#in each of these games/series fixed camera serves a purpose

[alexvalder]

People who complain about games being ""literally unplayable"" because of fixed camera, are cowards and weaklings. You literally get used to this in several minutes.

[hilltopsunset]

I Regret Buying Pokémon Shield

I told myself I wouldn’t do it. I’ve seen time and again the lack of innovation from main-series Pokémon games, and I insisted nothing would convince me to buy this latest atrocity. Yet here I am, reviewing the game I said I’d never purchase. I should have listened to myself. I KNEW BETTER! Strap in, ‘cause this one’s pretty long.

Pokémon has been around for a long time—like, a long, long time—and I’ve been around for every single new main-series game that’s been released since the franchise’s first arrival in North America back in 1996 with Red/Blue. I was not yet 10 years old, and I still remember the childlike excitement of finding rare, never-before seen creatures, the stress of trying to catch a wily Abra or elusive Pinsir, and the challenging first encounter with the Elite Four and the Champion, a 5-man gauntlet of trainers with powerful Pokémon rarely (if ever) seen in the game prior to that moment. It was exhilarating in a way that keeps me coming back for more, hoping to rekindle those same flames of wonder. 

While the main gist of the games hasn’t changed much over the years, one of my favorite parts of playing a new Pokémon game is seeing the improvements each game brings to the series. Many of the initial sequels made huge leaps in progress: Gold/Silver introduced a plethora of new mechanics like held items and breeding; Ruby/Sapphire introduced passive abilities and was the first to include multi-battles in the form of double-battles; Diamond/Pearl was the first generation capable of trading and battling online and brought us the revolutionary physical/special split so elements were no longer locked into one or the other. These changes all had significant impacts on how players approached battles, formed their teams, and used each Pokémon.

Those changes, combined with the addition of new Pokémon to catch, regions to explore, and enemies to fight, were enough to keep me interested. But I know I wasn’t alone in imagining all the possibilities of taking the franchise off the handheld platforms and moving the main series games over to a more powerful home console. In the meantime, each generation that followed Gen IV highlighted a new, troubling pattern that became more and more prevalent with each addition to the series.

1.       Gen V: Lack of meaningful gameplay innovation

By Generation V with Black/White, not only was Game Freak quickly running out of colors, they were quite obviously running out of ideas for significant gameplay innovation. The bulk of Black/White’s biggest changes were improvements on or adaptations to existing staples to the franchise: many new Pokémon, moves, and abilities were added, and the DS platform allowed for greater graphical quality where Pokémon could move around a bit more on-screen during battles, the camera wasn’t as rigid as it had to be in previous games due to machine limitations; perhaps most importantly, they FINALLY decided to make TMs infinite. Thank goodness. While the updates were nice, they were nowhere near as impactful on the game as previous generations’ changes were and served more as needed quality of life adjustments.

I would also argue Gen V also had the least inspired Pokémon designs (like Vanillux and Klinklang) with the worst starter choices of any Pokémon game, but that’s a discussion for another time. Excadrill and Volcarona were pretty cool, though.

 2.       Gen VI: Gimmicks as the main draw

Pokémon X/Y (See? They ran out of colors) continued this new downward trend in innovation. Mega-evolution—while admittedly pretty cool—wasn’t enough to carry the new generation into an era of meaningful improvement because it was equivalent to adding new Pokémon rather than developing innovative gameplay, ushering in a new era of gimmicks in lieu of substantial updates.

Though the gameplay innovation for X/Y was minimal, the graphic updates were substantial: Pokémon X/Y was the first generation to introduce the main series to a fully 3-dimensional world populated by 3D characters. However, since X/Y was on the 3DS, it was a ripe target for the 3D gimmick seen in almost all games on the console, which I personally used for all of 5 minutes before feeling nauseous and never using the function again.

Despite the fresh look of the new 3D models, the battle animations were, to be frank, incredibly disappointing. Pokémon still barely moved and never physically interacted with opponents, nor did they use moves in uniquely appropriate ways. To my point, for years now there’s been a meme about Blastoise opting to shoot water out of his face rather than his cannons. I was sad to see that they didn’t take the time to give each Pokémon’s animations a little more love. But I figured, in time, when or if the franchise ever moved to a more powerful machine, they would be better equipped to make it happen, right? I also convinced myself that the lack of refined animations were kind of charming, harkening back to the games’ original (terrible) animations.

 3.       Gen VII: Focus on Minigames

The main innovation (gimmick) that came with Generation VII, Sun/Moon, was the lack of HMs in lieu of riding certain Pokémon. Sun/Moon also added Ultra Beasts (essentially just new Pokémon) and Z-moves (just new moves) which only added to the number of gimmicks present in the games. These changes, which provide some mild adaptations to gameplay from previous generations, don’t fundamentally change the way players go through each game, the way that updates in the earlier generations did. I personally played through the entirety of Sun/Moon without using a single Z-move or seeing a single Ultra Beast outside the one you’re required to fight to progress the main story. Ultimately, these changes were not a significant enough experience to warrant an entirely new game that is otherwise full of more of the same stuff with slightly different creatures who have slightly different stats and occupy a slightly different world.

Though Sun/Moon was comfortably embracing the franchise’s affinity for gimmicks, it brought to the forefront yet another troubling trend: mini games. Between photography, the Festival Plaza, and Poké Pelago, the focus on and attention to detail toward mini games had grown considerably over the years. Pokémon games have always had minigames and other time-sinks—which is great! Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate having more to do than trudge through the main story. But it is apparent that, with each new generation, more time seems dedicated to development of these extras. Pokémon Contests, Secret Bases, Super Training, feeding/grooming; a lot of their larger innovations after Gen IV were centered on non-essential parts of the game, which results in diminished game and story quality overall.

Admittedly, Sun/Moon did have some of the best exploration moments of any of the Pokémon games, which I did very much appreciate. More on that later as it relates to Sword/Shield…

 4.       Generation VIII: You Can’t Be Serious

When Game Freak finally announced they were launching Generation VIII, Sword and Shield, on the Switch rather than a dedicated handheld console, I was beside myself with excitement.

And then I saw gameplay footage like this, and my heart sank.

What is the purpose of launching the game on a stronger console if they are going to continue copy/pasting their sprites and their animations? If they aren’t going to provide the Pokémon any unique flair or create more appropriate animations? It was disappointing enough seeing the same animations/models from X/Y for Sun/Moon, but that was sort of expected since the games were on the same console. But now that the game has moved to the Switch, this is unacceptable.

When I learned that they were significantly cutting the number of Pokémon available in the game, I thought for certain that would translate to more time dedicated to the ones that made the cut, to focus on adding animations and character to the critters to make them feel like real parts of the world, rather than avatars of a child’s imagination, unable to fully process how the world functions. Alas, what was I thinking?

I thought the Dynamax gimmick would be one of my biggest gripes because it’s so pointless, or maybe the Wild Area’s severe lack of organic belonging (all Pokémon are just wandering aimlessly, weather can change drastically after crossing an invisible line, trees look like they were cut and pasted out of Mario 64, you can’t even catch Pokémon if they’re too high a level) but honestly the most disappointing part of the game for me was the pitiful routes between towns/gyms. Previous installments of the game included routes full of trainers and puzzles you needed to defeat or solve before you could progress—in Sword/Shield, the only thing that ever prevents you from progressing are some Team Yell grunts barricading paths the game doesn’t want you to take yet, for literally no reason. It completely removes player autonomy and a sense of accomplishment earned through overcoming challenges—now instead of learning that you need to find an item that allows you to cut through certain trees to gain access to new areas, you simply follow the story beats and then, upon returning, the path will be open. It’s inorganic, it’s clunky, and it’s extremely lazy.

Speaking of lazy, the story itself was another massive disappointment for me. Pokémon games are not particularly known for having deep stories, but Sword/Shield takes it to a new low. Every NPC simply pushes you to battle in gyms, and every interesting story beat that occurs happens just outside the player-character’s reach. Any time something interesting happens, you are shooed away and told to let the grown-ups handle it while you just get your gym badges. There COULD have been some interesting story moments where your character gets more involved with helping fix the havoc occurring around the Galar Region, but instead we as the player are simply TOLD what happened, why it happened, and who fixed it (usually the champion, Leon).

I honestly think having the game focus on the story of Sonia, Bede, Marnie, or even Hop (was not a fan of this kid) would have been a much more interesting game, because those characters actually had some depth to them, some bigger reason for taking on the gym challenges than simply “I want to be the very best.” Albeit those stories would have required a tremendous amount of work to add depth and details, the potential for a better story is in those characters. There is just no story at all to the main character, who is ushered from gym to gym because…because? Because that’s what kids do? I’m not even really sure what the motivation is.

There are SO MANY exciting, interesting, innovative ways Game Freak could drive Pokémon into a new and exciting direction while still maintaining its charm and building on existing mechanics, but they instead choose to demonstrate their lack of interest in significant graphical and gameplay innovation. I imagine this is largely because the masses will eat up just about any Pokémon product produced so long as there’s a new bunny to catch, and Pikachu is still involved. I’m disappointed, and I wish the Galar region could meet the expectations of my 10-year old mind’s imagination.

When abilities were added, we suddenly had to consider whether our Earthquake could even hit the enemy Weezing and adapt to the tremendous changes the passive skills added, reconsidering how we faced each battle. When the physical/special split occurred, entirely new opportunities opened up and certain Pokémon who were banished to obscurity due to their poor typing and stat distribution, like Weavile, were suddenly viable. Some even became incredibly powerful, like Gyarados, who had been hit pretty hard by the Special attack/defense split. There were also already-powerful Pokémon (Gengar, Dragon-types) who became even more so through access to STAB moves that benefited off their strongest stats.

I want new games to include updates that feel as impactful as these changes. If you’re interested in how Game Freak can improve on the main gameplay, I have some fun ideas that will be fleshed out in another article: How to Breathe New Life into the Pokémon Franchise. That article will be dedicated to explaining what those changes are, why I want them, and how they can improve future games.

[za3k]

2020 Videogames

In 2020 I’m newly retired, so I’ve had free time. I think it’s fun to do reviews, so without further ado here’s every video game I played in 2020!

I recommend:

(4/5) Among Us – Very fun. It’s only fun with voice chat with friends, so I’ve only gotten to play once or twice. I’ve been watching it more than playing it. Also free to play for mobile gamers–I’m tired of the “everyone buys a copy” model of group gameplay.

(4/5) Brogue. Brogue is an ascii-art roguelike. It’s great, and it has a nice difficulty ramp. It’s a good “quick break” game. I play it in preference to other roguelikes partly because I haven’t done it to death yet, and partly because I don’t need a numpad?

(4/5) Cook Serve Delicious 3. One of the more fun games I played this year. You get really into it, but I had trouble relaxing and paying attention to the real world when I played too much, haha. I own but haven’t played the first two–I gather this is pretty much just a refinement.

(4/5) Green Hell. Price tag is a bit high for the number of hours I got out of it, but I haven’t finished the story. Great graphics, and the BEST map design I’ve seen in a 3D game in a long time. It feels like a real place, with reasonable geography instead of copy-pasted tiles. I love that as you walk along, you can just spot a cultivated area from the rest of the jungle–it feels more like it’s treating me like an adult than most survival games. Everything still gets highlighted if you can pick it up. I played the survival mode, which was okay but gets old quickly. I started the story mode–I think it would be fine, but it has some LONG unskippable scenes at the start, including a very hand-holdy tutorial, that I think they should have cut. I did start getting into the story and was having fun, but I stopped. I might finish the game some time.

(4/5) Hyperrogue. One of my recent favorites. The dev has made a fair number of highly experimental games, most of which are a total miss with me, but this one is fun. I do wish the early game wasn’t quite as repetitive. Failing another solution, I might actually want this not to be permadeath, or to have a save feature? I bought it on steam to support the dev and get achievements, but it’s also available a version or two behind free, which is how I tried it. Constantly getting updates and new worlds.

(4/5) Minecraft – Compact Claustrophobia modpack. Fun idea, nice variety. After one expansion felt a little samey, and it was hard to start with two people. I’d consider finishing this pack.

(4/5) Overcooked 2. Overcooked 2 is just more levels for Overcooked. The foods in the second game is more fun, and it has better controls and less bugs. If you’re considering playing Overcooked, I recommend just starting with the second game, despite very fun levels in the first. I especially appreciate that the second game didn’t just re-use foods from the first.

(4/5) Please Don’t Press Anything. A unique little game where you try to get all the endings. I had a lot of fun with this one, but it could have used some kind of built-in hints like Reventure. Also, it had a lot of red herrings. Got it for $2, which it was well worth.

