Guilty Gear Xrd Story Thread

[NeoStrayCat]

Hahahaha! XD

As much as I really want to see that mash-up become reality, last I checked, Robo-Ky flew away with Venom, so an uncanny fusion isn't gonna happen, though it would have been nice, lol.

[Jocelot]

Robo-Bed is pretty hilarious. But yeah I'm gonna hold on hope for the return of Bedman

[Tsuki Garyuu]

As long as you can dream, Bedman will never die. 

Spoiler

You think I'm crazy now, but just wait.

 

[BlazGearRegalia]

Does the Sheep count the Error 404?

[BlackJustin13]

1 hour ago, Jocelot said:

Robo-Bed is pretty hilarious. But yeah I'm gonna hold on hope for the return of Bedman

After Bedman's death,you could see someone's legs standing with similar markings.My guess is that's his sister and we'll have Bedwoman for the next GG game

[NeoStrayCat]

1 hour ago, BlackJustin13 said:

After Bedman's death,you could see someone's legs standing with similar markings.My guess is that's his sister and we'll have Bedwoman for the next GG game

I even mention the Bedwoman thing too, lol. But others insist of her name given name by Bedman...Delilah, lol.

[churchblue]

Any progress about the Dizzy dlc?

[SoWL]

It's time to voice some unpopular opinions! I'll put it all under the spoiler tag just in case.

Spoiler

 

I finally finished the story mode last night, and saying that I didn't like it would be an understatement. While it did have its good points, most of the time I just wanted to make it end, get my 100k points and buy Raven. Let's hope that listing all its shortcomings will be enough for me to vent off.

 - Most characters have lost their unique drives. This one goes first because it goes against the most important aspect of a good fighting game: a strong roster of characters with different opinions and points of view. Good fighting game stories tend to give each character its own agenda to follow, and when these agendas are in conflict, we get to the actual fighting part that everyone is here for. Alas, most of the roster fights against a single antagonist in Revelator, which really blurs the line between their goals and motivations. Let's say that the one to fight Bedman along with Robo-Ky was not Venom, but Millia: what would change? Pretty much nothing, because both of them are "Those assassin people" as far as the story is concerned. There are a lot of plot points that make characters interchangeable, but the worst offender is the speeches. The story really likes to hamfist its message, and it doesn't really care about which character to use for it. I wouldn't mind if Ky was the one to preach about trust and hope left and right, because that makes perfect sense with his character. I suppose Sin can be a fine mouthpiece, as well, since he is the one who teaches Ram about what makes humanity good. But when Robo-Ky, one of the most egoistic characters in the series, literally created as a weapon, starts talking about the importance of bonds, you can't help but worry about his mental well-being. The same goes for Jam, Sol, Raven, Slayer - all the egoistical badasses who had their own problems to solve turn into carebears who seriously consider a group hug to be the solution to all problems. Ironically, Bedman, a newcomer to the series, ends up being closer to the old character arcs than most veterans: he's doing what he himself considers important, even if it doesn't sit well with the rest of the cast. I sure hope they bring him back.

 - The script shoots itself in the foot with pointless technobabble. Sure, this wouldn't be an anime story without random smart-sounding words, but when the reader already has problems following the central plot (why does Ariels care so much about Justice, again?), complicating the matters even further is not what you want to do as a script writer. Adam and Eve, the gear cells, the Japanese, Information Flares - you hardly need half of these things to keep the reader invested and explaining the characters' actions. Consider the antimatter gears, for example: do you really need the giant enemies to explode on contact with anything (at least that's what the infodumps tell you - they hardly ever explode by the second half of the story) to make them threatening? They're giant beings of destruction, for god's sake! Which brings us to the other side of this point - the more complicated things are, the more solutions become available, even though they never end up being brought up. Since the enemies are gears, why can't Dizzy control them? Ramlethal can fly, so why can't she fly away before the gear explodes? If it's possible to resurrect people, why should I even care about Ramlethal dying? Bedman can attack Robo-Ky from inside the sphere, so why can't he do the same with Venom? If only the writers could apply good old Occam's razor.

