As I have mentioned before, Star Ocean 3 is pretty much the first in its series to be blessed with a plot and cast that are not obscenely boring and generally unoriginal. It's not what I'd call a fantastic RPG, but it's solidly good.
A lot of people, however, dislike this game because of the plot's big twist. For those of you unaware of Star Ocean 3's plot and still reading this (shame on you, spoiling yourselves), basically, Fayt (protagonist) and his merry band of heroes must at one point go to the 4th Dimension, where the beings who created their universe (which is ours, just very far in the future--the first in the series was pretty much the boring, badly-done Japanese equivalent to a very long Star Trek Away Mission) reside and threaten their creations in booming voices with all manners of destruction, apocalypse, and so on. When Fayt and company get there, they find a world that is strange, high-tech, but ultimately very similar to their own. They then learn from a passing 4D geek that their entire universe is nothing but a computer program, a game that people here in 4D land play and/or watch when they're bored (which seems to be more often than not).
So there it is. The big plot twist is that our existence is nothing but a higher dimension's MMORPG. Overall, the game could have done a LOT more with exploring the characters' reactions and feelings on this knowledge--you only really get Fayt's perspective on it in any depth, that being "Whatever, we all count and are important anyway! Now let's go save things like a proper bunch of RPG kids, gang! Scooby-dooby-doo!" And the others just sort of follow his lead. But, besides my annoyance that they didn't develop the potential of this idea with their cast, I say kudos to SquareEnix for a pretty interesting idea. I mean, yeah, it's been done before a few times (most notably in The Matrix), but it's still quite innovative.
Generally, though, people really, really dislike it. It seems that the only thing anyone hates about the game is this single aspect of its plot. The complaints I see about it come in 2 varieties.
First off, people don't like this because they think that, were it true, it makes their lives meaningless. Now, I don't know exactly how they reached this conclusion if they actually have played the game. Maybe they just stopped playing once they reached 4D Space, and never picked the controller up again. Because, see, the game goes to great lengths to point out that, yes, everything DOES matter, whether or not it is "real." What's important isn't which universe is real and which isn't, or whether we're all play-things of gods or not. What's important is knowing and protecting what you care about, having faith in your ideals and yourself. If you can think and trust and defend your existence, then it's as genuine as any other's. And the game goes to great lengths to emphasize this--the entire happy ending of the game hinges on the idea that, regardless of its origin or intended purpose, our existence is self-justified and significant. It can't simply be erased by the higher being that created it; in fact, the will and belief of just one young man that his life and the universe in which it exists is true is enough to prove it so. Ultimately, it's a variation of the common Creation Vs. Creator/Man Vs. God/Child Vs. Parent idea that you see in a lot of RPGs (Examples: Okage: Shadow King, Breath of Fire 3, Treasure of the Rudra, Xenogears, and Final Fantasy 12, to a lesser extent). It just has a pretty innovative way of communicating this theme in its Reality = Video Game idea. But make no mistake: that is still just a vehicle for the main theme of promoting human worth. So I really don't understand how people can be complaining about the game telling them that their supposedly artificial lives are worthless, when it goes to great lengths to say just the opposite. Maybe they played the last third of the game with their eyes closed, or something.
Secondly, there are some people who just say it's a dumb idea. The whole universe, just a program? Dumb! Yes, dumb, most certainly. Because a universe which follows concrete laws governing just about all forces, interactions, and reactions of the things within it does not in any way resemble an extremely high-level computer program.
You know what makes a LOT more sense? Believing that one big, all-powerful dude you've never seen and never will made absolutely everything for reasons that are either unknown or which boil down to Him being bored and wanting entertainment. Or heck, why just one deity? You could believe that lots of deities got together and made all creation! They were having a big old creation contest that night on who could construct the best stuff, and they got carried away and ended up creating a whole darned universe in the process. There was probably some booze involved somewhere in the process, too; how else would you account for the duck-billed platypus, or the way camels look? Or hey, here's another one that makes a ton of sense: nothing created the universe! It's just THERE. No real reason for an impossibly huge expanse of great and wonderful things and infinite possibilities. It's just the result of a big explosion--one minute stuff didn't exist, and the next minute it did, and there's no way that it could have been deliberately set up by a higher being because clearly things just randomly explode when they don't exist yet.
My point here is not to perhaps illustrate that I don't know anything beyond the basics of the Big Bang Theory (for all I know, scientists DO have a scientifically-feasible explanation for what exactly was around before the Big Bang happened that would make it possible). It's just to point out that, in the long list of proposed explanations for how everything came to exist, "It's a huge, fantastically complex computer program" is really not nearly as ludicrous or incomplete in terms of pure logic as a lot of the ones the majority of the world accept.
So yeah. I, personally, think that SO3's plot and its clever way of putting a new spin on an old theme is pretty darned neat, and I really don't see what other people's problem with it is. You didn't see geeks getting huffy over The Matrix's similar spin, and that one was a much more depressing possibility.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Monday, February 5, 2007
Wild Arms 4
Today I finished Wild Arms 4, made by Media Vision. Sweet Jesus, do I hate this game. I mean, I HATE this game. This isn't a case of thinking this game is a pile of shit like, say, Phantasy Star 3 or Quest 64. I mean, it IS, to be sure. But this is a case like Grandia 3, where I actively, wholly LOATHE it. So I'm gonna give it the special treatment I gave Grandia 3. Let's go over it, step by step. Spoilers, naturally. But you don't want to play this game anyway, trust me, so go ahead and read.
Plot: Alright, first of all, the general feeling and flow of the game reminds me of Grandia 3 a lot, because 80% of the time as I ran around in dungeons doing puzzles and killing monsters, I felt totally disconnected. I just didn't CARE; it all felt like aimless wandering. Typically, even in a bad game, I get involved in what the characters are doing and follow the plot. Here, though, I dunno, I just had no connection at all to it. I couldn't really guess why that was, though it might have something to do with how the game's length is set up--about a fourth of it is just trying to get to one single town that has trains in it. When you play a game whose plot purpose for that long is "Let's go take a train and run somewhere no one else will ever reach! Unless, of course, they also board a train and follow the same route...but that'll NEVER happen!", feeling a little disconnected from the plot is probably a natural occurence.
On the occasions where I DID care, though...good God, people, this story STINKS. Imagine if you got a whiny, rebellious 14-year-old whose parents just told to take out the trash, gave him a blank sheet of paper, and told him to write a game plot about how evil adults are. Three boxes of dialogue can't go by in this game without one of the characters talking about adults as though they were some strange alien species completely unrelated to them, not really seeming to realize that 5 years from now, THEY will be adults. I mean, maybe the game's trying to make some statement about growing up, like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance did, but I don't see how when every single person over 20 that you run into is carefully tailored to be evil. And it's not just the stupid kids, either--the theme that adults and children are entirely different races that have nothing to do with each other is driven home by all the adults in the game, too. I'm not sure I saw a whole three people who didn't make it a point to mention that they are ADULTS while your characters are CHILDREN. Wakka didn't say "Yah" as many times in all of FF10 as you see this kid-adult idea beaten to death inside 10 hours of WA4.
This is much of why I hate the game, incidentally. I hate it because I keep getting the feeling that it hates me. For my intolerable crime of having lived past 21 years of age.
Graphics: Graphics are nice enough.
Music/Sound/Voice Acting: Voice Acting's okay, though little of it is particularly interesting. I was looking forward to hearing Cam Clark's extremely awesome voice acting, but he did his characters so differently than usual that it didn't sound enough like him to give me that Robotech buzz, so that was disappointing. Music's okay, I guess. I think it tried a little too hard sometimes to get me excited, but in the end, not much was very bad or very good.
Gameplay: Not as many complaints here as a lot of people have about all the platform game elements here. Control could've been a little better with the jumping, but it wasn't as terrible as I'd been led to believe by others. It's still a little out of place in an RPG, though. The battle system is simple enough, but it really doesn't make sense. There are limitations to where you can attack that are silly--why is it that Jude, who uses a gun, can only attack people in places right next to him, but he can't hit someone just a little distance away at an angle? He's got a GUN. All he has to do is point and pull the trigger. Unless the gun only fires bullets for a distance of 4 feet, it SHOULD work.
Wild Arms Series Annoyance: As with the first two Wild Arms games, this one has just about nothing to do with the Wild West premise that the series continues to falsely claim to have. In fact, this one, with its silly anime-meets-Peter-Pan characters and themes, is probably the biggest failure to deliver the promised setting so far.
Also: Seriously, why have a plane where the pilot is in the back seat, behind a passenger? How does having the pilot unable to see the sky ahead make sense? Someone explain it to me.
Cheap Scams: You can load your data from Wild Arms: Altercode F to get bonuses in WA4. For those of you who don't know, WAAF is a recent remake of the original Wild Arms 1. Now, I have WA1. I played it back when it was new. I've been with the series since before it was popular (not that it really is right now, either), and I've been trucking along with it since. So I didn't get WAAF. Since I'd already played the game, I didn't see the need. Do I get a reward for my WA1 saved data, a symbol that I'm one of the dumb saps who've been paying for this stuff since the beginning? No. Of course not. It's only people who go out and buy a cheap, pretty remake that get extra goodies. Because, ladies and gentlemen, Media Vision is now doing business the SquareEnix way--giving you things you already have, taking as much money as they would as though they had given you something new, and, more than likely, laughing as they do.
Stupid Idea: Having a secret shop in a game which you can get the ingredients for the best equipment from...and having that shop take LEVELS from you instead of money. Yes, GREAT idea. It's not like it took me 40 hours of gameplay to get the experience for these levels or anything. Just go ahead and take'em!
Characters:
Jude: Main character. Now, I've mentioned that male protagonists often seem kinda dumb and boring, right? They just meander along doing heroic things for no real reason other than that they're supposed to. Well, Jude is not like that. Oh, Jude IS very stupid, yes. Very, very stupid. 15-year-old with a mind that's about 7 years behind. But he's not BORING and stupid, he's ANNOYING and stupid. Playing the game seems almost like you're babysitting some idiot preteen who, no matter how many times you explain something to him, will never, ever understand it. You TRY to tell him that 2 + 2 = 4. You show him diagrams. You use groups of fruit to simulate the process. But no matter what you do, 2 + 2 will never be 4 for him. For him, 2 + 2 = Grown-Ups Are Evil Hellspawn.
Memorable Jude Moment: Final battle. He gives the last boss a quick lecture on why you can't stop violence by using violence. And I just think...Hello? What the hell are you doing NOW, then? You're telling this guy that you can't use violence to end violence, and to demonstrate how right you are, you and your little pack of hoodlums are going to shoot, scorch, freeze, crush, and slice the living shit out him? How does this make sense? HOW?
