Hot Spring Scenes. Oh how I loathe them. They are the bane of my existence (well, one of them...I seem to have quite a few). They are almost invariably pointless, crude, and degrading just to have to sit through.
What is a Hot Spring Scene, you may wonder. You also may not wonder that, knowing what I'm talking about or just not caring, but I'm going to explain it to you anyway, because I like the magic words that appear when I hit the letter buttons and want to see more of them. Well, a Hot Spring Scene is a small, but (given its typical lack of importance to the plot) unusually time-consuming event in an RPG (or anime or comic, but I focus on the RPGs) in which the main party spends time soaking in one of those communal baths that Japan is famous for. The guys will be on one side, and the girls will be on the other--in theory, anyways. I'll admit that I don't really see the appeal of sharing the joys of scrubbing armpits and soaping up asscracks in the great outdoors with a bunch of other people a few feet away, but I don't have anything against the idea of a social bath thingy, and the impression that the games give is that they're supposed to be relaxing.
My problem with Hot Spring Scenes in RPGs is that they will, without fail, include at LEAST one of the following stupefyingly idiotic and crude situations* that manage to be possibly the cheapest gags that Japan has to offer. Seriously, fart and dick jokes have no less integrity than this crap:
A. Breast Comparisons. Dear lord. There is some kind of unwritten law in Japan that if any two or more females are naked near one another, they have to, under penalty of death, loudly compare the size and shape of one another's bust with their own. Why? Because the lowest common denominator demands it, of course! I mean, I know that girls probably do talk about that every now and then during their teens, but these characters are often adult women, and it's like they have nothing else they can possibly talk about. And the actual dialogue is always just unbelievably stupid. This is basically how it will go, with only a little variation:
Girl 1: OMG Girl 2 you have breasts and they're nice!
Girl 2: OMG no way Girl 1 your breasts are bigger! EVERYONE IN THE WORLD WISHES THEIR BREASTS WERE BIGGER BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT GAME DEVELOPERS THINK FANBOYS WANT.
Girl 1: Yeah but ironically the only people in all of anime-RPG land who don't want big breasts are the girls who have them! If only I had your lesser-sized breasts, Girl 2! Which I must, of course, emphasize loudly the niceness of, again!
Girl 3: I am very flat. This is sad, but somehow humorous, as well!
Optional Girl 4: What up bitches, sorry I'm late and/or over in the corner so that my joining the conversation sets up the possibility of my surprising you.
Girls 1, 2, and 3: OMG Optional Girl 4 you have the most perfect breasts of all, even though you are the least likely to have such things, given that you are very innocent, a cross-dresser, or possibly an entirely different species!
I can't help but feel that even the breast-comparing talks that do occasionally occur in real life between girls can't possibly sound so stupid. You could call a phone-sex operator and hear a speech less blatantly (and poorly, for that matter) designed to turn you on.
B. Attack of the Fanboys. What could possibly be more HILARIOUS than the idea that men want to see naked women? Nothing, hope many a game maker.
Many of the Hot Springs have two separate areas, one for men and one for women (which seems too few in some RPGs; you'd think some of them would have more divisions, given how many different species of sentient beings exist in them), meaning that the entire party can bathe at the same time, segregated by gender. Well, fine, right? I mean, most RPG casts are made up of fairly respectable people who aren't indecent savages, so I'm sure they can manage the bare minimum of etiquette and keep to their own side, right?
Ha ha ha, no. Not at all, it seems. These paragons of heroism that we're supposed to respect may be able to resist the temptations of power and the very essence of the forces of darkness, but tell any one of'em that there's a topless girl bathing next door, and suddenly they have less integrity as human beings than Austin Powers. If one of the male party members doesn't outright try to sneak into the girl's side, then he's at least going to find a hole in the wall or boards or rocks or whatever separating the two sides. Of course, he'll usually succeed, because for some reason, not only does every single word whispered on the girl's side carry over to the men's, so that the breast-comparison nonsense can further inspire them to voyeurism, but there's almost always SOME part of the boundary that can be looked through. Sure, you'd THINK that an established business running a Hot Springs area would take some sort of steps toward privacy, but where would be the "humor" in that?
