Central Fiction Arcade Plot Discussion (spoilers)

[Yoshirocks92]

20 minutes ago, ChainRevolver said:

I think it is to "put Noel into her coffin".

Well then that is one big coffin for just one person.

[Kenji Harima]

I will put two images now  cause there is one detail:

Spoiler

 

Where is the "Murakumo Unit" sign? Why it has disappeared? In all previous endings where "The Origin" was shown it was but in Mu-12 things changed. It may looks like overinterpretation but did they exclude the possibly PFD unit?

However the body of this "crucified girl" shown to be... shattered. The scar on left hand was able to see in previous endings but in the Mu-12 the rest of her flesh under the belt even it's blank it seems to be... cut off.

[Luminos564]

1 hour ago, Kenji Harima said:

Where is the "Murakumo Unit" sign? Why it has disappeared? In all previous endings where "The Origin" was shown it was but in Mu-12 things changed. It may looks like overinterpretation but did they exclude the possibly PFD unit?

It hasn't really disappeared or anything. It's not visible because of the "static" effect ASW overlaid on the image itself.

1 hour ago, Kenji Harima said:

However the body of this "crucified girl" shown to be... shattered. The scar on left hand was able to see in previous endings but in the Mu-12 the rest of her flesh under the belt even it's blank it seems to be... cut off.

I'll grant you that the girl's body is in rough shape. Who knows what happened to her from all the cycles of being inside that "coffin". But her body isn't cut off or anything like that (Mori is sadistic sure, especially if it means Ragna needs to offer another limb, but I doubt he has the gonads to do that to a "Noel"). That's just the hard shadows at work.

I decided to look up Ragna's arcade run recently. His conversation with Amane is...actually pretty damn uplifting. It also alleviated some of my worries. I thought, based on the descriptions, that Ragna was resigning himself to a sacrificial altar to stop the Entitled. But his tone is not one of a man resigned to one last brawl, but a defiant young man that plans to see things through to the end. It's also quite a bit telling just how much he's grown over the past games. He knows the Black Beast is a threat but rather than take the easy method to slow down his corrosion via Amane, he states that if he did so then it'll just be repeating the same course as before. His plan is also a more optimistic one, which as someone pointed out in comments, pits him in direct confrontation with Jin.

Jin's entire M.O hinges on blowing up "god" (read: Amaterasu and the girl within) in order to recreate a world completely free from "singular influence". As in, there wouldn't be any one singular entity that has control over the world's progression like Amaterasu did and instead it is governed by the "many". Ragna however doesn't want the world to be destroyed and recreated. He instead opts to accept the world as it currently is (Rachel would be proud), faults and all. He understands that the Amaterasu unit is flawed, but at the same time he doesn't see fit that it should be destroyed or used by others to fix their mistakes of the past.

[ChainRevolver]

22 hours ago, Toxin45 said:

But after seeing mu's act 3. I don think that is the case.

Then why does Izanami want to put Noel into the coffin while the master unit in tow? Also in Nu's fight with Mu, she recognized Noel as the Master Unit's core. Hmmm...

 

*Scratches head*

[Kenji Harima]

5 hours ago, Luminos564 said:

It hasn't really disappeared or anything. It's not visible because of the "static" effect ASW overlaid on the image itself.

I was thinking about idea that the effects are blanking the image but I am not really sure. I had been editing both images with light, shadow, contrast, sharpness and colors before I posted them but nothing changed. The only visible thing it's Amaterasu's emblem: a very, very small piece above "The Origin". However I might have interpreted these scenes just too much enthusiastically

Speaking of Amane I am interested in if his actions won't be acknowledged as intervention too in the future. Of course he isn't doing anything personally (like Rachel did when she used Tsukuyomi Unit to protect Kagutsuchi) but still guiding some of our heroes. I am also interested if Saya will get improtant role or remain limited as Izanami's vessel. Oh and the "goddess of death" was shown as mighty and confident being who might know much more than Rachel and Terumi but her Act 3's ending brought that she isn't really sure about her role and persona. She needed Relius for encourage -> I used to think that she manipulates all characters (both villains and heroes) but she may be vulnerable to manipulation too.

