To any Fallout series fanatic (and to be quite honest, I'm not sure there's any fan of the series who isn't fanatical about it) in the decade between 1998 and 2008, the term "Fallout 3" was...exciting, to say the least. "Exciting" the way the idea of Jesus's second coming is exciting to the clergy.
Once the long-awaited game finally came out, opinions on it were mixed, and quite often pretty violently polar. Some people absolutely love the game, while others spit on its casing and shake their fist at God in angered betrayal. Myself, I happen to quite like it--it may not quite live up to the Fallout name to me, but it's a solid entry to the series nonetheless. It's got a decent story that's epic in its simplicity, fine characters, and overall things tend to make sense (as much as the Fallout games generally do, at any rate) and follow logic.
Except the ending sequence. The ending sequence is bullshit. It's been a while since I officially gave a Spoiler alert, but I'm definitely going to right now.
So basically, in the final moments of the game, it's determined that the machine you're trying to save that can purify water in the hellishly irradiated Capital Wasteland is going to go boom if somebody doesn't go into its center chamber and enter in the Anti-Explodey access code that all plot-important catastrophe-prone machines have. Problem with that is, of course, that the radiation in the chamber is crazy lethal, so anyone going in isn't coming out. Now, you have the option of sending the heroic Sarah Lyons in to die instead of you, but if you have a heroic character who's not a dickwad/bitch, that option sucks. So it's up to your character, the Lone Wanderer, to do it, adding Self Sacrifice to Save the Future to your doubtlessly already impressive wasteland resume.
Well, that's all well and good, and I can respect an ending like that...except for one minor detail. Or really, 3 minor details: Fawkes, Charon, and Sergeant RL-3. These 3 are possible companions who can be with you at the time of the ending who are, for one reason or another, more or less immune to radiation. Fawkes is a Super Mutant who has proven previously that she suffers no ill effect from walking into tremendously radiated areas that would make Captain Planet villain Duke Nukem sunburned. Charon is a Ghoul, a fallout zombie-esque person who got so fried by radiation during the original nuclear bombings that it transformed them into a living corpse. I've yet to see a Ghoul in the Fallout series that had any problem with crazy doses of radiation; in fact, most of them enjoy the stuff. And Sergeant RL-3 is a robot with several manipulating limbs that could easily work the plot-machine's controls while he sits floats in radiation that, to a robot such as him, is pretty much harmless.
I'm not saying that every ally you can get should jump at the chance to go become a fleshy night light in your place. I wouldn't opt to send Jericho or Star Paladin Cross, for examples, in because they'd die. But why the HELL doesn't the game give you the option of having a friend who won't die go in to do the task that would kill you? These beings that are supposed to be your companions are just going to watch your character's face melt off instead of just walking in, putting in a code themselves, and walking out? The protagonist's life just isn't worth that much trouble to them?
And it's not just a case of the developers not thinking about it; at least not with Fawkes (haven't checked Charon or RL-3, although I'd be inclined to say it's the same case with them, most likely). Fawkes you can actually ask to go in so that nobody has to die a horrible death. You know what she says to that? Basically, "Thanks but no thanks; wouldn't want to rob you of your destiny."
...
Dot. Dot. DOT, motherfuckers.
You know what? If my destiny is to die horribly even though there's a completely harmless alternative that does the job equally well without having me or anyone else die, then go ahead and rob me of my destiny! Seriously, not gonna mind, won't even miss it. I mean, COME ON, rather than take a few steps and push a few buttons, you're gonna watch the person you've traveled from one end of Hell on Earth to the other with die because it's your personal opinion that it's their destiny to do so? SERIOUSLY? And with Charon's case, he's bound by the papers your character holds to do whatever the goddamn hell your character wants him to!
I'm fine with a dramatic self-sacrifice under reasonable conditions (even if it's a little over-played in RPGs), but this scenario is ridiculous.
RETRACTION (Posted 05/17/09):
So. Remember a (comparably) recent rant I did on how stupid Fallout 3's ending was, focusing on how it had some of your party members just sit around while you went to die from radiation that they were completely immune against? Gonna have to officially retract that whole rant.
See, it's like this. The makers of Fallout 3 have continued to develop for the game since its release, and have made new areas and missions available to Fallout 3 players to download and play (for a fee, of course). They're fairly neat additions in general, but the latest one, the Broken Steel package, extends the game past the original ending, as well as modifying the scene which used to be the game's final moments. Now, not only does your character survive no matter what (which makes sense, honestly; I mean, by the time you get to that point in the game, you've probably accumulated radiation-blocking medicine, clothing, and perks up the wazoo, not to mention craploads of radiation-removing medicine. My own character's got enough Rad-X and RadAway that she could curl up inside a nuclear power plant's reactor core for a nap without a problem), but you also DO get the option of making your radiation-resistant party members pick up the fucking slack.
So basically, the fine folks at Bethesda fixed the idiotic oversight or intentional apathy that made the ending stupid. It's not a perfect solution, in that the Broken Steel package doesn't actually give you an ending after completing it. You're basically trading off a stupid ending, but getting a non-existent one in return. Still, that's certainly better than it was. So yes. I take that whole rant back. Jumped the gun, it seems.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
General RPGs' Racial Equality
RPGs are pretty diverse, generally. You get heroes and supporting characters ranging in ages from children to the elderly of both genders. You get a myriad of settings--fantasy lands of magic and legend, futuristic galaxies with high technology and aliens, post-apocalyptic wastelands, modern-day Earth towns and countryside, floating sky islands, underworlds, gritty cyberpunk cities, and many more. You encounter all kinds of ideas, themes, and messages in the games' plots. You even see dozens of different expressions of art--a game can be cartoony like Paper Mario 2, realistic and dark like the Fallout series, obnoxiously colorful like Chrono Cross, so anime it hurts like the Tales of series, pleasantly simple and pale like Breath of Fire 4, and so on. You just plain find all kinds of stuff in RPGs.
It is thus somewhat surprising to me that the genre is extremely homogeneous as far as race goes. Fact of the matter is, the extreme majority of RPG characters, villains, and NPCs are Caucasians. You do see a few Asians, but that's about it. There are very, very few people with darker skin in these games, and those that do exist are found by and large in North American RPGs, like Fallout and Mass Effect. RPGs that come from Japan (which is to say, almost all RPGs) very, very rarely show any racial diversity. Heck, you get far more humanoids of fantasy races like dwarves and elves (all Caucasian ones, of course) than you do of regular humans with different skin color. I can quite literally off the top of my head think of more centaur party members I've seen in RPGs than I can black people.* And are there ANY Hispanic RPG characters at all? I'm certainly having trouble coming up with one.
The other problem with this issue is that, with the Japanese RPGs, the few characters of different races shown are often callously stereotypical. I mean, let's face it, even if he had some modestly okay character development, Barret in Final Fantasy 7 is a Mr. T knock-off. And Natan in Shadow Hearts 3 is about as generic a Native American as can be imagined, from what his limited and lackluster dialog would indicate.** And if they're not mildly offensive stereotypes, the ethnic characters are usually just mild and unimportant--Kiros from Final Fantasy 8's a sidekick of a side character who's most memorable for interpreting someone else's eye blinking, and General Hauser from Suikoden 2 takes the backseat to pretty much all of the other military leaders and strategists in the game, for examples.
Now, the simplest explanation for this is that Japan by and large has a homogeneous population. Pretty much everyone over there is either Asian or Caucasian; it's very rare to see a person of any other ethnicity (or so I'm told by my friend Jolt, who's the best expert on Japan I know). What exposure the Japanese media gives to people who are different also often reinforces stereotypes (again, from what I'm told by Jolt, although I've read some online articles about the subject that corroborate this). So the Japanese who create these RPGs most likely don't have much exposure to various ethnic groups, and what experience they do have with them may not be good for breaking stereotypes.
The problem I have with this excuse, though, is that Japanese RPGs by and large are still founded in Western ideas and culture. You get European ideas dominating the games' bestiaries, weapons and armor, locations and worlds' general looks, names, and character designs. There's a significant amount of Japanese culture mixed in, sure, and plenty of games are clearly inspired almost entirely by that, but by and large, the genre started with its foundations in Western myths and history, and regardless of how much it's branched out, it's still significantly based around ideas and implements of Western societies. So if they're looking to other cultures for ideas, they should be getting at least enough of a glimpse of them to have the idea to throw in a few more ethnically diverse characters.
Now, this isn't to say that Japan never does well with this, or even that North American RPGs always do. I may have criticized Suikoden 2 for Hauser's insignificant role, but the Suikoden series as a whole makes a solid effort to have some racial diversity--Suikoden 3 has several characters from the dark-skinned, tribal Grasslander clans join up with you--a few of which are significant and important characters, and one of which is actually one of the three protagonists (canonically THE protagonist, for that matter). That's certainly a step in the right direction. Final Fantasy Tactics has Rafa and Malak, who, if not terribly important characters, are still fairly significant and get decent characterization. Gallows from Wild Arms 3 is an excellent character whose Native American-based heritage works FOR his characterization, giving him a strong basis for his development (his attempts to escape his overbearing destiny as dictated by his culture, leading to his eventual acceptance of it) while not limiting him to some cheap stereotype--pretty much the exact opposite of one of my previous examples, Natan. And by contrast, Shadowrun SNES, which was made by an Australian game company and was based on a North American pen-and-paper RPG, contains a black character named Jangadance, who is a superstitious, pistol-toting, laid-back Jamaican, and a Native American character named Dances with Clams, who wears a headdress, seems to speak with deliberation, likes to talk about spirits, and basically looks like every Native American chief stereotype you've ever seen. That more or less counts as a Western RPG perpetuating stereotypes as badly as any Japanese RPG might, I reckon. Still, these are more or less just exceptions to a trend.
So yeah. RPGs are pretty varied in general, and their creators are more often than not making stories containing many elements founded in Western culture, so the racial inequality of RPG characters just seems odd to me. C'mon, RPG makers, stop letting The Man keep a brother down!***
* To be fair, almost all these centaurs come from Shining Force games, since RPGs in general stupidly don't have many centaurs, but even still.
** Shania, another Native American from the same game, doesn't set any records for originality, either, but with her it's more just her lacking any personality, stereotypical or not, so it doesn't count.
*** I apologize if this is offensive. I am whiter than a cotton swab dipped in vanilla icing left in the snow, so it's hard for me to gauge.
It is thus somewhat surprising to me that the genre is extremely homogeneous as far as race goes. Fact of the matter is, the extreme majority of RPG characters, villains, and NPCs are Caucasians. You do see a few Asians, but that's about it. There are very, very few people with darker skin in these games, and those that do exist are found by and large in North American RPGs, like Fallout and Mass Effect. RPGs that come from Japan (which is to say, almost all RPGs) very, very rarely show any racial diversity. Heck, you get far more humanoids of fantasy races like dwarves and elves (all Caucasian ones, of course) than you do of regular humans with different skin color. I can quite literally off the top of my head think of more centaur party members I've seen in RPGs than I can black people.* And are there ANY Hispanic RPG characters at all? I'm certainly having trouble coming up with one.
The other problem with this issue is that, with the Japanese RPGs, the few characters of different races shown are often callously stereotypical. I mean, let's face it, even if he had some modestly okay character development, Barret in Final Fantasy 7 is a Mr. T knock-off. And Natan in Shadow Hearts 3 is about as generic a Native American as can be imagined, from what his limited and lackluster dialog would indicate.** And if they're not mildly offensive stereotypes, the ethnic characters are usually just mild and unimportant--Kiros from Final Fantasy 8's a sidekick of a side character who's most memorable for interpreting someone else's eye blinking, and General Hauser from Suikoden 2 takes the backseat to pretty much all of the other military leaders and strategists in the game, for examples.
Now, the simplest explanation for this is that Japan by and large has a homogeneous population. Pretty much everyone over there is either Asian or Caucasian; it's very rare to see a person of any other ethnicity (or so I'm told by my friend Jolt, who's the best expert on Japan I know). What exposure the Japanese media gives to people who are different also often reinforces stereotypes (again, from what I'm told by Jolt, although I've read some online articles about the subject that corroborate this). So the Japanese who create these RPGs most likely don't have much exposure to various ethnic groups, and what experience they do have with them may not be good for breaking stereotypes.
The problem I have with this excuse, though, is that Japanese RPGs by and large are still founded in Western ideas and culture. You get European ideas dominating the games' bestiaries, weapons and armor, locations and worlds' general looks, names, and character designs. There's a significant amount of Japanese culture mixed in, sure, and plenty of games are clearly inspired almost entirely by that, but by and large, the genre started with its foundations in Western myths and history, and regardless of how much it's branched out, it's still significantly based around ideas and implements of Western societies. So if they're looking to other cultures for ideas, they should be getting at least enough of a glimpse of them to have the idea to throw in a few more ethnically diverse characters.
