Tales of the Abyss (2005)

Beat on loan from my coworker using her DS. I loved the game so much that I bought her old PS2 copy from her. I played through on Hard but was annoyed at the lack of reward for doing so. Some of the bosses were quite brutal and I especially found some boss fights vs multiple opponents to be far more difficult than later solo bosses. I mostly controlled Luke but it was a constant struggle to keep the other characters from taking unnecessary damage. No Tear you are the healer, stay the fuck out of melee.... god damnit Tear what did I just say?

Amazing story, characters and characterization. I am definitely going to play through my PS2 copy at some point but not sure how I will do the difficulty. I will have to look into the new game+ rewards since I think playing on Hard gives more points to spend on that but doing bosses on Hard is probably not worth the trouble. My notes say I gave it 8.5/10. It might go up to 9 by the time I finish it again.

Tales of Abyss is an excellent RPG that tells an engaging story, develops complex characters and presents mature discussions about identity and free will. Its combat system may be too simple for its own good, but the quality of the narrative makes up for any shortcomings in the gameplay department.

The protagonist of the game is a young man named Luke, the nephew of a king, who had to grow up locked away in a mansion after he was rescued from a kidnapping seven years before the events of the game, when he was just a child – a traumatic event that erased all his memories of his earlier years. With no contact with the outside world, living a good, but boring life, Luke eventually becomes a spoiled, entitled boy. His only friends are his young servant Guy, and his master of swordplay, Van. One day, however, when he’s training with them, a woman manages to sneak into the mansion and make an attempt on Van’s life. Luke tries to defend his master from the woman, but ends up triggering a magical effect that sends both of them to another land. Lost and with no clue of how the world works, he sees himself having to work with the same woman who tried to murder his master if he wants to have any chance get back home.

Luke is a very complex protagonist, serving a lot of narrative purposes and undergoing a good amount of character growth. He initially acts like a spoiled brat, who wants everyone to serve him, and who spills toxic masculinity whenever he has the chance. Therefore, his journey with that strange woman, named Tear, will eventually mold him into a better person. But that is just scratching the surface of his narrative arc.

Let’s start with the easy part. His lack of knowledge of the world, for example, serves three main purposes. It primarily works as an easy way of contextualizing exposition: since Luke doesn’t know stuff, people have to explain the lore of the universe to him – and thus to the player – all the time (“Lorelei? Isofons? Fonon Frequencies? What the heck are you talking about?”). This sometimes can seem a bit forced, though: it is one thing to lack specific knowledge, another entirely to not know anything about his own world – after all, did he not get a proper education in the mansion? But it can also lead to funny and revealing moments, as when he clearly demonstrates he doesn’t have any social skills, showing his entitled side by telling a random villager, for example, “You’re dismissed” after just asking a question. And finally, it serves to picture him as a bit naïve, which helps mitigate any antipathy the player may harbor against him: he is unbearable, there is no doubt, but is that his fault? Did Luke have a chance to become someone else with the secluded life that their parents made him have?

His naivety has another good consequence. It’s easy to dismiss Luke as a complete douchebag at the beginning of the game, since he’s bossy and full of male pride, but he can also show more empathy than his friends precisely due to being naïve: Tear may be the kindest person in Luke’s group – she not only puts up with him, but also cares for him even by having nothing to gain from it –, but she still kills her enemies without thinking twice. She is sad that she has to do it, but sees their death as “how the world works.” Luke doesn’t know that world and, therefore, refuses to accept that as the truth: for him, human life is invaluable and should be protected at all costs – even the lives of his opponents.

Luke’s main personality problems can be easily spotted. He’s entitled due to his social status and to having most things delivered to him when he wanted them – besides freedom, of course. But combining entitlement to being a man is a dangerous mixture. It’s no surprise, then, that Luke constantly shows signs of toxic masculinity: he has a problem with the voice of his bunny-like friend named Mew precisely because it’s feminine, calling it annoying all the time, and diminishing Mew in the process; he has competitive issues with other men, with the need to be ever stronger and the dominant one; and he also feels he has to suppress all his feelings, lest he be deemed weak – especially if he’s near a woman, like Tear. For Luke, men don’t cry, men endure and fight.

His journey doesn’t seem to change him at first, though. He finds many friends, besides Tear and Guy, like the aforementioned Mew, princess Natalia, the Colonel Jade Curtiss, and the girl Elise. However, just living with people better than him doesn’t automatically make him better person. On the contrary, being constantly contrasted to them appears to bring out what there is of worst in Luke, who gradually becomes more and more insufferable. Tales of Abyss shows that to break entitlement you have to also break the sense of self of a person: for change to happen there must be destruction first. In the story, after a strong plot twist, Luke has to face the fact that he has been lied to his whole life. What he knows about his identity is put into question, and that is what allows him a chance to become someone different.

As his appreciation for human life showed, Luke wasn’t a bad person altogether. But it was needed a moment of rapture to wake him up. In Tales of Abyss’ narrative, logic is depicted as insufficient to change a person – shock is also needed. Something must be shattered. Otherwise, the person will continue to dive into their own misery, masked as self-righteousness. Luke’s narrative arc, then, becomes even more complex when he has to face the problem of becoming a better person: he wants to, has the chance to, but how does one do it? He suddenly finds himself lost.

It’s at this point that the story becomes so moving, because his friends, especially Tear, are the fundamental piece to guide him amidst the dark. Without them, all would be for nothing. But because they are there for him, to help him no matter what, to give him a second chance, without ever simply forgiving him for what he was, Luke is able to become a true heroic and tragic figure. He goes from “I’m the best” to “I’m the worst” to finally reach the ideal “I’m flawed, but as long as I try to be better, that’s okay.” If he is incapable of self-sacrifice at the beginning, and craves it as a form of redemption at the middle point, by the end he starts to realize what the act actually means for him and for those who love him.

But there is more to his narrative arc. Besides all that, Luke is also heavily dependent on Van. Everything he does is because of his so-called master – seeking constant approval –, and he doesn’t know what to do without him. When you have limited access to information, as he had, you become dependent on your few sources, incapable of thinking without their aid. As Tear says to him: “You base all your actions on what others say and never tries to understand things for yourself.” Van is Luke’s master in every sense of the word, teaching him, but also owning him. However, it’s not just “think for yourself” the lesson that Tear is trying to teach her friend, because he also lacks the ability to understand and accept other points of view. Luke gets punished precisely because he doesn’t listen to others. But also because he doesn’t think for himself. The key is to develop critical thinking and that is what he starts to understand: he needs to listen to everyone, question everything, and expand his way of seeing the world.

And that’s the development of only the game’s protagonist.

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