THESE HEAVENS FOR RENT: LET'S PLAY VACANT SKY

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Hey, you guys. I just got a great idea for a game -Sailerius, August 29th 1997


Yeah yeah, I know I said about forty times I was going to do BallMonk Circle or whatever. But then I played this and realize it would sync much better with my unique narrative style. I will attempt to update this thread at least every two days.

Vacant Sky is a game made by Amateur Misunderstood Artist Sailerius. Although initial production began before I was born, the series has only just now been completed. Well, not really. This is actually just the first episode of three. And then three more after that in thirty years. It achieved notoriety for acquiring no less than five million downloads, most of which came from Russia. Now, I'm not saying this is a communist game, but, well, you know, the main character has red hair. That aside, let's see what the author has to say about the game!

October 18th. That's the night Auria Edith was shot and killed on her way home.

Wow, way to spoil the ending! But continuing on, this game boasts the following features!

-Original soundtrack composed by Tarranon, featuring vocal tracks by Melody Yoo and Melanie Ehrlich
-8 playable characters (along with up to 6 guests)
-Customize Auria's stats and growth
-Select your own progression of techniques
-Interact with your party members to strengthen your relationship with them
-Unlock guest art title screens through sidequests GET SOME SWEET HENTAI MATE

Alright, alright. not bad. This game also contains some not pornographic custom artwork, as well as some other interesting...things. I will hold off on giving my opinion until the end!



CHARACTERS OF IMPORTANCE

Auria Edith: Redheaded sarcasm elemental. She sucks at school and has a shiftless layabout for a father. True Neutral. Aligned with the elemental power of Loneliness.

Blaise Tearson: cid highwind ripoffffffffffff Lawful Neutral. Aligned with the elemental power of Guns.

Serijala Racorie: An elf. Forced Auria to travel with her against her will with ancient elf magicks. Probably blind. Chaotic Good. Aligned with the elemental power of Tears.

Zaqris jaGrane: A very polite elfchemist who values his privacy. Neutral Good. Aligned with the elemental power of Indecision.

CHAPTER 1: THE PROLOGUING
CHAPTER 2: THE BORING
CHAPTER 2: THE ELFING




PRESENTING




So this intro has music.Most of the music in this pretty good! I question the usage of certain tracks in certain areas but overall I can't complain. This song right here plays during the intro which I will not be recording because BORIIing




This is the only time this weird, isometric camera view is used. I was rather excited when I saw it, alas.



Behold, the main character, in all her glory! She should probably get a haircut.




So I guess now is as good a time as any to mention that I suck at capping. This is our heroine fragging some beggar asking her for change. Boom! Freoow!



While she's standing here, some young lady voiceacts some words at me.

Every sound I hear is the voice of an enemy
Every act of jealous, every spiteful word, every selfish lie I ever told...in an instant, none of it matters anymore. All that matters is that if I want to live, I have to kill him.


If someone knows what this means please tell me. Like I know I'm the person playing this but I don't know. As far as I can tell, it doesn't ever tie into anything. But with that, the intro is over! The game doesn't tell you where this next scene takes place, so I'll leave it up to your imagination.



"Ranksmith." Also, to anyone wondering what the Virad are, good news! It will be explained! To anyone wondering what Delphon is, I dunno. I'll just imagine it's a city populated by vampiric spiders.


Michael(The Prisoner): I told you I don't know a damn thing about the Virad.
Examiner: Then why the hell are you standing there wearing a Virad Uniform?
Michael: Mister Officer, sir, with all due respect, you found me in a bar. Aren't you askin' a little too much from me?
I think this is supposed to imply that this Michael character cannot explain why he's wearing a uniform worn by "The Virad" because he is really wasted. I suppose he's been in the jail cell for all of five minutes. This begs the question, why does he sound totally sober? Fortunately, the police officer does not see any problem with these inconsistencies and immediately starts offering to meet the demands of a prisoner who has not yet made any.

Examiner: All right, fine. what do you want? What do I have to give you to make you take this seriously?
Michael: I wouldn't say no to a couple shots and a pretty girl, if you see what I'm sayin'.

Suddenly, there is a loud explosion.



Michael: Sorry man, but you're screwed.
Examiner: Stop messing around, dammit! Tell me about Vastale, tell me about Sandarga! Tell me about something, for God's sake!
Interrogation 101. Immediately break down and start crying to the object of interrogation.

