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Post by Sonnington on May 9, 2016 20:03:53 GMT
First off, spoilers obviously. Secondly, it took me about 8 months to finish this game so it's very possible I'm misremembering the story in places. Thirdly, I tried searching for the thread where the ending was being discussed to no avail, so here I am making a new topic.
I absolutely loved this game. Despite it taking me so long I think this game is awesome and holds up very well to modern games. The only issues I had was with disc 4. It became rather tedious. Everything up until that point had extremely good pacing and I think with updated graphics you could easily release this game in full today.
My only disappointment was with most of disc 4. It had you flying around on top of a forest and through dungeon corridors wondering where you were supposed to go and what you were supposed to be doing. In terms of gameplay the ending lost steam and felt a bit rushed. Besides that, the end of the story was very well crafted and thought provoking. Here's my interpretation, let me know if I'm all wet here. The overall theme to story is fairly anti-deterministic and anti-dogmatic/theologic in tone.
Some of the events and elements throughout the game that show this would include the dragon and Edge being prophesied to protect the town of Zoah and ultimately failing. Then you have Azel eventually developing freewill despite heavy programming. You also have Paet who ostensibly burnt a Bible outside the mayor's house in Zoah. Then you have the emperor and Craymen locked in a battle to control the power of the towers through Azel. Both ultimately failing.
Craymen convinces Edge that the monsters and power from the towers are essential to life on the planet and they must be controlled by someone honourable and the emperor cant do it because he's evil. Then you have Gash who wants to destroy that power and free the world from the monsters. Edge doesn't know who to believe after Gash tells him this, but goes along with him anyway because he's weak in character and Craymen is dead.
The very end of the story has Edge meet an ultimate power or a god. Edge thinks it's the divine visitor, but what this ultimate organism is, is unclear. What is made clear is that the divine visitor is the player himself and is ultimately the god of the story. Which is a bit of a dues ex machina, 4th wall breaking, bizarre plot twist, but it works for the impact of the message the story wants to convey. So essentially the player destroys the existing oppressive power structure and ultimately god of the Panzer Dragoon world. While this has clear implications of antireligious sentiment and anti-tradition/anti-dogma. It's really an advocation of free will and free thought. The idea that you shouldn't follow simply because someone told you to, but because it's the right thing to do and what you want. That you are an empowered and powerful force that can move worlds.
After you kill God you see Gash at the end say, apprehensively, something to the effect of, 'We'll have to travel without a destination.' Which is an allusion to not blindly following dogma and making your own path. After that Azel rides her definitely-not-chocobo into electrical storms to look for Edge, which symbolizes the danger of charting uncertain waters, which is what a rejection of blindly following dogma entails.
While I don't like the idea of discarding all of the traditional values simply because they're dogmatic. I do like the promotion of free-thought, choice, and questioning of tradition. Or maybe I'm completely off and misinterpret the ending. In any event, it's a hell of a deep story and powerful ending if I am right. Also, is it supposed to be a cliffhanger with Azel running off looking for Edge like that? It's certainly an opening for a sequel.
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Post by tempest on May 11, 2016 13:12:27 GMT
Great interpretation of the story. Similarly, for me, the story was very existential, promoting the power people have to control or create their life (free will).
If you want to see how the story continues, see Panzer Dragoon Orta on Xbox. It's not a direct continuation of Saga but it picks up some of the dangling threads.
I too found the gameplay on Disc 4 less engaging than the previous discs. I feel that's because the developers retread several areas and had to bring the story to a conclusion rather than continuing to advance it. Or maybe we just had high expectations after what had come before.
It's still my all time favourite game and I've lost count of how many times I've played it.
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Post by Sonnington on May 12, 2016 1:04:26 GMT
Oh cool, I'm not so far off then. One thing I'm not entirely sure I'm correct about is the prophecy that the dragon would save the town. I'm pretty sure, when you reach the citizen's area, you talk to a guy in a store room who talks about how the food from the forest gods and the gods prophecized the dragon would save the town and keep the town safe. Am I right about that or am I misremembering?
