Tag: final fantasy

A Raft Made of Backlogs

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Lost in the dream sea

The backlog list is so big.  I love media, but this is getting ridiculous.   Disney announced a ton of stuff, and now a gigantic swathe of games just popped up for Nintendo, SEGA, and Sony.  There is also that pile of books I should read as well.  But is this…bad?

Sometimes I think back on my teenage years when getting more than one game a year was like a miracle.  If you look back on play time for games in my teens, those games had hundreds of hours in them, mostly because they were the only thing for that year.  There are more games than I could ever play in multiple lifetimes now.  

Moreover, I don’t think I ever would’ve thought I would be able to play through the series that I’ve dreamed of, but that has become a reality.  Since I like playing things in chronological release order, some of these games either never get released in English or fade away to time and become very difficult to obtain.  Now, I’ve been able to play through all the Final Fantasy’s up to VII, and games like Yakuza have been entirely ported to PC.  I’ve been able to go back and go through all the Kirby games and with Return to Dreamland’s remake I can fill that hole that was left behind because that game got real expensive real quick.  

This is…the dream.  I’m so grateful for where gaming has gone right now.  I mean, I can choose to be a strong female character in my games.  I can customize the crap out of them as well.  Free games show up so often I could play those and never worry about it all.  Not only is this a good time to be a gamer, it is a good time to be a gamer who grew up in the 90s and 2000s.  Being able to play the games I thought would be lost to me is very much a dream come true for me.

I know there are still things to hash out with the gaming community and how Nintendo games aren’t well preserved to be played again.  There will always be a few things here and there that go unaccomplished for now, but still.  Things are so wonderful now and I am very happy with the games being released. 

Are there any games that you were able to play that you thought you wouldn’t get to growing up?  Or games you feel like you missed out on due to the passage of time? I’m very content with the idea that I am lost in the sea now, because this raft of games that I’ve made was the dream cruise I was thinking of when I was younger. I am so grateful to be lost at sea on a raft made of backlogged games.

Thanks for reading, I’ll see you again.

Elise

There is No Status Quo

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Glow in the dark

There are going to be a fair bit of spoilers for these titles: 
Parks and Recreation, the TV show: major spoilers
Super Mario RPG: Major spoilers
Marvel Cinematic Universe Infinity Saga: Major spoilers
Final Fantasy VIII: First 13 hours spoilers

Although I spoil things, I am still purposely very vague.  This doesn’t mean they aren’t spoilery though, so be warned.

Long article time!

Character development works in the same way that people develop.  Whether you like it or not, that’s how some of the best character development works.  And a more turbulent thing that is also true is that it is almost always cheesy.  It’s the cheesy stuff that are the real lessons in life.  When writing character development, it’s important to recognize how and when paradigm shifts in perspective happen.  And we can also, again, skeletonize it to cheesy things, but we’re going to keep it at a complicated level for the sake of showing the individuality of developments.

First I’m going to establish the basic point that my title has made.  There is no status quo.  Characters are like glow sticks, they won’t really shine until you break them.  In Parks and Recreation the character Andy has one of the best developments because the events that happen to him actually change and cause him to grow.  It’s very simple and logical stuff.  Most people know that, but actually having that implemented is a different thing.  He actually does change as his love for April grows.  He really does learn from his time at community college.  He really does start finding footing for where he feels comfortable in his place in society.  These things are actually happening to him and the show acts like it.  This doesn’t mean he can’t be the same goofy character, but it means that he will not return to the original goofy character before.  You cannot return to the status quo, else it seems like nothing significant happened at all.

This happens in all sorts of TV shows where things return completely to normal.  I’m not saying that this is bad, because it fits some shows very well that things always return to normal.  Sometimes these kinds of series will do major shifts to show that something has changed.  This can be something that happens at the end of a season or in preparation for a change of casting.  Super Mario RPG’s Mallow has an identity crisis because he thinks he is a frog.  I’m…pretty sure we all can recognize that he is totally not.  Some character developments happen in drastic shifts like this.  This happens in real life as well, so it makes sense.  

What’s interesting about Mallow’s shift is that he doesn’t really change much, except for his self-confidence, which was an issue for a while.  He doesn’t really mind that he thought he was a frog this whole time.  The big shift wasn’t the fact that he was having an identity crisis, but rather that he needed to come to terms with how he feels about himself.  These aren’t huge lines in the story by the way.  Mallow doesn’t always talk about this, but it feels significant enough.  

