Voyager

How do you guys feel about his character? Personally, he was one of my favorite villains, but I really don't like the way they portrayed him in Episode III. In Pied Piper, he was trying to save people from the fear of U-DO, bringing them into a "heaven" of sorts by trapping them in their warmest memories. In Episode III, he just comes off as some lame power-hungry Star Wars character.

I really should read Pied Piper again, I've only read it once, but it has some of the best story and writing in the series. It's really a shame that it was relegated to a cellphone game.

I despise Voyager. The man is a monster. I especially hated him after reading Pied Piper. Some of the stuff he did during Pied Piper is messed up. I remember very little of Pied Piper, except that he also

Spoiler:

That alone made me hate him. Along with that, he loves taunting Ziggy by painfully reminding him of the death of his wife and son.

In short; Voyager is one of those villains who I was just waiting to fight and kill.

PS: Props to his voice actor for making the character sound as evil as he should sound. Of course, he's voiced by the same guy who voiced Albert Wesker in RE5, so that's kind of a given. =p

Adrak wrote:How do you guys feel about his character? Personally, he was one of my favorite villains, but I really don't like the way they portrayed him in Episode III. In Pied Piper, he was trying to save people from the fear of U-DO, bringing them into a "heaven" of sorts by trapping them in their warmest memories. In Episode III, he just comes off as some lame power-hungry Star Wars character.

I really should read Pied Piper again, I've only read it once, but it has some of the best story and writing in the series. It's really a shame that it was relegated to a cellphone game.

Well, he done all of this because he wanted to be like god, that's why he trap people in his mind. It was his way of thinking of saving people from end of world visions that he get form U-DO but still all he thinks it was about he become a god to them.
It was like Yuriev way of deal with U-DO vision and Eric copy a lot from Yuriev but changed few things.

He looked and act like normal person most of game, but in the end it turned out that he only act in this way and was psyho freak. I feel bad for Ziggy. Whole scene with Sharon and Jaquin death was really sad.  

Whole acting of Voyager to Ziggy in ep3 was annoying too. Poor Ziggy. It was like
Voyager: "Oh, Ziggy, I'm so yaoi for you" and all S&M XD.

Reading the Pied Piper translations were kinda confusing for me, but I think overall that it fits with the theme of various characters wanting to alter reality in some way to achieve eternal life, eternal happiness, etc. It would be more interesting if he had deeper motivations in XS3, but at that point I think the crew was scrambling to get it all done.

Well, it was best explained in Perfect Guide:

"It gave him a taste of the status of Creator, one who has power over life and death; it was a pseudo-god position. He overindulged in such false power."

Voyager ultimately becomes the one true villain of the series. Heck, even his attacks reflect his malevolence - Evil Claw, Karma Miasma.

Seriously though, Pied Piper doesn't really align all that well with the Perfect Guide. Voyager in PP actually offered souls to U-DO as a sacrifice, hoping to be granted immortality or a place with his God - that was the contract he made. And his motives were more complex than a simple desire for power as it becomes in E3.

Just went and read the end of Pied Piper again.

My interpretation of his stance there is that he wanted to shield people from the depths of the U.M.N., and UDO itself. Actually, I'm not sure where I got the idea from, but I'll try to backtrack. He calls UDO the "death of the world" and later says he wants "to give people rest without them having to see the horror of death". If he could act as some kind of buffer between people and UDO he could intercept their interactions, right?

Erich was dependent on the U.M.N. to function in everyday life -- he used it to compensate for his memory problems. He's a first-hand example of it working and maybe this suggested to him that others' consciousnesses could also be stored on the U.M.N.. After all, his was already half-way there. His "greatest fear was dissipating into the collective consciousness", which I interpret as becoming a non-entity who wasn't capable of thought or memory.

Seeing UDO and trying to understand it gave him nightmares. Since it "represented" the death of the world and he was trying to escape from it-- It kind of sounds like he's trying to grasp immortality. Voyager states so pretty baldly later. Through his actions people died and their consciousnesses were all stored inside his own consciousness. The way it's written implies they are stored inside his own physical brain, but part of his memory is inside the U.M.N., and likely it was up until then completely inseparable from his living, breathing existence. ...no, the way it's written is more like his physical brain is direct tap into the U.M.N..

