Matthew

Matthew (ムート Mut) is the main playable character of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. He is the son of Isaac and Jennaand is a Venus Adept like his father. He was first revealed for the game alongside his party members Karis and Tyrell.

=As a playable character= Throughout all of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, the player controls Matthew in the game's overworld and field-style environments, and he initiates conversations with non-player characters and searches aspects of the environment. He is the party leader in Dark Dawn, meaning that he leads a group of Adept companions through the game's world, and he is the only character among them who is visible as the player controls him. Matthew is depicted as a silent protagonist and his companions that appear in cut-scenes engage in conversations for him. The E3 2010 floor demo footage showed him in a battle using a 3D rendition of the Thorn Psynergy series.

An aspect of Matthew's role as party leader is his inherent knowledge of two particular Utility Psynergy spells: Move, the ability to remotely move an object in any one of the four compass directions, and Retreat, the ability to instantaneously teleport himself and everyone in his party out of almost any point in a dungeon-style location to that location's entrance point. Matthew's father and uncle know these as well. As of Dark Dawn, the team leader also learns Growth, but not the series.

In the battle mode at the E3 2010 floor demo, Matthew had the Venus Djinn Flint and Steel Set onto him, and his Psynergy consisted of Ragnarok, Quake and Earthquake, Spire, Cure and Cure Well, and Growth.

Matthew starts out at level 1, and will have a Short Sword, Cotton Shirt, Padded Gloves, and Leather Cap as his starting equipment.

Classes
Matthew has the following classes available to him:


 * Mono-Elemental: Squire class series
 * Dual-Elemental (Full): Brute class series, Apprentice class series, Swordsman (Venus) class series
 * Dual-Elemental (Partial): Seer (Jupiter) class series, Seer (Mercury) class series
 * Tri-Elemental (Full): Dragoon class series, Ninja class series, Samurai class series
 * Tri-Elemental (Partial): Medium class series

Statistical comparison
Matthew can be easily considered Isaac's clone in terms of statistics. He has high HP (third highest), the highest attack power, average defense, good agility (ranking him as the fourth-fastest character in Dark Dawn behind Karis, Himi, and Sveta), and three Luck points {which he also shares with Sveta}, but he shares a below-average PP pool with his fellow warrior Venus Adepts.

Compared to his fellow Venus Adept Himi, Matthew has much higher HP, their attack power is inverse (he has the highest whereas Himi has the lowest), but much less PP and agility, and two less luck points.

Later in the game, Matthew becomes the party's primary powerhouse fighter, because of his ability to handle the Sol Blade, an ability he shares with his father, Isaac and his uncle, Felix.

Personality
Even though he has almost no dialogue, it is implied in multiple cases that he does in fact talk, and his absence of word bubbles merely helps the player see the game from his perspective, by leaving his personality ambiguous. This way, his personality can adopt that of the players and it can seem like he really is the player. This is further aided with the introduction of Emotion Icons into Dark Dawn. These allow the player to choose Matthew's reaction to certain situations, allowing him to show a positive, optimistic, negative or angry expression.

Even though the player has control over Matthew's reactions, it can still be assumed that he is a kind person, as it is never implied that he says anything that truly upsets anyone. It is also implied that, despite his young age, he is quite observant, rational, and coolheaded even in dire situations.

=Biography= Matthew was born to Isaac and Jenna roughly fourteen years after the Golden Sun event. He would be raised in the cabin Isaac built on the Goma Plateau, which was upheaved as one of the many effects of the Golden Sun event. He would grow to resemble his father greatly, and had inherited Isaac's skills as a Venus Adept; however, he also inherited his mother's bright and determined spirit, and became a person of few words but strong convictions. He has been lifelong friends with the son of Garet, Tyrell, despite the latter's reputation for being a troublemaker. As a son of the infamous Warriors of Vale that set off the Golden Sun event, Matthew has been raised by his father in hopes of training him to take up Isaac's position as a watcher over the world of Weyard.

