Video games - Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean

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	Video games - Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean

Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean (バテン・カイトス　終わらない翼と失われた海) is a role-playing video game that was developed by tri-Crescendo and Monolith Soft and published by Namco for the Nintendo GameCube. First released in Japan in 2003, the game is the first entry in the Baten Kaitos series, and tells the story of a young man named Kalas and his companion Xelha, who live in an aerial island-based kingdom in the clouds.

Synopsis

The story begins in typical RPG fashion, with Kalas, an unwilling hero and more of a jerk than anything else, waking up in a hospital bed in the frontier of Sadal Suud remembering little more than his desire to seek revenge against those who murdered his family and burned down his home. While in pursuit of his family's murderers, Kalas encounters Xelha, a young girl running from the Empire and in possession of a mysteriously powerful medallion. With mutual, albeit initially tangential, goals, Kalas and Xelha find themselves in an unfortunate situation of having to stick together if they wish to survive the Alfard Empire's minions.

The two travel to Diadem where they meet Gibari, a fisherman from Nashira, and Lyude, the ambassador to Diadem from the Empire. After lowering the water level of Diadem's Lesser Celestial River, which has recently flooded, they leave with Gibari for the capital where they are welcomed by its King, Ladekahn. They soon learn that the Empire is after so-called "End Magnus", Magnus that have the power of a God named Malpercio. Kalas, Xelha, Gibari, and Lyude find one of the five End Magnus in Diadem, but it is stolen from them. They must travel to Anuenue to find the next End Magnus; while there, they comfront Geldoblame and meet Savyna, an ex-mercenary for the Empire. The group then travels to Mira, where they meet Mizuti, a strange and androgynous being. They are then arrested for the kidnapping of Lady Melodia and lose their only End Magnus.

Finally, the group of six heads to Alfard, where they intend to stop Geldoblame once and for all. Unbeknownst to Xelha, Gibari, Lyude, Savyna, and Mizuti, Kalas and Melodia have been working all along to try to revive the ancient God Malpercio. The game then becomes something of an apocalyptic epic, with Xelha trying to stop Malpercio yet seeking to save the one she loves.

Cast

Player characters

Guardian Spirit

A creature (in reality, the player) that watches over Kalas and his party. Kalas occasionally addresses the spirit by turning toward the screen and asking him/her to make a decision.

Kalas

(Age: 19) (Voiced by Eric Kelso in the English version and Kosuke Toriumi in the Japanese Version)

Due to the lacking of one of his soulwings, he can be somewhat considered an invalid. Because of this, he was scorned by many, and this left him a somewhat bitter young man. After his little brother and grandfather, the only lights in his life, were murdered, he set out on a quest for revenge. In the process he allied himself with Melodia, who helped him contract a spirit, which would grant him the means to achieve his goals. This in exchange for his loyalty and support in her own schemes to ressurect Malpercio. For that he would get greater reward still when they succeeded, he would be released from his handicap by beautifull white wings which Malpercio would bestow upon him. The spirit he contracted eventually rebels against this, but it's memory is erased by a spell so it would lend Kalas it's power once more.

For these manipulative purposes, Kalas keeps most of this a secret for the first half of the game, and states that he is merely out for revenge. Kalas and Melodia succeed in their goals of releasing the end magnus, but, when Xelha and his other friends in vain come to try and stop them from fully allowing Malpercio to be brought into the world, Xelha's final prayer before she is about to die by his hand and the fact that she has contracted the spirit he himself had contracted before make Kalas realise that she had, from the start, trusted and supported him despite the fact that she had known he was decieving her. With this realisation Kalas is capable of escaping his own bitterness, and then by his own hands releases himself from Malpercio's grasp, a feat that a normal mortal could not hope to accomplish even with the help of sacred items.

Afterwards, the group of heroes spends their time looking for any means to stop Malpercio. Then Larikush, an old collegue of Kalas' grandfather who was a great genius and rumored to have been of virgin birth, revealed that Kalas was born not from a human, but from magnus. Because of this, the fortuneteller couldn't see his 'magnus', in this context the part of a lifeform which becomes lost when storing it inside a card, making that process impossible. It was an attempt of his grandfather to unravel those cards' secrets and the secrets of life itself. However, Kalas himself was imperfect, which is why he had only one soulwing. Further experiments finally birthed Fee, Kalas' little brother, who was the perfect lifeform, and refered to as the 'divine child'. Kalas, in a final showdown with Giacomo, the murderer of his Kalas' family, had an epiphany himself, and discovered that he would've died that night the murders took place, would it not have been for his brother who used his powers to save Kalas from the brink of death, and in the process transferred them to him, making Kalas the new 'divine child', destined to face off against Malpercio. It is because he is the 'divine child' that Kalas is able to escape from the hold Malpercio has on him.

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