Also, I remember reading from time to time that people didn't like the ending, but I always avoided reading why that was and I can't find those posts anymore. I'm wondering why that is. Is there something I'm missing?
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martiniii
Joined: January 2010
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Post by martiniii on May 15, 2016 0:41:29 GMT
Ho boy. I'm a huge fan of Panzer Dragoon Saga, unquestionably one of my all-time favorites, and I aced all my English and philosophy courses, so brace yourself. First of all, the statement "you shouldn't follow simply because someone told you to, but because it's the right thing to do and what you want" is just a thinly-veiled version of hedonism. Basing one's moral choices on a higher authority certainly has its pitfalls, but it's the only way of finding the right path. Basing one's moral choices on one's own personal desires inevitably leads to immorality, because people's personal desires inevitably conflict with each other. Second, I don't think the game promotes that statement. In fact, some parts of the story go against it. For starters, I think you've misinterpreted Azel's character arc. She doesn't develop free will, not in the sense that you're talking about at any rate. From the beginning of the game to the end, she does what she does because of what Craymen taught her. She follows the morals and ethics she learned from him. She even goes against her own personal desires by sacrificing herself to destroy the towers. What she develops over the course of the story is emotion and independence, not free will. I'm pretty sure you're misremembering the part about Paet burning a Bible. Not only do I not remember anything about that, but it's drastically out-of-character for Paet, whose whole deal is that he's an amoral, antisocial guy who doesn't give two bits about politics, religion, or social interaction period. Edge doesn't go along with Gash because he's weak in character and Craymen is dead. He goes along with Gash because the threat the towers present is evident. It's a simple matter of uncertain good against certain evil. He worked with Craymen at the end of disc three for the same basic reason; he's not certain if what Craymen wants is right, but he's certain that what the emperor wants is wrong. It's actually made explicit that the "ultimate organism" at the end is Edge's dragon. Edge says "This voice... the dragon!?", and you might also notice that he's not riding the dragon at the end. I don't follow where you see the "player kills God". The player has no real role in the story, though he is another point against an anti-determinstic message for the game. After all, how more deterministic can you get than a story which only advances to the end when a character says "Push the button" and you do it simply because he told you to? I wouldn't read so much into things like Gash's "voyage without a destination" remark or Azel's riding blindly into a sandstorm. As the saying goes, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Pretty sure that the ending was made to point to a sequel, yes. Of course we can't know for sure without asking the developers, but Edge's disappearance is tacked on at the end with no explanation, and it's hard to argue that they would have had the protagonist disappear without a trace unless they were setting up for a sequel. As for people's problems with the ending, I think you've already summed them up yourself: gimmicky fourth wall breaking, a cliffhanger pointing towards a non-existent sequel and stemming from a tacked-on plot twist, and a lack of much of anything to the ending aside from those two points. And to end things on a less heavy note, "definitely-not-chocobo"? Reviewing the ending via a YouTube vid, I don't see any resemblance between the avian chocobos (which are definitely-not- gastornis-or- ostriches ) and the reptilian creature Azel is riding.
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Post by tempest on May 15, 2016 10:51:05 GMT
Thanks for the interesting insights, Martiniii. It's always great to have deep interpretations of game stories I love.
However, I disagree that Edge's disappearance set the game up for a sequel. Edge clearly dies at the beginning of the game, with the Divine Visitor (the player) keeping him alive for the quest. Once the player leaves the game world or 'presses the button' they remove their 'lifeforce' from Edge and he returns to being dead. After all, in PD Orta, Azel (in the Sestren memory bank) says she created Orta by combining her genetic data with the remnants of Edge's DNA in Sestren, which is where his lifeless corpse remained since the end of PDS.
The game does leave players wanting a sequel, however, because we want to know whether the world functions without the towers and what happens to Azel and Gash).
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Post by bradcap1 on May 15, 2016 12:17:46 GMT
I haven't played this in quite a while but I do remember thinking that the ending was fantastic.
