Weltall

Ummmm, yes and no at the same time? So much stuff happens between where your knowledge ends and the game picks up that you'd kind of spoil yourself for things whenever you play the later games, but from where you are some of them wouldn't look like spoilers, if that makes sense. There are a couple of things that are also outright spoilers even without context, including some for the parts of CS1 you haven't seen yet. Add in a few more if you could read the Japanese (or just recognize a particular word from anywhere else you might have encountered it) since some very early text in the trailer gives away something that happens near the end of CS4. And depending on how much you know of the later Crossbell arc events, there's some pretty hefty spoilers for there too. EDIT: @Val the Moofia Boss Welcome to the Shard! And this thread. xD

Welcome to the Shard! As mentioned, the Tears of Edgli are not required for Awakening but the vibrant (and lasting) colors produced by dyes made from the flowers are extremely potent fuel for the magic, which is why they're so valuable. But any color will do and we see people leeching it from things that have definitely not been dyed like that. Brandon even notes in several of the Warbreaker annotations that what the Idrians believe about Awakening and color is wrong and the browns, tans and especially the blacks that they wear are perfectly good sources of color as far as the magic is concerned. We also know for a fact that color can be leeched from stone because it happens at the end of the book, which also illustrates that black makes a very good color for Awakening.

I've been geeking out over the trailer for half the morning with friends who are also huge Falcom fans. xD Yeah, I spotted that interesting flashback on a rewatch. Or whatever it is, the term 'mindscrew' seems appropriate. We actually saw Wald in the magazine scans a day earlier. Some of the reveals were surprising, others we've known by implication since Ao. Oh, and the official website got an update as well. New chapter of Three and Nine, the Episodes revealed in yesterday's magazine scans got added to the site and there's now a System page for the Magical Alisa RS minigame. It's got a summary of the story: A sudden change comes over 'Demon Prince Rean' after the death of the Demon King and his forces once again invade the human world, in spite of the understanding he and Alisa had previously come to. To help fight them, Alisa's underclassmen are given magical girl powers of their own. There's also a brief mention of gameplay mechanics with the various types of attacks available and there's screenshots from the minigame. They're serious about it having a plot, which looks like it's gonna be told visual novel-style. And there's a ridiculously adorable Mona following the cursor around the screen. Oh, and there's a shot of Ennea and Ines and a horrible pun on Falcom's part.

Making a new post because this is just too big not to get one: Hajimari's big trailer just dropped and there is a ton of stuff packed in there. Highlights include: EDIT: Replaced the original video link with Falcom's own, which is higher-resolution.

Well, we just had another Hajimari update. Spoil-tagged for Briar King's sake. (There be some big CS4 spoilers, also Crossbell arc) As @aneonfoxtribute said, Ys and Legend of Heroes are unrelated. They're made by the same company but they're completely different sorts of games taking place in completely different worlds. Ys is Falcom's action RPG franchise to Legend of Heroes' turn-based RPG franchise. If you like that sort of game, the odds are really good that you'll love Ys but you don't need to play anything of one franchise to understand the other. While we're talking other Falcom franchises, if you're able to run Steam or GoG there's a huge library of Falcom games out there to check out, including Gurumin (A-RPG with some rhythm game elements), the Zwei duology (A-RPG), Xanadu Next (a bit more Diablo-esque, nice and atmospheric), Tokyo Xanadu (A-RPG urban fantasy) as well as every Legend of Heroes game that's been officially localized and every Ys game that's been localized (which means every first-party Ys game except V and IX, and the latter's only a matter of time).

Just to be clear, I'm talking about the Ys IX reveal there, not CS4. Wanna make sure we're on the same page. Because I don't recall anything official on the former before a few hours ago.

They did? I know everyone's been expecting it and Falcom leaked that someone had the license late last year but I don't recall anything from NISA directly before now, unless it was some veiled hint that I missed.

