Five Figure Fanwork Exchange

Title: Tales of the Abyss

Media: Video Game

Approx length: About 50 hours to play.

Where to find it: Tales of the Abyss is available on PS2 (and emulators of PS2s) and 3DS. This looks to be a compilation of all cutscenes.

What is it, in summary? In Auldrant everyone knows that if you follow the Score (a planet wide prophecy), prosperity is guaranteed. Luke fon Fabre has been prophesised in the Score, and after he was kidnapped as a child his home of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear keeps him locked up in luxurious confinement. Luke's stifling life quickly comes to an end when a girl invades his house to kill his master, only for things to go terribly wrong and they are both teleported halfway across the world. Luke just wants to go home, but fate has big things in store for him, and he absolutely, 100% is not going to like it. Nor is anyone around him.

Tales of the Abyss is about finding meaning to your own existence without someone giving you a purpose, self-determination versus predestination, a ton of fantasy politics where people are for the most part doing what they think is the right thing with what they know, and probably the best villain in the Tales of series who has completely rational and sympathetic reasons for what he is about to do.

What do you love about it? Tales games tend to skewer the whole "Chosen One" thing, and Luke is no exception. As a consequence of his upbringing, Luke is immature, self-absorbed, and constantly shaken by the thought of taking a human life. He's not a genuinely awful person, but he has been indulged and cosseted so much that his good traits are crushed under his bad ones. He's shocked out of this by trusting someone he really shouldn't, and then has to learn to take responsibility for his own actions and to make amends, and his character arc goes up and down. He's also one of the characters who actually has a pretty reasonable reaction to killing the big bad: he's depressed afterward because it didn't fix any of his problems. I just really love Luke a lot.

I also really love the messy politics going on, and how that informs what everyone is doing. There's a lot of foreshadowing about Guy, for example, that doesn't mean much until a replay. This is one of the few games where characters not telling people what they know makes complete and utter sense. The party aren't friends first, but allies who become friends over time, and so there are tensions between the fragile alliance and their other allegiances.

What sort of things are you likely to request for it? Luke's guilt complex which cannot be eased, but which drives him to be more reckless! Luke having to live with the actions of Asch post-game, as well as everything he's had to do! Just Luke, grappling with his life now.

Are there sections of canon (rather than the whole canon) that can be consumed by themselves to fulfil your requests? No, Tales of the Abyss is a standalone game.

Content warnings (ie, rape, incest, racism, gore/violence) Tales of the Abyss contains genocide, on-screen child death, human experimentation, off-hand mentions of unsavoury acts to vulnerable people, body horror, and mind control. It also contains Luke being a jerk to Mieu, an annoying fluffy creature, though this does die down over time.