 - Ariels is insufferable. Since most characters are already on the same page about opposing the Universal Will, you would expect to at least make Ariels a deeper character so the conflict is not so obvious, right? Fat chance - Ariels does everything in her power to make the player hate her guts. Hell, the writers even gave her a Joker make-up just to make her easier to hate. And her being crazy isn't even the main problem: there are many characters that are both crazy and sympathetic, hell, I'm currently reading a VN that has a perfect example of one. It's all because there is no reason to her craziness. Joker is unhinged because it only takes a single bad day to go mad; Terumi may seem to be a madman, but he's the mastermind behind most of BlazBlue's story, not to mention that he literally draws power from trolling; Ariels makes silly faces... just 'cause? The worst thing is, her backstory is actually pretty good and makes you reconsider her villain status. If only she could actually act in accordance with it. Every single scene that featured her felt like an eternity, so I'm glad she's actually kicked the bucket. Hope they won't bring her back as a playable.

Of course, it wasn't 100% awful: the action scenes are all great, and when the script wants to give some character a chance to shine, it's a sight to behold. But due to the above reasons, it was really difficult for me to lean back and enjoy the ride like I did in Sign. I can only hope the writers learn their lessons in the next installment.

 

 

[SolxBaiken]

THANK YOU!

I'm glad I'm not the only one . . . we pretty much share the same concerns . . .

[Steve-Fiction]

3 hours ago, SoWL said:

It's time to voice some unpopular opinions! I'll put it all under the spoiler tag just in case.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I finally finished the story mode last night, and saying that I didn't like it would be an understatement. While it did have its good points, most of the time I just wanted to make it end, get my 100k points and buy Raven. Let's hope that listing all its shortcomings will be enough for me to vent off.

 - Most characters have lost their unique drives. This one goes first because it goes against the most important aspect of a good fighting game: a strong roster of characters with different opinions and points of view. Good fighting game stories tend to give each character its own agenda to follow, and when these agendas are in conflict, we get to the actual fighting part that everyone is here for. Alas, most of the roster fights against a single antagonist in Revelator, which really blurs the line between their goals and motivations. Let's say that the one to fight Bedman along with Robo-Ky was not Venom, but Millia: what would change? Pretty much nothing, because both of them are "Those assassin people" as far as the story is concerned. There are a lot of plot points that make characters interchangeable, but the worst offender is the speeches. The story really likes to hamfist its message, and it doesn't really care about which character to use for it. I wouldn't mind if Ky was the one to preach about trust and hope left and right, because that makes perfect sense with his character. I suppose Sin can be a fine mouthpiece, as well, since he is the one who teaches Ram about what makes humanity good. But when Robo-Ky, one of the most egoistic characters in the series, literally created as a weapon, starts talking about the importance of bonds, you can't help but worry about his mental well-being. The same goes for Jam, Sol, Raven, Slayer - all the egoistical badasses who had their own problems to solve turn into carebears who seriously consider a group hug to be the solution to all problems. Ironically, Bedman, a newcomer to the series, ends up being closer to the old character arcs than most veterans: he's doing what he himself considers important, even if it doesn't sit well with the rest of the cast. I sure hope they bring him back.

 - The script shoots itself in the foot with pointless technobabble. Sure, this wouldn't be an anime story without random smart-sounding words, but when the reader already has problems following the central plot (why does Ariels care so much about Justice, again?), complicating the matters even further is not what you want to do as a script writer. Adam and Eve, the gear cells, the Japanese, Information Flares - you hardly need half of these things to keep the reader invested and explaining the characters' actions. Consider the antimatter gears, for example: do you really need the giant enemies to explode on contact with anything (at least that's what the infodumps tell you - they hardly ever explode by the second half of the story) to make them threatening? They're giant beings of destruction, for god's sake! Which brings us to the other side of this point - the more complicated things are, the more solutions become available, even though they never end up being brought up. Since the enemies are gears, why can't Dizzy control them? Ramlethal can fly, so why can't she fly away before the gear explodes? If it's possible to resurrect people, why should I even care about Ramlethal dying? Bedman can attack Robo-Ky from inside the sphere, so why can't he do the same with Venom? If only the writers could apply good old Occam's razor.

 - Ariels is insufferable. Since most characters are already on the same page about opposing the Universal Will, you would expect to at least make Ariels a deeper character so the conflict is not so obvious, right? Fat chance - Ariels does everything in her power to make the player hate her guts. Hell, the writers even gave her a Joker make-up just to make her easier to hate. And her being crazy isn't even the main problem: there are many characters that are both crazy and sympathetic, hell, I'm currently reading a VN that has a perfect example of one. It's all because there is no reason to her craziness. Joker is unhinged because it only takes a single bad day to go mad; Terumi may seem to be a madman, but he's the mastermind behind most of BlazBlue's story, not to mention that he literally draws power from trolling; Ariels makes silly faces... just 'cause? The worst thing is, her backstory is actually pretty good and makes you reconsider her villain status. If only she could actually act in accordance with it. Every single scene that featured her felt like an eternity, so I'm glad she's actually kicked the bucket. Hope they won't bring her back as a playable.