And of course, the finale to all this is usually the girls finding out that one of their friends has developed an instant case of Seriously Creepy Stalker Syndrome, and physically harming him in punishment. While the logical conclusion to this scenario, I would like to note, for the record, that this, like all other parts of the scene, is not really at all funny.
C. Unintentional Attack of the Fanboys. Like Scenario B, Scenario C involves the boys invading the girls' bathing area (don't ever expect to see the roles reversed, incidentally, because, as we all know, while every male alive has to be perverted, not a single female could ever be). This time, however, it is, incredibly enough, unintentional! Somehow, through a turn of events that is more contrived than the plot of Xenogears, the boys wind up in the girls' area without intending to. Maybe somebody mixed up the time when the girls would be in the bath. Perhaps someone got the directions mixed up. Hey, maybe one of the guys was on his own side, leaned against the wall separating the sides, and somehow the wall caved in and he fell across the side. Nothing is too unlikely or obvious a ploy for this "comedy!"
This scenario, like the one above, ends in the guy being beaten up viciously, only this time he doesn't deserve it. Because, somehow, this is expected to be hilarious.
I swear, the Japanese have a disturbing obsession with men getting the shit beat out of them by violent, short-tempered, and totally unreasonable women. There've been animes where this happens at least twice every freakin' episode.
With few variations, at LEAST one of these scenarios is guaranteed to be in an RPG Hot Springs Scene. While perhaps not THE absolutely stupidest, base cliche scene in anime ever (thank goodness RPGs haven't started incorporating those fucking swimsuit contests that animes throw around all the time...Persona 4 just better not be the one that makes it a norm for the genre), I certainly can't think of a worse one common to the world of RPGs. Hot Spring Scenes are like the perfect mixture of low-class perversion, poor writing, crude semi-humor, and just a whole hell of a lot of "Wow, that's just pathetic" short of actually just being Final Fantasy 10-2. This bad cliche is one that needs to die more than pretty much any of the others.
* The Suikoden series is the only one that's sort of an exception, in that it has a crapload of Hot Spring Scenes that don't have the crappy events I list--but SOME of their scenes DO include the terrible cliches, so they're not really exempt.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
General RPG Lists: Greatest Swords
So, as a breather after a few rants of actual significance, I thought I'd do a rather pointless list rant today to answer the age-old question that everyone* has wondered at one point or another: of the many, many swords found in RPGs, which ones are the very most awesome? It's actually not an easy question answer, for, quite frankly, magical, super-powerful swords are a dime-a-dozen in the RPG genre. If we are to determine which unparalleled blade is better than all its unparalleled peers, we'll have to look at them as a whole and find the ones that stand out even when considering magical super-swords. Let's see, shall we?
UPDATE 12/14/16: AeternoBlade added; Elsydeon has been bumped off.
5. Master Sword (The Legend of Zelda Series)
The Master Sword isn't really all that incredibly powerful, by RPG magical sword standards (hell, it's been outclassed a few times by swords in its own game series). What makes the Master Sword really awesome isn't how powerful it is, but its singular ability to utterly repel evil. It just knocks back dark power like a ball pitched underhanded to Hank Aaron by a 10-year-old and cuts through barriers of evil magic like a battle axe through a birthday cake. The Master Sword may not be able to cleave mountains apart, but there's no better blade for bringing down a true, evil villain.
4. Excalibur (General RPGs)
Good old Excalibur. The greatest sword of legend on this planet shows up in quite a few RPGs, and is just consistently one of, if not the, best weapons in any game it's in. Add to that the fact that it often shows up in RPGs with intrinsic positive qualities (holy elemental, for example, and let's not forget how it had an intrinsic Haste effect in Final Fantasy Tactics, making whoever used it insanely strong AND fast), and the fact that, c'mon, it's freaking EXCALIBUR, and you've got something pretty cool.
