Worst Suikoden Character

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wataru14
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by wataru14 »

I thought Cray was the worst villain. I don't understand his motivation for anything. He chops his own arm off to be rid of the Rune of Punishment and then years later he decided he wants it back? Why? That was never explained well enough for me. And his involvement in the Human Hunting thing in the game's backstory. Again, why? What is a case of "I'm trying to cozy up with depraved nobles in order to further my career?" Frederica makes it sound like the whole thing was his idea. But we have no reasoning as to why. I know he's not all mentally there, but if you're going to use "I'm crazy" as the motivation for your main villain, you have to do a better job than that.
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Raww Le Klueze
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by Raww Le Klueze »

I thought Cray was the worst villain. I don't understand his motivation for anything. He chops his own arm off to be rid of the Rune of Punishment and then years later he decided he wants it back? Why?
He wants the Rune back so he can see his son again through the Rune's memories.
And his involvement in the Human Hunting thing in the game's backstory. Again, why?
His only involvement in the Human Hunting incident is that his son lost his life using the Rune of Punishment to stop them, as one of the few survivors of the Rune going out of control Graham got the blame and he never tells anyone the truth about it.
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wataru14
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by wataru14 »

Raww Le Klueze wrote:He wants the Rune back so he can see his son again through the Rune's memories.
Where does the game say that? I just rewatched the Lazlo/Cray scene on Youtube and if you answer his question about the child who wants bread, Cray just says, "wonderful," laughs maniacally, and says he wants to "play with those sweet memories." That doesn't sound like a grieving father who wants to see his son one more time. It sounds to me like a megalomaniac who just wants to watch the suffering of others. If you choose one of the other two dialogue options ("I refuse to answer your questions" or "Memories? What memories?") does he elaborate further? I have only ever answered his question.

And I forgot Old Book 3 explains about the Human Hunting. Just checked it out.
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by sticky-runes »

wataru14 wrote:
Raww Le Klueze wrote:He wants the Rune back so he can see his son again through the Rune's memories.
Where does the game say that? I just rewatched the Lazlo/Cray scene on Youtube and if you answer his question about the child who wants bread, Cray just says, "wonderful," laughs maniacally, and says he wants to "play with those sweet memories."
He wouldn't ask about that particular memory if he wasn't interested in seeing the child, would he.
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by wataru14 »

His tone of voice does not convey any longing or melancholy. Or any other emotion that would lend itself to a father who wants his child back. At worst he sounds malevolent and at best he sounds like Homer Simpson saying, "Mmmmmmm, sweet memories." Normally I like Cray's measured monotone, but if you're trying to convey an important emotional concept (like your whole motivation for everything you've done the whole game), you might want to change it up a bit. Or the game designers should include some way to clearly and unequivocally state your reasons. The other games seem to do that nicely.

I took Cray's question and the "sweet memories" line to mean that he wanted confirmation that the Rune has stored the memories of bearers after him and that he could wade around in their lives for whatever voyeuristic reason. Bearers after him include Glenn, Brandeau, Edgar, Steele, and the Queen of Obel. There could be a lot of useful knowledge in their memories that he could exploit (political secrets, treasure locations, military info). It does not come across to me like he wants to see his son. At all. If he had said, "I will take that Rune from you and then I can have back the beloved child it stole from me!" then I would be on board completely. As it stands, he asks about a child (that he never says is his son), reacts in a dismissive manner to information about said child, and then never speaks of him again.

Other villains in the series have clear reasons why they want what they want:

Luca Blight - He and his mother were savaged by mercenaries and he wants to punish everyone even tangentially involved
Jowy - After seeing the ineffectiveness of the Jowston government and the evil of Luca Blight he wants to create a safe and perfect nation, even if he must get his hands dirty to do so
Luc - He has seen the end of the world and is trying to help mankind avoid its awful fate
Godwins - They want the Sun Rune to dominate Falena's enemies and bring their nation to dominance

Pretty straightforward. Windy's actions are vaguely motivated. She wants the Soul Eater to "take revenge" on this world. But she never states why she wants revenge on the world. The massacre of the gate Clan maybe? But then she should only want revenge on Harmonia. What else does she have reason to seek revenge for? She is cruel and malevolent, clearly. But why? Cray, to me is a similar situation.
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Raww Le Klueze
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by Raww Le Klueze »

wataru14 wrote: Luca Blight - He and his mother were savaged by mercenaries and he wants to punish everyone even tangentially involved
Except that's never stated in the actual game so by your own argument it's invalid as it only comes from supplimentary sources. The only reference in the game is that his mother was "callously dishonored".

