Skies of Arcadia - Part 22 - Around The World

Skies of Arcadia continues, as we fight a weapon of mass destruction in the skies over Yafutoma, and make a huge - if slightly confusing - discovery about the world of Arcadia...
Skies of Arcadia is tragically completely unavailable to purchase on any currently existing store, and was also never released on PC. If you want to play it yourself, your options are the GameCube and Dreamcast versions, which were the only releases. Sorry.
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Fanfare for Space, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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[@DarknessRifter]

With every episode I see it is more apparent, that a 22 year old game has more depth, character, gameplay and charm, than a AAAA game nowadays. A progressive story that opens up new areas, tons of side quests and optional content, and flying higher in the world, that would now be locked behind a paywall for extra content and expansions.

[@DavidRickmann]

24 Years old isn't it?

[@DarknessRifter]

​This is why I shouldn't comment tired 😂 22 years for Legends

[@theshad0wlancer]

I mean yes but, I think most of us has known this for something like 10 years now. Not just with this game. 😂

[@modermonkula]

Alot of publishers nowadays don't want to risk money, hence we get "uninspired copy/paste safe HD remakes" full of micro transactions

[@chrsjxn]

Rectangle maps with wrapping are donut shaped. (a toroid, if you like math-y words) North and South wrap around the donut through the hole in the middle, and you can fly East and West to wrap around the bigger ring.

[@katbairwell]

I thought that might be the case, but I am dreadful at spacial stuff, as I can't "see" when I imagine something. I'm quite chuffed to have got it right, for once, so thank you for putting this in the comments!

[@Skycroft1000]

An awful lot of video game worlds are toruses. It always amuses me to imagine a galaxy full of donuts orbiting their stars instead of spherical planets.

[@randomsandwichian]

That'll just makes the world not really have a true N or S, won't it? N would just be clockwise along that curve, and vice versa 🤣

[@katbairwell]

@@Skycroft1000 And now I'm just imagining a solar system of doughnuts, and it does not displease me!

[@queenannsrevenge100]

The thought of living on a toroid, and depending on where, you are looking up at night and seeing land (or ocean) would be cool as Hell. 😂

[@alexisauld7781]

"This means she can't put me to sleep anymore!" Aika: *Falls asleep*

[@Taolan8472]

The reason why that worked, if anyone is curious and hasn't figured it out themselves, is because the skull shield doesn't actually prevent the attack, it prevents the damage. If it prevented the attack the 'miss' or 'lost' message would pop up. Instead it says '0', indicating the attack landed but did no damage. In my own play of this game, I was similarly blessed with Moonberries, but unlike Jon I spent them almost immediately. I had Skull Shield available for Vyse before the second encounter with Rhaknam, and at one point in battle a confused Drachma attacked Aika while armed with the De Loco Drill and despite Skull Shield negating the damage Aika was knocked out by the instant kill effect of the drill. It was also the only time the instant kill effect ever triggered during that playthrough.

[@the_Book_778]

That "Blue Rogues" move is spectacular.

[@Scott_Forsell]

If the world was flat, cats would've knocked everything off the edge already.

[@Scott_Forsell]

Edgy dudes: "I wanna see the world burn" Edgy cats: "I wanna push the salt shaker off this table just to see it tumble"

[@LadyBlackmoor]

Moegi, after the foreign prince flirts with her and her father ignores her as a successor: "I smell opportunity"

[@SuperiorPosterior]

Honestly, I don't think her father was ignoring her as a successor, I think Mikado _wanted_ his son to become king, but then the exile happened. Moegi was then the defacto heiress, but she also seemed to wish her brother was there to take over-especially since that creep was the most likely marriage candidate were she to ascend the throne. So honestly, I think everything worked out as perfectly as possible for the whole family.

