Soul Calibur/Soul Series

Spoon!

Its official. I have nothing to contribute.

It's been a bit of a slow day for us all. I'm getting kinda sleepy here, so I think I'll call it a day and catch my forty winks. Have to wake up and finish some homework for summer classes.

That's if I'm not shown the greatest nightmare, however.

I think I've figured out what my whole objection is.

Now, let me just state that I can appreciate a good Crapsack World as much as anybody, and Soul Edge (before Calibur was introduced) certainly had the crapsack down. But then, after the Calibur was introduced, you basically had a glimmer of hope and it was kind of cool.

But, my whole problem with the way that the Edge vs Calibur matchup has been portrayed is that it's incredibly lopsided. The Calibur destroys the Edge and what happens? It shatters and spreads evil throughout the entire world, eventually emerging even stronger than it ever was. The Edge defeats the Calibur and what happens? The Calibur gets corrupted and the two basically form an Unholy Matrimony of evil blades.

It's basically a combination of Evil Feels Good and Evil Only Has to Win Once, which basically makes me wonder what the hell is the point? Why even introduce the Calibur if all it's going to do is be patently inferior and, in fact, make the entire story worse?

You interpreted the "spreading evils across the world" from the whole "covering the world in crystal" thing from Siegfried's ending in IV, right?

Maybe they can have the plot revolve around re-purifying Soul Calibur...
Or something...

I think hes talking about the shards of Soul Edge that wreaked shit up all over everywhere.

edited 10th May '11 10:54:00 PM by Zeromaeus

Soul Calibur want to freeze the world? Not only had that motivation never been there, but visually, the sword was better of as metallic with a blue tint, that icy crap can go. Also fire has always been in the visuals, but its something every character can do. Whose idea was it to degrade the Evil Is Visceral soul eating sword into a fire weapon? Weak!

& Bingo.

In Soul Edge, Sophitia shattered one of the Soul Edge's two forms and was gravely wounded by one of its pieces. Taki then had to come in and defeat Inferno and get medical attention for Sophitia. However, the shards of the Edge went everywhere around the world. (Taki herself took one because . . . um . . . why not?)

In Soul Calibur, Kilik defeated Nightmare and Xianghua defeated Inferno. But this time, she left the Calibur in the abyss. In the meantime, Nightmare started taking over Siegfried's body while he slept and using him to kill and absorb souls (as well as more shards).

In Soul Calibur III, Siegfried defeats the Soul Edge AGAIN, but Zasalamel comes along and revives it because it's apparently revealed that the way the Calibur works is that it's only just as strong as the Edge is. Edge gets stronger by absorbing tormented souls and corrupting other magic, but the Calibur automatically equals its power to act as a balance. Apparently, Zas needed both swords at their peaks for his master plan, which led to:

Soulcalibur IV, where both swords are now at their maximum and ready to end things once and for all. Except, whoever wins, we lose.

edited 10th May '11 11:02:58 PM by KingZeal

Could be the sword becomes a kind of extension of it's wielder - if I remember correctly back before it was "purified" Yoshimitsu's sword was like that...

With someone so against injustice and drawn to prosperity as Yoshimitsu to sword guides toward evil and fortune (or something like that, it's been a really long time since I've played II), and that was a Soul Edge infection: now, imagine Soul Calibur, made completely in tune with it's wielder, in the hands of suicidal and self-destructive Siegfried. Now imagine it's mission of purifying the world while tainted by that suicidal, cynical depression...

We don't know much about Soul Calibur, so we don't know if it was actually Calibur's mission to crystalize the world, we just know Siegfried ended up doing that with it.

My only real gripe is this: when are they going to stop pretending Mitsurugi is still relevant to the story and make him a bonus character already? Yeah, yeah, Wolverine Publicity - grumblegrumble.

edited 10th May '11 11:13:17 PM by KnownUnknown

Mitsurugi is my second favorite character. ):
Under Nightmare of course.
Above the sword and flag guy whose name I can never remember.

He's also Japanese.

He's basically their Johnny Cage.

That would be Yoshimitsu.

edited 10th May '11 11:19:17 PM by KingZeal

SPOON!
translation: Thank you. I can't believe how much I want Mewtwo wielding a spoon now. Its like embedded in my psyche.

