As A ‘Bracer’ In Trails in the Sky, Your Entire Life Is A Side Quest, And I Love It

One of my favorite things about The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is how deeply linked the sidequests are with the rest of the game. I don’t just mean the plot either. Let me explain.

            In Trails in the Sky, a JRPG made by Nihon Falcom in 2004, you play as Estelle who, with her adopted brother Joshua, aspire to become ‘bracers’.

            Bracers are essentially community service workers who seek to uphold justice and provide a helping hand to those who are in need. Think ‘ninjas’ from Naruto or ‘Hunters’ from Hunter x Hunter. They can do bad ass shit like dropping a sociopathic villain, but they also find lost goods and help kittens out of trees. Y’know, the run of the mill ‘Shonen Anime Cop’.

            Spoiler Alert: Estelle and Joshua become bracers (within, like, the first hour of the game). We get a sick badge, and we’re certified by the Bracer Guild to do all the cool things and go to all the cool places that Bracers can go.

            In the game, that means one of the things you can do is take up jobs that people post on a bulletin board at guild offices. And they’re things that you’d find in any JRPG really: find some dumb mushroom in a forest or take care of that monster at a road somewhere.

            The funny thing is, generally, helping these people out with their problems, petty or no, makes no sense in JRPGs. That is, besides a heroic sense of duty you might feel as a protagonist. But would you, as yourself, help save some random person’s marriage when you have problems of your own to worry about? Nobody has time for that son.

            Especially, when you need to save the world (I’m not saying you need to in Trails in the Sky, no spoilers!). You have other shit to do!

            As a Bracer though, helping others is the shit you have to do. That’s literally your job. Sidequests aren’t just a mandatory JRPG feature in this game, sidequests are an actual thing, in the world! Sidequests are what put food on the table! Sidequests are your life!

            Personally, that’s all the motivation I need to do every sidequest in the game. But if you don’t care to roleplay like a nerd, that’s just the tip of the iceberg for why sidequests are so great.

            Seeing as helping others is your job, you’re well compensated for it. This means money most of the time, as well as any experience points you might get from monster slaying and the occasional gift from a client.

            But, you also earn Bracer Points, or BP. You see, like Ninjas and Hunters and Cops (ACAB) and Soldiers, Bracers have ranks, and you rank up with BP. Not only does this give you a sick new title and badge to show off to your NPC friends (if you’re into that weird shit), but you also get an item every time you rank up!

            Those are equipable items, accessories, and abilities (called ‘orbments’, they’re like Materia from Final Fantasy VII, but that’s a whole conversation on its own) that can change the way you play the game in some really interesting ways.

            The game hides items at the higher ranks, so the only way you’ll even know what they are is by helping out your fellow man.

            Additionally, the idea of ranking up in a highly respected and sought after ‘battle profession’ that we’ve seen time and time again in Shonen anime is enough to get some people’s blood going. For others though, that’s not enough.

            A lot of people really love world building and characterization in JRPGs, or in any story really. Trails in the Sky incorporates sidequests into the story and plot of the game in seriously compelling ways.

            Every character is a person first, and a sidequest giver second. That’s seems a bit obvious of a thing to point out, but the game does a really great job making these characters people.

            They all have something interesting to say. In the proper world-building fashion we see in a lot of RPGs, they’ll mention some choice piece of information about the area. Whether that be the town itself, or something about the people that live there, or its history.

            More importantly though, they interact with us. Especially in the first town, people know who Estelle and Joshua are. They inquire about their lives, and ask what they’ve been up to. We do the same.

            It’s the same thing with those we don’t know either. Estelle and Joshua will react to people they don’t know in different ways (most of the time positively, because they’re positive people!). But if someone is rude to us, they’ll react. . . well, how a normal person would react.

            Moments where the duo run into a not so normal individual is always a moment of characterization for them. We see how they interact to the person they’re talking with, but also how they interact with each other in those situations.

            Here’s an example. Early on in the game you can get a sidequest (or a bracer job) to help some rich guy find a rare mushroom. Standard, fetch quest type of deal. But, the guy’s kind of an asshole. He’s not from the town and thinks it’s a backwater, he’s also rude to Estelle and Joshua. But we take the job anyway.

            So, we venture out far north of town and we find the mushroom. It turns out that it contains ‘sepith’, a substance used to make orbments (the Materia of Trails) which can also attract monsters.

            It attracts monsters. So, we lay waste to the freaks and we’re left wondering, “Why didn’t that guy tell us about this?”. Estelle and Joshua wonder too. (I won’t spoil what happens next).

            You’re probably thinking, “Okay that was a terrible story”, so let me give you the play by play.

            For one, we learn a bit about the properties of sepith, which is cool. Estelle learns about it too. She’s the hotheaded, ‘doesn’t study ever’ type of person, so Joshua (the studious type) teaches her.

            I’ll be honest, it’s an awfully convenient trait to give to a character that serves as the player surrogate. It’s a hell of a lot fresher than a character that’s new to the world entirely or lost their memory. Either way, it’s a moment that doubles as both world building and character building. Cool!

            Second, it turns the standard fetch quest into something a lot more intriguing. Why would some random dude want to get us killed? It’s an interesting question which is answered.

            Those moments of characterization are pretty much all over the game, but it’s great to see it in sidequests too. It’s like additional ‘story content’ rather than just ‘content’.

            And that’s the thing, it’s additional story content. It’s a part of the game that’s deeply linked to the rest of the experience in a bunch of ways.

            The idea of sidequests is a concept that makes in-universe sense in Trails in the Sky. It gives us tangible (and tantalizing) rewards for doing them. And it gives us meaningful world and character building. It’s honestly amazing.

            So, please, play the sidequests in The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Just play the game in general!

Aside: A symptom of doing a bunch of sidequests in a JRPG is staying in the same town or location for many more hours than you’re ‘supposed’ too. But that makes it even better! Setting aside people who just want to play a game for hundreds of hours, there’s an additional effect to staying in the same area forever. It just makes the world feel huge, at least for me. You’re doing sidequests, running back and forth from area to area, and from person to person. You’re talking to way more people than you would if you just critical pathed the game. You’re seeing every building. Buying every item (with the funds from all the sidequests you’ve been doing hopefully). Then you look at the map, and the area you’ve been exploring and discovering, the town where you’ve been talking to characters, is just a tiny segment of this huge world. That’s a really cool feeling. If we’re being real, that applies to pretty much any RPG, but I thought I’d mention it anyway. It’s a cool side effect.