[Ogiga99]

28 minutes ago, Kenji Harima said:

I was thinking about idea that the effects are blanking the image but I am not really sure. I had been editing both images with light, shadow, contrast, sharpness and colors before I posted them but nothing changed. The only visible thing it's Amaterasu's emblem: a very, very small piece above "The Origin". However I might have interpreted these scenes just too much enthusiastically

Speaking of Amane I am interested in if his actions won't be acknowledged as intervention too in the future. Of course he isn't doing anything personally (like Rachel did when she used Tsukuyomi Unit to protect Kagutsuchi) but still guiding some of our heroes. I am also interested if Saya will get improtant role or remain limited as Izanami's vessel. Oh and the "goddess of death" was shown as mighty and confident being who might know much more than Rachel and Terumi but her Act 3's ending brought that she isn't really sure about her role and persona. She needed Relius for encourage -> I used to think that she manipulates all characters (both villains and heroes) but she may be vulnerable to manipulation too.

It's almost certainly just a result of the static. The Murakumo Unit line is probably the smallest element in the picture and it's black on grey so the static can easily block it out. i wouldn't look to far into this.

Amane himself says that he is interfering. His intervention is still pretty direct (fighting several characters, trying to Observe Ragna to delay his Black Beast transformation, planning with Rachel to return Amaterasu to the Boundary etc.). He justifies it by saying that because the villains are purposefully distorting the world he can take action to fix it. The Onlooker is not supposed to interfere with the human "possibility" for the future but he can (or at least considers it worth the risk to) intervene to allow that possibility to exist. Now whether the world itself is OK with this remains to be seen. Rachel's actions are probably considered much worse because they were before the Embryo distorted the world and set it on the path to Doomsday. She directly acted to end the time loop by blocking Take-Mikazuchi and she sends Ragna back in time to the Time for Decision which took causality over a period of 100 years out of human hands. Basically Amane might have more lenient circumstances.

Izanami's high position on the "knows what the hell is going on" list and confidence are pretty different from what happened in Act 3. Act 3 is about her trying to figure out exactly what she is and how she can exist but she really hasn't wavered in her goals. It would be hard to manipulate her when that endgame hasn't changed.

 

10 hours ago, Yoshirocks92 said:

Well then that is one big coffin for just one person.

Not really. While the entire unit is pretty big, the "coffin" part is just the golden part in the center with the tubes that is shaped like a coffin. The rest couldn't be used as a coffin.

[Yoshirocks92]

2 minutes ago, Ogiga99 said:

Not really. While the entire unit is pretty big, the "coffin" part is just the golden part in the center with the tubes that is shaped like a coffin. The rest couldn't be used as a coffin.

I see well I hope that the console version would explain all of this and I also hope that the story mode gets translated as well.

[JRH]

Guys, can we also try to figure out in what order all of the remaining act 3 arcades take place?

[Superschmuck]

Since Noel ends up falling for Carl's trap in his arcade run, presumably he's the one that really kicked off Noel's increasing paranoia regarding a good chunk of the cast attempting to off her. So he get's early placement.

[Sashide]

Sorry if this has been discussed already, but has anything about Kazuma come up in what we know of CF so far?

I'm especially curious given Terumi's cut lines in (CP I believe?) that reference him...

[Ogiga99]

49 minutes ago, Sashide said:

Sorry if this has been discussed already, but has anything about Kazuma come up in what we know of CF so far?

I'm especially curious given Terumi's cut lines in (CP I believe?) that reference him...

I'm pretty sure the only mention (aside from Terumi and Relius comparing Hazama to "previous vessels" generally) of him is during Terumi's fight with Jin. When Trinity says that he should just disappear into the Boundary, he asks if she's sure about that because Kazuma's consciousness might still remain in his head and him disappearing would mean Kazuma would be gone forever (he's trolling obviously). Aside from making Trinity angst, Kazuma is largely irrelevant because his body was lost to the Boundary and ultimately he was just Terumi's previous vessel and unlike Hazama he never grew beyond that role.