And Luca wasn't savaged.
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wataru14
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by wataru14 »

Supplimentary spurces are fine. If a canon supplementary source says Cray's motivation for acquiring the Rune was to see his son in the memories I would definitely accept that. If it is supposition, then I do not accept that.
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by Ranadiel »

I've only played S1 and S2 so far, but here's my contribution:

S1 - Gremio. It might just be the concept of a manservant is foreign to me, but I never liked Gremio. His personality seemed weak, although that could just be attributed to the fact that Gremio's role is more of a full-on servant, versus Cleo and Pahn, who are legitimate bodyguards and tend to have stronger personalities and dialogue that carries more weight and substance. The game also didn't help his case by making him a mediocre fighter who is a required party member throughout most of the game who has only one Unite attack with Pahn, who is also absent from a good part of the game and only returns around the same time Gremio exits the scene. The final nail in the coffin? His absence makes the Commander's Team in major battles weaker up until the last battle! Personally, I always felt that Gremio's death should never have happened; that he would likely have had a lot to say about Tir's evolution as a person and the leader of the rebellion. Can you imagine the scene where Tir fights Teo, except Gremio's there on the sidelines, helpless in watching the events that are unfolding? Likewise, I felt severely disappointed that of all the characters they could have chosen to resurrect, they go with the damn albatross. I was seriously hoping for Teo... have a tearful reunion, Teo joins the rebellion, maybe Tir and Teo get a father/son Unite... blah.

S2 - The one person I can't stand hands down from this game is the guy whoever was assign to proofread the game script because damn, there are a lot of mistakes. Incorrectly spelled words, inconsistently spelled and misspelled names, situations where dialogue is coming from one person when the words being spoken are clearly from another character... it's just focking absurd. However, if I had to actually choose a character from the game, it's a bit harder since Gremio set the bar so damn high and I don't think anyone else ever came that close to annoying me. I suppose I'd have to say that person might have to be Luca, whose motivations throughout the game are either extremely vague or extremely basic - ie, I'm doing all this killing for a reason and that reason may involve the Beast Rune, or that reason is I simply enjoy the slaughter and I'm going to keep killing until I run out of people; either justification making for a poorly defined character. It's only through brief scenes and vague dialogue you manage to get a sense of what he's up to and a little more information on his background, and that left me wanting. Towards the end you learn that his father ran away during a siege and he witnessed his mother get raped, and he briefly mentions to Jilia that Arages wasn't even her father - that's about all you get in terms of character development. We never find out what Luca's endgame was.
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by sticky-runes »

Nobody's mentioned that tin-plated tosspot known as Pesmerga. OK, he wasn't important enough to be hated or felt strongly about in any way, but his role in both S1 and S2 sucked completely. He comes along really late in the game, claiming to be after Yuber, but doesn't do anything even if you do recruit him before confronting Yuber. And in S2 he showed up at the spot where you collected the Star dragon sword ages ago during your first quest against Neclord. He's certainly not as resourceful as Kahn when it comes to tracking down his worst enemy.
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by Ranadiel »

Oh man, Pesmerga might be the best candidate for this actually.
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by sticky-runes »

Ranadiel wrote:I've only played S1 and S2 so far, but here's my contribution:

S1 - Gremio. It might just be the concept of a manservant is foreign to me, but I never liked Gremio. His personality seemed weak, although that could just be attributed to the fact that Gremio's role is more of a full-on servant, versus Cleo and Pahn, who are legitimate bodyguards and tend to have stronger personalities and dialogue that carries more weight and substance. The game also didn't help his case by making him a mediocre fighter who is a required party member throughout most of the game who has only one Unite attack with Pahn, who is also absent from a good part of the game and only returns around the same time Gremio exits the scene. The final nail in the coffin? His absence makes the Commander's Team in major battles weaker up until the last battle! Personally, I always felt that Gremio's death should never have happened; that he would likely have had a lot to say about Tir's evolution as a person and the leader of the rebellion. Can you imagine the scene where Tir fights Teo, except Gremio's there on the sidelines, helpless in watching the events that are unfolding? Likewise, I felt severely disappointed that of all the characters they could have chosen to resurrect, they go with the damn albatross. I was seriously hoping for Teo... have a tearful reunion, Teo joins the rebellion, maybe Tir and Teo get a father/son Unite... blah.
I disagree about Gremio living through the entire game and being present during Teo's death. Don't forget that it's in the soul eater's nature to take the lives of people closest to the bearer, and if it didn't take the life of the person who raised the hero since he was tiny and felt as if they were related by blood and practically played the role of mother and father to him, then that wouldn't make the soul eater seem very dangerous or powerful, would it?

