Drakengard: Difference between revisions

''[[Speak of the Devil|Call not the Watchers' name.]]'' }}

{{quote|''"Strap in, kids. It’s going to get fucking weird..."''|'''[[The Dark Id]]'''}}

'''''Drakengard''''' is a videogame,video game published by [[Square Enix]] and made by Cavia in 2003, noticeable for its combination of a multilayered, surreal plot and excellent atmosphere with rather weak, repetitive gameplay. The gameplay switches between [[Hack and Slash]] and [[Simulation Game|Flight Sim]], so one could think of it as a mixture of ''[[Dynasty Warriors]]'' and a sandbox version of ''[[Panzer Dragoon]]''. It takes place in a [[Heroic Fantasy|Heroic]]/LowFantasy medieval setting, and it follows [[Anti-Hero]] [[Meaningful Name|Caim]] on a mission to destroy [[The Empire|an evil empire]] [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|(aptly named "the Empire")]] while also protecting his sister Furiae. Furiae is called "the Goddess" because she is [[Cosmic Keystone|part of four seals that protect the world from an unknown danger]] -: she is a living seal, and her death would [[The End of the World as We Know It|herald chaos in the world.]]. Caim is joined initially on his quest by Inuart, [[Two Guys and a Girl|his best friend and Furiae's betrothed]] before she became the Goddess, and [[Optional Party Member|four other characters,]], the circumstances of each being varied and [[Dysfunction Junction|always tragic.]].

* Seere the young boy has a pact with Golem, a stone giant. Golem provides the ultimate protection for the boy's life and can destroy [[The Legions of Hell]] with ease. Seere gave up his "time", meaning that [[Who Wants to Live Forever?|he will never age beyond his six year old body.]]. [[Unfortunate Implications|He bonds with Leonard pretty quickly.]].

* Verdelet the hierarch also made a pact with a dragon, but that was long before the events of the game, and the dragon has since been [[Hand Wave|petrified.]]. He would normally have gained the allegiance of the dragon as Caim has from his pact, but he can't call upon his pact-partner. As a consequence, Verdelet can understand the telepathy that goes between pact-partners, but he gave up [[Cursed with Awesome|his hair.]].

The game starts off simply enough, with Caim and any party members he's managed to find running from one location to the next, trying to prevent the Empire from destroying one of the three land-based seals. Each seal that is destroyed makes the burden on the Goddess that much more unbearable. As Caim journeys on, he learns about the [[Path of Inspiration|Cult of the Watchers]] which has taken hold over the Empire and their evil machinations for the Goddess. The game gets progressively [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|weird]] and [[Trippy Finale Syndrome|surreal]] as events go on, and the interactions between characters [[Character Development|gradually become more nuanced and complex]] from the straight-up swords and sorcery formula. By its end, ''Drakengard'' has gone beyond the [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief|standard unspoken agreement between author and audience]] and thrown us into [[Nightmare Fuel|the stuff of nightmares]]. Watching how the characters react with this and observing their [[The World Is Always Doomed|hopeless and doomed plight]] is strangely interesting; morbid curiosity drives one to finish the game's five endings. Much like [[Neon Genesis Evangelion|a certain famous anime]], ''Drakengard'' does not shy away from the surreal, the macabre, and the [[Downer Ending|downright depressing.]].

One of the most striking things about the game is how so many [[Video Game Tropes|Videogame Tropes]] are turned completely on their head. Your main cast is less than virtuous. [[The Hero|Caim]] is a [[Heroic Sociopath|mute bloodthirsty nutcase]], [[The Lancer|Inuart]] goes [[Heroic BSOD|completely nuts]] and [[Face Heel Turn|evil]], [[The Chick|Furiae]] isn't entirely [[Brother-Sister Incest|innocent]], and the list just goes on and on. {{spoiler|Foiling the [[Big Bad]] just makes things ''[[It Got Worse|worse]]'', as does winning the war against the Empire. One of the main themes of the game is nihilism, since [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|the all-powerful and also insane gods]] have decreed that the world is going to end, and damn if they're going to let you do anything about it.}}. Really, there's few games like it out there.

