State of the Arc is a podcast created by YouTube Resonant Arc. Starring Mike Brown and Casen Sperry, the two discuss and go over the story, characters, and production of video game stories, aiming to create a "Book Club" like podcast for the subject. Because they discuss and go over all of a game’s plot, unmarked spoilers will be below.
Their videos can be found on their YouTube channel, Resonant Arc
, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify, while their Patreon can be found here.
List of games covered in alphabetical order
List of other media covered in alphabetical order
State of the Arc provides examples of, and discusses:
- Alternative Character Interpretation: A decent amount of their Final Fantasy X series is discussing Jecht and how they viewed the game's writing for him. For example: When Auron tells Tidus that Jecht gave up drinking after attacking a shoopuf due to being drunk and mistaking it for a fiend, both interpret the moment differently and discuss their take away from it. Mike discusses how for Tidus, this could be seen as upsetting to hear, because it meant Jecht wouldn't give up drinking for his own son, and only did so because he humiliated himself, while Casen discusses how he saw it as a scene meant to show that Jecht was becoming a better person, and that Tidus would be able to take solace in learning his father did stop drinking eventually.
- Author Filibuster: Despite liking Metal Gear Solid, Mike criticizes the ending of the game for doing this trope. After the game had setup a lot of themes and ideas relating to the idea of genes and how much they influence someone, the ending has Snake become a mouthpiece for Kojima who just explains what the theme is, and pushes that on the player. Mike hates this choice since instead of letting the audience figure the theme out for themselves and determine if it was true or not, it just tells the player how the game is supposed to be read, instead of letting the viewer do so.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: Discussed and somewhat deconstructed, as both Mike and Casen refuse to believe that a translation is badly made on purpose or just a rushed job. When discussing something like Xenogears or Final Fantasy Tactics, they often discuss the localization team, and the history of it, in order to make sure the audience understands why the localization ended up the way they did. Rarely will they criticize it, understanding that it is a lot of work to do so, and will only be critical if they feel it hurts the story.
- Broken Base: Part of their Final Fantasy Tactics video discusses this when it comes to the localization of the original game vs the localization of the War of the Lions port. The divide is over if the original script is better, or if the updated script is, due to factors like the original script being more straight forward over the Purple Prose of the updated one, or the original one having a number of odd translation choices that resulted in confusing plot points. For their part, Mike plays the War of the Lions port, while Casen the original one, and will sometimes discuss the differences, though both agree that the War of the Lions script is vastly superior.
- Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo: Downplayed Trope. Generally, Mike tends to be the Soft Spoken, due to having replayed the game prior to the series, and thus focuses more so on explaining things, while Casen is moreso the Energetic, as he has not usually played the game they discuss, and so his reactions and thoughts are as they happen. The Downplayed element is that depending on the game, Mike and Casen will swap, as in some cases, Mike becomes more passionate and outspoken, while Casen becomes more reserved and soften spoken as he tries to analyze something.
- Enraged by Idiocy: This idea is discussed in the Xenogears video, in relation to the main character Fei, who tends to use Parrot Exposition a lot. Mike mentions when he first played the game, he hated Fei because Fei seemed so dumb, and mentions being frustrated and annoyed by this aspect of Fei. It was only when researching this did he realize why it was the case, though he gets a bit annoyed still later despite that.
- Fanon: Due to being confused about why Anabella Rosfield from Final Fantasy XVI suddenly began acting in an out of character way near the end of her spotlight in the story, both Mike and Casen decide to believe that the Big Bad Ultima must be causing her to be out of character after Casen suggests that because Anabella uses Never My Fault and It's All About Me logic, Ultima is able to control her as a result of shared views. They admit this is likely not actually the reason, but Mike tells Casen he likes that so much, he sticks to that as an explanation.
- Game-Breaker: They discuss this issue in the finale of Final Fantasy Tactics, where a common complaint people have about the game is that the game becomes way too easy at the end due to overpowered characters and abilities. They agree that this is something of an issue, but that it isn't so much with the mechanics but more the design, as the levels don't account for the players power, such as Thunder God Cid being able to easily kill bosses because the enemies start too close to the players units. Both agree though that part of the appeal of the game, and the genre as a whole, is getting to that point, and feel it was fine since they worked to become powerful.
- Jerk Sue: The concept of this is discussed in Mass Effect with how Renegade Shepard is written. Essentially, picking all Renegade options the entire game feels unrealistic due to the sheer amount of rude or terrible things they do as one, and yet the game continues on and doesn't call Shepard out on it. For example: Mike criticizes Renegade Shepard pulling a gun on Harkin in the middle of a bar early in the game, and feels frustrated by how not only Shepard can just do that, but suffer no consequences for doing so.
- Lost in Translation: Due to having learned Japanese, Casen often chimes in when they are discussing Eastern RPG games, as he often pulls the original script up for reference. This came in very handy during games like Xenogears, as due to the games rough localization process, many concepts and ideas were not translated clearly.
- Redemption Equals Death: Discussed during the Xenogears final episode going over the story. Casen theorizes that this trope is used so often by writers because, while people want to believe that others can change for the better, people also want to see people held accountable for their actions, so he theorizes that writers use this trope to get both of these desires from the viewer: The audience feels like a good person for seeing the protagonists want the villain to redeem themselves, but also feel vindicated that the villain dies due to it being a form of justice.
- Spock Speak: Mike brings the trope up when discussing the character of Citan from Xenogears, bringing up how Citan was written in the localization this way to try and convey how smart he is. Mike somewhat criticizes this choice though, as Spock Speak is primarily used when trying to emphasize how someone lacks humanity in their speech, rather then being a way to show how smart he is, finding it to be distracting. Casen notes this wasn't the case in the original script, so it was a choice by the localization to do so.
- Troubled Production: They'll often spend the first episode on a game talking about the development, and if the game happens to have a rough and documented development, they go into detail on this so viewers can understand why certain elements ended up the way they did. For example: They dedicate the first two parts of Xenogears on the rough development and localization so to set viewers expectations about the later elements of the game.
- Villain Decay: With regards to Seymour Guado from Final Fantasy X, both Mike and Casen mention feeling that Seymour's role as an antagonist peaked with his second fight, and felt that him reappearing after made him less threatening as an antagonist, since he comes back in ways that feel not properly explained, or feel contrived. Casen in particular notes that, by the end of the game, he felt Seymour was not that interesting of an antagonist compared to when he was first introduced.
- Woolseyism: One of Mike's favorite things about localization is this. If a game's localization team manages to make the script more interesting or unique while still telling the same story by just altering some details of how the dialogue is conveyed, he finds it vastly superior over a straight translation. In particular, Mike is a huge fan of Alexander O. Smith's work for this reason, particularly because of the word play and use of what is essentially a battle of words between characters, especially in games like Vagrant Story.
