Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep

[Gollgagh]

this is fucking pretty game btw

[Darklink42]

Dammit.

For every question this game answers, it's giving me three more to ask. There are as many loose ends to tie up as there was before, but I've found myself chanting "WTF" near constantly as I discover new elements of the final story. Please do not reveal the secret ending, as I haven't gotten to that yet.

The absolute biggest question for me right now is:

[spoilers]

What the hell happened to Aqua. I know she's in the realm of darkness, but she never showed up in Sora's story, and assuming that means she hadn't yet escaped, she'd have been in the realm of darkness for some ten+ years with no trace.

And another thing: Why did Terra get so screwed over? Don't get me wrong, I love that the game doesn't give us the cheesy "everybody wins" scenario, but Terra gets pretty much the complete shaft all the way around. Not only is his body taken, but it really seems like despite all that his friends tried to do for him, Xehanort literally erased every part of Terra. How come he never gets even a sliver of hope? Even Riku got more hope than that, and I would argue that Riku wasn't tested nearly as much as Terra was.

[Bleck]

Answers to both those questions:

1) Aqua has just been in the Realm of Darkness. It is a very large place. It is unlikely that anyone would find her there if they were not looking specifically for her. The secret ending takes place after KH2, and she's still there.

2) Terra wasn't completely screwed over - it's implied that the hearts of the original Xehanort, Terra and Eraqus were all contained within the new Xehanort's body. Now as we know, the new Xehanort eventually splits into Ansem and Xemnas, so I'm not sure what happened to them, but it can't have just been an abrupt end. We'll probably see them in some way at some point again.