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out-of-this-dimension · 5 years

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The Star Fox Adventures Game Manual -- Analysis

So, you may remember a few months back, I received a lot of hate mail on AO3 and FF.net for a fic that I posted that I’ve since taken down in hopes of redoing someday. The hate was largely from people who don’t like Panther (the fic was Krystal x Panther) but a lot of their arguments were attempts to debunk how “canon” my fic is. With a lot of my fics, I don’t stray too far from canon, but I do fill in “gaps” with my own headcanons. I feel like the SF series is a comfortable enough blank slate to do that. Mild spoilers for future fics, but one of these headcanons is that Panther is Cerinian. I’ve actually covered this headcanon previously on my blog but I’m too lazy to look up the link.

One of the arguments my “secret admirer” tried to make about how my fic “contradicts canon” is that “Well, Panther can’t be Cerinian because the Star Fox Adventures manual says that Krystal is the sole survivor.” (and then they made a hate fic about how my headcanon of Panther being Cerinian couldn’t possibly work, but that’s a story for another time).

Admittingly, I hadn’t looked at the manual in most of a decade, so that little tidbit escaped my memory. But honestly, with Cerinian OCs flying around left and right in the fandom, I thought it was an odd piece of info to nitpick about. Regardless, it sparked some intrigue, so I decided to poke around the internet and lo and behold, I found a PDF copy of the manual. Since it’s been a long while since the last time I read the manual, I decided to do an analysis on it. Analysis with pictures under the cut!

This is the “prologue” of Star Fox Adventures and while it’s all good and dandy, I want to point out three very important things-- 1. Peppy retired at this point, not after Krystal showed up. I mean, this is relatively minor but I thought it was noteworthy that our Barrel-Roll Loving Team Dad was already going to be retired before the “next SF game”-- whatever that would have been, though I’m fairly certain Assault’s development launched right at the heels of Adventures, if not while Adventures was in late development still. 2. Slippy apparently traded in his pilot’s wings to become a mechanic, which is... blatantly ignored in both Assault and Command because while he does mechanic-like stuff (playing off of his role as the “team smartie pants”), he still very much is a pilot. 3. Falco left because he was bored is only a rumor. I know “Farewell Beloved Falco” tackles this to a degree. I want to also note that this inspired me to re-read Farewell Beloved Falco on Monday and there’s no real point in the manga that says Falco left because he was bored (I have my own speculation as to why he left but I’ll save that for later). I find it really odd that the manual says Falco “simply disappeared”, when he very clearly left with great bravado at the end of the manga. He didn’t vanish into the night or anything, like this would imply. He said he was going to go solo for a bit and flew off after the Titania Incident. It... feels like maybe there was a miscommunication here between who was giving the person writing the manual details.

This is the Character Bio page, which, to my secret admirer’s glee, does contain the info that Krystal is the only survivor of Cerinia. It also name drops Cornerian Weapons R&D, which has also never been heard of before or since this manual. I actually searched excessively for more mentions about this and yielded no results. Curious. I had never noticed that and assumed Slippy had just been tinkering on stuff for fun. Also oof, my heart at ROB being considered a full-fledged SF member.

I’m going to skip over the parts I don’t have any commentary on.

So it’s pretty clear from the final product that Rareware had no idea what they were doing with the SpellStones. They clearly absorb magic from the planet to keep the planet from falling apart (which says to me that this is not the planet’s natural state but I’ve talked about that before so I’ll spare you the ramble). But what was going on with them is really unclear. I understand that Dinosaur Planet gives a better explanation of the SpellStones but that purpose does not seem to be canon any longer.

The text here implies that Scales has every single SpellStone in his possession (the Queen EarthWalker ALSO states he removed the SpellStones himself). Yet, when you make it into the game...

(Special note: I found this pic on Google and the file was called “Asshole”, which, tbh isn’t inaccurate but it gave me a chuckle so I thought I’d share it.)

