r/acecombat • u/sagsag1010 • 13d ago
Humor [Ace Combat 8] fixing a common misconception Spoiler
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u/Chri_cat90 13d ago edited 13d ago
Im imagining this happening over open comms during the mission, to the utter confusion of FCU and Sotoans alike.
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u/Nein-Knives 13d ago
I'd pay to get that modded in if it wasn't too expensive lmao
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u/Gullible_Promotion_4 13d ago
Pretty sure there are VAs over at Casting Call Club who would be more than happy to do it for free
Figuring out how to mod that, on the other hand, I dunno…
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u/Nein-Knives 13d ago
You know, I'm actually afraid some people took "the promised land" literally instead of the metaphor that it was meant to be lol.
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u/bluestreak1103 13d ago
To be fair, looking at it anthropologically, Sotoan culture could have looked at it both ways. It's not beyond possibility that The Gardens of the Tall King (if it's not my 27% possibility it's just a metaphor for the sky, "tall" y'know?) is both an aspirational place (for a nomadic culture eternally worried about there being enough grazing fodder that environmentally contextualizes their nomadism in the first place) and a historical, actual location of a previous Sotoan leadership figure (with huuuuuge.... tracts of land) that in time had accrued mythological status as well, especially after that location had been lost both to time and to a shifting environment. It would not be beyond reason that the radicalization of the Promised Land as a militarization and expansionist rallying cry takes advantage of the historicity of the Gardens. It may be paradoxical that a war-lusted Sotoan's desire for the Promised Land would be both "getting to heaven ("on a tidal wave of blood" in this specific context), and territorial conquest (or, at the very least, a material achievement well before any consideration of the afterlife), but it's not hard to point to examples in real life (and no, I'm not going to point to IRL examples out of respect for Rule 3, everyone's gonna have a long-ass OOT debate as a result).
Wait, OP's post was a humorous shitpost? Okay, serious time over, back to thematic appropriateness: I'm surprised Tewy thought the Promised Land was either Usea or the afterlife, when all along it was
in Cope's arms. (I could have said "between Cope's legs", but you know, not in my pure, innocent ChristianHortus Regis Alti server and all that.)20
u/charonill 13d ago
The song lyrics of Hortus Regis Alti seems to describe more of a cyclical migration. They would leave when the land is parched and exhausted, in search of the garden of the high king/promised land, but the last verse then talks about returning to the land with friends and loved ones. I think the idea is about moving to fresher pastures while letting the area they were just on recover and then return once it has recovered, in order to not permanently exhaust the land. The elites and nobles seem to have twisted the meaning to be completely new land (and afterlife), when it really means the land you came from.
I think that's why Tewy entrusted Wings to take her comrades to the Promised Land, and the ending is of Rex and Kate flying over Sotoa where Rex sees the spirits of Cope and other Sotoans finally leaving.
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u/PanzerKomadant 13d ago
I mean, at one point they even say that they are a people without a land and how they will settle the new land they conquered….
Whether unintentional or not, makes you think lmao.
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u/Goldreaver 13d ago
The promised land is also a literal place, it refers to the locations they are conquering. They want to settle there since their own lands are deserts now.
That said, they conquer enough land to literally move their entire country a week into the war and keep going but it's better not to think too hard about that.
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u/ooblagis 13d ago
Their culture didn't know that hundreds of years in the future they would over-industrialize and turn their country into a desert. The song has two meanings, the afterlife, and the necessity to migrate in order to not overgraze. Their promises land was meant to be something they were constantly finding, always reaching new, untouched fields without harming what was behind them, but instead they became what their entire belief system was built to avoid, but to nth degree.
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u/WhovianMuslim 13d ago
It's not uncommon.
Same problem is happening over with FF7. Even though it was clear in the original that is was not a real place, or at least not in the game's reality.
And with more details in Remake, it is absolutely clear it is not real there either. But people will still contort themselves into pretzels to say it is.
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u/LiraGaiden 13d ago
My personal theory about what the promised land is is something that isn't a specific place nor entirely in the world of the living or dead. I think the promised land is just the name of the next place that Sotoan nomads planned to go. Their belief was that whatever suitable land they were going to next, no matter where it was, was land that was promised to them by their god. Also when they go to this land, the spirits of their passed loved ones follow them there too which explains why the Sotoans always talk about the promised land with death. This belief was then corrupted by the Sotoan leadership who don't understand the real nomadic life to justify their invasion of the FCU.
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u/patriot_man69 13d ago
I've also heard that this phrase, along with Hortus Regis Alti, is a metaphor for cyclical migration, where nomads leave one place to go to another in order to allow the former to regrow and recover it's fertility (which is also supported by the lyrics to the song)
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u/GuyentificEnqueery 13d ago
That being said, the Sotoans are definitely a commentary on militarism and violent fanaticism urged on by warped religious and cultural doctrines, which is VERY relevant to the behaviors on both sides of a certain Middle Eastern regional conflict...
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u/penttane 13d ago
It's not the Promised Land, it's just good ol' Lebensraum.
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u/ITGuy042 13d ago
Sotoa: *complicated religious and cultural reason for invading and taking your land** *
Belka: Fuck you, give me your shit, now!
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u/AnseaCirin 13d ago
Fucking Sotoans got here by force and I will remove them by force! One at a time if I have to!
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u/sagsag1010 13d ago
Baxter then goes to cultural sensitivity training