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david rayel
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Post by david rayel on May 15, 2016 12:42:28 GMT
I have two copies of this game but I have not played
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martiniii
Joined: January 2010
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Post by martiniii on May 15, 2016 13:15:49 GMT
However, I disagree that Edge's disappearance set the game up for a sequel. Edge clearly dies at the beginning of the game, with the Divine Visitor (the player) keeping him alive for the quest. Once the player leaves the game world or 'presses the button' they remove their 'lifeforce' from Edge and he returns to being dead. After all, in PD Orta, Azel (in the Sestren memory bank) says she created Orta by combining her genetic data with the remnants of Edge's DNA in Sestren, which is where his lifeless corpse remained since the end of PDS. I've heard this theory, but it just doesn't make any sense that this was the writers' intent. First of all, the supposed clues for the theory are so few and so subtle that no halfway decent writer would expect a video gaming audience to pick up on them, much less fill in the enormous blanks. Even when writing for a hardcore literary audience, you don't rely on the reader to simply guess what happened to the protagonist, because they might guess wrong, not from a lack of insight, but simply from a lack of information. And unfortunately, we can't look to Panzer Dragoon Orta as an indication of the writers' intentions for Panzer Dragoon Saga. The time between the two games' creation is too long. Take it from a writer; when you're writing about the same milieu over several years in real time, your intentions for the characters often change dramatically.* And this is without going into all the changes with the development team's restructuring, switching to a different platform, etc. Second, the theory leaves us with no possible reason for the final scene with Azel. Remember, Azel was supposed to die in the tower. Why would the writers have her inexplicably survive just so that she could search for someone she has no hope of finding? (For that matter, since they had Azel inexplicably survive the end, what makes you think they wouldn't do the same with Edge?) Third, Edge turning out to be dead from the beginning of the game has no point, either thematic or dramatic, beyond cheating the reader/player. That's a really bad idea for prose fiction, and an even worse idea for video games, which are built around the concept of player accomplishment. Now, I wouldn't make the ridiculous assertion that PDS's writers are incapable of terrible ideas, even if that assertion weren't already disproved by the fourth wall breaking at the end. But I think that between (a)a plot point which sets up a sequel that ultimately was never made and (b)an overarching deus ex machina with no purpose beyond cheating the player, option (a) is more consistent with the rest of the game. *For example, just because I like to talk about my own work, when I had Natasha and Deanna decide on having six children back in "Hope for the Nations", I really was planning for them to have exactly six children. I didn't want to deal with any more characters than that. It was only later that it occurred to me that for a loving couple to set a practical limit on the number of children they have makes no sense, and so they have nine children with potentially more to come in "Shining Cloud".
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Post by bultje112 on May 15, 2016 16:00:16 GMT
First off, spoilers obviously. Secondly, it took me about 8 months to finish this game so it's very possible I'm misremembering the story in places. Thirdly, I tried searching for the thread where the ending was being discussed to no avail, so here I am making a new topic. I absolutely loved this game. Despite it taking me so long I think this game is awesome and holds up very well to modern games. The only issues I had was with disc 4. It became rather tedious. Everything up until that point had extremely good pacing and I think with updated graphics you could easily release this game in full today. My only disappointment was with most of disc 4. It had you flying around on top of a forest and through dungeon corridors wondering where you were supposed to go and what you were supposed to be doing. In terms of gameplay the ending lost steam and felt a bit rushed. Besides that, the end of the story was very well crafted and thought provoking. Here's my interpretation, let me know if I'm all wet here. The overall theme to story is fairly anti-deterministic and anti-dogmatic/theologic in tone. Some of the events and elements throughout the game that show this would include the dragon and Edge being prophesied to protect the town of Zoah and ultimately failing. Then you have Azel eventually developing freewill despite heavy programming. You also have Paet who ostensibly burnt a Bible outside the mayor's house in Zoah. Then you have the emperor and Craymen locked in a battle to control the power of the towers through Azel. Both ultimately failing. Craymen convinces Edge that the monsters and power from the towers are essential to life on the planet and they must be controlled by someone honourable and the emperor