(5/5) Reventure. Probably the best game new to me this year. It’s a short game where you try to get each of about 100 endings. The art and writing are cute and funny. The level design is INCREDIBLE. One thing I found interesting is the early prototype–if I had played it, I would NOT have imagined it would someday be any fun at all, let alone as amazing as it is. As a game designer I found that interesting! I did 100% complete this one–there’s a nice in-game hint system, but there were still 1-3 “huh” puzzles, especially in the post-game content, one of which I had to look up. It’s still getting updates so I’m hoping those will be swapped for something else.

(5/5) Rimworld. Dwarf fortress, but with good cute graphics, set in the Firefly universe. Only has 1-10 pawns instead of hundreds of dwarves. Basically Dwarf Fortress but with a good UI. I wish you could do a little more in Rimworld, but it’s a fantastic, relaxing game.

(5/5) Slay the Spire. Probably the game I played most this year. A deckbuilding adventure through a series of RPG fights. A bit luck-based, but relaxing and fun. I like that you can play fast or slow. Very, very well-designed UI–you can really learn how things work. My favorite part is that because it’s singleplayer, it’s really designed to let you build a game-breaking deck. That’s how it should be!

(4/5) Stationeers. I had a lot of fun with this one. It’s similar to Space Engineers but… fun. It has better UI by a mile too, even if it’s not perfect. I lost steam after playing with friends and then going back to being alone, as I often do for base-building games. Looks like you can genuinely make some complicated stuff using simple parts. Mining might not be ideal.

(5/5) Spy Party. One of my favorite games. Very fun, and an incredibly high skill ceiling. There’s finally starting to be enough people to play a game with straners sometimes. Bad support for “hot seat”–I want to play with beginners in person, and it got even harder with the introduction of an ELO equivalent and removing the manual switch to use “beginner” gameplay.

(4/5) Telling Lies. A storytelling game. The core mechanic is that you can use a search engine for any phrase, and it will show the top 5 survellance footage results for that. The game internally has transcripts of every video. I didn’t really finish the game, but I had a lot of fun with it. The game was well-made. I felt the video acting didn’t really add a huge amount, and they could have done a text version, but I understand it wouldn’t have had any popular appeal. The acting was decent. There’s some uncomfortable content, on purpose.

(4/5) Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (TABS). Delightful. Very silly, not what you’d expect from the name. What everyone should have been doing with physics engines since they were invented. Imagine that when a caveman attacks, the club moves on its own and the caveman just gets ragdolled along, glued to it. Also the caveman and club have googley eyes. Don’t try to win or it will stop being fun. Learn how to turn on slo-mo and move the camera.

(4/5) We Were Here Together. Lots of fun. I believe the second game out of three. Still some crashes and UI issues. MUCH better puzzles and the grpahics are gorgeous. They need to fix the crashes or improve the autosave, we ended up replaying a lot of both games from crashes. It’s possible I should be recommending the third game but I haven’t played it yet.

The Rest

(3/5) 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel. More fun that it sounds. If you play to mess around and win by accident, it’s pretty good. Definitely play with a second human player, though.

(1.5/5) 7 billion humans. Better than the original, still not fun. Soulless game about a soulless, beige corporation. Just play Zachtronics instead. If you’re on a phone and want to engage your brain, play Euclidea.

(3/5) A Dark Room. Idle game.

(1/5) Amazing Cultivation Simulator. A big disappointment. Bad english voice acting which can’t be turned off, and a long, unskippable tutorial. I didn’t get to actual gameplay. I like Rimworld and cultivation novels so I had high hopes.

(3/5) ADOM (Steam version) – Fun like the original, which I would give 5/5. Developed some major issues on Linux, but I appreciate that there’s a graphical version available, one of my friends will play it now.

(4/5) agar.io – Good, but used to be better. Too difficult to get into games now. Very fun and addictive gameplay.

(3/5) Amorous – Furry dating sim. All of the hot characters are background art you can’t interact with, and the characters you can actually talk to are a bunch of sulky nerds who for some reason came to a nightclub. I think it was free, though.

(0/5) Apis. Alpha game, AFAIK I was the first player. Pretty much no fun right now (to the point of not really being a game yet), but it could potentially become fun if the author puts in work.

(4/5) Autonauts. I played a ton of Autonauts this year, almost finished it, which is rare for me. My main complaint is that it’s fundamentally supposed to be a game about programming robots, but I can’t actually make them do more than about 3 things, even as a professional programmer. Add more programming! It can be optional, that’s fine. They’re adding some kind of tower defense waves instead, which is bullshit. Not recommended because it’s not for everyone.

(3/5) A-Z Inc. Points for having the guts to have a simple game. At first this looked like just the bones of Swarm Simulator, but the more you look at the UI and the ascension system, the worse it actually is. I would regularly reset because I found out an ascension “perk” actually made me worse off.

(5/5) Beat Saber. Great game, and my favorite way to stay in shape early this year. Oculus VR only, if you have VR you already have this game so no need to recommend. Not QUITE worth getting a VR set just to play it at current prices.

(1/5) Big Tall Small. Good idea, but no fun to play. Needed better controls and level design, maybe some art.

(0.5/5) Blush Blush. Boring.

(3/5) Business Shark. I had too much fun with this simple game. All you do is just eat a bunch of office workers.

(3/5) chess.com. Turns out I like chess while I’m high?

(3/5) Circle Empires Rivals. Decent, more fun than the singleplayer original. It shouldn’t really have been a separate game from Circle Empires, and I’m annoyed I couldn’t get it DRM-free like the original.

(3/5) Cross Virus. By Dan-box. Really interesting puzzle mechanics.

(4/5) Cultist Simulator. Really fun to learn how to play–I love games that drop you in with no explanation. Great art and writing, I wish I could have gotten their tarot deck. Probably the best gameplay “ambience” I’ve seen–getting a card that’s labeled “fleeting sense of radiance” that disappears in 5 seconds? Great. Also the core stats are very well thought out for “feel” and real-life accuracy–dread (depression) conquers fascination (mania), etc. It has a few gameplay gotchas, but they’re not too big–layout issues, inability to go back to skipped text, or to put your game in an unwinnable state early on). Unfortunately it’s a “roguelike”, and it’s much too slow-paced and doesn’t have enough replay value, so it becomes a horrible, un-fun grind when you want to actually win. I probably missed the 100% ending but I won’t be going back to get it. I have no idea who would want to play this repeatedly. I’m looking forward to the next game from the same studio though! I recommend playing a friend’s copy instead of buying.

(2/5) Darkest Dungeon. It was fine but I don’t really remember it.

(2/5) Dicey Dungeons. Okay deck-building roguelike gameplay (with an inventory instead of a deck). Really frustrating, unskippably slow difficulty curve at the start. I played it some more this year and liked it better because I had a savegame. I appreciate having several character classes, but they should unlock every difficulty from the start.

(2/5) Diner Bros. Basically just a worse Overcooked. I didn’t like the controls, and it felt too repetitive with only one diner.

(2/5) Don’t Eat My Mind You Stupid Monster. Okay art and idea, the gameplay wasn’t too fun for me.

(2/5) Don’t Starve – I’ve played Don’t Stave maybe 8 different times, and it’s never really gripped me, I always put it back down. It’s slow, a bit grindy, and there’s no bigger goal–all you can do is live.

(3/5) Don’t Starve Together – Confusingly, Don’t Starve Together can be played alone. It’s Don’t Starve, plus a couple of the expansions. This really could be much more clearly explained.

(1/5) Elemental Abyss – A deck-builder, but this time it’s grid-based tactics. Really not all that fun. Just play Into the Abyss instead or something.

(1/5) Else Heart.Break() – I was excited that this might be a version of “Hack N’ Slash” from doublefine that actually delivered and let you goof around with the world. I gave it up in the first ten minutes, because the writing and characters drove me crazy, without getting to hacking the world.

(2/5) Everything is Garbage. Pretty good for a game jam game. Not a bad use of 10 minutes. I do think it’s probably possible to make the game unwinnable, and the ending is just nothing.

(1/5) Evolve. Idle game, not all that fun. I take issue with the mechanic in Sharks, Kittens, and this where buying your 15th fence takes 10^15 wood for some reason.

(4/5) Exapunks. Zachtronics has really been killing it lately, with Exapunks and Opus Magnum. WONDERFUL art and characters during story portions, and much better writing. The gameplay is a little more varied than in TIS-100 or the little I played of ShenZen I/O. My main complaint about Zachtronics games continues to be, that I don’t want to be given a series of resource-limited puzzles (do X, but without using more than 10 programming instructions). Exapunks is the first game where it becomes harder to do something /at all/, rather than with a particular amount of resources, but it’s still not there for me. Like ShenZen, they really go for a variety of hardware, too. Can’t recommend this because it’s really only for programmers.

(1/5) Exception. Programming game written by some money machine mobile games company. Awful.

(4/5) Factorio. Factorio’s great, but for me it doesn’t have that much replay value, even with mods. I do like their recent updates, which included adding blueprints from the start of the game, improving belt sorting, and adding a research queue. We changed movement speed, made things visually always day, and adding a small number of personal construction robots from the start this run. I’m sure if you’d like factorio you’ve played it already.

(3/5) Fall Guys – I got this because it was decently fun to watch. Unfortunately, it’s slightly less fun to play. Overall, there’s WAY too much matchmaking waiting considering the number of players, and the skill ceiling is very low on most of the games, some of which are essentially luck (I’m looking at you, team games).

(3/5) Forager – Decent game. A little too much guesswork in picking upgrades–was probably a bit more fun on my second play because of that. Overall, nice graphics and a cute map, but the gameplay could use a bit of work.

(3/5) Getting Over It – Funny idea, executed well. Pretty sure my friends and I have only gotten through 10% of the game, and all hit about the same wall (the first tunnel)

(3/5) Guild of Dungeoneering – Pretty decent gameplay. I feel like it’s a bit too hard for me, but that’s fine. Overall I think it could use a little more cute/fun art, I never quite felt that motivated.

(1/5) Hardspace: Shipbreakers. Okay, I seriously didn’t get to play this one, but I had GAMEBREAKING issues with my controller, which is a microsoft X-box controller for PC–THE development controller.

(2/5) Helltaker. All right art, meh gameplay. But eh, it’s free!

(3/5) Hot Lava. Decent gameplay. Somehow felt like the place that made this had sucked the souls out of all the devs first–no one cared about the story or characters. It’s a game where the floor is made out of lava, with a saturday morning cartoon open, so that was a really an issue. Admirable lack of bugs, though. I’m a completionist so I played the first world a lot to get all the medals, and didn’t try the later ones.

(3/5) House Flipper – Weird, but I had fun. I wish the gameplay was a little more unified–it felt like a bunch of glued-together minigames.

(2/5) Hydroneer. Utterly uninspiring. I couldn’t care about making progress at all, looked like a terrible grind to no benefit.

(1/5) io. Tiny game, I got it on Steam, also available on phone. Basically a free web flash game, but for money. Not good enough to pay the $1 I paid. Just a bit of a time-killer.

(3/5) Islanders – All you do is place buildings and get points. Not particularly challenging, but relaxing. Overall I liked it.

(3/5) Jackbox – I played this online with a streamer. Jackbox has always felt a little bit soulless money grab to me, but it’s still all right. I like that I can play without having a copy–we need more games using this purchase model.

(3/5) Life is Feudal – Soul-crushingly depressing and grindy, which I knew going in. I thought it was… okay, but I really want an offline play mode (Yes, I know there’s an unsupported single-player game, but it’s buggier and costs money). UI was pretty buggy, and I think hunting might literally be impossible.

(2/5) Minecraft – Antimatter Chemistry. Not particularly fun.

(3/5) Minecraft – ComputerCraft. I played a pack with just ComputerCraft and really nothing else. Was a little slow, would have been more fun with more of an audience. I love the ComputerCraft mod, I just didn’t have a great experience playing my pack I made.

(3/5) Minecraft – Foolcraft 3. Fun, a bit buggy. Honestly I can’t remember it too well.

(1/5) Minecraft – Manufactio. Looked potentially fun, but huge bugs and performance issues, couldn’t play.

(4/5) Minecraft – Tekkit. Tekkit remains one of my favorite Minecraft modpacks.

(3/5) Minecraft – Valhelsia 2. I remember this being fun, but I can’t remember details as much as I’d like. I think it was mostly based around being the latest version of minecraft?