Jan points out to Voyager that there's a difference between "shreds of memory" and "living" consciousness, but I think for Erich/Voyager they're probably synonymous because of how he uses the U.M.N..

As for the first sentence of this post... Well, frankly, something about the way Sharon and Joaquin were put to "rest" brings to mind the school of thought that says letting a patient die painlessly under the influence of drugs is better than otherwise. And that starts getting into somewhat discomforting territory. I'm thinking of a specific character from Black Jack-- a doctor who acts like a foil to the series' protagonist-- who helps people who want to die, die. IIRC, he hastens their deaths because he believes that it's his responsibility to help them escape the pain. That's actually kind of different from what Voyager's trying to accomplish in Pied Piper, but both seem to revolve around sparing the people they can reach out to from a specific type of suffering.

I actually see a lot of parallels between Erich/Voyager and Ghost in the Shell but I couldn't really put it into words. I'm surprised I even managed to put the above into words.

Well, I would belive more perfect guide then game since Soraya said on her blog that Namco again changed ending in pied piper, I read that she even posted the diffrences but she take it down due to Namco. As far no one saved text with those changes so we can't know it now. Maybe this person who draw Pied pier manga have seen them, but I don't write so good in japanesse to ask him about it...

Yeah, but there is no guarantee the Perfect Guide follows the original, intended trajectory of the Pied Piper or how much it retains the original plan for the series. For example, the depiction of U-DO in Pied Piper is much closer to its descriptions in Episode 1 and the ODM, rather than the Perfect Guide.

::comes in late:: Since I've read Pied Piper well after I'd played XS3 and haven't scoured the Perfect Guide as much as I should, Pied Piper is a little fresher in my mind, so my opinion of Voyager as a character is probably inaccurate.  I think he's got a case of good intentions gone horrifically bad; another example of U-DO reaching out and messing with someone's mind like what happened with Albedo, only he's a little bit more at peace with it since he's had such a long time for it to sink in.  I think that Erich still truly thinks that what he's doing is right, which was to save people from their pain, but to do so by removing them from reality without their consent and being so adamant about it is what makes him malicious.  There's a huge disconnect between who Erich was and who Voyager is, though.  We get more specifics with what happened with Albedo.  People with a streak of perfectionism in them tend to crave control, and Erich's very strict personal standards seem to have been overextended and warped into what Voyager became.

It sucks that Namco seems to have ripped so many things out of the original creators' hands, but that's an in-general thing.  I hope someday Soraya-san will be able to give out information about that again, but it might not be for a very long time.  I'm very nosy and I want to know what sort of nondisclosure contracts Monolith had to sign that's had to keep them so silent.

I've read the PP script translation a few times now and I'd have to agree that it seems to portray him as having good intentions that went horribly wrong (you know what they say about the path to hell), and it was really disappointing to see him chopped down to a one-dimensional melodramatic stock villain in XSIII. I'd elaborate on it but you guys already stated it so eloquently, I don't have much to add. :>

I can just see the staff meeting.

Hey guys, we have about 2 hours total in cutscenes left to show KOS-MOS's finale with T-ELOS, explain what Wilhelm is up to, tell people who chaos really is, and kill off this last testament guy. What was his name again? Oh yeah.

It's odd, because I know I should hate Voyager more than I do. That's not to say I don't hate the guy for all that he's done (poor Ziggy!), but I'm more focused on how much I loathe Kevin. I think it's because, although I like Ziggy, he was never a favorite for me, so Voyager never truly centered on my radar.

I apologize to all Ziggy fans. *hides*

^ Haha, no need to apologize to me!  Ziggy is only like my favorite character from anything ever, but I still don't really hate Voyager.  I actually kinda like him (more than I like Kevin Winicott anyway), and at the very least I can sort of understand and relate to why he's so obsessed with Ziggy. owo  He's like a crazy creeper fanboy who happens to have godlike powers and a really warped conscience.

... And no, I've never EVER contemplated Ziggy/Voyager slash.  Nope, not me.  Wherever would you get that idea?  My evil!OTP is Voyager/Yuriev anyway

*ahem* Also, Glance, I have a feeling that's exactly how the staff meeting went. :D

chibi wrote:It's odd, because I know I should hate Voyager more than I do. That's not to say I don't hate the guy for all that he's done (poor Ziggy!), but I'm more focused on how much I loathe Kevin. I think it's because, although I like Ziggy, he was never a favorite for me, so Voyager never truly centered on my radar.

