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[10thingsihateaboutbenchu]

➺ PLAYER

Name: Sam
Age: 30
Preferred Contact Method: journal PM preferred, but estamir is also fine.
Current Characters: none

➺ CHARACTER

Character Name: Guo Jia
Character Age: No canon number is given, but I'd estimate him to be portrayed as about mid-twenties. His career in-game lasts about ten years, which means given canon points he ought to be mid/late thirties, but DW is weird and doesn't show anybody aging even when decades of time have explicitly passed, so it may be simpler to just call him "ambiguously adult" and leave it at that.

Canon: Dynasty Warriors. (Specifically: the Wei historical route in DW8/8XL. DW basically retells the same story with small variations in each installment, that story being an adaptation of the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms - so, like many DW players, while my chosen installment of the series is my primary source, I do take details from the rest of the series and from the novel where they do not conflict with DW8.)

Canon Point: Directly following the battle of Mt. Bailang.

History: On Koei wiki; while DW canon doesn't adhere strictly to the novel it's based on, there's a summary of his part in the novel here as well.

Personality: Cao Cao has said that Guo Jia is a brilliant advisor and the backbone of his ambition. Chen Qun has said that Guo Jia's wanton behavior is intolerable and he ought to exercise more restraint.

Both of these men are absolutely correct.

"Battles, much like life, are just passing moments that are gone before you know it. That is why we must enjoy each to the fullest."

The image Guo Jia projects to the world at large is composed, easygoing, and gentlemanly; he's usually seen with a quiet smile on his face, he rarely seems stressed out, and even his expressions of anger or surprise (rare though they tend to be) are rather collected. He doesn't fly off the handle, and things just don't seem to get to him much. One of the quickest things to notice about him is that he makes a point of enjoying life, even in potentially dire situations; much of his battle dialogue frames the situation in terms of having fun (whether that's his fun, or observations that the enemy is having a bit too much fun, and maybe he ought to crash the party), and even before battles where the odds are heavily stacked against his side, he remains as easygoing as ever.

Part of this stems from a natural confidence in his own talents, although said confidence rarely crosses the line into outright arrogance. While Guo Jia is ever calm and resolute in his belief that he can turn a bad situation around and make it work to his side's advantage, he doesn't take it for granted. In losing situations, he's often seen to simply admit that he underestimated his foe, where other strategists in the series go "I TOTALLY MEANT TO DO THAT" or wonder how on earth anyone managed to outsmart them. He takes his defeats with grace, when they occur - which is rarely, and he's never demanding or rude of the forces at his disposal - he tends to politely request generals' participation in his strategies rather than barking orders like a drill sergeant. True genius speaks for itself, and he doesn't put on airs or make a point of posturing.

Part of this stems from the fact that he is extremely conscious of his own mortality. He dies of illness early in the story, and is noticeably one of the younger characters in the Wei faction. The game never outright confirms what his illness is meant to be and his symptoms are vague (chest pains and a couple bouts of either dizziness or exhaustion causing him to stumble), but it is fairly clear that he knows something is wrong and he knows his time is limited - he simply believes in making the most of it rather than letting it eat at him. It's possible to have a character romance him in Ambition Mode (a different game mode that operates completely independent of the story proper), and he'll be more blunt about it there than he is anywhere in the story itself: "I don't have very long left. This is perhaps the first time I've ever regretted that fact."

For the most part, though, he hides it from everyone - even after collapsing on one of the two people he's closest to in canon, he brushes it off with a simple "sorry, I've been thinking too hard" and changes the subject. It's happening, it's inevitable, and he doesn't see any reason in wasting his time fretting about it or getting anyone else fretting about it, so he turns his attention to what's important - the tasks in front of him, and the things he enjoys, not necessarily in that order. (Usually in that order, though. He's at least diligent enough to propose that the drinking come out in celebration after the battle.)

(The things he enjoys: wine, women, and partying, mostly. His inclinations for the second have been significantly toned down in DW8; his flirtation was overplayed to the point of being kind of a tired joke in some of his other appearances, but DW8 largely shelves it aside from the occasional allusion in throwaway dialogue in order to focus on the rest of his personality.)

His personal motivations aren't heavily delved into beyond his desire to enjoy what time he has remaining - i.e. canon is not really explicit about why he doesn't go party it up 24/7 as opposed to working his partying around fighting in a war, but he expresses a deep personal loyalty to Cao Cao, and additionally, one can infer from his alignment with the Wei kingdom what his general motivation in the war is: the Wei officers are tied by both a desire to bring an end to the chaos, and by their belief that pragmatism is the only way to accomplish it. Sometimes that means taking harsh action, but they accept that a ruler who tries to adhere to perfect moral conduct can't get things done and can't keep things in line, and so Wei is willing to accept less than ideal means as a justification for the greater good.

