[Tales of Vesperia] My Impression on The Dragon Rider and How it's Still Changing 16+ Hours In

In Tales of Vesperia, Blastia is any artifact that uses the world's energy, (Aer,) to work. Blastia is the setting's version of functional magic, and basically anything imaginable can be accomplished using a Blastia designed for it. The main thing that protects towns from monsters in Vesperia's world is Blastia after all. It's also an ancient technology that can't completely be replicated by the modern times. The only way to obtain a new ancient core is by recovering it from the ruins.

One of the mysterious characters we meet relatively early in the game is a Dragon Rider who goes around towns destroying Blastia. The party bumps into this person a bunch of times, and interestingly, they always enter the stage as a netural third-party with the only goal of destroying a Blastia then flying away.

So, before the identity of this mysterious person was revealed I had a theory on where the story was going based on them. This theory is what I'm going to talk about in this article.

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Tales of Vesperia Spoliers Up to Barbos Boss Battle

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The Dragon Rider is one of the motivations that led to Rita sticking with the party. She wants to pursue them because she cares a lot about Blastia, and she can't forgive anyone who harms these artifacts. (I was actually surprised that she's the only one who treated this person as a problem considering how important Blastia is to the world's towns' safety.)

So, as one of the few antagonists of the early game. I assumed that The Dragon Rider would be the biggest threat as the game would go on. Sure, Yuri and Estelle didn't care about them now, but as Rita said, Blastia are important! Someone who destroys them for unknown reasons shouldn't be allowed to be free.

So my theory was that The Dragon Rider will be the main antagonist of the game, and I thought he must be that mysterious white hired guy from the opening. (Even though that white hired guy was shown without disguise at the start of Yuri's journey and had a different physique than Dragon Rider. Still, I was confident in my theory.)

I also theorized that they must have a legitimate reason for destroying Blastia. Maybe the Blastia they are targeting is harmful to the world, or a parallel world, (it's a Tales game and every Tales game I played before had more than a one world.) The party would sympathize with their reasons but ultimately decide that they must be stopped anyway, leading to an epic fight at the end!

Then the decisive battle with Barbos happened. In the midst of the fighting, Yuri had to partner with the Dragon Rider to pursue the Barbos. It turns out that the Dragon Rider is a "she" and she was in the opening as a party member! I didn't expect that, and in retrospect, her introduction is brilliant!

Judith joins the party to beat Barbos, and stays with them after that. Only Yuri knows her identity, (Rita has her doubts,) but she didn't reveal her motivations even to him. Her Dragon is a sentient being and is her firend. She also seems to know something about a mysterious being who's targeting humans for some reason, and my new theory is that it's related where the story is going toward from now on!

Anyway~

While my theory was debunked this early in the game, I still think I got some things right. Now that I know the Dragon Rider is a party member, I'm sure she has a legitimate reason for doing what she does. (Even if her interactions with the party makes her more mysterious than when she was an antagonist.) Anyway, Please don't spoil on me in comments, I'm still only 16 hours in the game. I'm writing this to put it in the record more than for it to be a full fledged article.

So, what do you think about my theory?

If you're commenting a spoiler please mention so at the start of the comment,
so I only read it after I finish the game!

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All images are screenshots of Tales of Vesperia, taken by me!