(4/5) Minecraft – Volcano Block. Interesting, designed around some weird mods I hadn’t used. I could have used more storage management or bulk dirt/blocks early in the game–felt quite cramped. Probably got a third of the way through the pack. I got novelty value out of it, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it if I had ever used the plant mod before–it’s a very fixed, linear progression.

(5/5) Minit. This is a weird, small game. I actually had a lot of fun with it. Then I 100% completed it, which was less fun but I still had a good time overall.

(3/5) Monster Box. By Dan-box. One of two Dan-box games I played a lot of. Just visually appealing, the gameplay isn’t amazing. Also, Dan-box does some great programming–this is a game written in 1990 or so, and it can render hundreds of arrows in the air smoothly in a background tab.

(3/5) Monster Train. A relatively fun deckbuilding card game. It can’t run well on my computer, which is UNACCEPTABLE–this is a card game with 2D graphics. My MICROWAVE should run this shit in 2020. Ignoring that, the gameplay style (summon monsters, MTG style) just isn’t my cup of tea.

(2/5) Moonlighter. Felt like it was missing some inspiration, just didn’t have a sense of “fun”. The art was nice. The credits list is surprisingly long.

(2/5) Muse Dash. All right, a basic rhythm game. Not enough variety to the game play, and everything was based around perfect or near-perfect gameplay, which makes things less fun for me.

(3/5) NES games – various. Dr Mario, Ice Climbers. Basically, I got some Chinese handheld “gameboy” that has all the NES games preloaded on it. Overall it was a great purchase.

(2/5) Noita. “The Powder Game” by Dan-Box, as a procedurally generated platformer with guns. Lets you design your own battle spells. Despite the description, you really still can’t screw around as much as I’d like. I also had major performance issues

(3/5) Observation. I haven’t played this one as much as I’d like, I feel like it may get better. Storytelling, 3D game from the point of view of the AI computer on a space station. I think I might have read a book it’s based on, unfortunately.

(2/5) One Step From Eden. This is a deck-building combat tactics game. I thought it was turn-based, but it’s actually realtime. I think if it was turn-based I would have liked it. The characters were a bit uninspired.

(1/5) Orbt XL. Very dull. I paid $0.50 for it, it was worth that.

(4/5) Opus Magnum. Another great game from Zachtronics, along with Exapunks they’re really ramping up. This is the third execution of the same basic concept. I’d like to see Zachtronics treading new ground more as far as gameplay–that said, it is much improved compared to the first two iterations. The art, writing, and story were stellar on the other hand.

(3/5) Out of Space. Fun idea, you clean a spaceship. It’s never that challenging, and it has mechanics such that it gets easier the more you clean, rather than harder. Good but not enough replay value. Fun with friends the first few times. The controls are a little wonky.

(1/5) Outpost (tower defense game). I hate all tower defense.

(3/5) Overcooked. Overcooked is a ton of fun.

(4/5) Powder Game – Dan-box. I played this in reaction to not liking Noita. It’s fairly old at this point. Just a fun little toy.

(1/5) Prime Mover – Very cool art, the gameplay put me to sleep immediately. A “circuit builder” game but somehow missing any challenge or consistency.

(2/5) Quest for Glory I. Older, from 1989. Didn’t really play this much, I couldn’t get into the writing, and the pseudo-photography art was a little jarring.

(4/5) Raft. I played this in beta for free on itch.io, and had a lot of fun. Not enough changed that it was really worth a replay, but it has improved, and I got to play with a second player. Not a hard game, which I think was a good thing. The late game they’ve expanded, but it doesn’t really add much. The original was fun and so was this.

(3/5) Satisfactory. I honestly don’t know how I like this one–I didn’t get too far into it.

(4/5) Scrap Mechanic. I got this on a recommendation from a player who played in creative. I only tried the survival mode–that mode is not well designed, and their focuses for survival are totally wrong. I like the core game, you can actually build stuff. If I play again, I’ll try the creative mode, I think.

(3.5/5) Shapez.io. A weird, abstracted simplification of Factorio. If I hadn’t played factorio and half a dozen copies, I imagine this would have been fun, but it’s just more of the same. Too much waiting–blueprints are too far into the game, too.

(2.5/5) Simmiland. Okay, but short. Used cards for no reason. For a paid game, I wanted more gameplay out of it?

(0.5/5) Snakeybus. The most disappointing game I remember this year. Someone made “Snake” in 3D. There are a million game modes and worlds to play in. I didn’t find anything I tried much fun.

(1/5) Soda Dungeon. A “mobile” (read: not fun) style idle game. Patterned after money-grab games, although I don’t remember if paid progress was actually an option. I think so.

(4/5) Spelunky. The only procedurally generated platformer I’ve ever seen work. Genuinely very fun.

(4/5) Spelunky 2. Fun, more of an upgrade of new content than a new game. Better multiplayer. My computer can’t run later levels at full speed.

(1/5) Stick Ranger 2. Dan-box. Not much fun.

(3/5) Superliminal. Fun game. A bit short for the pricetag.

(3/5) Tabletop Simulator – Aether’s End: Legacy. Interesting, a “campaign” (series of challenge bosses and pre-written encounters) deckbuilding RPG. I like the whole “campaign RPG boardgame” idea. This would have worked better with paper, there were some rough edges in both the game instructions and the port to Tabletop Simulator.

(4/5) Tabletop Simulator – The Captain is Dead. Very fun. I’d love to play with more than 2 people. Tabletop simulator was so-so for this one.

(2/5) Tabletop Simulator – Tiny Epic Mechs. You give your mech a list of instructions, and it does them in order. Arena fight. Fun, but I think I could whip up something at least as good.

(3/5) The Council. One of the only 3D games I finished. It’s a story game, where you investigate what’s going on and make various choices. It’s set in revolutionary france, at the Secret World Council that determines the fate of the world. It had a weak ending, with less choice elements than the rest of the game so far, which was a weird decision. Also, it has an EXCRUTIATINGLY bad opening scene, which was also weird. The middle 95% of the game I enjoyed, although the ending went on a little long. The level of background knowledge expected of the player swung wildly–they seemed to expect me to know who revolutionary French generals were with no explanation, but not Daedalus and the Minotaur. The acting was generally enjoyable–there’s a lot of lying going on in the game and it’s conveyed well. The pricetag is too high to recommend.

(0/5) The Grandma’s Recipe (Unus Annus). This game is unplayably bad–it’s just a random pixel hunt. Maybe it would be fun if you had watched the video it’s based on.

(3/5) The Room. Pretty fun! I think this is really designed for a touchscreen, but I managed to play it on my PC. Played it stoned, which I think helps with popular puzzle games–it has nice visuals but it’s a little too easy.

(3/5) This Call May Be Recorded. Goofy experimental game.

(4/5) TIS-100. Zachtronics. A programming game. I finally got done with the first set of puzzles and into the second this year. I had fun, definitely not for everyone.

(3/5) Trine. I played this 2-player. I think the difficulty was much better 2-player, but it doesn’t manage 2 players getting separated well. Sadly we skipped the story, which seemed like simple nice low-fantasy. Could have used goofier puzzles, it took itself a little too seriously and the levels were a bit same-y.

(2/5) Unrailed. Co-op railroad building game. It was okay but there wasn’t base-building. Overall not my thing. I’d say I would prefer something like Overcooked if it’s going to be timed? Graphics reminded me of autonauts.

(2/5) Vampire Night Shift. Art game. Gameplay could have used a bit of polish. Short but interesting.

(4/5) Wayward. To date, the best survival crafting system I’ve seen. You can use any pointy object and stick-like object, together with glue or twine, to make an arrow. The UI is not great, and there’s a very counter-intuitive difficulty system. You need to do a little too much tutorial reading, and it could use more goals. Overall very fun. Under constant development, so how it plays a given week is a crapshoot. The steam version finally works for me (last time I played it was worse than the free online alpha, now it’s the same or better). I recomend playing the free online version unless you want to support the author.

(1/5) We Need to Go Deeper. Multiplayer exploration game in a sub, with sidescrolling battle. Somehow incredibly unfun, together with high pricetag. Aesthetics reminded me of Don’t Starve somehow.

(2/5) We Were Here. Okay 2-player puzzle game. Crashed frequently, and there were some “huh” puzzles and UI. Free.

(3/5) Yes, your grace. Gorgeous pixel art graphics. The story is supposed to be very player-dependent, but I started getting the feeling that it wasn’t. I didn’t quite finish the game but I think I was well past halfway. Hard to resume after a save, you forget things. I got the feeling I wouldn’t replay it, which is a shame because it’s fun to see how things go differently in a second play with something like this.

These are not all new to me, and very few came out in 2020. I removed any games I don’t remember and couldn’t google (a fair number, I play a lot of game jam games) as well as any with pornographic content.

2020 Videogames was originally published on Optimal Prime

[takuchat]

The development of Final Fantasy VII is a mysterious and hard thing to follow. While there is plenty of info out there, much of it is either rumors or unsubstantiated.   The sad thing is, there is no easy way to find legitimate information on the game.  This is why I am here now, this article will serve as a source of factual information about the development of the original Final Fantasy VII.

Below, you will find interviews from the games development and release. As well as links to the sources of these interviews( interviews copied so they will not be lost one day ). Beyond interviews there will be Press Releases and some other cool information.  Enjoy.

  Logo concepts

Meteor Concept art

  Final Fantasy VII – 1997 Developer Interviews

  Hironobu Sakaguchi – Producer Yoshinori Kitase – Director Tetsuya Nomura – Character Design, Storyboards, System, Mech Design Yuusuke Naora – Art Director Motonori Sakakibara – Movie Director Akira Fujii – Battle Scene Director Ken Narita – Main Programmer Yasui Kentarou – Magic/Summoning Effects Kenzo Kanzaki – Backgrounds Nobuo Uematsu – Music

FF6 vs. FF7

Kitase: Our development concept for the story in FF6 was to have over 10 main characters, any of which could be called “the protagonist.” We challenged ourselves to create a world without someone you could point to and say, “this is the main character.” This time, with FF7, we knew from the beginning that we wanted Cloud to be the main character, and we were going to tell his story.

Aside from the story, FF6 had a lot of details undecided when we began development. A great many things were filled out along the way. In contrast, with FF7 we knew from the outset that we were going to be making a real 3D game, so from the earliest planning stage we had very, very detailed designs drawn up. The script was also locked in, and our image for the graphics was completely fleshed out. So when we began the actual work, we had already created what you could call “storyboards”. Of course there was some experimenting as we worked, but we were very clear about what we were supposed to be doing from the outset.

Actually, the very first thing we decided in FF7 was how the camera angles would change during battle scenes. We also decided on the materia system, where any weapon and armor can be equipped with any materia. Accordingly we knew the battles wouldn’t be about characters with individual, innate skills, but rather that combat would change depending on the way materia was used.

Sakaguchi: After FF6 was completed the staff had some free time. We then started thinking about what new hardware there was and what we wanted to do with our next creations, and we created a movie as an experiment. At that time we were working with the SG1 workstations, which had rendering software designed for next generation hardware. For that reason we thought it would be good if we could continue using this setup for our next game. With the SG1 software, we could develop graphics for any hardware. 1 However, for our purposes, we didn’t want the frame-by-frame, slow rendering that takes many hours; we wanted to develop a way to render the visuals in real-time for our new game.

Kitase: I believe we only had 3 months to figure all that out.

Choosing the Hardware for Final Fantasy VII

Sakaguchi: It was starting to become clear to us what the memory capacity for the different next-gen consoles would be. Our games were going to need a huge amount of memory. The Final Fantasy VI CG demo we made for the Siggraph exhibition took 20 megs all by itself. We thought that demo had a lot of visual impact, so there really wasn’t much question about which hardware we would use; if we were going to realize the promise of the demo we had shown at Siggraph, nothing but the CD-ROM format would suffice.

Another reason for choosing the CD-ROM was related to price. I think one of the big reasons the first Final Fantasy was favorably received by players, and the later games in the series gained so many fans, was that you could buy those games for around 5000 to 6000 yen. We tried to have the same pricing for Bahamut Lagoon, Gun Hazard, and our other later Super Famicom games, but using cartridge ROM meant those games had to be sold for over 10000 yen. New players did not flock to those games like they had before. If we used CD-ROM for Final Fantasy VII, we’d be able to have a 2-disc game at a price of 5800 yen. I was hoping it would be possible to make a game that could sell several hundred thousand copies.