Arnaud: I like to affectionately call Arnaud "Captain Moron." Captain Moron's purpose in the group is to be the one with the "razor-sharp wit." This allows him to come up with exceptionally brilliant plans like, "Now that we have what we came for, we should leave, because being in an enemy base is dangerous!" and "Okay, I'm going to do something, and Jude, you come save me when it goes wrong." Through the whole game, Arnaud will not come up with any plan that you couldn't either come up with yourself because it's obvious, or that you couldn't think of something better because it's stupid.
Kresnik: Kresnik is a strong competitor for the "Most Boring Anime Cliched Character Of All Time" award. He's all emo-angsty about convictions and protecting his sister by kidnapping her and all that crap, he uses a silly and impractical weapon, and he rides on a motorcyle. If the Wild Arms series were more popular, you can bet your life that there'd be hordes of idiot fangirls for him, just like there are for all his other clones in various animes and games.
Gung-Ho Guns...I mean, Anten Seven...I mean, Juppongatana...I mean, Brionac! Brionac is what I meant: Brionac is a group of elite fighters who use gimmicks when fighting to become really tough and dangerous opponents. Naturally this is like nothing you've ever seen before, especially not animes like Trigun or Outlaw Star or Rurouni Kenshin or like a billion others. As is typical for such groups, the members are kinda all over the place in terms of power--one dude can actually stop time for a few moments, making him nearly impossible to hit or evade, which is a pretty hugely powerful and dangerous ability, while another guy's special power is...having a gatling gun. One lady can block any attack completely, while on the other hand you have...a couple living dolls who can self-destruct. It's like these groups have some quota of memberships to hand out, and when they stop finding people with genuinely useful abilities, they just recruit any weirdo they happen across on the street.
Hauser: Hauser is the final boss of the game, which is why I'm including him here. That's the only reason, though, because his contribution to the plot otherwise is just about nothing. He has about 4 minutes of screen time altogether, and each of those 4 minutes is stupid--he's basically this super-powerful jackass who wants peace among people, and to achieve that he utterly destroys entire cities and armies that apparently looked at each other the wrong way. Oh yeah, he's also Jude's father (naturally). The game wants to make this very clear, and make you think that it is somehow significant, but in the end, it...really isn't, at all. I don't think Jude even ever figures it out. Unsurprising, of course, given how incredibly stupid the kid is.
Yulie: After the plot making it clear to me that it hates my guts, Yulie is the second reason that I really, really despise this game. She's...ah, fuck it. You know what? I'm not gonna even bother. Go back, find my rant on Grandia 3, and read up on Alfina. Yulie's basically a watered-down version of her, with the tired She's A Bad Cook joke replaced by the equally tired She's A Good Cook Because That's What It Is To Be Female idea.
Okay, and now, the two characters I LIKED. You see, although I liked them, they have the most important part of this rant, because they are the biggest reasons I hate this game. Don't get it? Read on.
Gawn: Gawn is a likeable kind of bachelor-bum dude who freeloads with you for a while, before turning out to be the best warrior on the planet. He's good-natured, he seems to escape the ADULTS WILL BURN IN HELL theme that the other game's characters seem to be stuck with, and he even makes fun of RPG Switch-Pushing Puzzles. He also has some serious and deep stuff to say, too, which is refreshingly insightful.
So what happens? They kill him off. See, it's like this. All through the game, you hear people talking about how Illsveil Prison has a defense system that shoots 10 homing missiles at you if you try to go there. Your characters, whose brains have more holes in them than Chrono Cross's plot, apparently forget this and take a plane trip up there, and are shocked to see a bunch of missiles coming at them. Gawn flies up in a fighter, shoots one down, a second destroys his craft, but he leaps out and starts shooting the incoming missiles with his revolvers, using their force to keep him up in the air. Yes, perhaps a little silly, but it's forgiven because he is pretty cool. So he gets all 10. He shoots them ALL. BUT WAIT--THERE'S SECRETLY AN 11TH MISSILE! And it crashes into him and he dies. Yes, the game hates me so much that it had to kill one of the only two characters I liked by shooting him with a missile that SHOULDN'T EXIST. Fuck you, too, WA4.
Raquel: Raquel is the last member of your party. And she is, strangely enough, AWESOME. I hate to have to sum her up because I can't do her justice, but I'm hoping for your sakes that you never play the game, so this might be your only chance to know anything about her. Raquel is a swordplay genius. A real prodigy. She was forced to train at sword fighting at an early age because of her immense potential, but in general, most of her technique is self-taught. Be that as it may, though, she doesn't really care about sword fighting. Her real interest is in painting, not battle. When Jude and company meet her, she's on a journey to find true beauty in her world, and paint it.
This by itself is a pretty damn nifty and original character idea--you don't often get the Master Swordsman/woman character who doesn't actually care for her skills, and the whole idea of the journey to find beauty has a sort of peacefully epic quality about it. But on top of that, you find out that she's on this journey because she doesn't have much time left in her life to see beauty in a world where she's only experienced ugly conflict and suffering. She's dying of an incurable condition, and at the time that the game takes place in, it seems she's getting pretty close to the end of her time--her body's cold, and her lungs are failing. Yet somehow she still manages to be your main powerhouse attacker, pulling off awesome sword fights even with an unresponsive, dying body.
So, at one point in the game, Captain Moron, who's sweet on Raquel (sadly enough, he's actually one of the BEST options she has to choose from for romantic interests in this game), promises her that once they're done with this hokey saving the world BS, he's going to find a cure for her and let her live. Even if it's Captain Moron giving the speech, it's sweet, and it makes me happy, because, hey, Raquel, who's the only thing keeping me going with this game beyond sheer stubbornness, will live on! Awesome!
Yeah, so, I watch the ending, it says what happens to everyone 10 years in the future, and hey, look at that, Raquel got married to Arnaud, had a kid, found true beauty in the form of her child...oh, yeah, and Arnaud never did find a cure for her and she died. The End!
Media Vision was looking for the perfect way to give the player a final, send-off Fuck You, and they sure as hell found it.
So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. My 99th RPG made me want to shove its makers' faces into a toilet. A toilet that's been used lately. A toilet that's been used lately that wasn't flushed. A toilet that's been used lately and wasn't flushed, and the recent user was some kind of monster that poops out razor blades. I would hold their faces down, press the handle, and my heart would be soothed. I sure as hell hope the 100th, Final Fantasy 12, is good, but really, even if it was pretty awful it'd still be enjoyable just in comparison to what I've just played.
Plot: Alright, first of all, the general feeling and flow of the game reminds me of Grandia 3 a lot, because 80% of the time as I ran around in dungeons doing puzzles and killing monsters, I felt totally disconnected. I just didn't CARE; it all felt like aimless wandering. Typically, even in a bad game, I get involved in what the characters are doing and follow the plot. Here, though, I dunno, I just had no connection at all to it. I couldn't really guess why that was, though it might have something to do with how the game's length is set up--about a fourth of it is just trying to get to one single town that has trains in it. When you play a game whose plot purpose for that long is "Let's go take a train and run somewhere no one else will ever reach! Unless, of course, they also board a train and follow the same route...but that'll NEVER happen!", feeling a little disconnected from the plot is probably a natural occurence.
On the occasions where I DID care, though...good God, people, this story STINKS. Imagine if you got a whiny, rebellious 14-year-old whose parents just told to take out the trash, gave him a blank sheet of paper, and told him to write a game plot about how evil adults are. Three boxes of dialogue can't go by in this game without one of the characters talking about adults as though they were some strange alien species completely unrelated to them, not really seeming to realize that 5 years from now, THEY will be adults. I mean, maybe the game's trying to make some statement about growing up, like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance did, but I don't see how when every single person over 20 that you run into is carefully tailored to be evil. And it's not just the stupid kids, either--the theme that adults and children are entirely different races that have nothing to do with each other is driven home by all the adults in the game, too. I'm not sure I saw a whole three people who didn't make it a point to mention that they are ADULTS while your characters are CHILDREN. Wakka didn't say "Yah" as many times in all of FF10 as you see this kid-adult idea beaten to death inside 10 hours of WA4.
This is much of why I hate the game, incidentally. I hate it because I keep getting the feeling that it hates me. For my intolerable crime of having lived past 21 years of age.
Graphics: Graphics are nice enough.
Music/Sound/Voice Acting: Voice Acting's okay, though little of it is particularly interesting. I was looking forward to hearing Cam Clark's extremely awesome voice acting, but he did his characters so differently than usual that it didn't sound enough like him to give me that Robotech buzz, so that was disappointing. Music's okay, I guess. I think it tried a little too hard sometimes to get me excited, but in the end, not much was very bad or very good.
Gameplay: Not as many complaints here as a lot of people have about all the platform game elements here. Control could've been a little better with the jumping, but it wasn't as terrible as I'd been led to believe by others. It's still a little out of place in an RPG, though. The battle system is simple enough, but it really doesn't make sense. There are limitations to where you can attack that are silly--why is it that Jude, who uses a gun, can only attack people in places right next to him, but he can't hit someone just a little distance away at an angle? He's got a GUN. All he has to do is point and pull the trigger. Unless the gun only fires bullets for a distance of 4 feet, it SHOULD work.
Wild Arms Series Annoyance: As with the first two Wild Arms games, this one has just about nothing to do with the Wild West premise that the series continues to falsely claim to have. In fact, this one, with its silly anime-meets-Peter-Pan characters and themes, is probably the biggest failure to deliver the promised setting so far.
Also: Seriously, why have a plane where the pilot is in the back seat, behind a passenger? How does having the pilot unable to see the sky ahead make sense? Someone explain it to me.
Cheap Scams: You can load your data from Wild Arms: Altercode F to get bonuses in WA4. For those of you who don't know, WAAF is a recent remake of the original Wild Arms 1. Now, I have WA1. I played it back when it was new. I've been with the series since before it was popular (not that it really is right now, either), and I've been trucking along with it since. So I didn't get WAAF. Since I'd already played the game, I didn't see the need. Do I get a reward for my WA1 saved data, a symbol that I'm one of the dumb saps who've been paying for this stuff since the beginning? No. Of course not. It's only people who go out and buy a cheap, pretty remake that get extra goodies. Because, ladies and gentlemen, Media Vision is now doing business the SquareEnix way--giving you things you already have, taking as much money as they would as though they had given you something new, and, more than likely, laughing as they do.