I actually don't hate Voyager as much as I do because of what he has done/continues to do to Ziggy (who is one of my favorite playable characters), although that doesn't help. What really made me hate him is Pied Piper. Good intentions gone wrong? Maybe so, but I can sympathize more with someone like Kevin than I ever could with Voyager. The guy may have believed he was "saving" people (that's a psychopathic way of thinking right there), but he takes way too much pleasure in what he does.

Of course, Yuriev is no saint either (who is my favorite XS villain). It's hard to pinpoint exactly what makes the difference for me between cool evil bastard villain and despicable evil bastard villain ( ).
I really can't find a proper way of explaining why I think Yuriev is a cool evil dude and Voyager the opposite. But that's just how it is, aha... x]

stitchedmoon wrote:My evil!OTP is Voyager/Yuriev anyway

Did you just say
you slash the villain I hate most with the villain I like most???
Oh noes! x_X

Ooooh, Xernova, I loathe Yuriev so much more than I do Kevin.

I think it's because Jr. and Albedo are my absolute favorites, and he was so awful in general to the URTVs.  But I don't want to take up a Voyager thread talking about my intense hatred of Yuriev (and also make you mad since he's your favorite! XD)

Wow, I just realized it's been forever since I've read the Pied Piper translation.  I should really take some time to read over it again and have it fresh in my mind.  Oh, and stitched - I still apologize since I feel like I'm somehow wronging Ziggy with the proper lack of caring. *pats Ziggy*

^ Haha, I don't mind. To each their own. ^^

How villains mistreat characters I like doesn't seem to influence my opinion on said villains as much as other things. As I said, my dislike for Voyager isn't because of how he treats Ziggy (although because I dislike Voyager, in this case it does add to the dislike, as I said in my first reply here). Same with Jr. and Yuriev, as Jr. is my absolute favorite of the playable cast (which doesn't stop me from liking Yuriev, heheh). x]

I felt the same way about Miang and Krelian the same way most people feel about Yuriev for a good ten years due to Ramsus, but I think since I've got some emotional distance, it's not so bad.  I think in general, like and dislike for certain characters comes and goes unless one is actively thinking about it and pulling themselves in the same direction.

I'm not going to get into how many arguments that have sprung up just based on me mentioning that I like Hojo from FF7, who is very similar to Krelian and Yuriev in most respects.

I tend to like and dislike characters on a case-by-case basis because some character will always come along that I will love or hate more, regardless of who they remind me of outside (or inside) that IP.

Anyway, Voyager. ^^ I think if Voyager had survived the staff meeting, things may have turned out a little differently.  Just playing XS3 made him seem really flat.

I think we would all view a lot more diffrent Voyager if we saw and hear all story from Pied piper, not only read it as translation.
Whole his murdering scenes, whole ending would be very emotional, maybe most emotional of all Xenosaga.

kare_reiko wrote:I think we would all view a lot more diffrent Voyager if we saw and hear all story from Pied piper, not only read it as translation.
Whole his murdering scenes, whole ending would be very emotional, maybe most emotional of all Xenosaga.

I think if Almadel's death from A Missing Year was a full cutscene, it would have been one of the most powerful scenes in the series. It was already very emotional, it would be even more as a cutscene.

Oh yeah, Missing Year.  In this you actually see Jin/Shion character development but NOPE IT IS NOT IN A GAME.

That's the problem with a lot of these characters.  Of course we love Albedo because he has such a rich story.  We still know he's bad and did bad things, but we like him because he is humanized to us.  We're able to see the sympathetic side of this character.

Kevin is the same way.  We are shown all these flashbacks of him as a boy, him at 14 years, him while he's happy with Shion, and then we see him in the present.

Even in Pied Piper, Voyager has very little time to appear sympathetic.  We aren't given detailed cutscenes to humanize him toward us like we were with the others.  He doesn't have a tangible motive we can relate with.  Albedo has Jr., and Kevin has Shion.  Through these characters we can see what Albedo and Kevin care about, what their fears are, and those fears seem very real.