3. Lightsaber (Knights of the Old Republic Series)
Yeah, yeah, okay, not exactly a sword, but...close enough, I say. Forget these other swords. This is what power is. The Lightsaber is just pure destructive potential. It just lazily goes through anything it encounters like it was nothing. There have been many other energy swords of various kinds in games and animes and so on, but none of them are so steadily unstoppable as this one. Graceful, simple, elegant, the Lightsaber is a little piece of killing technology that puts all those magical bullshit swords in other RPGs to utter shame. The Masamune, Ultima Weapon, Mana Sword, Eternal Sword, Glance Reviver, and so on...a Lightsaber would melt'em all on contact.
2. Dual Blade (Lufia Series)
(Note: The version of this sword from the beyond shitty Curse of the Sinistrals remake does NOT count).
Not only is the Dual Blade crazily powerful. Not only does it have a spiritual energy like that of a god's. Not only is it so powerful that you could theoretically suggest that it can distort the fabric of time and space around it over time (best explanation I've got for how jumbled and buggy-looking the area around it is in Lufia 2, besides it actually being bugged--but there's something about the area and the fact that it happens again at the bottom of the Ancient Cave where the ultimate monster is found that tells me that the Dual Blade's resting place was intentionally left looking like the universe's coding exploded). But the Dual Blade also resonates its spiritual power with and against your own, enhancing your strength with its power and using your determination to become deadlier itself. Its wielder can also use it in battle to completely recover their health and greatly increase their strength and ability. You practically become a deity just from wielding it--assuming that you're worthy enough for it to choose you. Now that's a legendary sword worth noting.
1. AeternoBlade of Past (AternoBlade 1 + 2)
This sword provides such raw, inconceivable power that it's hard to fathom. The AeternoBlade gives its wielder the ability to rewind the entirety of time around herself, while she can move freely, and every attack she scores on an enemy unknowingly going back in its own timeline will remain, leaving that enemy to, from its perspective, suddenly sprout dozens of fatal wounds from nowhere. How unimaginably overpowered is that? What foes could possibly counter such an ability? This is more than a time stop, such as a few of the most impressive spells in RPG history are capable of performing (such as Feena's power in Grandia 1, or Sailor Pluto's in Sailor Moon: Another Story, both of which are insanely overpowered). This sword's power gives all the benefits of a time freeze spell, but also the added bonus that since the foe is retreating backward in time, the AeternoBlade's wielder knows exactly what actions the enemy is about to take when she chooses to end the time rewind. Time stopping AND effective precognition! And if that weren't enough, the blade also allows its user to frequently make tiny hops through time-space in which she is invulnerable (think Tracer's blinking ability in Overwatch), to instantaneously warp back to a predeterminedspot she's been at previously, and (also like Tracer, only better) to rewind her own time line several seconds (or even close to a minute) to heal herself from fatal injuries she might have sustained, and allowing her to recall this averted fatal future so that she can avoid the same mistake. The sword even allows its holder to do this for a few seconds after death, it seems, since in the game it'll give you a bit of time after Freyja's HP has hit 0 to go back and fix things. And there are also certain relics one can equip that resonate with the sword, conferring even more insane power from it, such as the ability to heal oneself while rewinding the rest of the world, instead of just when rewinding oneself. Whoever wields the AeternoBlade is effectively immortal and unstoppable.
Honorable Mention: Star Dragon Sword (Suikoden Series)
While not enormously powerful (although its ability to kill immortal assholes is a nice plus), I'm rather partial to the Star Dragon Sword because it talks. And through talking you find that it is grumpy, vain, and just a jerk in general. If I were a sword, I'd be like this one.
...HA! Finally, a short list rant! It CAN be done!
* "Everyone" may need to be read as "me, and me alone."