Stupid Idea: Having a secret shop in a game which you can get the ingredients for the best equipment from...and having that shop take LEVELS from you instead of money. Yes, GREAT idea. It's not like it took me 40 hours of gameplay to get the experience for these levels or anything. Just go ahead and take'em!
Characters:
Jude: Main character. Now, I've mentioned that male protagonists often seem kinda dumb and boring, right? They just meander along doing heroic things for no real reason other than that they're supposed to. Well, Jude is not like that. Oh, Jude IS very stupid, yes. Very, very stupid. 15-year-old with a mind that's about 7 years behind. But he's not BORING and stupid, he's ANNOYING and stupid. Playing the game seems almost like you're babysitting some idiot preteen who, no matter how many times you explain something to him, will never, ever understand it. You TRY to tell him that 2 + 2 = 4. You show him diagrams. You use groups of fruit to simulate the process. But no matter what you do, 2 + 2 will never be 4 for him. For him, 2 + 2 = Grown-Ups Are Evil Hellspawn.
Memorable Jude Moment: Final battle. He gives the last boss a quick lecture on why you can't stop violence by using violence. And I just think...Hello? What the hell are you doing NOW, then? You're telling this guy that you can't use violence to end violence, and to demonstrate how right you are, you and your little pack of hoodlums are going to shoot, scorch, freeze, crush, and slice the living shit out him? How does this make sense? HOW?
Arnaud: I like to affectionately call Arnaud "Captain Moron." Captain Moron's purpose in the group is to be the one with the "razor-sharp wit." This allows him to come up with exceptionally brilliant plans like, "Now that we have what we came for, we should leave, because being in an enemy base is dangerous!" and "Okay, I'm going to do something, and Jude, you come save me when it goes wrong." Through the whole game, Arnaud will not come up with any plan that you couldn't either come up with yourself because it's obvious, or that you couldn't think of something better because it's stupid.
Kresnik: Kresnik is a strong competitor for the "Most Boring Anime Cliched Character Of All Time" award. He's all emo-angsty about convictions and protecting his sister by kidnapping her and all that crap, he uses a silly and impractical weapon, and he rides on a motorcyle. If the Wild Arms series were more popular, you can bet your life that there'd be hordes of idiot fangirls for him, just like there are for all his other clones in various animes and games.
Gung-Ho Guns...I mean, Anten Seven...I mean, Juppongatana...I mean, Brionac! Brionac is what I meant: Brionac is a group of elite fighters who use gimmicks when fighting to become really tough and dangerous opponents. Naturally this is like nothing you've ever seen before, especially not animes like Trigun or Outlaw Star or Rurouni Kenshin or like a billion others. As is typical for such groups, the members are kinda all over the place in terms of power--one dude can actually stop time for a few moments, making him nearly impossible to hit or evade, which is a pretty hugely powerful and dangerous ability, while another guy's special power is...having a gatling gun. One lady can block any attack completely, while on the other hand you have...a couple living dolls who can self-destruct. It's like these groups have some quota of memberships to hand out, and when they stop finding people with genuinely useful abilities, they just recruit any weirdo they happen across on the street.
Hauser: Hauser is the final boss of the game, which is why I'm including him here. That's the only reason, though, because his contribution to the plot otherwise is just about nothing. He has about 4 minutes of screen time altogether, and each of those 4 minutes is stupid--he's basically this super-powerful jackass who wants peace among people, and to achieve that he utterly destroys entire cities and armies that apparently looked at each other the wrong way. Oh yeah, he's also Jude's father (naturally). The game wants to make this very clear, and make you think that it is somehow significant, but in the end, it...really isn't, at all. I don't think Jude even ever figures it out. Unsurprising, of course, given how incredibly stupid the kid is.
Yulie: After the plot making it clear to me that it hates my guts, Yulie is the second reason that I really, really despise this game. She's...ah, fuck it. You know what? I'm not gonna even bother. Go back, find my rant on Grandia 3, and read up on Alfina. Yulie's basically a watered-down version of her, with the tired She's A Bad Cook joke replaced by the equally tired She's A Good Cook Because That's What It Is To Be Female idea.
Okay, and now, the two characters I LIKED. You see, although I liked them, they have the most important part of this rant, because they are the biggest reasons I hate this game. Don't get it? Read on.
Gawn: Gawn is a likeable kind of bachelor-bum dude who freeloads with you for a while, before turning out to be the best warrior on the planet. He's good-natured, he seems to escape the ADULTS WILL BURN IN HELL theme that the other game's characters seem to be stuck with, and he even makes fun of RPG Switch-Pushing Puzzles. He also has some serious and deep stuff to say, too, which is refreshingly insightful.
So what happens? They kill him off. See, it's like this. All through the game, you hear people talking about how Illsveil Prison has a defense system that shoots 10 homing missiles at you if you try to go there. Your characters, whose brains have more holes in them than Chrono Cross's plot, apparently forget this and take a plane trip up there, and are shocked to see a bunch of missiles coming at them. Gawn flies up in a fighter, shoots one down, a second destroys his craft, but he leaps out and starts shooting the incoming missiles with his revolvers, using their force to keep him up in the air. Yes, perhaps a little silly, but it's forgiven because he is pretty cool. So he gets all 10. He shoots them ALL. BUT WAIT--THERE'S SECRETLY AN 11TH MISSILE! And it crashes into him and he dies. Yes, the game hates me so much that it had to kill one of the only two characters I liked by shooting him with a missile that SHOULDN'T EXIST. Fuck you, too, WA4.
Raquel: Raquel is the last member of your party. And she is, strangely enough, AWESOME. I hate to have to sum her up because I can't do her justice, but I'm hoping for your sakes that you never play the game, so this might be your only chance to know anything about her. Raquel is a swordplay genius. A real prodigy. She was forced to train at sword fighting at an early age because of her immense potential, but in general, most of her technique is self-taught. Be that as it may, though, she doesn't really care about sword fighting. Her real interest is in painting, not battle. When Jude and company meet her, she's on a journey to find true beauty in her world, and paint it.
This by itself is a pretty damn nifty and original character idea--you don't often get the Master Swordsman/woman character who doesn't actually care for her skills, and the whole idea of the journey to find beauty has a sort of peacefully epic quality about it. But on top of that, you find out that she's on this journey because she doesn't have much time left in her life to see beauty in a world where she's only experienced ugly conflict and suffering. She's dying of an incurable condition, and at the time that the game takes place in, it seems she's getting pretty close to the end of her time--her body's cold, and her lungs are failing. Yet somehow she still manages to be your main powerhouse attacker, pulling off awesome sword fights even with an unresponsive, dying body.
So, at one point in the game, Captain Moron, who's sweet on Raquel (sadly enough, he's actually one of the BEST options she has to choose from for romantic interests in this game), promises her that once they're done with this hokey saving the world BS, he's going to find a cure for her and let her live. Even if it's Captain Moron giving the speech, it's sweet, and it makes me happy, because, hey, Raquel, who's the only thing keeping me going with this game beyond sheer stubbornness, will live on! Awesome!
Yeah, so, I watch the ending, it says what happens to everyone 10 years in the future, and hey, look at that, Raquel got married to Arnaud, had a kid, found true beauty in the form of her child...oh, yeah, and Arnaud never did find a cure for her and she died. The End!
Media Vision was looking for the perfect way to give the player a final, send-off Fuck You, and they sure as hell found it.
So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. My 99th RPG made me want to shove its makers' faces into a toilet. A toilet that's been used lately. A toilet that's been used lately that wasn't flushed. A toilet that's been used lately and wasn't flushed, and the recent user was some kind of monster that poops out razor blades. I would hold their faces down, press the handle, and my heart would be soothed. I sure as hell hope the 100th, Final Fantasy 12, is good, but really, even if it was pretty awful it'd still be enjoyable just in comparison to what I've just played.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
General RPGs' Minigames 4: Treasure Field
The Legend of Zelda series always has quite a few minigames in each installment since the SNES. And it's been following a disturbing trend of having the number and frequency of these irritations increase in recent games. But few of these typically mandatory annoyances are quite so infuriating to me as A Link to the Past's Treasure Field.
For the most part, it's your usual fairly stupid little bonus minigame. I'll give it credit for not being mandatory to complete in order to finish the game, but that's it. You're given a shovel, and a time limit, and what you do is press left and right and up and down ever so slightly, press the Dig button, and then move to the next spot. Somebody at Nintendo apparently mistook this for fun, I guess. It might as well be called Direction Pad + Y Button Field. As you dig, sometimes money or magic refills come up out of the ground, and you can collect them, and maybe, if you're really fast and really lucky, get enough cash to break even on the entrance fee you paid. So, since monetary gain for spending your time playing this is barely anything (and that's assuming the best; you could pretty easily end up with less money than before you started), I guess the main motivation to play this would be to refill your Magic Meter if you were running on empty for it. But even that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since you can get a green potion in a shop to fully refill it for 20 Rupees less than it takes to play the game in the first place. So this game is really quite pointless, even for a minigame.
Of course, the main reason to play it originally (and really, the only reason I can think of to do so at all) is because there's a Piece of Heart hidden randomly in the field. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Zelda series (which is probably none of you), collecting 4 Pieces of Heart will boost your HP by 1 permanently--and in the Zelda games I've played, the max HP is never over 20, so that's a pretty big deal. This main reason for playing the game, however, is also the main reason I HATE THE EVER-LOVING CRAP out of it.
See, because of the time limit, you only have about enough time to dig up a fourth of the field, a third if you're really good. I defy anyone who says they can do better than that. They are a blatant and evil liar. So, since the goddamn Piece of Heart is randomly placed around the field each time you play the game, the odds are that it won't be wherever you decide to dig each time you start. This can lead to you playing the goddamned minigame time after time after time, just having to stubbornly hope that THIS time, unlike the past 8 times, the godforsaken Piece of Heart will be where you dig. And of course, you may be steadily losing Rupees playing the damn game, since how much money you dig up in the field also relies pretty heavily on chance, so you may be forced to leave, kill monsters for a while to get more cash, and then come back again, just further wasting your time. I think it was after the 14th time that random chance fucked me over in this game that I developed a deep, personal hatred for this minigame. I can understand when luck plays a part in some minigames, but for the love of Mog, there needs to be a reasonable limit to it.
