Difference between revisions of "Bravely Default"

While traveling by boat, the party may be attacked by sea monsters and sharks in random encounters.

Skeleton enemies abound, especially in the later part of the game.

Black Mage Ominas Crowe kills his own minions on screen the first time the party meets him. They remain during the scene.

Several villains are killed and remain on-screen for some time throughout the course of the story.

The game makes heavy use of these elements, as demonstrated below.

Early on in the story, Tiz’s brother gets killed in front of him by a geological disaster, and the rest of his family and village are killed by the same disaster. . He is visibly traumatized and is revealed to suffer nightmares about the event throughout the game.

The Guard Captain of Caldisla is killed, and the party have to deliver the news to his father, who is obviously devastated and his health deteriorates from despair until you bring an orphan you encounter much later to live with him.

During the Summoner sub-quest, two preadolescent sisters murder each other due to mind-altering substances.

During the Valkyrie, Ranger, and Summoner sub-quests, it becomes clear that Edea is or was close to the bosses, especially the Valkyrie Einheria Venus. After you defeat and kill them, she mourns. Her mourning is most apparent for the Valkyrie, which she is obviously broken up about. Also, the Valkyrie, Ranger, and Summoner are all full siblings and mourn each other as you kill them.

Olivia, Agnès’s best, and prior to the party only, friend is murdered on screen defending Agnès from the villains as part of the main plot. Olivia is the closest thing Agnès has to family. Agnès is deeply wounded by her death.

To obtain the Swordmaster job, the party must kill Edea’s former master, and even though he is an enemy, it is clear that she still holds him in high esteem and is distraught by his death.

The death of her lover drives the Summoner Mephilia Venus's descent into the cruel madness the party sees when she is first encountered.

The party causes another instance of this during the boss fight with Victor and Victoria. Though she is a homicidal monster, Victor still cares deeply for Victoria and screams in agony at her death. Victoria responds with disbelief and bitter rage if Victor should die first.

Eventually you are forced to battle Edea’s father. Afterwards his wife, Edea’s mother, rushes into the scene to cry over him as he is dying, and Edea herself is devastated despite her contribution. The man is actually saved and does survive, but the scene is played up for the emotion before then.

Lester DeRoso's entire backstory arc is about how his family and subjects were murdered, and how he escaped death himself to become an immortal forever bitterly mourning and attempting to avenge them.

Alternis Dim was raised by Edea’s parents alongside her, and thought that perhaps one day they could be married. This is revealed in the fight where you must kill him. This death is drawn out longer than most. He is injured, dying, and the rocking of the ship throws him overboard after a few more emotional exchanges with Edea.

It is revealed later that the death of family or abandonment by them is what drove the Thief to commit his atrocities.

During and after act 5, you can refight all bosses; in some of these fights, characters are devastated if their partner is taken down first, such as killing Holly before Baras, or Victoria before Victor.

In chapter 6, an alternate reality, the native version of Edea is dead, and apparently Alternis was unable to protect her. Alternis Dim, Braev Lee, and Mahzer Lee are devastated by this. Alternis in particular is driven to suicidal despair, and fights you intending to die during the Conjurer sub-quest. He survives your battle, but it is heavily implied by the end of the quest that he has killed himself by other means.

It is discovered that Ringabel is the Alternis Dim from a world prior to the one that the party hails from, and was the sole survivor of that group. The trauma from this is implied to be the cause of his amnesia from the start of the game.

In the false ending, after a short unwinnable boss battle all of the party except Agnès is killed, and Agnès is devastated; Agnès is then killed. However the party is miraculously revived and continues on.

Lord DeRosso sacrifices his eternal life to sabotage the final boss of the true ending path, implying his permanent death.

During the final boss battle of the true ending path, the enemy is explicitly shown destroying and consuming worlds from parallel dimensions to heal and empower himself, as well as to taunt and demoralize the party for their inability to prevent the incredible loss of life. Some of these worlds are explicitly labeled as ones belonging to people on the player’s friends list that also own the game. This has no actual effect on anyone’s in-game world. At the end of the ending sequence in the true ending path, Tiz apparently dies. He is aware that this is about to happen and excuses himself from the party to spare them the trauma. He chooses to let himself pass on standing on the grave of his dead brother; the party and the orphan he has adopted as a surrogate brother are shown to be unaware of the event, and the player is not shown their reaction when (or even if) they find his body.

The Ranger boss is very animalistic, speaks in a primitive manner, and behaves like a feral predator, growling and loudly declaring her bloodlust. One of the characters asks something akin to “what has she become.”