I'm not at all surprised that NISA had the license (we've known someone had it for a while now and they're by far the most likely choice) but I wasn't expecting them to confirm it so soon, with CS4 still months away. But now we know and people can start looking forward to the game in English. It's gonna be worth the wait. That also looks like a kickass LE set, with not only the goodies that came with the Japanese edition (minus the cool box with heat-sensitive art, but it's got one of its own that looks pretty nice) but a bunch of other feelies like an Adol figurine and keychains on top of it. And that includes putting the effort in to translate the prologue novella with its tie-in to Ys Seven. Very nice! Also, between that and the trailer it looks like they've settled on 'Grimwald Nox' for that story/gameplay mechanic instead of 'Grimwald Night' and Adol's Monstrum title is 'Crimson King'. And speaking of wtich, the teaser:

On the subject of Hoid having a support network, it's worth remembering that while there are very few people who are anywhere close to his age and could understand him well, some of them still do consider him a friend. He and Frost both refer to one another as 'old friend' even if Frost admits that Hoid exasperates him and at least some of the Vessels still like him. He also has people he considers friends at he 'current' point in the timeline and has had others in the past and will have others in the future. For example, the entire reason he showed up in The Alloy of Law was to congratulate some friends. So whatever else Hoid may be, he's not completely friendless or alone. He's just not used to hugs...

Here you go.

Yeah, Falcom and 'open world' don't really go together but CS2 and CS4 are closer to it than most of their games. The Crossbell games are also relatively open in the sense that for most of its two games you can go wherever you want in the state, and a couple of hidden quests depend on you sticking your nose in places the plot isn't sending you. In terms of the Cold Steel games specifically, depends on who you ask. My personal take is that the games get progressively better (with a caveat or two) so my overall ranking in decreasing order is 4>3>2>1. I do think CS3 does some things better than CS4 and so on, but there's my general take. But yeah, in a broad sense the Cold Steel games are more divisive due to a combination of how many of them there are (it's the longest arc, a fact that Falcom acknowledges was the result of some issues during development that they don't want to repeat) and some writing issues internal to the games. The enormous cast size contributes to some of it since it's hard for so many people to shine when you have almost a dozen characters to juggle in the first game alone. Another reason the CS games aren't as liked writing-wise is that moreso than any other arc, Cold Steel focuses extremely heavily on its protagonist to the exclusion of other characters at times. There are reasons for this and the upcoming Hajimari might retroactively explain some more of the writing decisions, but it's definitely a factor in people's thinking. Again to give you my personal perspective, my top three games are all from the Sky and Crossbell sagas, with only CS4 having a shot at cracking the number three slot. It's fighting it out in my head over Trails in the Sky The 3rd and I'm still not sure which of them is winning. Mind you, even a 'less good' game in this franchise is still a very good game. xD Fun factoid: The flashback with Olivert and Osborne that plays in that sequence (and the accompanying song) are callbacks to a scene in The 3rd and involved the ship that the Courageous is based on.

Sorry, I should have been more clear there; those are two separate pictures in the calendar. And yeah, if the protagonist of the next arc is a martial artist they're more likely to be a Taito practitioner if anything.

While we haven't had a formal update yet this week, Falcom recently shared images from the Zemurian Heroes calendar that comes with the LE and it contained two very neat surprises. First, a group shot of all the Eight Leaves One Blade practitioners we've met so far, which includes (minor CS4 spoiler) The other thing 'hidden' in the pictures is a piece showing an unknown red-haired individual standing in a street with a distinct Eastern look to it. The odds are pretty good they're teasing a major character (possibly even the protagonist) of the upcoming Calvard arc. 'Hidden' because Falcom's very careful about this kind of thing so they obviously want us to see it and go nuts speculating, just like when they teased concept art of a certain character during Cold Steel 1's development. Anyhow, hype levels increasing. <gets popcorn ready> Every Trails game has a level cap that is far in excess of where the player is going to be by the time they finish the game, varying from about ten levels at the low end to fifty or so on the upper end. The Cold Steel games tend towards the latter end of the scale.

The thing with Elantrians and any form of Cosmere healing is that it wouldn't work not because it's magic from another Shard but for the same reason that you can't 'heal' Savantism: As far as the magic is concerned there's nothing wrong with you to heal. The spiritweb of the Elantrian has already been altered by the shaod which means that's their new 'natural' state for healing purposes; the problem is that they're stuck in an incomplete transformation. Some form of Connection-manipulation as Karger suggests would possibly work. We know that it could allow an Elantrian to use AonDor regardless of location (and this would be the harder way to solve the region-locking problem) so manipulating Connection to restore their link to the Dor is probably within the realm of possibility as well. Now, short of that, A-Pewter would probably help them avoid injury but F-Electrum would probably be a more useful power provided you could safely store determination while in such an emotionally vulnerable state. But if you've got enough of it (and especially if you can compound it) that should help power through hoed madness. H-Copper (aka the 'Blessing of Presence') would also be really useful since its effects include increased focus despite things like pain and increased resistance to madness... but I'm not sure I'd want to try combining hemalurgy with a reod Elantrian in the first place except as a last resort.

