Soul Series/Headscratchers

• Is "Tale(s) of Sword(s)" a possible translation for 3's "chronicles of the sword" mode? Chronicles is a near synonym for "tales" and with "tales of soul" it would fit nicely into the "tale of swords and souls" thing.
  • I didn't even notice that. Nice catch.
• This exchange in the 2nd game. "You, I've had enough of you" "You there, haven't you had enough?"
  • Oh, hey. This troper saw a fanfic once that consisted of this exchange, an awkward silence, and then Mitsurugi being all "yes, that's what I just said. Do you realize how stupid that sounds?" and ranting for several paragraphs about it. It was amazing.
    • Do want.
    • Heh. If you read that on the GameFAQs forum for SCII, then I think that one was mine.
  • My personal favourite is "I don't want to fight..." "Well then, let us dance."
    • I have a personal soft spot for: "Gods! Guide me!" "Wind! Guide me!"
    • Sophitia: You could never understand! | Siegfried: You could never understand. | Me: [facepalm]
    • This troper enjoyed the exchange of "Don't worry, Talim, believe in yourself." "EXTERMINATE!"
  • Changing the languages to Japanese changes the 2nd line in the subtitles to "you don't give up do you", so it seems to be a translation issue.
• Not the game itself, but what bugs me is far too many people claiming Voldo is blind AND deaf! Yes, he's blind. The game has stated he's also mute. But nowhere does it ever say he's deaf. How would sitting in the dark for twenty-some years make you go deaf, anyways? I thought it would be obvious he can still fight while blind because of acute hearing. Some people just seem to think he's the Pinball Wizard...
  • Word of God says Voldo does have enhanced hearing
  • Moreso, its a proven experiment to deprive a person of all visual and audio input for a prolonged amount of time, including no talking (usually just a few hours). Your mind invariably focuses all its attention to hearing. You become painfully aware of your own heartbeat, then your own pulse etc, until you can hear your own digest system bubbling away and are aware of even the slightest noise.
  • More Word of God: Voldo's backstory in Soul Calibur V states he has quite the keen sense of smell. He was able to track down and kill the thieves who ransacked the Money Pit while he was gone this way. And successfully retrieve every last piece of treasure.
  • Incidentally, there was at one point a story about a blind gamer in Minnesota who trained himself to play the first Soul Calibur on sound alone.
    • Interestingly, Voldo was neiher blind or mute(another assumption) in Soul Edge, he just had very deteriorated sight. And he spoke according to the game story.
• Why do the lizardmen surrounding one of the levels in Soul Calibur 4 hold giant novelty forks and knives? Is that Narmful or what?
  • Because they want to eat you.
  • Bear in mind that whenever you face more than one Lizardman, all but the first will have the joke weapon. They're the comic relief.
• Before you fight the final boss of Soul Calibur 3, Zasalamel says "I didn't come all this way just to die here." Isn't that exactly what he came there to do?
  • Not really. He's there to end his reincarnation spell and then die. Should he die before accomplishing that, he'd just ressurect again and have to go through life one more time, and probably restart his plot from scratch/come with a new one. The cutscenes where he says that are before he enacts his plan, so he either tries to bring the enemy down or starts the process before he/she can interfere anymore.
• Taki in SCIV. OK, it turns out Soul Caibur was not as good as Siegfried had been led to believe, but what was the point of calling him evil and killing him over it? Hilde had a legitimate beef with Siegfried and showed more compassion than that. Are we supposed to find Taki sympathetic for her story mode?
  • My take on this: Hilde's not aware of Soul Calibur's true nature and how dangerous it is to let it roam free, so she only sees Sieg's acts. Taki knows from first-hand just how much danger SC represents, and is determined to see it destroyed. Problem comes with Sieg, who sees SC as a tool of justice and wouldn't let it be destroyed. Sieg will not give in, and Taki can't trust Sieg will keep SC on check (too risk a gamble). Plus, the likely chance destroying SC equals Sieg's death (since his soul has bonded with it), Taki's got no other known choice (yet) to resolve this than fighting and (directly or indirectly) killing him, whether she wants it or not.
• Cassandra's SCIV ending. So she pierces Soul Edge with Soul Calibur and then destroys Soul Calibur, blaming it for what happened to Sophitia. What? Regardless of whether or not it is evil, Soul Calibur has nothing to do with Cassandra and Sophitia's stories aside from the fact that Cassandra was unknowingly looking for it. It seems to me that Cassandra's ending was made into another "Soul Calibur is evil" ending for the heck of it, regardless of how it would mesh with the rest of her story.
  • At this point in the series, I'm afraid that the story is something the producers just don't care anymore. Which is sad, because Soul Calibur used to have some of the best stories ever for a fighting game.
    • While things like Cassandra's ending and the direction Taki's story went do bug me, I'd have to politely disagree on them not caring about the plot completely. Most of the other endings are well done, and some of the characters in this game come from somewhere in the backstory (such as Durer and The Hero King/Algol, who were perhaps two of the more obscure ones).
    • Agree with the above. As for Cassy's ending, I think there's some missing link to tie it together: she fights Sophitia being possessed by SE in her story mode. Sophie turned a host to protect her child from SC, whose anti-SE nature would have killed. Cass may have also heard about its real nature from Raphael (who she fights in her story mode too). So SC is an anti-SE Knight Templar and it will kill Sophie's child, forcing Sophie to take such extreme measures as to wield SE, misleading Cass into blaming SC for Sophie's misfortune.