[@alex666493]

The little jack couldn't do enough damage to a giga to stop one so they had to target the gem holder; fighting the giga head on was never an option. But Vyse and crew always start by fighting the giga, this is just the first time that worked

[@robert23456789]

Now to say yea bye bye giges fly past it and go after the guy with the gem ..... Well we can't have that in anime that's common sense

[@killean2645]

"Pinta tossed a yellow moon at us." Of course, Jon, a yellow "moon" 😊

[@donovanfaust3227]

Must have missed the part where Pinta was digging for buried treasure in his nose.

[@specialnobody548]

Anyone else hoping drachma somehow survived and will make a dramatic return any day now?

[@robert23456789]

He will return

[@consolescrub4031]

He's in the character selection/equipment screen still. Gilder is too so I would be astonished if we've seen the last of them.

[@NoReplyAsset]

I'm holding out hope.... I miss him

[@user-hi4sm3ig5j]

We didn't see him die specifically so by the rules of anime nonsense, I'm sure he's basically fine!

[@robert23456789]

@@user-hi4sm3ig5j he most likely chilling in the deep sky as in under the clouds

[@RoyalFusilier]

I love the air battles in this game. I've so rarely seen ship combat portrayed with this kind of turn based RPG thing, to this day it's a novelty.

[@Sadgravy]

And the animations to match! The way the ships move in relation to each other sets up the turns and the amazing animation that conveys that information too you, it’s all so very charming.

[@modermonkula]

Games made with passion, not greed like most modern stuff

[@alex666493]

Arcadia is a donut

[@fredsmith9841]

The world of Arcadia is obviously the shape of a pillow.

[@LordRunolfrUlfsson]

(12:55) Bluheim and the other gigas are likely some kind of organic technology that will heal over time, so Bluheim probably isn't "all dead", just "mostly dead". In any case, it can't be reactivated without the blue crystal.

[@katbairwell]

The Blue Crystal, or Billy Crystal?

[@BardMichaelKelly]

@@katbairwell This comment is the best thing that I've seen on the internet today. And given that I was just watching one of Jon's SoA videos, that's a reasonably high bar to clear. :)

[@donovanfaust3227]

​@@BardMichaelKellyyeah, I love Jon's playthrough of Son's of Anarchy.

[@katbairwell]

@@BardMichaelKelly You're very kind, thank you!

[@consolescrub4031]

Have they tried Miracle Max and true love? If it worked for Wesley...

[@OhMeGaGS]

So Gigas are a metaphor for nuclear weapons, and are literally a doomsday weapon so terrifying that they almost destroyed the world and were sealed away. Valua created a prototype ship, that can straight up take one on in a slugging match and come out on top. And they intend to have a whole fleet of those ships, essentially meaning Valua has better technology now than humanity did when Gigas were made. It is a bit puzzling why given this state of affairs they are bothering with the Gigas anyway, if they waited a few years and cranked out a few more ships they could easily take on any nation, gigas wouldn't be able to stop them.

[@TheRedWon]

I was thinking of the Gigas as golem-like things that aren't exactly "alive" but more like "empowered to motion to do the bidding of the one that holds the moon crystal," so perhaps Blueheim is in a state of disrepair moreso than death, else they wouldn't have needed to take the blue moon crystal with them.

[@gnaskar]

The shape that lets you loop both north to south and east to west is a doughnut.

[@jansmout4849]

A donut. This world is a donut.

[@klemminguk]

The fact that the Delphinus is capable of fighting a Gigas on even terms (and actually defeating one), shows that the world has now gotten to the same technical level that the Old World had when it created them. Which was a point when the Moons apparently decided that the world was too warlike, and wiped out civilisation. Hmmm...

[@MadTurnip]

I can imagine Vyse fighting a Gigas directly is the same as when Shepard faced a Reaper on Rannoch. Both said "You know what? This ends now."

[@annad5967]

Bluheim is just pining for the fjords

[@Dead-EyeJuncan]

I can't stop thinking about playing Bluhiem white dragon in attack mode!