The sequel takes place eighteen years after the original game, and features a new lead character: Nowe, a Knight of the Seal. He was raised by a dragon named Legna for a good deal of his life until he was taken under the wing of General Oror and taught the ways of man. However, Nowe and Legna are not pact-partners, but Nowe has learned to speak the language of dragons, hence his nickname, "Dragon Boy". Other playable characters include Eris (another Knight of the Seal), Urick (a defector from the knights and acquaintance of Nowe and General Oror), and lastly, a familiar red-eyed, blonde-haired woman.

* [[Alien Sky]]: Happens several times both games. When the seals that keep the world from ending are broken, the sky becomes a [[Red Sky, Take Warning|sickening red]] (in ''Drakengard 2'', the blue sky literally ''shatters''). In the "bonus" ending of ''Drakengard'', Caim and his dragon emerge in an alien dimension (actually {{spoiler|modern-day Tokyo}}) where everything is [[Deliberately Monochrome]].

* [[All There in the Manual]]: Among other things, it's revealed that Leonard was absent from the massacre that killed his companions because {{spoiler|he was off in the woods having sex with a young boy.}}. [[Squick|What the hell, Cavia?!]]

** In an [[Alternate Continuity]] example: {{spoiler|1=Caim and Angelus are responsible for devastating the world of ''NieR''.}}.

* [[A Boy and His X|A Boy And His Dragon]]: Caim and his dragon are both an emotional and battle pair.

* [[Came Back Wrong]]: If Inuart succeeds in resurrecting {{spoiler|the goddess Furiae}}, it goes... ''poorly.''.

* [[Character Development]]: It's still character development if your protagonist becomes slowly more evil over time, right?

** There is also the changing relationship between Caim and Angelus. They start out hating each other's guts and only cooperating for the sake of survival. Canonically, they grow to respect each other and by the end actually become friends {{spoiler|which is why the canon ending is such a [[Tear Jerker]]}}. In the sequel , {{spoiler|Caim is willing to break the world in order to free Angelus from her torment.}}.

* [[Collision Damage]]: Considering you'll be fighting enemies by the hundreds, this is one thing you ''don't'' have to worry about. (Exceptexcept for the occasional ramming attack).) A few of Caim's spells can damage adjacent/nearby enemies on contact, and the "shield" power in the sequel enables Legna to ram through enemies while it's in effect.

* [[Colossus Climb]]: See that scaffolding on the Imperial war cyclopses? Better get ready to ... [[Subverted Trope|take them out from the sky with your dragon instead.]].

* [[Cool but Inefficient]]: Hymir's Finger is huge and damaging but slow. It's brutally damaging, but until it reaches its highest level, it's too slow for its damage output to be meaningful. At [[Game Breaker|level 4, though...]]

* [[Copy and Paste Environments]]: Nothing but bleak landscape for miles in some, even most cases. The second game does a better job with the environments.

* [[Counter Attack]]:* Most enemies have this ability; strike them repeatedly, and they'll eventually flash and become impervious to frontal strikes as they prepare to strike back.

* [[Crapsack World]]: Uh... if the summary at the top of the page didn't hammer this into your head, consider this: in ''Drakengard 2'', Legna reveals {{spoiler|that the horrific red-sky hellscape which overtakes the normal world when the seals break is the ''default'' state of things}}.

** The fifth ending leads into ''[[Nie RNieR]]'', but the two "sequels" are treated as two separate [[Alternate Continuity|Alternate Continuities]].

* [[Dark Fantasy]]: [[It Got Worse|At first.]].

* [[Death From Above]]:* Following the biggest military engagement in the game, the Empire [[Nuke'Em|nukes]] the victorious Union army from their sky fortress, rendering your entire efforts pointless. ...uh, thanks?