Here’s one that I have thought a lot about from the Infinity Saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically Thor.  Thor’s development is mostly about who he believes he is and his worthiness.  He goes through a lot of this and it develops on itself multiple times.  In Thor: Ragnarok, he really comes to terms with himself after his father’s “passing”.  Now normally this is it.  But after his failure to kill Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, he actually returns to what he was previously where he didn’t believe in himself.  This is not a return to the status quo.  This is usually only obtainable through story writing that is extended over time.  I think this is a rare opportunity to recognize how some people struggle to change over time.  He had such a big revelation in Thor: Ragnarok and now he is back to where he was before because of yet another shift.  This new development is no longer about coming to terms with himself, it is about the failure of doing so in a difficult time.  I love the writing of this because sometimes we have big life events happen to us and when it gets hard we do fall back down and we do struggle.

Lastly, Final Fantasy VIII.  Just to be clear, this isn’t a comprehensive list of all the different kinds of development.  Final Fantasy VIII just happens to be the final one on this list.  I love Final Fantasy to death, so maybe I’m a bit biased.  I haven’t finished VIII yet, so this is just what I know so far from the game.  I’ve played 13-ish hours.

Most of the game’s characters are teenagers, and I think it’s a very good opportunity to talk about the small world of the mind.  There are a lot of times where the main character, Squall, says some really angsty stuff.  Same with Rinoa.  There are tons of times where you could ask why the world they make the choices they make or how something they said was ridiculous or immature, but that’s just it.  They’re teenagers.  I think one of the more difficult parts of writing is not only understanding how much your character’s know, but also how much they can interpret.  When Squall is threatened by death he does the most teenager thing and runs away.  I’m not saying all teeangers do this, but it’s been established that he is an angsty teen, so what he is doing is in line with that.  He is so determined to not be something left in the past because someone he is close with may have died.

Having death hit you at such a young age affects you differently than if you were older.  This whole time Squall has set up a tough exterior, but it really breaks when he just runs.   His paradigm has shifted, and he has to come to terms with it.  This doesn’t fully absolve itself immediately though, which I like.  Rinoa also goes through a series of similar rash actions where she wants to try and suppress the evil Sorceress on her own.  This seems so foolish, but remember that her world consists of living in rebellion.  She has been fighting government oppression her whole life and her relationship with her father is not great.  This is what her world consists of: fighting back, no matter how small you feel.  When she fails to suppress the Sorceress, she nearly dies.  

Squall and Rinoa both argue over how serious these missions are taken.  This back and forth starts pretty early on.  Both Squall and Rinoa’s growth intertwine when Rinoa realizes just how dangerous all of this is and Squall feels what the fear of death is like in someone else as Rinoa literally clings to him.  This is further emphasized when he sees how scared Irvine is moments later.  Their small worlds grow larger with every shift.  He is changing how he feels about death, his mission, and what to do.  You see this in how he tells Irvine that it’s going to be okay, no matter the results.

Remember when I said Squall hated that idea of death?  Well, at this point some time later, he fights the Sorceress for the sake of the people and …dies.  Now hold on, this is where I’m at in the story.  So, very likely he’s not actually dead, but the action of this is significant, because now his paradigm has completely shifted.  He has voluntarily given his life for the sake of the people.  The world of his mind has grown.  He is no longer Squall as he was…however many hours ago in the game.  Unfortunately, for the sake of story he is likely still alive, so that status quo is probably still here.  I…I can’t say for sure.  I’m excited to see what happens next.

Not all teenagers and people will develop like this.  That’s fine.  But each has their own views and shifts.  Squall’s tough exterior has been well established by this point, but it is so fluid in his change over time.  His is not an immediate change, and that’s why I really like his development so far.  His “death” could also be just his desire to fulfill objectives for his organization, but he ran away last time.  He literally ran, and now he died.

Maybe I’m getting this all totally wrong.  I could totally, totally be getting all of this wrong.  But I’m still very happy with how they show the perspective of the small worlds Squall and Rinoa both live in.  It’s easiest to see these kinds of things in the main character who starts in humble beginnings, except it’s usually more literal in that the world they fight for gets bigger and bigger as you explore more places.  But for what I can see in Squall and Rinoa right now, is the change in the mind, and I really, really like that.  

Why is this so important to me?  I mean, other than good character development, this helps me recognize people’s perspectives and how they see the world.  To be less at conflict with others, I need to be more understanding of their perspectives and what their mind-world’s look like.  What I look like in their world.  

Things are not always black and white, and seeing character growth like this is a good way to better understand how some people might make bad decisions when they’re just trying to be good people.

Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next time.
Elise

Slave to the Game

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Deadly Dailies

I find it very interesting that the format that most mobile games use is that you have to come back every day.  They usually also give you a daily thing to do as well, to keep you there so that you’ll hopefully spend money on stuff that you want.  Now, you likely already know that I am one of those people that like to spend money on random stuff I want in a game.  So…this isn’t great.