Now, this isn't to say that Japan never does well with this, or even that North American RPGs always do. I may have criticized Suikoden 2 for Hauser's insignificant role, but the Suikoden series as a whole makes a solid effort to have some racial diversity--Suikoden 3 has several characters from the dark-skinned, tribal Grasslander clans join up with you--a few of which are significant and important characters, and one of which is actually one of the three protagonists (canonically THE protagonist, for that matter). That's certainly a step in the right direction. Final Fantasy Tactics has Rafa and Malak, who, if not terribly important characters, are still fairly significant and get decent characterization. Gallows from Wild Arms 3 is an excellent character whose Native American-based heritage works FOR his characterization, giving him a strong basis for his development (his attempts to escape his overbearing destiny as dictated by his culture, leading to his eventual acceptance of it) while not limiting him to some cheap stereotype--pretty much the exact opposite of one of my previous examples, Natan. And by contrast, Shadowrun SNES, which was made by an Australian game company and was based on a North American pen-and-paper RPG, contains a black character named Jangadance, who is a superstitious, pistol-toting, laid-back Jamaican, and a Native American character named Dances with Clams, who wears a headdress, seems to speak with deliberation, likes to talk about spirits, and basically looks like every Native American chief stereotype you've ever seen. That more or less counts as a Western RPG perpetuating stereotypes as badly as any Japanese RPG might, I reckon. Still, these are more or less just exceptions to a trend.
So yeah. RPGs are pretty varied in general, and their creators are more often than not making stories containing many elements founded in Western culture, so the racial inequality of RPG characters just seems odd to me. C'mon, RPG makers, stop letting The Man keep a brother down!***
* To be fair, almost all these centaurs come from Shining Force games, since RPGs in general stupidly don't have many centaurs, but even still.
** Shania, another Native American from the same game, doesn't set any records for originality, either, but with her it's more just her lacking any personality, stereotypical or not, so it doesn't count.
*** I apologize if this is offensive. I am whiter than a cotton swab dipped in vanilla icing left in the snow, so it's hard for me to gauge.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Tales of Symphonia's Characters
Lloyd: As per Anime Law for any hero who is not seriously psychologically damaged, the hero of the game is a good-natured, moral, yet utterly moronic simpleton. I'm really starting to wonder about Japan, at this point. Does it just never occur to them to try starring a character who is both sane and relatively smart?
Colette: In a small twist of character development that is about as close to originality as this game gets, the main hero's love interest is actually just about as nice-but-dumb as he is. Whether it's natural as with Lloyd, or simply brain damage as a result of all the clumsy accidents she has, is hard to determine. Either way, though, clearly a match made in heaven.
Genis: "Gasp! My new friend has betrayed my trust! I feel such a conflict of loyalty now--should I side with my honest and caring friends and family, half of whom I've known all my life, or with the manipulative traitor that I met about an hour ago? I CAN'T POSSIBLY DECIDE!"
Presea: Once her 10 minutes of plot are over, they're over. Frankly, you'd think that the game could get a lot of mileage out of an adult woman trapped in a super-strong child's body whose growth was stinted by a magical doohickey that also robbed her of her free will and personality for several years, leaving her alone and a temporally-misplaced freak of nature, but...they don't really seem to bother. After a little bit of remorse over her dad having died while she was zombie-ing it up, her only real role to play is just taking part in another character's development.
Regal: A backstory that's way lamer than it should be makes the only notable part of this character his fighting style--basically, he vowed to never use his hands to fight anybody, so he only uses various kicks and such in battle. That sounds kind of neat and all, but honestly, I gotta say, if you're in dangerous combat where the lives of you and your friends, as well as the freedom of millions and that of future generations, are on the line, it seems a little stupid to purposefully hold back.
Sheena: Much like Chisato in Star Ocean 2, Sheena has a strange kind of appeal as a character just by being a fairly normal and non-annoying character that makes her my favorite here. It's not that she's a good character per say--it's more just that she's really the only one that isn't a bad character.
Raine: For a character with a crapload of exposition, Raine doesn't have a whole lot of personality. When not fulfilling the role of "Character Who Is Knowledgeable About And Likes To Explain Plot Stuff," Raine's only real distinguishing trait is a mania for archeology. It's not even portrayed well enough to be as humorous as it should be (and that's not much); she never gets into enough detail or mumbles enough history about the ruins she's studying that you actually buy it. Will from Tales of Legendia's obsession with animal physiology is a much better execution of the same joke.
Kratos: Congratulations, Tales of Symphonia, on creating the most average Swordsman character of all time.
Zelos: You know your game's in trouble when the deepest character in it is a shallow playboy.*
Mithos: Y'know, I love my sisters a lot. But I have to say that if one of them died, I wouldn't split the world in half and create a military religious order that controls and enslaves countless people of other races, ruining their lives and their descendants' lives for centuries, with the intention of finding a human sacrifice through which to revive my sister. Maybe I'm just a bad brother, though.
* Final Fantasy 9 notwithstanding. Although Zidane isn't a shallow playboy to begin with, so it doesn't qualify anyhow.
Colette: In a small twist of character development that is about as close to originality as this game gets, the main hero's love interest is actually just about as nice-but-dumb as he is. Whether it's natural as with Lloyd, or simply brain damage as a result of all the clumsy accidents she has, is hard to determine. Either way, though, clearly a match made in heaven.
Genis: "Gasp! My new friend has betrayed my trust! I feel such a conflict of loyalty now--should I side with my honest and caring friends and family, half of whom I've known all my life, or with the manipulative traitor that I met about an hour ago? I CAN'T POSSIBLY DECIDE!"
Presea: Once her 10 minutes of plot are over, they're over. Frankly, you'd think that the game could get a lot of mileage out of an adult woman trapped in a super-strong child's body whose growth was stinted by a magical doohickey that also robbed her of her free will and personality for several years, leaving her alone and a temporally-misplaced freak of nature, but...they don't really seem to bother. After a little bit of remorse over her dad having died while she was zombie-ing it up, her only real role to play is just taking part in another character's development.
Regal: A backstory that's way lamer than it should be makes the only notable part of this character his fighting style--basically, he vowed to never use his hands to fight anybody, so he only uses various kicks and such in battle. That sounds kind of neat and all, but honestly, I gotta say, if you're in dangerous combat where the lives of you and your friends, as well as the freedom of millions and that of future generations, are on the line, it seems a little stupid to purposefully hold back.
Sheena: Much like Chisato in Star Ocean 2, Sheena has a strange kind of appeal as a character just by being a fairly normal and non-annoying character that makes her my favorite here. It's not that she's a good character per say--it's more just that she's really the only one that isn't a bad character.
Raine: For a character with a crapload of exposition, Raine doesn't have a whole lot of personality. When not fulfilling the role of "Character Who Is Knowledgeable About And Likes To Explain Plot Stuff," Raine's only real distinguishing trait is a mania for archeology. It's not even portrayed well enough to be as humorous as it should be (and that's not much); she never gets into enough detail or mumbles enough history about the ruins she's studying that you actually buy it. Will from Tales of Legendia's obsession with animal physiology is a much better execution of the same joke.
Kratos: Congratulations, Tales of Symphonia, on creating the most average Swordsman character of all time.
Zelos: You know your game's in trouble when the deepest character in it is a shallow playboy.*
Mithos: Y'know, I love my sisters a lot. But I have to say that if one of them died, I wouldn't split the world in half and create a military religious order that controls and enslaves countless people of other races, ruining their lives and their descendants' lives for centuries, with the intention of finding a human sacrifice through which to revive my sister. Maybe I'm just a bad brother, though.
* Final Fantasy 9 notwithstanding. Although Zidane isn't a shallow playboy to begin with, so it doesn't qualify anyhow.
Friday, February 13, 2009
The Wild Arms Series's Female Characters' Superiority
Y'know, when I was thinking about the Wild Arms series as a whole the other day, I realized something odd--the female characters in the series are way more compelling than the male ones. Now sure, there are plenty of individual games out there for which this is true, as well, and it's not really that noteworthy for them--the characters in them that are the most interesting and have the most depth just happen to be girls. But this is the case overwhelmingly with every game in the WA series to date. I mean, let's look at these things individually.
WA1: Now honestly, I can't say I'm really a significant fan of any of this game's characters. None are bad characters, I guess, but the general cast is just overall bland. Rudy's got all the characterization that having no dialog usually entails, Jack's just there most of the time and his development, which could have been quite compelling with better execution, just comes off as run-of-the-mill, and Cecilia's just another boring magical princess. The villains are no better, just being a collection standard evil-doing demons. Still, if there's one character that stands out in the game, it's Jane. While not a great character, the few poignant moments of the game are pretty much all centered on her, and she certainly has a lot more personality than everyone else.
Good Females: 1 (1 Total)
Great Females: 0 (0 Total)
Good Males: 0 (0 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
WA2: Again, not much of a noteworthy cast in general, just your average RPG characters with a little development here and there that doesn't go anywhere you haven't gone before. I suppose Brad is decent enough, and Irving's okay. But the two characters who really make any impression on you are Anastasia and Antenora. Anastasia's a rather neat heroine who has a rather neat and different take on heroism and desire that gives you something to think about, a new perspective to consider. As for Antenora, I've done a previous rant about why she's a pretty cool and different villainess, so check that out for the details. Marivel is also a fairly decent character, so that's another for the girls.
Good Females: 2 (3 Total)
Great Females: 1 (1 Total)
Good Males: 2 (2 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
WA3: Ah, my favorite in the series. Hell, the only one I actually really like at all. This game's got some pretty good male characters, actually--I like Clive, Gallows has some good characterization, Asgard is cool, Alfred is neat, Werner's got an interesting gimmick going on (even though he's mostly just there for the protagonist's development), and all 3 of the prophets (2 of which are male) are interesting villains for both their petty, weak human natures leading them to evil and for the fact that they're actually more or less the underdogs the whole time they're villain-ing it up. But even still, the true draw of this game is the main character, Virginia. She's pretty much one of the greatest heroes of the entire RPG genre, characterized beautifully, unique, full of personality, and always being developed, from start to finish of the game. Virginia by herself is about 2/3 of why this game is so good, not only because she's such an excellent character, but because she's so totally immersed in the game's story--everything else in the game that's good becomes better because she interacts and reacts to it, be it plot, character development, or themes. And there's also Maya, Virginia's antagonistic rival, who perfectly compliments and contrasts Virginia, she has some pretty decent characterization herself (which is a nice change for an RPG rival), and has a crazily appealing personality--I've yet to meet a WA3 player who did not love Maya. There may be a lot of decent male characters in WA3, but Virginia and Maya just completely overshadow them in quality and appeal.
Good Females: 1 (4 Total)
Great Females: 2 (3 Total)
Good Males: 7 (9 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
WA4: God I hate this game. The characters sucked, the villains sucked, the NPCs sucked. Gawn was decent, but nothing special. However, as terrible as the rest of the cast is, Racquel is such a great, original, and even inspiring character that she almost balances them all out. She's not only the best character in the game, she's its ONLY virtue.
Good Females: 0 (4 Total)
Great Females: 1 (4 Total)
Good Males: 1 (10 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
WA5: Once again, a game without many characters that evoke strong feelings (well, besides Dean and Volsung, but I meant POSITIVE strong feelings). Still, if there are any characters that are anything more than standard and boring, I would say they're probably Avril (sure, she does the tired old "Magical Girl with a Faulty Memory and Lack of Understanding of People/the World," but she does it better than most, and she's moderately likable) for the heroes and Persephone for the villains (on the grounds that she's the only villain with any depth at all, even if it's really only a little, and/or the only villain who has depth that is not laughable and stupid).
Good Females: 2 (6 Total)
Great Females: 0 (4 Total)
Good Males: 0 (10 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
So yeah. While there are some decent male characters in the series (mostly all found in one installment that's focused on its main females anyway), the female characters are consistently the ones worth noticing in each game, and the best characters in the series are all women.
Why am I bringing this up? I dunno; no reason, really. Just seemed like an interesting quirk when I thought of it, something I don't think any other RPG series does, and made all the stranger by the fact that the WA series purports itself (very falsely) to be a Wild West-style series, which would make you think that the really important and good characters (note the qualifier "and," important and sucky ones don't count) would be male.
WA1: Now honestly, I can't say I'm really a significant fan of any of this game's characters. None are bad characters, I guess, but the general cast is just overall bland. Rudy's got all the characterization that having no dialog usually entails, Jack's just there most of the time and his development, which could have been quite compelling with better execution, just comes off as run-of-the-mill, and Cecilia's just another boring magical princess. The villains are no better, just being a collection standard evil-doing demons. Still, if there's one character that stands out in the game, it's Jane. While not a great character, the few poignant moments of the game are pretty much all centered on her, and she certainly has a lot more personality than everyone else.
Good Females: 1 (1 Total)
Great Females: 0 (0 Total)
Good Males: 0 (0 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
WA2: Again, not much of a noteworthy cast in general, just your average RPG characters with a little development here and there that doesn't go anywhere you haven't gone before. I suppose Brad is decent enough, and Irving's okay. But the two characters who really make any impression on you are Anastasia and Antenora. Anastasia's a rather neat heroine who has a rather neat and different take on heroism and desire that gives you something to think about, a new perspective to consider. As for Antenora, I've done a previous rant about why she's a pretty cool and different villainess, so check that out for the details. Marivel is also a fairly decent character, so that's another for the girls.