Rescuing Tyrell
When he is sixteen years of age, Matthew accompanies Isaac in a routine trip to nearby Patcher's Place, a settlement for refugees of Isaac's hometown Vale, which was destroyed thirty years before. Visiting the cabin today is Karis, the daughter of Ivan, who has brought over Ivan's invention, a hang glider-like device named the Soarwing; this is something that Isaac and Garet need in order to better accomplish their duties, which are to monitor the area around what remains of Sol Sanctum and keep watch on occurrences of a phenomenon named Psynergy Vortexes. Matthew and Isaac return from their journey just in time to find that Tyrell has taken the soarwing and is about to fly with it, immaturely stating that he wants to get people to take him seriously. Despite Matthew and the others' warnings that he won't be able to fly it safely without proper training, Tyrell jumps off, and sure enough, he has to land at a distant peak and wait for his friends to rescue him.

Isaac and Garet have to venture out to rescue Tyrell from where he ended up, and Matthew and Karis willingly agree with Isaac that they should come along too; while Garet thinks they are far too young and will only be a burden and be potentially put in danger, Isaac states that the adults have been training their children to take up the responsibility to look after the world as Adepts. Therefore, Isaac guides Matthew and Karis down the trail through a cave at Goma Plateau, then through the evil forest Tanglewood, and finally through the mine, where Matthew gets his first hands-on experience with the dangers of fighting the wild monsters and using Psynergy and Djinn to clear obstacles. The four reach Tyrell only after fighting a giant plant monster, and while they are all glad to see he survived, he broke the soarwing.

His father's quest
Back at Isaac's cabin, Isaac and Garet explain to the three young Adepts that the soarwing needs to be repaired. The critical material needed to rebuild it is the feather of a Mountain Roc, a rare and mammoth-sized bird that roosts at the opposite end of the continent, in the country of Morgal. The original quest Isaac and Garet took to obtain the previous feather was long and difficult because Angara had radically changed, and because they need to stay behind to monitor Mount Aleph and study the aftereffects of the Golden Sun effect with Ivan, Isaac tasks Matthew, Tyrell, and Karis to go on the same long journey to retrieve a Mountain Roc feather. This comes across as abrupt, but to Isaac that is the point: thirty years beforehand, Isaac and Garet were catapulted into their own quest when they met Kraden, and a tough quest such as this is the perfect rite of passage for Matthew and his friends to undergo as Adepts. Isaac arranges for Matthew and his friends to meet Kraden at nearby Carver's Camp, where the wizened scholar can help the young Adepts in all matters involving charting a course into the unknown. Despite having something so big set upon them so suddenly, all three of the young Adepts are eager to go on this adventure; Isaac is conspicuously absent while Garet sees Matthew, Tyrell, and Karis off, though.

Matthew leads his and his friends' quest across western Angara until they arrive at Carver's Camp, where they are pointed to desert ruins to the southeast where Kraden had gone, the Konpa Ruins. When they reach it and explore it, ancient mechanisms suddenly imbue Matthew with the knowledge to read the ancient language of glyphs, which allows him to read tablets that provide hints and instructions to solving the dungeon's riddles. Matthew soon reaches Konpa's cavernous depths, which contains a forking path that leads north to the Bilibin region of Angara and south to the Ei-Jei region. There, he finds Kraden and his two pupils, the Mercury Adepts Rief and Nowell - the son and daughter of Mia, respectively - observing a large Psynergy Vortex inside.

Kraden and his pupils do not have much time to exchange pleasantries with Matthew, for they are suddenly taunted by two menacing men from above: a foreign-looking swordsman introduced as Blados, and a mask-wearing Mercury Adept who uses the name Arcanus as an alias, along with strange soldiers loyal to them. After verifying that Matthew has the ability to read ancient glyphs, Arcanus and Blados show that they have taken Rief hostage, and use this to split Kraden and Nowell from the others by having them take the north path to Bilibin, while Matthew and his friends must exit out the south end. Kraden tells Matthew that he will be waiting for Matthew at Belinsk, the capital of Morgal at the northeast part of Angara, before they resume the quest to find the Mountain Roc feather, and that Matthew will have to find a way to cross north over the Khiren Mountains separating Angara into northern and southern halves. As Matthew and his friends leave the south exit, Blados seals the exit off behind Matthew and explains that he has been granted orders to let Matthew live. Rief is let go and joins Matthew, which clearly demonstrates that Blados and his ilk had intended for Matthew to be "trapped" in the south portion of the continent for whatever reason.