      • My guess is that Cassandra somehow figured out (behind the scenes) that SC was (if I remember right... haven't played either of the 3 [yes, 3: IV, BD, and II in the order that I received them] games that I do have in ages XD) born from a fragment of SE, and therefore *rambles on and on, incorporating segments from the above post and little figments of her own imagination and ends up getting weird looks from the surrounding tropers*
• How come the games are apparently set in the 16th century (1591, if I remember correctly) and yet Sophitia and Cassandra live in the (Islamic) Ottoman Empire and they worship Greek gods. You'd think they'd be killed for this.
  • This also takes place in a world where the Greek gods exist. This probably makes worshipping them a bit easier in terms of "tendency of anyone who oppresses their worshippers to be struck by lightning" sense.
  • First, Cassandra doesn't worships them, and neither does any other member of Sophitia's family as a matter of fact. Dunno if what Sophitia (and Rothion) do can really be named "worshipping": visiting an ancient and ruined temple a few times to ask for blessing/help, or some personal/whispering prayers. And that's mostly given they know they are the real deal. No one else knows about that (except Cass), and she'd not be willing to reveal it, considering the last time Sophie spoke about her adventures she was ridiculized by even her close friends. PS: I wouldn't really count with those lazy greek gods to even move a finger if they even get pursued for that, considering their long-lasting lack of action, CF not-withstanding.
    • ...I'm pretty sure visiting a temple to petition a god or gods for favors/blessings and whispering prayers to those gods counts as "worship".
    • The whole ordeal (during SE, atleast) was more in the lines of "Sophie was a BIG fan of ancient myths", nothing else: Before knowing the gods were actually real, she was actually very interested in ancient greek mythology and lamented how people of her time has forgotten about their roots and culture. After leaving the mandatory worship (mass, though I'm not sure if that's the right term), she used to have a "silent prayer" to the city's protector (Athena) only out of respect for the story build by her ancestors, not because she's secretly thinking they are real (yet). After they are found out to be real, she's still not going every odd day to pray for them, but just visiting the ruins of the temple in very special times (her engagement, when she's troubled in SC3).
    • And in fact, in support of the above, ancient Greek religion has experienced a number of revivals in the past, in the arts, humanities and spirituality of the Renaissance era (when SC series is set) as well as with the contemporary Hellenic Reconstructionism, or "Hellenismos" as it is sometimes called. Sophitia probably keeps it quiet though, due to Ottoman influences at the time, but its not inconceivable that she worships the "old" Gods in secret. Even in modern-day Greece, some older women still keep a small shrine to Hestia, the ancient Goddess of the home and hearth for good luck.
    • I think that you are all giving Namco too much credit and that they just did not bother do the research. First of all while the Ottoman Empire wasn't all sunshine and roses, it was much more tolerant towards its religious minorities than any other contemporary empire. Second, Sophitia, Cassandra and any other Greek character from this period would belong to the Byzantine Orthodox Church (since approximately the 4th or 5th century AD), which was even more allergic to the old Greco-Roman pantheon then the Ottomans. (As a matter of fact, it was the Byzantines who banned the Olympic Games for being "pagan rituals").
    • I think that you are all giving Namco too much credit and that they just did not bother do the research., except that most of what's said (specially about Sophitia assisting mass and being a big fan of ancient greek mythology) is directly stated in her original profile. Sophitia was the only one who ever had this interest too, as Cassandra only believes they exist because she knows Sophitia is not the type to lie.
• Okay, so I did not watch the whole story mode yet, but I did watch the end and the credits. Suddenly, so much gets confirmed based on what I assume is the the voice actor list in the credits. Viola is suddenly Amy based on the fact that they share both English and Japanese VA's (which was known way before story mode was leaked) and Nightmare is using Raphael's body because they share the same seiyuu. This is where I get confused. Popular theory aside, does the trope Talking to Himself not apply? Not to mention that while they specified who played who in Japanese, but they only specified Roger Craig Smith as Ezio. The other English VS's are just mentioned in alphabetical order without saying who they voiced. Nightmare in particular is going back and forth between Patrick Seitz and Charles Rubendall. Some VA's also seem to be outright missing, like how the general consensus says that Laura Bailey is Pyrrha, but she appears to be either missing from the credits or played by someone else. Is this all being assumed based on the VA list or am I making the wrong assumptions and missed something? Also, is there anywhere I can find a confirmed VA list? I apologize for this wall of text.
  • What you see is what you get with the credits. It's possible that there are (like in III and IV) uncredited VAs for English, but Pyrrha (Laura Bailey) and Raphael (Charles Rubendall, who voiced him in III and IV) would seem to still be correct. As for the issues of Viola and Nightmare, there are strong hints that what is on the characters page is correct (aside from VAs, Raphael remarks "Strange..." when biting Viola during his throw and Graf Dumas looks like Raphael, but with a mask--something that's made even more obvious in CAS), but nothing was officially disclosed in the story. Thus, it's just conjecture at this point. True? Most likely. Confirmed? No. I'm going to bring this post up on the discussion page for the characters page, but I might just go ahead and remove that information altogether since it's not explicitly true.