Plus, it makes it much more dramatic if the hero has to face fighting and losing his own father without his attendant there to comfort him. He's practically been sitting on you since you first started the game, protecting you, trying to steer you away from trouble, nagging you, refusing to leave your side, then BAM he's killed off and you have to go through with killing your dad and leading the army without Gremio's support.

I agree they should have made Gremio a better fighter, though. If he had some fierce attacks or magical attributes, or even his own unique rune (like Valeria/Kasumi/Ronnie have their own unique runes) then that would have made Gremio far more useful in combat, and losing him would have had much more of an impact on both story telling and gameplay.
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by Ranadiel »

While I don't disagree that it was the Soul Eater's nature take the lives of those closest to the bearer, Gremio's death just didn't carry the weight with me that I thought it should, and after playing the game several times, I began to wonder if the plot may have been more interesting and Gremio may have become ended up a more worthwhile character to me had he lived, and that his presence could have added a lot to various scenes that happen while he was dead. I understood that Gremio had taken care of Tir since birth and that they would have had a close relationship, so the Soul Eater targeting him absolutely made sense, but I just wasn't feeling it. It might have been due to the fact that by the time he checks out I was sick and tired of him being forced into my party and not bringing anything to the table. By the time his death came around it was more of a relief than a gut-check.

Also in regards to the Soul Eater, one thing I never quite understood was why it took Odessa's soul when one could argue that there was no way she and Tir could have developed a significant relationship in such a short amount of time of knowing each other. Maybe the Soul Eater isn't as discriminating when it comes to which it consumes as we give it credit for?
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by sticky-runes »

Ranadiel wrote:
Also in regards to the Soul Eater, one thing I never quite understood was why it took Odessa's soul when one could argue that there was no way she and Tir could have developed a significant relationship in such a short amount of time of knowing each other. Maybe the Soul Eater isn't as discriminating when it comes to which it consumes as we give it credit for?
Yeah, lots of us have had doubts about the Odessa thing. Maybe it's down to the characters playing a significant part in the bearer's life? Odessa is the person who challenges Tir's beliefs and asks if he'll go back to being Teo's little boy or take up his own path and help make a difference. It's kind of at the point when they go to rescue Varkas and Sydonia that Tir is starting to become his own man, not just a privileged child with his servants holding his hand. If Odessa hadn't died and carried on leading the rebels, maybe she would have gone on to have a similar kind of effect on Tir that she had on Flik - being this amazing woman he looks up to and stands above all other people - and so the soul eater cut it short before it could happen. Or it could just be a bit of weak storytelling. I suppose it's up to the audience to decide how they feel about it.
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

Post by darkknightkv »

Funny, I just figured it was the rune just taking advantage of a situation in order to make it's host more powerful. I mean the events that lead to Odessa's death were put into motion possibly before Tir even got the Rune. I also find it strange that the rune never took Tir's soul while Ted had the rune.

As to the original topic, others will disagree with me, but I am going to have to go with Apple. She just in general has a weak personality and her only role in the suikoden series seems to be failing and being second in command of war strategy. In the first game she was completely forgettable, in the second she just flat out failed and then begged someone better to help, and in the third her personality was completely overshadowed.

She has no interesting backstory, no quests of her own, she does not provide anything in the castle, and she is not even hard to get to join you.

Lastly, in general I expect more from someone who has been in 3 of the 5 main games of the series. She is in the ranks of Futch, Viki, Jeane, and Luc (Being stars for more than two of the main games), but they all have better stories and are genrally more useful.

Oh, and Agnes, you are just Apple version 2.0.
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Re: Worst Suikoden Character

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Yeah, I always had the impression from the game that the Soul Eater wasn't on a mission to take the souls of those closest to its bearer, just that that's how events inevitably played out. In a normal life it sort of makes sense. If you're around a person when they die, chances are they're important to you in some way. In Tir's life, leading a rebellion in which people were surely dropping like flies, it either means we only see a portion of the souls it took, or the rune was very selective for some reason. I've always assumed it was some combination of the two, and only people whose deaths were particularly significant to Tir caused his affinity with the rune to increase.

I've always hated all the loose-ends characters that don't really do anything. Eresh, Pesmerga, Zerase, and on and on. There are enough characters in these games that I can field a party without 300 men of mystery that won't be fully appreciated until the next installment. And before that can come out, big chunks of the creative team will leave or be released, leaving us with a tapestry that's frayed in places from one side to the other. So they replace it with a shiny new centennial tapestry that we can use to wrap up the remains of the old one and deposit the whole package in the nearest river.
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