Great overall summary of what we know about artifacts so far. I really wonder if that "happiness stone" in moon door 5 is some kind of super powerful artifact related to the Aureole...kind of like the Recluse Cube... I will say, if the Septian Church ends up being the ultimate big bad, I will be sorely disappointed. It's not like that hasn't been done before in literally every JRPG featuring a church ever...
The "Happiness Stone" motif subtly repeats in both Crossbell and CS in two specific side requests where you build up presents like in the door. Whether those rocks are artifacts or linked to Aureole, I don't know.
I mean being disappointed in tropes isn't a good start. I feel like you have to look at the execution of it to see the real value. I think there are many ways in which they could make it exciting again, even if they start down an obvious path. That being said, i'm convinced aidios is at least a part of the problem.
@@narius_jaden215 I wonder how long they're going to keep the mystery of the Grandmaster and Aidios' identities going. I think the series will end with an Arteria arc and that's when we'll find out.
I've always liked to think of the Church as a front, but still a force for good. The true gifts from Aidios, the Sept-Terrions, have all been about controlling and suppressing humans. Even the artifacts we come across are harmful to humanity in general. When humanity rejected these gifts, the Dark Ages began and ended around the time the Church arose. This Church - while supposedly structured around the worship of Aidios and Her gifts - does everything it can to suppress knowledge and access to them. That seems counter to what you would expect from a group of Aidios worshipers. Unless, they aren't the true Aidios worshipers in the setting. Instead, they are a group dedicated to keeping the danger of Aidios creations from ever harming humanity again. So they hide away artifacts and suppress pre-Dark Age knowledge. But they also educate the populace through Sunday School, they organize the Grahlsritter to fight for the good of humanity. They heal, help, and bring hope wherever they go so that humanity never again fell for Aidios's enticements. And if you were Aidios, wouldn't you just hate that? Humanity threw away your gifts, squandered the power you bestowed upon them, and then have the audacity to use your name to further their own goals! But there woulds till be hope. There will always be those who seek the truth at the expense of all, who wish to return the wrongs done to them 100-fold, or who merely desire to test their own limits. You might seek these people out and have them help you return to the beautiful, bounteous time before the Dark Ages. You could bring them together and give them mastery over all of your gifts. And you, Aidios, would stand as Grandmaster above them.
The instant I heard the Grandmaster's voice, this is what I thought too. The odd reverence the Anguis have, the extremely powerful weapons, the access to technology, the odd powers and near impossible coincidences all make more sense with this in mind. I'm behind this theory and eagerly await the day we finally get our answers. Also, kinda fits the whole JRPG final boss trope too, if you think about it.
Loved this video, more lore and speculation about the series is always intriguing, and it's clear that the artifacts have a large role to play in the future. I'm very interested in the Salt Pale myself, and I hope we get some more info in upcoming titles. As for the Church, it's hard to say where their true motives lie, as of yet. Maybe if we get an arc in Leman State, we might start to discern more. Quite simply, the role of 'good' and 'evil' is not cut and dry in Trails, so I can't wait to see this develop.
Videos like this are so important. You see a million videos discussing the mysteries of hunter x hunter and Game of Thrones and I think Trails is the closest video game comparison to these franchises. Long running, interwoven, political, philosophical, super humans, ancient secrets and power?
Really good video. I really like delving into the lore of this series. If you continue these kinds of videos, maybe do one on the Divine Knights. I do wonder where they fit in with the artifacts.
Until we know more about the role of those artifacts in The Great Collapse lead or prevent to the event i'm not going to label which one is good or bad neither Septian church or Ouroboros
The 3rd is easily my least favourite Trails game. Solely because I don't think it works that great as a 'game', with lore dumps turning it into more of a visual novel in places and pacing being all over the place as a result. I also struggled with Kevin as a protagonist, despite usually being able to empathise with characters. However, I do utterly love all the interesting information it gives us about the world. My suspicion is that Ouroborous and the Church (or, perhaps, the Gralsritter) are far more intertwined than we have yet seen. I don't think Weissman was remotely unique in his past (my personal pet theory is that 'Carnelia' is the Grandmaster). I don't mean, by that, to say that the entirety of the Gralsritter are in Ouroborous, but rather that they are not immune from having their strings pulled. I really, really hope that the powers behind the Church have equally as many shades of grey as so many of the other factions in the series. I would love for the church not to be quite as sainted, nor Ouroborous to be quite as evil as we initially assumed. Having shades of grey gives the 'good guys protagonists' so much more room to express themselves as characters than stereotypical villains do. Cold Steel is shaping up to be my favourite series for precisely that reason, with what looks like being a 4+ faction story being told with Class VII, Ouroborous, Osbourne, and the Gralsritter all having distinct goals which can't be judged as being simply right or wrong. And those are just what I'm guessing (from CS 1 and 2) are the main factions, there's _far_ more to the politics than that.
I definitely agree with you about 3rd. I actually didn't even finish 3rd, I lost a certain boss fight a few times and just didn't feel like going back to power through it, nor did I feel like turning on the retry offset to just make the fight easier. Pretty much the whole point of 3rd is the moon and star doors, and the level of interaction in even the moon doors is fairly limited (and it is either zero or nearly so with the star doors). I was particularly getting burned out by constantly fiddling with equipment and orbment setups, which gets frustrating in CS too (particularly with the growth of the cast). Sadly the politics of CS got pretty much shoehorned into a black & white morality situation, with a bit of that happening in CS2 and a ton of it happening in CS3. There is a small twinge of blue & orange morality floating around too, but it is mostly black & white. That was kind of inevitable once the existence of Sept-Terrions was introduced, though. With the existence of artifacts of such colossal power, inevitably there will be someone that wants them for some nefarious plan, and someone else that either wants them for some beneficial plan or just wants to keep them out of human hands entirely to prevent nefarious plans. Basically the last chance that Trails has to not become a frustratingly conventional JRPG series is if the Orpheus Final Plan turns out to be beneficial to the world at large in some (perhaps twisted) way.