Scales doesn’t possess all of the SpellStones. Drakor, a mutant in Scales’s army, guards the one at Dragon Rock-- we can assume Scales is responsible for that. The King RedEye has been fitted with one in his head-- we can assume Scales is responsible for that. But past that? We find Scales in the CloudRunner Fortress treasury with the first Ocean SpellStone, which he has clearly just found. And the entire point of DarkIce Mines, the entire reason the SnowHorn are enslaved, is because Scales is looking for the SpellStone. Which says to me that the SpellStone wasn’t even removed by him. He wouldn’t have had to enslave the entire tribe to go digging for it otherwise. He wouldn’t have had to lay siege to CloudRunner Fortress either.

So this entire plot point is absolutely inconsistent to what’s in the manual and even... in the game. What is the reasoning behind this? Probably the innumerable plot changes during SFAdv’s development.

With the fortunate release of the Dinosaur Planet ROM and the creation of the Warlock Engine by Hugo Peters, a lot has been uncovered in terms of how Dinosaur Planet would have originally looked like. Dark Ice Mines, for instance, was actually meant to connect via the SnowHorn Wastes (or, Northern Wastes) via a small cave entrance on the other side of the river near where one finds Garunda Te. The cave still exists in the finalized version of the game but leads to no where.

However, with Star Fox being added in, I think Rare felt the need to add in things that made the game feel a bit more in line with the Star Fox series. The planet pieces being torn apart was a way to shove in Arwing sections of the game. And the devs needed a reason for the change in the planet’s state... and what’s a better throwaway reason than “it’s just magic, bruh”? So the SpellStones, being focal points in the game’s story, were changed to being part of the reason for the planet falling to pieces. That led to DarkIce Mines, despite having a basically completed map, getting yoinked from the planet’s surface and tossed into space, meaning the entrance was sealed. The reason for all of this was handwaved into “Oh, Scales did this because he removed the stones” without... the game actually reflecting much of that at all because most of it had been made with a different story in mind.

I think Rare did this hoping that no one would look at the plot too closely but uh oh, that didn’t happen. And if you need further proof that this was all a bit of an “oopsie” on Rare’s part, you need not look much further than DarkIce Mines once more. Belina Te has a small throwaway line about how her father hid the SpellStone in the mines. She says something to the effect of “He didn’t say where he hid it, only that it was somewhere safe” which is code for “Yeah lol I stuck this important object crafted by the gods into the claws of a giant monstrosity but it’s w/e”. Maybe he was hoping that Galdon would protect it from Scales. I mean, it’s not a bad thought, really...

But the fact that the game seems to imply Scales has all the stones is still technically wrong. Now, because I think about these things a little TOO much, here’s my theory as to how this could have technically worked: All the SpellStones are placed in the same spot, you just traverse different routes (The Force Point Temples) to reach that spot. The only way I could see Scales making out with 2 out of 4 SpellStones is that there was a battle between the SharpClaw and the other dinosaurs at the central point where the SpellStones are located and General Scales was only partially successful. Which could very well be the case, but, unfortunately, the manual and game seem to not act as though this is the case...

tl;dr for that section: This literally makes no sense no matter how you slice it and sure, you can come up for reasons that things ended up this way but ultimately, the game is conflicting with itself about its own story. But let’s move on.

Apparently atmospheric conditions are so powerful on Sauria that it can interrupt communications, which I thought was a neat lore tidbit.

So I got 2 things from this tidbit about Saurian.

1. This language is called “relatively new”, even though it’s existed for thousands of years, which feels like a contradiction? A quick Google search estimates English has been around for 1400 years, to put that into perspective and I think English is considered to be fairly new compared to other languages, but I’m honestly not too terribly learned on that. Of course, that’s only viewing this through the lens of someone who lives on Earth. Having a language around in the Lylat System only for “a few thousand years” makes me wonder how long the older languages have existed? It’s quite possible that a few thousand years isn’t a long lifespan for a language in this universe.

