…and they work for me. My name is Charlie.
White feathers on a black background. Behind them appears a very long braid of blue hair. The hair is attached to a woman in a feathered helmet and blue armor. The woman looks very wistful. She also has blue laser wings. As the twinkly music crescendos into an especially percussive section, the woman does some Sailor Moon-type poses and her laser wings become real, feathery wings. The free floating feathers coagulate into a blonde man in red armor, a blonde woman in a violet blouse, and a fierce-looking man with black armor and brown hair. The three warriors pose together.
Now we’re outside. White birds fly through the blue sky. There are also three floating continents covered in green in the distance. We then cut to inside a building on one of the floating continents, zoom past a stern-looking brunette woman in a green bodysuit, through a line of red curtains, and into the throne room of an old man wearing gray pajamas and holding a spear that looks a lot like Cronabe’s swallow. The man, like, creepily zooms out of the throne and into the camera.
This spell brought to you by the number 8!
We’re outside again, now in a forest. The blonde warrior in red from earlier leaps into the air, revealing the man in black armor, who charges the screen. As he approaches the camera, we see the reflection of a monster in his eyes. Black stabs the monster with his gigantic sword and flings him into the air, where Red has been, like, levitating or something. Red slices into the monster with an electrified sword. The woman in the violet blouse swings a staff around and whammy-zammies a world of hurt on the monster in the form of a giant orb of pink explodey energy. The monster’s explosion causes a whiteout which serves to shift the focus…
To a four-poster bed with purple drapery. A nerdy-looking man in a blue cape lifts the sleeping form of a naked woman with long blue hair into his arms and, with a victorious glance to the camera, kisses the woman. Creepy!
Swords clash. The woman, back in her blue armor and feathered headdress, locks blades with a darkened adversary. She leaps backwards, points two fingers into the air, and summons a giant blue energy spear, which she hurls at her enemy. En route, the spear grows a bird-like beak and a beady red eye. Another whiteout leads us…
To the Weeping Lily meadow from the opening prologue. Weeping Lily petals fly through the air. Blue armor woman stands over a kneeling Platina. Hey, they really look similar, with their fair features and matching “silver” hair. I wonder if they’re like, sisters or something. Blue and Platina exchange knowing smiles.
And with that, we’re back to the Press Start menu. Hm, let’s see… are there any other things I can recap that don’t involve actually playing the game? No? I suppose we’d better pick the New Game option then. The new game screen offers me a choice between three modes of difficulty: Easy, Normal, and Hard. Easy is for “teh pansies” I’m sure, so I don’t even bother checking out what it has to offer. Normal mode seems tempting, as everything about it is normal. EXP earned, Items found, Dungeons offered, Characters recruited, all normal. Characters also join the party at preset levels, it seems. And you even have the opportunity to get any one of the three endings! Sweet! Normal mode rocks! …And yet, something tells me that I should check out Hard mode, too. Hard mode boasts that it is “recommended for anyone who wants to plumb the depths (dirty!) of the game.” Hard mode also comes with a caveat: “make this selection not for enjoyment but as a challenge!” Great. Also, despite the fact that you are rewarded many types of items and “unlimited” (i.e., 22) characters, Hard mode players are also given many dungeons full of monsters that only relinquish few EXP. Also, all new characters start at level 1. Fabulous. Hard mode it is, then, I suppose. Sigh. The things I do to prove my gaming mettle to you guys. At least I can still get the best ending, as if that’s some kind of consolation.
We open the game in an aquamarine sky interspersed with fluffy white clouds and also framed with a dreamy white border. The view slowly shifts downward (a favorite maneuver of the cinematographers, it seems) to reveal a large and ornate cathedral with ivory decorations and several elegant spires. Bells toll. Inside the cathedral, we continue our downward pan, past several tall penises windows and phalluses pillars. We end focusing on a woman with blue hair in a white wedding dress, standing in front of an extravagant altar, and framed on the left by a cluster of luminescent lavender vaginas flowers in the foreground. On the woman’s right, a semi-transparent piece of artwork appears, showing us the full detail of her fabulous dress and bouquet. The woman’s hair is also very clearly blue, I’d just like to say.