Good Females: 2 (3 Total)
Great Females: 1 (1 Total)
Good Males: 2 (2 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
WA3: Ah, my favorite in the series. Hell, the only one I actually really like at all. This game's got some pretty good male characters, actually--I like Clive, Gallows has some good characterization, Asgard is cool, Alfred is neat, Werner's got an interesting gimmick going on (even though he's mostly just there for the protagonist's development), and all 3 of the prophets (2 of which are male) are interesting villains for both their petty, weak human natures leading them to evil and for the fact that they're actually more or less the underdogs the whole time they're villain-ing it up. But even still, the true draw of this game is the main character, Virginia. She's pretty much one of the greatest heroes of the entire RPG genre, characterized beautifully, unique, full of personality, and always being developed, from start to finish of the game. Virginia by herself is about 2/3 of why this game is so good, not only because she's such an excellent character, but because she's so totally immersed in the game's story--everything else in the game that's good becomes better because she interacts and reacts to it, be it plot, character development, or themes. And there's also Maya, Virginia's antagonistic rival, who perfectly compliments and contrasts Virginia, she has some pretty decent characterization herself (which is a nice change for an RPG rival), and has a crazily appealing personality--I've yet to meet a WA3 player who did not love Maya. There may be a lot of decent male characters in WA3, but Virginia and Maya just completely overshadow them in quality and appeal.
Good Females: 1 (4 Total)
Great Females: 2 (3 Total)
Good Males: 7 (9 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
WA4: God I hate this game. The characters sucked, the villains sucked, the NPCs sucked. Gawn was decent, but nothing special. However, as terrible as the rest of the cast is, Racquel is such a great, original, and even inspiring character that she almost balances them all out. She's not only the best character in the game, she's its ONLY virtue.
Good Females: 0 (4 Total)
Great Females: 1 (4 Total)
Good Males: 1 (10 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
WA5: Once again, a game without many characters that evoke strong feelings (well, besides Dean and Volsung, but I meant POSITIVE strong feelings). Still, if there are any characters that are anything more than standard and boring, I would say they're probably Avril (sure, she does the tired old "Magical Girl with a Faulty Memory and Lack of Understanding of People/the World," but she does it better than most, and she's moderately likable) for the heroes and Persephone for the villains (on the grounds that she's the only villain with any depth at all, even if it's really only a little, and/or the only villain who has depth that is not laughable and stupid).
Good Females: 2 (6 Total)
Great Females: 0 (4 Total)
Good Males: 0 (10 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
So yeah. While there are some decent male characters in the series (mostly all found in one installment that's focused on its main females anyway), the female characters are consistently the ones worth noticing in each game, and the best characters in the series are all women.
Why am I bringing this up? I dunno; no reason, really. Just seemed like an interesting quirk when I thought of it, something I don't think any other RPG series does, and made all the stranger by the fact that the WA series purports itself (very falsely) to be a Wild West-style series, which would make you think that the really important and good characters (note the qualifier "and," important and sucky ones don't count) would be male.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Startropics 1's Ending's Worth
Startropics 1 was a terrifically fun game with a lot of heart to it, one of my favorite NES games of all time. It was a very decent action RPG that had a strong devotion to its story, along with a rather unique RPG setting. Its most enjoyable aspect, the humorous and silly dialog and light overall mood, is what makes it notable in RPG history, because it was one of the earliest examples, if not the earliest example plain and simple, of the all too rare humor RPG. Fun, challenging, and silly in a nice way, the game's definitely worth checking out if you ever feel like kickin' it up old school. Or older school, I guess; I think we now consider SNES and PSX1 eras to be "old school."
There is one part of Startropics 1, though, that I feel is largely and unfairly forgotten and under-appreciated: its ending, and the perspective it puts on the game's adventure's purpose. A little refresher on the ending for those of you who haven't played it in a little while (and severe warning to those of you who haven't played it at all not to read further! Startropics 1's close enough to my heart that I don't want anyone to spoil it for themselves): after single-handedly beating the alien warlord Zoda, taking out an entire space ship full of world-conquering, technologically advanced alien invaders, and blowing said ship up, Mike returns to C-Island and brings the three delicious-looking alien sugar cubes to his uncle, who had insisted that they were artifacts important enough for his teenage nephew to take on a world-destroying group of aliens while armed with naught but a yo-yo in order to get them. They put the cubes together, there are some flashy effects (to the extent that the ol' NES can produce flashy effects, at any rate), and 7 kids suddenly appear. Mike and company discover that these children are the last survivors of Argonia, an alien civilization that had been otherwise utterly obliterated by Zoda and his bunch. Mike did more than just beat up bad guys and save his uncle--he preserved the last of an entire civilization from final ruin.
This is something that really impressed me about the game, that it would, at the end, make the otherwise relatively small (and often silly) adventure into something truly significant, arguably as epic a quest as any Save The World RPG plot; perhaps more, even. It doesn't seem that many people really think about this strong moment when they recall Startropics 1, even the many fans, who usually only think of and talk about the game's plot in terms of its fun and light atmosphere. Not that I can blame them entirely, of course, since the ending itself jumps immediately from finding out that Mike saved the remnants of an entire planet's people to someone making a joke and everyone going fishing, but still. It's a neat and fairly moving RPG moment, and I felt it deserved note.
There is one part of Startropics 1, though, that I feel is largely and unfairly forgotten and under-appreciated: its ending, and the perspective it puts on the game's adventure's purpose. A little refresher on the ending for those of you who haven't played it in a little while (and severe warning to those of you who haven't played it at all not to read further! Startropics 1's close enough to my heart that I don't want anyone to spoil it for themselves): after single-handedly beating the alien warlord Zoda, taking out an entire space ship full of world-conquering, technologically advanced alien invaders, and blowing said ship up, Mike returns to C-Island and brings the three delicious-looking alien sugar cubes to his uncle, who had insisted that they were artifacts important enough for his teenage nephew to take on a world-destroying group of aliens while armed with naught but a yo-yo in order to get them. They put the cubes together, there are some flashy effects (to the extent that the ol' NES can produce flashy effects, at any rate), and 7 kids suddenly appear. Mike and company discover that these children are the last survivors of Argonia, an alien civilization that had been otherwise utterly obliterated by Zoda and his bunch. Mike did more than just beat up bad guys and save his uncle--he preserved the last of an entire civilization from final ruin.
This is something that really impressed me about the game, that it would, at the end, make the otherwise relatively small (and often silly) adventure into something truly significant, arguably as epic a quest as any Save The World RPG plot; perhaps more, even. It doesn't seem that many people really think about this strong moment when they recall Startropics 1, even the many fans, who usually only think of and talk about the game's plot in terms of its fun and light atmosphere. Not that I can blame them entirely, of course, since the ending itself jumps immediately from finding out that Mike saved the remnants of an entire planet's people to someone making a joke and everyone going fishing, but still. It's a neat and fairly moving RPG moment, and I felt it deserved note.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Mass Effect 1's Sex Scene's Inequality
Alright, so, old news: Mass Effect's plot can, with a little effort made to develop a romantic relationship between the protagonist Shepard and one of three of his/her party members, involve a sex scene. How scandalous. This fact caused a bit of a stir for a little while, until people finally realized that there's less adult content in the scene than there is in some "We Are Heavily Implying Sex Is Happening" moments in PG-13 movies, and that the people making the fuss were making a lot of stuff up because they liked attention. Seriously, the scene in Xenogears where Elly's naked, vaguely-defined little sprite gets out of bed after supposedly having (undoubtedly unsatisfying and awkward) sex with Fei shows more and better qualifies as adult content.
Now me, I think that the scene's done tastefully enough, and is relevantly inserted into the plot and characters' relationship's progression well enough, that it's a good, reasonable, and worthwhile part of the game, not excessive or gratuitous. Opened can of worms that it may be to say so, I actually wish a few more RPGs included sex (in this relevant, not excessive way, mind) in their plots, because it IS a consideration for most people in relationships and their average lives--it adds to the relationship of Mass Effect, it helps to nurture the culmination of love and significance in the Aeon Social Link in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES,* and its less romantic, more casual and corrupt nature in the Fallout games helps to reinforce the savage setting and often amoral people of Fallout.
However, there is something about the situation that irks me greatly. It's been complained about by various people before, but now it's my turn to gripe: Why does the player have the option to pursue a heterosexual and gay female relationship, but not a gay male one?
Now look, I admit, it's not a scenario I would especially want to pursue, myself. But limiting the player's options to heterosexual or lesbian ones cheapens the whole affair. Obviously a significant portion of gamers are heterosexual males, so they're only going to be interested in one of those two options (and you can probably guess which one is going to be more popular with them).** But pandering to the larger audience and ignoring the smaller one this way makes the whole thing look like it's just a cheap, degrading attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator shamelessly, like something Final Fantasy 10-2 would do.
This is the kind of insulting pandering the comic book industry specializes in--pretending to be forward-thinking by including a few homosexual characters, but then making sure that pretty much all the ones that are in any way significant are hot girls. Want a Super Hero who's gay, actually important, and has characterization relating to but also going beyond his sexual preference? Apparently you have to go read a book about a kid named Thom Creed, because you sure as hell won't find an example in the genre's primary mediums.
Look, I want to believe that Mass Effect's sex scene and romantic relationship options were about more than fanservice. All other signs say that they were! But it's hard to argue that opinion with this kind of suspicious omission. I hope that ME2 will correct this with the additional option to pursue a gay male relationship. Heck, even just eliminating the lesbian option would almost be better--I'd rather have homosexuality included as an option in the game, being open-minded and all that jazz, but including one and not the other like this is not a step for equality.
* Look, the way I figure it, having Minato leave a small imprint of his DNA in her core CPU doohickey is, for an android like Aigis, most definitely a sexual encounter. Which brings me to a question I've had for a while that some of you (mostly just Trippy) will no doubt want to weigh in on: is it implied (or even canon) that Minato has sex with each girl that he completes a romantic Social Link with? I had originally thought he didn't, and that people were just, as is almost always the case, inappropriately reading more into it than was there...but since the last and most important romance ends with the robot equivalent of poignant love-making, it occurs to me that the others might have meant to imply sex, too. Thoughts?
** I admit that the lesbian relationship's usually the one I pursue, too, but in my defense, the male Shepard sounds like an idiot and comes off as a high school bully given an automatic weapon, Kaiden (the male romantic interest possibility for female Shepard) is a nice but ultimately kind of boring character, and Liara (the female romantic interest who likes Shepard regardless of gender) is a good character whose romantic relationship with Shepard is the sweetest, to me. Then again, maybe I'm just a horny idiot who rationalizes better than most others.
Now me, I think that the scene's done tastefully enough, and is relevantly inserted into the plot and characters' relationship's progression well enough, that it's a good, reasonable, and worthwhile part of the game, not excessive or gratuitous. Opened can of worms that it may be to say so, I actually wish a few more RPGs included sex (in this relevant, not excessive way, mind) in their plots, because it IS a consideration for most people in relationships and their average lives--it adds to the relationship of Mass Effect, it helps to nurture the culmination of love and significance in the Aeon Social Link in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES,* and its less romantic, more casual and corrupt nature in the Fallout games helps to reinforce the savage setting and often amoral people of Fallout.
However, there is something about the situation that irks me greatly. It's been complained about by various people before, but now it's my turn to gripe: Why does the player have the option to pursue a heterosexual and gay female relationship, but not a gay male one?
Now look, I admit, it's not a scenario I would especially want to pursue, myself. But limiting the player's options to heterosexual or lesbian ones cheapens the whole affair. Obviously a significant portion of gamers are heterosexual males, so they're only going to be interested in one of those two options (and you can probably guess which one is going to be more popular with them).** But pandering to the larger audience and ignoring the smaller one this way makes the whole thing look like it's just a cheap, degrading attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator shamelessly, like something Final Fantasy 10-2 would do.
This is the kind of insulting pandering the comic book industry specializes in--pretending to be forward-thinking by including a few homosexual characters, but then making sure that pretty much all the ones that are in any way significant are hot girls. Want a Super Hero who's gay, actually important, and has characterization relating to but also going beyond his sexual preference? Apparently you have to go read a book about a kid named Thom Creed, because you sure as hell won't find an example in the genre's primary mediums.
Look, I want to believe that Mass Effect's sex scene and romantic relationship options were about more than fanservice. All other signs say that they were! But it's hard to argue that opinion with this kind of suspicious omission. I hope that ME2 will correct this with the additional option to pursue a gay male relationship. Heck, even just eliminating the lesbian option would almost be better--I'd rather have homosexuality included as an option in the game, being open-minded and all that jazz, but including one and not the other like this is not a step for equality.
* Look, the way I figure it, having Minato leave a small imprint of his DNA in her core CPU doohickey is, for an android like Aigis, most definitely a sexual encounter. Which brings me to a question I've had for a while that some of you (mostly just Trippy) will no doubt want to weigh in on: is it implied (or even canon) that Minato has sex with each girl that he completes a romantic Social Link with? I had originally thought he didn't, and that people were just, as is almost always the case, inappropriately reading more into it than was there...but since the last and most important romance ends with the robot equivalent of poignant love-making, it occurs to me that the others might have meant to imply sex, too. Thoughts?