cant do it because he's evil. Then you have Gash who wants to destroy that power and free the world from the monsters. Edge doesn't know who to believe after Gash tells him this, but goes along with him anyway because he's weak in character and Craymen is dead. The very end of the story has Edge meet an ultimate power or a god. Edge thinks it's the divine visitor, but what this ultimate organism is, is unclear. What is made clear is that the divine visitor is the player himself and is ultimately the god of the story. Which is a bit of a dues ex machina, 4th wall breaking, bizarre plot twist, but it works for the impact of the message the story wants to convey. So essentially the player destroys the existing oppressive power structure and ultimately god of the Panzer Dragoon world. While this has clear implications of antireligious sentiment and anti-tradition/anti-dogma. It's really an advocation of free will and free thought. The idea that you shouldn't follow simply because someone told you to, but because it's the right thing to do and what you want. That you are an empowered and powerful force that can move worlds. After you kill God you see Gash at the end say, apprehensively, something to the effect of, 'We'll have to travel without a destination.' Which is an allusion to not blindly following dogma and making your own path. After that Azel rides her definitely-not-chocobo into electrical storms to look for Edge, which symbolizes the danger of charting uncertain waters, which is what a rejection of blindly following dogma entails. While I don't like the idea of discarding all of the traditional values simply because they're dogmatic. I do like the promotion of free-thought, choice, and questioning of tradition. Or maybe I'm completely off and misinterpret the ending. In any event, it's a hell of a deep story and powerful ending if I am right. Also, is it supposed to be a cliffhanger with Azel running off looking for Edge like that? It's certainly an opening for a sequel. in general I advice every person who finished the game this website: panzerdragoonlegacy.com/ it's full of theories and other interesting things explaining the world, characters and storylines. it also has a good forum. did you play the other panzer dragoon games before saga? I strongly advice to do so. especially zwei about your point. I think mainly the panzer dragoon saga storyline advocated the destructive power and will of human in general. yet still always maintains hope through love. even an android can feel attached to a human, as is seen by azel falling in love with edge (body)
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Post by bultje112 on May 15, 2016 16:05:36 GMT
Ho boy. I'm a huge fan of Panzer Dragoon Saga, unquestionably one of my all-time favorites, and I aced all my English and philosophy courses, so brace yourself. First of all, the statement "you shouldn't follow simply because someone told you to, but because it's the right thing to do and what you want" is just a thinly-veiled version of hedonism. Basing one's moral choices on a higher authority certainly has its pitfalls, but it's the only way of finding the right path. Basing one's moral choices on one's own personal desires inevitably leads to immorality, because people's personal desires inevitably conflict with each other. Second, I don't think the game promotes that statement. In fact, some parts of the story go against it. For starters, I think you've misinterpreted Azel's character arc. She doesn't develop free will, not in the sense that you're talking about at any rate. From the beginning of the game to the end, she does what she does because of what Craymen taught her. She follows the morals and ethics she learned from him. She even goes against her own personal desires by sacrificing herself to destroy the towers. What she develops over the course of the story is emotion and independence, not free will. I'm pretty sure you're misremembering the part about Paet burning a Bible. Not only do I not remember anything about that, but it's drastically out-of-character for Paet, whose whole deal is that he's an amoral, antisocial guy who doesn't give two bits about politics, religion, or social interaction period. Edge doesn't go along with Gash because he's weak in character and Craymen is dead. He goes along with Gash because the threat the towers present is evident. It's a simple matter of uncertain good against certain evil. He worked with Craymen at the end of disc three for the same basic reason; he's not certain if what Craymen wants is right, but he's certain that what the emperor wants is wrong. It's actually made explicit that the "ultimate organism" at the end is Edge's dragon. Edge says "This voice... the dragon!?", and you might also notice that he's not riding the dragon at the end. I don't follow where you see the "player kills God". The player has no real role in the story, though he is another point against an anti-determinstic message for the game. After all, how more deterministic can you get than a story which only advances to the end when a character says "Push the button" and you do it simply because he told you to? I wouldn't read so much into things like Gash's "voyage without a destination" remark or Azel's riding blindly into a sandstorm. As the saying goes, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Pretty