* [[Deconstruction]]: The game gives us a glimpse into the psyche of the kind of person in an RPG who would be willing to kill a buttload of people in order to strengthen his weapons and level himself up. The result? [[Sociopathic Hero|Not]] [[Harmful to Minors|very]] [[Blood Knight|nice.]].

** To wit with the second game's best ending: {{spoiler|Thethe corrupt Knights of the Seal are defeated, both the Grotesqueries and the Dragons are gone for good, freeing mankind from the demand of the mass sacrifices of innocents by the former and the manipulations of the latter, all of Nowe's friends survive, Caim and Angelus are finally [[Died Happily Ever After|at]] [[Together in Death|peace]], and after two games' worth of death, destruction, betrayal and despair, the world is finally beginning to improve.}}.

* [[Eldritch Abomination]]: The Grotesqueries, in an unspeakably creepy {{spoiler|parody of innocent baby-like cherubs. ''[[Nightmare Fuel|They have fucking teeth]] and [[Slasher Smile|slasher smiles]]}}''}}.

* [[Evil Versus Oblivion]]: The protagonists of the first game consists of some rather despicable people. However, it's them or the [[Eldritch Abomination]]s.

* [[Exploding Barrel]]: You'll find plenty of them hanging around in the sequel, with completely no explanation why. Their explosions are surprisingly deadly to [[Mooks]] and surprisingly harmless to you.

* [[Failure Is the Only Option]]: {{spoiler|Furiae dies in every path of the first game}}.

** {{spoiler|Manah begging for death after being defeated in the canon ending.}}.

** {{spoiler|Furiae being resurrected into not one, but several ''thousand'' [[Eldritch Abomination|horrific monstrosities.]]}}.

** {{spoiler|Seere, Caim, and the dragon when time itself is destroyed around the Imperial capitol. Seere never gets to die and rejoin his mother, and Caim and the dragon are stuck in the midst of being devoured by Grotesqueries. Forever.}}.

** Then there's ending numberEnding 2 in the first game, where the dragon ends Caim's pact and the two of them fight to the death to determine the fate of the world.

** Likewise, the standard ending in the sequel pits {{spoiler|Nowe against Legna}}.

** [[The Smart Guy]]: Verdelet ([[Mr. Exposition]]).

** [[The Chick]]: Seere, who is trapped as a waifish blond six-year-old boy. [[Tempting Fate|Note that Leonard is a child molester, and Arioch a child eater.]].

* [[Gentle Giant]]: Seere's pact-partner, [[Golem]].

* [[Going Through the Motions]]: Averted.

* [[Grimdark]]: In ''spades.''. Here's the little story for Bonebreaker, an axe you can unlock: "Once, a man opened a shed, and there were a bunch of skeletons and stuff. Oh, and he had an axe. THE END." And it just goes from there.

* [[Humans Are the Real Monsters]]: The Fairies justify their [[Jerkass]] natures with this. Angelus also has a tendency to act haughty and superior when around humans.

* [[Inexplicable Treasure Chests]]: thatThat appear or disappear at the behest of myriad arbitrary triggers.

* [[Jiggle Physics]]: Averted, {{spoiler|in one case because the mother of Grotesqueries seems to be made of marble, and thus wouldn't be prone to a-jigglin'.}}.

* [[Karmic Death]]: {{spoiler|[[Eats Babies|Arioch]] in the fourth ending gets devoured by the [[Wave of Babies|Grotesqueries]].}}.

* [[Kill'Em All]]: In most endings, the cast gets decimated at least, wiped out entirely at worst. {{spoiler|The events of Ending E are directly responsible for the [[Nie RNieR|extinction of the human race]]}}.

* [[Knockback]]: Hammers, maces, and axes generally send enemies flying with ''every'' hit that connects, making them useful crowd-clearing weapons in your hands, and ''annoying'' weapons in the enemies' hands.

