Something that I think Tales of the Abyss did well is that in most cases, all the party members have a reasons to be involved beyond “we’re friends now so I’ll go with you guys.” I mean I love the ToV party but none of them have a reason to be involved other than deciding that they’re a team now. Which is pretty much the same in most other Tales games. But in Abyss, every time they have a new goal they talk about who’s going and they all have a reason. Jade is a militar commander, Natalia represents Kimlasca’s government, Luke is the ambassador, Tear is being sent as a member of the Order of Lorelei. And part of this is because the party didn’t form a close-knit “we’re family now” kind of relationship… yes, by the end, they’re all friends, but it takes a good part of the game for them to all warm up to each other. So, they all needed a reason to join Luke. And the end result is that every character is highly relevant to the plot and everyone has a clear motivation and the intra-party relationships are more complex.
Compare that to, say, Xillia. Leia was there because… they needed another character to fill out the party. Look, I adore Leia, but even I admit she has no real baring on the plot. Elize is there because Alvin said, “yeah, sure, let’s bring the spud along” in Lerond. In Symphonia, Regal and Presea join because… I don’t know, they really had no reason to be in the party and once they’re Exsphere-related plots wrapped up they had no real relevance to the rest of the game.
Anyway, the other games aren’t bad for this, because they do give everyone a reason, even if it’s rather artificial and boils down to “we’re friends so I want to come along”, but the fact that everyone had distinct reasons for needing to go everywhere in Abyss made the party make-up feel more natural and the plot and characters tighter. This is part of what makes it, in my opinion, the strongest game for storyline and characterization.
#Tales of the Abyss, #is not my favourite Tales but I think it’s the best Tales if you understand,#I write about ToV a lot because I see so much potential in it,#I never write TotA fic because they used all their potential and there’s nothing I can add to it
I just wanted to applaud this post; also, I, too, fall in love with things which had great potential and lackluster execution, though seeing it phrased this way really let me put my finger on it, finally.
I guess the way I’d say it is that Tales of the Abyss used every single fucking thread it had to weave a tapestry with very little waste compared to something like Tales of Zestiria. Rather, I don’t think it used up ALL its potential, but nothing about it felt like waste. There’s still room to build off of it, but I don’t have a pile of unused threads going nowhere after I finished it the way I did after finishing Zestiria, you know?
As someone who has now officially written more fic for Abyss than any other game in the series, that might be why I’m so drawn to writing very specific things – namely, AUs, or fics that address things we never saw, such as the three years between Eldrant and the Epilogue. The game itself, for its part, is very solid and every piece of it seems to have a REASON to exist. The deeper I dig, instead of finding discrepancies, I see how more and more things line up to build an organic and interconnected world as much as an organic and interconnected story.
Anyway, A+ post. What a great observation!
Did I hear some TotA fanfic recs in those tags
i'll apple your turnover 