Not really sure where this belongs or the best way to flag this for Team Dragonsteel's attention but I was having a blast with the new quiz on the website. Noticed however that there was a lore error in the results for the Truthwatchers. It identifies them as having three Surges, but one of them (Regrowth) is an application of Progression rather than being a Surge unto itself. It's a whole lot of fun, the geek in me just hates seeing the mistake, y'know?

Well, I surprised myself by getting Truthwatcher, but apparently according to the info that's because they have traits that I think a lot of us were assuming were more of an Elsecaller schtick. Otherwise it's about what I would have expected. It's funny how close Skybreaker and Windrunner are, which just goes to show that the plea by the unknown Stoneward in the Gem Archive is true: Those two Orders really aren't as different as they may have thought.

One little detail to add to this: Vasher knows the trick of getting a splinter out from the Physical/Cognitive region that its Investiture is tied to. The Returned are a form of Cognitive Shadow, which means that like spren they're largely bound to the region where they were created. In their case it's the Divine Breath which is 'stapling' their Spiritual/Cognitive aspects back into their original Physical bodies which is causing the binding. Since Vasher has worldhopped multiple times, he must know a way around this limitation.

Welcome to the Shard! On using hemalurgy against a Vessel, Brandon has said that their original bodies sublimate because they can't contain all the Investiture that's flowing through them. Their bodies are described as existing but being 'blended in'. So they really don't have a physical body that you could stick a spike into; while they may take on the appearance of a body they're just projections and they can create lots of those at once if they want to (as we see Leras do) so you're not gonna get anything from spiking one of those. On the Heralds, have you read Oathbringer yet? There's a relevant bit of information from there but I don't want to give away anything from the book if you haven't finished it yet.

So there have been a few Hajimari updates, including new chapters of Three and Nine, they've started doing downloadable wallpapers, the website updated with True Reverie Corridor information (mostly what was in the last reveals but it also includes one new Episode which looks like it's going to be Towa-centric) and there's details on shop-specific preorder goodies. Yeah, Zemuria is a big place. We have a fairly good idea how they're gonna fill that map out though, based on comments Falcom's CEO has made about the number of planned future arcs and hints within the games themselves of where the story will be going next. And we're pretty much assuming we're never going to see everything personally, so some countries we know about like Ored are probably only going to be bits of background detail. Yeah, Falcom likes making nods to other games but they aren't that crazily connected. The Dragon Slayer franchise is only connected thematically and even then, mostly just by the fact that each game features a sacred sword called the Dragon Slayer that's a focus of the story in some way. The first two Legend of Heroes games were part of this super-franchise (as 'Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes I-II') and take place in one setting but have nothing to do with the other Dragon Slayer games or the later Legend of Heroes ones plotwise. The Gagharv Trilogy were Legend of Heroes III-V, dropped the Dragon Slayer label and take place in their own shared setting. The Kiseki/Trails games started out being numbered with Trails in the Sky being first released as Legend of Heroes VI: Trails in the Sky but they stopped officially numbering the games before the release of the first Crossbell game. Falcom's also got the long-running Ys franchise which is its own thing and the Xanadu games which started as Dragon Slayer titles have also spun off into their own (equally loose) franchise. All three of their big franchises did actually cross over once in a game called Ys vs. Sora no Kiseki: Alternative Saga, with characters from Kiseki and Ys (plus one from Gagharv) in the Xanadu setting. It was a huge love letter to their fanbase with music taken from all their games, non-story character cameos from all their games and unlockable art from all their games, great fun. It was also very much not canonical to any of the games that went into it. Regarding access to previous games, Falcom has ported the Crossbell games to PS4 so they should be playable on the PS5 as well. I wouldn't be surprised if the Sky games eventually get a similar port so the entire series can be played on one platform but that's just speculation right now. Back to Garrelia I take it? Yeah, welcome to our reactions seven years ago. Wait, has it been that long already? xD We have some ideas that might explain that in an in-universe context but they involve stuff from games you haven't played yet. The out of universe explanation is that they specifically wanted to hide those characters being there until the player saw them joining Class VII for themselves. Yeah, in the first two CS games, whenever you hit a wall you can almost always simply break it down with S-Craft spammage... as long as you do enough damage to win the fight, otherwise the cooldown afterwards leaves you vulnerable to a beatdown. Assuming we're thinking of the same fight, another thing to consider is that while most bosses resist status ailments very well, some of them are vulnerable to one or more. They won't last long against bosses but they can make a huge difference.

