- Pronouns
- he/him
Hm, still think the name's a bit weird but that's solid evidence. Would make some sense for an Attacker to inflict Unblockable on themselves as an auraThe talent art for Eunie's ouroboros also has unblockable as one of the effects. If you look at the Japanese footage, that effect in Eunie's ouroboros talent art literally translates to something like 'Guard Seal'. It's the exact same word that I chose to translate as Nullify Blocking in my chart because that seemed more in line with how 2's localization named similar stuff. But now I'm thinking Unblockable is actually the localized name for that Guard Seal status. I also think yumsmith has an art that inflicts it. Likely, Annul Guard seen on another ouroboros art is for an attack to bypass block rate.
I find 1 vs 2 stuff tiring and I don't enjoy talking story as much as gameplay because of how personal one's connection to a story can be so I won't go into this too much. 1 came into my life at a time where what it means to me is something I can't argue rationally.
But 2 strikes me as a lot heavier on plot with all the politics between nations and the world feeling more fleshed out because of it. People often say chapter 4 is useless or an example of the narrative getting sidetracked. Really, Bana's connection to torna and the mass manufacturing of artificial blades is pretty important and what people are responding poorly to I think is that it doesn't feel character motivated. It eventually gets to expand on a character in which they retell Maria Balthazaar's story with Tora, but that wasn't the impetus for the party going to the factory in the first place.
I'm not interested in discussing the merits of using a revenge plot for a narrative device, but isn't revenge inherently a character driven motivation? Much of 1's story feels driven by Shulk's desires. He wants revenge on the mechon and when he reaches a point where he sees revenge as futile and only continuing a cycle of violence - his enemy changes to an entity who looks and sounds just like him and seeks to continue a cycle of violence. He conquers his own bloodthirst by turning to face what is essentially his own dark side making up the third act.
Though in general, I don't find plot vs character to be all that useful because very few stories actually weigh that heavily on one side. It's always muddied and hard to separate. And it gets even more complicated when you consider some people see a difference between plot vs story on top of that. The best stories do both well and both 1 and 2 play with both at different times through their respective stories.
I do wonder how Auras will be balanced for Agnian classes, since arts seem to recharge a lot faster there (even if you increase the number of auto attacks for the cooldown, canceling arts charges things up really fast it seems). Seems trivial to have constant uptime, but at the same time I don't know if you'll want one of your faster charging arts to be relegated to an aura.
Also, interesting take on the subject of plot vs character driven. I guess for me it isn't that 1 is more plot driven, but more plot focused . As in, the motivations might be more character driven but the actual game focuses more on the plot than the characters. And vice versa for 2. But I agree that it's all a bit subjective and murky and we've probably discussed it for long enough. Like you said, how people view stories is ultimately subjective and it's hard to argue about that sort of thing.