Story
The main characters of Elite Beat Agents are members of a fictional government agency responsible for helping those in need. When someone facing a crisis reaches their breaking point and cries out for help, Commander Kahn dispatches the agents to help them succeed. The agents never assist the person directly, but encourage the person through their dancing, motivating the people they assist to overcome various obstacles. The person's degree of success depends on the accuracy of the Agents' dance moves, as demonstrated by multiple endings for each story.
Like Ouendan, the tone of the stories told in Agents is primarily humorous. The individual stories are not linked by an overarching narrative; though some characters take part in multiple stories, there are unique protagonists for each song. Although the first few stage scenarios are fairly mundane, such as helping a babysitter control a trio of rowdy children while trying to ask a potential boyfriend to go steady, they progressively become more fantastic. For example, one of the last stages is about a washed-up professional baseball player who rescues one of his young fans from, and subsequently battles with baseball equipment and techniques, a fire-breathing golem in a theme park. The one notable difference to this trend in the game is the stage "A Christmas Gift", in which the agents assist a young girl in reuniting with the spirit of her deceased father. This shift in tone is further marked by the game's "clap" gameplay sound effect being replaced with more subtle chimes accompanying the stage song, "You're the Inspiration".
Also in contrast, the final levels in the game involve most of the characters previously helped by the Elite Beat Agents joining together to help eradicate a music-hating race of aliens, the Rhombulans (a portmanteau of rhombus and Romulan), that have invaded Earth. When the Agents are seemingly turned to stone while shielding the rest of the humans, the crowd's combined determination allows them to break free and defeat the remaining Rhombulan troops. A blast of spirit energy is released from the crowd, destroying the aliens' leader and saving the planet.
Several of the levels in Agents are thematically similar to those found in Ouendan; for instance, a level taking place inside the human body, and a tearjerker level. In addition, some of the story characters from Ouendan have cameo appearances in Agents. In the final two stages, as in Ouendan, all of the characters in the game reappear.
Read more about this topic: Elite Beat Agents
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“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Even such is Time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust,
Who in the dark and silent grave
When we have wandered all our ways
Shuts up the story of our days.
And from which earth, and grave, and dust,
The Lord shall raise me up I trust.”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618)