* How the hell does an entire planet run out of energy in 1948? Did they seriously run out of coal and wood to burn? They couldn't harness solar, wind, geothermal, or hydro power!?
** It's implied that humanity fucked up Earth ''that badly''. Edge mentions in one Private Action that Earth is so polluted that you can't see the stars in the sky any more.
*** Yet they have enough resources to create a space fleet, as opposed to, say, feeding people, or ''cleaning the sky.''
*** Since it was nuclear annihilation, the concern Earth faces isn't a lack of metal or other materials needed to make things like starships and moonbases, it's a lack of things like food, breathable air, and clean water, something that would presumably take a very, very long time to fix. We never hear about whether or not people ARE working to clean the Earth (and judging from later installments in the Star Ocean series, they at least make it livable, if still dirty and crowded.) because the story focuses on the people sent to explore other worlds for colonization.
** Also, the 1948 and the out-of-resources were unrelated. The people of 1948 wanted stuff to win the cold war, whereas the people from the main game who want energy and to restore the planet are from, like, the 2070s or something.
* Okay, so the earth was somehow cleansed and restored during the course of the game... and no one says a word!
** Could it perhaps have been [[spoiler:Faize's]] influence due to some final bit of lingering power from the Missing Procedure?
* It's nice seeing that major landmarks are nuke proof.
* Okay, let me see if I have this right; the normal weapons used by the Earth's soldiers are portable railguns. Fair enough, in the future. Now, these guns are rendered useless by these giant bugs that can sense the electromagnetic emissions of the shots fired by the guns, and in response, create some sort of shield. Edge Maverick is able to fend them off with a sword. Now, I'm no physicist or gun expert, but I'm almost certain that railgun shots travel ''very freaking fast'', which is most likely a Holy Grail amongst gun enthusiasts. A giant spider can sense and ''block'' one of these with no physical repercussions, but they can still be defeated by swords that are waved around a bit with a human arm, which is significantly less than the speed of sound.
** Fixed. Thanks to the tropers who bothered to pick up after me.
** I wonder, if the game only needed an excuse for a sword-wielding protagonist, they didn't just do something similar to how they handled [=SO3=], where the protagonist admits that he just plain likes swords, already knows how to use one because it's his hobby, and then never runs into a reason to use something else? Granted, his other reason was to blend in better without toting a gun. But does that really matter at the point of giant magnet spiders?
** Swords and bows don't produce the electromagnetic current that the railguns use, so there's nothing to warn the bugs about the attack.
*** Nothing to warn them? How about a blonde guy swinging a sword? The fact is, they're fast enough to block a gun, but not fast enough to block a sword? Edge isn't that quick.
*** Do they even have eyes?
*** Its stated right at the start that the enemy is detecting the electromagnetic fields around the projectiles, one of the crew even states that normal firearms WOULD be effective against them and are trying to get some.
* Why is it, that after Reimi joins the party, the crew members who are guarding the area around the Calnus still holding railguns, even though they're completely ineffective against the Monsters there?
** Hidden bayonets?
** It's all they have, or the only weapon they can use easily, or who knows, maybe only some of the hostile creatures of the planet have a defense against railguns. It is better have some kind of weapon than no weapon. Also they can always use the guns as a blunt object I guess.
** They may not be able to damage the bugs, but they can still disrupt the scenery around them. Not something that you can exploit in gameplay, of course, but personally if I can't shoot a bug because of some electromagnetic shield, then I'm sure gonna try to shoot a boulder down to crush and/or subdue them.
* Isn't it a little odd that the cause of Faize's descent into craziness is the girl he met literally five minutes ago? He must be ''really'' sensitive, or mentally/emotionally fragile, or... something.
** He is. It's pretty much implied he's like Spock - seems normal on the outside, but a roiling mass of barely understood emotion on the inside. Plus, it's not like that was the only event that lead him to lunatic activities.
* 1957 Earth with a woman as the high commander of the game's equivalent of Area 51. Alternate universe Earth sure is progressive for its time.
* Here's something head scratching about Faize's start of darkness... Why didn't he tell any of the others what happened to the nomads? Sure, Edge might not be the brightest or the most tactful, but Reimie, Lymle, Meracle and Bacchus are all there for him, and Edge would TRY. Instead, he bottles it up like an idiot, and almost causes the end of the galaxy.
** Faize is hilariously socially awkward. His first interaction with Welch consists of him backing away from Edge in terror over the equivalent of a joke, his first few private actions available with him to the player consist of him constantly apologizing, he has ''no'' idea how to deal with his interactions with [[{{Tsundere}} Lymle]], things like that. On top of that, [[spoiler: his mental and emotional conditioning were designed to suppress emotion to enhance rational thought]], which before the death of the nomads had been functioning perfectly well. And afterward, he had enough success controlling it that the only people who knew that something was '''critically'' wrong with him was Lymle. Basically, at the time, he thought he could handle it and probably thought it was too awkward to bring to anyone else if he had it under control. Note that he only ''really'' cracked upon learning of the [[spoiler: destruction of his homeworld and the near genocide of his people, on top of recently learning that the exploration base full of people he personally knew was destroyed and everyone in it was killed,]] and what really cracked the shell off the nut was [[spoiler: watching an evacuation craft full of possibly hundreds of thousands of Eldarian civilians, if not more, being blown to pieces right in front of him.]] By the time that happened, he was already in space and separated from the party, and the Missing Procedure got its mitts on him long before the the rest of the party on Aeos knew he had gone missing.
** TL;DR Basically, when he was able to receive help he didn't think he needed it, and when he was actually in critical need of the help of the party, he was way too far away and the BigBad got to him first.
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