空の軌跡 // Trails in the Sky ⚔ Story Club・Week 4

Week 4 29th July 2024
Last Week Week 3
Next week Week 5
Home Thread 空の軌跡

This week’s reading is to Start the Prologue. You’ll know when it’s started because there will be a chapter title screen for it. Remember to talk to everyone before you leave town.

Important: Starting this week, there will be choices. Sometimes this just affects the next bit of dialogue, sometimes this affects how much BP you get. If you’re worried about missing out on the BP, a guide is your friend. Otherwise just choose which choice you think is best (or which choice you think Estelle would make).

Screenshot

This indicates the beginning of the prologue. We’re stopping as soon as the game lets you save.

Depending on which version of the game you have, yours might look more like this.

Vocabulary

Vocab Sheet , the frequency data is very inaccurate due to being incomplete.

Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.

Discussion Guidelines

Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice
  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

If necessary, include an explanation of any discrepancies in the Ebook page numbers from physical page numbers. If there is an easy shortcut for some ebook versions to relate back to physical page numbers, it would be worth it to include it as a third bullet here, or if you want to use chapter page numbers instead of volume page numbers, as is the case with some manga. For example:
Example

For the Kindle version of this manga, the page numbers and the location number are always 3 apart. If you subtract 3 from the location, this will give you the accurate page number!

OR

Please use the chapter page numbers, instead of the volume page numbers. These are located in between the panels!

Discussion Questions

  1. What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!

  2. What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?

  3. Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?

  4. How do you feel your first official mission went?

  5. Thoughts and theories on Cassius’s letter / conversation with Joshua / leaving for a month?

  6. Which of the NPC interactions stood out to you the most?

  7. What choices did you make?

Participation

Will you be playing along with us this week?

  • I’m playing along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still playing the game but I haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m playing this game after the club has finished
  • I’m no longer playing the game
0 voters

If you’ve already played this game but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this part.”

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!

5 Likes

I’ve put a poll in the home thread for pacing.

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Good stuff. Having done a little more combat now, the turn order bonus stuff comes up way more than I expected, heh. At this stage it felt pretty free and self replenishing to use a lot of crafts. Hitting enemies on the field felt awkward til I switched to Joshua, who isn’t nearly as slow.

Story stuff

Knowing there may be points on the line I chose to go in with Joshua rather than rushing ahead, though otherwise I’d have rushed to match Estelle’s character. Though maybe I like how this turned out anyway, she went from thinking strategically to getting very distracted by the obnoxious kid, it’s kinda organic having the highs and lows that way, and the latter having a very clear trigger.

I didn’t talk to every single person again but I visited a few that stood out to me. The voice acted woman I’m wondering about in the inn was just working on learning the layout of the town.

Cassius leaving is definitely planting the seeds for bigger conflict later on. I’m mostly wondering if anything is going to happen to him – if this is the sort of game to do that, I could certainly see Cassius meeting an unfortunate end at some point for poking into likely secret political maneuvering. Whatever it is, surely we’re going to get wrapped up in that, but I suppose for now it’s time to do odd jobs around the town. The game is pretty leisurely about setting all this up, but I’m enjoying it.

3 Likes

My advice on this point is if you see something coming towards you, charge towards it, not away. Helps avoid the enemy advantage.

Response to Story Stuff

I’m one of the people who made the wrong choice, thinking it was the right choice until getting more irl experience. I find it very interesting to see what people think the right choice is here.

That voice acted (face having?) woman is not voice acted or face having in the original version of the game. Make of that what you will. I’m now curious what other voice acting / face having decisions have been made for EVO though.

That’s a reasonable assumption to make. How long until we either receive news of his untimely demise or he returns home safe and sound? Whichever option the plot takes, it will probably set the tone for the rest of the story.

3 Likes
Story things

First official mission was short but fun. It was great to run around and do some actual combat, for sure. The plant monsters whooped my butt until I learned their back from their front, then they barely got any turns at all.

The decision before the rescue was interesting and I played it out both ways to see the difference. I’m used to decisions in these sorts of games just leading to flavor text so it was surprising to see that you get a smaller reward for the reckless one! Also Josh yells at you :’(

My first choice was the wait option, in part because NPCs have been lining up to tell Estelle to get her act together and it’s given me the impression that the game wants you to act sensibly. It seemed fine to let her be a little careful after all that lecturing. I don’t necessarily think one option makes more sense than the other, though.

Not sure on theories about Cassius, Joshua, and the Empire at this point. The conversation they had in Japanese succeeded at being extremely vague. I get the sense that whatever movements Cassius is investigating has some connection with how Joshua came to be at the house, but that’s it.

Missing kanji

Seems like extra large kanji are entirely absent from my version. I thought she was cussing the kids out at first, but turning the high res fonts off showed that it was missing basic characters 聞, 返, and 事.
Positive note: at least the game didn’t crash!

Small NPC things

It was a pleasant surprise finding these two up on the clocktower after she rejected him earlier in the day. Those crazy kids really made it :partying_face:


And then this:

Aha! Seeing that tower, I knew there was no way we weren’t going to go ancient civilization diving at some point. Classic JRPG.

5 Likes

Aww thanks for pointing out the tower scene, that’s sweet. The NPCs having their own lives happening around is cool. I saw those two earlier but I’m not patient enough to re-comb every part of the town this often so I didn’t think to retry there.

4 Likes

If you go to the room next door where the kid is hanging out, there’s a letter/diary that can be read on the table. It’s a bit bizarre (and uses a lot of vocabulary I’m not used to, like “diapers”) but entertaining.

On Cassius

Definitely feels like it could go that way, especially the ominous scene on the porch with Joshua.

Alternatively he’ll just go missing and we’ll have to save him somehow.

4 Likes
Cassius

Yeah that’s exactly the kind of thought I’ve been having. Like one way or another what he’s up to is surely planting the seeds of the conflict we’re going to get dragged into, right? But I get the impression the game seems committed enough to showing us as low ranking, not the type to get called on for that. So whether he goes missing, or something worse happens, there needs to be a personal reason these two are going to force their way into the matter.

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What’s crazy is that I did play through all of this 12 years ago and I have zero memory of any of it.

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There are a lot of games or other art I wish I could do that with so that’s pretty fortunate I suppose, haha!

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week 5 is up!

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Damn @polv, I can follow your progress through your likes and you’re bulldozing through!

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