Penises and Vaginas– together at last!
The bells continue to toll. Suddenly, everything except the woman’s sprite vanishes in a sea of black. Slowly, the wedding dress fades away, revealing the woman underneath, clad in peasant’s garb and standing with her eyes closed in a field that looks suspiciously like the Weeping Lily meadow, except the woman isn’t dying of poisonous poison, so I guess they must just be regular old lilies. We can see for a fact that this is a different place because instead of the glacial valley, we can see the floating continents from the opening anime sequence and lots of fluffy clouds in the background. The woman’s long blue braid flows in the breeze. Despite the prevalence of blue/violet/blonde/silver-haired maidens in this game, I think it would be safe to assume that this is the woman in blue armor from the opening anime sequence. Blue opens her eyes, done with her matrimonial daydreaming, and says of the lily meadow, “How nostalgic…” Her VA, shockingly, doesn’t make me want to kill myself. She actually sounds kinda… good. Regal and feminine, and, most importantly, age appropriate. Blue exits, stage left.
From a distance, we watch a microscopic Blue as she walks through the floating continent’s paradisiacal fields while some credits roll in the space above the horizon. The people involved with this game all have very distinctly Asian-sounding names, which isn’t really weird or surprising, but that’s all there is to recap, at the moment, so I’m making do with what I’ve got. …Golly, Blue walks slowly. The camera, like, faded in an out of several locations on this floating continent place while she was walking and, now that it’s returned to her, she’s only barely made it any closer to the giant ivory city situated at the screen’s edge. (As an interesting credit supertext-related note, the two Character Designers for Valkyrie Profile are named Kou Yoshinari and You Yoshinari. Hot!)
After Blue finally makes her way to the Ivory City, the credit/continent montage ends and we join Blue just inside the gates. Blue doesn’t move for a long time. Then I realize that I’m actually in control of Blue now, pick up the controller, and maneuver her across a long bridge to a woman in a brown uniform standing guard outside the city proper. “Welcome to Valhalla!” the woman, Frei, says
Frei throws herself around Valkyrie in a sisterly embrace, and, in the same “walking amongst the retards” voice, answers in the affirmative: she is, in fact, waiting for somebody. Frei tells Valkyrie, who she calls Lenneth, that she’s actually been waiting for her, and that she’s been doing so ever since her sister, Freya, told her that Lenneth was coming back. Lenneth seems surprised at this news, and wonders briefly whether she’s actually been away that long before asking Frei if she’s well. Frei’s voice actor totally injects an unnecessary amount of perk into Frei’s “Yes!” After an awkward pause, during which Lenneth probably contemplates running away from this crazy girl, Frei remembers that “Lord Odin” is waiting for Lenneth within Valhalla, so she should probably get a move on. Lenneth takes this opportunity to get out of having to shoot the shit with the town loon, and promises that they will talk later. (Yeah, right.) Lenneth walks off the left side of the screen into Valhalla proper, and then we’re treated to this 100% unnecessary CGI sequence where a gigantic and overly-ornate door swings open.
I should probably pause here to address something that I’m sure I’ll get, like, a bazillion poorly-written emails about if I don’t. You see, in Norse Myth, Frei, the retarded doorwoman, is actually supposed to be Freyr, an important fertility god. Why Enix decided to go on a gender bender and portray him as a her is quite beyond me, but there you have it. As we’ll see during the game, Enix plays it fast and loose with the details of Norse Mythology, anyway, so, despite the fact that Valkyrie Profile draws heavily from Norse Myth, getting hung up on the small stuff won’t really do us any good. Just think of it as being the same as when Square changed Shiva from a powerful Hindu god into a sparkly ice princess. Savvy?