Introductions, Difficulties, Favorite Moments

Sakaguchi: I’ve been working with Kitase for a long time, since FF5. He did most of the event scenes in FF6: the opera house, Celes’ suicide scene, the scene where Setzer climbs the stairs and reminisces, and more. I’m not exactly turning things over to the next generation just yet, but for FF7 almost all the story was done by Kitase. His original ambition was to be a film director, so he’s well-disposed towards this work–I’ve left all the in-game event scripting in his hands.

As for my part, since FF3 I’ve led the battle team, and that was my role this time too. Well, actually, the battle team is composed of solid veterans, so I stepped back a bit and played more of a producer role.

Nomura: For FF7 I worked on character design, storyboarding, and the underlying story.2 I have too many favorite parts to sum up quickly here… well, I like it all.

Narita: I was the main programmer. I did all the programming related to the field, and I also helped get everything together at the end. As for difficulties… hmm. Since it’s been a pretty sudden shift from the Super Famicom to the Playstation, we struggled first with getting used to the Playstation hardware itself, then finding out what appealing features it had, and learning how to bring out those features to make a good, balanced game. But on the programming side, what was really hard for me was going from 2D to 3D. Probably any programmer would say the same I think.

As for things I’m proud of, I thought the movies and the in-game field scenes transition into each other very smoothly. That was also the most difficult thing for us in terms of the programming.

Sakakibara: I worked on the movie cutscenes. The challenge for me was just the amount of volume we had to create, it was crazy. What I liked was the opening scene in the beginning. Although I’m already starting to forget it. (laughs)

Fujii: I did the backgrounds for the battle scenes. What was hard for me was that the field graphics would design their graphics with a very high polygon count, and I think had to find a way to reduce that count so the graphics could be rendered in real-time. Selecting the primary elements to render was very difficult. At first I was just fumbling through it, but I gradually got the hang of it and was able to connect things very well. When I first saw characters move around in those backgrounds I had made, I thought they looked great… if I do say so myself. Unless you’re specifically paying attention to them, battle backgrounds aren’t something you usually notice in a game, but we really had to prepare a huge number of different backgrounds for all the different map terrains.

Kentarou: I did the programming for the battle effects and summons. What was fun for me was recieving the storyboard mockups from Tetsuya and thinking “there’s no way, this is impossible.” But then when I got down to it, they came out surprisingly well. The Titan summon was especially memorable for me. The way we did it was new to me, and I think it compares really well with the work I’ve done in the past.

The CG Team

Sakaguchi: We definitely hired a lot more CG staff than we had before.

Kitase: Yes, but they didn’t feel like a separate, “detached force” from our main development team. They had experience in the game industry. What’s more, our existing staff at Square, who up to now had only worked on games, were able to learn a bit about CG from them.

Sakaguchi: For FF7, about 80-90% of the field and game mechanics were done by our traditional staff. For the CG staff with their specialized hardware knowledge, we tried to let them do their thing (but this time with a video game). Several top-grade special fx guys who had worked at Digital Domain and Lucasarts’ Industrial Light Magic also contributed to FF7.

Maps and Backgrounds

Naora: I worked on the unifying all the graphics, including the movies. The majority of my work was on the background graphics. In our previous games, most of those graphics were done with a fixed top-down perspective. To take a town for an example, the map would be composed of various sprites: houses, streets, foliage, fences, and so on. With FF7 we didn’t have to use sprites and could instead present the maps as one seamless image.

I had experimented with this before in the trial scene of Chrono Trigger. I used a bunch of memory to make one single image for the background. Previously we had to reuse so many sprites for our maps, but it was very exciting to be able to include whatever we wanted for FF7. We could have more varied terrain, and our whole image of the game world really expanded.

The work of mine that I really want people to see is, of course, Midgar. I had the image of a pizza in mind when I designed that city, and I really like how it turned out.

In any event, what we really wanted to convey with the backgrounds was a lived-in feel. Down to the beds and individual toilets, I put a lot of detail into everything.

And even after I stopped working, my boss was still making stuff. On one of the posters hanging on the wall, he added an image of Hironobu Sakaguchi. (laughs) I should be upfront: there’s many graphics that even I don’t know about hidden away in the game. Be sure to look closely at the walls inside the buildings. Who knows what surprising things you might discover. The Rocket Town especially has a variety of interesting things hidden away.

Cinematic Aspirations

Kitase: Visually, I wanted Final Fantasy VII to be a completely unified work, with a single style running from beginning to end. The cut-scene movies, overworld map, and battle scenes would not be disconnected, but would instead smoothly and seamlessly transition into one another. To call this game “cinematic” would be correct, but what I really wanted was something where all the compositions and shots would be suffused with meaning and show the intent of the creators.

For all our previous games, when we’ve been in the phase of brainstorming ideas and sketching pictures, there’s always been the knowledge that we have to work within the hardware memory limitations. This time there were no limits, and no restraints.

That difference in available memory had a really big influence on the development. For the gameplay system, story, and in-game events, it didn’t change very much. What the increased memory allowed in FF7 was more painterly visuals, with a better sense of space and composition. Naturally the graphics quality itself has also gone up, but I think it’s in the cinematic presentation where you see the evolution.

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Sakaguchi: Speaking of cinematic, we also wanted to have a soundtrack with no repeated music. In movies, you don’t hear music get repeated, you know. Depending on the scene the tempo or the intensity might change though. I think something like that should be possible… although there is the matter of how much available spirit/creativity we can get out of our composer, Uematsu. (laughs) Of course FF7 is a game that takes over 40 hours, so some music is repeated, but our overall goal was to make it as cinematic as possible in that regard.

We also had Yoshitaka Amano do illustrations for the world of FF7. Some of his work appears as a frescoe on a wall in the game.

Kitase: We had really been wanting to use Amano’s artwork in-game before. In FF6, we wanted to have one of Reim’s drawings being Amano’s artwork. In the ending scene Reim would have painted a wall mural showing scenes of all the adventures the heroes had undertaken.

Character Design

Nomura: Since the characters in FF7 were going to be rendered in real-time, the nitoushin,3 chibi-style character design we’ve used in previous games wasn’t going to work here. If they brandished their sword overhead they’d end up stabbing themselves in the head. Not using the super-deformed style meant we had no limits on how to animate these characters.

Naora: I helped out on the character design too. In the previous games with the nitoushin, deformed sprites, it would look really lame if they rode a motorcycle or something. By changing the character’s dimensions, we were able to have them ride different vehicles.

Nomura: My involvement with FF7 goes back to helping create the basic story, and we came up with the characters during that time too. I think that was a good way to do things. Barret and Cait Sith were two characters whom I had wanted to create for a long time, but everyone else was created as we were writing the story.

As for things I personally designed, I think the Yin and Yang boss came out really well. Also, the Iron Giant. It wasn’t enough to just have a good initial design though. I had to create a design, then translate it into a 3D model, then see how it looked all-around, and only then could I say “alright, this is good.” Yin and Yang and the Iron Giant were two designs I felt that way about.

I also helped out on all the storyboad designs for the summons. Since 3D allows you to change the perspective in various ways, we decided to make the summons have really flashy camerawork.

Favorite Characters

Kentarou: I personally really like Red XIII’s scenes. Every time I remember that one scene of his, I start to tear up. (laughs)

Kanzaki: My favorite would be Tifa, because of her ample bust. (laughs)

Fujii: Yuffy. I like the sounds she makes. Also, it’s not a character, but I like all the summons.

Kentarou: Ah, yeah, I have a special love for Titan. Nomura said Titan should flip over the ground that the enemies are on. He would peel off a slab of the land: no matter what terrain he was on. (laughs) At first I had him come in on normal ground, and he’d flip the same slab of ground no matter what terrain… but that looked boring. I had a small insight into the problem and was able to solve it.

Narita: My favorite character is Barret. Because he does the same damage when he’s in the back row. (laughs)

Kanzaki: Yuffy and Vincent can do that too, though.

Narita: You can clear the game without getting Yuffy. I didn’t add her to my party. As for Vincent, I can’t forgive him. (laughs) Yeah, it’s Barret all the way for me.

Sakakibara: I like Jessie. She cleans your face for you. (laughs) If only you could have had Jessie in your party.

Nomura: For me, it’s of course Cloud and Sephiroth. My concept for Sephiroth from the beginning was that everything about him would be kakkoii.4 His battle movements, and all his in-game scenes too. My image of the relationship between Cloud AND Sephiroth was that of Musashi Miyamoto and Sasaki Kojiro, and I had them in mind when I designed their appearance, as well as their swords. Of course Cloud is Musashi, and Sephiroth is Kojiro.

Animating the Characters

Narita: The movement of the characters during the in-game events was actually all done by character designers in the planning group. Normally those designers convey what they want to a motion specialist, who then animates them. But in our case, the character designers learned how to do the motion work, and if they wanted to add some movement or gesture to a character they did it themselves. That’s why each character’s movements differ depending on who created them. There were designers who liked very exaggerated movements, and those who preferred more quiet, subtle movement.

For the character battle animations, however, we had motion specialists for each character. But for all the other in-game events, the designers created the character’s movements themselves.

Narita: Nomura was the Demon King of retakes. He was always making the designers re-do things. “Nope, that’s wrong there.”

Kanzaki: But it’s really thanks to him that we achieved very realistic motion.

Nomura: We spent more time on the typical, everday motion of the characters than we did on other types of motion. That’s where the character’s personality comes out, after all. So yeah, I stuck my nose into everyone’s work there. (laughs) I drew the designs for these characters from the moment we had our basic idea of them; no one told me “draw him this way” or anything like that. Every character in FF7 is one that I designed just how I wanted to.

The first characters we had were Cloud and Barret. From there we kept talking, and as we worked our ideas out, new characters would come up. All the characters were created in the course of our discussing our ideas for the game. None of them were created after the fact, as in “oh, let’s make this kind of character.” As we brainstormed about the game, we’d realize a character was already there in our minds.

Limit Breaks

Nomura: With each Final Fantasy, the entire team contributes to the initial design/planning documents, and we then pick out the best ideas from there. During that highly individual period of brainstorming, I came up with the idea of adding limit breaks to the battle system. In FF6 we had desperation attacks that would happen when you were near death, and I wanted to build on that idea. Since you were free to build your character by adding and removing materia, I also wanted to add limit breaks as a way to bring out the individual, innate personalities of each character. For that reason I’m really glad we were able to include them. It also allowed us to add more unique animation for each character, too, further emphasizing their individuality.

The Music of FF7

Uematsu: I know many players were hoping that with the move to the Playstation, we’d have studio quality music instead of the internal sound chip like that used in the Super Famicom games. And I know other companies are recording CD quality music for their games, but with FF7 we decided to do all the music with the Playstation’s internal chip.

  That’s because as far as sound quality goes, we felt the Playstation’s hardware was more than capable. It has a higher dynamic range than the Super Famicom, and 24 voices (the Super Famicom had 8). The sound effects were all recorded in the studio, but the music, from start to finish, is all the Playstation’s internal chip. This way the music puts less demands on the read access time of the CD-ROM. It’s stressful to be playing a game and have to wait all the time for the CD-ROM to load data. So we prioritized a less stressful experience over better sound quality.

From the first Final Fantasy up to Final Fantasy V, the music has had a European atmosphere: the north, castles, blue skies… But FF6 started to break away from that, and FF7 begins with a new image, a dirty city of the future. So I was thinking the music should change too. I personally like a lot of different styles of music, so I saw this game as a chance to show parts of myself which I hadn’t been able to express before.

I used keyboard and guitar for the basic compositions, and I read the story and script as I composed. But there were so many songs this time that I was really worried I would run out of time. There were something like 100 songs needed. I’d compose, then program it in, and if it was wrong I’d revise it. Rinse and repeat. I write the music out first and then proram it into the sequencer, but there was no guarantee that the Playstation hardware would have the kind of sound I was looking for. And the sound quality might be very different. For that reason there ended up being a lot of unused songs.

Wrapping things up

Narita: At the end of the development we had a closing party. We gathered all the development staff together, and we all watched the credits roll after the last boss was defeated. As the staff was listed, each respective developer stood up and took a bow. It was the first time I realized “oh, he did that.” And it was the first time I really felt how many people had been involved in making this game.

Fujii: Once the field, battle, and world maps were all joined, that was when I first felt the power of FF7 as a finished work.

Narita: Until then, everything was being developed separately, and only at the end was it all joined together. When the world map was added and you could walk around, that was definitely the moment when I felt, “wow, we’ve really made it.”