One party member, Ringabel, behaves like a blatant philanderer and is constantly admiring women for their bodies and trying to see more exposed skin. Quote: “Women are fickle beasts.” This is, however, largely an act, as it is made clear that he only has true feelings for one woman, he much prefers championing women and would never truly take advantage of them. When confronted with the villain described below, whose first crime is implied to be rape, Ringabel is visibly outraged and angrily stands up for the victims.

One villain uses a drug to seduce numerous women; it is implied that he rapes them, and it is shown that he keeps them imprisoned in cages, where he experiments on them and kills them to extract and refine his drug. He intends to use this drug to further his own career and standing, and is shown to be completely unrepentant and outright dismissive of the women sacrificed in his scheme: “Does a carpenter care for the wishes of his hammer? Tools ill have need of identities.”

Another villain eagerly embraces participating in a continent-wide full scale war for the sole purpose of developing and testing chemical weapons of mass destruction. He is utterly unconcerned with friendly fire during these ‘tests’ and angrily refutes his (much more humane) superior’s adamant insistence that their enemies be treated like proper people. He gathers up and treats wounded enemies back to health, but only because healthy subjects provide better data when experimented upon and tortured, and he states explicitly that he would gladly use his own troops and allies for the same purpose. Yet another villain is a wealthy merchant in possession of the only water supply in a desert town. He has conspired with the local king (who also views his subjects as nothing but tools to build his own greatness) to gain this monopoly and raised his prices to exorbitant levels, telling anyone who objects that they can always trek through the desert to the nearby oasis, where he has hired a band of thieves to rob them of all their possessions. When confronted he dismisses every other human being as nothing but a source of wealth to be exploited.

The villainous plot in the Florem region revolves around flooding the local economy with beauty products laced with addictive mind-altering drugs with the intent of turning the local pious, puritan culture into blind, shallow, beauty-obsessed-to-the-point-of-crazed-poverty masses. In one instance, devoted preadolescent sisters are shown to have murdered each other over desire for these products. Several of the participating villains revel in or even take advantage of the dehumanizing that occurs.

In the war-torn region of Eisen, enemy forces have kidnapped war orphans and forced them to mine precious material. These orphans are called ‘canary boys’ in reference to the practice of using canaries to find and trigger deadly traps or natural dangers.

In a conversation with the final boss of the true ending path, he likens the party and even his own minions to cattle. “What further use has one for cattle claimed by age or injury, save to be eaten?”

The Great Chasm destroys Norende village, an event that recurs multiple times through the story. As the first player character lived in Norende, the first time the destruction is depicted is in a fully animated and detailed movie. It is implied that the Great Chasm will grow and destroy the entire world if the party does not stop it, driving the plot.

The effect of the crystals being darkened mimic natural disasters. The seas are rotted through and impassible, killing fish and dissolving ships, the winds are stilled and thus the air has become stagnant an unbearably warm, and the Eisen volcano has erupted, spewing lava everywhere.

Gravemark Village bears innumerable gravestones from the Great Plague before the story.

One villain uses a self-created deadly airborne toxin to kill massive numbers of enemy forces as well as some of his own; while not strictly disease based, it may bear some similarities. It is revealed late that this villain makes some weapons of mass destruction by combining infectious diseases like the common cold with snake venom.

Part of the game’s backstory, and the backstory of Eternia and Edea’s family, is heavily based on the events of the Great Plague, 20 years prior to the events of the story. It eradicated entire villages and cost countless lives. Much of this is revealed in Gravemark Village, a tiny and easy to miss place to the east of Eternia city, where grave markers of those killed by the plague cover the landscape.

Very few characters have a stable home life.

Notably, you are required to assault the castle one of your party members grew up in, you can visit her room that serves as a safe house to recover, and this event culminates in a fight apparently to the death with her father. While it is made clear that father and daughter do care about each other, it is also explicitly mentioned there is a great deal of friction and hurt in their history. At least once the father states that he will have to kill his daughter along with the rest of the party rather than let them succeed at their goals.

This is a running tone through the latter half of the game.

The party is out to save the world; multiple times it appears as if all of the progress and success they have achieved has been completely undone, forcing them to start all over and driving them to the brink of despair.

A number of ghosts and ghostly enemies exist throughout the game.

The Pirate job quest involves finding and fighting upon a ghost ship.

Several scenes take place on airships, and while there no risk of falling accidentally, but they do crash via the plot. At least two characters die by falling to their deaths, though the point of impact is never depicted.