Cao Cao, their leader, is the perfect embodiment of this philosophy, and also Guo Jia's closest canon relationship; they're good friends beyond simply being lord and officer, they enjoy many of the same things (read: wine, women), and Cao Cao has said that Guo Jia understands his thinking best. It's quite possibly this relationship that truly makes Guo Jia stand out among the Wei officers; he's not the only gifted strategist in their ranks, but he's the one who has Cao Cao's ear and the one who has the best success at talking him down from the ill-advised paths and steering him towards the solid course. (In the novel, Cao Cao laments after his terrible defeat at Chibi that it would never have happened if Guo Jia were still alive. DW8 runs with this and gives players the chance to take an alternate story path wherein Guo Jia survives to see Chibi, tears the enemy coalition's strategy to pieces, and Wei goes on to win the war even more decisively than in the normal story path.)

His other close relationship from canon is with Jia Xu, a fellow strategist who is initially an enemy but joins Wei after Cao Cao defeats his previous master; while Guo Jia is initially somewhat suspicious of him (but always polite, regardless), he warms up to him once he finds him trustworthy, and the two share a brief but stellar record of victories in the battles they plan together before Guo Jia's death - where, in his final words, he tells Jia Xu to look after their lord. His friendship with Jia Xu demonstrates something of a convenient bullet-point summary of his character traits - always composed, polite even to enemies, always considering the angles, but willing to revise his opinions based on new information and change his mind when he's proven wrong.

(Okay, add one more ticky box Jia Xu missed for "getting drunk and partying.")

Power & Abilities: Not a power per se, but as it's what he's known for, I feel obligated to begin with his mind. Guo Jia is one of the prominent strategists of his canon, and he has a talent for grasping the overall picture on a battlefield and knowing where and how to push to turn the tide in his side's favor.

Combat in Dynasty Warriors is built around the principle of "it's like a normal battlefield, except generals can casually ignore certain laws of physics and are badass enough to plow through a thousand people singlehandedly." Characters fight primarily by smacking enemies around with weapons ranging from the normal to the...slightly less normal, and have access to a few flashy "limit break" type attacks, as well as a rage gauge that lets them briefly power up further and ignore damage.

Like every other character, Guo Jia is able to equip any of the eighty-some weapons in the game freely, so he's well grounded in a variety of fighting styles. The weapons are divided into four types, which every character has proficiency ratings in (granting attack bonuses and access to an extra action at max rating); his highest rating is dash-type weapons, generally those focused on speed.

And then each character has an EX weapon - their weapon of choice, and one that gives them a couple of special attacks that no other character can access when using it, regardless of proficiency. Guo Jia's is the orb and scepter, which perhaps ought to be called the "glorified magic pool cue." The moveset consists of smacking enemies around with the cue, conjuring balls from midair, and hitting those into enemies. I'm laughably bad at describing this succinctly, but if I can offer a video reference, that may help!

(I'm not entirely certain how the orb works into powercaps on creating things from nothing, but given that they don't last long and constantly have to be resummoned in battle, I would lean towards calling it some kind of temporarily solid energy projection, more than actually making a new object. It doesn't persist past a few minutes/getting smacked into an opponent, so I would assume it's still okay?)

Inventory: Just his weapon - or rather, the scepter, since the orbs are summoned only in the midst of attacks. Aside from that, it's just the clothes on his back.

Game Plan: The Wei forces, per Guo Jia's canon, tend to take a pragmatic view towards governance - that they're willing to do the sometimes unpleasant things necessary to maintain power, but that the point of having power is to provide stability to the populace and prevent the reign of chaos. As such, he would be strongly inclined to place his loyalties with the empire (as much as he can be loyal to anyone who isn't Cao Cao, that is). The Insurgents are likely to get a similar view to that he takes on his lord's nemesis, Liu Bei - that the devotion to their cause is commendable but foolish, destructive, and to the overall detriment of the population. He's unlikely to be anything but an Asset, albeit one who keeps his eyes and ears open and isn't blind to the faults or weak points of the empire - it'll take a lot for whatever flaws he sees in the empire to shift his loyalties in the other direction, however, because the Insurgent cause goes so directly against what he's fought for.

➺ LINK TO SAMPLES

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