You see, the way we made FF7 was totally different from the way we made the previous Final Fantasy games. Before, there was no real “director”–everyone was, individually, their own director, and everyone created the actual data that would be used in-game by themselves. There was a head person who generally controlled the flow of work and made sure everything got into its final form, though. I guess you’ve got to have someone like that.

But to imitate that with FF7 would have required a huge number of staff and hardware for them all to work on. You could say that the way we made FF7 was closer to the way they make movies.

Sakakibara: Speaking of that, we were also asked to make sound effects that would be of the same quality and character as those you hear in movies. It felt entirely different from the way we made sound effects before.

Kanzaki: The quality of the backgrounds took a huge step up, too. We didn’t have to reuse any sprites or tiles.

Kentarou: When I was making the battle effects, it felt like business as usual for me, so I didn’t have a feeling like “these are awesome!” then. But at the very end when we were debugging and I saw them, I thought for the first time how nice they looked. I also thought, “damn, it’s a good thing I didn’t slack off.” (laughs) It would have been really bad if we had just made a bunch of shoddy effects. (laughs)

Kanzaki: There were a lot of worries at the start of the development though.

Narita: Yeah, in a certain sense, FF7 is something of a minor miracle. I mean, we only had a year to do everything.

Fujii: It’s the shortest development we’ve had so far.

Narita: Yeah, that it was. And normally you’d start developing your game after you’d learned the new hardware. But we had to learn the hardware and create the game all in the same year. I really couldn’t believe it when I saw the finished product of FF7. It’s amazing that so many people were involved, and that we completed it in so short a time.

Fujii: Time is always the one thing you’re in short supply of. We had to do the battle system after all the field stuff was done, so practically speaking we only had half a year for that. The last dungeon was a real slap-bang, rushed affair.

Midgar near finished

Concept

midgar

Interview with Official UK PSX Magazine

  Published in October 1997

Official UK PSX Magazine: Describe the game in 100 words.

Square: The latest in the Final Fantasy series is the closest Square have come to their ultimate goal of blending real-time action with FMV-quality animation, in an all-encompassing, totally absorbing and immersive interactive gaming experience. This seventh heaven is a mix of stunning backdrops, adorable and believable characters, intriguing plots, pulsating battles and tricky puzzles, which all add up to the best RPG yet to appear.

What’s the plot?

The world of Final Fantasy VII expands on FFIII’s concept of Magitek, where magical forces are a reality and have thus been incorporated into the technological progress of civilisation. This isn’t your typical fantasy setting: vast chimneys belch smoke, steam trains criss-cross the urban sprawl, neon signs crackle in the rainswept ratruns between towering factories. It transpires that Mako is a ‘dark’ form of magic, and its insidious corruption of the Shinra Corporation has created a police state by empowering a security force. You begin the game as an ex-soldier-turned-revolutionary, and immediately find yourself assisting a terrorist group called Avalanche in their attempt to overthrow Shinra and restore balance to the exploited world.

Is there anything in this game that we’ve never seen in any other?

If you’ve played SNES versions of the Final Fantasy series, then possibly not. There are slight deviations from the first six, and the music and graphics are obviously enhanced. But as a PlayStation starting point, continuity was very wise. For novice owners, however, this will be like nothing you’ve seen.

What other games have influenced Final Fantasy VII?

Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II… need we go on? There is a whole history of RPGs and all the paths that lead Square here were winding. In Final Fantasy VII, however, there have been more Western influences both externally and from those on the team.

What’s going to be the best bit of the game?

Taking an already believable story and gameplay and placing it in an environment that now looks real it is a real shock to the senses.

Why will it be better than any other game of its ilk?

The characters for a start. Square’s scriptwriting talents are once again employed to make you fall in love with the characters, then mercilessly pull your emotional strings as they experience suffering, joy, love, betrayal and even (whisper) d.e.a.t.h. Also the quest is huge, straddling no less than 3 CDs, and with so many locations that the average completion time is reportedly 120 hours.

Any specific technical conventions to speak of?

At first the system might seem to bear similarities to Resident Evil, in that your polygon hero can move around a detailed pre-rendered environment, but the backgrounds are packed with interactive ‘hot spots’. The integration of old and new techniques also gives FFVII a unique cinematic quality. Its many cut scenes are CGI movie sequences that use the same pre-rendering as the rest of the game, so that when the dizzying camerawork finally comes to a halt, the scene on which it settles is also the environment in which your character can explore. The direction is seamless. The combat system boasts AD&D complexity. Weapons and items have slots in which to fit Materia, orbs that endow the wearer with extra powers such as the ability to steal, or summon Esper-like creature attacks, with some weapons boasting more slots for combining enhancements.

So why should anyone care about the game?

Because it’s the best RPG to appear on the PlayStation. It’s sold five million copies already in Japan!

   Hironobu Sakaguchi Interview

  Interview with Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the Final Fantasy series and producer of Final Fantasy VII. From PlayStation Underground #2 demo CD set, released in the US in 1997.

Transcription and screenshots by Tuulisti.

PlayStation Underground: Why is Squaresoft publishing Final Fantasy FVII only on PlayStation?

Hironobu Sakaguchi: In the August of 95, one of the US’s largest CG conventions, Siggraph, was held in LA. At that time we were not sure what the next generation RPG game should look like, so as an experiment we created a CG based, game like, interactive demo to be presented at the show. It focused on battle scenes that were 100% real time and polygon based. This became the seed of Final Fantasy VII and it was then that we decided to make this a CG based game.

When we discussed designing the field scenes as illustrations or CG based, we came up with the idea to eliminate the connection between movies and the fields. Without using blackout at all, and maintaining quality at the same time, we would make the movie stop at one cut and make the characters move around on it. We tried to make it controllable even during the movies. As a result of using a lot of motion data + CG effects and in still images, it turned out to be a mega capacity game, and therefore we had to choose CD-ROM as our media. It other words, we became too aggressive, and got ourselves into trouble.

Why did you need such a large staff?

A larger developer team will not always create a better game, but when a project moves onto a scale such as this, you get to spend a lot of money, and work with highly qualified staff.

We were able to use many high-end machines and work with a staff of approximately 100 people, and I believe this was one of the largest game development teams in history. As a result, the final game generates a tremendous amount of energy. My theory is this: if one person creates a game – it can be a racing game or anything – or 10 people create the same game, the one created by 10 people will be much richer in scope. There is a larger pool of resources to draw from, and each person is able to put passion into his role, creating a greater sense of depth.

How has film influenced your game-making?

It is easy to get emotionally involved with both films and games, although in different ways. Adding certain interactive aspects to films however, I believe players can get further into them, even become one with the visual images. I have always emphasized visual and sound effects because rather than making my games equivalent to films, I want my games to surpass films. That is my goal.

Why is Final Fantasy VII getting so much praise?

Without changing the basic game play, the visual and sound effects have been significantly enhanced further drawing the players’ emotions in to the game. One way RPGs enforce too many images and too much sound on the players, robbing them of the feel of control. In order to avoid those responses, we did extensive research during Final Fantasy V and VI on how to make the players interactively involved in the game, while upgrading the visual and sound effects. The results of this research are reflected in Final Fantasy VII.

Are there any new themes in Final Fantasy VII?

When we were creating Final Fantasy III, my mother passed away, and ever since I have been thinking about the theme “life”. Life exists in many things, and I was curious about what would happen if I attempted to analyze life in a mathematical and logical way. Maybe this was my approach in overcoming the grief I was experiencing. This is the first time in the series that this particular theme actually appears in the game itself. See if you can spot it!

What was it like to work with director Yoshinori Kitase?

I have been working with him since Final Fantasy V. When he joined Square, he told me he initially wanted to become a film director, but that he thought this would be impossible in Japan. The previous version of Final Fantasy could be called puppet shows compared to this one. It’s a real film requiring innovative effects and various camera angles. His experience studying cinematography and in making his own films has contributed a lot to the making of the game. He is the director of this game.

  The Making of Final Fantasy VII

  May 2003 edition of Edge magazine’s regular feature “The Making Of…”, spotlighting Final Fantasy VII. Interviewed for this article were Yoshinori Kitase and Tetsuya Nomura.

Transcription by Tuulisti.

3.28m sales in Japan, 2.92m in the US and 1.77m in Europe. Three CD. Over two years’ development. Over 100 team members. Nine out of ten. Adults in tears. But Final Fantasy VII represents much more than cold record-breaking statistics. Here was the catalyst for the worldwide RPG revolution…

“This was undoubtedly the game that changed everything.” Yoshinori Kitase, the director the most important RPG ever, has cause for hyperbole. “We felt a wind of change inside the company during the development process. There was this incredible feeling I’ll never forget: we were making a new thing… making history. Imagine.” He pauses. Imagine. At the time there were many doubters, but Kitase-san’s instinct proved right; Final Fantasy VII eventually propelled the high-production RPG into one of the most popular videogame genres worldwide. The first demo of the title, creatively bundled on an extra disc with Square’s first 32bit offering, Tobal No.1, stunned the world with its steam punk setting, achingly melancholic score and arresting visuals. And it bore evidence of a huge team working on a title with aspirations not yet though possible in the medium of videogames. “There was a huge number of people we had never worked with before. Up until that point Squaresoft’s teams had only ever dealt with the traditional 2D medium. All of a sudden we had new people coming in working with software like Power Animator and SoftImage that we had never heard of before. From and industry point of view, it was unbelievable what we were trying to achieve. That is why we all had this strong feeling; this great enthusiasm.” As the software houses were jumping from the 16bit systems to 32bit hardware, Squaresoft made the headlines for choosing Sony over previous soul mate Nintendo. The story behind the split is yet to be explained and as the two companies only recently kissed and made up (with the departure of warring Hirosohi Yamauchi from Nintendo and Hironobu Sakaguchi from Squaresoft) we’re are unlikely to anytime soon. Kitase-san is predictably diplomatic, “We had a big decision to make in terms of which hardware to use. Nintendo was not one step behind in terms of hardware. In fact, the N64 was quite attractive actually. But as our goal was to develop the next-generation RPG we came to the conclusion that only a high capacity mass storage media would facilitate what we wanted to achieve. This meant CD was the only option and so from that perspective, Playstation was the only choice.”

Access All Areas

There was a great pressure on the team to maximise the benefits of the new medium. “At that time Sakaguchi-san (Square’s founder) was the series’ producer. Right from the time the decision to go with CD was made he set down a ground rule for the team saying, ‘If the player becomes aware of the access times we have failed.’ So we tried many tricks to circumvent the issue such as offering animation while the game was loading data, etc. The constant fear for us having worked with cartridges for so many years was that the player would feel bored while waiting for loads. However, only CD media was able to facilitate more than 40 minutes of FMV movies so we virtually had the decision made for us.”

Another Dimension

Graphically Square was trying things only hinted at in the first generation of 32bit titles. Using polygonal characters on CG backgrounds and interspersing the action with streaming FMV was a bold aesthetic decision. “We were keen that the distinction between the in-game graphics and the CG movie sequences was not overly pronounced: something we could not have done on the N64. The change of dimension into 3D was a massive one for the Square team. You could see the game with maps and angles that only 3D could offer and in terms of game characters, we were able to offer far greater, detailed animations, so they would look more real and more alive on screen. But it was a daunting task.” The change from Final Fantasy VI to Final Fantasy VII is as graphic a demonstration of the transition between 2D to 3D as one will see. Just how apprehensive was Kitase-san about this sea change? “It was during development that I realised the impact that 3D realistic CG visuals had on overseas players. In Japan, you have the manga culture with the traditional deformed style world design and characters that live through a story with very serious themes. Overseas, you don’t have this. To be honest we were pretty confident that FFVII’s characters and graphics would be accepted overseas and ironically I was much more anxious to see how Japanese users would respond.” Undoubtedly at the heart of any RPG’s success is the plot. No matter how good your battle system or locations, without quality scripting there will be no incentive for the player to play. It is testament to FFVII’s story that the game is widely regarded as the acme of the series and still frequently referenced today. While Final Fantasy games have traditionally always drawn upon a huge selection of myths and legends, the seventh game used them as a framework for loftier ethical aspirations and ecologically conscious evangelism. “Sakaguchi had a great vision of the force behind the universe. He wanted to explore the idea that planets and people share the same basic energy and so are, in some way, intrinsically linked. He developed this philosophy from drawing upon other cultures that stated when a planet disappears an invisible energy is released in to space. This energy goes to some place to give life again when certain conditions are met. The same energy drives people. So matter who or what this energy comes from, it will concentrate all together to give life to something or someone again.” These were ideas that the SquareSoft founder had long been toying with and it is unclear as to how much of the philosophy was pure fantastical fabrication and how much was his own dogma. One thing is certain, they posed difficulties for Kitase-san, “Sakaguchi’s ideas were incredibly difficult to represent in the game since they concerned an invisible abstract concept. It was something I’d never seen done in a game before. So, I came up with the Life Stream. “This was an idea that planets have the same kinds of life systems as people’s blood or nerve network. It allowed us to more clearly examine the issues we wanted to. Sakaguchi-san’s main ideas for FFVII and the world he imagined for the game (the creatures, etc.) were very closely integrated into the “Final Fantasy” movie. FFVII and “Final Fantasy” started at the same time in their development process and they share nearly identical roots. I may have to play/watch both again and compare all their common elements.” Although lengthy FMV, random battles and an arcane combat system alienated some gamers—especially in the west where anecdotal evidence suggests it became the most returned game history—the combination proved the winning formula for thousands who had never sampled such fare before. Boosting weapons and skills with Materia, summoning devastating guardians, scouring the planet’s highest peaks and deepest oceans for secret items and raising and training Chocobo gave both fresh and old RPGers an inconceivably large universe to explore and revel in. It also provided us with a legendary videogame moment.