sure that the ending was made to point to a sequel, yes. Of course we can't know for sure without asking the developers, but Edge's disappearance is tacked on at the end with no explanation, and it's hard to argue that they would have had the protagonist disappear without a trace unless they were setting up for a sequel. As for people's problems with the ending, I think you've already summed them up yourself: gimmicky fourth wall breaking, a cliffhanger pointing towards a non-existent sequel and stemming from a tacked-on plot twist, and a lack of much of anything to the ending aside from those two points. And to end things on a less heavy note, "definitely-not-chocobo"? Reviewing the ending via a YouTube vid, I don't see any resemblance between the avian chocobos (which are definitely-not- gastornis-or- ostriches ) and the reptilian creature Azel is riding. saga was the be all end all of the series. in various interviews I've read this. edge hasn't just disappeared. he's dead just like he was at the beginning of the game until the divine visitor (soul) entered edge's body to co-work with the dragon in destroying the tower. this makes it all the more painful and emotional to see azel looking for a person who isn't there
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Post by bultje112 on May 15, 2016 16:09:43 GMT
However, I disagree that Edge's disappearance set the game up for a sequel. Edge clearly dies at the beginning of the game, with the Divine Visitor (the player) keeping him alive for the quest. Once the player leaves the game world or 'presses the button' they remove their 'lifeforce' from Edge and he returns to being dead. After all, in PD Orta, Azel (in the Sestren memory bank) says she created Orta by combining her genetic data with the remnants of Edge's DNA in Sestren, which is where his lifeless corpse remained since the end of PDS. I've heard this theory, but it just doesn't make any sense that this was the writers' intent. First of all, the supposed clues for the theory are so few and so subtle that no halfway decent writer would expect a video gaming audience to pick up on them, much less fill in the enormous blanks. Even when writing for a hardcore literary audience, you don't rely on the reader to simply guess what happened to the protagonist, because they might guess wrong, not from a lack of insight, but simply from a lack of information. And unfortunately, we can't look to Panzer Dragoon Orta as an indication of the writers' intentions for Panzer Dragoon Saga. The time between the two games' creation is too long. Take it from a writer; when you're writing about the same milieu over several years in real time, your intentions for the characters often change dramatically.* And this is without going into all the changes with the development team's restructuring, switching to a different platform, etc. Second, the theory leaves us with no possible reason for the final scene with Azel. Remember, Azel was supposed to die in the tower. Why would the writers have her inexplicably survive just so that she could search for someone she has no hope of finding? (For that matter, since they had Azel inexplicably survive the end, what makes you think they wouldn't do the same with Edge?) Third, Edge turning out to be dead from the beginning of the game has no point, either thematic or dramatic, beyond cheating the reader/player. That's a really bad idea for prose fiction, and an even worse idea for video games, which are built around the concept of player accomplishment. Now, I wouldn't make the ridiculous assertion that PDS's writers are incapable of terrible ideas, even if that assertion weren't already disproved by the fourth wall breaking at the end. But I think that between (a)a plot point which sets up a sequel that ultimately was never made and (b)an overarching deus ex machina with no purpose beyond cheating the player, option (a) is more consistent with the rest of the game. *For example, just because I like to talk about my own work, when I had Natasha and Deanna decide on having six children back in "Hope for the Nations", I really was planning for them to have exactly six children. I didn't want to deal with any more characters than that. It was only later that it occurred to me that for a loving couple to set a practical limit on the number of children they have makes no sense, and so they have nine children with potentially more to come in "Shining Cloud". because that's the wole point. the panzer dragoon saga ending is a good ending for humanity perhaps, but not for edge or for azel. that's what makes it emotional(in some ways ico ending reminds me of this very much). it's individualism suffering for collectivism, which is very japanese. also you come here as usual saying this is good or bad, having aced your so called philosophy courses. with your kind of attitude (I'm a teacher myself) I wouldn't have aced you in anything because you don't decide what is bad, good or even terrible. there are no rules for it even if you like to pretend they are. if 90% of the audience likes something and 10% doesn't that doesn't make either right or wrong
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Post by Sonnington on May 15, 2016 17:53:18 GMT
There's some interesting points to martiniii's post, thanks for responding!