Michael: Sandarga? Oh. She's an arch-captain.
Examiner: What's an arch-captain?
Michael: There's three of'em. They're the highest-ranked officers.



Oh Examiner! You may have a future as the next Curly!



Sandarga reporting. All preparations have been made.
Hi. This is Sandarga. I have reason to believe she is actually a Twilight character. Therefore, Ms. Bella Swan will be representing her.
What exactly the preparations were made for will forever remain a mystery. Sandarga remarks that no guards will help to come Mr. Examiner, who immediately tries to flee as the exit door closes on its own. All of the doors in this prison are like the ones from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Except they're programmed to be dicks.




You'd be really surprised how easily men can be broken...
Now, when I first played this, I assumed that this meant Sandarga killed the guards. Having played all three episodes and gained greater insight into the mind of the author, I can safely say that Sandarga probably did a striptease or something.

Michael, it's time to wake up.
Michael: You want to know my connection to the Virad?
Examiner: What are you...?





Oh my god! The tall man! No, stop, I don't want to play those games again! NOOOOO!


Masked Robe Man teleports out of his cell and kills Examiner Man. He will be missed. I did not bother capping this because you can't really even see anything. Sandarga and Cabadeth then escape from the horrible cell that they could've left at any moment once and for all!

I doubt we'll encounter much resistance on this floor.



Anyway, we're on the second floor. It's an underground complex.
Sandarga doesn't seem to think the Masked Man knows that the facility is underground. Your choice whether this means that the human government is totally out of control and knocks people unconcious before dragging them underground or that Sandarga is an idiot. And no, I have no idea how a teleporting murderer with dbz powers was captured in the first place. Heart disease, perhaps.

Anyway, Weapon and I were held in Cell Block E, which is on the floor below this one. We should see how he's doing before we just leave without him.



We then make our way down to the third floor. Masked Man does something I like here. Rather then allowing himself to just be railroaded onto a sidequest for a dumb key when encountered with the locked elevator door, he blasts the thing open with magic.





Here we encounter what I believe is some kind of hipster raveoff.



Somebody makes a remark about the Mars Volta's lyrics just being nonsense and things get ugly.



Hi. This is Weapon. He is the worst character in the game and I'm just gonna throw this out there: the author's mary-sue. I have nothing to base this on but it sounds good in my head. Therefore, I will be using a specific image for him.

This is Lord Vastale. Living avatar of Torklemmor, you know. Stuff like that.
By the way, I hope you look forward to not ever hearing about Vastale again until the last five minutes of the game. The patron god of bad names is mentioned even less.

You mean he exists? I thought he was a just a joke.
And that's why you'll never get anywhere in life.
Now...Leave.
Are we grabbing a gate out of here?
No. We have to find the circuit breaker and cut the power first.
What?
Explain
It's hardly needless. We don't want the humans to find out how to work the gates, so we need to disable the security cameras
You may be thinking "These two look exactly like humans. Well, you're right. But what you do not realize is that there are other races in the game that are fundamentally different from humans...somehow, despite looking exactly the same.



SUMMARY: We need to find circuit breaker and cut the power. The best way to do that is to cut the power. The best way to go about cutting the power is to cut the power.



Bad idea. Those crates and barrels are explosive.
I see...They were hoping we'd blow ourselves up. We'll need to find another way around.
So, the human guards had so little faith in their own ability to keep their prisoners in prison that they fill the hallways with 'traps' preemptively. And I say the word trap with utter disdain, as these are just explosive barrels and crates blocking the path from one cell to the circuit breaker. What, is the only way to "clear the path" with fire? How did whoever was in charge of this operation know that these three would want access to the circuit breaker, anyway? They could have just as easily broken one camera and set up their fairy portal there. In fact, why the hell are we looking for the circuit breaker.



Even though a high-ranking officer of the Virad thought Vastale was "a joke," the human military seems to be able to recognize him on sight despite him looking nearly identical to the Virad grunts. The logical conclusion is that nobody likes Weapon. Not even the members of his own organization.



