Out Of The Fogden

The big finale of Fogden Game takes place in some kind of derelict coliseum. At one end there's the Fog Coffin and in front of it stands Inanna, flanked by Zankou and Poinsette. At the other, there's everyone else.

I took screenshots of each group as they appeared and then another of the full complement. That's the whole crew up there at the top of the post. From Right to left: Adler, Daffodil, The Appraiser, Hotori, Linko, Chaos and Thyme. It's such a classic stand-off. I loved the drama of it all.

There's a couple of things to say about the line-up. Firstly, Adler. I didn't even mention him in the previous post. I'd completely forgotten he was there and even now I can't remember who he was with or what he did. I try to find him interesting because on paper he ought to be but the way the character is written and voiced makes it hard.

Secondly, there are seven people on our side and only three on the opposing team, assuming the Fog Coffin is the referee, not a competitor. Eight, in fact, because although Nitsa isn't in shot, she came in with Adler and Linko so she must be there, somewhere. Maybe she's behind Hotori. With those numbers, surely this fight can only go one way?

Yeah, well, about that. When the fighting starts, you can only have four in your team. And you don't get to pick who they are. In the first phase the team is yourself (Zero/the Appraiser), Linko, Chaos and Adler and in phase two Adler tags out in favor of Hotori. Daffodil, Thyme and Nitsa are somewhere else, presumably fighting Zankou and Poinsette.

First, though, let's backtrack just a little. The final two set pieces in the prelude to the big fight are both quite strange, one in a much more meaningful manner than the other. 

Linko and Nitsa's adventure, which has always felt like the lighthearted end of the story, changes from a homage to the Indiana Jones movies to a spoof of the Kaiju genre. The two girls find themselves stomping through a 1/50th scale version of Hethereau like Godzilla's cuter little sisters. 

That was pure fun but Flora's sliding doors trip to a variety of future versions of Eibon goes much darker. In a series of bleak tableaus, presented in washed-out sepia like a badly-stored celluloid movie, the Appraiser gets to see what might happen if she wins. Or loses. Or merely survives.

None of it is good. In one scenario, three months after the Fogden Game, Alphard has been forced to resign and Eibon is closing down. In another, the Appraiser is the only one left in a still-functioning Eibon a hundred years after the end of the game. And in a third everything seems to be going splendidly and Alphard has just given her blessing on the Appraiser remaining at Eibon permanently.

All of these turn out to be either possible futures or imaginary ones conjured up by Poinsette via her somewhat vaguely-defined ability to create doorways through dimensions and/or time. Poinsette appears and a lengthy discussion takes place between her and the Appraiser during which some thought-provoking observations about the nature of reality, predestination and fate are made.

Poinsette, it transpires, hasn't specifically raised these phantoms to freak Flora out. She's been tasked by Inanna with revealing Flora's future to her but Poinsette, having rifled through a lot more futures than she's shown the Apprasier, is herself freaking out that she can't find a single one in which she survives the Fogden Game.

I found this sequence particularly enjoyable. It revealed a bit more of Poinsette's character and in doing so augmented the impression I'd already formed that the girl wasn't entirely beyond redemption, unlike her so-say sister, Zankou. 

Given the tone of the writing and the direction, I was fairly sure we wouldn't be killing Poinsette. I certainly hoped not. She has potential both as a character and a colleague. It would certainly be handy to have a team-mate who could open doors you could walk through to appear in another place or time.

So much for the philosophy. On with the fighting.

The big battle with Inanna is suitably spectacular but if I said I could remember much about the details, I'd be lying. It's all a bit of an impressionistic blur after a couple of days. I remember she levitated and grew extra legs like a spider. There was a lot of swooping around and some massive light-show explosions. 

We killed her once and she got back up, as arch-villains all too often do. The Fog Coffin, with whom Inanna has an Anomaly Contract, which seems to be the Hethereau equivalent of a deal with the devil, came clambering over the rubble like a titanic golem and I was just thinking "Oh FFS! Do I have to fight that thing now?" when Code Zero, the ultra-mysterious Rules Anomaly from a previous episode, turned up out of nowhere and started a King Kong vs Godzilla style battle with the Fog Coffin.

I was very much hoping that would be the end of it but Inanna underwent another transformation into an even more distorted arachnid form and we had to kill her a second time. I'd lost track by then of what the two giant anomalies were doing. It was hellish.