So◊

sad

Sad? That theres few pictures of Mewtwo wielding the ultimate weapon? True.

I like the "Evil Soul Calibur" angle. It puts the fate of the world in the hands of people again, not mystical MacGuffin sentient weapons. It's up to the heroes to save the world now. Earn Your Happy Ending.

Also there's no point in re-purifying soul calibur. It's completely pure already. But Pure Is Not Good. I guess they washed away edge's bloodlust and selfishness, which basically left nothing. And the thing never had empathy to begin with.

I hate that "pure is not good" nonsense. The entire point to purifying the evil from something is to make it not evil.

Also, even if both swords destroy each other, that doesn't put humanity's fate in its own hands again. Just about every major character in the story has some sort of zen/magical background. The most Badass Normal of the bunch, Mitsurugi, doesn't even care about the Soul weapons one way or another.

Hey now, What Is Evil? Who said the people that did the purifying didn't get exactly what they asked for? If some object is supposed to be an embodiment of good, wouldn't it be odd for it to take the form of a weapon anyways? Isn't it sort of silly that an "Evil-B-gone" ceremony exists in the first place?

... And since when are people with magical powers not people? Aside from Astaroth and Cervantes everyone's a regular human, there's nothing that says Taki didn't shoot ninja fireballs at others just by training really hard. Even Zasalamel earned his immortality through rigorous study.

edited 11th May '11 9:47:10 AM by ShirowShirow

It's also been implied that Algol's soul (since he was not without his ambitions) also corrupted the spirit/holy sword, so it's very well possible that being Lawful Evil was Soul Calibur's true nature from the beginning, merely remaining dormant for some odd years. It was probably overlooked in vein of her being the only thing capable of vanquishing Soul Edge for good.

Like I said, I'm impartial to this plot development. I think it's interesting, to say the very least. It's kinda like Mitsurugi said in his ending from IV: "Weapons are just tools. True strength... lies within me."

Maybe the moral of the story is that you can't rely on these weapons as a crutch. The entire story pretty much was kickstarted by Siegfried being unable to cope with his actions, going into denial, and seeking out Soul Edge. We all know how that turned out.

'Remorseful after his son's death, Algol desired to create a sword to counter the evil within Soul Edge. The legend says that, using purified shards obtained from the battle with his son and the assistance of various sages, Algol was able to create Soul Calibur...'

Yeah, sounds like Algol really wanted that sword to be all kinds of evil. Also the term purified does mean, for lack of better words, made not evil.

-looks in the wiki-

Oh wait, because Algol sacrificed himself to make the sword, it received some of his lust for power, but said power-lust can be supressed and purified if the sword is exposed to the Dvapara-Yuga.

Hu-uh...
Also, apparently Siegfried having Soul Calibur at the end of IV is canon...

No. For one thing, you can't ask "What is evil" when evil is a quantifiable, tangible thing in this series. Evil is, several times, in the series, stated as something which can be sense, felt, and take on a life and shape of its own. Kilik, for example, dedicated his life throughout the series to mastering the evil within himself. It's a cop-out to all of a sudden turn around and try to get semantic about it.

I also find it too pretentious to all of a sudden claim that a weapon can't be "good". If that's the case then, what is good in this series? If pure evil persists in any material form, then what is pure good? And you can't say "the human spirit", because half of the cast (Maxi, Sophitia, Kilik, Siegfried) get that shoved right up their ass.

Their magical powers, for the most part, come from gods or some sort of corporeal entities. In fact, Zasalamel came from a sect that was specifically tasked with the protection of the Soul Calibur.

I still hope the story will come out better this time around, though maybe that it asking abit too much.

Okay seriously, we have 3 Soul series threads active at this point. Something's gotta give.

I'm sure one of these threads would flounder about and drown in the sea that is the tvtropes forum if people didn't bump all of the threads in question just to point that there are too many threads about a subject. Just saying.

The threads were already active (as in multiple posts today) before I did that. What I did isn't making a difference.

Then what's the point? One or two of them, if not all of them, will die in time. Just give it a little while.

The thing is, JAF started two of those threads. The most recent one (the one that says "Soulcalibur 5") wasn't even necessary, as he started a thread about the same game less than a month ago. We really don't need three threads covering the same basic topic.