Sidetracked
With Matthew's quest for a feather having been enormously sidetracked by a group of villainous Adepts, he and his party of Adepts, who Rief has newly joined, explore the Ei-Jei region and soon come to learn of a machine in the mountain town of Passaj that can create a "cloud passage" north into Morgal. They find out that it is created by the town's slumbering Alchemy Forge, and their new objective to turn it on and make use of it turns Matthew's quest into a thorough exploration of Ei-Jei and all of its towns, cultures, and riddle-filled ruins. Over the course of this quest, his party is joined by the Mercury Adept prince of the kingdom of Ayuthay, Amiti, and Matthew and his friends have their first encounter with Blados' compatriot, Chalis, while dealing with the military-minded monarch of Kaocho, who wants Adepts like Matthew to bolster his war efforts. Eventually, Matthew finally gets the Alchemy Forge to work the way his party wants, and the cloud passage is successfully formed, allowing Matthew and his four friends to cross over north into the Khiren Glacier within the mountains.

As they cross through the glacier and pass through into the Morgal region of Angara, Matthew has his first encounter with Ryu Kou, the prince of the Sana region in eastern Angara, who hopes to extract his younger sister Hou Ju from the castle in Belinsk. The king of the hybrid beastman nation of Morgal, Volechek, has captured her and slated her for execution apparently because she is of the royal family of the nation that subjected Morgal to slavery over ten long years. During their travels into Morgal, Matthew and his friends befriend a female beastman and Jupiter Adept named Sveta, who is sympathetic to Hou Ju's plight and has a personal reason for wanting to assist the effort to infiltrate Belinsk Castle, and she eventually leaves the party with instructions on how to reunite with her in the ancient ruins under Belinsk that connect into Belinsk Castle from underneath, once they have finished their business with getting the feather of the Mountain Roc that roosts to the northeast.

While Matthew's group passes through Kolima Forest on their way to the Mountain Roc, they meet the Waelda known as Tret and Laurel and get critical information on both the Mountain Roc and the ruins under Belinsk, which they would need to know in order to help in the rescue of both Hou Ju and another captive of Volechek's, the pirate Eoleo. During this, they learn that the Mountain Roc is also a natural source of a jewel-like power source called a Magma Orb, and that there is a machine deep in Belinsk Ruins called the Alchemy Dynamo which may be powered on to unseal something that would be dreadful. Matthew and his friends promise Laurel not to turn on the Alchemy Dynamo. As Matthew's party leaves for talon peak, they are rejoined by Ryu Kou, who Sveta instructed to accompany and assist Matthew in his quest for the Mountain Roc's feather so that they could all later go into Belinsk Ruins together to address all of their respective objectives.

Once Matthew's party reaches and attacks the Mountain Roc for the feather, they suddenly find that Blados and Chalis have been waiting for them, and it is made apparent that Volechek has conspired with these Adepts to set this trap for both Matthew and Ryu Kou. The two manipulators demand that the group kills the Mountain Roc for its Magma Orb and use it to power on the Alchemy Dynamo in Belinsk, unless Ryu Kou wants Volechek to execute Hou Ju. After the pair leave and Matthew's party slays the mountain roc, Ryu Kou angrily takes the Magma Orb for himself and departs for Belinsk Ruins himself because of how Matthew's promise to Laurel not to turn on the Alchemy Dynamo would mean the death of Ryu Kou's blameless sister.

Belinsk Ruins
Matthew and his group soon arrive in Belinsk Ruins to meet back up with Sveta, and by then they have found out that Sveta is the wayward sister of King Volechek and that Blados, Chalis, and Arcanus are the agents of a sinister, military-focused nation named Tuaparang. Soon after, Ryu Kou happens upon Matthew again and apologizes for his outburst earlier, and everyone agrees to resume pressing forward. However, both the path back outside and the path into Belinsk Castle from underneath have been made to disappear, leaving them unable to do anything other than proceed downward to where the Alchemy Dynamo is located, and everyone understands that Tuaparang is manipulating them all into turning the machine on like they had explained earlier. This machine turns out to be the seal on an underground structure called Luna Tower.