It’s different when something is subscription based, and that’s all there is to it.  Ultimately, if I cannot play for the day, that is fine.  Sure, I didn’t use that one day I paid for a subscription, but I’m not going to tear myself apart for it.  There are also weekly dungeons and stuff in games like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, or Final Fantasy XIV.  But again, less pressure because it’s a weekly thing.  

Games that are free like Genshin Impact or Hearthstone have dailies that they give you.  And while Hearthstone’s piles up to three at a time, Genshin’s dailies are extremely important.  I’ve actually decided to stop playing Genshin, which is a huge thing for me, because it has a strong cultural impact and I want to support Chinese games.  They deserve better love.  But all these games that want daily things done for them are starting to eat into my time.  By the time I have finished all the dailies for my games, I have no free time left.  That’s just it.  There’s no more of the day left after I get back from work, and it’s really cutting into my single player gaming time.

Not to mention the stress of it all.  Knowing that primogems from the dailies in Genshin were my only access to getting more characters, going in every day was a must.  Guild Wars 2 gives you two pieces of gold and achievement points, of which the latter is harder to come by.  However, both of those are still not a huge deal.  They’re important, but I’m not kicking myself for missing a day or three.  I think part of the stress of Genshin was that I started on Day 1 and I didn’t want to lose that streak.  

And now that I’ve stopped…it’s been extremely relieving.  This actually happened with Fire Emblem Heroes as well.  I don’t regret any of my time in both games.  I enjoyed them a lot, especially Genshin Impact.  But I can’t keep up with the time I have left in my day.  I spread myself thin trying to go to work, practice art, keep up with entertainment media, and do chores.  I usually paraphrase the line from Bill Watterson: “There’s not enough time to do all the nothing in the world.”  

I get myself so worked up about getting skins in games where I don’t play with people.  I usually play solo, even in multiplayer games.  I think for me it’s more of a “dress up” thing than it is presenting myself to people.  This means I still care about doing the time-limited stuff.  It still eats at me now, that I’m missing out on stuff in Genshin Impact and I have to push myself out of that mindset.  I guess the feeling of missing out is very real.  Worse even, Genshin Impact’s events also include lore and story elements, so if you miss out on that, you’ll never get to play that story.

However, I just can’t commit to this sort of binding anymore (says the person who plays Final Fantasy XIV).  I think it really started eating at me when I was looking at my subscriptions for streaming services and realizing how unsustainable it was getting.  I’m not “financially successful”, so I probably shouldn’t be writing about video games or something.  I’m starting to cut down on streaming services and other subscriptions because I can’t afford it anymore.  It goes both ways.  In a way, subscriptions really aren’t that much money.  Like, an hour’s worth of work, but many subscriptions start piling quick.  Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Discovery+, HBOMax, Humble Bundle, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, and so many other possibilities almost without notice.  It ends up becoming several days worth of work.  I don’t have all those, thank goodness, but look how fast it happens.  And don’t forget the subscription to life, like food and other monthly paid services.  Even if some streaming services are shared in a group it still is so much money in the long run.

It really is that feeling that I might not have the means to play catch up and be with the crowd, but I also would like to not be homeless.  Also, ironically, all this talk about subscription and demanded time makes me realize mobile games really should not be isolated for this.  Many games are like this and we should stop stigmatizing that only to mobile/free-to-play games.  I always mention how we should be healthy about our approach to video games and life, and yet here I was slaving away my time.  I’m glad I noticed, because the stress relief has been very helpful during a stressful time outside of video gaming.  Playing what I want to play has been so cathartic, and it makes me wonder what other underlying stress comes from me restricting myself.

I feel like all this focus on fomo really diverts people’s gaming away from fun.  Fun almost always requires that you’re not worried about time and meta-efficiency.  Until time begins its stretch into the eternities, we mortals have to make sure that we’re not burying ourselves in the chains that we believed bound us to our passions.  

Stay safe out there, I’ll see you next time!
Elise

Why I Love: Final Fantasy V

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Ancestry

I played Final Fantasy in order.  As fun as the first four are, they haven’t aged too well.  Each one brought strengths to the table, and I feel like Final Fantasy V is the culmination of what they’ve learned.  Let’s take a walk through Final Fantasy’s life up to this point.

Final Fantasy
I played through some of this on mobile, and then I played through the whole game on the GBA collection.  I tried to play through this with the idea that turn-based RPGs were not overflowing with games.  You know how in a lot of RPGs, especially JRPGs, there are monsters where they just change the color palette and call it something different?  For some reason I LOVE that.  With less limitations on space, that could be more of a lazy thing nowadays.  It might be because I studied biology and simple things like that can mean crazy histories within a species.  I always imagine what it took to reach that point in the video game world.  I think that sort of “imagination running” keeps video games so alive to me.