Going to take a minute to explain the battle system here. Turn order on the right, portrait of the character who is currently acting on the top right, rest is self-explanatory. You may be wondering why everyone, no matter what weapon they use, has the same combat stance. Well I dunno. The weirder thing is that they all have basically the same attack animation. It gets really weird when the character with the spear is introduced. Now for an explanation of the commands:



Awakenings are just special moves that typically cost a lot of sp. (Sparkly Points)
I think you can guess what attacks are.




By far the most confusing aspect of the combat system. Reactions are just that, set ways your character will react to any given attack. See those boots above Weapon and Vastale? Those indicate they are using the "dodge" reaction. The game does not explain any of this. I had no fucking clue what I was doing with this until the second act, and I had no idea why I would want to use these commands. There are four types of reactions. They are:
Dodge(Attempt to avoid the attack altogether)
Defend (Reduce Damage)
Counter (Accept the damage and get an immediate turn. The damage is also increased unless you level this up a lot.)
Parry (Accept the damage and regain sparkly points)
Of these, only Counter and Defend are useful.




I would just like to point out that the name of Weapon's "sword" is Dreamweaver. This will seem significant later during the game, but never pans out.

You can go into an optional area here that holds no purpose other than to offer the player a chance to talk to this guard. After the guard begs for his life, Weapon says this:



Guard: Er...yes...
Where do you live?
Guard: *address I am not transcribing*..why?
No reason. Anyway, I'm getting bored, so I guess I'll leave.
Guard: You're going to let me live?
No.
Now, you may think that Weapon is going to go kill that girl later because he's a psychotic murderer. What you DON'T know is that, while he is a psychotic murderer, he is also a psychotic rapist. This would make Weapon a terrifying villain if not for the fact that everyone else in this game is also a rapist.



awwww yeah time for some cutscene movie magic



syke

Well, not that you actually...talk.


Considering the power of Weapon and Sandarga, it's fairly obvious they were captured on purpose. I suppose the only reason they would do this would be to rescue or perhaps simply meet up with Vastale, seeing as he is perfectly capable of rescuing himself.

So, despite having already seen Vastale kill half a dozen people and exhibit the power of teleportation, it is only now that Sandarga confirms he is not "all talk." If Sandarga did not know of Vastale's abilities or legitimacy, and Weapon did not even know he existed, I am not entirely sure why they are here. And why is Vastale here? This again calls into question the preparations Sandarga mentioned, given that she has apparently never seen Vastale fight and would therefore have no reason to report in to him given that the Virad are an organization based entirely around power.

Also, Weapon goes offscreen and the other two just leave him behind. Pricks.




By the way, these are the crates we couldn't pass due to them being filled with explosives. I had high hopes when we just forced that door open, but alas, rpgs.



Uhhhh. So, Weapon is here again. Despite...not ever rejoining us.



Oh, you found the spirit?
If you don't mind, I'd prefer to see this through myself. I don't expect that I'll need your assistance.
As you wish, Mr. Senator.I don't think I have to remind you, but we're not very patient. Do be sure not to keep us waiting.
It is never hinted anywhere else that this guy has political ties. I have no idea if he is actually a senator or if Sandarga is just trying to make fun of him in some weird way.

Of course not. You can be sure I'll abide by the terms of our contract.
Didn't we come here to rescue that Michael guy?
Michael Guy?
Who is...Michael?
How much did you have to drink, Weapon?
But...Whatever.

DUurur it' me . wepaon. nobody enver tell me anyihing. Anyway, after they jump through some kind of Dr. Who portal, we're finally rid of that group of sociopaths and free to follow the TRUE villian of this game! You'd rather be locked in a real prison!



This is Auria. I hate her. There's a dialogue here about how Auria is irresponsible and just going to call in sick to school instead of doing her chemistry paper. Her friend then asks her to meet her at a really badly named restaurant. I didn't bother transcribing it because honestly who cares. Also, we have to run some godawful errands for our accursed mother.


See? I told you. What kind of a horrible witch excepts someone to run errands using 125 different credit cards?



One last note, this is the skill system. It is a poorly implemented attempt to make this game more like Quest for Glory or Dungeons & Dragons or whatever, and it was removed by the second act. I dunno. I actually really like stuff like this, but it's not implemented well. I don't think there's even a chance to use strength, enchantment, or stealth. I put all of my points into awareness, charisma, and harvesting.

