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Dragon Quest - Like a Dargon
- Thread starter WildcatJF
- Start date
Specifically, it's the "cursed item" musical sting, and considering it comes right after he joins, the implication seems to be that he's a "cursed" party member.
I read the wakeup scene in particular more charitably as the horror of having an energetic morning person wake you up, basically as an extension of the "sleepy JRPG protagonist" trope, but I can definitely see how it could be seen otherwise.
This isn't to disagree with the broader interpretation, which again I'm not far enough in to comment on or make comparisons to. I'm also not really interested in a debate over how to read the scene, first of all because I have zero experience with how Sylvando is portrayed, only Sylvia, and second of all again because I understand how and why you would read it the other way.
This isn't to disagree with the broader interpretation, which again I'm not far enough in to comment on or make comparisons to. I'm also not really interested in a debate over how to read the scene, first of all because I have zero experience with how Sylvando is portrayed, only Sylvia, and second of all again because I understand how and why you would read it the other way.
That was my read too, but Also discussing Sylvando is a topic more fraught than I feel I’m equipped to deal with.
I’ll say that I like him more than most of the DQ11 cast and also he can get Hustle Dance really early so he rarely left my party
I’ll say that I like him more than most of the DQ11 cast and also he can get Hustle Dance really early so he rarely left my party
I think my general ambivalence towards most of the cast in DQ11 is a heavy contributor to why I rank it kind of middle-of-the-road among the franchise (in addition to a few other quibbles). There's definitely a strong correlation to my favorite DQ entries and my favorite DQ characters (*glances at my username*), and after the character drought between DQ9 -> DQ11, I did end up being disappointed in what we got.
It is a pretty bland cast though;
Hero is Hero, never changing because god forbid you give your main characters personalities
Erik is the rogue with a heart of gold
The twins are an unfortunate mishmash of every Japanese lady spellcaster trope
Sylvando is...*sigh*
Jade's your overprotective sister/girl-next-door and obvious tertiary love interest
Gramps is, well, gramps
Taciturn honorable knight dude is as the label
And none of them ever receive any sort of development past that, potentially because of the way the narrative works?
Hero is Hero, never changing because god forbid you give your main characters personalities
Erik is the rogue with a heart of gold
The twins are an unfortunate mishmash of every Japanese lady spellcaster trope
Sylvando is...*sigh*
Jade's your overprotective sister/girl-next-door and obvious tertiary love interest
Gramps is, well, gramps
Taciturn honorable knight dude is as the label
And none of them ever receive any sort of development past that, potentially because of the way the narrative works?
A less thematically fraught annoyance with DQXI:
Your home village and the first big town are both full of design that teaches the player, "This game will be full of platforming. Be sure to look for ways to jump up to the top of buildings and explore all the roofs! These towns are in three dimensions now, baby!"
But basically every subsequent town (at least through the "we hate mermaids" town) is "Oops! All Invisible Walls," full of places that look exactly like what the early game taught you to be on the lookout for, that look like you should be able to jump to or able to jump off of, but instead they don't actually exist as spaces that you can move to/through, at all.
I get why they didn't want to cut this element from the first two towns after adding it in, but the mixed message it creates is honestly a kind of irritating.
Your home village and the first big town are both full of design that teaches the player, "This game will be full of platforming. Be sure to look for ways to jump up to the top of buildings and explore all the roofs! These towns are in three dimensions now, baby!"
But basically every subsequent town (at least through the "we hate mermaids" town) is "Oops! All Invisible Walls," full of places that look exactly like what the early game taught you to be on the lookout for, that look like you should be able to jump to or able to jump off of, but instead they don't actually exist as spaces that you can move to/through, at all.
I get why they didn't want to cut this element from the first two towns after adding it in, but the mixed message it creates is honestly a kind of irritating.
Serena is my favourite character as far as party members in XI but it's more of a victory by omission in light of everyone else being so generally dire. Erik I especially hate because he is so transparently positioned as the Default, Rational Bro archetype that modern Persona has codified in the genre, where their early introduction and voiced opinions as the protagonist's effective mouthpiece are usually extremely conservative, bigoted or cruel and which are taken as the token presumed viewpoint most of the audience are assumed to sympathize and agree with. Like the walking death of an entire medium in one.
Sprite
(He/Him/His)
I’m fine with Sylvando. He basically has all the mannerisms of a Disney villain, except he’s a good guy, and I like that. There are some unfortunate lines in there but eh. All the criticisms I’ve seen are well-articulated and valid but I think I just disagree with most of them? I don’t know. Part of me feels like any queer character put into a work ends up picked apart for their inevitable warts and that depresses me. I don’t want to devalue anyone’s reading, though, or tell them they shouldn’t be pissed off.
My problem with Sylvando isn't that he's bad, but that he's lazy--just like the rest of the cast. IX-XI just feel really lazy in the story/character department despite making real strides with gameplay and presentation.