** I admit that the lesbian relationship's usually the one I pursue, too, but in my defense, the male Shepard sounds like an idiot and comes off as a high school bully given an automatic weapon, Kaiden (the male romantic interest possibility for female Shepard) is a nice but ultimately kind of boring character, and Liara (the female romantic interest who likes Shepard regardless of gender) is a good character whose romantic relationship with Shepard is the sweetest, to me. Then again, maybe I'm just a horny idiot who rationalizes better than most others.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Annual Summary: 2008
Another year has come and gone, folks. I'm particularly sad about this one leaving, because 8 is totally my favorite number. But that's life. The RPGs I played this year, in alphabetical rather than chronological order, are:
Baroque (PS2)
Fallout 3 (PC)
Golden Sun 1 (GBA)
Golden Sun 2 (GBA)
Mass Effect (PC)
Phantasy Star Universe (PS2)
Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald (GBA)
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES (PS2)
Shining Force EXA (PS2)
Suikoden 4 (PS2)
Suikoden Tactics (PS2)
Tales of Legendia (PS2)
Wild Arms 5 (PS2)
You may notice that there are significantly fewer games on that list than there were last year. There are several reasons for this. First of all, I started to work 2 full time jobs back around March, 1 related to the career I want to get into (Teaching) and the other related to the fact that I want to actually be able to pay my bills until someone hires me on as a regular teacher instead of a Substitute one. So that equals a lot of time lost. Another reason is Super Smash Brothers Brawl--those of you who know it and have it don't need an explanation on how that interrupts one's focus on other things. Third reason would be spending a lot of time with my sister, showing her awesome stuff like Wild Arms 3, Tales of Legendia (as a replay), and Futurama, along with her getting me into House M.D., 30 Rock, and, oddly enough, Ouran High School Host Club (so sue me, I can't help but love parodies of stupid fangirls and stupider anime trends). So that's a lot of time gone.
I also re-watched and re-contemplated every episode of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and the movie. This is an RPG-only blog, so I don't often say much at length on animes save the (often annoying) correlations they have with RPGs, but I gotta just make a note here: Man, if anything proves that anime can be an art form, it's RGU; I could make a blog that updates once a week just talking about that show and movie and manage to keep it going for at least 5 years. It's like one of the best classic novels ever written in visual form. So that's more time there, anyways.
And lastly, me compulsively searching every corner, bookshelf, and suspicious pile of rubble in Fallout 3. Damn that game's immense map and explorable nature. Thank heavens I'm not doing a second run of Fallout 3, or I probably wouldn't get a new RPG played until next Spring.
So yeah. Sadly not as much time this year for RPGs.
Still, it was a pretty good year. It didn't start especially auspiciously, with the first game I finished being the coma-inducing Suikoden 4, but things got better when I was happily surprised to find that Phantasy Star Universe didn't suck contrary to what Meteor9 had told me, Shining Force EXA was actually really nice despite being nearly totally unknown and looking like it would be as bland as could be, and Wild Arms 5 not sucking nearly as much as I thought it would. Also, a good friend who goes on Gaia by the name of Cross Knight Byuu recommended Tales of Legendia to me, and much to my (very reluctant) surprise, it turned out to be pretty awesome.* And of course, playing Mass Effect and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES right in the middle made the year shine very favorably for me, RPG-wise (heck, just finding out that they ended up making Mass Effect for the PC instead of keeping it exclusive to the X-Box 360 was like an early Christmas; I nearly bought that stupid system just for that one game). Ending it with Fallout 3, which is pretty darned good, also makes the year feel pretty satisfying.
One unfortunate trend of 2008 for me, though, was the Endings aspect. While Suikoden 4 having a pointless and boring ending was no surprise, given the game, Wild Arms 5's final scenes and ending are so stupid that they would actually make Wild Arms 4 look worse, let alone a WA game that isn't totally horrible. Fallout 3's ending seems to be reversely proportional in detail and length (unless we count the insanely long credits) as the game itself is. And Golden Sun 2's ending doesn't seem to know what the hell it wants to do--it introduces 3 separate problems that sound important during its course, and then almost immediately after makes each one meaningless. Here's how they break down:
1. "Oh no! Alex is unsurprisingly a bad guy! And he could do evil things with the power that we have unwittingly made available to him!"
A FEW MINUTES LATER
Alex: I AM ALL POWERFUL!!!! Wait hang on, no I'm not. Well dang.
2. "Oh no! The people near the elemental towers will all be killed by them exploding and such!"
NEXT SCENE
"Oh good, everyone knows to get away from them, so they will probably be okay."
3. "Oh no! My family is not within eyesight, so they must be dead! I'm finally receiving character development because of this! NOOOOOOOOOO WHYYYYYY NOOOO SOB SOB"
3 SECONDS LATER IN THE SAME SCENE
"Oh wait, you guys are fine! I just needed to turn my head a little to the right to notice. Silly me!"
I didn't dive into as many unknown game series this year as last time, more just sticking to ones I knew already. Golden Sun was the only totally new one for me--although maybe not in spirit, since GS tends to be pretty standard RPG fare. Still, Phantasy Star Universe, and Shining Force EXA are pretty drastic reinventions of their series, and Fallout 3's fairly different from the previous 2 Fallouts, as well, so it wasn't all just more of the same.
But if I didn't do much venturing out in terms of series, the games I did play this year were often very different themselves. Mass Effect and Fallout 3 both created a new kind of Action RPG, a mix of RPG elements with a First Person Shooter game rather than the roving beat-em-up close-combat kind of game that most Action RPGs, with their swords and other melee weapons, focus on. While Breath of Fire 5's use of player death predates Baroque's by several years, Baroque's way of telling its story is almost as unique as the story itself is. And Tales of Legendia is really odd--it has 2 major stories in it, and the first, which is what the game considers the "Main Quest," leaves many loose ends to be tied up later, isn't half as epic as the second half, isn't as interesting (I didn't even really like the game until the second half began), and almost feels more like a long prologue intended to establish the great characters (which are not the main guy and gal; game's got major Love Hina Syndrome).
Okay, that's it for the real ranting, so as with last year, let's go bulletin-style for the end.
RPG Moments of Interest in 2008:
1. After years of eager waiting by we cult-like Fallout fans, Fallout 3 has finally come out. I've seen largely mixed reception from fans, and fans on both sides of the Good or Bad issue generally seem to have completely ridiculous and illogical biases that they form their opinions from, but hey, the important thing is, Fallout 3 exists. That would be a memorable event even if the game did suck, which it doesn't.
2. Me having to officially say the following: Tales of series, I am sorry. I have often accused you of being uncreative, pointless, dumb, and so full of anime cliches that it makes me physically ill. I said this based on the fact that it is true for Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Symphonia, and dismissed Tales of the Abyss's high quality as a fluke. But now, with Tales of Legendia, half of the Tales of series that I've played has been as interesting and neat as the other half has been crappy and boring. So until I play the next Tales of game and find it to be dull, I have no ground to criticize the series as a whole. I currently apologize for my previous statements.
3. Seeing that the Shin Megami Tensei series can be almost as thorough, inventive, and fascinating in treating other beliefs and mystical cultures as it was with Christianity (see previous rant for details) with SMT Persona 3's working its plot, characters, playing style, and general flow and progression around the Tarot deck. Pretty neat.
4. Fallout 3's Liberty Prime is totally the best robot since Knights of the Old Republic's HK-47.
5. Saving Wild Arms 4's Raquel in Wild Arms 5 (WA5 has all sorts of cameos of previous games' characters) from her debilitating illness. I mean, it's nice that I can finally do it, cuz I seriously love Raquel, but...why the hell couldn't we have seen Raquel cured in the game she was actually a character for? Why the fuck did she have to, in spite of the game practically promising us otherwise, die in her very own game?
Oh, and the process of saving her in WA5 confirms my suspicions that Arnaud, AKA Captain Moron, just didn't try hard enough to do it in WA4. Because, see, the process apparently is Captain Moron sending out a random group of well-meaning, less-than-bright teens to find a magical item to do the job while he sits on his goddamn lazy ass in a restaurant doing nothing. 'She needs him there' my ASS, she needs him OUT THERE finding a CURE for the DISEASE that is GOING TO KILL HER faster than not having him around to administer chicken soup every hour! I tell you, WA4 is so bad it's revolutionary at being crap--you actually can find NEW ways to hate it retroactively by playing OTHER games!
Best Sequel/Prequel of 2008:
Winner: Golden Sun 2
I didn't really think much of Golden Sun 2 (or GS1, for that matter). However, of the real Sequels/Prequels I've played this year, it ties itself to the previous title the best--not only does the story more or less just pick up right where GS1 ended, it also allows the player to transfer his or her data from GS1 to GS2 via link cable or password, allowing the player's game of GS2 to be influenced by some of the sidequests done and decisions made in the first game, along with getting to keep all the cool stuff and hard-earned levels of GS1. That's certainly a strong connection between original and sequel, one which I appreciate.
Runners-Up: Fallout 3, Suikoden Tactics
Fallout 3 and Suikoden Tactics are both fine fare as far as sequels go, each one having direct plot ties to a game/games before them (Fallout 1 and 2, and Suikoden 4, respectively). Still, while fine continuations of their origins' universes, each is just telling a new story with pre-established concepts. There's not a great amount of further exploration of those concepts; they're mostly just launch pads for new stuff. That's fine, but it's not noteworthy.
Biggest Disappointment of 2008:
Loser: Golden Sun 1
Let's be clear: I don't hate GS1 and 2. And I wasn't horribly disappointed by either. They just happen to have had the bad luck to be played during a year where most games I played with low expectations turned out to be good, and the bad games I played I went into with the expectation that they'd suck. Granted, Suikoden 4 sucked way worse than I'd dreamed, but that was simply because of my lack of imagination on how boring a game could be. Golden Sun is the only series of games that I went into thinking they'd be great and came out of without having my expectations met. So...yeah. Sorry, GS1.
Almost As Bad: Golden Sun 2, Suikoden 4
See above explanation.
Worst RPG of 2008:
Loser: Suikoden 4
Yeah, okay, just...see my rant on it. And on Sailing.
Almost As Bad: Wild Arms 5
Whether by luck or simply by how few RPGs I played this year, only 2 of them I count as actually being bad. And really, WA5 isn't really that terrible. Sure, most of the characters are empty and pointless, the plot is kind of dumb most of the time, the main character only becomes tolerable after about 20 hours of gameplay, there are a lot of painfully contrived events, most of the finale is one of the stupidest I've ever seen, and the Monowheel exists, but....uh.......you know, on second thought, I was right the first time. This game blows.
Most Improved of its Series of 2008:
Winner: Suikoden Tactics
Being that Suikoden Tactics is a sequel to Suikoden 4 that does NOT rival tranquilizer darts as a means of sedation, it is almost immeasurably improved on its series's previous installment.
Runners-Up: Tales of Legendia, Wild Arms 5
Yes, yes, I know that I said Wild Arms 5 sucks, but just by sucking in a normal way it is a HUGE improvement on Wild Arms 4. And it does have some moments that are kinda nice and good, I guess. Who knows, maybe WA6 will actually be average...or, unlikely though it might seem, good. As for ToL, well, I've mentioned my feelings on it as a part of the Tales of series already. It manages to make anime cliches into really neat characters and themes explored in new ways, while Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Phantasia make anime cliches into...cliches that have been overdone one more time.
Most Creative of 2008:
Winner: Mass Effect
Mass Effect is an incredible sci-fi RPG. It imagines its setting with great and careful detail, going to huge lengths to develop a universe that, in my opinion, has greater potential for science fiction adventures than Star Trek or even Star Wars--if only because they're already doing so much to develop it from the get-go.
Runners-Up: Baroque, Fallout 3, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
Doubtless several people, one of them tomato-related, are going to contest that Baroque is more creative than Mass Effect. I don't blame them. It was extremely hard to choose one over the other--Baroque just slaps you right in the face with individuality and crazily original ideas. The only real reason I chose Mass Effect over Baroque for sheer creativity is that Mass Effect really, really works for every bit of the stuff it comes up with, making ideas and then detailing them fairly extensively, while Baroque, while awesome, just flings original ideas and themes at you without getting into that extreme level of detail about them, making a lot of the plot's neat ideas somewhat vague. I know that's often what the game intends, but I still better respect the author who creates and then works to detail his ideas rather than the one who creates, tosses the audience the idea, and then immediately wanders off to make another. Oh, and yes, Fallout 3 is very creative in many ways, and SMTP3FES even more so.
Stupidest Weapon of 2008:
Loser: Dean's Ridiculous Sword-Pistol Things (Wild Arms 5)
I don't know if I'll ever have this category again, but really, these things are too stupid not to say something. Aside from looking ridiculous and being totally impractical as weapons (at least with Final Fantasy 8's Squall's stupid Gunblade, the weapon could be held sort of like a real sword--the blades of Dean's pistols come out of the handle going downward. Hell, all you'd have to do is push Dean's arms down a little and his damn blades would get stuck in the ground), they're rarely even used as guns to begin with. Dean will fire at things outside of battle with them, but when an enemy actually attacks, it seems he forgets how to pull a trigger unless it's a Critical Attack. You can't even imagine that he uses the impractical blades because they do more damage like some people theorize about Squall, because his critical hits show his guns going sub-machine gun-style and do huge damage. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Almost As Bad: Grune's Vase (Tales of Legendia), Norma's Bubble Straw (Tales of Legendia), Shirley's Writing Utensils (Tales of Legendia...Again)
No goddamn wonder mages can't attack for shit. Did anyone ever consider giving a magic-user a sword or spear or SOMETHING?
Best Voice Acting of 2008:
Winner: Tales of Legendia
Fantastic voice acting nearly all around; everyone's voice is well-suited for their character, and many of the characters wouldn't be as convincing and endearing without the actors' skill. Moses, Norma, and Grune are especially well-played, and of course, having Cam Clarke in the cast is icing on the cake. ToL isn't perfect--Shirley's voice acting is about half of why she's unbelievably annoying, the other half being everything else there is about her--but it's darned great all the same.