UPDATE 12/14/16: AeternoBlade added; Elsydeon has been bumped off.
5. Master Sword (The Legend of Zelda Series)
The Master Sword isn't really all that incredibly powerful, by RPG magical sword standards (hell, it's been outclassed a few times by swords in its own game series). What makes the Master Sword really awesome isn't how powerful it is, but its singular ability to utterly repel evil. It just knocks back dark power like a ball pitched underhanded to Hank Aaron by a 10-year-old and cuts through barriers of evil magic like a battle axe through a birthday cake. The Master Sword may not be able to cleave mountains apart, but there's no better blade for bringing down a true, evil villain.
4. Excalibur (General RPGs)
Good old Excalibur. The greatest sword of legend on this planet shows up in quite a few RPGs, and is just consistently one of, if not the, best weapons in any game it's in. Add to that the fact that it often shows up in RPGs with intrinsic positive qualities (holy elemental, for example, and let's not forget how it had an intrinsic Haste effect in Final Fantasy Tactics, making whoever used it insanely strong AND fast), and the fact that, c'mon, it's freaking EXCALIBUR, and you've got something pretty cool.
3. Lightsaber (Knights of the Old Republic Series)
Yeah, yeah, okay, not exactly a sword, but...close enough, I say. Forget these other swords. This is what power is. The Lightsaber is just pure destructive potential. It just lazily goes through anything it encounters like it was nothing. There have been many other energy swords of various kinds in games and animes and so on, but none of them are so steadily unstoppable as this one. Graceful, simple, elegant, the Lightsaber is a little piece of killing technology that puts all those magical bullshit swords in other RPGs to utter shame. The Masamune, Ultima Weapon, Mana Sword, Eternal Sword, Glance Reviver, and so on...a Lightsaber would melt'em all on contact.
2. Dual Blade (Lufia Series)
(Note: The version of this sword from the beyond shitty Curse of the Sinistrals remake does NOT count).
Not only is the Dual Blade crazily powerful. Not only does it have a spiritual energy like that of a god's. Not only is it so powerful that you could theoretically suggest that it can distort the fabric of time and space around it over time (best explanation I've got for how jumbled and buggy-looking the area around it is in Lufia 2, besides it actually being bugged--but there's something about the area and the fact that it happens again at the bottom of the Ancient Cave where the ultimate monster is found that tells me that the Dual Blade's resting place was intentionally left looking like the universe's coding exploded). But the Dual Blade also resonates its spiritual power with and against your own, enhancing your strength with its power and using your determination to become deadlier itself. Its wielder can also use it in battle to completely recover their health and greatly increase their strength and ability. You practically become a deity just from wielding it--assuming that you're worthy enough for it to choose you. Now that's a legendary sword worth noting.
1. AeternoBlade of Past (AternoBlade 1 + 2)
This sword provides such raw, inconceivable power that it's hard to fathom. The AeternoBlade gives its wielder the ability to rewind the entirety of time around herself, while she can move freely, and every attack she scores on an enemy unknowingly going back in its own timeline will remain, leaving that enemy to, from its perspective, suddenly sprout dozens of fatal wounds from nowhere. How unimaginably overpowered is that? What foes could possibly counter such an ability? This is more than a time stop, such as a few of the most impressive spells in RPG history are capable of performing (such as Feena's power in Grandia 1, or Sailor Pluto's in Sailor Moon: Another Story, both of which are insanely overpowered). This sword's power gives all the benefits of a time freeze spell, but also the added bonus that since the foe is retreating backward in time, the AeternoBlade's wielder knows exactly what actions the enemy is about to take when she chooses to end the time rewind. Time stopping AND effective precognition! And if that weren't enough, the blade also allows its user to frequently make tiny hops through time-space in which she is invulnerable (think Tracer's blinking ability in Overwatch), to instantaneously warp back to a predeterminedspot she's been at previously, and (also like Tracer, only better) to rewind her own time line several seconds (or even close to a minute) to heal herself from fatal injuries she might have sustained, and allowing her to recall this averted fatal future so that she can avoid the same mistake. The sword even allows its holder to do this for a few seconds after death, it seems, since in the game it'll give you a bit of time after Freyja's HP has hit 0 to go back and fix things. And there are also certain relics one can equip that resonate with the sword, conferring even more insane power from it, such as the ability to heal oneself while rewinding the rest of the world, instead of just when rewinding oneself. Whoever wields the AeternoBlade is effectively immortal and unstoppable.