Loading ...Inside Valhalla, the camera pans slowly downward from the ceiling while an ethereal choir sings in the background. When the camera’s view dips low enough, we can see the pajama-clad old geezer and the woman in green from the opening anime sequence. Green is levitating to the right of Geezer’s throne, and Geezer looks like he’s about to die from boredom. Lenneth enters, kneels to the floor, and greets Geezer: “I am here, Lord Odin, at your service.” …So, the bored-looking old man is really the ruler of the Norse Pantheon? Sweet. When even the Gods are getting bored, you know you’ve got a winning game on your hands.
Anti-grav Green (real name: Freya), commands Lenneth to rise, reminding her that she has “no need to kneel before [them] like a dweller in Midgard.” (Not to be confused with Midgar. Chill out, FFVII fanboys.) Lenneth stands up and, in a completely unnecessary display of power, Freya teleports, via a CGI ripple effect, a distance of three feet to Lenneth’s side and embraces her. “I rejoice to see you again! You have been missed!” Freya wanks. Lenneth, all business, greets Freya with about the same level of enthusiasm as she did Frei, that is to say, none. What a frosty bitch.
Freya and Lenneth’s “heartfelt” reunion is cut short as Lord Geezer, voiced by Movie Preview Announcer Guy, booms some exposition in Lenneth’s general direction: “Lenneth Valkyrie. I would not summon you, the greatest of the three goddesses who govern destiny, without good cause. The head of Mimir has told me that Ragnarok, the end of the world, draws near. There have been signs of unrest among the Vanir of late. It seems that we, the Aesir, will not be able to avoid war with them.”
Okay, factcheck.org time. Let’s see here, according to the Internet’s understanding of Norse Myth, the Vanir were another race of Gods, similar to the Aesir, but not as strong or whatever. The two races fought against each other a lot, but the big war that ends the world, Ragnarok, is supposed to take place between the “Frost Giants,” whoever they are, and the Aesir. Not the Vanir. Like I said before, it’s not worth it to get all uppity over the mythological minutiae in this game, but, hey, The More You Know.
This next part is right enough, though, promise.
What a fabulous makeover! I hope those Queer Eye guys are taking notes.
“We require warriors,” Lord Geezer booms, and he tells Lenneth that, as a Valkyrie, her role in the war against the Vanir is to travel to Midgard to “search for suitable human souls,” and then send them up to Asgard, where they’ll prepare for Ragnarok with the rest of the Gods. Lenneth’s all in, and she responds, “It is my honor, Lord… to serve you.” Lord Geezer, pleased to hear Lenneth’s pledge of loyalty, tells Lenneth that she should leave do her soul-catching thing ASAP. Taking Lord Geezer’s cue, Freya turns to Lenneth and envelops her in streams of blue light that replaces her clothes with the blue armor and winged helmet we saw in the opening sequence. Freya tells Lenneth that she will accompany her “on the journey down” (dirty!), but reminds Lenneth that it’s only a quickie; she’ll have to return to Valhalla shortly. “You have but recently awakened and it would be unkind of me to send you alone,” she rationalizes. That, and it would totally suck if you couldn’t clear the first dungeon because your Valkyrie is too weak to kill a pack of zombies on her own. But I’m getting, like, an hour ahead of myself. Exeunt Lenneth and Freya, courtesy of Freya’s ripply teleportation magic.
We rejoin Freya and Lenneth on a high cliff, overlooking the valley below. Lenneth wonders if they’re in the “human world.” Freya responds in the affirmative, noting that it is in fact “the lower world of Midgard, where souls wander about… locked in cages of flesh.” Ooooh, that is such a juicy and depressing line. I’m totally using it in my next LJ post, when I talk about how sad I am that my daddy didn’t buy me a gold-plated XBOX 360 for Christmas and now my life is, like, totally ruined now and I’m leaving the internet FOREVER. For real this time. No, really.