Which is part of the larger issue with Sylvando to me in that he's the only queer-coded character that exists in the entire game and consequently its world. Everyone else who might be read that way derives from him, is influenced by him, orbits around him (the game makes it very clear to caricaturish degree that simply coming into contact with him "converts" many to his euphemistic way of life and presentation)--he is narratively an entire industry of queerness, all hoisted on his singular shoulders, and so has the usual burden of having to represent everything to everyone because the non-committal, vague gestures invoked are so core to who the character is. He cannot do anything but fail, and be emblematic of the shallow tokenism of the writers as a result. Dragon Quest XI has who knows how many puff-puff "jokes" in a multitude of variations; it has one queer character. I talk about XI being one of the least enjoyable experiences I've had with the series and while this doesn't cover all of it, it does encapsulate a lot about why I wince thinking back to my time with it.
So after more hours than I care to count, I finally finished DQXI including the post game bonus content. I say overall I enjoyed the game, despite its issues. I liked it a lot more than IX, which left me cold.
Yeah, the whole parade sequence really stuck out to me because of this.
Taking the metaphor underlying Sylvando and making it literal, i.e. so that "performer" literally means a circus performer, might well have been a decision to reduce some of the secondary implications of the story arc. The strife between Sylvando and Don Rodrigo moving the "father angry that their child isn't being masculine the way he wants" from text to subtext is a loss, making it so that the only thing queer about the character is his coding. But the entire deal with the parade boys following in his footsteps because of his infectious enthusiasm complicates it, as Peklo said.
Basically: if the cigar is just a cigar, then the game is only disappointing for being timid. But if the cigar is a penis, so to speak, then it becomes a game that makes some some pretty eyebrow-raising claims about penises. I rather suspect that the localizers identified that dilemma and invented the English version of the character as a result.
Basically: if the cigar is just a cigar, then the game is only disappointing for being timid. But if the cigar is a penis, so to speak, then it becomes a game that makes some some pretty eyebrow-raising claims about penises. I rather suspect that the localizers identified that dilemma and invented the English version of the character as a result.
Yep. See also: Fire Emblem Three Houses.
I'm about to deliver the orbs to the tree in DQ11.
If I want to get any chests in field areas I didn't find but know are there because of Erik's "how many more chests are there?" skill, do I need to do that now? Or will they still be around in whatever happens next? There's for example a tiny little island on the north of the world map associated with a viking quest. It says there are a few more chests there, but I can't imagine where they could be, because the island isn't that big! I'm probably just overlooking something ... But it feels like there a few places where there are "phantom" chests in the overworld...
Obviously some are behind the next level of key, so delivering the orbs can't be an absolutely point of no return, but I know that something happens and I want to explore the overworld more if I'm away from these areas for a while, for whatever reason.
(The Japanese subtitle is a riff on Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" and the English title is "Echoes of an Elusive Age" so... I'm assuming something timey is going to happen, although I don't know what.)
If I want to get any chests in field areas I didn't find but know are there because of Erik's "how many more chests are there?" skill, do I need to do that now? Or will they still be around in whatever happens next? There's for example a tiny little island on the north of the world map associated with a viking quest. It says there are a few more chests there, but I can't imagine where they could be, because the island isn't that big! I'm probably just overlooking something ... But it feels like there a few places where there are "phantom" chests in the overworld...
Obviously some are behind the next level of key, so delivering the orbs can't be an absolutely point of no return, but I know that something happens and I want to explore the overworld more if I'm away from these areas for a while, for whatever reason.
(The Japanese subtitle is a riff on Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" and the English title is "Echoes of an Elusive Age" so... I'm assuming something timey is going to happen, although I don't know what.)
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Nothing's permanently locked behind your tree visit, but there's still a lot of game ahead of you.
To clarify a bit, that is the one thing I was pretty confident about, although I don't know the details. (Too much foreshadowing not paid off!) I'm wondering more along the lines of, "Will I be able to casually search around those areas whenever I feel like it after I deliver the orbs? Or will I be away from them a while?"
I'm curious what your playtime is at right now, before you actually go to the tree. I can't remember for sure, but I believe mine was around 50 hours.
Oh also for anyone in my situation: I decided to poke around by checking to see if I somehow missed any chests in the very first dungeon just on a lark and saw that there was one but I absolutely could not find it even though it's very small.
I checked a guide because I was totally perplexed and it was designated as not gettable yet. Even if they're not clearly behind the next level of key, there are apparently other chests you just can't get at this point. So, instead of poking around, I'll just move on, since there's no real way to tell at this point if the chests Erik can sense are gettable or not.
I checked a guide because I was totally perplexed and it was designated as not gettable yet. Even if they're not clearly behind the next level of key, there are apparently other chests you just can't get at this point. So, instead of poking around, I'll just move on, since there's no real way to tell at this point if the chests Erik can sense are gettable or not.
I went round and round about this too. Some chests require certain mountable enemies to be available, and they don't spawn till later.
I'm finding myself actually enjoying the Sylvia interlude scenario despite earlier reservations about the character. I often thought that a lot of my problems with this portrayal might be fixable just by doing something about Camus, and it turns out that this basically works, for me.
I could see it still going quite badly when it's time to pay off the foreshadowing about Sylvia's father, and also depending on what happens going forward with the group of followers from this interlude.
Re: The orb delivery event — That was a lot less timey than I expected! Maybe later?
I could see it still going quite badly when it's time to pay off the foreshadowing about Sylvia's father, and also depending on what happens going forward with the group of followers from this interlude.
Re: The orb delivery event — That was a lot less timey than I expected! Maybe later?