/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4860608
They were weak and shouldn't have put all their faith in some machine mother to guide them.

>>4860616
but they're scammed into it! they don't have a choice.

>When Earth became uninhabitable, several humans built the spaceship Noah and escaped into space. For years, they traveled the universe until they discovered Algo. They decided they wanted it, but they needed to get rid of the native population first. Mother Brain was created in order to fulfill that purpose.

>Mother Brain established itself as a benevolent being only concerned with making life better for Algo. Under Mother Brain, luxuries that were once beyond the reaches of all but the richest of men were now commonplace. This confused the people, who were not used to such things, and they began to fight for what was created. Mother Brain fulfilled every dream and desire of those it watched over, making it so that no one needed to work anymore.

>Unbeknownst to the population, there was an insidious purpose behind this. Because no one was working anymore, the people had become weak and lethargic. In time, they began to believe that they needed Mother Brain to survive. It was the intention of Mother Brain to lead Algo down the path of destruction once the people became completely dependent on the system.

that's not the part that gets me tho. it's the fact that they get a utopia, they basically get fully automated luxury communism. and they have to destroy it, killing this huge amount of the population, and fuck up their entire system for centuries. why? because people from another planet wanted their planet, that's why.

the 80s music and art are so cheery and quirky. i love the aesthetics of this game. but seriously the plot is a dropkick in the face.

Also the party gets killed by OUR descendants.

And it deserves the justice it got because it got possessed.

>>4860608

Yeah, games back then used to have a real pair of balls. I don't even remember the last time an RPG killed off a party member for good. Or if they do they replace them with a completely identical one.

>>4860839
Sauce?

>>4860846
Akahori Gedou Hour Rabuge

>>4860642
That's exaclty what I like with the plot: how what would come as utopia has the people getting all bored and apathetic. When you never any effort to do, it's hard to find a purpose to your life. In a way, it reminds me of dystopian science-fiction movies from the 70s.

Even though the ending is dark, it would have been worse for the Algo people if the Earthlings got to genocide them.

Oh, and Motavia kinda goes back to its prime state : the planet is very similar in PS1 and PS4.

>>4860845
>I don't even remember the last time an RPG killed off a party member for good
I guess you don't play very many RPGs anymore.

>>4860898

I don't actually.

>>4860642
It's like the rabbit warren in Watership Down that's being fed by the farmer. Most of them don't realise they are just being fattened for the kill.

If you make a population weak and lethargic they'll become too stupid to fight back. In Paseo there's a kid complaining that his dad no longer works and just sits around all day doing nothing.

I always liked that they made Earthlings the enemy. Because I can totally see us doing something like this to another planet.

>>4860642
That sounds like a pretty inefficient plan for a genocide... Was that really eartmen intention or was the whole plan the work of dark force?

>>4860839
that picture is amazing! saved!

>>4860949
Dark Force Made Me Do It seems to be a pretty consistent explanation in the PS games, but in PS2 you wonder if it it's really required. in this case the earthlings already had their plan fully hatched. the presence of dark force being there might be needed to explain why they would do something like this, that it had corrupted them, but it's actually not required. that is to say, the presence of dark force in the box can imply there is a supernatural dimension to their being evil, as well as creating some internal plot consistency, but you could just as easily have removed Dark Force from the game and it still would have made sense, i think. calling the spaceship Noah implies a link to noah's ark and other forms of fallenness or biblical psychology, perhaps.

>>4860873
yes, you're right. it would have been worse. and it's easy to overlook that. i just really am amazed by the reward for your party's Great Victory being the destruction of nearly all life and a new technological dark age. most of the time the reward for winning is the expurgation of evil from the world and a new happier order. in this one, getting rid of the evil means death for virtually everyone!

i guess with a slightly more open world or some more sophisticated psychological plotting, the story might not have been so dark in the end. i really like the 80s aesthetic, and PS2 is nothing if not vintage old-school dungeon-crawling JRPG. but there are elements here that imply the possibilities for a very rich world.

and the whole aspect of the space pirates in the middle was left undeveloped too...i would have liked to have traveled to different worlds and so on.