 

In regards to the whole Noel being "The Origin" thing, I think the previous theory that the soul of the girl inside the Master Unit moved into Noel's head is still the case, just minus the OPFD part. Based on Amane and Mu's ending we know for a fact that the Master Unit is currently vacant and that in some way whatever is supposed to be inside it (its "core" or "The Origin") has become Noel in some form. However, in Kagura's ending Kokonoe discusses the gods (Amaterasu and Izanami). She explains that both of them are inside "vessels" that can be destroyed. Since she refers to them collectively, it's pretty clear that they both follow the same principles, the soul of a god is put inside a separate body. I'm pretty sure this is confirmation that Noel simply has the soul of "The Origin."

[Toxin45]

But wouldn't that mean mu is her vessel as well? Why the the origin use mu as a vessel when Noel separated from her I think it meant that mu is the vessel while Noel is the origin's soul. 

I think the master Unit possessed Mu in the main time as Noel  prior to CT and sealed her own memories.

[JRH]

Hey guys, do you think that Stages 3, 6, 7, 8, for Act 3 of each character take place at different times? Can you give it some thought please?

P.S. Could CF's story mode be 90 or 120 hours long?

[Ogiga99]

3 hours ago, JRH said:

Guys, can we also try to figure out in what order all of the remaining act 3 arcades take place?

 

Short answer, no. There is no complete order because so many events contradict each other or happen multiple times. Story mode is going to have to streamline everything because there are simply way too many events that cannot happen in the canon route. The biggest offender is characters stealing Nox (both Arakune and Nu have taken Rettenjou) and those characters having been said to absorbed Nox in other routes they appear in. People will dramatically learn the same thing in two very different ways (Tsubaki learning Hakumen is Jin either by Azure or through Hakumen mentioning his original sin, Kokonoe learning Noel and Mu are seperate during fights with both characters, Noel regaining her memories either because of Terumi or Mu etc.). Some characters appear in so many stories (Hazama, Terumi, Relius, Hibiki, Noel and Mu being the standouts) that it is impossible to nail down their timeline and thus becomes difficult to place the timelines of the character their fighting against as well. There are also a lot of fights that are the same characters, with the same conversations (Jin vs. Tsubaki and it happens three times if you count Izayoi, Izayoi vs. Hakumen, Ragna vs. Kagura, Hakumen vs. Nu), but are either in different places or cannot be reconciled between the two characters having the fight since the two stories are probably at very different times relative to each other. It also doesn't seem to be as simple as just ordering each character's modes because it seems like some Arcade events will happen at a point in the middle of another character's story. If we want Hakumen and Izayoi to have one fight, the two stories must have run concurrently. The best we can do is establish some general order of some events relative to each other and perhaps the very beginning and end. I made a list of this a few pages ago but I'll update it here.

The broadest timeline I can definitively place is Ragna -> Platinum -> Rachel -> Valkenhayn.

• Ragna's is most likely the first because is immediately after Act 2 (neither he nor Makoto even know what happened to any of the other Entitled or if they are even alive) and in every appearance after that he has already decided to "devour" the other Entitled's desires.
• Platinum is next (though at the very end) because at the end of it Jin restores Trinity, meaning it has to be after any other Arcade with a Trinity possessed Jin. This includes Terumi and Nine's.
• Rachel's comes after Platinum's because when Jubei saves her in the end he says that "Trinity is on the move" which almost certainly means she has gotten her body back.
• Valkenhayn's comes after, and is possibly the last one period, because Ragna says that he has already spoke to Rachel, which happened in her Arcade mode.

There are also a few I can place relative to each other that are somewhere in the middle of that list between Ragna and Platinum.