Honorable Mention: Star Dragon Sword (Suikoden Series)
While not enormously powerful (although its ability to kill immortal assholes is a nice plus), I'm rather partial to the Star Dragon Sword because it talks. And through talking you find that it is grumpy, vain, and just a jerk in general. If I were a sword, I'd be like this one.
...HA! Finally, a short list rant! It CAN be done!
* "Everyone" may need to be read as "me, and me alone."
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Shin Megami Tensei 3 Theory: Isamu's Folly
Time for another theory rant, this time perhaps a little more intellectual-sounding than my previous "KAIN = GAYZ" one.
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, henceforth referred to as Shin Megami Tensei 3, is a pretty neat game, following much of the spirit (if not even close to the brilliance) of the original two Shin Megami Tensei games as a semi-sorta-kinda-not-really sequel to them. As with SMT1 and 2, you get to choose a side between several warring factions, according to which side you believe is the better one. With SMT3, though, the lines aren't so cleanly cut between Heaven, Earth, and Hell, between Logic, Balance, and Emotion. The disciplines you have the opportunity to endorse are all more basic, human views of what the world should be, and as such, each one clearly has its elements of truth but also clearly is flawed in certain ways. And the game's fairly careful, as SMT1 and 2 were, not to show a particular bias for any path beyond the one you'd expect for choosing not to give in to any side's dogma and instead fight them all.
Save in one instance. Now, it may be small, and unimportant, and I may be reading too much into this, but there's one moment of SMT3 that sticks out to me as being, for this game, bizarrely uneven. It's like this: in the ending of the game, your main character, known semi-officially as Naoki Kashima, gets to speak with the leader of the group that he has sided with, provided he's sided with one at all, and hear that person tell him how totally awesome he is for making the world they desired come to be. Just about what you'd expect, really, right? If you sided with Chiaki, who believes in a world of eternal struggle and violent rule by the most powerful, you meet with her, and she gives you the verbal equivalent of a thumbs-up. If you sided with Hikawa, who wants a world of absolute reason and logic with no emotions or passions, he gives you the verbal equivalent of a unemotional raising of one's thumb to indicate satisfactory-but-not-emotionally-stimulating results. And if you sided with Isamu, who more or less advocates a world where everyone leaves everyone alone and has anything they want at all times so long as what they want isn't contact with any other living being in existence, his ghost will give you a verbal version of a thumbs-up that wouldn't be corporeal anyway, given his state.
To quote the bard, "One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong."* Yes, Isamu dies no matter what happens. Assuming that you ally with one of them, Chiaki and/or Hikawa will live to see her/his dream world's beginning, but even if it's not by your hand, Isamu's destined to go and get himself killed by Chiaki. Although, as I said, it may be nothing, it seems like an odd discrepancy.
What reason could there be, I've wondered, for singling out Isamu to die? Is it just because he, of the three discipline leaders, seems the weakest in power? I guess it could be as simple and harmless as that, but it seems odd nonetheless that they would take the time to emphasize that point. Yes, Chiaki does die if you follow her path, as well, but that's as a result of her intentionally fighting the protagonist to the death to determine which of them is the stronger and therefor the one to properly lead the way to the new world--it's the natural, acceptable result of her philosophy, a successful death, while Isamu's is against his will. And, as I said, Isamu's the only one whose death is emphasized during the ending conversation. So, as I said, it seems an odd discrepancy.