Considering that the series takes place in the 16th century...

It's pretty strange that Sophitia is the only woman that's married. It wasn't unusual for girls to be married at age 15/16 (around Talim's age), and girls like Cassandra and Seung Mina would be considered Christmas Cake material...

• You presume they get any offers.
• Single women are more accessible to fanboys and shippers. Story-wise, though, it's a bit more surprising that they're actually doing things out by themselves without any men accompanying them. The Soul series is full of anachronisms, but I think the biggest is women's rights back then.
• Women's right have nothing to do with that. Ignoring for a moment the fact that the game needs a host of female characters to keep it varied, most characters have excuses for this: they are either rebellious and not asking for anyone's consent (Cass, Mina, Amy), higher forces ordered so (Rothion being denied by Hephaestus to go along Sophie), they broke the rules regardless of any consequences falling on them (Ivy, Xianghua, Taki, Setsuka) or they come from fictional places with different customs (Talim). Hilde's probably the only unjustifiable case, but then again Wolfkrone is a fictional pseudo-country, so who knows what are their views on women. Also, there are cases where this issue is adressed, like Han-myeong in SC2 noting the bad rep he'd get by letting Mina leave on her own.
  • come from fictional places with different customs (Talim) - Talim is a babaylan and has a canonical background placing her in a Philippines-like tribe. Before the Spaniards took over and subsumed the country, while expectations and stereotypes still existed, the disparity isn't as uneven. For example, either child can be a Datu (social/political leader) but only women were ever allowed to be a Babaylan (religious leader), so Talim, being from a family that rears babaylan and being one herself, it's not that hard to see why she can have the freedom to do what she wants, even if SC technically happens in the 16th century.
  • they are either rebellious and not asking for anyone's consent / they broke the rules regardless of any consequences falling on them - Which was unthinkable back then. I don't mean as in "Wow, that's pretty rare, nifty!" I mean "HOLY SHIT THAT WOMAN IS DOING SOMETHING WITHOUT THE MAN'S PERMISSION, GET THE FUCKING GUARD". Just the fact that they know martial arts and fighting styles is eyebrow-arching. Acceptable Breaks From Reality, of course, but it's still fun to joke about.
    • This is not necessarily true, there have been times even in the medieval period where common women were given power or were largely independent on their husbands, see the Wife of Bath. Also there are few records written by the poor who lived by a different set of rules than the nobility who would be the ones in charge of the records. Besides that given the fighting ability of these women your hypothetical would end in the death of said guard.
  • >end in the death of said guard. STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM.
    • Which results in more dead guards. Assuming anyone actually saw the fight. Besides, they have a lot ore pressing matters to worry about, like Nightmare going around the countryside.
  • Hilde is justified, as by V she is leading her people to refuge while researching a way to purify the lands of Wolfkrone. In short, she's pretty much her nation's current leader.
• Mentioned above, but to reiterate with regards to Ivy (and Hilde, as a fellow aristocrat) in this matter: you can see a portrait of Ivy hanging in the gallery of her mansion (her SC 3 stage) which shows her wearing a much more formal, period-correct dress. It's therefore likely that she only wears her revealing fighting-gear when she's off on one of her Soul Edge quests, as opposed to when she attends society balls in London. Also, as an aristocrat, she would arguably have more freedom to be eccentric (and dress eccentrically) than a common woman of the time. Also, her native England was ruled by Elizabeth I at the time, who no doubt would have approved of a fellow strong, powerful woman as one of her subjects (revealing outfits non-withstanding!)
