Tales Of Berseria: Better Art For Its Imperfections

Expectation is one of the most under-discussed aspects of modern artistic quality and a fairly sizable piece of the critical equation. In an age of unrestrained hype cycles and disappointment loops, it is easy to substitute average for bad, and bad for terrible. It is, a difficult space to appraise the quality of a work. To be plugged in enough to understand the language through which a work of art is being spoken, but not too plugged in lest we find ourselves a victim of the cruel cycle that is ravaging the respective industries of art that keeps us from actively enjoying and taking from it in not only the ways we want, but the ways we need.

And what could I have expected from Tales Of Berseria, Bandai Namco’s long-running flagship role-playing series, that received solidly good reviews from gaming publications of the time, but little in the way of the fanfare one might expect from a Persona or Final Fantasy game. Series’ that are revered for their innovations, cinematic and thematic qualities with strong narratives and some of the most iconic and beloved characters in the medium of video games. The Tales series sits on the rung below, solidly good, but never spectacular enough to move that passionate needle. And so in the same way it was a surprise when I rolled credits that I found myself so deeply impacted by the story Tales Of Berseria told and the group of people they told it through.

It starts as many Japanese role-playing games do. The quiet, quaint, and comfortable. Velvet Crowe, taking care of her sickly younger brother Laphicet with her brother-in-law Artorias. Gathering food and supplies for medicine in their secluded village. It’s not much, but it’s an honest life. One that Velvet is more than happy to lead as long as she can help her ease her brothers suffering. Seven years prior Velvet’s pregnant older sister Celica was killed by a daemonic outbreak known as a Scarlet Knight. Fast forward to the present, and another is upon them. Succumbing the entire village to the daemonblight, each human mutated into an unrecognizable monster lusting for human flesh on which to feed. Velvet, after finding Laphicet absent from his bed, stumbles outside to discover the carnage. Only to see Artorius in the process of sacrificing Laphicet in order to appease whatever forces must be kept at day, lest the daemonblight continue to grow. And if Laphicet wouldn’t be enough, Artorias is ready and willing to sacrifice Velvet, too. As she fights back, the daemonblight possesses her arm, mutating and turning it into a “Therion” or an object capable of consuming daemons for sustenance. 

After passing out, waking up in a dungeon prison and subsequently imprisoned for three years, her thirst for revenge only growing more and more unstable as each day passes, Velvet is able to escape along with a few of her fellow prisoners, thanks to Artorias’ former “Malakhim.” Spirits previously visible only to those with the ability to perceive them, and enslaved by the ruling humans of the “Abbey,” a force of exorcists of humans and subservient Malakhim created by Artorias himself, with the people exalting him as the “Sheperd” of humanity.

It is one of the great openings not merely in its genres history, but the medium of video games as a whole. It creates it’s stakes, tethers us to the plight of our anti-hero through it’s emotional direction and believable character writing, and strikes at the core of it’s fragile and blatantly unfair world through the exaltation of who we know and fully believe to be a murderer not just through our own eyes as the player but through that of the character of Velvet Crowe, and through the characters we meet along the way, being well-realized in general, but particularly against the backdrop of the world and society they are set in, and how they are forced to live within this fractured society of cattle celebrating a fratricidal false idol. They each stay together in self-service. Rejecting the idea that they are noble arbiters of comprehensive change, rather realizing it more as a business agreement between the lot of them, but still finding through that agreement the space to care and form a bond of sibling hood all the same. An exorcist becoming sympathetic to their plight through believable tribulations, understanding they are not the senseless motley crew that they are characterized as by the Abbey. A Malakhim boy who is caught in the crossfire of a fight between Velvet and the exorcists effectively learning how to be human, his traits and personality suppressed by his Abbey overlords. A Malakhim who is a first mate for the Captain Aifread’s pirate crew who serves as an analog to what the boy has suffered at the hands of his handlers. It’s not these setups that make the characters, it is what is done within their developments, how they develop and what makes them change that is consistent, and believable relative to world and character tendencies that makes them compelling as a cast.

Berseria has an even more impressive trick up it’s sleeve. Something many stories don’t get a chance to do at the end, let alone the middle third. Consequence. A story, and by extension its drama, is the struggle between the status quo, and a new state of being. And within that status quo being maintained, there must be  not only be narrative consequences, but changes in how the narrative continues, and how the characters react. Without revealing too much, at about it’s halfway mark, Tales Of Berseria lets you see the antagonists win. It’s impermanent, but it is given space to bloom into a sizable narrative beat. It lets you see their vision of the world, that the people fervently cheer, that they dream of above all else as the ideal for their society. And we get to experience the fallout of that which is realized, how it impacts our main cast of characters, how they adjust, and how peoples lives change as a result of it. Equally impressive is it’s conclusion in how it offers an equally somber, weary, and yet still retaining a realists hope and want for all this suffering to have meant something and more importantly, mean something for the present of people they don’t even know, after their lives have permanently changed forever. The respect given to this world, and the fine balance it walks in its final gut-wrenchingly profound moments is a masterclass of bittersweetness and more than anything, realness of its emotional temperature that carries with it an indistinguishable weight of aftermath.

There is one glaring issue though, the tonal whiplash through which much of Berseria is realized. As a result of its series, which not only featured a noticeably lighter overall tone, but far more moments of levity and light-hearted banter, through numerous skits and cutscenes sprinkled in throughout it’s runtime. Berseria, even with it’s darker story and more seriousness and aggression still felt necessary, as being a part of the Tales series, to sprinkle in that levity, most of the time in between it’s major story moments, but it still manages to seep in every now and again, robbing certain moments of dramatic weight. A certain amount of humor and calmness is valuable to manage the weight of the story through ideally naturalistic interactions between characters. But Berseria is hamstrung by the expectation of audiences familiar with its series staples, as opposed to an objective player.

It’s themes of self-motivation, will versus reason, and the balances that we maintain within our very real lives imparts a message of profundity and philosophy. We often look down upon ourselves as species. Sardonically envisioning the scenarios we find ourselves in as a result of the flaws of our nature, misanthropically decrying our whole beings, as opposed looking at those inconsistencies in a measured candor. While introspection can bring about it a myriad of frustration, the beauty of the human soul, jaded, worn down, those negative bring with them a balance that makes us what we are, imperfect yet captivating in that harmony. And when we harness that harmony with others experiencing their own numerous dichotomies within themselves, can create a reality where what we can do, what we want to do, and what we should do, can all act in harmony for a future of tangible hope for everlasting change, even if we must fall apart to arrive and appreciate.