I then considered whether his death, and the idea of dying in general, could maybe just be emphasizing some part or concept of his discipline or the world he wanted to form, like Chiaki's is. But that also seemed to be a dead end. I mean, death does sort of remove you from the reach of all other people, but not in the idyllic way that Isamu wanted. And if you think of death as a way to get to Heaven or some other afterlife paradise, well, that doesn't quite work either, because those are typically thought of as places with lots of people (all the saved, chosen, virtuous, etc, depending on the version), which is definitely not what he advocated.
So it's probably not a simple show of power, and it's probably not some attempt to emphasize some aspect or virtue of his beliefs. It could just be nothing, but I couldn't very well rant about that. And anyways, I might accept most game plots not having any specific purpose in doing such a thing, but SMT games, as a general rule, have a design in every significant aspect of their story-telling. From what I've seen, at least. So I'm left with the (fairly reasonable) idea that Isamu is set apart from the others by a worse fate for a reason, something that he does or believes in that is different enough from the others that it's worthy of reprimand from the writers as being more flawed.
What I think it is, is this: Isamu's philosophy is based on inactivity, escapism, running away from reality instead of actually DOING something. Hikawa reasons out what he thinks is right and sets plans in motion to accomplish his goals, and wants to create a world of silence, logic, order. His actions and his world are about what to do, and how beings should live with each other. Chiaki, after experiencing life as a helpless wanderer in a hostile world, comes to covet the strength she lacks, comes to the conclusion that the world is and should be about the strong overcoming the weak, and sets out to gain power, and to create a world in which that is completely true. Her actions and her world are about what should be done and how beings are meant to interact with each other.
But Isamu? He isolates himself from the world in despair, and just happens across the means to change the world by fateful accident. He not only wants to run away from reality instead of dealing with it and working to change it, but he wants to create a reality that is paradoxically about rejecting itself. I mean, think about it--his world isn't one where no one else exists; it's just one where each person has his own little perfect fantasy life completely isolated from every other person having his or her own fantasy life. The reality would still be that other people existed, yet the world would be shaped in such a way to perpetuate a denial of that reality.
All three of the game's leaders have flawed visions, but Hikawa and Chiaki at least share the virtue that their disciplines are based on actually acting, working to better the world (in their eyes). Isamu just outright denies it and advocates escapism. And I think that's why he has such a notably worse fate than the others--the SMT3 creators couldn't help but subtly show his folly as worse than the others'.
* Assuming that "the bard" you're referring to is Sesame Street's songwriter.
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, henceforth referred to as Shin Megami Tensei 3, is a pretty neat game, following much of the spirit (if not even close to the brilliance) of the original two Shin Megami Tensei games as a semi-sorta-kinda-not-really sequel to them. As with SMT1 and 2, you get to choose a side between several warring factions, according to which side you believe is the better one. With SMT3, though, the lines aren't so cleanly cut between Heaven, Earth, and Hell, between Logic, Balance, and Emotion. The disciplines you have the opportunity to endorse are all more basic, human views of what the world should be, and as such, each one clearly has its elements of truth but also clearly is flawed in certain ways. And the game's fairly careful, as SMT1 and 2 were, not to show a particular bias for any path beyond the one you'd expect for choosing not to give in to any side's dogma and instead fight them all.
Save in one instance. Now, it may be small, and unimportant, and I may be reading too much into this, but there's one moment of SMT3 that sticks out to me as being, for this game, bizarrely uneven. It's like this: in the ending of the game, your main character, known semi-officially as Naoki Kashima, gets to speak with the leader of the group that he has sided with, provided he's sided with one at all, and hear that person tell him how totally awesome he is for making the world they desired come to be. Just about what you'd expect, really, right? If you sided with Chiaki, who believes in a world of eternal struggle and violent rule by the most powerful, you meet with her, and she gives you the verbal equivalent of a thumbs-up. If you sided with Hikawa, who wants a world of absolute reason and logic with no emotions or passions, he gives you the verbal equivalent of a unemotional raising of one's thumb to indicate satisfactory-but-not-emotionally-stimulating results. And if you sided with Isamu, who more or less advocates a world where everyone leaves everyone alone and has anything they want at all times so long as what they want isn't contact with any other living being in existence, his ghost will give you a verbal version of a thumbs-up that wouldn't be corporeal anyway, given his state.
