u/Snoo-855

I'm currently playing Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope, my first time playing the series. Edge is probably my second favourite character (my favourite being Reimi), but his actions post-Alternate Earth very nearly made me hate him. Okay, so he watched an entire planet be destroyed in front of him, so it's natural he'd be shaken up. But then he rants about how he's somehow entirely responsible for it and that he's beyond redemption as a result, as well as screaming over and over again that "everyone" is dead. Who is "everyone"? The faceless nobodies he knew nothing about? The insane scientists who tried to kill him and his friends and experimented on Meracle and countless other aliens with fantasies of universal domination? The only person worth mourning on that planet was Klaus, because he actually helped them. And no matter how Edge looks at it, he can't deny that something good came out of them going there, since they were able to rescue Meracle, but he was basically acting like her life meant nothing, which looks especially bad since he was the one who convinced her to come with them in the first place. I mean, yeah, he was an idiot for trusting Milla, but she was an even bigger idiot for meddling with technology beyond her comprehension. With people like her running the show, it was honestly only a matter of time before the planet was destroyed. So yeah, I'm with Faize when he says there's nothing Edge could have done, and it's honestly pretty arrogant of Edge for him to think there was. Thank God he came to his senses by the end of the Roark arc, because if Reimi and the others all ended up getting killed while he was too busy feeling sorry for himself, then that really would have been his fault.

Honestly, it's melodramatic nonsense like this that makes me realise that the identifiable victim bias exists for a reason. It's just much easier to care about the lives of someone you actually know than those of complete strangers. Overall, I am enjoying the game, but that particular part left an incredibly foul taste in my mouth. And to think it was done by the original Dungeon Master for Critical Role. I'm willing to bet that if Matthew Mercer were to look back at that performance now, he'd be deeply embarrassed.