This thread will serve a useful purpose in spite of itself, because I was just looking for an excuse to whine about the storytelling in a game I beat recently. Obviously, this will contain spoilers.
That game being Star Ocean: Second Evolution on the PSP--a remake of Second Story for the PSX. I did enjoy it--well, a lot of it--but the plot felt like it was written as a round-robin by people who didn't quite understand that when it's your turn to write a chapter, what you write is supposed to be based on the stuff the other people have already written.
Like ... there's this woman named Celine who wants your help, OK? She's obtained a treasure map, but doesn't dare venture into the caves alone to retrieve the treasure. You're dragooned into helping her, and when you do find the treasure, it's an ancient manuscript that none of your party can read. You need the help of a linguist. So ... a little later in the game, you reach a big university town where a famous linguist lives. Great! But he refuses to speak to your party. Not great. But you can ask around town, and eventually find a man named Bowman who's a friend of the linguist. He agrees to get you an interview--if you will journey into a monster-infested cavern and discover a totally unknown herb for him. Ugh. OK, venture into the cavern, find the herb, bring it back to Bowman, get an audience and give the linguist the manuscript. That was some nonsense fetch quest bullshit, but no worse then you see in a lot of JRPGs, right?
WRONG. Because in most games, there would be some kind of resolution after all of that. Not in Second Evolution, though! At no point, from the time you give the linguist the manuscript to the end of the game, do you learn what's in the manuscript. At no point does the manuscript become important. At no point is the manuscript ever mentioned again!
Second Evolution is always like that. None of its damn storylines go anywhere. We hear about the Warrior of Light for an hour, and then that's dropped and we never hear about it again. We go to all that damn trouble for the manuscript, and I just told you how that ends up. We have to endure Claude being a whiny little shit because blau a bloo, Rena seems to like Dias better then him, first when Dias and Claude rescue some kids together, then when Dias kicks Claude's ass in a tournament, then when they're defending the front line together, and then the world suddenly blows up while Dias is still on it, and I guess Rena isn't very bothered by that because she never mentions him again, and what the hell kind of resolution is that? Oh no, we can't hurt the Ten Wise Men! Let's spend the majority of the second disk doing the Four Fields quest, that will solve this problem in ways that are never really explained, oh look, releasing the Four Fields didn't accomplish shit, we still can't hurt them. This stupid game!
(I really liked the private action system, I liked the party members who aren't Claude or Rena, I liked the crafting systems and the skill systems and the multiple endings and a bunch of other stuff. Just ... this is some really inept story-telling, guys).
Post edited September 29, 2013 by BadDecissions