Of course, it wasn't 100% awful: the action scenes are all great, and when the script wants to give some character a chance to shine, it's a sight to behold. But due to the above reasons, it was really difficult for me to lean back and enjoy the ride like I did in Sign. I can only hope the writers learn their lessons in the next installment.

 

 

I agree with you. However:

Spoiler

Sign had pretty much the same problems in my opinion (except the Ariels part, obviously).

I think there is a very simle reason for all of those problems, which is the length of story mode. It's super short. With that little time on their hand, they can't really get into the motivations and stories of the side characters while still advancing with the main plot.

I'm sure if they took a different approach to story mode (less cinematic, more VN style) Ariels would have been more likable, every character would have had way more screentime and characterization, and so on. Then, maybe one could appreciate every new plot point they bring up (like Adam and Eve and stuff).

I feel like my English is especially bad today, please excuse that.

[JustaMaskedFreak]

True, especially because we are used too with Blazblue story, which has a huge lenght and many twists of PVs according to the story, when I see GG, I see something damn shorter than BB.

[SoWL]

While it is true that Sign had similar problems, the fact that it had a lot of unknown variables made it much less apparent. It was easier to forgive the script's shortcomings when it clearly leaves a lot of the answers for the later installments. The rest of your points are pretty valid, I think.

[Tsuki Garyuu]

\

On 7/14/2016 at 2:26 PM, SoWL said:

It's time to voice some unpopular opinions! I'll put it all under the spoiler tag just in case.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I finally finished the story mode last night, and saying that I didn't like it would be an understatement. While it did have its good points, most of the time I just wanted to make it end, get my 100k points and buy Raven. Let's hope that listing all its shortcomings will be enough for me to vent off.

 - Most characters have lost their unique drives. This one goes first because it goes against the most important aspect of a good fighting game: a strong roster of characters with different opinions and points of view. Good fighting game stories tend to give each character its own agenda to follow, and when these agendas are in conflict, we get to the actual fighting part that everyone is here for. Alas, most of the roster fights against a single antagonist in Revelator, which really blurs the line between their goals and motivations. Let's say that the one to fight Bedman along with Robo-Ky was not Venom, but Millia: what would change? Pretty much nothing, because both of them are "Those assassin people" as far as the story is concerned. There are a lot of plot points that make characters interchangeable, but the worst offender is the speeches. The story really likes to hamfist its message, and it doesn't really care about which character to use for it. I wouldn't mind if Ky was the one to preach about trust and hope left and right, because that makes perfect sense with his character. I suppose Sin can be a fine mouthpiece, as well, since he is the one who teaches Ram about what makes humanity good. But when Robo-Ky, one of the most egoistic characters in the series, literally created as a weapon, starts talking about the importance of bonds, you can't help but worry about his mental well-being. The same goes for Jam, Sol, Raven, Slayer - all the egoistical badasses who had their own problems to solve turn into carebears who seriously consider a group hug to be the solution to all problems. Ironically, Bedman, a newcomer to the series, ends up being closer to the old character arcs than most veterans: he's doing what he himself considers important, even if it doesn't sit well with the rest of the cast. I sure hope they bring him back.

 - The script shoots itself in the foot with pointless technobabble. Sure, this wouldn't be an anime story without random smart-sounding words, but when the reader already has problems following the central plot (why does Ariels care so much about Justice, again?), complicating the matters even further is not what you want to do as a script writer. Adam and Eve, the gear cells, the Japanese, Information Flares - you hardly need half of these things to keep the reader invested and explaining the characters' actions. Consider the antimatter gears, for example: do you really need the giant enemies to explode on contact with anything (at least that's what the infodumps tell you - they hardly ever explode by the second half of the story) to make them threatening? They're giant beings of destruction, for god's sake! Which brings us to the other side of this point - the more complicated things are, the more solutions become available, even though they never end up being brought up. Since the enemies are gears, why can't Dizzy control them? Ramlethal can fly, so why can't she fly away before the gear explodes? If it's possible to resurrect people, why should I even care about Ramlethal dying? Bedman can attack Robo-Ky from inside the sphere, so why can't he do the same with Venom? If only the writers could apply good old Occam's razor.

