Was anyone else surprised that... [MAJOR SPOILERS]

[treehann]

(EDIT: I'm editing this post to pad the text a bit so it doesn't show up in the tooltip for the discussion board. It's kind of stupid that Steam discussions don't censor the spoiler text in the tooptip. They should fix that.)

...Mother was just a glorified figurehead and on top of that, kind of a jerk? I was expecting a villain more akin to a Tales game where they're exceedingly calm even when guiding people towards an unethical goal. She broke down really easily and didn't even have very much stage time.

Twists like this are awesome in my opinion, and Iconoclasts has a lot of them that send you for a loop if you care about the story. I was also shocked that Elro would kill someone suddenly who seems so nice compared to the other villains (still sort of sad about that tbh, I liked Gray).

What else in the story surprised you guys? The ending being the obvious one...

[ImpTaimer]

Unless people figure out more secrets/dialogue/cutscenes/flashbacks in the game, its safe to say Elro and Chrome are the biggest screwups; just plain ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Everyone is a screwup except you, but those two more than anyone. You're trying to fix everything they broke.

[x-calibar]

@Mother - I expected a whole lot more from Mother... She did have a great battle, but I guess I'm spoiled with long RPGs which will give you far more than you need. Where are my long winded expositions!!

She had some immense power, but she was clueless about the Seeds. So certain of her own strength and so angry at Royal about how he ruined everything they had ever planned, that she just lost it. You could tell things were bad from the moment you saw her slouching as she arrived in public. It's hard to judge how people might react with the supposed end of the world at hand, even if she had a gloomy escape route planned... (Living on the moon?)

There is also the question of how long has she been around, and how much that has affected her mind... Who knows if she too suffered from the Ivory process?

@Elro - I really didn't expect Elro to seem like such a ruthless character either. He had lost everything, and was willing to do almost anything to cling to what he had left. Surely he suffered more than many of the characters; but I didn't feel a very strong connection to how he expressed himself. Or maybe just seeing him do that to Gray made me resent him... Perhaps if Teegan had only spoken of the story of his friend, it would have had a different effect; rather than seeing the bare truth...

@ other stuff that surprised me
How about ROBIN. I mean super Robin.

Just what is she?! In her dream, Robin seems like a much more delicate girl in the past. Though I guess that was just a dream. Teegan mentioned Elro saw Robin as a much more fragile girl, so for the longest time I had a tough time coming to terms with super Robin. She who seemed to be unphased by harsh icy winds, and was able to take down impossible foes that no other could. They also stress her youthful age... And the first moment of the game is Robin leaping into a house that was just newly Peanced. And proceeds to defeat the eye monster!? I was sure she was a robot or changed by something that Elro or her father had given her. Being described as weak just doesn't match up with reality... Robin the Iconoclast! IMO it felt like Elro was trying to hide something about her, but I guess he just had his own idea of who she was.

@ Royal's fate
This surprised me. I hadn't read if this game had routes, and being forced to leave him all of a sudden seemed out of character to me. I wondered if I had entered a bad route after all that had happened and would happen soon. (Was Elro dead? Was Mina broken further? Was I supposed to save the Silver Watchman? Let the Rocket break? Try to let Mina see what the transcending machines did? Tell the Ili about the other Ark? Were there moments I should have held back, instead of helping or attacking as common gameplay practices prods you towards? ...I did try to avoid shooting most enemies for the longest time. Soldiers, statues, monsters... Anything that might count against her.)
I guess my biggest issue is that Royal didn't appear to be dead when she left him, and there was plenty of time to try something on the clock. There was no dialogue, just the player's choice to let him go in order to advance. I'd have been much more satisfied with such a dark choice if the timer had been much stricter, giving you no choice but to react, and regret afterwards. Instead I tried everything from blasting the door repeatedly, checking the walls, spamming all the buttons, attempting to drop kick Royal, meditate with him, looking for other passages... lol nothing :/
Was there a symbolic point to forcing his death? Eh... maybe... but I'd rather focus on the person in front of me that can be saved than interpet his death as anything other than a loss of a troubled friend.

[Willcheat]

That is one big wall of text. A nice big wall of text. I liked reading it.