>>4860946
yes, me too. i think it would have been fun to discover the conspiracy, or imagine further events after the ending of the story, how life continues in those other cities, even during the decline.

>>4860949
apparently that was their plan. but again, the question is, did they really need Dark Force to come up with it?

>>4860949
I agree that's convoluted and going with Mother Brain spawning bio-monsters from the start seemed like a sounder plan. But seeing how a Palman teenage girl can slaughter monsters, maybe they thought it would be more prudent to dull them first. Plus they had to wait for Motavia to become a lush planet.

>>4861187
The ending was a WTF moment for me too, and that's why we're discussing it. It's bound to not leave you indifferent, and it's a nice change from the usual fairytail ending.
I agree it's lacking in development, but every PS game, besides PS4, suffer from being laconic.

>>4860949

just having Mother Brain deteriorate over time, for any number of reasons, would also have been a good explanation. maybe some crazy band of luddites or whatever infects the system with a computer virus, or disrupts the bio-engineering program. they could be led by neifirst or whatever.

maybe there's a schism in the ranks among the earthlings on noah. maybe mother brain achieves sentience on her own...there are lots of possibilities.

>>4861231
yes, true. open-world PS2 would have been so great tho. bonus other characters, side quests, superbosses...maybe finding and upgrading your own ship and so on.

>>4860608
I always wondered why the characters in this game were so fucking weak and the ending answered that.

>>4860616
it's all an allegory for communism

>>4861187
>whole aspect of the space pirates in the middle was left undeveloped too
I heard in the original version that there was no space pirates and it was just you die and are recloned.

>>4860902
That's a shame. If you like character permadeath, try SRPGs like Xcom and Fire Emblem. Some modern RPGs haven't been shy about killing off characters but we don't need to mention them here.

How about the part where you rescue the dudes daughter and he kills her and then fucking kills himself with dynamite.

>>4861187
>i just really am amazed by the reward for your party's Great Victory being the destruction of nearly all life and a new technological dark age.

It's not really surprising if viewed in the context of the "real" world. There's always a catch to everything. For example, if you want end pollution on Earth, you'll have the end and reverse progress of modern technology. Of course, most people don't want that.

>>4861981
they're not too weak to bulldoze nine hundred dragons on the way through ryuon.

besides, protecting the people is what the agents are for.

>>4862652
i forgot about that part.

you forget, because of the music and the bright color palette, that this game in general was pretty dark.

>>4862609
interesting. i guess that would make sense too. that sequence with tyler and the gaira prison always felt like it sort of came in from some other place: whoa, there's space pirates?

in my dream-game of a Phantasy Star 2.5 there would definitely be a lot more room for space piracy in the Dark Ages between PS2 and PS3. maybe dealing with those surviving earthlings, or recruiting older members of the team, things like this. maybe battling other neifirst-style clones of yourself, who knows. wouldn't you like to have seen another game in the series that explores class conflict, different levels of technology, the kind of chaos that follows?

i really love that setting.

>>4862678
yes, exactly. the destruction of Mother Brain would be a disaster, given that by the time that events in the game begin, she's in control of everything.

but it is tragic, though. what gets exploited is, essentially, the basic goodness of people - no? i mean there is the story of the kid who's dad doesn't work, the guy who becomes a bandit and other things, but essentially it is because people don't have to be violent and warlike and adapt to the system that they all wind up being wiped out.

>>4862720
sorry, not ryuon. no dragons in towns. ikuto is what i meant.

also the fact that the sword was called Lung always kind of creeped me out. i don't know if it's a translation of some other famous sword name but i always assumed that it meant that was where it was going to attack you.

>>4862730
クライブリンガー (Crybringer) = Glosword
デスロウナー (Deathloaner) = Desrona
リビングブレード (Living Blade) = Lung

Those are the three magical sword enemies.