Death of a Friend

Easily the most infamous and memorable character in FFVII was neither the main lead nor the central antagonist, although both Cloud and Sephiroth are premier examples of excellent design and characterisation, but rather a flower seller who appears a little more than a third of the game. Tetsuya Nomura, character designer, conceived both the characters of Sephiroth and Aerith. “The main issues of contention for fans worldwide are still Aerith’s death and the ending sequence with Sephiroth. With the plot I wanted people to feel something intense, to understand something. Back at the time we were designing the game I was frustrated with the perennial dramatic cliché where the protagonist loves someone very much and so has to sacrifice himself and die in a dramatic fashion in order to express that love. We found this was the case in both games and movies, both eastern and western. But I wanted to say something different, something realistic. I mean is it right to set such an example to people?” Kitase-san is adamant that cultural art puts too high a value on the dramatically meaningful death, “In the real world things are very different. You just need to look around you. Nobody wants to die that way. People die of disease and accident. Death comes suddenly and there is no notion of good or bad. It leaves, not a dramatic feeling but great emptiness. When you lose someone you loved very much you feel this big empty space and think, ‘If I had known this was coming I would have done things differently.’ These are the feelings I wanted to arouse in the players with Aerith’s death relatively early in the game. Feelings of reality and not Hollywood.”

Classic Convention

At the time of release the internet was awash with rumours that it was possible to resurrect Aerith. Edge wonders if this was ever the developers’ intention? “The world was expecting us to bring her back to life, as this is the classic convention. But we did not. We had decided this from the beginning. There was a lot of reaction from Japanese users. Some of them were very sad about it while others were angry. We even received a lengthy petition addressed to our scenario writer asking for Aerith’s revival. But there are many meanings in Aerith’s death and that could never happen. Final Fantasy VII is arguably one of the most significant games of all time. Not simply because it was so well conceived and executed, but mainly because of its wider significance to Sony. In Japan, history dictates that hardware can not succeed without a best-selling RPG franchise. With Final Fantasy VII Squaresoft secured its position as king of the adventure tale and won Sony an army of fans both in Japan and the west. The continued pressure Square receives to do a remake of the title is evidence of the game’s continued popularity. Edge gently pursues the rumours. “If I were to redo the game onto today’s hardware I would like to make the characters more realistic, I mean like FFX for instance. I think I would try include full voice support but I would definitely keep very same plot and scenario. I know that other members of the team are eager to do the update, but, currently I have no plans. Cloud and Aerith have appeared in other titles (Final Fantasy Tactics, Kingdom Hearts) so it is possible FFVII character will appear in a future title but there is much discussion to be had first.” Whether a new generation of videogamers get to experience this RPG in next-gen clothing is almost irrelevant. While few would go back to experience this epic again, it is one of those rare games that cast an emotional spell over legions of players. For that reason it will always remain the stuff of legend.

    Afterthoughts: Final Fantasy VII

  Interivew with Yoshinori Kitase and Tetsuya Nomura from Electronic Gaming Monthly, issue #196, October 2005.

In light of all these new FFVII offshoots, we thought it would be interesting to look back at the groundbreaking original PS1 game that popularized the role-playing genre in the United States. We waxed nostalgic with two of FFVII’s most integral team members: Director Yoshinori Kitase and character designer/battle director/coauthor Tetsuya Nomura.

EGM: What does Final Fantasy VII mean to you? Yoshinori Kitase: FFVII was the first Final Fantasy for the PS1, and it was also the first 3D game in the series, so it determined the new direction that the franchise would take after the 16-bit Super Nintendo era. It’s by far the most memorable and important title for me, and when I had the chance to expand any of the past games, I immediately chose Final Fantasy VII for the project. The ending of FFVII seemed to me to open up so many possibilities with its characters, more so than other games.

EGM: When you were working on FFVII eight years ago, could you conceive of how much the game would affect the RPG marketplace? Tetsuya Nomura: When I look back, I remember having no concept of just how massive that project would go on to become. Of course, I’d been associated with the Final Fantasy franchise before FFVII, as I did monster designs on Final Fantasy V (Super NES). I remember that before we started FFVII, the characters from Final Fantasy IV were still very popular, despite the fact that FFV and FFVI had been released. I found this really frustrating. Why would people still be talking about those characters? So I made it my goal to create my own batch of characters that would be remembered and loved by the Final Fantasy fans. Also, starting with FFVII, I was far more deeply involved with the story and characters, so I was really extremely excited to work on that project.

EGM: FFVII was a departure from the Super NES titles… were you worried about fan reaction? YK: I wasn’t really worried about response to the graphical shift, as there were already several 3D games in America that were accepted by fans. My fear had been that the Final Fantasy franchise might be left behind if it didn’t catch up to that trend, actually.

EGM: What did you think of Cloud as a hero when you were making FFVII? YK: There wasn’t really much controversy or criticism about having him as the hero from within Square, but he is definitely a mysterious character. That’s one of the game’s main themes, the fact that the protagonist has all these secrets to unravel. He isn’t a straightforward hero like Superman; rather, he has lots of mysteries, self-doubts, and a real dark side. Mr. Nomura was also very good at designing a character like that.

EGM: We heard that the death of Aerith and the creation of Tifa both originated in a phone call between you two…. TN: It’s funny, some magazine ran that story, but only the beginning and ending of it. People think that I wanted to kill off Aerith and replace her with Tifa as the main character! [Laughs] The actual conversation between Mr. Kitase and myself was very, very long. Originally, there were only going to be three characters in the entire game: Cloud, Barrett, and Aerith. Can you imagine that? And we knew even in the early concept stage that one character would have to die. But we only had three to choose from. I mean, Cloud’s the main character, so you can’t really kill him. And Barrett… well, that’s maybe too obvious. But we had to pick between Aerith and Barrett. We debated this for a long time, but in the end decided to sacrifice Aerith.

EGM: Did you pick her to increase the drama? TN: In the previous FF games, it became almost a signature theme for one character to sacrifice him or herself, and often it was a similar character type from game to game, kind of a brave, last-man-standing, Barrett-type character. So everyone expected that. And I think that death should be something sudden and unexpected, and Aerith’s death seemed more natural and realistic. Now, when I reflect on Final Fantasy VII, the fact that fans were so offended by her sudden death probably means that we were successful with her character. If fans had simply accepted her death, that would have meant she wasn’t an effective character.

EGM: Which female character in FFVII is your personal favorite? TN: [Laughs] I’m not really interested in any superdeformed females.

EGM: Since Dirge of Cerberus is, chronologically speaking, the furthest game in the FFVII timeline, does it have a happy ending? YK: AC and DC both have their own resolutions, so don’t expect cliff-hangers there. Also, DC isn’t the direct sequel to FFVII, Advent Children is. So we can’t view DC as the ending to the whole big FFVII saga. Plus, FFVII definitely has so many diverse elements, and different fans have interest in different characters, so if, for example, one person is interested in Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith’s relationship, then AC may provide some sort of answers for them. Somebody else might be interested in Vincent, so they might want to explore DC. It’s not like this is going to complete the whole story, but it will satisfy fans who have strong attachments to individual characters.

EGM: At the very end of FFVII, we see the epilogue to the whole story that takes place 500 years later, so really, you still have another 497 years’ worth of games and movies to fill in…. YK: Ha, maybe I’ll try to do that. In a way, I consider that epilogue to be the true happy ending of FFVII. Well, it’s a happy ending even though all the human beings are destroyed. [Laughs]

Concept art

Render

Dengeki PlayStation Vol.17– Dengeki PlayStation Vol.40-Non Translated

    Magazine Previews

  Forum member Brooke dug up some old FF7 previews from August of 1997 and was kind enough to share them with us. If you were already a Final Fantasy fan then, you might enjoy the nostalgia of the excitement that had been absolutely ravaging the West after the game’s January Japanese release. If you were not, it’s a pretty fascinating look at just how beside themselves people were to play this game. Also included is the preview of Final Fantasy Tactics, another imminent release at the time, as well as a truly prophetic piece about gaming and the third dimension.-lifestream

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  final fantasy vii development final

final fantasy vii development early

FFVII 10th Anniversary Discussion: p. 8 to 13 of the FFVII 10th Anniversary Ultimania

  FFVII 10th Anniversary Discussion

In 2007 FFVII hit its 10th anniversary. To find out the secret of its appeal, we went to the 3 central members of the development staff behind FFVII and the Compilation. How does FFVII look through their eyes? Cloud’s Animations determined the image of the scenario

– It’s been 10 years since FFVII was released. I think the reason fans have continued to support it for so long is because it left that much of an impression on them, but what scenes stand out most in your memories as the creators?

Nojima: For me, it’s the scene where Cloud first appears at the start of the story. That scene used the cool standing animation Toriyama (Motomu Toriyama: FFVII’s event planner) made. If I remember correctly, it was named “Cloud showing off” (laughs). But when I say that animation I thought to myself objectively, “wow, this is great.” It was when I’d just started writing the scenario, and Cloud’s false persona was kind of determined based on that pose, and after that the image of the scenario started to solidify. Back in those days, a lot of different tasks would be going on simultaneously during production, so there were a lot of cases like that where the other staff would influence each other. All the important stuff was usually decided by talking it over in the smoking room (laughs). Nowadays since you’ve got the voice acting to record the scenario needs to be done first, so it’s turned into quite a lonesome task.

  Kitase: That Cloud ‘showing off’ standing animation appears in the Nibelheim flashback as well. When the Shinra soldier asked about doing “the usual”, he does that pose. The same scene is in CC too, so I instructed the staff to recreate that animation (laughs). You were in charge of the Nibelheim events in FFVII, weren’t you, Nojima?

Nojima: That’s right. Right up till the very end we couldn’t get the bugs out of it, so it was pretty rough. Like when Cloud was waiting outside of the screen for his part in the scene, his hair would be poking out from the edge of the screen (laughs). Story-wise, the scene at the Northern Cave where Cloud talks while upside-down left an impression on me. I worked on the direction for that scene, but getting the characters to run to match with the movie scene was tricky, and I remember having trouble with it. The part where Cloud addresses Tifa as “Mrs.” Tifa, I made that hoping that the people playing it would be taken aback by the change in Cloud and it would really hit the player.

Nomura: The scene that sticks out for me is the scene when Tifa going into Cloud’s mental realm and he remembers the truth about what happened in the past.

Nojima: It was Katou (Masato Katou: FFVII event planner) who made the events for that part, and the movies were made by Ikumori (Kazuyuki Ikumori: FFVII movie designer). Ikumori was originally graphic designer for the maps, and this was the first time he’d tried his hand at movies. He said, “I’ve never worked on the movies before,” but looking at him now…

Nomura: Now he’s the movie director on DC and CC.

Kitase: Katou also did the event on the airship, the night before the final battle.

Nojima: Oh, the scene with the risqué line of dialogue? It was Katou who wrote that as well, not me.

– The line “Words aren’t the only way to talk someone how you feel,” right? That was quite a mature conversation for a FF game.

Kitase: But I remember having to get another version that was too intense toned down.

Nojima: The original idea was more extreme. The plan was to have Cloud walk out of the Chocobo stable on board the Highwind, followed by Tifa leaving while checking around, but Kitase turned it down. But even with the line in question, maybe at that time none of us thought it would be something so important (laughs).

  In the original scenario, Zack didn’t exist

– Mr. Kitase, which scene do you find most striking even now?

