The Star Ocean Universe

Attention conventioneers!

Kyle Herbert, voice actor for Dias from Second Evolution and Arumat P. Thanatos and Crowe F. Almedio, will be appearing at AnimeWorld Indianapolis, which will be July 5-8, 2012. From his website, here is his complete convention schedule:

PORTCONMAINE   June 21-24, Portland, Maine

ANIME EXPO   June 29-July 2, Los Angeles, CA

ANIMEWORLD EXPO   July 6-8, Indianapolis, Indiana

ANIME FESTIVAL ORLANDO   August 3-5, Orlando, FL

MOTAKU   August 17-19, Kansas City, Missouri

ALCON    September 6-9, Leicester, UK

RURONIKON   September 14-15, Edinburg, Texas

ANIME BLAST CHATTANOOGA   November 9-11, Chattanooga, Tennessee
 

* * * *

Agriculture on Underdeveloped Planets, Part 5 - Elicoor II

I now come (finally) to the last planet on the list of underdeveloped planets that I'm familiar with in the Star Ocean series - Elicoor II. This is only for the interim, until I've had the chance to play Second Story/Second Evolution and to get to know the underdeveloped planet/s in the game. I'm looking forward to exploring Expel and learning more about the Twelve Wise Men.

Back to Elicoor II . . . as with Vanguard III, we know that there is farming taking place. In the peace talks between the queen of Aquaria and the king of Airyglyph, the Holy Mother remarks that the war has taken a toll on the Glyphians and that their harvests were meager. Farming, specifically the lack thereof, is why Arzei has waged this war in the first place.

While, as is usual in the Star Ocean games I've played, we don't see the farm lands and livestock, the fact that this tactic is employed in Till the End of Time as one of many reasons to wage a war gives the game a sense of realism I find a bit lacking in The Last Hope, though not too severely. The mention of agriculture, of farming and providing food for a person, a family, a country, is something that dates back to the dawn of man. The ability to farm, to provide, no matter the country, no matter the planet, is something that can unite people or send them to war.

Since the land and atmospheric composition is always similar to that of Earth on the underdeveloped planets (it's the only way carbon-based life forms such as ourselves are able to exist), it stands to reason that the food stuffs grown there will be similar in taste, texture, and smell as they would on Earth. As with the other planets, I believe that, if they'd place such things to at least walk by in the games, we'd see fields with grains similar to wheat, rye, and rice as well as vegetables like lettuce, cabbage, potatoes, gourds like pumpkins and squash, and fruits like tomatoes, cucumbers, apples (we can buy apple pies on Elicoor II), blueberries, and blackberries. For livestock, we'd definitely see animals similar to sheep and cows. They just wouldn't be similar in appearance as to what we have on Earth.

And I bring up livestock because there's a slight inconsistency between the game of Till the End of Time and the seven volume manga as written/drawn by Akira Kanda. In the game, there are horse-like animals called lums. They're treated like horses, used for riding into battle, and they're as tall as horses . . . but they have horns like rams. In the manga, they're drawn as horses. I don't know how much was tweaked between the initial release of Till the End of Time in Japan and the director's cut of the game, but I'm quite certain the tweaks were more to do with the programming than with the game's animation. Why Kanda left the horns off of the lums, I'm not sure . . . perhaps to make the animals more believable to the readers buying the manga who probably hadn't played the game just yet.
 

For some people, it might seem strange and more than a little silly to nitpick about such details in a video game. After all, depending on the animation style (Till the End of Time is CGI compared to games like Dragon Quest, which can add things like cows and sheep), details like grain fields, animals in the wild, etc . . ., can add to the loading time of the game. (We've been there before . . . the frustration of waiting for a scene to load . . .) It's these little details, though, that can make or break a game.

Of course, it isn't just up to the game's designers to add these details. We, the players, hold some accountability in that, to use our imaginations on what it is that we can truly find in the games. Also, if we choose to write fanfiction, we add to our accountability on what we can find if we're exploring the pre-created planets of the Star Ocean universe or the planets that we create for ourselves.
Now, originally, initiating this conversation never bothered me on my first play-through. I loved the game, but the love wasn't to the point where it is today (the writing of fanfiction in the form of poems, one-shots, and mult-chaptered stories, choosing pairings that I absolutely adore, collecting merchandise, wanting to create my own merchandise, and cosplaying). So I never paid too much to the emotions driving Maria. However, now that I've delved into fanfiction writing, choosing the pairings that make me happy for when I write, and trying to figure out the intricacies of personalities, I find her unwillingness to forgive people at this point a turn-off. I understand her hatred towards the Leingods, but she's taken the leap from hating them to understanding and "slowly" accepting what they did in a very short amount of time. There is a very fine difference between what the Leingods did and what Luther is trying to do with something he created.

