2010 MISAO WINNERS

I'm probably alone in wondering this, but why are they called "misaos"? Is it some kind of in-joke or something?

Well at least one person enjoyed the Bloodsphere demo lol

author=blueperiod
I'm probably alone in wondering this, but why are they called "misaos"? Is it some kind of in-joke or something?

author=halibabica
They are named after the character from Kenshin with the same name. The reason for this has been lost with time...

Well, actually misao (æ") is Japanese for "honor", which would make sense. (so typically, it means "Honor Awards")

WTF Vacant Sky sucked.

please remove bad end where you become creepy pervert's "wife" that you receive for not wanting to sell an angel into slavery when you know god is real because you are using a sword made by him thank you

oh also please get rid of back alley near-rape sequence where the character with magical powers is overpowered by four teenagers and only saved by deus ex machina

frankly sailerius i don't believe i should have to use the new game + feature to make my character both act in a coherent manner and also not be raped

author=Alex898
Well at least one person enjoyed the Bloodsphere demo lol

Seems we're in the same boat.

Thanks for the in depth response. You raise some good points, but there are a few points I would like to respond to:

there is eventually good justification for this character's behavior, but at this point in the game, nobody knows about it, so there is no reason to help this person other than to pacify the retard goku archetype in your party.

That's more or less accurate.

you also have a much more important goal at hand! But no, you have to help this person. If you don't, you get railroaded into bad ending where everyone leaves you for being mean.

That I don't think is a fair assessment. Auria's goal at this point is revenge and she doesn't expect to return from Nemargentine alive. The pre-Nemargentine segment is about her squaring things away in her life before she accepts her fate. She hasn't exactly led a very selfless or altruistic lifestyle, so she's trying to make a last ditch effort to do something for someone else. Furthermore, the rest of the party doesn't leave you "for being mean." There are two reasons why, in the Relinquish ending, you proceed to Nemargentine alone.

In Vacant Sky, when you make choices, you aren't only directing Auria's decision making, you're also directing her mentality. Decision points indicate places where Auria is conflicted in how she feels about a given situation. In the case of whether or not to help Goku, what she's struggling to reconcile is her selfish, self-destructive hunger for revenge and her want to reconcile with him. When you decide not to help, Auria decides that she cares more about revenge than anything else. She decides to blow off saving someone else's life in order to go kill someone for no real benefit. Even if she is misguided, she's not oblivious; she can't expect to make a choice like that and then ask everyone else to come along and help her. In essence, by making this choice, you're having Auria decide to become more independent.

Aside from that, the motives of the individual party members should be considered. They don't refuse to join you because you're "being mean." The case could be made for Matthew and Laaik, who don't approve of Auria's objective on a moral basis; blowing off someone whose life is in danger is crossing the line for them when they already disagreed with Auria's intentions. The two party members you blow off have obvious motives for not joining you. That leaves Rien and Blaise. If you recall the beginning of Act III, Rien's original objection to Auria's plan was that they didn't have the manpower to take on Halo Locks; she didn't want to commit to an operation unless there was a fair chance of success. With only herself and Blaise remaining, it's only to be expected that she would bail out. Lastly, Blaise only climbed on the bandwagon because all the cool kids were doing it. He's not exactly fond of Auria, so he doesn't have a reason to go any longer.

so the obvious lesson is "act moral."

I don't see how any scene in the entirety of the game suggests this. I wrote the game to tell a story, not to try to convey a message. I suppose you could find one if you looked hard enough, but I don't really see where you're getting that one.

what i do not accept is that they (including the goku archetype who basically forces you to do all this lest he let someone who has been deceiving him remain in a coma) even consider selling a literal angel into slavery when it is firmly established that god is real.

What don't you accept about this? Goku is firmly established to be bull-headed, immature, hypocritical, and headstrong. He's a lonely loser with an inferiority complex and for the first time in his unextraordinary life, a omggirl!!! is head over heels for him. He's a miserable attention-seeker and the only person who isn't his mother that has ever shown an interest in him is dying. He doesn't care about what she's done, he cares about this large-breasted girl whose vacuous skull is filled with nothing but adoration for him.

I guess I can see where you're coming from if you thought that he was meant to be liked. He was not meant to be liked. Your calling him a Goku archetype is exactly right; he is every RPG protagonist ever. By placing him outside of the role of main character where his perspective would taint the player's ability to analyze his character, he demonstrates just how utterly superficial, single-minded, stubborn, and unlikeable a person of this archetype really is.

Given that he could not give a damn how horrible a person she is and is juvenile inability to grasp basic moral quandaries, what about his determination to save her is unacceptable to you?

With regard to the sword, you have a point, but it's not "firmly established" that god is real. The sword has supernatural properties, but the only proof they have to go on that it was truly of divine origin is the Orkan church's mythos. The only person who knows for sure died 2000 years ago and his testimony is suspect on account of his being a raving lunatic.

so after choosing to "act moral" (because the game has basically beaten it into you at this point that if you do not act morally you get bad endings) you get a bad ending

Again, where do you get that the game insists that not acting morally screws you over? In Act II, the choice which was arguably the morally correct route was to attempt to save both Serijala and Matthew from Kasch, which screwed you over (they were both presumed dead and you had to fight a boss with one less party member). In fact, the entire point of the Kasch subplot was to ridicule the concept of morality. Kasch ridiculed Auria's belief that everyone's life is equal by forcing her to realize that she herself considers certain people's lives more valuable than others'. This quest indicates her acceptance of that--she has to choose between screwing over someone she knows and screwing over someone she doesn't know. Either way, someone suffers. This choice reflects the choice she makes in the Return ending and is wholly consistent with the maturing (for better or for worse) of her sense of right and wrong.

i am literally, when first playing this game, forced into choosing a)if I want my characters to act how they've been characterized for the last nine hours and not be monsters

See above for my rebuttal to this. I believe that their choices here are consistent with how they've developed over the course of the game thus far.

or b)rapedeath

She neither dies nor gets raped. He wants her to be an eternal trophy and because of the revelation in Maladorr manor (which I won't mention since it's one of the like two spoilers I care about not being ruined for prospective players), the two go hand in hand.

i submit that there is not one single person on this entire horrible plane of existence who managed to succesfully run vacant sky's bad ending gauntlet on their first try.

Did you really think that fighting Darxinger was the way to go? I know several people knew that challenging him was a mistake but still went ahead with it out of curiosity to see what would happen.

you raped me.

Was it as good for you as it was for me?

Congratulations to Sailerius.
The second and third acts of VS were some of the games I enjoyed the most last year.