First off, I want to make clear I see no value in moral relativism. What I meant to get across is that understanding the intent for a law, a tradition, or a value is just as important as being taught what they are to begin with. Having the knowledge of intent allows you to reevaluate if the virtue is still valid or not. I don't want to go into a political rant, but there are quite a few laws that are being perverted or should change simply because the intent of those laws have been forgotten, were corrupt to begin with, or are simply invalid now. With that said, following your own best interests will almost always lead you to a virtuous life... as long as you're on the higher end of the bell curve.
Secondly, you're going to have to explain that one to me. She was a robot programmed to do what her master(Craymen) wanted her to do. He died and she was still bound to obey his wishes. Craymen believed the towers and monsters were vital to human existence and didn't want them destroyed. Despite that Azel made a decision to destroy them. How is disobeying her programming not acting on her own volition? Are you saying Azel stayed in the crumbling towers because it was her programming to? What gives you that impression? I thought she stayed because she had to.
As far as Paet and the burnt Bible goes, you can find the Bible outside the mayor's house next to where the child goes to play hide and seek. Edge narrates to himself, "Paet must've done this."
That's a fair point about Edge, he's just an ignorant young man that doesn't know who to believe or what to do. I suppose lacking character isn't the right way to put it. Lets say he lacks conviction. Your framing of it as uncertain good vs certain evil is a bit overblown though. Edge just doesn't know what to do and is easily convinced. For most of the ending Edge wasn't at all convinced he should destroy the towers, but he went along with it anyway.
I actually wasn't at all clear that he was the dragon. I was too busy reading the subtitles. It could get more explicit than 'That voice...... the dragon?!.' Thanks for bringing that up though! I didn't notice Edge wasn't riding the dragon either. Clearly the dragon is a part of the ultimate power or metamorphasized into it. Now that I've had some time to rewatch the ending and think about it. I wouldn't call the dragon an ultimate power the same thing. The dragon either evolves into that power or reverts back to it.
That ultimate power seems pretty god-like to me. At the beginning of the game it was able to bring Edge back to life and give you control over Edge. It's also omniscient. I'd also say that the ultimate power is a representation of the developers. It says that he's been guiding the Divine Visitor. That's not really the case for the dragon though. The dragon has no character motivation at all and adds nothing to the direction of the story save for being a vehicle. Who has been guiding you are the developers and their intent.
I find it rather strange that you're trying so hard to prove my interpretation as invalid with nit picks when the ultimate power says, "I exist to lead the Divine Visitor, to break the spell of the Ancient Age, and to give humans control of their own destiny."
What I said was having the player become the Divine Visitor and take the roll he did worked for the story. Not that pressing the button was proof of anti-determinism. At the end of the day we're talking about a late 90's JRPG which are built linear by design. Does the game need to be Minecraft in order to truly have an anti-deterministic message? Lets unpack this. This is an interesting design choice. Why even have the Divine Visitor be the player character? Why give that decision point to press the button at all? Which is less deterministic, giving the player a decision point, as faux as it might be, or giving no decision point at all? Perhaps the game is signalling the positive nature of power: getting people to do things without coercion. Which is in stark contrast to what Craymen and the Emperor wanted with the power of the towers and monsters. They wanted to rule with force. At the end, the player wants to continue the story and the ultimate power wants to be destroyed. So the ultimate power gives the player a method to make both things possible and commands the player to do it. Stopping the cutscene to press the button wasn't required. Edge or the Divine Visitor could've done that without the pause, but the pause was there to give the player an opportunity to decide. The decision is an easy one, but it didn't have to take place and it didn't involve coercion. As simple and as obvious as the decision was to make, it was done by the player's free will.
