Hello and welcome to Wasted Plotential, the show where we discuss the wasted potential
of our favourite plotlines.
In this series, I'll be exploring a canonical stories of characters or series, explaining
in what way I find them to be wasting the potential they have built up, and then offering
an alternative that I feel makes better use of that potential.
So, let's begin.
Sophitia Alexandra is my favourite character in the Soul series, and her sister Cassandra
is my second.
In my younger years, I gravitated more towards Siegfried and his quest for redemption, but
around the release of SoulCalibur V in 2012, my attention shifted towards the Alexandra
sisters instead.
Theirs is a more complicated tale, filled with divine quests, unholy creatures, and
the determination to do whatever it takes to keep one's family safe.
The story begins in the first entry in the series: Soul Blade, where Sophitia, the 18
year old daughter of a baker, is chosen by the Greek Gods to hunt down and destroy the
cursed sword, Soul Edge.
Armed with a sword forged by Hephaestus himself, Sophitia sets forth on her holy quest.
Eventually, she comes face-to-face with the blade's current host: the dread pirate, Cervantes.
Sophitia shatters one of the two blades in their clash, but shards of the blade pierce
her body, leaving her too wounded to finish the fight.
She is saved by the ninja Taki, who kills Cervantes and takes Sophitia back to Athens.
She recovers and, three years later, during the events of SoulCalibur, she receives a
vision of Siegfried Schtauffen, who had taken the remaining Soul Edge blade and become possessed
as the Azure Knight, Nightmare.
She collapses from the vision and is help by a local swordsmith named Rothion.
The two quickly fall in love and become engaged.
Hephaestus once again assigns Sophitia the task of destroying Soul Edge.
She sets out again, this time wielding a sword and shield forged by her husband-to-be.
Nightmare is defeated by Xianghua and Kilik, and Sophitia, unable to sense Soul Edge's
presence, returns home.
She marries Rothion and produces a pair of twins: Patroklos and Pyrrha (odd choice of
names, given that they derive from Achilles' homosexual lover and Achilles' own alias when
posing as a woman).
Four years later, the kids bring home a piece of metal that starts to corrupt them, which
Sophitia realises very quickly is a shard of Soul Edge.
Cassandra, not wanting her sister to have to face the evil sword again now that she
has children to look after, steals Sophitia's weapons and heads out to defeat Nightmare
herself, making her debut in SoulCalibur II.
Rothion then forges Sophitia a new weapon set so she can go after Cassandra to keep
her safe.
With SoulCalibur II, III and IV taking place one after the other, it really becomes one
extended adventure with both sisters returning home at various points and repeatedly missing
one another.
Around the time Siegfried is released from Soul Edge's hold at the start of SoulCalibur
III, Sophitia travels to Nightmare's home base of Ostrheinsburg Castle, where she encounters
his servant, Tira.
Tira makes it clear that she plans to use Sophitia's children to strengthen Soul Edge.
Sophitia, thus, vows to destroy Soul Edge to protect her children.
As Cassandra hears rumour of Siegfried as he approaches his final battle with the new
Nightmare in SoulCalibur IV, she follows him to Ostrheinsburg, where she comes face-to-face
with Sophitia.
Leading up to this, Tira had been recruiting more followers to protect Soul Edge from the
many individuals that wanted to claim its power or destroy it.
She explained to Sophitia that the shards of Soul Edge that had entered her body way
back in the first game had actually tainted her blood; blood she had passed on to her
children.
Tira has also abducted Pyrrha and exposed her to Soul Edge's energy so that she is now
dependant on it, meaning she will die if the sword is destroyed.
SoulCalibur V seems to contradict this, so Tira may well just be lying.
But either way, Sophitia reluctantly agrees to protect Soul Edge to protect her daughter.
This is great so far, right?
Aside from the story spinning its wheels a little between II and III, we have a really
good story about a mother trying to protect her children and a sister trying to protect
said mother for the sake of said children.
And now, their respective paths have brought them into conflict with one another.
So, why is this the first episode of a show about wasted potential?
Because SoulCalibur V. You see, SoulCalibur V takes place 17 years after Siegfried kills
Nightmare and seemingly destroys Soul Edge, and focuses on the now grown up Patroklos
and Pyrrha.
By this time, Sophitia is dead, having sacrificed herself to save Pyrrha, though the game itself
never actually specifies how she did that, because SoulCalibur V is the worst.
Unlike previous games, SCV doesn't bother giving characters in-game bios so that we
know who they are and what their goals are, which one would think would be especially
important in a game where half the roster has been replaced by newcomer kids and apprentices.
Bios were released, I think only in the New Legends of Project Soul artbook and maybe
a website.
Through this, we learn that Sophitia put the Soul Edge shards in her body into Pyrrha or
something?
But despite being dead, she at least still gets mentioned a lot and Soul Calibur even
assumes her form to manipulate Patroklos.
It's better than her husband and sister get, with the former going completely unmentioned
outside of the artbook, which claims he just got ill and died; and Cassandra, after being
knocked out by Sophitia, got caught up in the collapsing vortex of Astral Chaos, and
disappeared without a trace.
She then appears in the debatably canonical card-fighting mobile spin-off, SoulCalibur:
Unbreakable Soul, travelling through the Astral Chaos with Edge Master to explore parallel
universes.
And then, when Patroklos kills the possessed Pyrrha and ends up inside Astral Chaos himself,
he encounters Edge Master, who gives him guidance and helps him go back in time.