For the most part, it's your usual fairly stupid little bonus minigame. I'll give it credit for not being mandatory to complete in order to finish the game, but that's it. You're given a shovel, and a time limit, and what you do is press left and right and up and down ever so slightly, press the Dig button, and then move to the next spot. Somebody at Nintendo apparently mistook this for fun, I guess. It might as well be called Direction Pad + Y Button Field. As you dig, sometimes money or magic refills come up out of the ground, and you can collect them, and maybe, if you're really fast and really lucky, get enough cash to break even on the entrance fee you paid. So, since monetary gain for spending your time playing this is barely anything (and that's assuming the best; you could pretty easily end up with less money than before you started), I guess the main motivation to play this would be to refill your Magic Meter if you were running on empty for it. But even that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since you can get a green potion in a shop to fully refill it for 20 Rupees less than it takes to play the game in the first place. So this game is really quite pointless, even for a minigame.
Of course, the main reason to play it originally (and really, the only reason I can think of to do so at all) is because there's a Piece of Heart hidden randomly in the field. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Zelda series (which is probably none of you), collecting 4 Pieces of Heart will boost your HP by 1 permanently--and in the Zelda games I've played, the max HP is never over 20, so that's a pretty big deal. This main reason for playing the game, however, is also the main reason I HATE THE EVER-LOVING CRAP out of it.
See, because of the time limit, you only have about enough time to dig up a fourth of the field, a third if you're really good. I defy anyone who says they can do better than that. They are a blatant and evil liar. So, since the goddamn Piece of Heart is randomly placed around the field each time you play the game, the odds are that it won't be wherever you decide to dig each time you start. This can lead to you playing the goddamned minigame time after time after time, just having to stubbornly hope that THIS time, unlike the past 8 times, the godforsaken Piece of Heart will be where you dig. And of course, you may be steadily losing Rupees playing the damn game, since how much money you dig up in the field also relies pretty heavily on chance, so you may be forced to leave, kill monsters for a while to get more cash, and then come back again, just further wasting your time. I think it was after the 14th time that random chance fucked me over in this game that I developed a deep, personal hatred for this minigame. I can understand when luck plays a part in some minigames, but for the love of Mog, there needs to be a reasonable limit to it.
Monday, January 8, 2007
The Breath of Fire Series's Innovation
Well, today's disappointing, as it seems that VG Mix's ETA of January 8th for their grand return was a little too optimistic. Looks like the world is stuck with the bad taste, lesser quality, and immense slowness of OCR alone for a while longer for video game remixes. Sigh. Well, on the bright side, being more bored than I had anticipated means I finally am doing a rant! Joy, or something.
So, I was trying to figure out the other day just what exactly it is that makes me such a fan of the Breath of Fire series. Because, really, it has confused me for quite a while. I mean, sure, they're reasonably good RPGs, but none of them are really exceptional. I could pass off liking Breath of Fire 2 as being entirely based on the fact that Katt is in it, but that wouldn't explain why I like the other 4 in the series so much, and why I go out of my way to get a new BoF any time one comes out (which has sadly not been for some time).
I think I hit on it today, though. I like the Breath of Fire series because of its innovation. Each game's got something about it that's new and interesting, but in a quiet, subtle way, usually. It's almost like an unassuming originality, I guess.
Now granted, the series doesn't start out very unique. Breath of Fire 1 is about as much a textbook RPG as you can get. Evil empires, swords and magic, dragons, world that needs saving, long distracting quests with only a vague attachment to the plot, boring and silent protagonist, it's got'em all. Still, it had that spark of interest in that the cast is physically more varied than just about any game of its time save the first 2 Shining Forces. You control shapeshifting humans, a winged princess, a naga, a mole-person, a shape-shifting fish dude, and so on. The game establishes a world of very rich diversity in its inherent species, with more than just the usual boring bunch of humans, semi-humans, and imbecilic elves (seriously, when are elvish societies NOT a huge bunch of pain-in-the-ass idiots?).
With Breath of Fire 2, though, you get the same kind of varied cast (including Katt, whose powerful No Pants Fu was too great for even Nintendo of America censors to stop), but with a plot that has quite a few elements of interest. (Spoiler warning, though, really, you should all expect this sort of thing from me by now) Okay, yes, essentially, it's another story of "Christian-Esque Religion's God Is Actually Evil And Wants To Stab Your Heart, Eat Your Children, And Steal Your Shoes." But back when the game was released, this was still a relatively new and interesting idea in video games, before Squaresoft ate a full buffet of it and then shat it all into one single game (Xenogears) that made it both the trendy and tiresome RPG theme to have. BoF2 handled it all with a pretty good level of dignity and skill--the demons lived up their titles often, being nasty and evil to a high and even creepy degree, and the game never seemed to be screaming at you "RELIGION IS THE BADZ OK." It was an interesting theme to have.
A few years later, Breath of Fire 3 came out. Great example of an innovative plot, there. You can pretty much find my sum-up of it in a previous rant, so I won't bore you further with a repeat of it. But it's definitely an interesting idea, not often used, to make a game's central focus into a choice between an uncertain future of independance, and a safe, comfortable one of limitations and essentially stagnation. Many people, maybe even most, aren't interested in playing an RPG that's not about saving the world or universe or something else of importance, but rather just exploring a theme of humanity. But that doesn't make it any less creative and interesting.
Then there's Breath of Fire 4. Now, this game threw me for a loop. See, you essentially play through a regular RPG of guiding a bunch of stupid young hero types along through the world and all, but you also, for short stints throughout the game, take control of the villain, Fou-Lu, and watch over him (not that he really needs it--he's Main Villain-powerful already) as he makes his own small journey to power. That in itself is pretty original, but it also sets the stage for Fou-Lu to become one of the best developed RPG villains ever, too. You get an idea for his personality so much more clearly than you do for nearly any other RPG's villain, and you even get to see many of the events that shape his final views. Experiencing them from the perspective of actually playing the game with him really makes a big difference in how well they deepen his character and your understanding of it, rather than the standard of just watching a few quick scenes (at the very most) to familiarize yourself with whatever daft reason the Evil Pretty Boy of the Day has for wanting to kill things.
Of course, it did kinda backfire a bit, in that by comparison, the actual heroes of the game aren't really very interesting. But that's not really relevant; the point is that the game's very innovative in how it does its villain. It's quiet, but impressive.
Then there's Breath of Fire 5. Or Dragon Quarter, I guess. I don't know why Capcom suddenly decided that the series was too cool for numbers any longer, but I care just little enough to call it BoF5 and not BoFDQ. Anyway, BoF5 has a REALLY neat setting--long post-apocalypse, 1000 meters below the surface of the planet. They really play up this interesting setting well, creating a whole social order of the people living in this sub-surface world, a reason for this order originating in their being there to begin with, etc. It's really very cool and unique, a totally new, urban-style (something few RPGs have even in a normal sense) setting that has terrific story-telling potential. Sadly, the plot's a little hard to follow at times (as in, there are aspects of it that even I just can't quite reason out, and lord knows I think about and ponder RPGs probably more than any person healthily can), probably due in part to a not-quite-great translation and localization (something the entire series seems doomed to). Still and all, this short installment to the series, with its original setting, skillful use of said setting, and really odd but manageable system of game restarting that's actually a natural part of playing the game, is a really unique entry to the world of RPGs.
So yeah, I think that's why I'm a solid fan of the Breath of Fire games--because, whether good or just kinda blah, its installments can always can at least always be depended on to give you a little something interesting and out of the ordinary.
So, I was trying to figure out the other day just what exactly it is that makes me such a fan of the Breath of Fire series. Because, really, it has confused me for quite a while. I mean, sure, they're reasonably good RPGs, but none of them are really exceptional. I could pass off liking Breath of Fire 2 as being entirely based on the fact that Katt is in it, but that wouldn't explain why I like the other 4 in the series so much, and why I go out of my way to get a new BoF any time one comes out (which has sadly not been for some time).
I think I hit on it today, though. I like the Breath of Fire series because of its innovation. Each game's got something about it that's new and interesting, but in a quiet, subtle way, usually. It's almost like an unassuming originality, I guess.
Now granted, the series doesn't start out very unique. Breath of Fire 1 is about as much a textbook RPG as you can get. Evil empires, swords and magic, dragons, world that needs saving, long distracting quests with only a vague attachment to the plot, boring and silent protagonist, it's got'em all. Still, it had that spark of interest in that the cast is physically more varied than just about any game of its time save the first 2 Shining Forces. You control shapeshifting humans, a winged princess, a naga, a mole-person, a shape-shifting fish dude, and so on. The game establishes a world of very rich diversity in its inherent species, with more than just the usual boring bunch of humans, semi-humans, and imbecilic elves (seriously, when are elvish societies NOT a huge bunch of pain-in-the-ass idiots?).
With Breath of Fire 2, though, you get the same kind of varied cast (including Katt, whose powerful No Pants Fu was too great for even Nintendo of America censors to stop), but with a plot that has quite a few elements of interest. (Spoiler warning, though, really, you should all expect this sort of thing from me by now) Okay, yes, essentially, it's another story of "Christian-Esque Religion's God Is Actually Evil And Wants To Stab Your Heart, Eat Your Children, And Steal Your Shoes." But back when the game was released, this was still a relatively new and interesting idea in video games, before Squaresoft ate a full buffet of it and then shat it all into one single game (Xenogears) that made it both the trendy and tiresome RPG theme to have. BoF2 handled it all with a pretty good level of dignity and skill--the demons lived up their titles often, being nasty and evil to a high and even creepy degree, and the game never seemed to be screaming at you "RELIGION IS THE BADZ OK." It was an interesting theme to have.
A few years later, Breath of Fire 3 came out. Great example of an innovative plot, there. You can pretty much find my sum-up of it in a previous rant, so I won't bore you further with a repeat of it. But it's definitely an interesting idea, not often used, to make a game's central focus into a choice between an uncertain future of independance, and a safe, comfortable one of limitations and essentially stagnation. Many people, maybe even most, aren't interested in playing an RPG that's not about saving the world or universe or something else of importance, but rather just exploring a theme of humanity. But that doesn't make it any less creative and interesting.
Then there's Breath of Fire 4. Now, this game threw me for a loop. See, you essentially play through a regular RPG of guiding a bunch of stupid young hero types along through the world and all, but you also, for short stints throughout the game, take control of the villain, Fou-Lu, and watch over him (not that he really needs it--he's Main Villain-powerful already) as he makes his own small journey to power. That in itself is pretty original, but it also sets the stage for Fou-Lu to become one of the best developed RPG villains ever, too. You get an idea for his personality so much more clearly than you do for nearly any other RPG's villain, and you even get to see many of the events that shape his final views. Experiencing them from the perspective of actually playing the game with him really makes a big difference in how well they deepen his character and your understanding of it, rather than the standard of just watching a few quick scenes (at the very most) to familiarize yourself with whatever daft reason the Evil Pretty Boy of the Day has for wanting to kill things.