The first game doesn’t really do a good job of telling you where you’re supposed to go and what you’re supposed to be doing, especially in the GBA version where there are bonus things to do that I thought were part of the original game but were totally not.  It’s an annoyance now, but it’s also nice to see the gaming world how it was back then when game guides were totally a thing.  Calling friends or those help lines were really a thing back then!  Without them, you’re forced to explore every bit of world to try and get you where you need to go, which would be a lot more fun if there were more things to find.  Haha.

That takes me to one more point.  Back then, I don’t know how many people actually owned a lot of games.  Remember when constant sales weren’t a thing?  Remember when games costed a ton?   So having a game last really long, whether through wandering around or grinding (or both at the same time) is actually fit for the time.  Or you can …go outside and stuff.

Final Fantasy II

This was also played on the GBA collection.  The proficiency system.  I love it.  It might not be the best thing ever, but that mechanic was enjoyable to me.  They don’t really use this system that much up to V, but they were definitely exploring their way through RPGs and I think this is a nice result of that.  It could have been worse. 

There were also more people of significance.  People that apparently meant something.  …my memory is very fuzzy concerning story.  It still wasn’t as significant as Final Fantasy games now.  

But I still liked it!

Final Fantasy III

I played this one on…PC.  A billion classes.  Okay, not a billion, but there are a lot more classes, and this is when Final Fantasy decides they can do whatever the world they want with making more classes.  That’s okay with me!  You can pretty much do that with all the characters too.  That was kind of…strange to me.  But this was still a fun experience with understanding how we can go about leveling these classes to benefit the party as a whole.  Also, on the 3D versions, the chibis are really cute.  I really like the battle theme in this one.

Final Fantasy IV

This is where story and characters start getting into being…well, a story and characters with meaning.  I was actually invested in the characters and the world.  It was still a bit confusing at times, but a lot less so than the first game.  At least I had more motivation to see what would happen next.  I played that remake one on PC, so I think this has the time-based battles.  It was kind of difficult to adapt to after three games in regular turn-based style, but I think it’s worth the change.

Final Fantasy V

V is most of these things combined.  Unfortunately, I had to play the fuzzy version on Steam, but it didn’t affect things too much.  It had a good story and characters that I really liked.  The classes could be interchanged and I could still customize them to what I wanted my party to be like.  It still keeps a good final fantasy feel.  A lot of the emotion I get from playing V is because I went through the journey of the first four, and we can look and see how far we’ve gone.  Especially in franchises, the games do not exist in a vacuum.  The journey beforehand most definitely affects the way we see the games when we play them.  

That being said, I think it’s arguable that Final Fantasy IV should have a spot on the ULTRA.  It sits in my Honorable Mentions right now, and it is the first game to actually start that list.  I’m not as knowledgeable on game design of turn-based RPGs as I am with other games, but I really think the turning point for Final Fantasy started with IV.  V is proof that the developers can build on what was learned in the past, even if a game didn’t turn out to be perfect.

I think the thing that companies struggle with today is learning from previous mistakes.  Some really have become executive amalgamations for the money, and although developers deserve pay, it can degrade game quality by quite a bit.  Even worse, it may break down the morale of those wanting to make games that did their best only to have it shot down by the decision makers.  

Humans can’t really improve unless they make mistakes, and we can’t move on from our mistakes if we cling to them.  As consumers, we have a direct connection to video games that makes us extremely powerful.  It is good to take action when a game dares to siphon the money out of us, or does something absolutely terrible design-wise.  We also have the power to do some bad things to companies, like holding grudges for…well, ever.  Companies may not be our friends, but they really can’t get better if we don’t let them.  Thankfully, the vocal minority is the one shouting and claiming unfair designs or things like that when things are actually okay.  I think sometimes we need to take a few steps back and remember that companies consist of human beings who have motives and dreams of their own.  They’re dreamers, perhaps even more so than us in this industry, because they actually make the games, and yet we hold the power of the industry.   

The best kinds of companies build on previous games and know what they should improve on by themselves.  I see this in Square / Square Enix as they go along Final Fantasy.  Mistakes will come.  Sometimes there will be such mistakes that really knock a franchise off its course, but I think proper experimentation and getting themselves back up are what makes companies even stronger (if the executives are willing to part with the money again to try).  The best companies don’t necessarily look for what players want, but what they need in order to have fun.  We see this in some of the best designed games out there where fun is brought to the table in a way that gamers don’t realize they wanted.  Although the early days were rough, Final Fantasy V (and yes, IV,) are good examples of that.

I love the far and wide opinions of the Final Fantasy series and how different people like different eras.  What are your favorite eras?

Final Fantasy V is ranked 125 on the ULTRA.  We’ll see you next time on What I love!