There is also a scene prior to the Fire Temple where stone pillars that the party is traversing begin to collapse into lava. The party nearly falls in, but manages to save itself.

There are a number of butterfly, moth, scorpion, and worm like enemies.

Airy’s wings resemble butterfly wings, and one endgame boss has multiple stages representing an insect’s metamorphosis, including a grotesque ‘pupa’ form with multiple limbs and scythe-like claws.

One of the primary goals of the nation opposed to the party is to kidnap Agnés because of her position and special ability. At one point the party is captured and thrown in a dungeon and must free themselves.

One villain specializes in creating medicines and various compounds and chemicals. Participating in a full-scale war, he treats prisoners of war back to full health, but only so he can test the effects of various poisons and toxins on healthy subjects.

Charm effects exist that reverse party affiliations for the duration for the status ailment.

The villainous plot in the Florem region revolves around flooding the local economy with beauty products laced with addictive mind-altering drugs with the intent of turning the local pious, puritan culture into blind, shallow, beauty-obsessed-to-the-point-of-crazed-poverty masses. In one instance, devoted preadolescent sisters are shown to have murdered each other over desire for these products.

One of the Florem villains is taking advantage of this plot to develop what is essentially a very potent date-rape/mind control drug.

The villains are not shy about murdering various NPCs, including their own minions, innocent civilians, and characters the player has been set up to care about. One of the most emotionally played up murders is that of Agnès’s best friend Olivia, who dies on-screen intercepting an attack from the villain meant for Agnès.

There is a murder-mystery styled sidequest where an assassin gradually kills off the friendly NPCs in the area; if the player knows what to do these are the only preventable murders in the game.

Combat involves killing enemy soldiers, and upon defeating many enemy human bosses it is explicitly shown and stated that you kill them, at least in the first few acts.

This is the excuse the holder of the Thief Asterisk gives for his life of crime. Notably, player character Tiz proposes the alternate possibility that the Thief’s parents may have been unable to care for him and gave him up for hope of a better life, but the Thief bitterly refuses to consider the idea.

While it is not overtly stated, Tiz may have developed some sort of psychological trauma in response to the death of his brother and the Water Vestal in front of him. He doesn’t sleep well, has nightmares every night, and he does talk about how deeply it affects him once during the main storyline.

Agnes is also shown to be traumatized and emotionally broken at the death of her best friend, Olivia.

Edea befriends the other party members and as a direct consequence finds herself opposed to the doctrine and ideology she was raised in, as well as in a position where she must fight family and close friends to the death. She struggles with this conflicting loyalty throughout the story.

The innkeeper from the beginning of the story is so distraught by his son’s death that he becomes bedridden.

While not technically racism and more accurately religious genocide, the religion that the PCs support, the Crystal Orthodoxy, is under violent suppression by the Eternian Empire.

This is a bit of a plot point; The Town of Florem turned from a religious focal point to a town obsessed with physical beauty and that type of posturing. The only permanent inhabitants are women, and men come from all over to take a look at the “flowers.” One plot point involves a beauty pageant. The town has a statue of a woman with bunny ears in a suggestive pose.

The Black Blades employ child slaves in the Mithril mines, accessed in the Eisen Region before the Fire Temple.

The king of Ancheim treats his subjects as little better than slaves, working them ruthlessly in an attempt to ‘modernize’ his city and contribute to his own personal glory.

Numerous snake enemies exist.

In chapter 6, an alternate reality, the native version of Edea is dead, and apparently Alternis was unable to protect her. Alternis Dim, Braev Lee, and Mahzer Lee are devastated by this. Alternis in particular is driven to suicidal despair, and fights you intending to die during the Conjurer sidequest. He survives your battle, but it is heavily implied by the end of the quest that he has killed himself by other means.

Several bosses (most notably Victor and Victoria) will be driven to despair and suicidal rage when their battle partners are killed by the party.

Undead enemies abound, especially in later parts of the game.

In the intro of the game, Agnes speaks to the player with augmented reality technology; in the game’s interface she appears to be in the room with the player.

After the events at the holy pillar, the world is reset to slightly after the party meets. They are thrown off by this and it is quite unclear what precisely is going on for some time. Agnes begins to doubt reality.

A pair of preadolescent children in Florem kill each other over the mind-altering addictive products in the region.

The war orphans put to slavery in Eisen are called ‘canary boys’ after the practice of using the birds to discover and trigger deadly traps and natural dangers.

In comparison to most other named characters, your protagonists appear to be very youthful, which may lead to the impression of this, but the youngest of them is stated to be 18 (15 in the Japanese version).