And what Luther tried to do isn't all that different in how people operate today. We do try to influence the behaviors and thoughts of others, be it religiously, politically, or financially, to get that which we desire. If we were to be unforgiving of every person who tried to manipulate us into thinking or behaving a certain way, we'd be very lonely.

I will chalk Maria's mannerisms up a lot to the way she was raised after the death of her parents. It isn't for any child to live on a ship with no true parental figure. That kind of thing can have an impact on a person. I liken it to that of living in foster care, only she didn't have to move from home to home to home.

Maybe, if there's a sequel to Till the End of Time, we can see some more emotional growth and character development with Maria. Aside from seeing some qualities in her that I see in me, I don't find much to like about Maria.

That's just me.

For the third planet on the underdeveloped planet list, we come to Roak. This planet has been mentioned in three of the four Star Ocean game - I'm not sure if it's mentioned in Second Story/Second Evolution. It was the first underdeveloped planet to appear, to be explored by players and fans of the game. Some of its history is mentioned in Till the End of Time, and, for four, we get to explore it all over again.

I did some research at gamefaqs.com for Roak for the original Star Ocean game re-released to the PSP as First Departure, which has really sparked that desire to somehow find a way to play the game. (I used my Last Hope strategy guide for Aeos and Lemuris, and I will be using it for Roak as well.) The kinds of foods that are appearing for First Departure are almost what you'd find in any bakery or restaurant on Earth - 10 oz. steak, 16 oz. steak, apple pie (which appears in Till the End of Time along with steamed buns), batter-fried shrimp, and boiled mushrooms, as a few examples - but I know that, as with Lemuris, there aren't any visible farms on Roak, at least in The Last Hope.  

To break it down, this is what you can buy/create for food in First Departure, in addition to the aforementioned foods: agar drink, amazing tenderloin, awful cider, banana frappe, bean rice cake, beautiful ice cream, beef and egg bowl, bitter cake, bitter juice, bloody driver, boiled king crab, cabbage roll, cactus cocktail, cheese salad, chicken shish kabob, chocolate banana, Christmas turkey*, coffee** milk, cola, cold soba, collagn jelly, corn on the cob, crazy cow, cream soda, custard of life, daikon salad, delectable cheese, deluxe fruit platter, deluxe sushi, demonic durian, devil's ramen, eel soup, egg fried rice, egg soup, escargot, fabulous flan, fiery cyclops cider, fine tuna sashimi, fire in the sky, fish ball soup, fresh juice, fresh orange juice, fresh spring roll, fried egg, fruit cake, fruit parfait, fruit punch, fruit sandwich, golden natto, golden stew, golden stir-fry, and granadillia juice, just to name a few. (To see the full list, follow this link: http://www.gamefaqs.com/psp/939439-star-ocean-first-departure/faqs/56728 )

Some of that list is item creation. Some of it is what you can buy in stores or what enemies may drop in battles, according to the list I found.

As for The Last Hope, food stuffs are, of course, found dropped by enemies, in the stores, or for harvesting. In the Tatroi area, one can harvest blackberries, blue seeds, dendrobium, ebony, red seed, seasonings, white rice, and wooden sticks. Rich cheese, natural water, vinegar, uncooked pasta***, raw animal meat, raw fish, common eggs, vegetables, seasonings, Special Warishita sauce, fresh cream, blueberries, bigberries, blackberries, aquaberries, basil, fresh sage, hot chocolate, and pickled plums are found in the stores. Astral City, which is connected to Tatroi via barge, has a harvesting point in the castle itself with aquaberries, bigberries, blackberries, blueberries, and lemons. One of the shops - Whole Heart Foods - offers pumpkin extract, sweet fruit, and natto in addition to natural water, uncooked pasta, raw animal meat, raw fish, common eggs, vegetables, seasonings, Special Warishita sauce, and fresh cream. Next to Whole Heart Foods is the Happy Skip Grocer with the basic restorative items of blueberries, bigberries, blackberries, aquaberries, basil, fresh sage, and hot chocolate.