 - Ariels is insufferable. Since most characters are already on the same page about opposing the Universal Will, you would expect to at least make Ariels a deeper character so the conflict is not so obvious, right? Fat chance - Ariels does everything in her power to make the player hate her guts. Hell, the writers even gave her a Joker make-up just to make her easier to hate. And her being crazy isn't even the main problem: there are many characters that are both crazy and sympathetic, hell, I'm currently reading a VN that has a perfect example of one. It's all because there is no reason to her craziness. Joker is unhinged because it only takes a single bad day to go mad; Terumi may seem to be a madman, but he's the mastermind behind most of BlazBlue's story, not to mention that he literally draws power from trolling; Ariels makes silly faces... just 'cause? The worst thing is, her backstory is actually pretty good and makes you reconsider her villain status. If only she could actually act in accordance with it. Every single scene that featured her felt like an eternity, so I'm glad she's actually kicked the bucket. Hope they won't bring her back as a playable.

Of course, it wasn't 100% awful: the action scenes are all great, and when the script wants to give some character a chance to shine, it's a sight to behold. But due to the above reasons, it was really difficult for me to lean back and enjoy the ride like I did in Sign. I can only hope the writers learn their lessons in the next installment.

 

 

I appreciate the effort you took to make this and I agree with a lot of these criticisms. Nevertheless:

Spoiler

I don't feel that most characters' drives have been lost as much as they have become resolute and they now know what objectives they wish to complete. This character dynamic puts Sign and Revelator in the same platform as BBCP; more than half the characters begrudgingly set aside their differences for a while to defeat a common enemy. Their individual motives are petty compared to what these big bads are going to do to them. You bring up the Story Mode to not go into great detail about every character's motivations and ideals and such, but Arcade and Episode mode did just that for the most part. If ArcSys needs to fix anything, it should be to add more cutscenes (both in-fight and movie) to these modes, but sadly, they didn't have that kind of time. There's still the past GG games to consider as well, but at the same time, this is a game that came out almost a decade after GGAC+ and GG2.

 

Of course, just because most characters have found their true calling doesn't automatically mean that this kind of writing is done well. I dunno about you, but I found Millia coming back to Assassin's Guild (with the excuse that it's her real home) and wanting to be the one to change it to be out of character. I thought leading the guild was Venom's new shtick. I too found it strange that all the Assassins decide that it's best for guild to be disclosed to the public...huh? Throughout the "Battle of Illyria" segment, I was like "so are they Illyria's personal hitmen? Are they mercenaries? Are they superheroes?" These details could be removed and it would have made no difference. It's so simple: Millia hangs with the guildies to reconcile with Zato and help the other guildies defeat Bedman cuz even she thinks something's up. They get their asses kicked and plot their revenge together. Knowing that the world is in danger, the guild shows up in public just once to save Illyria. Venom and Robo-Ky defeat Bedman. Venom dies (kinda). After everything is done, Millia rejoins to honor Venom's resolve or she leaves and Slayer takes over the guild like he did in GGXX. DONE.

 

As for the "carebears" complaint, as I mentioned, most character are resolute in their drives, so they can take working together with a grain of salt. I like this progression in the story, mostly because it's at a point where characters can do that. I get the most heartwarming scenes in the entire series because of this. How can you hate the big argument that Sol and Ky had in Sign? What about the time when Sol and Axl had a drink together; when Ky, OF ALL PEOPLE, offered a drink with Sol? The conversation between Raven and Jack-O wasn't too bad either.

 

There are some major inconsistencies in the story, and "carebear" shifts where they don't make actual sense. Aside from the Assassin's Guild for reasons above, Robo-Ky is probably the most inconsistent, if not worst character in the whole series because of the 10 minutes of screen time he had and that out-of-nowhere speech about bonds and shit. AND HE'S NOT A PLAYABLE CHARACTER. He doesn't even have an arcade story in Sign or Revelator. You can't believe this is the same character after playing GGX and GGXX. Did the writers took and early shift out and let Mori fill in for the rest of their hours or something? His segment in the Venom vs. Bedman fight was a huge turnoff for me. AND WHY ARE VENOM AND HE WALKING ACROSS A DESERT? Doesn't the PWAB make multiple Robo-Ky's too or is that retconned out of GGXX as well?