* [[Lampshade Hanging]]: When the metaphysical shit hits the fan this hard, even the game has to step back and acknowledge it. In an especially cruel fashion, {{spoiler|Seere's [[Heroic Sacrifice]] is mocked in the ending titles when he tries to compare it to a fairy tale his mother told him.}}.

* [[Let's Play]]:* [http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Drakengard/index.html Of the first game] by [[The Dark Id]] of [[Let's Play]] ''[[Resident Evil]]'' fame. Particularly notable for turning the interplay between Caim and the dragon into that of a [[Buddy Cop Show]] (with more murder) and pointing out some of the hypocrisy and lunacy of the characters and setting. ''[[Catch Phrase|Drakengard!]]'' <ref>Best said in, quote unquote "The tone of a kooky sitcom catchphrase. Pretend someone looking at the camera with a goofy face and shrugging their shoulders while saying it."</ref>

* [[Level Grinding]]: The main reason to slay hundreds upon hundreds of enemy Mooks.

* [[The Load]]: Seere borders on this: he wastes a lot of the group's time by making them go on a wild goose chase looking for his family, then gets kidnapped and needs rescuing; without Golem, he's about as useful in combat as you'd expect from a real eight-year old. His (or rather, Golem's) actions when they encounter Manah may make up for it, though. Verdelet also borders on this, not so much because he needs saving all the time, but because he never really does anything useful, and one of the few times he tries, it [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|backfires spectacularly]].

* [[Magnet Hands]]: Gets ridiculous when bigger weapons are involved.

* [[Meaningless Meaningful Words]]: In the second game, Nowe and Manah bang on about "peace and equality" while cutting a bloody swathe through hundreds of people in an effort to break the seals ''that keep the world from ending.''.

* [[Mind Control Eyes]]: Inuart and the whole Empire—anythingEmpire... anything acting at the behest of the Watchers.

* [[Mook Chivalry]]:* Nope, enemies will gladly surround you and start poking you from all directions. Most enemies don't actually attack very frequently, but if several of them start attacking all at once....

* [[New Game+]]: Unlike the first game, ''Drakengard 2'' doesn't allow the player to revisit/replay earlier story chapters at their leisure ... but all weapons, items, and [[Experience Points]] carry over to a new game, and it explicitly tells you what other bonuses you get (like rare weapons, and the ability to use all party members at any time). This is also a requirement for achieving the alternate endings, but it's also accompanied by an increase in the game's difficulty level.

* [[New Powers as the Plot Demands]]: Seere in Ending 4. We know his time has been taken away from him, so ''obviously'', {{spoiler|throwing him at the Time Monster causing the world to fall apart will end in kind-of sort-of victory!}}! It's a cross between a bad-episode-of-''[[Star Trek]]'' [[Ass Pull]] and partly justified, given what the heroes are up against.

* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]: In ''Drakengard 2'', {{spoiler|Nowe and Mannah's crusade to stop the knights' oppression unleashes Angelus, who's gone [[Ax Crazy]] from her imprisonment and wants to burn down the entire world. And since Angelus is the new Goddess Seal, killing her means saying hello to [[The End of the World as We Know It]].}}. Oops.

* [[No Ontological Inertia]]: The world. [[It Makes Sense in Context]], kind of.

* [[The One True Sequence]]: Averted.

* [[Optional Party Member]]: Leonard, Arioch, and Seere are completely optional. Seere in particular cannot be unlocked until having beaten the game once already.

* [[Point of No Return]]: Nope, the first game uses a level-select feature, while the second allows you to return to the World Map for shops / sidequests before any mission.

* [[Power At a Price]]: Pacts. The human partner loses a function of their body, with implications that the beast is the one deciding what that price is. Some prices are particularly karmic, and some less literal than others; Caim lost his voice, Leonard his sight, Seere ... his [[Not Allowed to Grow Up|ability to age]]? Verdelet lost his ''hair''?!

* [[Powered by a Forsaken Child]]: In the first game, the seals were just kind of... there. In the second, they're fueled by {{spoiler|the life force of the surviving Imperials.}}.