Just as I thought we had her beaten for the second time, she somehow grabbed Daffodil and held her trapped in her tentacles as she monologued something extremely disturbing about taking her eyes. Hotori went in for a rescue but before she could get there Zankou dropped out of the sky and skewered her so-called Mother, yelling "I told you! Daffodil. Is. Mine!"

Inanna finally goes down for a second time and we all stand around, wheezing and gasping and bleeding, while the whole Fogden starts to collapse around us. Chaos somehow gets a connection to the outside world on his magic phone that's been out of service the whole time until now. He calmly starts making a report because he's cool as hell and we all need to know about it and as all that's going on, Zankou moves over to Poinsette and tells her it's time to go.

Then the Helm of Odysseus drops out of the sky, bounces a couple of times and ends up in the middle of the arena. Everyone looks at it. For a second, no-one moves, then Code Zero reaches for it with its fifty foot long arm but Thyme gets there first and next thing we're all on the ghost ship somehow, with Thyme steering and Flora hanging over the side and Hotori trying to haul her onboard and Code Zero is trying to grab the stern and letting loose some sort of doomsday attack and then Hotori counters with something even more powerful and then the ship goes through a portal and the Appraiser slumps to the deck and...

It was all very exciting. I'd be lying if I said I remembered it as clearly as I've just described and I'm aware I haven't described it clearly at all. What I actually remembered were lots of fragmented images and moments. I had to go watch someone else's recording on YouTube to put all the pieces into the right order.

Here it is, in case you want to watch it, too. The big fight's at the end. Or watch the whole thing. It'll only take you two and a half hours.

I remember the coda well enough. It's so much calmer and less frenzied. One of those silent cinema intertitles so beloved of video game designers pops up, saying "A Few Days Later", and next thing I know, Flora's waking up in the dormitory at Eibon with everyone crowding around to see her because she's been asleep for three days straight.

It turns out everyone got home safely. Nanally's fully recovered and all's well until Daffodil turns up and goes on an apology jag that ends with everyone in the room in floods of tears. That was the weirdest part of the whole storyline for me. After everyone gets it together and stops emoting, there's one of those bits where you get to have a private chat with some of the others, one on one. If anything significant was said I've forgotten it.

The final scene takes place in Alphard's office at BAC HQ, where the Director and Chaos debrief the Appraiser. That's when we find out what happened to Zankou and Poinsette. 

I thought they'd vanish for the time being, to return at some some future turn in the storyline. That may well happen at some point but not yet a while. As Alphard explains, they're both now in custody, having failed to make a clean getaway.

Apparently, Poinsette gated all the surviving competitors from the Fogden Game to safety and in doing so drained most of her esper ability. She went to ground in a Scarlet Letter safe house but the BAC tracked her down and she gave up without a fight, since when she's been co-operating with the authorities and hasn't been any trouble..

Zankou was a lot less less co-operative but she too was taken into custody by Chaos after what he describes as a tough fight. Alphard says Zankou will be going to Ghroth Island for a lengthy spell of incarceration. Poinsette, however, has earned some credit with BAC thanks to saving the competitors and being so very docile after being arrested. She's also deemed to have acted, at least in part, under duress while she was with the Scarlet letter.

Poinsette is now going to be trained at the Esper Academy "under supervision". When she passes a series of special tests designed for her, she'll be given the choice of either becoming a regular citizen of Hethereau or joining BAC. I'd bet on the latter.

And that was that. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing, confusing though it was at times. I thought it moved the plot on nicely although, since I'd expected the Scarlet Letter would become the main opposition for some time to come, it was a bit of a surprise to see the whole organization broken up and rendered obsolete so quickly.

It's quite hard to define just what the central plot is in Neverness To Everness. I think of the MSQ being clearer in other gacha games I've played but then, when I think back, at the stage we're at, I'm not sure I had a clear idea what was going on in any of those either. Telling long, complex stories in movie-lenght episodes every six weeks is an odd format for a narrative. It takes a while for everything to come together.

It seems like the real concern is Rules Anomalies in general and Code Zero in particular. That's the kind of extinction level existential threat that most video games like to have running in the background as they task you, the player, with sorting out a whole lot of more manageable problems. As I said last time, I think Rules Anomalies are an extremely scary and highly original concept and the potential certainly exists for an apocalyptic climax to the storyline at some future time.

I suspect, though, that what we'll get for a good while are a lot of smaller-scale crises on a more human scale, at least while the game beds in. I hope so. I'm never entirely at home when the conflicts my characters involve themselves in verge on the mythical.