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Post by Sonnington on May 15, 2016 18:07:03 GMT
First off, spoilers obviously. Secondly, it took me about 8 months to finish this game so it's very possible I'm misremembering the story in places. Thirdly, I tried searching for the thread where the ending was being discussed to no avail, so here I am making a new topic. I absolutely loved this game. Despite it taking me so long I think this game is awesome and holds up very well to modern games. The only issues I had was with disc 4. It became rather tedious. Everything up until that point had extremely good pacing and I think with updated graphics you could easily release this game in full today. My only disappointment was with most of disc 4. It had you flying around on top of a forest and through dungeon corridors wondering where you were supposed to go and what you were supposed to be doing. In terms of gameplay the ending lost steam and felt a bit rushed. Besides that, the end of the story was very well crafted and thought provoking. Here's my interpretation, let me know if I'm all wet here. The overall theme to story is fairly anti-deterministic and anti-dogmatic/theologic in tone. Some of the events and elements throughout the game that show this would include the dragon and Edge being prophesied to protect the town of Zoah and ultimately failing. Then you have Azel eventually developing freewill despite heavy programming. You also have Paet who ostensibly burnt a Bible outside the mayor's house in Zoah. Then you have the emperor and Craymen locked in a battle to control the power of the towers through Azel. Both ultimately failing. Craymen convinces Edge that the monsters and power from the towers are essential to life on the planet and they must be controlled by someone honourable and the emperor cant do it because he's evil. Then you have Gash who wants to destroy that power and free the world from the monsters. Edge doesn't know who to believe after Gash tells him this, but goes along with him anyway because he's weak in character and Craymen is dead. The very end of the story has Edge meet an ultimate power or a god. Edge thinks it's the divine visitor, but what this ultimate organism is, is unclear. What is made clear is that the divine visitor is the player himself and is ultimately the god of the story. Which is a bit of a dues ex machina, 4th wall breaking, bizarre plot twist, but it works for the impact of the message the story wants to convey. So essentially the player destroys the existing oppressive power structure and ultimately god of the Panzer Dragoon world. While this has clear implications of antireligious sentiment and anti-tradition/anti-dogma. It's really an advocation of free will and free thought. The idea that you shouldn't follow simply because someone told you to, but because it's the right thing to do and what you want. That you are an empowered and powerful force that can move worlds. After you kill God you see Gash at the end say, apprehensively, something to the effect of, 'We'll have to travel without a destination.' Which is an allusion to not blindly following dogma and making your own path. After that Azel rides her definitely-not-chocobo into electrical storms to look for Edge, which symbolizes the danger of charting uncertain waters, which is what a rejection of blindly following dogma entails. While I don't like the idea of discarding all of the traditional values simply because they're dogmatic. I do like the promotion of free-thought, choice, and questioning of tradition. Or maybe I'm completely off and misinterpret the ending. In any event, it's a hell of a deep story and powerful ending if I am right. Also, is it supposed to be a cliffhanger with Azel running off looking for Edge like that? It's certainly an opening for a sequel. in general I advice every person who finished the game this website: panzerdragoonlegacy.com/ it's full of theories and other interesting things explaining the world, characters and storylines. it also has a good forum. did you play the other panzer dragoon games before saga? I strongly advice to do so. especially zwei about your point. I think mainly the panzer dragoon saga storyline advocated the destructive power and will of human in general. yet still always maintains hope through love. even an android can feel attached to a human, as is seen by azel falling in love with edge (body) I'll be sure to check that site out, thanks. While I've played the earlier titles, they've never held my attention.