Of course, it did kinda backfire a bit, in that by comparison, the actual heroes of the game aren't really very interesting. But that's not really relevant; the point is that the game's very innovative in how it does its villain. It's quiet, but impressive.
Then there's Breath of Fire 5. Or Dragon Quarter, I guess. I don't know why Capcom suddenly decided that the series was too cool for numbers any longer, but I care just little enough to call it BoF5 and not BoFDQ. Anyway, BoF5 has a REALLY neat setting--long post-apocalypse, 1000 meters below the surface of the planet. They really play up this interesting setting well, creating a whole social order of the people living in this sub-surface world, a reason for this order originating in their being there to begin with, etc. It's really very cool and unique, a totally new, urban-style (something few RPGs have even in a normal sense) setting that has terrific story-telling potential. Sadly, the plot's a little hard to follow at times (as in, there are aspects of it that even I just can't quite reason out, and lord knows I think about and ponder RPGs probably more than any person healthily can), probably due in part to a not-quite-great translation and localization (something the entire series seems doomed to). Still and all, this short installment to the series, with its original setting, skillful use of said setting, and really odd but manageable system of game restarting that's actually a natural part of playing the game, is a really unique entry to the world of RPGs.
So yeah, I think that's why I'm a solid fan of the Breath of Fire games--because, whether good or just kinda blah, its installments can always can at least always be depended on to give you a little something interesting and out of the ordinary.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Final Fantasy 9's Theme of Identity
I'm kinda blitzed from final exam studying and such, so this here's gonna just basically be a rehash of a post I made in the Final Fantasy section on Gaia. Sorry. Maybe next week I'll have a new and real rant for all'y'all.
I really love Final Fantasy 9. Although FF Tactics comes close, I think FF9 has gotta be the best installment of the series. From start to finish (well, near finish--that whole Memoria place seems to come out of nowhere), its plot and characters are epic, creative, and terrifically developed. There's a lot of themes in the game, from Love to the idea of Duty to Acceptance of Death, and many more. I think the biggest theme in the game that the characters all (or almost all) are fixated on, is the theme of Identity.
Someone brought this up at Gaia a couple weeks back, and when I thought about it, I came to a very interesting conclusion: the cast of FF9 is just about perfectly balanced altogether on this theme. One third of the cast (Dagger, Beatrix, Vivi, and Eiko) are people who discover themselves, who establish their own identity in the game. On the other side of things, the other third (Zidane, Steiner, Freya, and Amarant) are characters who don't exactly discover or remake their own personality, but rather, have their identity strengthened, solidified by the game's events, in ways of character development that are really no less interesting or skillful than the first group's. And the third...well, they just don't have much significance either way (Quina, Blank, Cinna, Marcus), so I guess they'd be right in the middle of the spectrum, or disqualified, or something.
It also interests me that each of the two groups' members represent a different level of finding or confirming identity, exactly as much as they need without going over that amount. Eiko, for starters, discovers what it is to have other people that she can trust and depend on, growing up just a little during the adventure while at the same time learning a little better how to be a child. Not a huge change in identity, but certainly a monumental one for a kid to have. Going one step up, Beatrix only finds a new identity in one sense, that of how to regard her role as Knight Captain. But that's still a huge aspect of her personality, so it's just as much and as little a change as she needs. Then you get Vivi, who basically starts from scratch in his search to find himself and his purpose. A huge step up in terms of a character finding themselves as you watch, but still not the highest, most complex and carefully portrayed example in the game--that would be Dagger's character, who does more than just build an identity from nothing as Vivi does--her experiences, efforts, and the influences of her companions change her entire being as you watch. It's a beautiful case of discovery and change.
The other side of the spectrum has just as much of a gradient, though. You've got Amarant, for starters. Now, he doesn't seem to really change at all in the game, or do much of anything, but all the same, his experiences with Zidane seem to remind him through the differences and similarities between them of exactly who he is, why he does what he does. It's only lightly touched upon, but then, Amarant's not a touchy-feely kind of guy, so it's just about right for him. Next, you've got Steiner, who struggles with issues of who he is and what his job means, much like Beatrix does. Conversely, though, he differs from her in that the conclusions he comes to are that his initial instincts and ideals of protecting the princess are more or less the right way to go (though, thankfully, he at least seems towards the end to not actively want to mount Zidane's head on a pike any more). Freya goes through a huge amount of mental anguish, yet internalizes most of it, meaning that, while we're all very aware that it's there, she's too strong to succumb to it and become a hopeless wreck over it. She continually works through her issues as the story progresses, putting the matters at hand first and formost as she should, and overall staying true to her code of conduct and ideals regardless of what seeks to shake them. It's again a case of an increased level of identity crisis being resolved, fitting the character's needs very well. And lastly, of course, we get Zidane, whose cheerful and helpful nature is a pillar to them all, and who faces conflict which threatens to shatter that trusty pillar of a personality, but ultimately emerges a stronger but unchanged version of himself for it. These aren't "static" characters persay, they're dynamic ones who simply stay themselves, just a little stronger, surer, maybe truer.
This is what I love about FF9, that no other of the series, and not too many other RPGs in general, does: it takes almost its entire significant cast (Marcus, Cinna, and Blank are only with you for little bits of the story, after all), and makes each and every one of them a deep, worthwhile character, but doesn't fall into the trap that a lot of other games do (such as FF7) of bogging the characters down with excessive identity issues. Everyone in the game has their own level of complexity, and it fits them even when it's low--you're not saddled with Mr. T suddenly becoming a tragic figure with a past just because the makers feel that everyone has to have huge personality issues to work through in order to be taken seriously, for example. The characters just have what they need, and there's more than enough food for thought in each of them with that.
I really love Final Fantasy 9. Although FF Tactics comes close, I think FF9 has gotta be the best installment of the series. From start to finish (well, near finish--that whole Memoria place seems to come out of nowhere), its plot and characters are epic, creative, and terrifically developed. There's a lot of themes in the game, from Love to the idea of Duty to Acceptance of Death, and many more. I think the biggest theme in the game that the characters all (or almost all) are fixated on, is the theme of Identity.
Someone brought this up at Gaia a couple weeks back, and when I thought about it, I came to a very interesting conclusion: the cast of FF9 is just about perfectly balanced altogether on this theme. One third of the cast (Dagger, Beatrix, Vivi, and Eiko) are people who discover themselves, who establish their own identity in the game. On the other side of things, the other third (Zidane, Steiner, Freya, and Amarant) are characters who don't exactly discover or remake their own personality, but rather, have their identity strengthened, solidified by the game's events, in ways of character development that are really no less interesting or skillful than the first group's. And the third...well, they just don't have much significance either way (Quina, Blank, Cinna, Marcus), so I guess they'd be right in the middle of the spectrum, or disqualified, or something.
It also interests me that each of the two groups' members represent a different level of finding or confirming identity, exactly as much as they need without going over that amount. Eiko, for starters, discovers what it is to have other people that she can trust and depend on, growing up just a little during the adventure while at the same time learning a little better how to be a child. Not a huge change in identity, but certainly a monumental one for a kid to have. Going one step up, Beatrix only finds a new identity in one sense, that of how to regard her role as Knight Captain. But that's still a huge aspect of her personality, so it's just as much and as little a change as she needs. Then you get Vivi, who basically starts from scratch in his search to find himself and his purpose. A huge step up in terms of a character finding themselves as you watch, but still not the highest, most complex and carefully portrayed example in the game--that would be Dagger's character, who does more than just build an identity from nothing as Vivi does--her experiences, efforts, and the influences of her companions change her entire being as you watch. It's a beautiful case of discovery and change.
The other side of the spectrum has just as much of a gradient, though. You've got Amarant, for starters. Now, he doesn't seem to really change at all in the game, or do much of anything, but all the same, his experiences with Zidane seem to remind him through the differences and similarities between them of exactly who he is, why he does what he does. It's only lightly touched upon, but then, Amarant's not a touchy-feely kind of guy, so it's just about right for him. Next, you've got Steiner, who struggles with issues of who he is and what his job means, much like Beatrix does. Conversely, though, he differs from her in that the conclusions he comes to are that his initial instincts and ideals of protecting the princess are more or less the right way to go (though, thankfully, he at least seems towards the end to not actively want to mount Zidane's head on a pike any more). Freya goes through a huge amount of mental anguish, yet internalizes most of it, meaning that, while we're all very aware that it's there, she's too strong to succumb to it and become a hopeless wreck over it. She continually works through her issues as the story progresses, putting the matters at hand first and formost as she should, and overall staying true to her code of conduct and ideals regardless of what seeks to shake them. It's again a case of an increased level of identity crisis being resolved, fitting the character's needs very well. And lastly, of course, we get Zidane, whose cheerful and helpful nature is a pillar to them all, and who faces conflict which threatens to shatter that trusty pillar of a personality, but ultimately emerges a stronger but unchanged version of himself for it. These aren't "static" characters persay, they're dynamic ones who simply stay themselves, just a little stronger, surer, maybe truer.
This is what I love about FF9, that no other of the series, and not too many other RPGs in general, does: it takes almost its entire significant cast (Marcus, Cinna, and Blank are only with you for little bits of the story, after all), and makes each and every one of them a deep, worthwhile character, but doesn't fall into the trap that a lot of other games do (such as FF7) of bogging the characters down with excessive identity issues. Everyone in the game has their own level of complexity, and it fits them even when it's low--you're not saddled with Mr. T suddenly becoming a tragic figure with a past just because the makers feel that everyone has to have huge personality issues to work through in order to be taken seriously, for example. The characters just have what they need, and there's more than enough food for thought in each of them with that.
Monday, December 4, 2006
Baten Kaitos 1's Inclusion of the Player
Baten Kaitos 1 is quite an interesting game, with a neat setting (floating islands, as I've mentioned in a previous rant), a pretty fair plot, a card-based battle system that DOESN'T suck ass (I think this may be the ONLY RPG where this is true), and several really great and original characters. One of the most interesting and unique parts of it, though, is that it actually includes YOU, the player, in the plot.
Now, it's not that I haven't experience this sort of thing before, on a very tiny scale. I mean, in Earthbound, the only way for Ness's crew to defeat the universe's ultimate evil is for Paula to eventually pray to the player him/herself to intercede and whup Giygas's ass. A kinda neat idea, too, that they're fighting an evil so monumentally unbeatable that it takes a being from a higher dimension to destroy it. And who hasn't seen or at least heard of that old televised Peter Pan play thing, where Peter asks the audience to clap and believe in fairies so that Tinkerbell can be saved? There're a few instances scattered here and there of the player/viewer/reader/listener/whateverer actually being included in something for reasons other than a quick joke.