 

And then there's Ariel, the elephant in the room. I love...the potential she had to be a good GG villain. Did it look the writers tried way too hard to make us hate her? Sure. Was the Joker makeup unnecessary and pretentious? Absolutely. But you wanna know something? She's an insane character that has a backstory actually given to us. We understand how she could end up insanely schizophrenic and switch moods on a dime, like a better version of Junko Enoshima. After all, "Backyard is a hell of a drug." I was given a believable villain in a fighting game, I just personally wish the writers subdued her insanity at times where she didn't need to, have her actually do more things to make us gradually hate her. How can you mess up developing a villain that we can't understand in human terms? The Universal Will tried to understand concepts that it can't associate with. That's the basis of an interestingly complex villain and the writers couldn't pull it off. The fact that she died in one game ruins the chance for Ariels to be developed further. I sometimes wonder if the writers were scared of making her too similar to Izanami, but I digress.

 

Overall, I still have my enjoyment with Xrd's story modes and they do have some merit to them. I have my reasons for liking the fact that they're 2-4 hour movies of sorts, but that's a topic for another day. The flaws that I have with the writing leads Xrd to be critically average.

 

Now, who wants to make a Guily Gear Sins with me?

 

[redsilversnake]

Putting aside that neither of you are that good at critique (which is especially obvious with citing the Cinema Sins format, which is horrible for criticism), you're both completely overlooking the problems on the production side that caused the story's actual issues, such as low staff leaving few options for a story more involved than in Sign and Revelator.

[Tsuki Garyuu]

I thought a good chunk of us understood the problems the staff had production-wise for a long time, and even more so after Arcsys patched in the other half of the Rev's story. We still got what we got. Also, I made a reference for a quick joke. Not the same as using a format.

[JustaMaskedFreak]

Now, we only need to wait to see the final battle between Asuka and Sol...

Looking foward at the end of 2017

[Tsuki Garyuu]

And I-No vs. The World(?).

[Zazz]

On 7/15/2016 at 11:46 PM, JustaMaskedFreak said:

Now, we only need to wait to see the final battle between Asuka and Sol...

Looking foward at the end of 2017

I think the "final battle" will get interrupted by Aria waking up, and jumping in between them and saying stuff about not losing her only two friends left.

Then some funny character interactions/everyday life bits.

And then I-no makes her villain move and a new bad thing happens that the heroes must solve.

[werewolfgold]

Walls o' text going on here. lol

I agree that Robo-Ky was a little WTF in this story and that Bedman probably should've tried a bit harder to attack Venom while he was charging his lazer. But, I don't really see any good reason why Ariels had to be a sympathetic villain. I think she works just fine as completely batshit. We got the backstory and her overall motivation. From there, the fun is yet to come with basically the entire world being turned on its head due to the world's religious leader actually being a murderous psycho. We don't need to feel sorry for her on top of that.

And then a lot of characters working together just comes from people actually being human and knowing when to table bullshit. If anything, it would've been more stilted to have in-fighting for no real reason other than "drama" and preserving a character's pigeon-holed role/archetype. There's some other complaints I could pick apart, but then this would be a wall o' text, too. lol

[Blade]

There's lots of stuff I want to say about the story, but I think regardless of what I say, people will come to their own conclusions/opinions about it.

What people need to "get" about Ariels is that she/it was something intended to research an altruistic future for mankind, but got hung up/confused along the way.

When she talks to Sol about his life experiences, she gets hung up on his "tragic past", but he quickly brushes that aside for an optimistic future, which is also what Axl Low does too.

A good future isn't necessarily something you think deeply about, it's something you MAKE.

[deadite]

I'm predicting

SolxElphelt

SinxRam

Aria/JackOx Raven in the sequel.

[Solhunter]

Unrelated topic, but is anyone here interested in becoming the new administrator of the Guilty Gear Wikia?  Danseru-kun has officially stepped down and is looking for some people to take his/her place:http://danseru-kun.tumblr.com/post/148232129204/anyone-wants-to-be-a-guilty-gear-wiki-admin-or

[Toxin45]

So will there be a follow up for guilty gear xrd maybe as a conclusion to sol's saga? Because it's going that route

[Blade]

Baiken was chillin'. 

http://gear-project.tumblr.com/post/156157999934/exactly-where-was-baiken-during-ramlethals

[churchblue]

I hope Dizzy's story mode will explain her decision in coming out in the open to protect Illyria.