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rukachiri asked: Why do you think the rune of punishment is the best true rune for Lazlo/hero IV |
lazloenkuldes-deactivated201510:
The Rune of Punishment is really one of the very best concepts that Suikoden IV lays down okay it’s so cool and dark as hell
I mean yeah true runes in general SUCK ASS and I would never ever want one, and I honestly can’t blame Graham Cray for chopping off his fucking arm when he got one, BUT
The RoP is an amazingly destructive force. It can be used against smaller enemies or it can wipe out an entire fleet. It’s been used to take out whole villages before, too. That alone is deadly, but then you add in the factor of the rune draining the bearer of their life and turning them to ash. You get that rune, you have a death sentence, plain and simple.
When they first meet, Lino straight-up tells Lazlo that he’s going to die a horrific death, and since people with the rune generally don’t tend to last long that means that Lazlo’s slated to die very soon. That is such an interesting problem to give to a protagonist. In the game, people tend to treat Lazlo like a ticking time bomb and some even go out of their way to avoid him because they don’t want to be next. I really wish this had been explored more in-game actually, just because of what a (objectively) fun concept it is.
Plus! Lots of bad people want the RoP. Graham Cray wants to presumably take revenge against the Scarlet Moon Empire, he’s working under the pretense of presenting the rune to the Kooluk Emperor, who in turn intends to sell the rune to Harmonia, which is a superpower notorious for forced takeovers of other nations. In Tactics, the Pirate Steele uses it to be a dick and blow people up. So nobody who actually wants the rune has any good intentions for it.
So with that in mind, it’s really interesting that the rune forces itself on someone who is a genuinely good person. It’s very likely that, when Glen got the rune, Lazlo was the real “target” and Glen just got in the way at the wrong time. Glen is wiped out very soon after, in a shorter amount of time than most bearers, and with theories that true runes manipulate the events around them, one could say that the rune intentionally controlled events so Lazlo specifically would be the one who ended up with it.
And Lazlo is so nice. Seriously. He organizes fishing parties and saves little girls from pirates. He is so laid-back and forgiving and supportive. And forgiveness is really the big thing here; without forgiveness, he’d be dead along with the other bearers. By being so nice, Lazlo managed to avoid a fate where he’s disintegrated and trapped in eternal torment inside a true rune.
The point of this is:
This giant laser of mass destruction with an awful track record is put into the possession of a truly good teenager who only uses it when he has to, not because he wants to. It’s fun to think that Lazlo could wipe whole cities off a map if he ever felt like it. He looks so unassuming but he’s extremely powerful post-game yet he never actually does anything.
I love it. Lazlo and RoP for best Tenkai/Rune combo 2k15.
TL;DR I can’t believe I wrote an essay about this.