Runners-Up: Mass Effect; Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES; Shining Force EXA
SMTP3FES provides major competition to ToL, frankly, and putting one above the other in terms of voice acting talent might necessarily rely more on personal preference than objective comparison of skill. Mass Effect is done very well, as seems to be the norm for RPGs created on this continent (Fallout 3's also pretty good, and the KotOR series's voice talent is excellent). SFEXA actually surprised me--not only is it actually a pretty good game, but I really, really liked a lot of the voice actors' work in it. Everyone seems very well-chosen for the role, and in many cases, the acting is exceptional. Cyrille, 1 of the 2 protagonists, was particularly surprising in how appealing her voice acting was--she has, more or less, a somewhat average-sounding teen girl voice and speaking manner (I hear multiple girls chatting in class that sound very similar quite often when I sub), yet the dialog and her distinct inflections and delivery really sell the character to me and make her voice memorable.
Best Villain of 2008:
Winner: Sovereign (Mass Effect)
Sovereign's pretty cool--a massive, living machine that serves as a harbinger of doom for the Milky Way galaxy, using an ultimately irresistible mind control over sentient beings to bring about their own downfall in a calculated, ever-repeating cycle of galactic civilizations' destruction. Older possibly than the universe itself, on a level of consciousness unlike that of mortals or even the gods they worship, Sovereign's kind is beyond understanding, beyond reasoning with, and almost beyond resistance. They are simply the end.
Runners-Up: Death (Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES), Schwartz (Tales of Legendia)
As usual, not many villains this year that I'd consider all that good--I've mentioned before that RPGs just don't seem to get all that many good villains. Death was done really well in SMTP3FES, though, I gotta say. And Schwartz's role of world-ender isn't new or different, but she pulls it off with a convincing level of style and seriousness, so kudos to her.
Best Character of 2008:
Winner: Aigis (Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES)
Y'know, Aigis's character type is not especially new--she is more or less another Unemotional Girl Who Doesn't Know Anything About Humanity--But Learns To Understand And Value It.** But Aigis is the second robot lady I've ever seen to pull it off believably, and more than just that, get me emotionally involved in her struggles, really feeling the empathy for her that I'm meant to (Tio from Grandia 2 is the first, and still the best, but darn if Aigis ain't close). Aigis's transformation is lovely to watch, as is her relationship with the main character, which I believe is by far the most touching love story in the game (even though Mitsuru's was nice). Aigis is so great that I'd say she accounts for almost half of what makes the game so damn good.
Runners-Up: Chloe (Tales of Legendia), Will (Tales of Legendia), Wrex (Mass Effect)
Although none of them compete with Aigis for character excellence, each of these three are really great characters with (often quite surprisingly) a lot of depth.
Best Game of 2008:
Winner: Mass Effect
Make some room, Knights of the Old Republic: there's a new Science Fiction RPG franchise in town from the West to shame stuff like Xenosaga and Star Ocean with superior plot, characters, and creativity. Seriously, folks: play this game. Whatever hardware upgrades you make to your computer or price you pay for a 360 are worth it.
Runners-Up: Baroque, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES, Tales of Legendia
While the actual playing experience is repetitive as anything, Baroque's pretty darned cool. And even if the first half is kinda average, Tales of Legendia ends up being a game you love with characters you're guaranteed to remember fondly. As for SMT3FES, well, it seems to have become the Final Fantasy 7 of the SMT series--it has a crapload of hype, it seems like everyone's either played it or has 5 friends who have, and you can't hear its name 3 times without someone describing it as the best RPG ever. So like FF7, I think it's overrated. But also like FF7, I don't think it's overrated by very much. If you haven't already, go get it.
And that's it for this year! On with the RPGs of 2009. Looks to have a promising start; I've got Mother 3, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, and Paper Mario to start with, and I've heard promising things about them all. See all'y'all next year, folks.
* I was reluctant to be pleasantly surprised in this case, because it means that I can no longer count Tales of the Abyss being a fluke in the series for being good. I've said several uncomplimentary things about the Tales of series based mostly on Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Symphonia, but now that half of the Tales of games I've played turned out to be really good, I can't dismiss Namco's little RPG series as unimaginative crap...at least, not until I play another of their games and it turns out to be bad. Curse you, CK Byuu!
** I hear there's a fine that Japanese writers have to pay if they write a female robot who DOESN'T fit this archetype.***
*** I wonder what Phantasy Star 4's creators had to pay for Demi.****
**** Because she was so vapid and meaningless a character that even the laziest minimum of Wanting To Be Human characterization would have quadrupled her near-nonexistent personality, Hand Maid May's writers got off the hook with mandated Community Service.*****
***** Which was 3 dozen panty shots per episode.******
****** This will be the last time I abuse these page-bottom note thingies this rant. Promise.*******
******* I lied.
Baroque (PS2)
Fallout 3 (PC)
Golden Sun 1 (GBA)
Golden Sun 2 (GBA)
Mass Effect (PC)
Phantasy Star Universe (PS2)
Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald (GBA)
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES (PS2)
Shining Force EXA (PS2)
Suikoden 4 (PS2)
Suikoden Tactics (PS2)
Tales of Legendia (PS2)
Wild Arms 5 (PS2)
You may notice that there are significantly fewer games on that list than there were last year. There are several reasons for this. First of all, I started to work 2 full time jobs back around March, 1 related to the career I want to get into (Teaching) and the other related to the fact that I want to actually be able to pay my bills until someone hires me on as a regular teacher instead of a Substitute one. So that equals a lot of time lost. Another reason is Super Smash Brothers Brawl--those of you who know it and have it don't need an explanation on how that interrupts one's focus on other things. Third reason would be spending a lot of time with my sister, showing her awesome stuff like Wild Arms 3, Tales of Legendia (as a replay), and Futurama, along with her getting me into House M.D., 30 Rock, and, oddly enough, Ouran High School Host Club (so sue me, I can't help but love parodies of stupid fangirls and stupider anime trends). So that's a lot of time gone.
I also re-watched and re-contemplated every episode of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and the movie. This is an RPG-only blog, so I don't often say much at length on animes save the (often annoying) correlations they have with RPGs, but I gotta just make a note here: Man, if anything proves that anime can be an art form, it's RGU; I could make a blog that updates once a week just talking about that show and movie and manage to keep it going for at least 5 years. It's like one of the best classic novels ever written in visual form. So that's more time there, anyways.
And lastly, me compulsively searching every corner, bookshelf, and suspicious pile of rubble in Fallout 3. Damn that game's immense map and explorable nature. Thank heavens I'm not doing a second run of Fallout 3, or I probably wouldn't get a new RPG played until next Spring.
So yeah. Sadly not as much time this year for RPGs.
Still, it was a pretty good year. It didn't start especially auspiciously, with the first game I finished being the coma-inducing Suikoden 4, but things got better when I was happily surprised to find that Phantasy Star Universe didn't suck contrary to what Meteor9 had told me, Shining Force EXA was actually really nice despite being nearly totally unknown and looking like it would be as bland as could be, and Wild Arms 5 not sucking nearly as much as I thought it would. Also, a good friend who goes on Gaia by the name of Cross Knight Byuu recommended Tales of Legendia to me, and much to my (very reluctant) surprise, it turned out to be pretty awesome.* And of course, playing Mass Effect and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES right in the middle made the year shine very favorably for me, RPG-wise (heck, just finding out that they ended up making Mass Effect for the PC instead of keeping it exclusive to the X-Box 360 was like an early Christmas; I nearly bought that stupid system just for that one game). Ending it with Fallout 3, which is pretty darned good, also makes the year feel pretty satisfying.
One unfortunate trend of 2008 for me, though, was the Endings aspect. While Suikoden 4 having a pointless and boring ending was no surprise, given the game, Wild Arms 5's final scenes and ending are so stupid that they would actually make Wild Arms 4 look worse, let alone a WA game that isn't totally horrible. Fallout 3's ending seems to be reversely proportional in detail and length (unless we count the insanely long credits) as the game itself is. And Golden Sun 2's ending doesn't seem to know what the hell it wants to do--it introduces 3 separate problems that sound important during its course, and then almost immediately after makes each one meaningless. Here's how they break down:
1. "Oh no! Alex is unsurprisingly a bad guy! And he could do evil things with the power that we have unwittingly made available to him!"
A FEW MINUTES LATER
Alex: I AM ALL POWERFUL!!!! Wait hang on, no I'm not. Well dang.
2. "Oh no! The people near the elemental towers will all be killed by them exploding and such!"
NEXT SCENE
"Oh good, everyone knows to get away from them, so they will probably be okay."
3. "Oh no! My family is not within eyesight, so they must be dead! I'm finally receiving character development because of this! NOOOOOOOOOO WHYYYYYY NOOOO SOB SOB"
3 SECONDS LATER IN THE SAME SCENE
"Oh wait, you guys are fine! I just needed to turn my head a little to the right to notice. Silly me!"
I didn't dive into as many unknown game series this year as last time, more just sticking to ones I knew already. Golden Sun was the only totally new one for me--although maybe not in spirit, since GS tends to be pretty standard RPG fare. Still, Phantasy Star Universe, and Shining Force EXA are pretty drastic reinventions of their series, and Fallout 3's fairly different from the previous 2 Fallouts, as well, so it wasn't all just more of the same.
But if I didn't do much venturing out in terms of series, the games I did play this year were often very different themselves. Mass Effect and Fallout 3 both created a new kind of Action RPG, a mix of RPG elements with a First Person Shooter game rather than the roving beat-em-up close-combat kind of game that most Action RPGs, with their swords and other melee weapons, focus on. While Breath of Fire 5's use of player death predates Baroque's by several years, Baroque's way of telling its story is almost as unique as the story itself is. And Tales of Legendia is really odd--it has 2 major stories in it, and the first, which is what the game considers the "Main Quest," leaves many loose ends to be tied up later, isn't half as epic as the second half, isn't as interesting (I didn't even really like the game until the second half began), and almost feels more like a long prologue intended to establish the great characters (which are not the main guy and gal; game's got major Love Hina Syndrome).
Okay, that's it for the real ranting, so as with last year, let's go bulletin-style for the end.
RPG Moments of Interest in 2008:
1. After years of eager waiting by we cult-like Fallout fans, Fallout 3 has finally come out. I've seen largely mixed reception from fans, and fans on both sides of the Good or Bad issue generally seem to have completely ridiculous and illogical biases that they form their opinions from, but hey, the important thing is, Fallout 3 exists. That would be a memorable event even if the game did suck, which it doesn't.
2. Me having to officially say the following: Tales of series, I am sorry. I have often accused you of being uncreative, pointless, dumb, and so full of anime cliches that it makes me physically ill. I said this based on the fact that it is true for Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Symphonia, and dismissed Tales of the Abyss's high quality as a fluke. But now, with Tales of Legendia, half of the Tales of series that I've played has been as interesting and neat as the other half has been crappy and boring. So until I play the next Tales of game and find it to be dull, I have no ground to criticize the series as a whole. I currently apologize for my previous statements.
3. Seeing that the Shin Megami Tensei series can be almost as thorough, inventive, and fascinating in treating other beliefs and mystical cultures as it was with Christianity (see previous rant for details) with SMT Persona 3's working its plot, characters, playing style, and general flow and progression around the Tarot deck. Pretty neat.
4. Fallout 3's Liberty Prime is totally the best robot since Knights of the Old Republic's HK-47.
5. Saving Wild Arms 4's Raquel in Wild Arms 5 (WA5 has all sorts of cameos of previous games' characters) from her debilitating illness. I mean, it's nice that I can finally do it, cuz I seriously love Raquel, but...why the hell couldn't we have seen Raquel cured in the game she was actually a character for? Why the fuck did she have to, in spite of the game practically promising us otherwise, die in her very own game?
Oh, and the process of saving her in WA5 confirms my suspicions that Arnaud, AKA Captain Moron, just didn't try hard enough to do it in WA4. Because, see, the process apparently is Captain Moron sending out a random group of well-meaning, less-than-bright teens to find a magical item to do the job while he sits on his goddamn lazy ass in a restaurant doing nothing. 'She needs him there' my ASS, she needs him OUT THERE finding a CURE for the DISEASE that is GOING TO KILL HER faster than not having him around to administer chicken soup every hour! I tell you, WA4 is so bad it's revolutionary at being crap--you actually can find NEW ways to hate it retroactively by playing OTHER games!
Best Sequel/Prequel of 2008:
Winner: Golden Sun 2
I didn't really think much of Golden Sun 2 (or GS1, for that matter). However, of the real Sequels/Prequels I've played this year, it ties itself to the previous title the best--not only does the story more or less just pick up right where GS1 ended, it also allows the player to transfer his or her data from GS1 to GS2 via link cable or password, allowing the player's game of GS2 to be influenced by some of the sidequests done and decisions made in the first game, along with getting to keep all the cool stuff and hard-earned levels of GS1. That's certainly a strong connection between original and sequel, one which I appreciate.
Runners-Up: Fallout 3, Suikoden Tactics
Fallout 3 and Suikoden Tactics are both fine fare as far as sequels go, each one having direct plot ties to a game/games before them (Fallout 1 and 2, and Suikoden 4, respectively). Still, while fine continuations of their origins' universes, each is just telling a new story with pre-established concepts. There's not a great amount of further exploration of those concepts; they're mostly just launch pads for new stuff. That's fine, but it's not noteworthy.