[@atoth62]

"Screw the rules, I have money"

[@Sadgravy]

Ahh the island is so fun! Another one of those little touches that set Skys ahead of its time.

[@XMarkxyz]

19:15 Here we have Jon discovering map projections for the first time lol By the way if Arcadia is sferical and the map "closes on itself" from the sides than the north and south line collapse to a point the poles as on our good old boring Earth

[@donovanfaust3227]

Okay but in Arcadia you can travel to the north of the map and pop out of the south. That's not how our spherical planet works, traveling past the north pole doesn't spit you out in the south pole. Arcadia isn't a sphere but rather a doughnut as others have already pointed out. Don't worry, I'm sure you'll figure out how map projections too someday.

[@atoth62]

What if Arcadia was a actually tidally locked with Nasr always facing the red moon, which is actually its sun, a red dwarf star.

[@ellaisplotting]

'sferical' is twisting my mind, damn

[@XMarkxyz]

@@donovanfaust3227 yeah i noticed going on with the video, and that's why the "if" sentence is there, you didn't need to be a dick about it; by the way being an airspace engineer I know quite well the math behind sphere's projections on a plane

[@XMarkxyz]

@@ellaisplotting just my brain defaulting back to Italian sometimes, English spelling is fucked anyways

[@Alexander84129]

Why do they need the gigas if they can build ships powerful enough to destroy them

[@VyseRogue13]

The Gigas were built by the old world that had advanced technology.

[@modermonkula]

Don't they only have one ship?, which was a prototype. Possibly don't have the resources/engineers to build another?

[@sirdano]

27:00 "The spirit is willing but the flesh is spongy and bruised" Zap Branigan

[@tite93]

Holy crap, so they animated that whole sequence of all crew members just for this one secret move??

[@brentedmiston9325]

Christ, just watching the fight with the Ixa' Ness Demons was frustrating to watch

[@stewartgames6697]

The planet has to be donut shaped for it to wrap around on all sides.

[@thebread8888]

Maybe Bluheim’s just sleeping 😢

[@VyseRogue13]

I once had to make my title drop a level to recruit Ryu-kan, he is just that picky.

[@katieheys3007]

Hey great timing from me for once! Been looking forward to this episode! Open world here we come!

[@BattleUnit3]

40:24 Smugness personified

[@FailcopterWes]

No future she cannot see, and yet didn't bother to warn anyone about the Valuans. A bit rude of her.

[@randomsandwichian]

Like a localized weather forecast

[@Soapbox81]

Aww man, we've got to wait until Tuesday to find out about our new home? Like if you want these episodes up to 1h+

[@randomsandwichian]

Our understanding of the Mercator map (the square map we use for our own) is that East and West is along the latitude, with the North and South point just a cylindrical projection of both points, so going N or S would not lead us to the other end. But if going N or S here in Arcadia has that effect, I'm suspecting the game devs might have either glazed over this point, but we can chalk it up to the 4 corners or edges actually meeting at a single point on the opposite end of the map, so like a water drop with the point just not quite that sharp.

[@TheFlyingV]

There's something to be said that sometimes an active crew member choice is based on the blue rouges attack and not the ship battle.

[@BattleUnit3]

27:15 Really Vyse? After everything you have seen, heard and done, this is what really makes you mad?

[@_notch]

It would have to be donut shaped.

[@BardMichaelKelly]

All Hans on deck!

[@Zomgltd]

As a note, the earth isnt a perfect sphere either, due tot he rotation ont he axis it stretches so the horizontal length is longer than the vertical. Think of it like a slightly squished orange.

[@Bluelink13]

There is a lot of talk about the shape of the world, but like, No mention about how in a world with a developed naval tradition they don't know their world is a sphere? Because in earth we very much did know, in fact we did well before Columbus did his thing, so by all means for a crew of experienced navigators it should not be an "Old Legend"

[@SheepBeard]

If going off the right takes you to the left, and going off the top takes you to the bottom, that world isn't a sphere - it's a DONUT

[@thomascarpenter8177]

Sounds like a ring or donut shaped world

[@charlesfranks1902]

I really admire the game design.