>>4860608
That's lore added by PS4, so it's really PS4 that's being dark. In PS2 what happens after you win is up in the air, though it's still a bit dark as it implies that your whole team are killed in a hoppeless battle against thousands of Earthmen.

>>4862746
>deathloaner
>desrona

i never would have guessed this one. cool. thanks anon!

>>4862752
even if Rolf & Co were killed on the ship, i feel as though the magical power of cloning tech might be able to raise them again somewhere else in the canon fanfic i have in my head.

but seriously, could they really all just be killed? just swarmed by earthmen? and no escape pods or anything? that would be incredibly harsh.

>yes, yes, congratulations on defeating Dark Force and Mother Brain. HOWEVER

a room full of old dudes kill our heroes after all of that? i understand that they could have all kinds of access to crazy next-level magic or technology or whatever, throw those plasma rings on you, i guess. but to just have the party wiped out and then imagine those guys standing around wringing the blood out of their robes and going, "well, that's that boys." i can't into it.

i get that the party dies...and yet, some part of me can't believe it either. it's a really good ending, for sure. i just can't believe that they're all extinguished without a trace and that, on top of the population genocide and the dark ages that that room full of guys still has survivors in it too, that they just...kind of sail on elsewhere into space.

clones. i'm going with clones. somewhere, on some other planet, there's a cloning tank.

>>4862831
supposedly the jp version clearly implies that the party survives

>>4862851
really? any details you can share about this? like who survives, and how? give details man, i need to know these things!

>and also, why does nei have a gun on the box art? she looks good with it but it's kind of confusing.

>>4862863
apparently, the end makes it clear the party at least defeats the earthmen. It's what happens after that is unknown.
there's some info here
http://www.ripplinger.us/camineet/theories/ps2end.asp
But don't read part 3 where the writter can't id a optical lens effect...

>>4862886
the sword! of course. how could I have forgotten the sword?

all right, I can now die in peace.

>>4862831
>i feel as though the magical power of cloning tech might be able to raise them

Yeah but why would anyone think too is the issue. The clone store ain't a charity

>>4863031
i mean this guy owes you a solid, but it would be a good cut-scene to watch. imagine being this guy and realizing the shit that is about to unfold. maybe he realizes what is about to happen: uh, sir, the universal apparatus on which all life depends was just blown up. we're pretty sure all life is about to end. should we resurrect these guys who used to work for you? and maybe he says, no, it's better we don't say anything for now until we can get our story straight. that's a possibility.

another one might be lutz, as that link indicates. he could teleport the team out of there and back to the esper mansion if things were really going south, and then the team could make its way back to the spaceport as they wished, hang out on dezo, and so on. or maybe they link up with the space pirates and decide to explore some other world. more likely they go their separate ways - some going back to their homes, maybe some stay where they are, others want to go back to help with the chaos that is coming.

maybe the sword itself has some advice to give that tilts things one way or the other also, anything's possible in end-game cutscenes.

>>4862720
>they're not too weak to bulldoze nine hundred dragons on the way through ryuon
yeah, but that is already the endgame where you've fought your fair share through giant flies and wasps(biomonsters) and also robots. and these caracters are supposedly the elite of the elite, it's makes sense tho they grew up sheltered in a utopia for so long naturally they'd be weak.

i saw >>4862730
>>4862720
>>4864642
Those dragons kicked my ass and needed to grind up for them i remember i was around lv20 or so party of Rolf, Rudo, blonde slasher chick and the medic redhead.

>>4862886
that site is really interesting anon, thanks for sharing.

>>4862886
>>4864671

This site is probably older than most posters

>>4862886
>/theories/
Dropped. I can say with certainty that this guy is 100% wrong without reading it. Fan theories are the worst. Phantasy Star fan theories are especially spectacularly retarded.

I could have kept this opinion to myself but I wanted a reason to bump this thread.

>>4866480

No shit it's not accurate you tit, the idea isn't about being right, it's about having a giggle and think.