Next update, the game gets boring. I mean really boring.




This is a pretty cheap shot at Sailerius. =/ The intro bit (up to where you become Auria) I thought was pretty cool, and pretty well-polished. I mean, you may not agree, obviously, but I don't really believe you could hate it this much. It seems like you didn't like a lot of the characters, not for being boring but for having flaws, which goes against the laws of story-writing. You were really very nitpicky. I wasn't even a fan of the game and I think this is overkill.

Now the next bit on the other hand is absolutely a piece of shit and I look forward to seeing you dissect it.

(If it means anything to you, I think Sailerius plans to clean up the first chapter.)
imagine this next paragraph read in the voice of comic book guy

If it makes you feel in any better, this is not intended in any way to be a "shot" at Sailerious, despite my ribbing. I also did not hate this part of the game. Playing as the villians is cool, but I am still confused as to what purpose it serves or what is going on. Maybe this is different in the new version, I don't know! But this is not supposed to serve as a review. As for characters: Weapon is the only one of the three who actually has a distinct personality and when I say he is the worst character, I mean that he is just an awful, terrible person. My only constant complaint about these three is how underused they are. Nonetheless, I will take your comments into consideration

that said, sailerius is welcome to chime in and correct me on things I get wrong
tardis
is it too late for ironhide facepalm
308
this is one of the greatest things i have ever read.

this rivals the pokemon quartz let's play, and that's some legendary shit. at least you're not getting raped every five seconds.
author=Jericho
imagine this next paragraph read in the voice of comic book guy

If it makes you feel in any better, this is not intended in any way to be a "shot" at Sailerious, despite my ribbing. I also did not hate this part of the game. I just am still confused as to what purpose it serves. As for characters: Weapon is the only one of the three who actually has a distinct personality and when I say he is the worst character, I mean that he is just an awful, terrible person. My only constant complaint about these three is how underused they are. Nonetheless, I will take your comments into consideration

Just so you know, this version that you play is the current but the old version as Sailerius is working on revamped versions of both Acts I and II. For a Let's Play of Sailerius's currently unreleased revamped Act I, you can check out Craze's Let's Play at http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/6925/ It's labelled as Act I+

Just for your info :)
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
eplipswich
Just so you know, this version that you play is the current but the old version as Sailerius is working on revamped versions of both Acts I and II. For a Let's Play of Sailerius's currently unreleased revamped Act I, you can check out Craze's Let's Play at http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/6925/ It's labelled as Act I+.

Yes. This is an old version. You have been wasting your time, Jericho.

I didn't read much; I have already played this, and I don't like you much anyway.

tardis, others who wank on this stupidity: I'm sorry that you get off on angry nerds. The Pokemon Quartz LP is much, much more engaging and much wittier. It's also more horrifying. Vacant Sky is a mediocre/decent RMXP game being picked on by Random Internet Jerk, while Quartz is a terrifying experience.

Just go cry in your corners because you barely ever release anything/don't get any recognition outside of WANK WANK WANK THE COLONY WANK WANK WANK I FUCKING LOVE YOUR FF6/RUDRAS RIPS
i sense an undercurrent of bitterness craze. lets talk about this
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
You know I don't actually see FF6 rips being used all that much
duh no one actually uses them it's just the done thing to complain about them
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
FF6 was the wave prior to Rudras.
author=Craze
Just go cry in your corners because you barely ever release anything/don't get any recognition outside of WANK WANK WANK THE COLONY WANK WANK WANK I FUCKING LOVE YOUR FF6/RUDRAS RIPS


Just go cry in your corners because you barely talk about anything besides what people are doing wrong/VXP/Numbers/Scripts/other miscellaneous things nobody gives two flying fucks about.

OMG GUYS YOU AREN'T COPY PASTING SUPER COOL YANFLY SCRIPTS INTO YOUR REFMAP PROJECTS YOU SUCK SO MUCH OMG

I'm not saying they weren't a good option or whatever... It's pointless to blatantly attack tardis when Craze does garbage like that all the time. (And then complains about people attacking him, har har har)

Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
author=Craze
FF6 was the wave prior to Rudras.
I thought Mac&Blue was how far back are we going here
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
author=Lennon
I'm not saying they weren't a good option or whatever... It's pointless to blatantly attack tardis when Craze does garbage like that all the time. (And then complains about people attacking him, har har har)


tardis and I are Real Men and were actually discussing this/my comments immediately after my posting. Then we kissed and made up posted nude photos of each other said goodnight/morning.
author=Craze
FF6 was the wave prior to Rudras.