• Hazama probably comes after Terumi's because Terumi is exhausted at the end of his story and when Hazama finds him he is much weaker than any other time.
• Tsubaki is immediately followed by Izayoi. Tsubaki ends fighting Jin, which is the same fight Izayoi starts with, making it likely to be the same fight with Tsubaki just transforming in between.
• Jin, Nu, Amane and Naoto are before Rachel since she reaches the limit of her strength in her ending.
• Carl's comes before Nine's. Carl is already in Relius Jr. mode in Nine's Arcade, which starts in his story.

Finally, there is one smaller chain in the middle I can find, Carl -> Bang -> Litchi -> Azrael -> Arakune

• Carl comes before Bang because Carl mentions meeting with Litchi, which happened in his route, in Bang's Arcade.
• Litchi is after Bang because she fights him in his story, which must be before she loses her memory at the end of hers.
• Azrael is next because he takes Arakune to start collecting Nox, which includes Rettenjou.
• Arakune's is last here because he starts transforming into a Black Beast.

This is the best I've got and all of this is subject to change because 75% of these endings and events will not be directly incorporated into Story Mode.

 

1 hour ago, Toxin45 said:

But wouldn't that mean mu is her vessel as well? Why the the origin use mu as a vessel when Noel separated from her I think it meant that mu is the vessel while Noel is the origin's soul.

No. Mu is just the the Godslayer power personified. By definition, the vessel is the being that contains the soul in it. Mu is something different. Kokonoe makes it very clear that the "gods" are unable to directly act in the world without a body to inhabit. Noel being the soul physically manifested is impossible. The entire point of people searching for the Lynchpin is that if they use it against Noel, it will negate the seithr that makes up her Prime Field body and release the soul. In Mu's ending, Izanami says she has no interest in Mu since she is just the Godslayer powers, Noel is the only one relevant when it comes to Amaterasu, which is what the vessel is in reference to.

[JRH]

19 minutes ago, Ogiga99 said:

 

Short answer, no. There is no complete order because so many events contradict each other or happen multiple times. Story mode is going to have to streamline everything because there are simply way too many events that cannot happen in the canon route. The biggest offender is characters stealing Nox (both Arakune and Nu have taken Rettenjou) and those characters having been said to absorbed Nox in other routes they appear in. People will dramatically learn the same thing in two very different ways (Tsubaki learning Hakumen is Jin either by Azure or through Hakumen mentioning his original sin, Kokonoe learning Noel and Mu are separate during fights with both characters, Noel regaining her memories either because of Terumi or Mu etc.). Some characters appear in so many stories (Hazama, Terumi, Relius, Hibiki, Noel and Mu being the standouts) that it is impossible to nail down their timeline and thus becomes difficult to place the timelines of the character their fighting against as well. There are also a lot of fights that are the same characters, with the same conversations (Jin vs. Tsubaki and it happens three times if you count Izayoi, Izayoi vs. Hakumen, Ragna vs. Kagura, Hakumen vs. Nu), but are either in different places or cannot be reconciled between the two characters having the fight since the two stories are probably at very different times relative to each other. It also doesn't seem to be as simple as just ordering each character's modes because it seems like some Arcade events will happen at a point in the middle of another character's story. If we want Hakumen and Izayoi to have one fight, the two stories must have run concurrently. The best we can do is establish some general order of some events relative to each other and perhaps the very beginning and end. I made a list of this a few pages ago but I'll update it here.

The broadest timeline I can definitively place is Ragna -> Platinum -> Rachel -> Valkenhayn.

• Ragna's is most likely the first because is immediately after Act 2 (neither he nor Makoto even know what happened to any of the other Entitled or if they are even alive) and in every appearance after that he has already decided to "devour" the other Entitled's desires.
• Platinum is next (though at the very end) because at the end of it Jin restores Trinity, meaning it has to be after any other Arcade with a Trinity possessed Jin. This includes Terumi and Nine's.
• Rachel's comes after Platinum's because when Jubei saves her in the end he says that "Trinity is on the move" which almost certainly means she has gotten her body back.
• Valkenhayn's comes after, and is possibly the last one period, because Ragna says that he has already spoke to Rachel, which happened in her Arcade mode.