All of a sudden, Arcanus, Blados, and Chalis appear once again, and while Blados and Chalis attack Matthew and his group to show them not to defy Tuaparang in the future, Arcanus brings Ryu Kou to the core's controls and emotionally manipulates Ryu Kou into inserting the Magma Orb and turning on the Alchemy Dynamo. Matthew's party manages to defeat Blados and Chalis in battle, but Arcanus warps away with them in victory nonetheless, while Luna Tower extends itself out of the ground behind Belinsk. Matthew and Sveta's group and Ryu Kou exit out of the tower back into Belinsk, not yet aware of the full magnitude of what has been unleashed.

Matthew's group is allowed into Belinsk Castle to free both Hou Ju and Eoleo from their cells, a token of King Volechek's gratitude for them helping him activate "his" tower. Volechek believes that Luna Tower is a weapon of the ancients that he can use to subjugate Sana before they can return Belinsk to slavery. Kraden suddenly appears, however, and brings dire news about the true nature of Luna Tower, whose true name is Eclipse Tower: Volechek was deceived by the Tuaparang into thinking of this as a weapon in the sense of being something he can use, when in fact it will cause a calamity that not everyone at Belinsk may survive.

Sure enough, it happens: Sol rises up to assume an oddly stationary position behind Luna, and through the resultant eclipse the tower siphons the light ordinarily being given to the world and projects and maintains a colossal semisphere of dark energy that stretches across much of Angara, in a phenomenon that would come to be known as the Grave Eclipse. Shadow monsters start manifesting and attack and kill everyone in sight, and just as Ryu Kou and Hou Ju leave Belinsk on a ship in a hurry, Matthew and Sveta's party find Eoleo's pirate ship and use it to sail away from the Eclipse as fast as possible. While they sail, however, Volechek spiritually communicates with Matthew's group to admit he was used by the Tuaparang and made a tragic mistake that may have destroyed his own kingdom. After asking Sveta's forgiveness, Volechek throws the group something he stole from Blados, a Blue Orb, in the hopes that Matthew's party may some how be able to use it as a weapon against the Tuaparang. Volechek seems to meet his fate following this.

Escaping the Grave Eclipse
Having barely escaped from a calamity that they were manipulated into playing a role in causing, Matthew, Kraden, and their party resolve to start moving for themselves and figure out for themselves what they should do. They first try to gather information about the Grave Eclipse by visiting a nearby island that is partially in the shadow of the Grave Eclipse, Harun Island. There, they learn from village storyteller Ikan that it was prophesied that warriors would gather at the island's Warrior's Hill and obtain a treasure that would guide them toward combating the Grave Eclipse should the Eclipse have been set loose again like it had once been in the ancient past. Matthew solves the riddles in the dungeon at Warrior's Hill and finds a strange rock-like object, which they do not know how to use yet.

The next island the group reaches is Nihan, the location of Yamata City. When they meet with its king Susa, they find that his daughter, the young seer Himi, had fallen into a strange, deep sleep once the Grave Eclipse began. Mysteriously, the rock from Warrior's Hill suddenly imprints itself into Himi's forehead, and she wakes up and acts as a medium through which ancient spirit voices attached to the rock convey to the warriors what they must do in order to stop the Grave Eclipse. They learn that at the highest peak of the mountain range dividing Angara in half is a light-based apparatus named the Apollo Lens, which has the capacity to fire a destructive beam of light and was originally designed to put an end to the Grave Eclipse by surging light into Eclipse Tower. Power to the Apollo Lens was in fact set up when Matthew and his party activated the Alchemy Forge in Passaj, but in order to remove the Lens' lock, they will need to collect all five pieces of darkness-aligned combat gear named the Umbra Gear, scattered in secret locations across Angara and the upper half of the Great Eastern Sea. An ancient map to the locations of these items should be in the possession of Sana. Himi joins Matthew's party as a Venus Adept, and Matthew sails west to Tonfon, the capital of Sana, to begin his search.

