She starts screwing them over in favor of the bracers, first for Arios. Then she works hard to belittle them in the news, to manipulate public opinion.
And then indeed, they work together, and Lloyd is not happy about that but she has intel. Obtained from dubious sources, that she no doubt would be able to use to clean up the mafia, but the news are more important.
And that's a good reflection of modern day: she supports the status quo early on, manipulate the population, then switch to the heroes of the story when it's convenient for her image while still focusing on her news... and her fantasy Pulitzer price.
She's in for herself.
Lying is no biggie in the beginning, she has all the reasons to be frustrated, but her actions are certainly not for the truth. Hell, she gets censored when the news are not palpable to the elites... and had no issues keeping on because her career is at stake. And her paper is very important after all, can't let that close down.
She's a complete hypocrite, like pretty much everyone in this game.
Anything the heroes do is used to make others look good, but they never support them, and will actively try to stop them when they can.
It's the oh-so-topical brand awareness applied to an entire state apparatus. And the press, we all know what's going on with it even under literal fire. Can't cross a line, keep your job, keep it fair and balanced, protect the government.
The point is not that they can't go to the auction, it's that they've been ordered not to, multiple times.
Of course finding KeA is a crime the mafia committed, I'll come to that after.
But if you're a police officer, off duty, against orders, and you go waltzing in a well known den of criminal activity... you'd better know what you do. It's not like they can't just say "we're cops you're all under arrest". They can, they'd be right in general.
However, they're not allowed for a reason that proves correct: there's plenty of ministers and foreign dignitaries doing shady stuff: the Crossbell government do not want them discovered by the public (they love the auction, it brings them plenty of dirty money) and even less hurt.
When they start the shoot out, which is bad for the mafia... but it's the fucking mafia, a lot of VIPs are in danger.
Of course it's a videogame, so they know the important people to begin with and nothing bad happens.
But in a real life situation, waltzing on human trafficking while an investigation was going on when told not to interfere, then shooting your way out while I dunno, a Russian minister is hanging out with the chairman of the CCP's largest shell company... and they both die hit by stray bullets?
Yeah.
Morally, I agree with them.
But they are cops.
Legality and politics are VERY different. On top of blowing up the ongoing investigation, and probably putting the Crossbellian spies in quite a pickle, there's no way they'd get out unscathed by their own government. They'd probably have a mysterious accident falling from the fifteenth floor while discharging their shotguns in their backs.
As far as the foreign countries are concerned, Crossbell cannot be trusted, their police force has gone wild (and later with the drugs... the military too), their citizens and ambassadors are threatened.
This is not a moment where you can say "but we saw human trafficking and it's a crime".
Plus KeA was kidnapped (as far as they understand), that's bad of course.
But all the over activities are fine, as they say, even the Bracers would intervene in front of that. It's a good thing. But that also means that all the rest is okay as long as it doesn't get too well known or... make them lose money I guess?
Racketeering is fine, bribery and arson is whatever, plus I'm suuuure the mafia with unlimited would never kill and kidnap anyone else. We have a legendary assassin in the game, but it's really the supposed kidnapping of one girl that is the thing that they should never do. Nothing really bad happened before.
Riiight.
The police and the Bracers are insane hypocrites. Again.
Crime is a-okay as long as it's doesn't interfere with their activities and their money making schemes. Hell, considering all that happens, Bracers being bodyguards against criminals but doing nothing to crush them, instead focusing on desperate rabble trying to survive... the entire political game smells fishy when you combine modern day culture and fantasy tropes of intercontinental guilds.
The entire segment is absolutely ridiculous and is the main reason why making the subject of the game the fucking cops was a bad idea.
Law and order are completely irrelevant, consequences are hilariously absent in the game.
If they were bracers, that would be fine. Plausible deniability and all.
Cops, absolutely not. If they don't intend to use that element in any other way than "bracers but-not-really and we don't follow orders we're young lol", they should not have. The political impact on the lore is staggering, and would bring Crossbell's destruction.
JRPG tropes are a deal breaker if you want a realistic world.
I like the lore in general, but increasingly less so the modern anime tropes infesting the series.
I like the game (well not the gameplay, combat and backtracking is crap).
Just not at all the heroes, and everything that they did. Because as far as the real world is concerned, that would be Hong Kong giving the CCP the perfect reason to just steam roll them. In the game everything goes on as if it was normal, but after the police and the military going nuts, it's pretty unlikely that "no we didn't want to stop your illegal activities, but there was a green haired kid to save plus a cult drugged our armed forces so it wasn't our fault we're in control now kthx" would be effective.
Shortened, the later part of the game is tremendously stupid and destroys any semblance of political parallels.
There's two very different games at play in Zero (and it gets worse from here).
And it just doesn't work.
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