gog i still can't get over minish cap vaati's Everything. He is So Fucking Stupid (affectionate)
Like. This guy's establishing character moment is, in order:
he's introduced as having won an entire tournament to get to touch a magic chest and get a cool sword, which was the prize for said tournament
turns around and does a goddamn evil soliloquy TEN FEET AWAY FROM THE GUARDS who were about to hand him his macguffin on a platter
(like this man fucks up his own horribly planned daylight heist because he cannot keep a lid on the dramatics for FIVE FUCKING MINUTES, IN PUBLIC)
(THE BAR WAS ON THE FLOOR VAATI, FUCKING GANONDORF PLAYS THE PIPE ORGAN FOR HIS OWN BOSS INTRO AND HE STILL KNOWS BETTER THAN THIS SHIT)
proceeds to fight the guards (it is, admittedly, a curbstomp for him, but it still clearly wasn't his plan, because otherwise why bother with the tournament)
gloats evilly
opens chest, unleashing a whole bunch of monsters
exposits out loud about Zelda's powers like a nerd while she is actively charging up her magic powers to kick his ass
RECOGNIZES and IDENTIFIES said magic as the special power carried by the female royal line
completely fails to recognize it as the light force he is currently trying to get his hands on (he spends like 99% of the game not figuring this out.)
petrifies her
(i have no idea if link could have deflected this spell if he had managed to get the right angle with his shield but i like to think somewhere there is a very short and very funny alternate timeline where it happens)
(more importantly: no part of vaati's original presumed plan would have involved doing this. he 100% created this situation for himself by being an dramatic idiot and picking a fight for no good reason.)
looks in the chest
there's no light force
considering his stated goals he might be as confused as you are about the monsters tbh
uhhh
evil laugh
teleports the fuck out
He then proceeds to spend the rest of the game trying to figure out where the light force is and ends up having to wait for Ezlo and Link to figure it out first because he was, as far as I can tell, GENUINELY stuck on this part. He fucking kidnaps and impersonates the King, not for access to Zelda, but to… send guards to go look for the Light Force, presumably because he was either running out of ideas or genuinely thought that would work.
None of the guards even had any idea what he was talking about. He's not even good at impersonating the King. He's already sent like twenty people to the dungeon by the time you get there and it hasn't even been a week. Somehow the game spins this as a cunning plan and clever manipulation or something.
(Meanwhile the guards are just. Poking around in random bushes and shit hoping to find the light force. One of them asks you what you think it might look like.)
Zelda is literally right next to the throne and Vaati does not figure it out until you find an actual honest-to-goodness LORE TABLET spelling out that the Light Force is Stored in the Zelda, at which point he's like "ahahaha you've done my work for me this was definitely my plan all along" and takes over the castle and throws a bunch of monsters at you to stall for time while he figures out how to extract the force from her. Somehow he still doesn't think to actually lock the fucking door.
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i was just thinking about percy and grover’s empathic link…
they know and can feel whatever the other is feeling. which takes me to mark of athena.
MARK OF ATHENA AND HOUSE OF HADES SPOILERS AHEAD
grover just minding his business in the usa, missing percy (and annabeth) but knowing he’s alive, spreading the word of pan, and helping take care of chb.
and then he feels it.
for seven whole days
he knows percy is falling most likely to his death. and he knows annabeth is with him. he remembers when he almost fell, but percy and annabeth were there to save him. and he couldn’t be there to save them this time.
for seven days he has to feel his best friends falling into tartarus. and for the next few days he has to feel them basically rotting and fighting for their lives like never before in tartarus. he only has to trust that they will make it. and if percy doesn’t make it out alive, he won’t either.
and he feels all the horrors they had to face, knowing that there’s absolutely nothing he can do to help them.
he still feels like their protector. but this time, he just can’t protect them.
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Are we ever going to get an in-universe explanation as to why Rhea sets a city with civilians still in it on fire at the end of CF, or is it forever going to remain the "devs wrote Rhea doing something evil so the audience wouldn't feel bad about killing the final boss who'd done nothing wrong up to that point, regardless of how grossly out-of-character it is for her to do that" excuse?
:(
I was typing an answer, switched tabs, and what I already typed disappeared...
Anyways...
Watsonian wise, the game iirc tells us Rhea intends to use the "fiery tiles" as hazards to slow down the BESF's progression to rekt them - and I personally find nice how the devs picked peg knights to act as reinforcments - cementing the "strategy" aspect of the Berning, aka Rhea's own troops are immunte to tile hazards, but the BESF isn't.
Doylist wise, I feel like it was one of the moves the devs pulled out to illustrate how far Rhea fell from... well, what she once was.
It's the culmination of her breakdown, her point of no-return : we came from a Rhea who valued Fodlan and its people more than her own survival and who would refuse to sacrifice anyone to ensure her safety to... a Rhea who lost so much (her remaining family), is PTSD'ing hard and was betrayed by Billy and Humanity "again", she snaps and now will sacrifice Fodlan and its people to get a chance of surviving what she perceives as the second act of the genocide of her species.
Forget the "not feeling bad" aspect of this fight anon, because, at least with the Jp audio, every scene involving Rhea, before this fight when she lost Seteth'n'Flayn, is in Tailtean, or even in this fight laments in her battle quotes, conveys, kuddos to Inoue, anguish, desperation and anger.
The BESF pushes her - during the entire length of this short route - to her breaking point, she breaks (but it's not only a furious/angry breakdown!) and Firdhiad Berning is the consequence.
Imo, even if the gapmoe and the Supreme Court tries to act as if the BESF is "in the right" or wonder what's for dinner, the foes are much more humanised/developed/are mourning on screen that, save for some devoted people, I firmly believe Tru Piss wasn't supposed to be seen as a "Good Route", but more like the Tales games sometimes have a "Bad End" path.
The final close-up on Billy's dead eyes after they lost Nirvana is, imo, telling enough - even if gapmoe and the game mechanics + IS' obsession to sell you Supreme Leader as a S material waifu you can romance sort of killed this intent, since you can get your "and they lived happily ever after" ending and marry Supreme Leader.
Tl;Dr : Tru Piss is written in a way that would make anyone (even on a first PT!) feel bad about the people you're trouncing, from Judith crying about Ignatz'n'Leonie's loss of their future, to Hilda sacrifying herself to save someone against her former nature, aka when it comes to do the "right thing" Hilda will do it even if it costs her life, to Faerghus' desperation to defend themselves at the point of willingly make the ultimate sacrifice and turning into demonic beasts and Dimitri's tender scene with Dedue, or Felix and Rodrigue fighting side by side to defend their land (and dying together) - to ultimately, Rhea losing her mind, breaking down as she learns of her kin's fate and relieving her previous PTSD hard, ultimately telling the player that they betrayed the gremlin living in their head (even if game mechanics means that gremlin is the worst mother in the entire series) and ultimately, herself.
If you're not a first PT, but Tru Piss is your last PT and you know about Rhea'n'Billy's backstories... Well.
I don't like the "you made hit you" rhetoric because it fucking sucks and irl is used by scum, and while I don't think the Firdhiad Berning was made to make Rhea look "evil" so you wouldn't feel bad for rekting her... the game painfully reminds the player, each time, that they are the instigators of this war, they are the agressors attacking people who, in this last map, will do anything to defend themselves.
It's ugly but it's the War the BESF, aka the player in Tru Piss, started/supported.
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