While in meeting with Sana's emperor, Unan, the uncle of Ryu Kou and Hou Ju, Matthew's party finds one piece of the Umbra gear, but the map to all the rest is nowhere to be found, and it is believed Ryu Kou has the map, wherever he is. Matthew finds a means with which to pinpoint Ryu Kou's location, and his group sails northwest and find him and Hou Ju stranded in the ice floes north of Angara. They obtain his map and bring him and Hou Ju back home to their remaining family in Tonfon, earning Matthew the undying gratitude of Sana's royal family. Following this, Unan reveals that Arcanus approached him earlier and gave him the Red Orb which to give to Matthew, and Arcanus had told that the full set of three Colored Orbs, the Blue Orb of which Matthew already has, is what Matthew's party will need in order to both reach the Apollo Lens and make use of it in order to stop the Grave Eclipse. Matthew's party is perplexed, interpreting this as Arcanus apparently helping them bring an end to the cataclysms that the puppet master originally had a direct hand in triggering. Whatever the reasoning behind this, the group decides that they ought to accept this help and try to bring about an end to the deadly phenomenon Tuaparang originally set up. The Blue and Red Orbs allow them to find the Yellow Orb later on, and they also manage to obtain all the pieces of the Umbra Gear they need.

Apollo Sanctum
Matthew and his friends proceed on the long climb up the mountains in the center of Angara toward the Apollo Lens, and reach its holding place, the Apollo Sanctum. Deadly amounts of Light energy flowing through the sanctum necessitates having Sveta wear the Umbra Gear to shield the rest of the group in a protective shell of shadow, and Matthew uses the three colored orbs to set up the Apollo Lens, which resembles a giant cannon. But when Arcanus appears and thanks them for finishing setting up the weapon, Matthew and his friends exclaim in frustration. Kraden addresses Arcanus by his true name, Alex - revealing to Matthew and his party that he is the infamous Adept who had attempted to gain immortality by using Isaac and the Warriors of Vale's quest to trigger the Golden Sun event so that he could take its power for himself. The Warriors of Vale and their children had all believed throughout these thirty years that Alex perished that time. Alex tells the Adepts in advance that time is almost up, now.

A large, flying dropship of the Tuaparang flies in overhead and deposits Blados, Chalis, and the soldiers loyal to them onto Apollo Sanctum so as to take control of it for themselves and silence Matthew's party for good. It quickly comes out that Matthew was once again used for their enemies' purposes, and that the Grave Eclipse was enacted so that the Apollo Lens, the greatest weapon of the ancient world, could be set up and fall into the empire's possession, which was Tuaparang's goal from the start. Blados and Chalis ask Alex why he isn't killing Matthew's group yet; however, Alex explains that the ruler of Tuaparang, the High Empyror, ordered Alex personally to make sure the Apollo Lens was used according to the Empyror's own plan, and the ruler has apparently distrusted the duo.

Then, Alex mysteriously antagonizes Blados and Chalis by revealing to Matthew the guarded secret of Tuaparang being the scions of a self-styled Umbra Clan, of which Blados, Chalis, and their men are members and therefore are able to employ Darkness as an unusual form of Psynergy. He also indicates that because of that, the Umbra Clan Adepts here are not really Tuaparang soldiers, and want to take control of the Lens for themselves for the possible reason of using it against the Tuaparang Empire. Blados and Chalis are ready to eliminate Alex as well as Matthew to keep these and other things secret, and Alex instructs Matthew to throw the switch on the Apollo Lens and have it end the Grave Eclipse while the two Dark Adept commanders are focused on Alex. For a period of time, all three of them are out of sight, but before Matthew's party can do anything relevant with the time Alex gave them, Blados and Chalis reappear and show them a monstrous wolf-like pet of theirs, and then engage Matthew's group in battle in order to kill all of Matthew's company for good so that the superweapon will be under their control. However, Matthew and his friends manage to beat the three opponents back, and when Blados and Chalis execute a Dark Binging technique to merge with the hound monster to form a multi-armed monstrosity to annihilate the party with, Matthew and his friends engage it in a lengthy battle in which they manage to survive and fell it.

Matthew and his group have successfully managed to stop the Apollo Lens from being taken control of by those who would misuse it, and Blados and Chalis separate back from the hound monster and lie defeated. It comes out for Sveta that the monster was in fact Volechek, who Tuaparang had captured and twisted both physically and mentally with Dark Psynergy. However, when Matthew tries to climb onto the controls of the Lens itself to make it fire at the Eclipse Tower, the light energy flowing up there knocks him straight down. Sveta decides that she must go up there with the Umbra Gear and very potentially die in order to throw the switch, but she cannot do it alone and asks Matthew for help. Matthew agrees, and through some mysterious effect Matthew manages to will his vitality and spirit out of his body to empower Sveta's own. As Sveta climbs onto the controls, she and Matthew agree that they both will lose their lives in order to save many others across Angara.