There are also a few I can place relative to each other that are somewhere in the middle of that list between Ragna and Platinum.

• Hazama probably comes after Terumi's because Terumi is exhausted at the end of his story and when Hazama finds him he is much weaker than any other time.
• Tsubaki is immediately followed by Izayoi. Tsubaki ends fighting Jin, which is the same fight Izayoi starts with, making it likely to be the same fight with Tsubaki just transforming in between.
• Jin, Nu, Amane and Naoto are before Rachel since she reaches the limit of her strength in her ending.
• Carl's comes before Nine's. Carl is already in Relius Jr. mode in Nine's Arcade, which starts in his story.

Finally, there is one smaller chain in the middle I can find, Carl -> Bang -> Litchi -> Azrael -> Arakune

• Carl comes before Bang because Carl mentions meeting with Litchi, which happened in his route, in Bang's Arcade.
• Litchi is after Bang because she fights him in his story, which must be before she loses her memory at the end of hers.
• Azrael is next because he takes Arakune to start collecting Nox, which includes Rettenjou.
• Arakune's is last here because he starts transforming into a Black Beast.

This is the best I've got and all of this is subject to change because 75% of these endings and events will not be directly incorporated into Story Mode.

 

No. Mu is just the the Godslayer power personified. By definition, the vessel is the being that contains the soul in it. Mu is something different. Kokonoe makes it very clear that the "gods" are unable to directly act in the world without a body to inhabit. Noel being the soul physically manifested is impossible. The entire point of people searching for the Lynchpin is that if they use it against Noel, it will negate the seithr that makes up her Prime Field body and release the soul. In Mu's ending, Izanami says she has no interest in Mu since she is just the Godslayer powers, Noel is the only one relevant when it comes to Amaterasu, which is what the vessel is in reference to.

What about Celica's Act 3 though? Which ones take place before, between and after her arcade? I am pretty sure her ending will be incorporated into story mode.

[Toxin45]

It seems ragna's goals always changes first getting revenge on terumi,then trying to save saya,and now protecting the master unit. Geez Ragna make up your mind already.

[BlazGearRegalia]

3 hours ago, Toxin45 said:

It seems ragna's goals always changes first getting revenge on terumi,then trying to save saya,and now protecting the master unit. Geez Ragna make up your mind already.

Well look at it like this:

 

At first Ragna wanted revenge against Terumi, but soon realized that Terumi wasn't worth shit, and shifted to focusing on saving Saya, but then he learns of the Master Unit's role in all of this, realizes that before he can save Saya, he has to protect OPFD from everyone who are crazy in the head with the "Entitled" bullshit. First comes saving everyone from destroying and recreating the world, then save Saya.

 

Pretty much throughout the series, his goal was to find and rescue Saya, but there was always some world-ending thing that he had to deal with: CT - Nu-13, CS - Mu-12, CP - Take-Mikazuchi [and Nu-13 again XD]

Now in CF, it's Ragna the Bloodedge VS The World, LOL

[JRH]

Hey guys, do you think that Celica's Act 3 ending will be incorporated into Story Mode? I think that it will be very important for her and Nine.

[Ogiga99]

15 hours ago, JRH said:

What about Celica's Act 3 though? Which ones take place before, between and after her arcade? I am pretty sure her ending will be incorporated into story mode.

I have no idea where to place it besides before Noel and Mu's since Noel doesn't remember everything yet (not that this helps much since those two are incompatible and are hard to place aside being close to the end). We don't know how Nine reacted to Celica's little speech so we can't compare it to other Nine appearances. Elements of her mode are most likely going to be in Story Mode, this is where they explain Nine's attempt to recreate Take-Mikazuchi, but whether or not the inevitable meeting between the two will play out the same is up in the air, especially since this is before Es enters the picture and throws a wrench in Nine's intentions.

[JRH]

Even though they said the story mode is from Ragna's perspective, there are a lot of important events in the arcade mode that will be not be seen from his point of view. We will have to wait and see what else is in store.