• Seong Mina also has a father who wants him to marry Hwang, but both seem to be worried about a Japanese invasion at least during Soul Calibur 2. He seems to be somewhat allowing Mina to travel the world, or more darkly she, Hwang and Yun Sung are the only survivors of the many Korean agents sent to claim Soul Edge aka the Sword of Salvation.
  • • No other people was ever sent for the sword by the Korean government, as Hwang's bio in 3 states he was selected the 2nd time because he was the only one with some experience traveling west. In Mina's bio in 2, Han-myeong is reluctant to let Mina go get Yun-seong, but he realizes she'd just escape home a third time if he said no, and accepting she was fit for the task, gave his blessing to her quest.
• Also note that it was Sophitia and Taki who defeated Soul Edge in Soul Edge, and Xianghua who damaged Soul Edge in SC1, so most people would probably be a bit more open since the Azure Knight has to be public knowledge by now. The massacres to feed the Evil sword and a knight immune or resistant to bullets would stand out specially with that giant arm. So the average peasant may have heard of the evil sword and more than willing to turn a blind eye on uppity women if they have a rampaging, soul sucking, army stomping monster with a cadre of minions to worry about. Thats not even counting the Evils seen in Soul Calibur Legends, considering the Evil Seed may have awakened anything dangerous world wide.
  • There is also a stage in Soul Calibur 3 with a burning villa with Nightmare's portrait surrounded by the dead and dying, made for a merchant who is collecting stories and knowledge of the evil sword. So the general populace might have heard of mysterious women who fought the Azure Knight in the past and ignore their breaking of gender roles if they can keep a certain soul drinking knight and its minions at bay. So Soul Edge may be the "good" sword since it seems to be more open gender roles in its wake of destruction and soul calibur might be the evil status quo protecting sword.
    • Nope, the prologue for 2 is very clear "no one knew" and "most people were oblivious" about the final battle and Nightmare's fate; it even states "Four more years passed, and the horrors became a distant memory and people felt safe once again". Besides, it also states that there were no witness of the final battle, so outside of Kilik, Xianghua and (maybe) Edge Master, no one ever knew what happened in Osthreinsburg.

The (Eurasian) world knows of the Azure Knight...

But apparently elects to not remember that he's holding the so called "Sword of Salvation"? If people mistook Soul Calibur for the S of S, that would be fine, but they all seem to believe that Soul Edge is the Sword of Salvation, since many seeking it are hunting Nightmare. Do they all die off without sharing this knowledge, or what? All the people who live seem to be taken as giving a Cassandra Truth, but even that is stretching it when the sword is in the hands of a mass murderer.

• • Pretty much no one really knows that Nightmare wields Soul Edge. Not even Ivy was aware while she stood next to him in his slaughters, and she spent most of her life researching that sword. Also, there are very scarce survivors of Nightmare's massacres, so it's actually stated there are very few reports about his attacks, most of which happened during midnight (low visibility and all that stuff).

Nightmare x Siegfried...?

Is Inferno Yandere for Siegfried? Inferno dumps Cervantes for Siegfried, and even after Siegfried tries to destroy Soul Edge, Inferno still keeps up the Nightmare persona and mimicks Siegfried's fighting style. Tira lampshades this in one game, but, I mean, come on! How many Yandere characters can you have? Cervantes x Soul Edge; Tira x Nightmare; Xianghua x Kilik...