Just then, the twisted Volechek regains his composure and part of his original identity, and leaps up onto the controls and sends Sveta back down and Matthew's spirit back into his body. It occurs to everybody that Volechek is sacrificing himself by using his own darkness-infused body to survive the light just long enough to fire the Apollo Lens, and Matthew and everyone else watch in sadness. The Lens' beam of light overloads Eclipse Tower, which expels the light straight into the sky and clears away all the darkness, ending the nightmare of the Grave Eclipse. What happens with Alex or Blados and Chalis after this point is not known. Matthew and the rest of his companions leave Apollo Sanctum, though it is unknown whether the Apollo Lens is not left in a state that allows the actual Tuaparang empire to make use of it.

At a later date, the surviving beastmen of Belinsk and Sveta, who has newly been crowned their queen, thank Matthew and his friends from the bottom of their hearts for saving them all. The Adepts say their farewells to each other as well before going their separate ways: while Eoleo, Himi, and Amiti return to their respective kingdoms and Rief resumes his travels with Kraden, Matthew begins the long journey back home with Tyrell and Karis to Isaac and Garet's cabin to give them the Mountain Roc feather. When they eventually return to the cabin, however, Matthew is nowhere near as relieved to be home as Karis and Tyrell; he points towards a colossal Psynergy Vortex that has manifested in the airspace near the cabin.

=Trivia=
 * When the party meets Briggs for the first time in Port Rago, Briggs mentions that Matthew has Jenna's eyes. At most, this can only be a metaphorical statement because Matthew and Jenna's eyes have little physical resemblance; Jenna has brown eyes, while Matthew's blue-greyish eyes are much closer to the light-blue eyes of his father, Isaac.
 * Both of Matthew's parents are known, whereas Tyrell, Karis, and Rief each have only one known parent.

=Quotes=
 * In Ayuthay:
 * Karis: (If Matthew responds with sadness to Paithos' question on whether he retrieved the Insight Glass from Barai Temple, something all of his friends already responded with cheer to) "Oh, Matthew is probably just trying to keep it under wraps! He's so mischievous sometimes!"


 * In Kolima Village:
 * Rief: (While Matthew's group is all lying down at the base of the Dream Tree, attempting to sleep so that they can investigate the tree's illness) "How did we arrive in this situation, exactly?"
 * Tyrell: "Matthew can be talked into anything-that's how."


 * In Kolima Forest:
 * Tret: "You. You are Isaac's son. What is your name?"
 * Matthew: "..."
 * Tret: "What was that? You'll have to speak up. I didn't catch your name."
 * Karis: "He's kind of quiet. His name is Matthew."


 * On Talon Peak:
 * Karis: (After Ryu Kou left) "I can't believe we lost the Slap Glove and the Magma Orb all at once... Makes it hard to figure out what our next move is, huh?" (If Matthew responds with anger) "Wow...graphic. But you're right-we can probably find Ryu Kou in Belinsk and get some payback."


 * Out at sea:
 * Kraden: "You've led well to this point, Matthew, so I see no reason to change that arrangement."
 * Tyrell: "Yeah, Matthew's gotten the job done so far!"
 * Rief: "I'll keep following you."
 * Amiti: "I would follow no other."
 * Eoleo: "You've got a good head on your shoulders, kid."


 * At the Apollo Lens:
 * Arcanus: (After Matthew's group finishes setting up the Apollo Lens, they exit out the door to find Arcanus waiting for them.) "Ah, good. Have you finished with the preparations?"
 * Matthew: "#*@%!"

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's encyclopedia entry for Matthew:

This young man is a promising Earth Adept, just like his father was when he started his adventures 30 years ago. And just like Isaac, who lead the famous Warriors of Vale, Matthew is a person of few words but strong convictions.

=In Fan Circles= Matthew is usually paired with either of the Jupiter Adepts in his party—Karis (Dawnshipping) or Sveta (Spiritshipping). Dawnshipping is popular because of Matthew and Karis's childhood relationship; Spiritshipping because of a scene near the end of the game.