[Sashide]

Thanks for the information !Ogiga99

Just finished watching Terumi's + Hazama's arcades... so what is this other vessel Terumi wants to merge with?

[Luminos564]

4 hours ago, Sashide said:

Just finished watching Terumi's + Hazama's arcades... so what is this other vessel Terumi wants to merge with?

Presumably, he wants the Susano-O unit back. Possibly because Amaterasu is currently "empty" and can no longer issue commands to the Susano-O unit itself (remember, it was tasked with following Amaterasu's commands and Haku-men could only ignore it via Power of SEIGI Order). To do so, he's nabbed that fancy Rubik's Cube thingamabob from Clavis' grave.

[Toxin45]

12 hours ago, BlazGearRegalia said:

Well look at it like this:

 

At first Ragna wanted revenge against Terumi, but soon realized that Terumi wasn't worth shit, and shifted to focusing on saving Saya, but then he learns of the Master Unit's role in all of this, realizes that before he can save Saya, he has to protect OPFD from everyone who are crazy in the head with the "Entitled" bullshit. First comes saving everyone from destroying and recreating the world, then save Saya.

 

Pretty much throughout the series, his goal was to find and rescue Saya, but there was always some world-ending thing that he had to deal with: CT - Nu-13, CS - Mu-12, CP - Take-Mikazuchi [and Nu-13 again XD]

Now in CF, it's Ragna the Bloodedge VS The World, LOL

Now It seems Ragna seems to realize that even if Izanami is gone the Saya he knew is dead and Saya is already dying also Noel is more like Saya then Saya herself.

[Madness4455]

I have one theory.  It may not be good, but worth a try.

Okay, Terumi's origins are practically unknown. However, somebody[forgot who] commented on how Nine is becoming just like Terumi. Behavior and gameplay-wise, both of them tend to place their foot on a defeated opponent, both are willing to show the cast the 'truth' about the Blazblue verse, and both are aiming to destroy the Amateratsu unit. Judging by how Nine became corrupted after her field trip in the boundary, whose to say Terumi didn't went through the same fate as Nine did?

I believe Nine's change of character might be a potential clue to Terumi's origins. You have to ask yourself, 'was this guy always evil?' and is he simply just a man who lost his sanity in the timeloops? I'd like to think that at some point Terumi probably lost something valuable or rather Amateratsu did something so unforgivable, that it cost him his sanity and made him a monster, hellbent on bringing despair onto others and wants others to experience what he had experienced. 

This may sound cliche and dumb, but I think Nine's character change could be a clue behind Terumi's background.

[JRH]

49 minutes ago, Madness4455 said:

I have one theory.  It may not be good, but worth a try.

Okay, Terumi's origins are practically unknown. However, somebody[forgot who] commented on how Nine is becoming just like Terumi. Behavior and gameplay-wise, both of them tend to place their foot on a defeated opponent, both are willing to show the cast the 'truth' about the Blazblue verse, and both are aiming to destroy the Amaterasu unit. Judging by how Nine became corrupted after her field trip in the boundary, whose to say Terumi didn't went through the same fate as Nine did?

I believe Nine's change of character might be a potential clue to Terumi's origins. You have to ask yourself, 'was this guy always evil?' and is he simply just a man who lost his sanity in the timeloops? I'd like to think that at some point Terumi probably lost something valuable or rather Amaterasu did something so unforgivable, that it cost him his sanity and made him a monster, hellbent on bringing despair onto others and wants others to experience what he had experienced. 

This may sound cliche and dumb, but I think Nine's character change could be a clue behind Terumi's background.

I am sure that Nine will definitely be saved from her madness in the story mode as shown in Celica's Act 3 ending especially since Es' appearance will make her rethink her actions, but Terumi has it so much worse then hers that there is no chance of redemption for him. It is true that this could provide a hint to Terumi's past because he was lied to by the Master Unit so it must have made him believe that the world was nothing but lies.