But you know, I don't think I've EVER seen a game or show or movie or book or ANYTHING that takes it to the level that BK1 does. In this game, the player is represented as a Guardian Spirit, a sort of wandering soul that has taken residence in the main character Kalas (and for a brief time later, Xelha). Kalas and Xelha frequently actually interact with you, talking to you and asking you questions, and even the other party members occasionally talk to you. It's often noted that it's your presence that makes Kalas such a formidable and successful fighter (making reference to both the fact that you are controlling his actions and thus leading him to victory through your strategy, and that your presence can allow the main character to perform special attacks which far outclass all the other abilities in the game). And when you're temporarily banished from the BK1 world, the screen goes black--you actually cannot witness what's happening until the Guardian Spirit representing you is eventually called back later.
This involvement of the player really adds a neat and enjoyable angle to the game. It's fun to be directly thanked by the game's characters for helping them out, to have a direct hand in the game's affairs rather than just be an unseen watcher who happens to also play. And as I said before, it's a rarely-explored idea, probably because up until the medium of video games, the observer of a story, be it a book's or show's or movie's or whatever, did not have an interactive nature with the medium. With video games, though, you already are interacting with the game's mechanics, so with a little creativity, as BK1 demonstrates, the player can be made to directly interact with and influence the story as well. I hope at least a few more RPGs recognize the potential for this idea and also adopt it.
Now, it's not that I haven't experience this sort of thing before, on a very tiny scale. I mean, in Earthbound, the only way for Ness's crew to defeat the universe's ultimate evil is for Paula to eventually pray to the player him/herself to intercede and whup Giygas's ass. A kinda neat idea, too, that they're fighting an evil so monumentally unbeatable that it takes a being from a higher dimension to destroy it. And who hasn't seen or at least heard of that old televised Peter Pan play thing, where Peter asks the audience to clap and believe in fairies so that Tinkerbell can be saved? There're a few instances scattered here and there of the player/viewer/reader/listener/whateverer actually being included in something for reasons other than a quick joke.
But you know, I don't think I've EVER seen a game or show or movie or book or ANYTHING that takes it to the level that BK1 does. In this game, the player is represented as a Guardian Spirit, a sort of wandering soul that has taken residence in the main character Kalas (and for a brief time later, Xelha). Kalas and Xelha frequently actually interact with you, talking to you and asking you questions, and even the other party members occasionally talk to you. It's often noted that it's your presence that makes Kalas such a formidable and successful fighter (making reference to both the fact that you are controlling his actions and thus leading him to victory through your strategy, and that your presence can allow the main character to perform special attacks which far outclass all the other abilities in the game). And when you're temporarily banished from the BK1 world, the screen goes black--you actually cannot witness what's happening until the Guardian Spirit representing you is eventually called back later.
This involvement of the player really adds a neat and enjoyable angle to the game. It's fun to be directly thanked by the game's characters for helping them out, to have a direct hand in the game's affairs rather than just be an unseen watcher who happens to also play. And as I said before, it's a rarely-explored idea, probably because up until the medium of video games, the observer of a story, be it a book's or show's or movie's or whatever, did not have an interactive nature with the medium. With video games, though, you already are interacting with the game's mechanics, so with a little creativity, as BK1 demonstrates, the player can be made to directly interact with and influence the story as well. I hope at least a few more RPGs recognize the potential for this idea and also adopt it.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Kingdom Hearts 2's Atlantica
I bet I know what you're all expecting. You read the title of this rant, and think, "Oh, right, Arpy's gonna flame the hell out of Ariel's crappy world. It was a huge disappointment." Because, hey, if anyone's gonna hate a minigame world, it's gonna be me--and everyone else does, too. Ornery old Arp is gonna yell and scream and holler about it and give you all some good hearty laughs.
Well, you're all WRONG!
Now, don't misunderstand. I'm NOT a fan KH2's Atlantica. It's not much fun. You listen to a bunch of songs, most of which are grating and stupid, and play semi-DDR as you mash buttons in time with the music--well, sometimes in time, other times it's just there and you mash the X button for no real rhythmic reason.
While this is happening, a scene plays out, for reasons I can't quite figure out--it's not like you can take the time to watch and enjoy it when you're waiting for each little "PUSH X NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE" icon to pop up. My theory is that SquareEnix actually spent a fortune on each song's visual sequence out of spite alone--FF10-2 has made it abundantly clear that they secretly loathe and detest the people who buy their games. Seeking to frustrate KH2 players, SquareEnix made these elaborate, cheerful sequences during a minigame where watching them means total failure. To add to the distraction value of these things, they decided to set this minigame in Atlantica, where players will continue to have their eyes stray from their objectives, lured away by Ariel and/or a shirtless Sora. No way can this just be a case of poor design; they're LAUGHING at you as you miss the cues because your fangirl instincts to drool at shirtless 14-year-olds cannot be denied.
"Wait a second," you're saying. "If you're saying that the minigame is stupid and annoying, along with badly-designed, then why was I wrong before?"
The reason is this: I don't hate KH2's Atlantica, even given its exceptionally annoying nature. Why not? Because it is so, so, so much better than it was in the original Kingdom Hearts. Look, as stupid and simplistic as the singing minigame might be, it's a helluva lot better than trying to navigate that stupid underwater battle system in KH1. You couldn't just move with the direction stick, no, you had to use that to steer while you held down a button to actually get there--it was annoying enough just to move regularly, let alone while trying to fight enemies that were above and below and all around you. You're trying to swim up and down to get at something and meanwhile there are Heartless smacking your face and electrocuting you with poorly-named Thunder spells and Donald and Goofy are floundering around doing just about nothing except absorbing damage as usual while Ariel's trying to make up for your incompetence at swimming and their incompetence at life and you start swearing because the Little Mermaid is more badass than you...
I'm supposed to be upset that a stupid but harmless little minigame replaced that nightmare of bad gameplay design? Not having to dick around with Heartless jellyfish and whales and whatnot was the greatest improvement they could have possibly made to the sequel. And hell, KH2's take on the world isn't too terrible at times--I mean, they actually made ERIC cool, rather than just the same kind of "Looks nice but has a mind as empty as Quina Quen's (Final Fantasy 9) refrigerator the day after Thanksgiving" character type that I so often criticize RPG heroes for being. KH2 shows HIM being willing to work to be with HER, rather than Ariel having to do and give up everything. I mean, the line:
Eric: "And to think...all this time..."
Ariel: ~LE SAD~
Eric: "...I could've practicing my swimming." ~Splash~
Adds a TON of depth to his character, and makes him pretty damn cool. Sure, it took several rounds of agonizingly dumb musical button-mashing to get to it, but it IS something good about the whole thing, at least, and more rewarding than any of the plot that you're given after the hours of underwater battle torment in KH1. All in all, KH2's Atlantica was a huge improvement, in my opinion.
Well, you're all WRONG!
Now, don't misunderstand. I'm NOT a fan KH2's Atlantica. It's not much fun. You listen to a bunch of songs, most of which are grating and stupid, and play semi-DDR as you mash buttons in time with the music--well, sometimes in time, other times it's just there and you mash the X button for no real rhythmic reason.
While this is happening, a scene plays out, for reasons I can't quite figure out--it's not like you can take the time to watch and enjoy it when you're waiting for each little "PUSH X NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE" icon to pop up. My theory is that SquareEnix actually spent a fortune on each song's visual sequence out of spite alone--FF10-2 has made it abundantly clear that they secretly loathe and detest the people who buy their games. Seeking to frustrate KH2 players, SquareEnix made these elaborate, cheerful sequences during a minigame where watching them means total failure. To add to the distraction value of these things, they decided to set this minigame in Atlantica, where players will continue to have their eyes stray from their objectives, lured away by Ariel and/or a shirtless Sora. No way can this just be a case of poor design; they're LAUGHING at you as you miss the cues because your fangirl instincts to drool at shirtless 14-year-olds cannot be denied.
"Wait a second," you're saying. "If you're saying that the minigame is stupid and annoying, along with badly-designed, then why was I wrong before?"
The reason is this: I don't hate KH2's Atlantica, even given its exceptionally annoying nature. Why not? Because it is so, so, so much better than it was in the original Kingdom Hearts. Look, as stupid and simplistic as the singing minigame might be, it's a helluva lot better than trying to navigate that stupid underwater battle system in KH1. You couldn't just move with the direction stick, no, you had to use that to steer while you held down a button to actually get there--it was annoying enough just to move regularly, let alone while trying to fight enemies that were above and below and all around you. You're trying to swim up and down to get at something and meanwhile there are Heartless smacking your face and electrocuting you with poorly-named Thunder spells and Donald and Goofy are floundering around doing just about nothing except absorbing damage as usual while Ariel's trying to make up for your incompetence at swimming and their incompetence at life and you start swearing because the Little Mermaid is more badass than you...
I'm supposed to be upset that a stupid but harmless little minigame replaced that nightmare of bad gameplay design? Not having to dick around with Heartless jellyfish and whales and whatnot was the greatest improvement they could have possibly made to the sequel. And hell, KH2's take on the world isn't too terrible at times--I mean, they actually made ERIC cool, rather than just the same kind of "Looks nice but has a mind as empty as Quina Quen's (Final Fantasy 9) refrigerator the day after Thanksgiving" character type that I so often criticize RPG heroes for being. KH2 shows HIM being willing to work to be with HER, rather than Ariel having to do and give up everything. I mean, the line:
Eric: "And to think...all this time..."
Ariel: ~LE SAD~
Eric: "...I could've practicing my swimming." ~Splash~
Adds a TON of depth to his character, and makes him pretty damn cool. Sure, it took several rounds of agonizingly dumb musical button-mashing to get to it, but it IS something good about the whole thing, at least, and more rewarding than any of the plot that you're given after the hours of underwater battle torment in KH1. All in all, KH2's Atlantica was a huge improvement, in my opinion.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
General RPGs' Minigames 3: Hauler Beasts
I don't have many serious complaints about Star Ocean 3. While still badly imbalanced in its battle system like SO2 was, taking a little too long to stop dicking around in fantasy land and get back to the plot, and also having Albel in it, overall it's a pretty good and enjoyable game. The characters are pretty good, the pacing's not bad most of the time, and the plot is really nifty once it gets going. But dear God, I loathe the Hauler Beast minigame.