Biggest Disappointment of 2008:
Loser: Golden Sun 1
Let's be clear: I don't hate GS1 and 2. And I wasn't horribly disappointed by either. They just happen to have had the bad luck to be played during a year where most games I played with low expectations turned out to be good, and the bad games I played I went into with the expectation that they'd suck. Granted, Suikoden 4 sucked way worse than I'd dreamed, but that was simply because of my lack of imagination on how boring a game could be. Golden Sun is the only series of games that I went into thinking they'd be great and came out of without having my expectations met. So...yeah. Sorry, GS1.
Almost As Bad: Golden Sun 2, Suikoden 4
See above explanation.
Worst RPG of 2008:
Loser: Suikoden 4
Yeah, okay, just...see my rant on it. And on Sailing.
Almost As Bad: Wild Arms 5
Whether by luck or simply by how few RPGs I played this year, only 2 of them I count as actually being bad. And really, WA5 isn't really that terrible. Sure, most of the characters are empty and pointless, the plot is kind of dumb most of the time, the main character only becomes tolerable after about 20 hours of gameplay, there are a lot of painfully contrived events, most of the finale is one of the stupidest I've ever seen, and the Monowheel exists, but....uh.......you know, on second thought, I was right the first time. This game blows.
Most Improved of its Series of 2008:
Winner: Suikoden Tactics
Being that Suikoden Tactics is a sequel to Suikoden 4 that does NOT rival tranquilizer darts as a means of sedation, it is almost immeasurably improved on its series's previous installment.
Runners-Up: Tales of Legendia, Wild Arms 5
Yes, yes, I know that I said Wild Arms 5 sucks, but just by sucking in a normal way it is a HUGE improvement on Wild Arms 4. And it does have some moments that are kinda nice and good, I guess. Who knows, maybe WA6 will actually be average...or, unlikely though it might seem, good. As for ToL, well, I've mentioned my feelings on it as a part of the Tales of series already. It manages to make anime cliches into really neat characters and themes explored in new ways, while Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Phantasia make anime cliches into...cliches that have been overdone one more time.
Most Creative of 2008:
Winner: Mass Effect
Mass Effect is an incredible sci-fi RPG. It imagines its setting with great and careful detail, going to huge lengths to develop a universe that, in my opinion, has greater potential for science fiction adventures than Star Trek or even Star Wars--if only because they're already doing so much to develop it from the get-go.
Runners-Up: Baroque, Fallout 3, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
Doubtless several people, one of them tomato-related, are going to contest that Baroque is more creative than Mass Effect. I don't blame them. It was extremely hard to choose one over the other--Baroque just slaps you right in the face with individuality and crazily original ideas. The only real reason I chose Mass Effect over Baroque for sheer creativity is that Mass Effect really, really works for every bit of the stuff it comes up with, making ideas and then detailing them fairly extensively, while Baroque, while awesome, just flings original ideas and themes at you without getting into that extreme level of detail about them, making a lot of the plot's neat ideas somewhat vague. I know that's often what the game intends, but I still better respect the author who creates and then works to detail his ideas rather than the one who creates, tosses the audience the idea, and then immediately wanders off to make another. Oh, and yes, Fallout 3 is very creative in many ways, and SMTP3FES even more so.
Stupidest Weapon of 2008:
Loser: Dean's Ridiculous Sword-Pistol Things (Wild Arms 5)
I don't know if I'll ever have this category again, but really, these things are too stupid not to say something. Aside from looking ridiculous and being totally impractical as weapons (at least with Final Fantasy 8's Squall's stupid Gunblade, the weapon could be held sort of like a real sword--the blades of Dean's pistols come out of the handle going downward. Hell, all you'd have to do is push Dean's arms down a little and his damn blades would get stuck in the ground), they're rarely even used as guns to begin with. Dean will fire at things outside of battle with them, but when an enemy actually attacks, it seems he forgets how to pull a trigger unless it's a Critical Attack. You can't even imagine that he uses the impractical blades because they do more damage like some people theorize about Squall, because his critical hits show his guns going sub-machine gun-style and do huge damage. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Almost As Bad: Grune's Vase (Tales of Legendia), Norma's Bubble Straw (Tales of Legendia), Shirley's Writing Utensils (Tales of Legendia...Again)
No goddamn wonder mages can't attack for shit. Did anyone ever consider giving a magic-user a sword or spear or SOMETHING?
Best Voice Acting of 2008:
Winner: Tales of Legendia
Fantastic voice acting nearly all around; everyone's voice is well-suited for their character, and many of the characters wouldn't be as convincing and endearing without the actors' skill. Moses, Norma, and Grune are especially well-played, and of course, having Cam Clarke in the cast is icing on the cake. ToL isn't perfect--Shirley's voice acting is about half of why she's unbelievably annoying, the other half being everything else there is about her--but it's darned great all the same.
Runners-Up: Mass Effect; Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES; Shining Force EXA
SMTP3FES provides major competition to ToL, frankly, and putting one above the other in terms of voice acting talent might necessarily rely more on personal preference than objective comparison of skill. Mass Effect is done very well, as seems to be the norm for RPGs created on this continent (Fallout 3's also pretty good, and the KotOR series's voice talent is excellent). SFEXA actually surprised me--not only is it actually a pretty good game, but I really, really liked a lot of the voice actors' work in it. Everyone seems very well-chosen for the role, and in many cases, the acting is exceptional. Cyrille, 1 of the 2 protagonists, was particularly surprising in how appealing her voice acting was--she has, more or less, a somewhat average-sounding teen girl voice and speaking manner (I hear multiple girls chatting in class that sound very similar quite often when I sub), yet the dialog and her distinct inflections and delivery really sell the character to me and make her voice memorable.
Best Villain of 2008:
Winner: Sovereign (Mass Effect)
Sovereign's pretty cool--a massive, living machine that serves as a harbinger of doom for the Milky Way galaxy, using an ultimately irresistible mind control over sentient beings to bring about their own downfall in a calculated, ever-repeating cycle of galactic civilizations' destruction. Older possibly than the universe itself, on a level of consciousness unlike that of mortals or even the gods they worship, Sovereign's kind is beyond understanding, beyond reasoning with, and almost beyond resistance. They are simply the end.
Runners-Up: Death (Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES), Schwartz (Tales of Legendia)
As usual, not many villains this year that I'd consider all that good--I've mentioned before that RPGs just don't seem to get all that many good villains. Death was done really well in SMTP3FES, though, I gotta say. And Schwartz's role of world-ender isn't new or different, but she pulls it off with a convincing level of style and seriousness, so kudos to her.
Best Character of 2008:
Winner: Aigis (Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES)
Y'know, Aigis's character type is not especially new--she is more or less another Unemotional Girl Who Doesn't Know Anything About Humanity--But Learns To Understand And Value It.** But Aigis is the second robot lady I've ever seen to pull it off believably, and more than just that, get me emotionally involved in her struggles, really feeling the empathy for her that I'm meant to (Tio from Grandia 2 is the first, and still the best, but darn if Aigis ain't close). Aigis's transformation is lovely to watch, as is her relationship with the main character, which I believe is by far the most touching love story in the game (even though Mitsuru's was nice). Aigis is so great that I'd say she accounts for almost half of what makes the game so damn good.
Runners-Up: Chloe (Tales of Legendia), Will (Tales of Legendia), Wrex (Mass Effect)
Although none of them compete with Aigis for character excellence, each of these three are really great characters with (often quite surprisingly) a lot of depth.
Best Game of 2008:
Winner: Mass Effect
Make some room, Knights of the Old Republic: there's a new Science Fiction RPG franchise in town from the West to shame stuff like Xenosaga and Star Ocean with superior plot, characters, and creativity. Seriously, folks: play this game. Whatever hardware upgrades you make to your computer or price you pay for a 360 are worth it.
Runners-Up: Baroque, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES, Tales of Legendia
While the actual playing experience is repetitive as anything, Baroque's pretty darned cool. And even if the first half is kinda average, Tales of Legendia ends up being a game you love with characters you're guaranteed to remember fondly. As for SMT3FES, well, it seems to have become the Final Fantasy 7 of the SMT series--it has a crapload of hype, it seems like everyone's either played it or has 5 friends who have, and you can't hear its name 3 times without someone describing it as the best RPG ever. So like FF7, I think it's overrated. But also like FF7, I don't think it's overrated by very much. If you haven't already, go get it.
And that's it for this year! On with the RPGs of 2009. Looks to have a promising start; I've got Mother 3, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, and Paper Mario to start with, and I've heard promising things about them all. See all'y'all next year, folks.
* I was reluctant to be pleasantly surprised in this case, because it means that I can no longer count Tales of the Abyss being a fluke in the series for being good. I've said several uncomplimentary things about the Tales of series based mostly on Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Symphonia, but now that half of the Tales of games I've played turned out to be really good, I can't dismiss Namco's little RPG series as unimaginative crap...at least, not until I play another of their games and it turns out to be bad. Curse you, CK Byuu!
** I hear there's a fine that Japanese writers have to pay if they write a female robot who DOESN'T fit this archetype.***
*** I wonder what Phantasy Star 4's creators had to pay for Demi.****
**** Because she was so vapid and meaningless a character that even the laziest minimum of Wanting To Be Human characterization would have quadrupled her near-nonexistent personality, Hand Maid May's writers got off the hook with mandated Community Service.*****
***** Which was 3 dozen panty shots per episode.******
****** This will be the last time I abuse these page-bottom note thingies this rant. Promise.*******
******* I lied.
Monday, December 8, 2008
General RPG Lists: Most Overpowered Characters
Every now and then, you come across an RPG party member who is so ridiculously impossible to beat/ridiculously powerful, he/she/it seems to just plain be a living cheat code. Today, we look at the ones I think are the most over-powered of all.
UPDATE 12/11/2024: Gen (Child of Light) added; Georg (Suikoden 5) has been bumped off.
5. Chisato (Star Ocean 2)
Chisato is awesome in battle. I can't see why the Star Ocean 2 community as a whole hasn't quite caught on to this yet. Her regular attack does damage twice each time, which is nice since her attack stat is very high, and doesn't take so long to perform and have such a limited range that enemies often manage to move/attack before it can actually hit, like the attacks of the unfathomably more popular Dias. Her running speed around the battlefield is practically twice that of other characters, which means that she has a better chance of retreating for a moment to heal without the enemy effectively pursuing her. Her best attack, Tear Gas, is nearly inescapable, hits at least 10 times for good damage each hit, and has a chance, I believe, of poisoning its target. It's also easy to link with another of her more effective skills, Flamethrower, adding several more hits to the mix. Finally, Chisato is one of only 2 characters in SO2 (and, since the other character is the brainless, exasperating Final Fantasy 10 Rikku prototype, Precis, Chisato is the only 1 of the 2 that you would actually WANT to have around) that can equip the almighty Algol Shield. This shield basically can randomly Petrify any enemy that attacks its wearer--and with SO2, Petrify is synonymous with Instant Kill with enemies. The best part of this is, though, that almost no enemy in the game is immune to Petrify--this includes bosses, insanely powerful secret bosses, and even a boss that you are scripted to lose against. Frankly, if it weren't for SO2 having such a poorly-executed battle system that works with a high difficulty level to frustrate the player, Chisato would be number 2 on this list, easy. However, since the game is difficult both by design and by design incompetence, Chisato is not as crazily over-powered for her game as the others below, so she remains in at the bottom of this list.
4. Juan (Suikoden 3)
The Suikoden series has more than its fair share of over-powered characters--Georg from Suikoden 5 was also previously on this list for over a decade before eventually being bumped off by a new character's addition, and if I did a longer list, I would not only have Georg and Juan, but would also most likely include Suikoden 5's Zerase and Suikoden 3's Nei, too. I'd probably consider Lazlo in Suikoden Tactics, too.
Juan is a beast. He SEEMS useless at first, because he's a lazy oaf who starts off every battle asleep. But all you need to do is equip him with Sleep-blocking accessory or armor to remedy that. And once he's awake, he's just devastating. His innate combat skills allow you to make his attacks extremely powerful, AND they have him hit multiple times each round of combat--it's been a little while since I played, but I think he was getting 5 - 7 attacks each round. Think about that. In your average RPG, just giving your weak HEALING MAGE character 5 attacks a round would put them in the same physical damage class as your top attackers--and Juan's the latter. The icing on the cake is that another of his skills allows him to retarget new opponents once the one he's attacking is dead, so if he kills an enemy on, say, his 3rd punch in a turn, you won't lose the rest of the strikes he would have delivered to them normally--he'll just find the next baddie and pummel them with the extra. He doesn't have the tank-like staying power that (previous contender for this list) Suikoden 5's Georg does, but he obliterates everything so fast that it doesn't make a difference in regular battles, and he doesn't require any more healing aid in prolonged boss battles than anyone else normally would.
3. Gen (Child of Light)
Any character who can paralyze an
entire group of enemies, including several bosses, is powerful. Any
character who can do that reliably, such as the combination of
Salve-Maker and Phantom in Bravely Default 2, is incredible. But a
character who can paralyze all enemies, and I do mean all of them, including the final boss, for a full
and unyielding 10 seconds, in a game whose battle system
makes managing turn orders and delaying enemies' ability to act the
number 1 priority for effective combat, is godlike. Heal your party, get in several free and devastating hits on your foes, hell, take the opportunity to knock them further back in the turn order, the world is your oyster! As a bonus, if you've only got 1 major foe to fight, she also can just do a single-target version of this ability to save MP, which fires off a little faster!