[@11011san]

A game map that wraps around like this, in 3d it will make a toroid or more comely known as a doughnut.

[@inkyGhosty]

The world of Skies of Arcadia isn't a sphere Jon, it's a Donut shaped world.

[@librarianseth5572]

Day 137 of requesting Age of Mythology - a full playthrough if possible. The Valuan prince having to apologize for his nation seems ridiculous at first, until you realize the state of both American and British politics at the moment. Then you just feel like pulling a Vyse and sailing off as far as possible from home

[@JosephSwartzJr.-es4nm]

Blue rogue like thunder cat call

[@logicblock8783]

Most video game worlds are actually a torus.

[@Josh-ye9ol]

So the world is a, torus. If you brake it down by our logic

[@benjaminfranklin329]

If you flatten a sphere, with some stretching in the corners you get a 2:1 rectangle because north-south is only covering 180° top to bottom, but east to west ens up covering the full 360°.

[@Stupid_Rabbit]

19:15 - the map being rectangular does not really mean anything for the shape of the world, there are plenty of maps of Earth that are rectangular all that happens is we just inflate things at the top and bottom. For a visual aid Google World Map find one rectangular and look at the size of Greenland vs Mexico, and despite how big the difference looks Mexico is actually just 10% smaller with Iceland being stretched to fill in space

[@NevG27]

Jon... If you look at a map of the Earth it's also rectangle. There's some magic math stuff going on when it's laid out flat.

[@FonVegen]

The difference is that on Earth when you pass over the North Pole you don't come out at the South Pole.

[@ManyATrueNerd]

Yeah, but in Skies it's not a trick of map making - the world is literally longer from east to west than north to south...

[@XMarkxyz]

@@ManyATrueNerd that's kinda of true for Earth too: the circumference along the equator is 40075km while the one passing through the poles is 39941km

[@valikoest7981]

​@@XMarkxyzA mere thousand kilometres isn't that big a deal

[@valikoest7981]

​@@ManyATrueNerdthe answer, as so often stated in this comment section, is actually donut

[@gmh3]

loving the series but Jon's horribly anglicized pronunciation of what are obviously spanish and japanese names hurt my soul

[@mariosoto2588]

Lol a like for the demons

[@SpeakShibboleth]

Our planet is also oblate, a squished sphere. Not that much though.

[@timhutchinson8485]

So, the world of Arcadia is shaped like a rugby ball, maybe?

[@Bear.M.ro.3]

I demand someone disagree with me!

[@danielcampbell9457]

ok... ill bite. As long as you respect and use my preferred pronouns (your/right+big/boy). Just dont be to pushy cause im self diagnosed with highly acute instinctually triggered multiple personality defense mechanisms and u dont want my one alter Mdarg (choke/me/daddy+gwak/gwak) to feel offended, cause if alter4 Scrimmy (he/he) cries on behalf of Mdarg and cant find alter19 Frank (deez/nutzz) at alter2 2Times (am/nesia!!!) saloon, to build a fully finished and furnished safe place with only gluten free hand tools, then this convo's gonna get real weird, real fast and its a fuggin betch to stop once they get rollin. Anyways, what are we disagreeing about?

[@Morphologie]

No!

[@jessie699]

Day 162/1230 of requesting Jon play a game nobody will remember, like Majesty: A Fantasy Kingdom Sim.

[@Castlemight]

day 63 of requesting Jon play Okami HD

[@TheRogueEmpire]

this has to be the best sega saturn game ive ever seen

[@donovanfaust3227]

That's probably because it was made for the Dreamcast, not the Saturn and this version is the GameCube port as well.

[@MadTurnip]

@@donovanfaust3227 Be careful what you say, or Segata Sanshiro will come for you.