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Post by tempest on May 16, 2016 0:43:47 GMT
However, I disagree that Edge's disappearance set the game up for a sequel. Edge clearly dies at the beginning of the game, with the Divine Visitor (the player) keeping him alive for the quest. Once the player leaves the game world or 'presses the button' they remove their 'lifeforce' from Edge and he returns to being dead. After all, in PD Orta, Azel (in the Sestren memory bank) says she created Orta by combining her genetic data with the remnants of Edge's DNA in Sestren, which is where his lifeless corpse remained since the end of PDS. I've heard this theory, but it just doesn't make any sense that this was the writers' intent. First of all, the supposed clues for the theory are so few and so subtle that no halfway decent writer would expect a video gaming audience to pick up on them, much less fill in the enormous blanks. Even when writing for a hardcore literary audience, you don't rely on the reader to simply guess what happened to the protagonist, because they might guess wrong, not from a lack of insight, but simply from a lack of information. And unfortunately, we can't look to Panzer Dragoon Orta as an indication of the writers' intentions for Panzer Dragoon Saga. The time between the two games' creation is too long. Take it from a writer; when you're writing about the same milieu over several years in real time, your intentions for the characters often change dramatically.* And this is without going into all the changes with the development team's restructuring, switching to a different platform, etc. Second, the theory leaves us with no possible reason for the final scene with Azel. Remember, Azel was supposed to die in the tower. Why would the writers have her inexplicably survive just so that she could search for someone she has no hope of finding? (For that matter, since they had Azel inexplicably survive the end, what makes you think they wouldn't do the same with Edge?) Third, Edge turning out to be dead from the beginning of the game has no point, either thematic or dramatic, beyond cheating the reader/player. That's a really bad idea for prose fiction, and an even worse idea for video games, which are built around the concept of player accomplishment. Now, I wouldn't make the ridiculous assertion that PDS's writers are incapable of terrible ideas, even if that assertion weren't already disproved by the fourth wall breaking at the end. But I think that between (a)a plot point which sets up a sequel that ultimately was never made and (b)an overarching deus ex machina with no purpose beyond cheating the player, option (a) is more consistent with the rest of the game. *For example, just because I like to talk about my own work, when I had Natasha and Deanna decide on having six children back in "Hope for the Nations", I really was planning for them to have exactly six children. I didn't want to deal with any more characters than that. It was only later that it occurred to me that for a loving couple to set a practical limit on the number of children they have makes no sense, and so they have nine children with potentially more to come in "Shining Cloud". It's great to hear there's another author on SS:UK. Will have to look out for your stories. What's your pen name? For me its extremely powerful that as the Divine Visitor, I breath new life not only into Edge, but through his quest, the world of Panzer Dragoon. That's one of the reasons I love the game so much - I get to give new life to this almost lifeless world. It creates a sense of hope. And it ties into the whole existential theme of making your own choices and creating your own life. Azel's survival also gives players hope. While we can't know the author's intention for sure without asking them, for me, Azel's survival and beginning quest is about giving the player a sense of hope at what otherwise would be quite a depressing ending. I can understand why it might be interpreted as an allusion to a future story but I don't believe this was the author's intention. For me, it was simply a statement that life goes on and that every ending creates a new journey, again, tying back to the existential theme. And, as an author, I'm sure you know that people will interpret a story in many different ways no matter the author's intention. All that matters is that we are emotionally affected and engaged with the material and I can tell from your response, that you were touched or fully engaged in the story, even if your interpretation differs from mine (which makes for interesting discussions like this).
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Post by bultje112 on May 16, 2016 10:08:27 GMT
in general I advice every person who finished the game this website: panzerdragoonlegacy.com/ it's full of theories and other interesting things explaining the world, characters and storylines. it also has a good forum. did you play the other panzer dragoon games before saga? I strongly advice to do so. especially zwei about your point. I think mainly the panzer dragoon saga storyline advocated the destructive power and will of human in general. yet still always maintains hope through love. even an android can feel attached to a human, as is seen by azel falling in love with edge (body) I'll be sure to check that site out, thanks. While I've played the earlier titles, they've never held my attention. try playing them now. at least watch all the cutscenes from panzer dragoon and zwei. they uncover important storyline bits. also very important things about the dragon, who is basically the main protagonist in all panzer dragoon
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