And unlike a few similar abilities in other RPGs, there are no strings
attached to this one--you don't have to recharge it over a period of
time like with that group ability in Tales of Legendia, it doesn't require so
much battling to learn that it's probably useless when you get it like
Feena's Time Gate in Grandia 1 (and on the note of Time Gate, Feena's
the only one still active when she uses that move, limiting just how much you can take advantage of it; Gen's whole
team can do as they like when she uses Paralyze All). Just make sure Gen can hit your foes again when her turn comes around again, before they break out of it, and keep'em stun-locked for as long as you need; the 10 second timer resets if they get hit again while still paralyzed!
As if that weren't enough, Gen's even got access to a passive ability that increases her own speed by 70%
when her HP is low, meaning that even should the flow of combat somehow
still turn against you, she's almost certain to get her turn fast
enough to freeze all your enemies in place and give you a moment to
regroup. Hell, you could probably just keep her at low HP on purpose to make absolutely sure your foes will never get their turn. It's crazy!
2. Orlandu (Final Fantasy Tactics)
Ah, Orlandu. Patron saint of the Over-Powered Characters. His attack stats are crazily high, he can normally equip most of the best armor and weapons in the game, he has decent movement, and his skills are a combination of the most immediately powerful decently-ranged Job Class in the game (Holy Knight, with its powerful semi-magical physical attacks that not only have range and easy-to-work-with area affect, but also can cause status effects on enemies that they don't just instantly destroy), one of the more tactically useful Job Classes in the game (Divine Knight, which, while lacking very slightly the Holy Knight's power and range, can destroy enemies' equipment with each strong attack), and one of the most self-sustaining Job Classes in the game (Dark Knight, which has a ranged attack that not only deals strong damage, but heals the user at the same time). Not only that, but he automatically comes with an extremely powerful sword that automatically casts Haste on him, giving him the speed to rain destruction down on his enemies one turn after another before they can even react. Using Orlandu can make you feel dirty, he's that over-powered.
1. Sailor Pluto (Sailor Moon: Another Story)
Sailor Pluto has lousy staying power. Her defense is bad, her HP ain't great, she more or less can be pretty easily put down for the count by one relatively powerful boss-level attack. Her attack power is even worse. Unless you specifically devote the best attack items to her, her regular attacks and special abilities will quite often be dealing 1 damage to enemies--and even with the attack items, she's mediocre at best.
So why is she the most over-powered RPG character ever? Because she can stop time. Or, more specifically, freeze your opponent in time for 3 turns. Your opponent will sit there, doing nothing, for, again, multiple turns while you dish out damage, heal allies, and point and laugh. And Pluto does this for EVERY bad guy in the game, up to and including--you guessed it--the final boss. And it's fully repeatable; all you need to do is make sure that Sailor Pluto's MP is restored during one of the turns that your enemy's frozen, and she's ready to cast it again immediately. This means that, so long as the enemy doesn't manage to kill her between spell casts, Sailor Pluto basically makes it impossible to lose!
Now, you may be thinking this all sounds a bit familiar. Because it's all basically what I said about Gen. So why is Sailor Pluto so much higher? A few reasons: A, 3 turns is a LOT longer of a window of opportunity to do whatever you like than Gen's 10 seconds. B, Sailor Moon: Another Story has a combat party of 5, while you're limited to 2 characters onscreen at any given time in Child of Light, so there's a LOT more teammates to take full advantage of Time Stop than there are to get the most out of Paralyze All. And C, maybe most importantly, MP restoration in Child of Light is a more restrictive economy--it takes more work (and ally turns, which, related to point B, are in scarcer supply in CoL) to keep Gen fully gassed up and ready to go than it does Sailor Pluto, as, by the time she joins you, SMAS's nature of necessitating grinding means that you've almost definitely got an inventory filled to bursting with MP restoration items. Gen's still amazingly overpowered, but her level of game-breaking power still requires some care and skill to maintain, and has its potential limits. Sailor Pluto, though, is a goddamn time-freezing nuke.
Honorable Mention: Mewtwo (Pokemon Blue/Red/Yellow)
Back in the good old days of Pokemon, Psychic was where it was at. Their only weaknesses were Ghost Pokemon, which was no weakness at all because there weren't any real Ghost Type attacks and all the Ghost Pokemon were part Poison, which made them weak to Psychic anyway, and Bug Pokemon which was also not a weakness since Bug Type attacks all sucked and the Bug Pokemon were all also part Poison like the Ghost ones were. And at the top of the Psychic ranks was Mewtwo. He had the best stats, learned or could learn most of the best moves, and was more or less invulnerable to everything. He was about as over-powered as it got; Orlandu looks like a sissy by comparison.
Sadly, the creations of proper Ghost Type attacks, Ghost Pokemon who weren't naturally weak to Psychic ones, lame other super powerful Pokemon like Deoxys and that idiotic flying chicken Ho-oh, and the disgracefully stupid, unnecessary, and random Dark Type, have all evened the playing field, and Mewtwo is no longer the unequaled master of power that he was always meant to be. Still great, of course, just not distinctively so. But if not a place on the actual list, he certainly deserves mention for what he was.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
General RPGs' Romantic Pacing
Today's rant is not about an RPG-only problem. RPGs have this problem, yes. But it is only natural that they would, because all the forms of media closest to them (other video games, TV shows/anime/cartoons, movies, even many books) have the exact same problem. It's an annoyance to me in general, but the blog's about RPGs, so I'll just focus on the problem in them.
This problem is the pacing of romance in RPGs. Now, don't get me wrong--I love a good courtship-under-fire, that situation where a guy and a gal (not that a guy and a guy or a gal and a gal wouldn't be fine, but RPGs haven't quite eased their way that far into the topic of homosexuality yet) fall deeply in love with each other while running around in constant, life-threatening danger on a long and complicated quest to save their country, world, galaxy, universe, or whatever. Their quickly-formed bonds of love will form over the course of the game (and often wind up somehow absolutely essential to the plot), and by the end or at least near end of the game they'll finally seem to accept that they're meant to be together, whether they actually speak the words "I love you," or, strangely often, just kind of reach some unspoken agreement about it. Sure, it sounds stupid, and, well, it actually quite often IS stupid, along with lazily and incompetently written and portrayed...but it does often work, too, giving us really lovely, heart-warming love stories like Tidus and Yuna's (Final Fantasy 10), Dagger and Zidane's (Final Fantasy 9), and Bastila and Revan's (Knights of the Old Republic 1), among many others.
The problem I have, though, is that this is more or less the ONLY romantic pacing shown--the "Boy Meets Girl, Boy and Girl Develop Attraction, Boy and Girl Finally Establish Themselves as a Couple, The End" formula is more or less the only love plot ever shown to any significant degree in an RPG. The "relationship" they show isn't actually a relationship until the last moments of the game. Just about never do we see an RPG where a main character actually is IN a relationship, whether it existed before the game or came about during the game's events. Some smaller, side characters might have boyfriends/girlfriends or husbands/wives, but they're shown as secondary. Actually, hell, scratch that--they're never even shown secondary attention. That's given to side characters who are ALSO working their way into a relationship. Any side character who's happily involved/married gets just about nothing. Most of the time, any romantic scene they get can be summed up by:
Party Member: Hello, dutiful husband or much-more-likely wife. It's me, your wife or much-more-likely husband. I'm going to have to leave on a dangerous journey with a group of people who call me old just because I've been able to legally consume alcohol for a year now, because they need my help with fighting or thinking, as I am either a renowned warrior or much-more-likely renowned scholar.
Spouse: Okay! Love you! Bye! I'll keep the house tidy!
Party Member: Your support means all the world to me. Thank you.
Spouse: Okay! Love you! Bye! I'll keep the house tidy!
Party Member: I'll be thinking about you the whole time, darling. I only have my courage by knowing I have something, and someone, to come back to. Goodbye.
Spouse: Okay! Love you! Bye! I'll keep the house tidy!
RPG writers never seem to want to deal with the task of writing two people who are in love with each other and actually KNOW it. There are 3 reasons I can think of for this, but only 1 that I really buy.
Reason 1: Pandering to their audience. Just like Quesada's decision to break up Spiderman's marriage, the RPG writers have determined that their audience is a collection of anti-social losers who are incapable of finding love due to being enormous tools, so the writers give them the only side of romance that they can relate to--the build-up to getting together with someone, except that they usually throw in the happy ending that the gamers imagine and strive for but never themselves reach. The game ends before any specifics of how the relationship works are shown because the gamers themselves have no understanding of it.
Actually, that's not exactly like Quesada's plan to insultingly pander--the RPG writers probably aren't projecting their own misery and psychological issues.
Reason 2: The conflict of a burgeoning romance. The conflicts and difficulties of hooking up with the person you like are always interesting to an audience, and of course you can't show those in a relationship where you have hooked up with that person already.
Reason 3: Just about no one in any popular form of media shows stable, happy relationships. Even in cases where two people ARE together and are focused on by the show/movie/whatever, their relationship immediately becomes all about outside forces trying to tear it apart (and usually succeeding...we wouldn't even have daytime television if not). A happy relationship's aspects and hurdles aren't ever shown in other media, so RPG writers have a whole new world available to them if they want to show a relationship in progress rather than starting...and the newness scares the dickens out of them.
I don't think that the first reason's the case, because you can usually spot the RPGs out there that are insultingly pandering to their target audience pretty easily (shallow teen stereotypes involved in empty, meaningless friendships and won't-last-a-week romances with each other in Final Fantasy 8, crappy writing desperately trying to hide behind lame and stupid jokes and women who qualify as naked even when fully clothed in Shadow Hearts 3...that sort of thing). And I don't really think that the second reason's the case, either, because really, most of the RPG romances come about with relatively little resistance from either side beyond occasional stupid anime "I'll do everything humanly possible to deny that I have a crush on someone because it's shamefully embarrassing, somehow!" stuff. I mean, sure, sometimes the guy and gal have to work stuff out to hook up, like with Dagger and Zidane, but in general, RPG couples just kind of hit it off from the start and cruise their way into each other's arms.
So I'm left with the third reason. It's annoying, because until a significant amount of people are willing to take the plunge into the creative waters of portraying a stable relationship, it's not going to become anything more than a rarity.
And for clarification, I don't mean cases where you're told there's a stable relationship, but never seem to actually see it for yourself. Senel and Shirley in Tales of Legendia may be involved with each other in the second half of the game, once they hook up at the end of the first half via standard RPG love story pacing, but they live separate lives in general, and when they're together (which is almost invariably while they're with the rest of the party anyway), little to no mention or development of their relationship occurs. Ark and Elle (underground version, I mean) in Terranigma might be an item, but since Ark's away from her for about 98% of the game, it doesn't count. And while Shadow Hearts 2 shows some rather touching moments of the love between Yuri and Alice established in the first game, I don't think you can really count it in this case since it's Yuri being grieved over Alice's death. I mean, I guess you don't get much more stable than death, but...not what I'm talking about here.
(Not to say, incidentally, that I don't think SH2 does a truly great job with Yuri and Alice, and that I don't think it's an uncommon thing to show in such detail in an RPG--it does and is. It's just not what we're looking for in this rant).
I would say that of all the RPGs I've played, the only ones that significantly show an actual relationship for a fair amount of time are Dragon Quest 5, in which you spend a lot of the long and tedious game wandering the world with your wife, and later children, Monstania, which has the main character Fron and his main squeeze Tia already established as boyfriend and girlfriend, and Lufia 2, which shows main character Maxim hook up with and marry Selan, a woman he meets in his travels.
DQ5 doesn't really go into the details (surprise, surprise) of the relationship it shows after the wedding (heck, it barely shows the details of the relationship beforehand, and that's if you the girl the hero chooses is the one he actually knew before wandering into town the day before), with the hero's wife more or less just blindly and cheerfully following the hero and popping out a couple of kids (good old Dragon Quest, always keeping up with tradition!). Monstania, though, is rather nice, showing Fron and Tia knowing each other, sticking by one another, having the occasional argument that's not serious, and quietly reaffirming their bond through actions and small, non-dramatic words and gestures. It's not a moving, epic story of Love Conquers All by a long shot, but it's different, nice, and believable.
I think Lufia 2 does it best Maxim and Selan fall in love in rather typical, somewhat-odd-but-we'll-roll-with-it RPG fashion probably about 1/3 through the game. They get married, and the player sees a few scenes of them living a happy married life as husband and wife, fellow warriors, and equals. After these scenes, the adventure picks up again, and they go off together to save the world. During this quest, they engage in light-hearted banter, deal with issues of trust and faithfulness, act on the desire to protect their child's future, and share tender moments together when circumstances allow...things real wedded couples do, from what I've seen of'em. It's interesting, it's touching (heck, moreso than probably the majority of average RPG romances), and the quality and appeal of the relationship doesn't suffer at all for actually being there. It's a shame we don't see more relationships like this in the genre.
This problem is the pacing of romance in RPGs. Now, don't get me wrong--I love a good courtship-under-fire, that situation where a guy and a gal (not that a guy and a guy or a gal and a gal wouldn't be fine, but RPGs haven't quite eased their way that far into the topic of homosexuality yet) fall deeply in love with each other while running around in constant, life-threatening danger on a long and complicated quest to save their country, world, galaxy, universe, or whatever. Their quickly-formed bonds of love will form over the course of the game (and often wind up somehow absolutely essential to the plot), and by the end or at least near end of the game they'll finally seem to accept that they're meant to be together, whether they actually speak the words "I love you," or, strangely often, just kind of reach some unspoken agreement about it. Sure, it sounds stupid, and, well, it actually quite often IS stupid, along with lazily and incompetently written and portrayed...but it does often work, too, giving us really lovely, heart-warming love stories like Tidus and Yuna's (Final Fantasy 10), Dagger and Zidane's (Final Fantasy 9), and Bastila and Revan's (Knights of the Old Republic 1), among many others.
