AMVERY

For some reason in DFA’s amazing career mode, right after you have the big celebration with the crowd, you get a flashback to yourself as a kid. It was kind of weird to jump around in time like this, but living it felt more like a vivid memory I had no choice but to think about.

It was also weird to still have all my memories of my old life, so I had two concurrent childhoods going on here. Memories of two childhoods and a kind of flashback going on was a trippy experience, trippy enough that I thought I might barf from the sensation.

When I was much younger in this world, I watched as the dragon warriors prepared all around me. They were called Protos sometimes, but a lot of the fandom went with just dragons. A girl of ten years old probably shouldn’t have been allowed so close to these big angry warriors before their battles that night, but my father told me it wouldn’t be an issue; he had brought me to plenty of fights. Every few minutes, the building shook as more arenaships landed and docked, connecting their battlefields to the one I stood in.

Suddenly, my memory felt a bit strange. I felt like someone was staring at me. Again, this was kind of a weird, layered memory, as I was still standing on stage in the present, but the memory was so vivid it stopped me in my tracks. I now remembered someone across from me, locking eyes with me.

Wait…

When I played the game, there was never another girl as part of this. Career mode had a brief flashback to your childhood to show you’ve always been passionate about a sport about dragons wrestling, but it was about a five-minute scene including your dad’s match. I wasn’t prepared to suddenly have changes to a cutscene I had memorized. The girl across from me looked familiar, too.

There’s no way they’d add her to my backstory, right?

I didn’t have time to ruminate on that, as a man in a long black trench coat, and agile looking black armor approached me, holding a small girl. He put the girl down, who sat by me. This was my younger sister, who I didn't think much of. The younger sibling didn’t even appear again in career mode because they didn’t bother to make a character model of her when she was older. The man knelt before us just as the staring girl walked away.

“Alright, you two better get to your seats soon,” our father, Leon, said. He was a legendary character in the game, with one of the highest overalls for stats, one that was absurdly difficult to unlock. As a bonus, in canon, if you pick the villain route, he’s your dad. “You know where to find them, right?”

Leon didn’t have his war paint on, which made him look less intimidating than he would during his battle later.

“Obviously, Dad, we’ve done this a thousand times,” I said. “Are you gonna be on early? I don’t want Koriko to fall asleep and miss this.”

“I won’t fall asleep!” Koriko said. She was a few years younger than me. She’s probably not important though. Again, if she didn’t show up past the flashback in the game, I assume she wouldn’t be a big deal in the new world I ended up in. Right?

“I think I’m last tonight.” Leon said.

“Aw,” I said. “Alright, Koriko, let’s go.”

I held his hand out to my sister, and started to walk away when a large man with green hair stopped us.

“Bringing your kids. Typical.” The green haired man said.

The big man smiled. He shook Leon’s hand with a fierce grasp.

“I wanted them to be here for this,” Leon said. “It’s my last fight, after all.”

“Of course,” the green haired man said. “You kids cheer your dad on tonight, alright? His old joints probably need all the help they can get.”

Leon just laughed at that.

“Head on down,” Leon said to us. “I don’t want you hearing half the jokes this guy would tell you.”

Koriko and I left the warriors’ area. Koriko kept looking back at our father.

“He’ll be fine.” I said. “Stop worrying.”

“I’m not worrying,” Koriko said.

A flight of stairs past a few sets of security guards took us to the seating area, where a massive crowd had already gathered, not even filling half the seats of the lower bowl. Koriko stared in amazement above us, as arenaships connected to the structure we were in, their walls turning clear, each adding another large group of people.

A lone ring sat at the center of the massive base arenaship, the battleground of the champions.

Koriko and I stared at the battleground where our father would compete as the audience filled in. After what felt like hours, the show finally began.

The flashback didn’t show me the whole show, giving me glimpses of the brutal battles between the Protos, hitting each other with really cool moves. I would have sat through it all gladly, but I did also really want to get to my part, so I was fine with a speedy memory.

“You don’t have to flinch,” I said. “You know they’re fine.”

“Y-yeah,” Koriko said.

I wasn’t sure what the point of Koriko was when I played, but having a cute little sister by me in real life made me a bit softer on the girl. She was really spooked by all this.

There was one thing the flashback did stop to show, the reveal of the battle tenets. I had heard the tenets of the DFA fights so many times from all my playthroughs of career mode that I could recite them backwards, blindfolded, and standing on my hands. They appeared on a large screen on stage.

The Holy Battle Commands of the Dralei Va

1. The world is divided into disk cities. Disk cities can be controlled by Indicordia or Crimsalia.

2. Indicordia and Crimsalia are the two brands Proto fighters are assigned to.

3. Control of each disk is determined by overall victories at major events.

4. The Dralei Va ensure the safety of all warriors who compete.

5. A warrior must fight fairly in a true test of strength, skill, and cunning (or not get caught if they cheat!)

6. A warrior may not kill another warrior in battle.

7. Don’t try this at home!

8. If any of these commands are broken, the Dralei Va will smite all present.

Some of it was cool lore that I wish came up more in career mode (the console it came out on probably didn’t have the power to render the mysterious Dralei Va smiting everybody, so official lore states that they haven’t been seen in quite some time). I did spend an absurd amount of time trying to slam someone in a very specific spot three times in a row, because a cheat code website said doing that would kill your opponent and send the Dralei Va in to destroy everyone. I could never get that to work. I also loved the game developers putting “Don’t try this at home!” in the rules. Way to avoid legal issues, game studio.

There is one place in-game where you could see the effects of the Dralei Va: a really cool arena where it’s just a wasteland. The description for it on the menu says it was where a single warrior had disobeyed the Dralei Va and murdered his opponent. The Dralei Va arrived like a wave and destroyed everything in their path. The decayed remnant of the disk city was all that was left, mostly a pile of shredded and twisted metal. It was a pain to unlock but it made for such a good battleground in game just for the visual alone.

Anyways, where was I?

The battle results that night were a mix of points for Crimsalia and Indicordia. The warring nations who decided battles via dragon duels also didn’t come up a lot but I think a wider war system was planned at one point (I’ll explain in a bit where a lot of the game's attention went besides the battles, and it’s not warring nations). For my purposes, Crimsalia and Indicordia were the brands you picked for career mode, and I usually picked Indicordia because Crimsalia’s aesthetic kind of sucks and the storylines are dull.

Other warriors still got to compete as well, for regional trophies, championships, and their own grudges. This was the main thing in career mode (I think the writers must have forgotten about the war stuff because they kind of drop it at a certain point).

“That’s the guy we saw with Dad,” I said when the green haired man stepped out to battle.

The green haired man, who was introduced as Cade Drake, made short work of his opponent. Koriko waved to him, but I just rolled my eyes. There was no way he could see us in a crowd this big.

After a long night of battles, it was finally time for Leon, the Living Dragon, to battle. A dumb nickname? Maybe. Was he one of the coolest dragons in the game? Absolutely. The lights went out, and a lone spotlight appeared on the entranceway. My father’s war paint gave his face a monstrous look, and his demeanor changed completely. Leon slowly walked to the center of the arena.