2. Who were these off-worlders? And boy do I have theories.

Theory 1. The Krazoa. They are seemingly the gods to the dinosaurs and speak the same language. This could mean that they taught the dinosaurs this new language. It would fit the bill for their portrayal in this game. They are godlike entities, the dinosaurs do revere them... it makes sense.

Theory 2. The ones who taught the dinosaurs how to talk were the Cerinians. There is mild evidence for this with Krystal understanding Dino Speak without a translator despite being new to the planet (evidenced by the fact the CloudRunner had to explain the Krazoa to her/some dialogue bits about her learning of General Scales/the brief exposition we get about her searching the Lylat System for answers). You could argue this is due to her telepathy - she could just simply be talking in a way that the dinosaurs can understand but I don’t think Krystal’s telepathy had been firmly established as part of her character at this point (she had the ability to leave telepathic messages onto her staff and she could channel magic into Andross, but her true telepathy powers weren’t really shown until Assault). Krystal’s staff also seems strangely in-tune with Sauria, which I’ve theorized about previously. I’m mostly thinking on the Magic Caves that are conveniently scattered on Sauria. It could be that Cerinians had built the shrines within the Magic Caves to help their descendants out if they ever showed up to Sauria. So, I guess the tl;dr version is “Maybe the Cerinians had previously been on Sauria and had established the Magic Caves and had taught the dinosaurs their native language?”

To summarize my thoughts, the manual is a reflection of SFAdv itself- riddled with weird plot inconsistencies that you can almost fudge reasons/logic to cover but some of it feels like stretches for the sake of making plot make sense. There’s some contradictions in the lore/story but despite that, there’s still interesting tidbits to be found.

If anything, this booklet kind of validates my feelings from the post I made about canon awhile back. Not all of the canon makes sense when you nitpick it to death. When the source material conflicts with itself, you’re not going to win a “this is canon because x and y, etc” because... well... the story itself doesn’t even seem to know what’s canon.

Additionally, canon is something derived partially from people’s own experiences. Two people can consume the same media and come to different conclusions and that’s fine. We don’t need to have these tired debates about whose interpretation of canon is better. We just need people to understand that while their interpretation may fit them but it may not fit everyone. And that’s why, as I have begun doing Fanon Hot Take posts, I keep that disclaimer up. I don’t wanna say “My opinion of how to interpret canon/fanon is the best opinion” because that’s stupid. There is no definitive “best” because it’s all subjective. But people get into their own feelings so much about their interpretations and that’s when we have these debates of “well, my idea is better than yours”. Then people try to dismantle each other instead of just appreciating the different ideas being brought to the table. And it’s exhausting.

Frankly, I don’t ever think Panther being Cerinian will be canon. But Nintendo has not, as of this date, said he’s not. But that’s my interpretation of his character until Nintendo gives us more to go off of. And if my interpretation bothers someone enough that they decide to send me harassment over it, then that’s on them. I will not be apologizing for my interpretations, even if they do go against the grain. It’s a pity people like that exist, that would rather tear at others than try to just enjoy the content that appeals directly to him but alas, they are not the first person to be like that and they will not be the last.

On a lighter note, while I am still bothered by this person going out of their way to be so spiteful, I want to thank them for inspiring me to look at the text. It validated my feelings further and it made me realize how stupid the canon debate is. I actually had a blast going back over this book and re-reading everything. I hadn’t gotten to lay eyes on this booklet in years! I really hope I get to do this for other SF games because a lot of these manuals have such hidden gems.

Thank you for reading this ramble/analysis!

#star fox adventures #dinosaur planet #speculation #theory #analysis #long post #falco lombardi #the spellstones #farewell beloved falco #plot inconsistencies #continuity errors #starfox adventures #cerinia #sauria #dino language #the krazoa #lore #star fox #starfox

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