Time to throw in the towel and delete Chronology for good.
Sailerius
did someone say angels
3214
Guys, can you knock off all the random bashing? I don't mind and it's pretty funny. Out of curiosity, Jericho, how far have you gotten in the game already? You allude to knowing what happens later in Act I , so I'm curious if you've already played the game all the way through to the end (in which case several of the things you mention not being explained have since been addressed).

I do hope that you choose to keep going past Act I, though, since it's pretty crappy and reflects being my first game.

EDIT
If someone knows what this means please tell me. Like I know I'm the person playing this but I don't know. As far as I can tell, it doesn't ever tie into anything. But with that, the intro is over! The game doesn't tell you where this next scene takes place, so I'll leave it up to your imagination.
It's explained in the later Acts. I don't mind your jokes (I laughed at many of them myself), but I would appreciate not claiming that something "never ties into anything" if you haven't played all three episodes, since it's misleading to readers.

EDIT 2
After reading it again, I guess you have played all three episodes, in which case I'll answer your questions. Act III spoilers follow for anyone who cares.

The first thing I want to mention is that the story was completely overhauled after the release of Act I. Act I was my first game and I learned a lot about every aspect of game development from it. I took a long break before starting Act II and decided to change a lot of what I had planned (for starters, it was originally planned to be seven (smaller) Acts). So, a few plot threads in the later games aren't properly foreshadowed in the first one since they hadn't been conceived of yet and some things alluded to in Act I were later either changed or removed. That's a major reason why I'm remaking the first one. That said, I'll address your questions:

If someone knows what this means please tell me. Like I know I'm the person playing this but I don't know. As far as I can tell, it doesn't ever tie into anything. But with that, the intro is over! The game doesn't tell you where this next scene takes place, so I'll leave it up to your imagination.
This is a flash forward to the end of Act III. Auria is reflecting on the path that took her to where she is now and what she has to do. In the original draft of the story, Auria's life depended on her killing Ejaro, but I later changed that since it kind of invalidated the point of the moral conflict.

Now, when I first played this, I assumed that this meant Sandarga killed the guards. Having played all three episodes and gained greater insight into the mind of the author, I can safely say that Sandarga probably did a striptease or something.
Did you get the Remission ending of Act III? Sandarga has the ability to access a person's thoughts and memories by making eye contact. She's skilled at turning people against each other by exposing their secrets and insecurities. The point of the infiltration was for her to gain intel into how the Kinthrope facility operated so that it could be seized (which happens at the end of Act I).

Sandarga doesn't seem to think the Masked Man knows that the facility is underground. Your choice whether this means that the human government is totally out of control and knocks people unconcious before dragging them underground or that Sandarga is an idiot. And no, I have no idea how a teleporting murderer with dbz powers was captured in the first place. Heart disease, perhaps.
Are you referring to Vastale/Michael? Michael and Vastale aren't exactly the same person. "Michael" is the host body for Vastale, so the two are completely unaware of the other's existence. Michael is just some chum with no particularly interesting abilities. He doesn't even know that he's involved with the Virad. Sandarga has the ability to force Vastale to awaken.

The logical conclusion is that nobody likes Weapon. Not even the members of his own organization.
Basically.

Of these, only Counter and Defend are useful.
I'm guessing you never focused on a speed character. Later on, especially in Act III, speed builds become all but untouchable to low-accuracy characters.

I would just like to point out that the name of Weapon's "sword" is Dreamweaver. This will seem significant later during the game, but never pans out.
I actually forgot that was mentioned in Act I. Thanks for pointing that out; it's part of a removed subplot.

It is never hinted anywhere else that this guy has political ties. I have no idea if he is actually a senator or if Sandarga is just trying to make fun of him in some weird way.
Another dropped subplot. I've removed that reference in the new versoin.

I didn't bother transcribing it because honestly who cares. Also, we have to run some godawful errands for our accursed mother.
Yeah.>_> I made those optional in the new version. Actually, I made this entire segment optional. And took out the Alibaas portion.
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