It’s getting close, guys. Big reveals are going on and there’s a lot to take in. Buckle up!

So much goes on in this episode that it’s difficult to delve into it in a single post. The big problem is something I’ve talked about multiple times in these write-ups: Birth By Sleep obsessively explains away almost every single detail from previous games by saying that it’s something Terra, Ventus, or Aqua did.

But we see another problem in this episode, and towards the end of the last one, where it’s not content with just explaining away details in previous entries. In a lot of the endgame dialogue, the characters in this game reuse speeches and phrases that characters in earlier Kingdom Hearts games used. Sora’s “part of their heart” speech and Billy Zane as Ansem’s infamous “All world’s begin in darkness” monologue are taken almost verbatim. Unfortunately, they are also recycled in contexts that rob them of their original meanings.

There is debate as to exactly when Kingdom Hearts “jumped the shark”. Some would say it was Kingdom Hearts 2. Others would point to Dream Drop Distance, which we will cover soon. If I were asked where I thought the Kingdom Hearts franchise got too bloated and out of control, I would say this game. Fortunately there’s an HD version of this game on the PS3 and PS4, because otherwise it would be criminal for all of this important plot information to be buried in a portable many fans didn’t play.

Welcome to the beginning of the end… for Birth By Sleep.

By far my favorite moment of this episode is when Sam, after doing some plot calculus in his head, comes to the conclusion that this game, when taken in context with that which (in terms of release date) came before, makes the whole franchise worse.

Frankly, knowing that every problem in the known universe can be traced back to 3 kids and their inability to communicate makes the whole sorted affair feel like a cosmic waste of time. On top of that, most of the trio’s actions, even when are aware of what they are doing, just make things even worse for the ones who need to clean up their mess later.

This is compounded by the sheer stupidity/inconsistency of Eraqus. Despite being this stalwart Templar of Light, he wasn’t exactly worth-coming about the dangers of darkness (and his evil rival who covets it).

Sure, I feel bad for the 3 “heroes”, but it’s hard to be particularly sympathetic to them when everyone (including them) would have been better off if they just got sick and stayed home.

At last, we’re solidly in Act 3.

We’ve suddenly gone from not much happening at all, to a lot happening all at once. Out of all the new topics introduced, there are two big ones: Eraqus and the X-Blade. We’ll table the X-Blade talk for now. Instead, I want to focus on Eraqus and his questionable decision making.

The game wants to portray him as an ultimately well-meaning man that has become so blinded by his obsession with the light that his judgement has been clouded. To some degree, this works, particularly in his interacts with Terra. These moments, and the way Terra remembers him, give off the impression of an “All Darkness Must Die”-type Knight Templar figure. While he loves Terra like a son, it’s obvious that he doesn’t approve of Terra’s proximity to the Darkness.

That said, I also believe that Birth By Sleep wants me to think of Eraqus as an intelligence (not omniscient, we have Xehanort and Aqua for that) person in all other respects. If that is the case, he fails miserably. We harped on it a lot during this episode, but I just cannot get over how Eraqus let Xehanort watch the Mark of Mastery exams despite knowing he tried to start the Great War of Kingdom Hearts (For Science!). And on top of that, he neglected to tell his students about this event.

This could be forgiven, but there really is no compelling reason (at least, the game doesn’t offer one) for him to make these mistakes. There would be no plot to Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep if not for all the secrecy. Considering how much (and we haven’t even gotten started on most of it) of these events tie directly into Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, Eraqus and our 3 “heroes” just come of this looking completely irresponsible.

This is the last world before we can get back to the main plot.

To make something clear in these posts, I want to say that although we constantly complain about how gullible Terra is, that’s not inherently a flaw with either his character or the story. Gullibility is a trait, like any other. It can be good, bad, or somewhere in between.

The real problem comes from the fact that Terra is fooled by the bad guy every single time. No matter how many times he is ruthlessly, consistently fooled, he never takes steps to try to avoid being duped in the future. It’s always “Well, I guess I’ve been duped again. Guess I couldn’t do anything about that”.

And even that could work, but then it would help if he had some character trait other than “stupid, easy to trick”. Just some scenarios where his gullibility generates some interesting dynamics b/t him and more heroic character, or if he grew wise and started raising questions to certain people before he chose to help them. The latter could even mark some strong, much needed character growth.