Kitase: Like Nomura, I’d have to say the climax in the mental realm. The scene where the mysteries regarding Sephiroth and Cloud all become clear. I didn’t know until we were in the latter stages of development that Cloud’s memories were Zack’s. First of all, when I originally checked the scenario, the character of Zack didn’t exist. Zack was a character who came up as Nojima was building up the mysteries. So until that part was complete I was left wondering just how he was planning to solve this, and all the while making the event scenes, still in the dark about the truth.

Nojima: But with Zack, I didn’t simply bring him in just because it was needed for solving the mysteries. When I joined the development team, the concept of Aerith seeing her first love again in Cloud was already there, so I brought him in to link that with solving the mysteries.

Nomura: About the concept of her seeing her first love again in Cloud, at first we were thinking of making that man Sephiroth. When I got the request for the illustration of Zack we were already near the end of development, so when you look at it now it’s not even coloured, and I can’t really deny that it feels like quite a sudden request.

– Had you thought about the truth of the mysteries regarding Cloud and Zack from the very beginning?

Nojima: No, I thought of it as I went on with my work. So at the beginning there wasn’t much foreshadowing. The foreshadowing scenes, I asked the staff in charge of the event scenes to add after development reached a point where an outcome for the mysteries came into sight.

Kitase: In those days it was easy to go back and change things around later on. Lately, with the workload involved in making the graphics, it’s hard to ask people to change something once it’s been finished.

Nojima: Well, even back then, there were some people you could easily ask to change an event later on, and people who were difficult to ask, so the locations of the foreshadowing might be biased. I only went to the people who were easy to ask, and the foreshadowing is focused at the scenes they were in charge of (laughs).

Red XIII: Four-Legged Bane of the Event Planners – I think one of the things that have helped maintain FFVII’s popularity is the uniqueness of its characters. How did you go about creating the characters?

Nomura: At the very start of development the scenario wasn’t complete yet, but I went along like, “I guess first off you need a hero and a heroine,” and from there drew the designs while thinking up details about the characters. After I’d done the hero and heroine, I carried on drawing by thinking what kind of characters would be interesting to have. When I handed over the designs I’d tell people the character details I’d thought up, or write them down on a separate sheet of paper. At that time, I still wrote everything by hand as well.

– So in exactly what order did you draw the characters?

Nomura: The first ones I drew was Cloud and Aerith. Next was Barret.

Kitase: And then Nomura said he wanted to have a four-legged character, and drew Red XIII…

Nomura: After that I think things kind of stalled for a while (laughs).

Nojima: Because you said you wanted to have a four-legged character, it was a real struggle to make the cut-scenes. Like, ‘how is he supposed to climb a ladder?’ and ‘when he turns around his tail and his body end up going into the wall’ (laughs).

Nomura: The scene with Red XIII standing on two legs on the transport ship was funny.

Nojima: The scene where he says, “It’s hard standing on two legs” (laughs).

Kitase: You named Red XIII, didn’t you, Tetsu (Nomura)?

Nomura: I thought a name that didn’t sound like a name would be interesting, so I combined a color and a number. The reason I chose 13 was pretty much because it’s an unlucky number. The official details for the character and his real name ‘Nanaki’ was something one of the other staff did.

Kitase: It was probably Akiyama (Jun Akiyama: FFVII event planner) who thought of those.

– This is something I noticed before, but to type in ‘Seto’, Nanaki’s father, in Japanese with the keyboard set to kana input, you press the keys ‘PS’. I was wondering if this perhaps was where the name came from…?

Kitase: Did he think that deeply about it?

Nojima: If it was Akiyama who was in charge of that, I wouldn’t put some deep-rooted reason like that past him (laughs).

Yuffie and Vincent, who were almost cut at one point.

– Yuffie and Vincent are secret characters who you don’t have to get in your party, but I was surprised that they had so many cut-scenes prepared for them.

Nomura: There was even a time when some people thought we should cut them because we didn’t have enough time. But we somehow managed to veto cutting them, and as a result they became the secret characters they are today.

Kitase: The main reason for there being so many cut-scenes for Yuffie is down it the strong attachment that Akiyama, who was in charge of them, had. Her appearing in a battle and talking with her afterwards, all those were his ideas, and as development moved along the scope steadily got bigger and bigger.

Nojima: It’s really annoying when you try to save after the Yuffie battle and get tricked (laughs). For the story in Wutai, I made the parts related to the main story, but the events in the Pagoda of the Five Mighty Gods were the work of Tokita (Takashi Tokita: FFVII’s event planner).

Kitase: Those bits do have a Tokita-feel to them.

Nojima: Tokita is involved in the theatre, and the characters who appear there have the names of people involved with the theatre like playwrights.

– Who was in charge of Vincent’s cut-scenes?

Kitase: I remember making the event where he joins you in the Shinra Mansion, but his episodes themselves was Nojima, wasn’t it?

Nojima: I did write his episodes. The back story for Vincent and Lucrecia was around from the start, and I remember linking that with Shinra. In the end, Chiba (Hiroki Chiba: FFVII’s event planner) crammed the Vincent-related events in right at the last minute.

Kitase: Chiba is in charge of DC’s scenario, but thinking about it now maybe it turned out that way because he worked on the events with Vincent in FFVII.

Nojima: However, despite Vincent not having many scenes due to him appearing in the latter half of the story, he has a fair amount of dialogue, and when he does show up he talks a lot. Even though really he’s meant to be a quiet person (laughs). Even now I have a problem when creating scenarios, where even though the character is a cool and silent type, I end up making scenes where they just keep on talking and talking. Roles like Barret, who appear from the start and have a lot of lines, most of the time, basically don’t know anything. But characters like Vincent, or Auron in FFX, it tends to be the case that the quieter they are the more they know about things, and they just end up with more expositional dialogue. I still haven’t found a solution to this problem.

The reason FFVII’s characters have continued to be loved

– When thinking of the character’s stories or working on their designs, do you have any kind of tried and tested methods, Mr. Nomura?

Nomura: Maybe not a method in particular. For FFVII’s characters, they’re the result of wanting to make varied, and in a sense going for an orthodox balance. In the recent FF games, I now receive the profiles of the characters before handling the designs, so I don’t worry about the character building much now. I think FFVII was it as far as me thinking of the character’s stories first goes.

– The characters of FFVII seem to be especially popular even out of the entire series, but where do you think the reason for that lies?

  Nomura: Hmmm, I wonder? Nothing really hits me. Well, I guess that each character has their own individual episodes which are well told. You might say their personalities are too strong (laughs).

Nojima: Yeah, they were made nearly excessively individual. For example, once you’ve decided Aerith speaks like this, it starts to escalate in that direction. And like Cloud’s cool standing animation we mentioned before, all the staff in charge of the events took in anything that seemed interesting. Even Cloud’s “not interested” catch phrase comes up so much you start to think, you won’t normally say it that much (laughs).

Kitase: Everyone used it, didn’t they?

Nojima: In that sense, their characters were definitely strong. In FFVIII onwards, the height of the characters increased, and we starting to be conscious of realism. And when that happens, there are times when you start comparing them to real life people. But with FFVII’s height, even in 3D, you still don’t really get that sense of reality. Maybe in that aspect they were like cartoon characters, which was a plus. I think, maybe they had a kind of easy to remember quality as symbols.

Kitase: When I first read Nojima’s scenario, I felt strongly that his image of a heroine was fresh. The hero didn’t have a typical personality, single-minded or righteous, and Aerith lived in the slums. Those things were really fresh. And having 2 heroines, Aerith and Tifa, and having the hero waver between them, at the time that was something new. And Sephiroth too, who appears from the start and is the final enemy, and is sort of a rival. For me personally, I think those things which weren’t in past FFs might be the secret to its popularity.

Nomura: In regards to Sephiroth, I wanted to avoid having the kind of plot development where you get to the end of the story and suddenly this boss you’ve never heard of yet just appears. With FFVII, I wanted to do a story where you’re chasing someone you’ve known was the enemy from the get-go. As for the heroines, during development some people were of the opinion that compared to Tifa, Aerith has fewer scenes and didn’t really stand out, so we also increased her appearances.

Nojima: As a motif for them, Tifa is “the childhood friend who’s been with you since nursery school”, and Aerith is “the girl who transfers school mid-term and quickly leaves for another school.” Since she doesn’t have many scenes, you’ve got to make it so that the transfer student has a big impact. That was what I thought.

Feelings about Aerith, the tragic heroine

– You can’t talk about FFVII’s heroines without talking about the tragedy that befalls Aerith at the Forgotten City. That event was a very memorable scene not only for the FF series, but all RPGs.

Kitase: In the past FFs as well, important characters died and went away. Like Galuf in FFV for example, they followed a pattern where the character would go down after giving it his all in a fight. In this case, often it went that the characters think something like, they’ve tired so hard, and just accept the death and overcome it. When creating stories I think that is an option, but in FFVII we were thinking, could we take this a step further? Bring out a sense of loss somehow? What I didn’t want to have was the kind of story development where even when a character dies there’s no sense of loss, on the contrary it just raises motivation and pushes you forward.

Nojima: Kitase’s loss talk has been consistent since back then.

Kitase: And with a lot of stories, before they die there’s a lot of dramatic preparations, aren’t there? Like a “pre-prepared excitement”, or “using this as a step to fight evil further”, those are the kinds of developments I wanted to avoid. In reality, death comes without warning, and you’re left feeling dazed at the gravity of the loss… Rather than wanting to fight evil, you’re just overcome by a great sense of loss, like you just want to give up everything. I was in charge of the direction of that scene, and I tried to bring out that sort of sense of realism.

Nomura: It’s related to ‘life’, one of the themes of FFVII, so it’s not portrayed as a “death for excitement’s sake” but expresses a realistic pain. Death comes suddenly, so I think the emotion there wasn’t excitement or anything, but sadness.

Nojima: Speaking from a scenario standpoint, FFVII is ‘a story of life cycling through the planet’, so someone needed to be part of that cycle. In other words, although what happened to Aerith isn’t really based on logic, as far as the story goes, maybe one of the team was destined to lose their life from the very start. But how that one became Aerith wasn’t decided through a notice as is popularly mentioned. It was decided after everyone, including myself, racked our brains about what to do.

Truth hidden in the abbreviations of the Compilation titles

– 7 years after the release of FFVII, the Compilation began, but it was a surprise that Advent Children, the sequel, was a film.

Kitase: Originally the AC project came about when the staff said they wanted to make a film.

Nomura: But having that film work being based on FFVII was decided from the beginning.

Kitase: They’ve made several of the movie scenes for games before, so they have the know-how. But an independent film was a big challenge for us, so we had to be ready for it being considerably difficult. When thinking of what subject material we work with while having that readiness, we came up with FFVII. At first it was only planned to be 20 minutes, but before I knew it there were fight scenes, and finally it grew to 100 minutes… (laughs).

Nomura: After we started the project, there was a period where it was put to one side for a while. At that rate, the project itself seemed like it would just go up in smoke, so I put my hand up and said I’d do it, and started again from there, adding in fight scenes and so on.

– Was the formula for the Compilation’s titles, AC, BC, CC and DC, planned from the start?

Kitase: In order of release BC comes first, Advent Children was the first title we decided on.

Nomura: For BC’s title, Taba (Hajime Tabata: BC’s director) and Itou (Yukimasa Itou: BC’s producer) came to me saying they had a good idea. “How about linking with AC, and Before Christ (B.C.), and going with Before Crisis?” I just gave an nonchalant “sure, why not,” but I never thought it would end up being a formula (laughs). So, next we skipped C and went for DC. Then planning for CC suddenly began. Kitase came to my office one day and told me, “think of something” (laughs).

Kitase: That was how it all began. At then, we were thinking of a PSP port of BC. At the time, you could only play BC on NTT DoCoMo mobile phones, so we wanted to let a wider spectrum of players to have a chance to play it. So personally, I was planning releasing it on the PSP with basically the same graphics as the mobile phone version, even if we did fill in the story a bit. However, when I told Tetsu about this, I hadn’t realized at that time that that wouldn’t be enough (laughs).

Nomura: Since at first I was told it’s BC on the PSP, I thought of calling it “Before Crisis Core”. But at that time we’d already decided on having Zack as the main character, so we said, “since it’s going to be different from BC, we don’t need ‘Before’ in the title, do we?” So we took off the “Before”, and by chance it fitted the CC which we had skipped.