With characters like Voyager and Yuriev, we have this intangible fear of U-DO, which is an alien concept we can't identify with.  We don't see how hard it was for them as children, or what loved ones were torn away from them, and there's no character representing the things they want to protect.  

Yuriev comes off as a stronger villain, perhaps the best in Xenosaga, because we learn all we need to know about him through his actions.  He is merciless, and his need for absolute power comes from his own taste of fear.  Voyager on the other hand is so distant from the game's present-tense events that we only learn about his motives and actions second-hand.  Even the Pied Piper translation only gives us the bones of what happened between him and Jan Saur, not how he got that way, what he's afraid of, or why these murders are the only answer for him.  

That combined with the over-the-top "obviously evil" motif of his physical appearance and attack moves just makes him hard to identify with at all, and thus not a very good villain in my opinion.

Good points all around.  I think Voyager's characterization within the main series came off looking the weakest, but his backstory in Pied Piper ... weeell ... I wouldn't say it made me sympathize with him, exactly, but it did kinda make him one of my favorite villains.  I like how Glance pointed out that a lot of the antagonists in Xenosaga are defined by their connections with other characters (Albedo and Jr., Kevin and Shion, Virgil and Feb), and I'd argue that Voyager could be defined by his absence of connection (well, other than his weird obsession with Jan/Ziggy but that kind of just seems like a symptom of his forever-alone-ness).  Like, this guy Erich was born (or engineered) with a super-human ability to connect to the net, but no capacity for empathy or human relationships, so of course he wouldn't understand how to "save" people or help them overcome the fear of death.  The only time he really seems to express any kind of normal affection is in his interactions with a robot (well, Bugs seemed to think of him as a "father" anyway).  I think his lack of a defining relationship could be his defining quality.  (And I will agree that the fear of U-DO seems kind of distant and unknowable, but for me, the fear of dying and the eventual destruction of the universe is one I'm very familiar with; it's been keeping me awake at night since I was old enough to entertain the idea that the universe might not be around forever.  So I kind of just swap that in for whenever someone's raving about UUUUUUDOOOOO and it makes them more relatable.  Of course, I was actually afraid of God for a while too--I was brought up Catholic and so God was like this vengeful fire-breathing ogre in the sky, basically--so there's that.)

I'm definitely not trying to excuse Voyager's actions, though; I think what he did was despicable.  To paraphrase what Xerno said, sometimes bad guys with "good" intentions are the worst kind of bad guys because they're so damn smug and self-righteous and wrapped up in their own savior/god complex that they've completely blinded themselves to the atrocities they're committing in the name of whatever their greater good is.  On a personal note, I've had people very close to me who kind of mucked up my life by doing things they claimed were in my "best interests" at the time, so the kind of villain who takes other people's "best interests" into his own hands is one of the most abominable (and therefore perversely fascinating) villains in my opinion.

I forget where I was going with this but yeah, there's my tangent. :B

katimus wrote:I felt the same way about Miang and Krelian the same way most people feel about Yuriev for a good ten years due to Ramsus, but I think since I've got some emotional distance, it's not so bad.  I think in general, like and dislike for certain characters comes and goes unless one is actively thinking about it and pulling themselves in the same direction.

I don't really blame Miang and Krelian for Ramsus' problems though. I think he was just always trying to assert his worth and prove his existence. When Fei reentered his life, his fear returned, and that's when his decline began. Sure, Krelian and Miang's treatment of him didn't help the situation at all, but I think it was just Ramsus' own fear that caused his actions.

I think Voyager's story would have more impact if we saw more of him. His relationship with Ziggy could have been more evolved, so that Ziggy had a chance to become that character like Shion or Jr. became for other villains. Ziggy obviously has reasons to be in conflict with Voyager, but what is Voyagers continued reason to fight against Ziggy? Why is he working for Wilhelm? These kind of these were weak in XS3.

^ Why work for Wilhelm indeed. Or better yet, I don't even know what use Wilhelm had for Voyager. Or Virgil for that matter. Albedo was useful for taking care of Yuriev and Kevin was pretty much Wilhelm's right-hand man (only to karate chop his right hand off in the end, hahaha!...*cough* sorry). But yeah, not sure what Voyager (and Virgil) contributed to Wilhelm's plans... or if it was said, I just don't remember.