They exist but as mentioned they aren't encountered in the same way in Cold Steel. Really, it's only in the Sky games that they occupy a similar position as the various Metal Slimes in the Dragon Quest games or what have you, with their combination of EXP, sepith drops and accessories. In the Crossbell games they're not as rewarding on EXP and drop U-Material instead of unique accessories and in the Cold Steel games you have to use rare and expensive in-game items (or buy DLC) to encounter them. CS4 introduced the Golden Pom which functions similarly to Sky-era Shining Poms except that they reward you with tons of sepith mass which you can exchange for mira, instead of EXP or regular sepith, and they behave similarly in that they'll run away if you don't kill them quickly.

My take on it is that whatever is in Dragonsteel Prime, it provides more of a basis to understand Hoid's immortality, but it likely doesn't fully explain it. Back when Brandon wrote it, Dragonsteel was planned to be seven books long and the one he wrote for his thesis would have been the third of them (the first two being the Hoid-centric prequels) so I'm guessing that there's a ton of stuff that Prime set up which we might be able to use for theorycrafting, but most of the big stuff was being saved for later volumes. But for all I know, it's way more explicit and Dragonsteel Prime does explain it to a great extent. Hard to know when all you've got is the publicly available sections involving Bridge Four which were repurposed for Stormlight Archive. Ahhh, I hadn't seen that WoB yet, fair enough! Well, we know that it's possible to be influenced by the intent of a Shard when you hold some of their Investiture and the more you hold, the more the influence, so if Hoid was reasonably Invested pre-Shattering he's probably had a similar effect. How different this would be from anyone in the present era is hard to say though, since as Brandon mentions the various 'states' of Investiture corresponding to the Shards were always there, they just weren't differentiated the way they are now. So if Hoid somehow held a huge chunk of Investiture that would have gone to, say, Endowment, he might have been influenced in that general direction even though Edgli's specific interpretation of that intent didn't yet exist. But it's also possible there would have been other influences since all that Investiture was held by a single entity with its own mind. We don't know much about pre-Shattering magic and how people interacted with Investiture, but there was an interesting recent WoB that mentions that while fabrials could have existed in theory, Adonalsium would have to specifically allow it. So yeah, could potentially be some influence from Adonalsium directly since if it could control the use of magic to that extent, nudging people towards a mindset in the same way that the Investiture that's associated with particular Shards does in the present day isn't outside the realm of possibility either.

@Golstar Heads up, if you've read the full version of Dragonsteel Prime, you're not supposed to talk about what's in it because it's not publicly available. One of these days, but today is not that day. That said, while Hoid being a Sliver makes a whole lot more sense, Brandon has actually nixed that idea. Whatever he is, it's something else. We have the following WoBs to give us something to work with: So Hoid was already unusual before the Shattering and his immortality is connected in some way to the Shattering itself via this 'weapon', whatever it was.

Hoid was human, once. A Splinter is by definition something that was never human, ergo Hoid cannot be a Splinter. While Brandon has said that Hoid is being literal with that 'words on a page' quote and not breaking the fourth wall as a joke, he's also said that it's meant to refer to how Hoid acquired his pseudonym.

RNGesus smiled upon you that run. Mind you, if you have the Quartz or accessories for it, increasing SPD makes that sort of occurrence a lot more likely. Across the entire series, speed is the One Stat To Rule Them All.

One thing to bear in mind is that the broadsheet account is a deliberately sensationalized piece based. Per her writer Isaac: So while we can assume that there's true and useful (to us) information contained in her accounts, we shouldn't assume it's all meant to be taken at face value.