A Prologue To A Prologue

[lowkey]

I've had Dissidia Duodecim for several weeks now, but I've been putting it off till I could get Prologus, the DLC that bridges the first and second games. The PSN store came back today, and I immediately downloaded it. I was a little disappointed by the DLC's length—the story mode was a series of four back-to-back battles—but the story and animation were quite good. And it focused on everyone's favorite Rule 63 Cloud, so what could possible go wrong?!

The story, though really short, was good. Good in a way that the first game was never really able to achieve. In the original Dissidia, I always had the nagging feeling that my characters were just standing around, speaking platitudes at each other, and that sometimes, against all odds, those platitudes accidently collided together into something approximating a normal human conversation. Come on—that's exactly how the game ends!

But this story... not so much. Lightning narrates her induction into Cosmo's faction, explaining that she's fighting for a way "to win", and thereby escape the war-torn madness of this realm. It's a good motivation, made that much more interesting by the fact that it seems she could have just as easily been a warrior for Chaos, what with her ambivalence about the content of the fighting (she points out it wasn't her fight to begin with) and her complete hatred about being bossed around.

A few other thoughts:

• Jecht: He's so much more awesome as a hero! I think it has everything to do with his voice—he comes across as a surprisingly mellow, levelheaded and caring character. I'd like to think that this is what he was like as a Guardian, post-Shoopuf incident.
• Cain Highwind: I know nothing about this dude, but hey! He has a pretty nifty voice, and his response to Lightning's criticism of the Warrior of Light—he questioned whether or not she had the skill to back up her arrogance—was badass.
• Cloud: Cloud's a villain, and man, it's completely amazing! Of course, his short appearance depicted him more as an anti-villain than anything else—he was very polite and showed concern for his opponents—but that's still an amazing improvement over I'm-totally-dickish-but-that's-okay-because-I-have-prrrrroooobbbbblllllleeeemmmmmssss Cloud.

Lastly, there's the Warrior of Light, who is... well, a good friend of mine pointed out that he's Dissidia's Captain America, and that about sums it up. He's might not be the best or smartest fighter, but he's a blast from the past and has leadership skills in spades. Of course, Lightning is all like "hhuuurrrr who died and made you Primarch hhuuurrrr" (yes, she really said that -_-;), but it seems his no-nonsense attitude toward combat and his genuine politeness and care for her safety had won her over a little by the end of the chapter.

Of course, I'll just interpret the whole thing as sexual tension, which will make their inevitable storyline battle that much more amazing.

And maybe it's good to have someone actually care about Lightning, ya know? I'm not trying to imply that everyone woman really needs a man or anything, fuck no. What I mean is, she's definitely the relationship odd-man-out in FFXIII. Everyone else had a really significant other to care about, and her's—her sister Sera—was was shared with Snow, and he really co-opted that whole thing. And, despite how much we might want to think otherwise, HOPE IS TOO YOUNG.

So yeah, I'm all for shipping Lightning and the Warrior of Light.