Heading into the Astral Desert doesn't bring a very high yield for harvesting - bizarre fruit, poison hemlock, seasonings, and thornberries. Around Tropp, harvesting points offer ash, blue seeds, dendrobium, ebony, fresh sage, lemon, oak, and red seeds. The Cave to the Purgatorium hides caterpillar fungus, ebony, fresh sage, magic seeds, poison hemlock, and white rice. Around the Purgatorium itself, lemons, poison hemlock, ripe berries, seasonings, thornberries, and white rice can be found. There are only two shops in Tropp, but neither offer food stuffs for sale. (There is a Roakian, though, he does sell grape juice. To trigger that particular sale, talk to an old man in Tatroi who is crazy for grape juice.)

There is much that we don't see on Roak in The Last Hope. Since it is, at this point, the last game but taking place before the first game, the fact we only wander the Astralian continent is, perhaps, done by design.

Even so, I can't help but wonder why we don't see any kind of farms on Roak. The food does have to have from somewhere and not just the fighting of monsters and harvesting points. The harvesting points don't even exist in the previous games, which I won't say don't exist for the NPCs . . . they just don't exist for the players to find and utilize.

Also, I realize that, when it comes to farming on these underdeveloped planets, I sound like a broken record - we don't see it, we don't see it, we don't see it . . . but I truly am very curious as to the variety that could be found in fruits, vegetables, and animals when it comes to planet-hopping. Bunnies were changed in appearance. Why not mix up the food stuffs a little and see what we can come up with that can be similar to what we know but at the same time exotic and new?

Naturally, as Roak remains an underdeveloped planet for a little over three centuries, the farming of food stuffs and raising of livestock are how the people survive. I don't believe or even think for a moment, though, that Roak is a farming/gathering/hunting type civilization. The civilization on Lemuris, yes, it is. If the right private action is triggered on the alternate Earth, Lymle indicates as much. However, Lemuris doesn't have some of the same advancements as Roak. The climate from one planet to the other also makes a difference in how easy it is to till the soil (cold weather causes the water in the soil to freeze, etc . . .) in certain areas. There's a lot of open space on Roak, and it wouldn't necessarily be hard for farmers and livestock breeders to keep monsters from eating the food/breaking into the barns and livestock pens.

I think in terms of produce, one would definitely find fruits and vegetables similar to that of strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, tomatoes, lettuce, corn, and potatoes on Roak. There might even been wild bovines, deer, and other animals for hunting, which I feel would be done until taming the animals could be accomplished. Bunnies are "hunted" and treated like they're horses or donkeys so . . .

Anything is really possible. I'm simply wishing we had more information about the underdeveloped planets themselves so we could get those ideas.

********

* - I will only buy into the notion of a Christmas turkey in a video game with non-humans so long as it's coming from item creation and a human has been involved in the process. Christmas is an Earthen holiday. Life on other planets will not have the same holidays as we do.

** - Like with the Christmas turkey, I will only buy into the premise of coffee milk if the coffee beans are somehow imported from Earth. A friend of mine pointed out to me within the last week of this entry that coffee beans can only grow if certain soil conditions are met. She brought up Anne McCaffrey's research on coffee beans. If the right conditions aren't met - soil, weather, etc . . . - coffee can't grow anywhere other than where they're grown.

*** - I'm now having a hard time buying into the notion that players can buy uncooked pasta on underdeveloped planet. The issue is that of storage and the right combination of ingredients/chemicals to keep the pasta from spoiling . . . unless the uncooked pasta is made fresh daily and sold right away. Then I can believe that premise of buying uncooked pasta on an underdeveloped planet. Yes, uncooked pasta appears in one of the shops on Aeos, but we're talking about stores built by Eldarians so . . . . to buy uncooked pasta from people who know how to preserve it so it doesn't spoil is completely understandable to me.

*************

Note: I have an inquiry out to Laura Bailey, the voice actress for Reimi Saoinji, to interview her for this blog. Even if the interview is a no-go (or I don't hear back in time), I will be writing about Laura and the projects where we can see and hear her voice on June 22. I will post on whether or not the interview will happen.