Edge Master.
Not Aunt Cassandra, who is also trapped inside Astral Chaos!
Surely, it would have made far more sense for her to appear before him, comment on his
growth in both size and combat prowess, then warn him to be wary of "Sophitia", and maybe
drop some exposition about the current state of the family.
But no, that would make far too much sense for SoulCalibur V.
I am absolutely convinced the plan was to have Cassandra return in SoulCalibur VI, without
having aged a day, so she could continue to be playable since she'd be under the 40 year
threshold that forces women to retire in Namco fighting games.
But with VI looking to be a reboot of the franchise, whatever plans they may have had
for her have gone completely out the window, and probably for the best.
It's disgusting that despite being brought to the forefront for the series' final chapter,
the Alexandra family got screwed big time by the writers.
And there was a very clear path for the story to follow post-IV, that would have made so
much sense, I'm baffled they didn't go with it.
Think about it: Sophitia begins as a naive girl, tasked with saving the world by the
Gods.
She then settles down and starts a family, transforming her into a determined young warrior
who chooses to destroy Soul Edge for her own reasons.
Then, she learns that the very family she sought to destroy Soul Edge to protect will
be torn apart if she actually succeeds.
Thus, she submits herself to protecting the evil sword to preserve her family, bringing
her into conflict with said family, as Cassandra is just as determined to protect Sophitia
as Sophitia is to protect Cassandra and the kids.
It's a brilliant arc for Sophitia's character.
And Cassandra, while originally intended to replace Sophitia as the latter settled down
and retired, added a whole extra layer to the story that makes it more compelling than
even the central narrative of Siegfried's corruption and redemption.
The shift of focus to Sophitia's kids in V seems like an attempt to capitalise on this
potential, but in the most asinine way possible - that being removing the two central characters
from the equation all together.
But what if, rather than cutting Sophitia's story short, they had instead taken it to
the logical extreme?
My vision for a follow-up to SoulCalibur IV centres on Cassandra.
Like in the canon, Cassandra is defeated by Sophitia.
But instead of a single hit, Soul Edge's power drives Sophitia into a berserker rage, where
she delivers a savage beating that leaves Cassandra comatose for a while, as part of
its plan to break Sophitia's will.
Cassandra is saved by Zasalamel, who takes her away to recover.
By the time she awakens, Siegfried has killed Nightmare, but Soul Edge was stolen before
it could be destroyed, and Sophitia has gone missing.
Cassandra finds herself teaming up with Siegfried, an expert in all things Soul Edge, reasoning
that Sophitia's disappearance must be connected to Soul Edge.
They travel in a group, including a few other characters like Hilde and Zasalamel, and follow
rumours of some sort of successor to Nightmare.
Rather than just another version of the Azure Knight, it's an entirely new form of Soul
Edge host: some sort of Twilight Knight with jet black armour and a female figure and I'm
sure you see where this is going.
The scars she received from her sister resonate with the evil sword, drawing Cassandra towards
the blade.
She feels the effects particularly in her sleep, receiving visions of where the blade
currently is and finding herself sleepwalking in that direction, with both of these potential
benefits becoming more erratic and frequent as the group grows closer to their goal.
They follow the rumours all the way back to Athens, where they find Sophitia, possessed
by Soul Edge and trying to abscond with her children, as Soul Edge twists her mind to
make her believe that only she and her blade can keep her children safe, even wounding
Rothion in her attempt.
Joined here by their brother Lucius, finally bringing him into the story, Cassandra gives
chase to Sophitia, culminating in a clash between the two sisters, where Cassandra ultimately
wins, freeing Sophitia from the evil sword's hold.
She probably wields Soul Calibur which, despite needing it to survive his wounds from III,
Siegfried could willingly give up to Cassandra so she can save her sister.
This would give Siegfried's own arc an actual conclusion, instead of just having him go
off to start up his old Berserk-esque mercenary band again, and randomly deciding to give
Soul Calibur to Patroklos because he can sense his main character status.
Tira either takes up Soul Edge and acts as the final boss that the sisters unite to defeat,
or Sophita had retained enough of herself until now to kill Tira herself and take her
soul for Soul Edge.
Either way, Sophitia and Cassandra use Soul Calibur to purify Sophitia's kids and it's
the two sisters who plunge Soul Calibur into Soul Edge to destroy it, rather than the two
kids.
Then, they return home to live happily, until a possible sequel, where a new threat emerges.
Maybe this threat is Soul Calibur itself, since both IV and V did start to explore the
idea of the two swords being Order and Chaos rather than Good and Evil, before unceremoniously
having both swords destroyed by the twins in V's climax, leaving much of that potential
plotline unexplored.
This approach would capitalise on the compelling story arc of Sophitia and her family, give
a proper conclusion to the almost as good Siegfried redemption arc, and leave room to
explore the idea of an evil Soul Calibur in a sequel.
And you wouldn't even need to drop 75% of the cast to do it.
As I said before, SoulCalibur VI looks to be a reboot of the storyline going back to
around SoulCalibur I. Here's hoping Cassandra returns and they do the Alexandra's storyline
properly this time.
Or, you know, they could drop most of the actually good characters and keep the totally
irrelevant Cervantes and Mitsurugi around instead.
That works too, I guess!
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Wait, if Eurydice Shrine is up in the mountains, why is Sophitia never cold?