little bit too boring for me. Except for the one in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days, which explained a lot about Organization 13 and Roxas. I just don't like the story of Kingdom Hearts: Re-Coded. It's almost like the same thing of Kingdom Hearts, except it has a somewhat different story concept.