Instead, the same scenario plays out over and over again. It gets to the point where one can easily predict the plot of almost every world.

• Terra will find himself fooled by the bad guys, up until he helps them complete their plans. At this point, once they think they no longer need him, they will double cross him, leading him to realize he’d been duped.
• Ventus (Call him, Ven. will show up either slightly earlier/later, and just miss him. While looking for Terra, Ven meets the friendly Disney hero of whatever world he landed on and get sidetracked into helping him for a bit. Once he feels he can do no more, he’ll leave while the Disney hero takes care of it from there.
• But no, actually Aqua shows up after the other two to tie-up loose ends, learning that she “just missed” her friends. 

Well, we were going good for a while, but now is filler time.

It had to happen eventually. With all LPs, especially with Kingdom Hearts, you reach the eventual filler episode.

It’s just that we spent this episode talking about filler in Kingdom Hearts. It’s a subject I’ve pontificated over numerous times in this series. I see no need to go over it again.

Welcome to Greek Mythology… where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.

To give the game some credit, I didn’t notice just how badly the timeline for this world got bungled until after I had beaten the game twice and then did this project with Sam. When I had 8 hours between visits to a given world, it was easy to forget some of the particulars. Having AtRiley cut this in chronological order just puts in into perspective.

It’s also hard to unsee just how different Aqua is treated in this world compared to other worlds. In all the other worlds, being a woman informs her character, but it never becomes a defining trait of who she is and what she’s involved in. Here, Sam’s right in that she just gets treated like the token chick. Even if it’s only for this part of the game, I’m left quite uncomfortable about that. Not only does it perpetrate harmful stereotypes, but the character deserves better than that.

This was probably one of our best episodes.

It’s been a long time since I made this commentary. As a result, while I still largely agree with many of the things I said in this series, some of my opinions have changed. The point I was trying to make at the start of this episode regarding player agency and how that sets up expectations doesn’t resonate as strongly to me now as it did back then. I’ve seen a lot of games that put the player in positions where they can’t make good choices, like Night in the Woods, and they’ve turned my opinion around. It’s not a crime to rob a player of agency, so long as something compelling comes from it.

The other hard part about writing these posts well after the series was recorded is that sometimes I just don’t have any meaningful commentary to add. In those cases, I artificially inflate the length of my post by making meta-commentaries on the meta-commentary I made in the episode. Worse, I won’t add anything meaningful to the commentary in doing this. It literally only exists to add words.

That’s a terrible writing style that would only come from a hack. Fortunately, I never claimed to be good at writing.

Before I even had the chance to, Sam immediately points out the problem with the scenes in this episode… both of them.

The second problem Sam mentioned was elaborated on in the previous episode’s post. In the scene with Terra and Braig, Sam talked about how this game seems to need to explain every single thing that happened in later games as a side effect of what one of our main characters in this game did. That issue I had with Aqua’s spell on Kairi is the same problem I had with Braig’s scar: There was no need to explain it.

However, that leaves the other elephant in the room. The first problem that Sam pointed out, and my biggest issue with Birth By Sleep, is that when the three met up again, the entire plot would have been solved if they just sat down and compared notes.

Though the footage we borrowed from AtRiley (Thanks to them for allowing us to use it) cut these scenes to be in chronological order, Birth By Sleep is a Rashomon plot. As a player, one plays through each character’s story one at a time, and only gets the full understanding once they’ve completed all of them. On some level, this only works if each character has knowledge the others do not have access to.

But the best way to make sure that happens is to either prevent them from gathering together in the same place, or otherwise disincentive them from divulging information to the other parties. In the scene at the beginning of this episode, where the friends meet up, neither of these conditions hold.  Not only are all three of them in the same location, but as friends they would almost automatically open by asking what the other two have “been up to”.

Think about a time when you, the reader, reconnected with an old friend. There’s an almost 100% that within the first five minutes of talking, you asked them happened to them between when you last saw them and when you met again. It’s just something we do, but this doesn’t happen in this scene.

This episode contains the second-most annoying scene in Kingdom Hearts.