* [[Psycho Strings]]: The first game's soundtrack is pretty much entirely made of spliced and distorted samples of classical orchestral symphonies, and thus is all over this trope like jam on toast. The sequel, less so, but when {{spoiler|the world breaks again after the seals get destroyed}}, the background music makes use of it again.

* [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits]]: Consider the, uh, "heroes"--:

** ''Drakengard'': Deposeddeposed prince with a penchant for slaughter, dragon who thinks humanity barely rates above roaches, paedophile and his [[Jerkass]] [[The Fair Folk|fairy]] companion, cannibal survivor of the elven holocaust with a taste for human veal and her elemental buddies, blond kid with a giant magic robot, and a long-winded old bald priest.

** ''Drakengard 2'': Overover-idealistic fluffy-haired protagonist, his slightly grumpy childhood friend of the opposite sex, amnesiac major antagonist from the last game, purple-haired masked coolguy with a pile of hidden remorse, and non-amnesiac antagonist from the last game (who is a dragon).

* [[Rogue Protagonist]]: Caim in the second game. And nope, it's not due to the main character being [[Locked Out of the Loop]], or any of the other common reasons: Allall that's changed is that you're now on the ''receiving'' end of Caim's sword.

* [[Schizo-Tech]]: The Imperial gargantuan cyclops, airships, and cannons. The [[Let's Play]] wonders why people don't have cars, or actually use guns.

* {{spoiler|[[Sequel Hook]]}}: {{spoiler|The cutscene after the end of the credits shows the shadow of a dragon flying overhead, despite what Seere said before about all the dragons disappearing.}}.

* [[Shout-Out]]: Around half of the game, where Caim is about to face Mana in the Temple of The Empire, if you take time to wander around before the "final confrontation", you can see several paintings. One of them is {{spoiler|[[Berserk|The Skull Knight]]}}.

* [[Hide Your Children|Show Your Children And Slaughter Them Mercilessly]]: As The Dark Id's Let's Play can attest, [[Memetic Mutation|''Drakengard'' hates children.]].

* [[Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes]]: Caim is a... not very pleasant fellow with a ''magnificently'' enthusiastic approach to violence who just so happens to be fighting people and/or things which are even ''worse.''.

* [[Story-BoardingStoryboarding the Apocalypse]]: Subverted. By the time you see it happening, it's too late to stop.

* [[Taking You with Me]]: Leonard's death in Chapter 12 (leading to endingEnding 4).

** General Gismor also plays this literally; he normally switches from red to blue to indicate his particular attack pattern, but when he runs low on HP, he turns a ''dark'' red and opts for homing projectiles instead of the usual energy shockwaves.

* [[Two Guys and a Girl]]: Caim, Inuart, and Furiae.

* [[Vitriolic Best Buds]]: Caim and Angelus. {{spoiler|They eventually become actual friends and partners.}}.

* {{spoiler|[[Wave of Babies]]}}: The Grotesqueries in Chapter 12.

* [[Wham! Episode]]: Chapter 12, "Chaos.". {{spoiler|The chapter that introduces the Grotesqueries.}}. The Dark Id's [[Let's Play]] sums it up nicely:

* [[What DoHappened Youto Meanthe Its Not SymbolicMouse?]]:

* [[What Happened to the Mouse?]]:* What ever happened to Leonard and Arioch in the sequel?

* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: Caim is openly criticized for his eagerness to go out, fight, and slaughter Imperial [[Mooks]] by the hundreds. Especially in "Leonard's Regret", which involves wiping out Imperial child conscripts.

* [[Wolfpack Boss]]: A dogfight against Tokyo's elite air defense pilots is unlocked if you successfully unlock (and complete) bonus endingEnding 5 in the first game. Who will win, a dragon armed with homing firebreath, or a squad of five high-speed fighter jets with (equally high-speed) air-to-air missiles?

[[Category:Play StationPlayStation 2]]

[[Category:DrakengardFantasy Video Games]]