The problem I have, though, is that this is more or less the ONLY romantic pacing shown--the "Boy Meets Girl, Boy and Girl Develop Attraction, Boy and Girl Finally Establish Themselves as a Couple, The End" formula is more or less the only love plot ever shown to any significant degree in an RPG. The "relationship" they show isn't actually a relationship until the last moments of the game. Just about never do we see an RPG where a main character actually is IN a relationship, whether it existed before the game or came about during the game's events. Some smaller, side characters might have boyfriends/girlfriends or husbands/wives, but they're shown as secondary. Actually, hell, scratch that--they're never even shown secondary attention. That's given to side characters who are ALSO working their way into a relationship. Any side character who's happily involved/married gets just about nothing. Most of the time, any romantic scene they get can be summed up by:
Party Member: Hello, dutiful husband or much-more-likely wife. It's me, your wife or much-more-likely husband. I'm going to have to leave on a dangerous journey with a group of people who call me old just because I've been able to legally consume alcohol for a year now, because they need my help with fighting or thinking, as I am either a renowned warrior or much-more-likely renowned scholar.
Spouse: Okay! Love you! Bye! I'll keep the house tidy!
Party Member: Your support means all the world to me. Thank you.
Spouse: Okay! Love you! Bye! I'll keep the house tidy!
Party Member: I'll be thinking about you the whole time, darling. I only have my courage by knowing I have something, and someone, to come back to. Goodbye.
Spouse: Okay! Love you! Bye! I'll keep the house tidy!
RPG writers never seem to want to deal with the task of writing two people who are in love with each other and actually KNOW it. There are 3 reasons I can think of for this, but only 1 that I really buy.
Reason 1: Pandering to their audience. Just like Quesada's decision to break up Spiderman's marriage, the RPG writers have determined that their audience is a collection of anti-social losers who are incapable of finding love due to being enormous tools, so the writers give them the only side of romance that they can relate to--the build-up to getting together with someone, except that they usually throw in the happy ending that the gamers imagine and strive for but never themselves reach. The game ends before any specifics of how the relationship works are shown because the gamers themselves have no understanding of it.
Actually, that's not exactly like Quesada's plan to insultingly pander--the RPG writers probably aren't projecting their own misery and psychological issues.
Reason 2: The conflict of a burgeoning romance. The conflicts and difficulties of hooking up with the person you like are always interesting to an audience, and of course you can't show those in a relationship where you have hooked up with that person already.
Reason 3: Just about no one in any popular form of media shows stable, happy relationships. Even in cases where two people ARE together and are focused on by the show/movie/whatever, their relationship immediately becomes all about outside forces trying to tear it apart (and usually succeeding...we wouldn't even have daytime television if not). A happy relationship's aspects and hurdles aren't ever shown in other media, so RPG writers have a whole new world available to them if they want to show a relationship in progress rather than starting...and the newness scares the dickens out of them.
I don't think that the first reason's the case, because you can usually spot the RPGs out there that are insultingly pandering to their target audience pretty easily (shallow teen stereotypes involved in empty, meaningless friendships and won't-last-a-week romances with each other in Final Fantasy 8, crappy writing desperately trying to hide behind lame and stupid jokes and women who qualify as naked even when fully clothed in Shadow Hearts 3...that sort of thing). And I don't really think that the second reason's the case, either, because really, most of the RPG romances come about with relatively little resistance from either side beyond occasional stupid anime "I'll do everything humanly possible to deny that I have a crush on someone because it's shamefully embarrassing, somehow!" stuff. I mean, sure, sometimes the guy and gal have to work stuff out to hook up, like with Dagger and Zidane, but in general, RPG couples just kind of hit it off from the start and cruise their way into each other's arms.
So I'm left with the third reason. It's annoying, because until a significant amount of people are willing to take the plunge into the creative waters of portraying a stable relationship, it's not going to become anything more than a rarity.
And for clarification, I don't mean cases where you're told there's a stable relationship, but never seem to actually see it for yourself. Senel and Shirley in Tales of Legendia may be involved with each other in the second half of the game, once they hook up at the end of the first half via standard RPG love story pacing, but they live separate lives in general, and when they're together (which is almost invariably while they're with the rest of the party anyway), little to no mention or development of their relationship occurs. Ark and Elle (underground version, I mean) in Terranigma might be an item, but since Ark's away from her for about 98% of the game, it doesn't count. And while Shadow Hearts 2 shows some rather touching moments of the love between Yuri and Alice established in the first game, I don't think you can really count it in this case since it's Yuri being grieved over Alice's death. I mean, I guess you don't get much more stable than death, but...not what I'm talking about here.
(Not to say, incidentally, that I don't think SH2 does a truly great job with Yuri and Alice, and that I don't think it's an uncommon thing to show in such detail in an RPG--it does and is. It's just not what we're looking for in this rant).
I would say that of all the RPGs I've played, the only ones that significantly show an actual relationship for a fair amount of time are Dragon Quest 5, in which you spend a lot of the long and tedious game wandering the world with your wife, and later children, Monstania, which has the main character Fron and his main squeeze Tia already established as boyfriend and girlfriend, and Lufia 2, which shows main character Maxim hook up with and marry Selan, a woman he meets in his travels.
DQ5 doesn't really go into the details (surprise, surprise) of the relationship it shows after the wedding (heck, it barely shows the details of the relationship beforehand, and that's if you the girl the hero chooses is the one he actually knew before wandering into town the day before), with the hero's wife more or less just blindly and cheerfully following the hero and popping out a couple of kids (good old Dragon Quest, always keeping up with tradition!). Monstania, though, is rather nice, showing Fron and Tia knowing each other, sticking by one another, having the occasional argument that's not serious, and quietly reaffirming their bond through actions and small, non-dramatic words and gestures. It's not a moving, epic story of Love Conquers All by a long shot, but it's different, nice, and believable.
I think Lufia 2 does it best Maxim and Selan fall in love in rather typical, somewhat-odd-but-we'll-roll-with-it RPG fashion probably about 1/3 through the game. They get married, and the player sees a few scenes of them living a happy married life as husband and wife, fellow warriors, and equals. After these scenes, the adventure picks up again, and they go off together to save the world. During this quest, they engage in light-hearted banter, deal with issues of trust and faithfulness, act on the desire to protect their child's future, and share tender moments together when circumstances allow...things real wedded couples do, from what I've seen of'em. It's interesting, it's touching (heck, moreso than probably the majority of average RPG romances), and the quality and appeal of the relationship doesn't suffer at all for actually being there. It's a shame we don't see more relationships like this in the genre.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Okage: Shadow King's Humor
Okage: Shadow King is an absolutely delightful, very obscure RPG that looks and behaves something that Tim Burton might come up with while tripping on LSD. Despite having tortuously boring dungeons that focus almost exclusively on a mind-numbingly repetitive battle system, it has an unique sense of fun that makes just about everyone who plays it love it.
What OSK is most known for is its bizarre and zany humor. It's silly through and through, filled with crazy hilarity that more or less stays consistent through to the end. To give you an idea of this, here's how the game opens up: Ari, the main character, finds himself having to leave his village to go on a journey to beat up creatures known as Evil Kings at the demand Lord Stanley Hihat Trinidad XIV, a selfish and short-tempered spirit who has possessed Ari and is currently inhabiting Ari's shadow, who wants to gain their power for himself. Ari, who got into this mess after his family pressured him into selling his soul to Stan in order to save his sister from an embarrassing curse that caused her to only speak in Pig Latin, has to go along with this on the hope that raising Stan to the state of the legendary Great Evil King Gohma, who Stan makes completely unfounded claims of being a reincarnation of, will give Stan the means to create a body of his own, so he can leave poor Ari's shadow alone and stop harassing him.
The game goes on largely in this vein of amusing oddness, with incredibly silly situations, crazy characters, and funny dialog that guarantees enjoyment throughout the game's entirety. It's such a wacky, fun time that you almost don't realize as the game reaches its later stages that you're also experiencing a deep and thought-provoking plot.
This is what separates Okage: Shadow King from other Humor RPGs such as Super Mario RPG and Earthbound, among others, to me. The games of this sadly rare category are all marvelously fun RPGs that appeal to just about anyone who's not too self-important and anal to have a sense of humor, making them often universally loved, but I'd say that OSK is the only one I've encountered that's an all-out humor adventure that has true meaning to impart on the player. Not that it's surprising that such a thing would be a rarity--it's not often we see a product completely devoted to humor that also has something there to make us really think and consider it. I may absolutely love comedy movies like Space Balls and Ghostbusters, and comedy TV shows like Freakazoid and Mystery Science Theater 3000, but when I watch such things that are built around tickling the audience's funny bone, I don't expect to see anything that really gets me thinking.
(Not to say that Comedies shouldn't be held to any standards; they still need creativity and intelligent writing, just focused in a different way. Crude, unimaginative shit like Superbad or the Scary Movies that just cycle through 5 low-brow punchlines over and over like a month of 8-Bit Theater strips condensed into 2 hours aren't excused).
This is probably because actually getting some kind of deeper meaning into a comedy product is more than a little difficult. While the occasional or even frequent joke is a nice way to break up tension without distracting the audience from the important plot stuff in your average movie, game, show, or whatever, it's hard to keep an audience's thoughts and emotions captivated with your creation's depth when 80% of your dialog and situations are trying to get them to laugh.
Okage: Shadow King, however, seamlessly blends the serious with the comic--in fact, rather than competing, the comic and serious tones work together in this game. The comedy keeps you immediately interested and entertained, while softening the drama of the plot and allowing you to experience and appreciate the serious events and themes without becoming mired in them. You'll be chuckling at the silliness even while seeing themes of individuality, independence, and Man Vs. God explored in as interesting and worthwhile a way as any other RPG--in fact, OSK does it a sight better than quite a few of its peers. I can only hope that more humor RPGs will take a cue from this one and experiment with mixing in some deeper meanings to their joke-laced stories, because it can really result in something nifty.
What OSK is most known for is its bizarre and zany humor. It's silly through and through, filled with crazy hilarity that more or less stays consistent through to the end. To give you an idea of this, here's how the game opens up: Ari, the main character, finds himself having to leave his village to go on a journey to beat up creatures known as Evil Kings at the demand Lord Stanley Hihat Trinidad XIV, a selfish and short-tempered spirit who has possessed Ari and is currently inhabiting Ari's shadow, who wants to gain their power for himself. Ari, who got into this mess after his family pressured him into selling his soul to Stan in order to save his sister from an embarrassing curse that caused her to only speak in Pig Latin, has to go along with this on the hope that raising Stan to the state of the legendary Great Evil King Gohma, who Stan makes completely unfounded claims of being a reincarnation of, will give Stan the means to create a body of his own, so he can leave poor Ari's shadow alone and stop harassing him.
The game goes on largely in this vein of amusing oddness, with incredibly silly situations, crazy characters, and funny dialog that guarantees enjoyment throughout the game's entirety. It's such a wacky, fun time that you almost don't realize as the game reaches its later stages that you're also experiencing a deep and thought-provoking plot.
This is what separates Okage: Shadow King from other Humor RPGs such as Super Mario RPG and Earthbound, among others, to me. The games of this sadly rare category are all marvelously fun RPGs that appeal to just about anyone who's not too self-important and anal to have a sense of humor, making them often universally loved, but I'd say that OSK is the only one I've encountered that's an all-out humor adventure that has true meaning to impart on the player. Not that it's surprising that such a thing would be a rarity--it's not often we see a product completely devoted to humor that also has something there to make us really think and consider it. I may absolutely love comedy movies like Space Balls and Ghostbusters, and comedy TV shows like Freakazoid and Mystery Science Theater 3000, but when I watch such things that are built around tickling the audience's funny bone, I don't expect to see anything that really gets me thinking.
(Not to say that Comedies shouldn't be held to any standards; they still need creativity and intelligent writing, just focused in a different way. Crude, unimaginative shit like Superbad or the Scary Movies that just cycle through 5 low-brow punchlines over and over like a month of 8-Bit Theater strips condensed into 2 hours aren't excused).
This is probably because actually getting some kind of deeper meaning into a comedy product is more than a little difficult. While the occasional or even frequent joke is a nice way to break up tension without distracting the audience from the important plot stuff in your average movie, game, show, or whatever, it's hard to keep an audience's thoughts and emotions captivated with your creation's depth when 80% of your dialog and situations are trying to get them to laugh.
Okage: Shadow King, however, seamlessly blends the serious with the comic--in fact, rather than competing, the comic and serious tones work together in this game. The comedy keeps you immediately interested and entertained, while softening the drama of the plot and allowing you to experience and appreciate the serious events and themes without becoming mired in them. You'll be chuckling at the silliness even while seeing themes of individuality, independence, and Man Vs. God explored in as interesting and worthwhile a way as any other RPG--in fact, OSK does it a sight better than quite a few of its peers. I can only hope that more humor RPGs will take a cue from this one and experiment with mixing in some deeper meanings to their joke-laced stories, because it can really result in something nifty.
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