Okay. Here's the basic idea. You get in a mine cart to go through a mine area. Never mind that you could just walk through it like you walk miles and miles through nearly identical other caves throughout the rest of the game--THIS one you need a mine cart for, and that's final! A Hauler Beast, which seems to sorta be some giant turtle thing of some kind which is so big that the mine tunnels only barely accomodate it, thus giving rise once again to the question of why regular people such as your characters can't walk through the tunnels when they're obviously more accomodating for humans, tugs your mine cart through the tunnels, and you give orders on what speed to go, when to stop to explore a little room in the mines, and which direction to take at forks in the path. You have to adjust your speed accordingly for traps and breaks in the track, and if your Hauler gets upset enough by the traps and bonking into walls and such, the minigame is over and you have to start from the beginning.
Now, in order to get all the treasures in the mines, you need to do a crapload of stop-and-go speed increases and decreases with the stupid Haulers, which is annoying. You also have to pretty much start memorizing what turns and twists you have and haven't taken so far, because the map the game gives you is utterly useless for any purpose of navigation. It would probably take you longer to properly figure out how to determine what turns to make based on the map than it would just to randomly fumble your way to the exit--which, trust me, would be a matter of solid hours. You also would have to memorize where each jump and trap is, so you can adjust your speed accordingly, because you'll never get the prizes very far in otherwise, since your turtletard will call it quits after being frightened at having to open gates (no, really).
This by itself is a huge pain in the ass, MORE than enough to guarantee it a spot on my list of Things To Kill People Over. But there's also one treasure deep in the mines that, according to an FAQ for the minigame (and my experiences back this up), you have to take out a Whimsical Hauler to reach. Now, there are 5 different kinds of Haulers. The one most likely to piss its shell and run screaming back to the beginning is also the one most likely to actually do what you tell it to. The other Haulers have different ranges of bravery against traps and willingness to not completely ignore you, but the only one who can last long enough to get this one treasure is the Whimsical Hauler, which does whatever the hell it wants without listening to any input from you. But of course, since the treasure is so far in, the Hauler has about 20 forks in the track to decide to go the wrong way on, so you can be waiting for a LONG time for the stupid thing to finally manage to accidentally bring you where you want it to go. I gave it about 10 tries before I just gave up.
Now, here comes the very best part. You may THINK that this is going to be the only time you waste hours of your life directing an uncooperative and idiotic turtle of burden through SO3's caves. And yes, it could be...but you'll miss out on a bunch of treasures if you don't come back later. Because, you see, nearly half of the treasures you find in the mines when you're forced to play this hellish minigame the first time will be out of your reach--you'll need a tool you get about 2/5 of the way through the game to get them. So if you want to actually get anything GOOD from this torture, you have to spend hours meticulously riding through the caverns AGAIN.
Well fuck you too, SquareEnix.
Okay. Here's the basic idea. You get in a mine cart to go through a mine area. Never mind that you could just walk through it like you walk miles and miles through nearly identical other caves throughout the rest of the game--THIS one you need a mine cart for, and that's final! A Hauler Beast, which seems to sorta be some giant turtle thing of some kind which is so big that the mine tunnels only barely accomodate it, thus giving rise once again to the question of why regular people such as your characters can't walk through the tunnels when they're obviously more accomodating for humans, tugs your mine cart through the tunnels, and you give orders on what speed to go, when to stop to explore a little room in the mines, and which direction to take at forks in the path. You have to adjust your speed accordingly for traps and breaks in the track, and if your Hauler gets upset enough by the traps and bonking into walls and such, the minigame is over and you have to start from the beginning.
Now, in order to get all the treasures in the mines, you need to do a crapload of stop-and-go speed increases and decreases with the stupid Haulers, which is annoying. You also have to pretty much start memorizing what turns and twists you have and haven't taken so far, because the map the game gives you is utterly useless for any purpose of navigation. It would probably take you longer to properly figure out how to determine what turns to make based on the map than it would just to randomly fumble your way to the exit--which, trust me, would be a matter of solid hours. You also would have to memorize where each jump and trap is, so you can adjust your speed accordingly, because you'll never get the prizes very far in otherwise, since your turtletard will call it quits after being frightened at having to open gates (no, really).
This by itself is a huge pain in the ass, MORE than enough to guarantee it a spot on my list of Things To Kill People Over. But there's also one treasure deep in the mines that, according to an FAQ for the minigame (and my experiences back this up), you have to take out a Whimsical Hauler to reach. Now, there are 5 different kinds of Haulers. The one most likely to piss its shell and run screaming back to the beginning is also the one most likely to actually do what you tell it to. The other Haulers have different ranges of bravery against traps and willingness to not completely ignore you, but the only one who can last long enough to get this one treasure is the Whimsical Hauler, which does whatever the hell it wants without listening to any input from you. But of course, since the treasure is so far in, the Hauler has about 20 forks in the track to decide to go the wrong way on, so you can be waiting for a LONG time for the stupid thing to finally manage to accidentally bring you where you want it to go. I gave it about 10 tries before I just gave up.
Now, here comes the very best part. You may THINK that this is going to be the only time you waste hours of your life directing an uncooperative and idiotic turtle of burden through SO3's caves. And yes, it could be...but you'll miss out on a bunch of treasures if you don't come back later. Because, you see, nearly half of the treasures you find in the mines when you're forced to play this hellish minigame the first time will be out of your reach--you'll need a tool you get about 2/5 of the way through the game to get them. So if you want to actually get anything GOOD from this torture, you have to spend hours meticulously riding through the caverns AGAIN.
Well fuck you too, SquareEnix.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Knights of the Old Republic 2's Kreia
Alright, folks, if you haven't played KotOR2 and ever intend to (and you really, really should), don't read this. Too many spoilers.
I am a big fan of the Knights of the Old Republic games. They manage to flawlessly combine fan-made Star Wars (fuck Lucas--anyone who has ever read Timothy Zahn's books knows this is the best, most carefully detailed version of the SW galaxy) with the RPG genre. They've got an awesome setting (naturally), great plots, and better characters. They've got more realistic and gripping backstories and personalities than most other RPGs, and it can be hard not to like even the ones with a heart as black as Darth Vader.
Case in point for me would be Kreia. Now, I do not personally LIKE Kreia. If you've played the game, you'll know that she's not exactly the nicest or most moral person you'll ever come across. She's vicious, manipulative, and she bullies poor Atton all the time (I love Atton). She's Machiavellian to an extreme, just a bit crazy, and at least as much a servant to the Dark Side as she isn't.
But man, as a villain, Kreia is the best I've ever seen in an RPG, plain and simple.
Point One: She's tough. She's genuinely powerful. She's a master of the Force like few others, knowing its ways and using them to her advantage. She can use a lightsaber, which automatically makes her more of a force to be reckoned with than any villain using a regular weapon. She can take a hit (and by a hit, I mean have her hand cut off) and keep on truckin'. She doesn't NEED to do some quest for magic objects to give her the powers of a god. She's smart enough to set the fall for anyone who opposes her without resorting to one-winged angel crap like that. When you deal with Kreia, you deal with someone who's not going to futz around with that nonsense--she'll just either kill you, or, more likely, let you live to unwittingly do her bidding. If Kreia decides to let you live, it's not because she's being a stupid FF villain who doesn't have the good sense to kill protagonists after whupping them early in the game while their levels are low. It's because she knows she WILL make use of you, and can probably do so while making you mentally suffer.
Point Two: The game gives you ample opportunity to know Kreia. Like, KNOW Kreia. This isn't like knowing, say, Seymour of FF10. With Seymour, you know the very, very broad and general (not to mention really dumb) reasons for his villainous actions. This is true of most villains in RPGs, even the good ones--you just don't get too really involved in understanding them. A few, however, like Fou-Lu of Breath of Fire 4 or Orsted of Live-A-Live, are evil characters that you're given a really good amount of insight about, both in their personalities and the reason they do the evil things they do. Kreia, however, blows these two away. She hangs with your party for most of the game, and in that time she tells you all about herself. Her past, her ideals, the qualities she admires and the qualities she despises, her understandings of people and the ways of the universe, and eventually how and why she set everything up. Kreia is a realistic human being in a way that few characters (and of those few, just about no villains) in games are, complex in dozens of different ways that intertwine with each other. Even in a game series with such strongly defined personalities as KotOR2, she really stands out as a character whose creation and development are extraordinarily solid and deep. Folks, a great many of the classic works of literature I've read in my time at college as an English major don't have characters of this high a quality.
Point Three: The voice acting for Kreia is pretty much perfect. Not a big deal, I know, but still, when most of the game's more insightful and thought-provoking content comes from her, it really helps that it's delivered by a voice actress who can get just the right inflections of aged, dark wisdom to match Kreia's personality and words.
Point Four: Kreia wins. Everything. She's the most successful villain of any RPG ever, because she accomplishes every single goal she has. Kill off the remaining survivors of the old Jedi order? Check. Revenge on the Sith Lords who betrayed her? Check (no easy task, either--one regenerates all wounds done him, and the other one is such an unnatural horror that he could very likely defeat every single normal Jedi who ever lived--Yoda, Palpatine, Vader, Luke, EVERYONE). Set the stage for several new Jedi, who know what it is to be human first and foremost and Jedi after that, to create a new order which has a chance not to make all the mistakes the old one did? Check. Bring some balance to the force? All of the above work towards this one. Help prepare the galaxy for the inevitable and fast-approaching day when the Sith finally strike? Check. Send Revan a powerful ally to aid him in fighting the Sith on their own turf? Check. Just about no major move of the Light Side or Dark Side in this game is made without Kreia's making sure it works to further her goals. I mean, even when you kill her at the end of the game, you're STILL doing exactly what she wants--one of her goals is to train her greatest apprentice of all, and that apprentice having the strength of body, Force, and will to kill her will be the way to prove that she has succeeded, her final triumph. How many villains can you think of for whom their final defeat (not just I'm-Dying-But-Not-Really, like Seymour) is an essential part of their plan? Not many.
Point Five: You identify with Kreia. Understanding her isn't just a case of knowing where she's coming from, it's also a case of empathizing with her at times, acknowledging that there's wisdom in her ways regardless of whether they're good or evil. Villains aren't characters you can very often really connect with, and if they are, then you probably have a few issues. Kreia, though, you could argue the merits and weaknesses of her philosophies and insights on humanity, society, karma, and life for hours on end.
In the end, there's really no villain crafted with quite as much care and expertise as Kreia is. Buggy and unfinished as KotOR2 may be, the presence of a villain of Kreia's caliber alone makes it a great RPG.