• Cervantes and Xianghua are far from Yandere material. As for your question... dunno. I get the feeling that Siegfried as Nightmare was probably the most successful host Soul Edge has had to date (Siegfried did best Inferno in combat back in Soul Edge, after all). Resuming the form of his most recent host was probably the best way to go for Inferno, considering how notorious and feared the Azure Knight was (to the point that stories of him stretched all the way from Western Europe to Japan). It could also very well be psychological warfare against the one who escaped his grasp. At any rate, it's no less weird than the Foe Yay the two soul swords themselves have going on, which probably is the strangest implication of Brother-Sister Incest I've ever seen in fiction.
  • There's also the Female part of Soul Edge- the sword itself is both male and female.
  • I honestly don't see any Foe Yay between Inferno/Soul Edge and Elysium/Soul Calibur, if that's indeed who Elysium is. Looking back, I see now that Inferno used Siegfried's Nightmare armour as a proxy host after Soul Edge was taken by Siegfried in III as there was nothing else there to possess. Cervantes was very much obsessed with reclaiming Soul Edge prior to V, although his obsession doesn't really qualify as Yandere. I guess that narrows it down to Sigfried x Nightmare. Tira's still yandere, she's just not impressed with Nightmare learning from his mistakes and employing subterfuge, and has decided that a female Nightmare works just as well.
• Soul Calibur V contradicts stuff. It says that SCIV takes place in 1590 and that SCV takes place in 1607, yet when you look at the characters' DOBs, they all suggest it's in 1591. Add 17 years to that, 1608. Even the new SCV characters' DOBs suggest 1608. Does the story mode start in 1607 and end in 1608, even if the whole thing is called 1607? Are the previous ones in 1590 or 1591?
  • Maybe their math was a bit incorrect? Everything else in the series suggests that the last three games took place in 1591. I guess you could also chalk it up to the amount of time it'd take for the characters to travel back and forth (such as Pat going to locales like Hungary and Japan) as well as the lack of secondary narratives in the story (outside of Sophitia's kids).
  • Those birthdates aren't from any official source, they were just Fanon assumptions based on the only official timeline ever released (which mostly listed historical events intertwined with Mitsurugi's career). 1607 has been the first official date ever given for any of these game.
  • The timeline provided by Namco's Soul Archive site states that Edge takes place in 1584. Calibur is noted to take place three years after, and SCII four years after that. That's seven years. 1584 + 7 = 1591. Judging by certain bios in III, a minimum of four months passed between II and III (it took Xianghua one month to carry Kilik back to Edge Master's place and Kilik spent another three training under Edge Master). Allegedly, approximately one full year passes between II and IV, but I can't find any official sources for that, so the validity of such a statement sounds fishy. Unless that holds true, IV still ended in 1591. Seventeen years later, and it's 1608.
• So how does everyone understand each other? Do they?
  • I would assume they do. To the best of my knowledge, Ezio is the first character to actually break out into his native tongue (although Talim can be heard saying "Sipa" in II, which is Tagalog for kick), and that's only during select quotes. It would seem that everyone knows English, even when they shouldn't. However, this didn't hold true for Soul Edge/Soul Blade, where the Asian characters were left in Japanese. I don't quite have an answer for you, but there's a WMG here suggesting that since the soul swords are unnatural entities that warp the fabric of reality, they eventually broke down the language barriers on Earth once they grew powerful enough.
  • Still, Mitsurugi and Arthur do suffer from language barriers, so that doesn't really cut it. All interactions outside those two, however, do happen without any communication problem, so it's really just a minor detail that hasn't really been taken into account.

On the character heights...

Nightmare is 5'6. This is very silly.

• How so? He possessed Siegfried, whose height was 5'6" up until V. And even when Nightmare was an Animated Armor in III and IV, his body was still based off of his previous one (i.e. Siegfried's). If it's any consolation, his new host in V is 5'10".

Artbook

Several of the articles talk about an art book for Soul Calibur V, which reveals secrets like Lexia and Xiba being siblings and Nightmare using Raphael's body as a host. Is this the same art book included in the collector's edition?

• Sadly, no. The artbook you're referring to is called New Legends of Project Soul, which (puzzlingly/infuriatingly so) is currently Japanese only.