For Royal's fate, the ray seems to force your guilt to attack you. During the last fight, in the nightmare phase, the first three nightmares will be more or less violent depending on how nice you were to Elro, Mina and Royal during the game. Being agreeable to them all the time will make the nightmares simply not attack you. Considering how violent they can be if you simply say "no" to someone, it's likely Royal's nightmare, fueled by the fact that he possibly doomed the whole world with his action, was quite likely impossible to snap out of.

What he says is likely him rambling during the nightmare, but it's doubtful he'd manage to snap out of it in time.

And yeah, even if you could swap with Royal, there'd be a huge box right after blocking your 1-high jump when carrying him. He's quite sadly doomed :(.

[StealthMode]

I don't know about anyone else, but the part in the game that hit me the hardest was the last couple battles with Black. I felt so bad having to kill her I cried after the fight. After learning what she had been through I felt really awful...especially when you have to use the seeds on her. It's one of the few times in gaming where winning the fight didn't make me feel like I did something good. Not many games make me cry but this one part sure as hell did

[Droj]

What surprised me was realizing that the name "One Concern" actually made sense. The One Concern literally had only one concern: to save humanity from the coming disaster. Nothing else mattered, not methods, morals, pain, the greater part of humanity that had to be sacrificed, nothing mattered to them but to save some remnant. (In theory, of course. People being people, it didn't entirely work that way in practice, and some definitely took advantage of it.)

What didn't surprise me was the ending. Not even the birdman. Honestly! I'd been getting such a Chrono Trigger vibe that I think I was subconsciously expecting it at that point. (Oops, sorry for the spoilers if you haven't played it, WHICH YOU SHOULD.)

Originally posted by Ri-chan:

I don't know about anyone else, but the part in the game that hit me the hardest was the last couple battles with Black. I felt so bad having to kill her I cried after the fight. After learning what she had been through I felt really awful...especially when you have to use the seeds on her. It's one of the few times in gaming where winning the fight didn't make me feel like I did something good. Not many games make me cry but this one part sure as hell did

Yeah, killing Black was rough. And when Royal said not to feel bad about it because she was a terrible person, that was when I said out loud, "Shut the ♥♥♥♥ up, Royal. You just shut your damn mouth."

I wasn't planning to 100% the game on my first run, but I was so dreading what could possibly come after that that I kept putting off the final fight until there was literally nothing else left to do. Good game, A+ feels. It goes on my List, which now has three games on it.

[x-calibar]

@after trying to save Royal, going back and redoing the rocket sequence to see if anything can be changed. Like if Black can break the rocket if you don't stop her.
Not sure if this is weird, but due to Robin's silence I found myself mentally talking for Robin a few times. Like with the rocket battle with Black: A silent plead, an argument for Agent Black to stop this madness. I refused to use the seeds... but no matter how many times you force her down, she would get right back up. ...No choice after all...

And then what surprised me, (which turns out to be just an amazing coincidence upon attempting again) once I used all of the seeds, and Black entered her final dialogue. I stopped shooting, as if I just couldn't bring myself to finish her off... I was listening to her final words... when suddenly, in a single strike, Royal did what I couldn't. He killed her. I was shocked... wow Konjak, you thought of that too? ... Man... This is dark...

@the rocket
Oh right. Did everyone catch it? After the initial fight with Black, the very first time I actually "won"; I noticed the central pipe connected to, or which is part of the rocket, was shattered. I assume that's Ivory fuel just gushing out? I just KNEW, knew: wow, we are so screwed. Didn't know if the rocket would just blow up (Like Elro said...), or fail to work at all...
But, guess it was fine in the end...

Originally posted by IYFWillcheat:

there'd be a huge box right after blocking your 1-high jump when carrying him. He's quite sadly doomed :(.

Glad I didn't ramble too much! :)
About that quote, I was wondering though, if you could double jump them with a certain tweak. Well not that we can reach them anyway...

[StealthMode]

Konjak put some incredibly intense imagery into that battle. Watching Black puke up ivory and progressively getting slower and weaker but still trying to get up...and I kept remembering the scene where you go beneathe the transcender machine into the vat with all the ivory and melted people--and realized she avoided that but had an even worse fate in the end. I'm literally going to play through it once more just to get to that battle again. Even when you defeat her final form and she proclaims "HEADACHE" as she dies...i felt so bad. The final boss sequence didn't come close to the same feels (not that it was bad, I thought it was a really fun battle too)