To quote the bard, "One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong."* Yes, Isamu dies no matter what happens. Assuming that you ally with one of them, Chiaki and/or Hikawa will live to see her/his dream world's beginning, but even if it's not by your hand, Isamu's destined to go and get himself killed by Chiaki. Although, as I said, it may be nothing, it seems like an odd discrepancy.
What reason could there be, I've wondered, for singling out Isamu to die? Is it just because he, of the three discipline leaders, seems the weakest in power? I guess it could be as simple and harmless as that, but it seems odd nonetheless that they would take the time to emphasize that point. Yes, Chiaki does die if you follow her path, as well, but that's as a result of her intentionally fighting the protagonist to the death to determine which of them is the stronger and therefor the one to properly lead the way to the new world--it's the natural, acceptable result of her philosophy, a successful death, while Isamu's is against his will. And, as I said, Isamu's the only one whose death is emphasized during the ending conversation. So, as I said, it seems an odd discrepancy.
I then considered whether his death, and the idea of dying in general, could maybe just be emphasizing some part or concept of his discipline or the world he wanted to form, like Chiaki's is. But that also seemed to be a dead end. I mean, death does sort of remove you from the reach of all other people, but not in the idyllic way that Isamu wanted. And if you think of death as a way to get to Heaven or some other afterlife paradise, well, that doesn't quite work either, because those are typically thought of as places with lots of people (all the saved, chosen, virtuous, etc, depending on the version), which is definitely not what he advocated.
So it's probably not a simple show of power, and it's probably not some attempt to emphasize some aspect or virtue of his beliefs. It could just be nothing, but I couldn't very well rant about that. And anyways, I might accept most game plots not having any specific purpose in doing such a thing, but SMT games, as a general rule, have a design in every significant aspect of their story-telling. From what I've seen, at least. So I'm left with the (fairly reasonable) idea that Isamu is set apart from the others by a worse fate for a reason, something that he does or believes in that is different enough from the others that it's worthy of reprimand from the writers as being more flawed.
What I think it is, is this: Isamu's philosophy is based on inactivity, escapism, running away from reality instead of actually DOING something. Hikawa reasons out what he thinks is right and sets plans in motion to accomplish his goals, and wants to create a world of silence, logic, order. His actions and his world are about what to do, and how beings should live with each other. Chiaki, after experiencing life as a helpless wanderer in a hostile world, comes to covet the strength she lacks, comes to the conclusion that the world is and should be about the strong overcoming the weak, and sets out to gain power, and to create a world in which that is completely true. Her actions and her world are about what should be done and how beings are meant to interact with each other.
But Isamu? He isolates himself from the world in despair, and just happens across the means to change the world by fateful accident. He not only wants to run away from reality instead of dealing with it and working to change it, but he wants to create a reality that is paradoxically about rejecting itself. I mean, think about it--his world isn't one where no one else exists; it's just one where each person has his own little perfect fantasy life completely isolated from every other person having his or her own fantasy life. The reality would still be that other people existed, yet the world would be shaped in such a way to perpetuate a denial of that reality.
All three of the game's leaders have flawed visions, but Hikawa and Chiaki at least share the virtue that their disciplines are based on actually acting, working to better the world (in their eyes). Isamu just outright denies it and advocates escapism. And I think that's why he has such a notably worse fate than the others--the SMT3 creators couldn't help but subtly show his folly as worse than the others'.
* Assuming that "the bard" you're referring to is Sesame Street's songwriter.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Fallout 3's Ending Stupidity
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.
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, 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.
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