I am a big fan of the Knights of the Old Republic games. They manage to flawlessly combine fan-made Star Wars (fuck Lucas--anyone who has ever read Timothy Zahn's books knows this is the best, most carefully detailed version of the SW galaxy) with the RPG genre. They've got an awesome setting (naturally), great plots, and better characters. They've got more realistic and gripping backstories and personalities than most other RPGs, and it can be hard not to like even the ones with a heart as black as Darth Vader.
Case in point for me would be Kreia. Now, I do not personally LIKE Kreia. If you've played the game, you'll know that she's not exactly the nicest or most moral person you'll ever come across. She's vicious, manipulative, and she bullies poor Atton all the time (I love Atton). She's Machiavellian to an extreme, just a bit crazy, and at least as much a servant to the Dark Side as she isn't.
But man, as a villain, Kreia is the best I've ever seen in an RPG, plain and simple.
Point One: She's tough. She's genuinely powerful. She's a master of the Force like few others, knowing its ways and using them to her advantage. She can use a lightsaber, which automatically makes her more of a force to be reckoned with than any villain using a regular weapon. She can take a hit (and by a hit, I mean have her hand cut off) and keep on truckin'. She doesn't NEED to do some quest for magic objects to give her the powers of a god. She's smart enough to set the fall for anyone who opposes her without resorting to one-winged angel crap like that. When you deal with Kreia, you deal with someone who's not going to futz around with that nonsense--she'll just either kill you, or, more likely, let you live to unwittingly do her bidding. If Kreia decides to let you live, it's not because she's being a stupid FF villain who doesn't have the good sense to kill protagonists after whupping them early in the game while their levels are low. It's because she knows she WILL make use of you, and can probably do so while making you mentally suffer.
Point Two: The game gives you ample opportunity to know Kreia. Like, KNOW Kreia. This isn't like knowing, say, Seymour of FF10. With Seymour, you know the very, very broad and general (not to mention really dumb) reasons for his villainous actions. This is true of most villains in RPGs, even the good ones--you just don't get too really involved in understanding them. A few, however, like Fou-Lu of Breath of Fire 4 or Orsted of Live-A-Live, are evil characters that you're given a really good amount of insight about, both in their personalities and the reason they do the evil things they do. Kreia, however, blows these two away. She hangs with your party for most of the game, and in that time she tells you all about herself. Her past, her ideals, the qualities she admires and the qualities she despises, her understandings of people and the ways of the universe, and eventually how and why she set everything up. Kreia is a realistic human being in a way that few characters (and of those few, just about no villains) in games are, complex in dozens of different ways that intertwine with each other. Even in a game series with such strongly defined personalities as KotOR2, she really stands out as a character whose creation and development are extraordinarily solid and deep. Folks, a great many of the classic works of literature I've read in my time at college as an English major don't have characters of this high a quality.
Point Three: The voice acting for Kreia is pretty much perfect. Not a big deal, I know, but still, when most of the game's more insightful and thought-provoking content comes from her, it really helps that it's delivered by a voice actress who can get just the right inflections of aged, dark wisdom to match Kreia's personality and words.
Point Four: Kreia wins. Everything. She's the most successful villain of any RPG ever, because she accomplishes every single goal she has. Kill off the remaining survivors of the old Jedi order? Check. Revenge on the Sith Lords who betrayed her? Check (no easy task, either--one regenerates all wounds done him, and the other one is such an unnatural horror that he could very likely defeat every single normal Jedi who ever lived--Yoda, Palpatine, Vader, Luke, EVERYONE). Set the stage for several new Jedi, who know what it is to be human first and foremost and Jedi after that, to create a new order which has a chance not to make all the mistakes the old one did? Check. Bring some balance to the force? All of the above work towards this one. Help prepare the galaxy for the inevitable and fast-approaching day when the Sith finally strike? Check. Send Revan a powerful ally to aid him in fighting the Sith on their own turf? Check. Just about no major move of the Light Side or Dark Side in this game is made without Kreia's making sure it works to further her goals. I mean, even when you kill her at the end of the game, you're STILL doing exactly what she wants--one of her goals is to train her greatest apprentice of all, and that apprentice having the strength of body, Force, and will to kill her will be the way to prove that she has succeeded, her final triumph. How many villains can you think of for whom their final defeat (not just I'm-Dying-But-Not-Really, like Seymour) is an essential part of their plan? Not many.
Point Five: You identify with Kreia. Understanding her isn't just a case of knowing where she's coming from, it's also a case of empathizing with her at times, acknowledging that there's wisdom in her ways regardless of whether they're good or evil. Villains aren't characters you can very often really connect with, and if they are, then you probably have a few issues. Kreia, though, you could argue the merits and weaknesses of her philosophies and insights on humanity, society, karma, and life for hours on end.
In the end, there's really no villain crafted with quite as much care and expertise as Kreia is. Buggy and unfinished as KotOR2 may be, the presence of a villain of Kreia's caliber alone makes it a great RPG.
Monday, November 6, 2006
Seiken Densetsu 3's Characters
After over a month-long absence, I give you...a lame post. Awesome.
I'll admit right now: doing a cast list for Seiken Desnsetsu 3 is a daunting task. Not because I don't think this game's cast deserves to be ridiculed for being shoddy and poorly-conceived characters there to be personality-less drones who forward the plot. Rather, because this cast is so incredibly boring that it's really hard to find a decent characteristic in any one of them that significantly sets them apart from the others.
Duran: You know, I know I harp on the fact that RPG hero dudes are very often boring, featureless blocks of wood that you could randomly switch around between games, and no one could tell the difference. I really wish I could think of new and funny ways to express just how blandly heroic these sword-wielding idiots like Duran are, but I just don't have the imagination. Suffice to say, there's really nothing about Duran that sets him apart from Claude (Star Ocean 2), or Cless (Tales of Phantasia), or Dart (Legend of Dragoon), or Lufia 1's hero, or Ratix (Star Ocean 1), or dozens upon dozens of other such faceless do-gooders.
Angela: Angela suffers a tortured existence as one small and limited sprite shouldered with the heavy destiny of being her game's entire share of T and A.
Kevin: Okay, now, I'm not saying that the loss of a pet isn't a sad thing, folks. I understand it hurts. I've kept some wonderful little creatures of my own in my time, and they've all passed on when it's their time, and it always makes me tear up at least a little to part with them.
But when you have a character whose entire motive for his heroic actions in the game is to avenge the death of his dog, you have done something wrong as a writer.
Lise: "My little brother's been kidnapped! Am I a bad enough Amazon dudette to slowly meander my way through the plot to rescue him?"
Fairy: This little semi-mascot for the team has the unenviable task of constantly having to remind these idiots that they actually have a job to do and should cut their aimless wanderings short to get it done.
Hawk: Being a thief using daggers motivated out of a need to save the chick he's into, Hawk reminds me suspiciously of Locke (Final Fantasy 6) at times, particularly given the name similarity and the fact that they're both Square characters. Aside from the aspects of his personality where this comparison can be drawn, though, there's not much of interest about Hawk.
Carlie: Carlie is a half-elf with the mind of a child who has the hots for a priest dude who stands about 5 feet taller than her. This jonesing for some hot priest-on-midget-half-elf-child action is what keeps her going for at least most of the quest.
Seriously, people. What is with these half-elf kids in RPGs?
You know, this game is just screaming to be made into a porno. Duran's the big muscular guy, Angela's the woman with the enormous boobs who wears scanty clothing regardless of setting (I mean, she IS wearing an over-glorified bathing suit while living in an arctic queendom), Hawk is there as an extra just because there needs to be another guy, Lise is there for the lesbian scene (she's in an all-girl amazon army, and all), Kevin the werewolf's there to please furries, and Carlie is the half-human nymphomaniac midget. Tell me this isn't the perfect cast for a porn flick.
I'll admit right now: doing a cast list for Seiken Desnsetsu 3 is a daunting task. Not because I don't think this game's cast deserves to be ridiculed for being shoddy and poorly-conceived characters there to be personality-less drones who forward the plot. Rather, because this cast is so incredibly boring that it's really hard to find a decent characteristic in any one of them that significantly sets them apart from the others.
Duran: You know, I know I harp on the fact that RPG hero dudes are very often boring, featureless blocks of wood that you could randomly switch around between games, and no one could tell the difference. I really wish I could think of new and funny ways to express just how blandly heroic these sword-wielding idiots like Duran are, but I just don't have the imagination. Suffice to say, there's really nothing about Duran that sets him apart from Claude (Star Ocean 2), or Cless (Tales of Phantasia), or Dart (Legend of Dragoon), or Lufia 1's hero, or Ratix (Star Ocean 1), or dozens upon dozens of other such faceless do-gooders.
Angela: Angela suffers a tortured existence as one small and limited sprite shouldered with the heavy destiny of being her game's entire share of T and A.
Kevin: Okay, now, I'm not saying that the loss of a pet isn't a sad thing, folks. I understand it hurts. I've kept some wonderful little creatures of my own in my time, and they've all passed on when it's their time, and it always makes me tear up at least a little to part with them.
But when you have a character whose entire motive for his heroic actions in the game is to avenge the death of his dog, you have done something wrong as a writer.
Lise: "My little brother's been kidnapped! Am I a bad enough Amazon dudette to slowly meander my way through the plot to rescue him?"
Fairy: This little semi-mascot for the team has the unenviable task of constantly having to remind these idiots that they actually have a job to do and should cut their aimless wanderings short to get it done.
Hawk: Being a thief using daggers motivated out of a need to save the chick he's into, Hawk reminds me suspiciously of Locke (Final Fantasy 6) at times, particularly given the name similarity and the fact that they're both Square characters. Aside from the aspects of his personality where this comparison can be drawn, though, there's not much of interest about Hawk.
Carlie: Carlie is a half-elf with the mind of a child who has the hots for a priest dude who stands about 5 feet taller than her. This jonesing for some hot priest-on-midget-half-elf-child action is what keeps her going for at least most of the quest.
Seriously, people. What is with these half-elf kids in RPGs?
You know, this game is just screaming to be made into a porno. Duran's the big muscular guy, Angela's the woman with the enormous boobs who wears scanty clothing regardless of setting (I mean, she IS wearing an over-glorified bathing suit while living in an arctic queendom), Hawk is there as an extra just because there needs to be another guy, Lise is there for the lesbian scene (she's in an all-girl amazon army, and all), Kevin the werewolf's there to please furries, and Carlie is the half-human nymphomaniac midget. Tell me this isn't the perfect cast for a porn flick.
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