Kitase: When I saw the cut-scenes of the completed CC, the quality was good enough to release on the PS2, and I never expected it would be this good. With CC, I had only read part of the scenario when I worked on it, so when played up to the ending myself, as a consumer, I was moved, like “aah, so this is what Zack’s story was like…” (laughs). When I saw the ending, I though to myself, “all the titles have come together nicely. I’m glad we did the Compilation.”

  WEEKLY FAMITSU ISSUE NO. 1224: YOSHINORI KITASE INTERVIEW

IT BEGAN ON THE SNES

—First off, can you tell us how the development of “FFVII” came about?

Kitase: After development on “FFVI” ended, we started the “FFVII” project on the SNES. All of the team put forth ideas for the characters and game systems, but during that time we needed to help out “Chrono Trigger” team who at the time had run into trouble, so for a time development of “FFVII” was put on hold.

—Was the “FFVII” being developed then different from the finished one?

Kitase: Yeah. It was completely different, and Nomura (*1) had proposed things like a design for a witch. In the end, when development started up again it changed to the current setting centred on mako and the like, but the design for the witch Nomura made was incorporated into “FFVIII” in Edea.

—I see. So then, when the development began again, it become the world we have now which has a strong sci-fi feel.

Kitase: At the time there were a lot of Western-fantasy RPGs around, so we wanted to set it apart, and we wanted to achieve more realist ways of showing the story. Also, Mr. Sakaguchi (*2) had suggested a modern drama-esque story with a strong sci-fi feel.

—Had you decided on making it an RPG using 3D polygons at that point?

Kitase: When development had restarted, talk of a next generation console was already in full swing. Since the next generation hardware was said to have chips that excelled at 3D graphics, we also made a 3D battle demo movie based on “FFVI” and studied using 3D. Soon the idea came up that movies would be indispensible to the evolution of “FF” and we decided to development for the PlayStation, which utilised CD-ROM that had a large storage capacity.

“ALONE IN THE DARK”

—Was the decision to make “FFVII” in 3D a unanimous one?

Kitase: There were two directions the development of “FFVII” could have taken. One was to put pixel characters on 3D maps, like “Dragon Quest VII” and “Xenogears” would later use. And the other was the method used in “FFVII” where the characters are rendered using polygons. The pixel characters used in the story scenes in previous “FF” games were extremely popular, so at first we were considering the former which is an extension of that method. But as we couldn’t made a realistic drama in that way, and with polygon characters we could use the movement of their entire bodies to express things, we went for the later to look for new possibilities.

—Was there no resistance from the team?

Kitase: There was at first. Particularly, with the loss of the pixel graphics, the designer team such as Naora (*3) seemed to have felt that their job was put at risk. But in their own ways, everyone went to the CG training sessions and such and learnt to handle it. The people who had been there since the old days are those who had overcome that sort of times of change. In a sense, that was really the turning point for the development.

—Were there any titles that served as a reference when making a 3D RPG?

Kitase: A foreign game called “Alone In The Dark” was an inspiration. The backgrounds were single images done in CG, and when the polygon character moved along them, the camera would switch and the viewpoint would change. That method was new. “Alone In The Dark” was an adventure game, and its story was set in a mansion, but I thought that by taking this and using in it in RPG with vast field maps, it could be something different and new, so I went around showing this game to all the staff.

MOVIE SCENES YOU CAN CONTROL

—In “FFVII” one of its unique features was being able to control characters during the movies.

Kitase: What I wanted to do most of all in “FFVII” was to seamlessly join the movies and the game parts. We wanted to avoid there feeling like there was a massive gap in the graphics when moving from the movies to the playable parts, and Mr. Sakaguchi also said to not make it feel like the movies stick out. So we did some tests and made the part in the opening where the camera zooms in from a shot of all of Midgar to Cloud jumping off the train. I was in charge of the composition of that part, we used a method where as it moved from the movie to a CG image, the characters were positioned so they didn’t move out of place, and we refined it numerous times to get it to sync up nicely. When it went well without moving out of place, it felt brilliant. By the way, the kind of showy events like the scene where Tifa jumps off the Junon cannon, I was mostly responsible for those (laughs).

—Do you think scenes you can control during movies not being in other games was down to Square’s high level of technical skills at that time?

Kitase: No, rather than technical skill, I think it was more the inventiveness to want to do those kind of things. We wanted to take what “Alone In The Dark” did, having polygon characters on top of a CG background, and take it one step further. And because this was our first 3D game, we didn’t know the limits so we could have reckless ideas. We commissioned an outside CG company for the movie scenes, but when the trial version was completed, we would say “the story’s changed so we’d like to extend the movie scene by about 30 seconds” which really surprised them. Since at that time even just extending a movie by a few seconds costed 10 million yen. We made these unreasonable orders without knowing that. In the end we made do with a few revisions, but we gradually learnt that you can’t get retakes as easy as you could with games (wry smile).

—(Laughs) Did Mr. Sakaguchi give any orders for other parts?

Kitase: I think Mr. Sakaguchi wanted to follow the tradition of the pixel graphics, and to show the characters’ expressions on the field screens, so he paid attention to the size of the heads. In battles you can zoom in the camera, but since the field screens are a single background image, you can’t do that. As a result, the proportion of the characters are different in battle and on the field. But when we looked at it after “FFVII” was released, we thought “people are probably going to feel something is off with the difference in proportion” and so in “FFVIII” we the proportions on the field and battle scenes the same.

A SCENARIO WITH A HINT OF MYSTERY

—How was the story, which was distinct from the RPGs that had come before it, created?

Kitase: Before “FFVI” we had Mr. Sakaguchi’s plots, and based on that each of the staff would throw in their ideas and flesh it out, but with “FFVII” we could express things more realistically, so we couldn’t take a mishmash of all the separate episodes the staff had made up and make a single coherent game. That’s where Mr. Nojima (*4), who was one of the new staff members, came in. He had written an RPG scenario with mystery elements for “Glory of Heracles III: Silence of the Gods” on the SNES, so to make it a surprising story like that we left the scenario to Mr. Nojima and he incorporated the elements everyone wanted to do.

—Things such as Cloud’s true identity were certainly surprising.

Kitase: For Cloud’s identity, we only vaguely had an image of Cloud’s own existence being up in the air and it ending there, but the actual unfolding of events was left in Nojima’s hands. And he made not only the scenario but the actual event scenes as well, and the parts where all the mysteries get made clear like Nibelheim in the past were all in Nojima’s head so he hadn’t written it down in detail in the scenario. So we were doing the test play with no idea how it was going to end, and that’s how we first found out what happens. In particular Zack was made like that as well, he was a character Nojima brought in while he was building up the mystery, so we had no clue that he was that important a character (laughs).

—That’s surprising (laughs). Did Mr. Sakaguchi have any directions for the story, having written the plot?

Kitase: Mr. Sakaguchi had been deeply involved with the story up to “FFVI” but with “FFVII” he focused his efforts on the battles. It was Mr. Sakaguchi who suggested the materia system. At first materia had the name “spheres” which Nomura proposed, but Sakaguchi thought we should make it something that would resonate easily even with elementary school kids, so we went for ‘materia’. Back then, the staff were trying to come up with some cool name, but Sakaguchi said that in order to get it embraced across the board you can’t just think about what’s cool.

DEVELOPMENT BRIMMING WITH ENTHUSIASM

—Was the wide variety of mini-games something you planned to include from the start?

Kitase: We had thought of the bike mini-game where you escape from Midgar, but apart from that we had no plans at all (laughs). Now we don’t have staff who aren’t working on anything, but back then we could have staff who had a bit of free time between projects. There were some new staff as well so, kind of doubling as training, we had them make things that needed specialised programs, like the roller coaster shooting game or the submarines.

—So that’s the story behind it! By the way, were there any specific episodes from back then that left a mark on you?

Kitase: Actually, 6 days after “FFVII” mastered up, my eldest son was born. I luckily got there in time for the birth, but afterwards my wife said “you can’t just simply show up for the moment he’s born and everything’s fine” (wry smile). So while I caused some worry, it was a memorable time also for the birth of my son.

—So finally, can you give a message to the fans of “FFVII”?

Kitase: Looking back on the development of “FFVII” now, the difference in proportion between the field and battle sections encapsulates how the desire to “include the stuff we wanted to do” won over consistency. Those bits that are rough but you can feel the energy behind them, those are my favourite points in “FFVII”, and I think maybe what has been supported for so long. As you get used to game development you try to make something more clean and refined, but even if some things were a bit irregular, like there being so many mini-games, later on you come to realise that those can create some unpredictable sort of fun. I hope we can treasure that energy in the future as well, and not forget the enthusiasm we had at first as we make new games.

*1: Tetsuya Nomura. Character designer for “FFVII”. *2: Hironobu Sakaguchi. Produced heavily involved with the “FF” series. *3: Yusuke Naora. Art director for “FFVII”. *4: Kazushige Nojima. In charge of the scenario of “FFVII”.

– On the 15th anniversary To Tetsu

You’ve mainly received attention for your character designs, but you also suggested various systems like the limit breaks in “FFVII” which would be used in later games in the series. Limit breaks are similar to the special attacks in fighting games, but what an interesting idea it was to think it would be fun to place those into an RPG format. If I said it to you directly you’d get ahead of yourself so I won’t, but I would just like to say ‘thank you’ (laughs). (Kitase)

– On the 15th anniversary To Nojima

While we were asking you to come up with a mysterious story like “Glory of Hercules III”, me and Nomura kept throwing these elements we wanted without considering foreshadowing, so I think incorporating them must have been tough. But I am grateful that you pieced them together without turning us down. Thank you. But around the time of “FFX” our unreasonable behavior was too much *even for you* and you had a displeased air about you, didn’t you (wry smile). (Kitase)

  WEEKLY FAMITSU ISSUE NO. 1224: TETSUYA NOMURA INTERVIEW

CHANGES IN THE VISUAL ASPECTS

—What was the most significant thing for you in the transition from “FFVI” to “FFVII”?

Nomura: I guess it was utilising polygons. The difference in high between the characters on the battle screen and the characters on the field screen also kind of seems like the gap between “FFVI” and “FFVII”, and seeing that process of trail-and-error is memorable for me.

—At that time, I hear you could have gone in the direction of using pixel graphics, or 3D, but what were your thoughts on it?

Nomura: I originally handled the pixel graphics, so I thought that if there were no pixels then my work would be gone (laughs). Later I took some training to learn CD, but I went into design and direction rather than working as a modeller.

—The “FF” series had been particularly known for Mr. Amano’s (*1) illustrations previously, so did you feel any pressure when your illustrations were to become the main focus in “FFVII”?

Nomura: I thought of my drawings as the standing images for the pixel graphics of the previous games, so there wasn’t any pressure.

—Standing images for the pixel graphics?

Nomura: In the “FF” series, Mr. Amano’s image illustrations and the pixel characters’ designs didn’t necessarily match. Personally, I considered image illustrations and the pixel graphics as being different categories in a sense. I was in charge of the pixel graphic parts, so I never considered myself as standing alongside Amano or taking over from him. The company decided from a rights perspective to put my name out in front, but originally there weren’t any plans like that at all.

THE TRADEGY OF AERITH AND THE BIRTH OF TIFA

—It was apparently Mr. Sakaguchi who selected you for “FFVII”, but how did that come about?

Nomura: From before when making a “FF” title, everyone would put plans regardless of their section. While everyone handed in text documents they made on a PC, mine were hand-written and had illustrations attached. Because I had originally studied advertising, I would keep in mind how to make people want to read it. Mr. Sakaguchi thought those illustrated proposals were amusing. Then one day he said, “let Tetsu draw the characters.” The start of this was the brush images for “FFVI”.

—Because your proposals were amusing!?

Nomura: Until that point, I hadn’t had many proposals taken up at all, so I don’t think that’s the reason (laughts). I suppose he liked the illustrations on the proposals.

—When it was decided that you would draw the illustrations, was the world and characters’s details already pinned down to a degree?

Nomura: There was a plot for the story, and I drew them based on that. But during the course of it Mr. Sakaguchi put Mr. Kitase (*3) in charge of production, and at that point in time the plot went back to square one. From there, I was also included in coming up with the original idea for the story, and began drawing while thinking up character and story details. At first Mr. Nojima (*4) was still on the “Bahamut Lagoon” team, so Kitase and myself refined the plot.

—Was the Aerith’s shocking death scene also confirmed at that time?

Nomura: I suggested to Kitase about having either Aerith or Tifa die, and it was decided that we’d go in that direction.

—Were there two heroines from the outset?

Nomura: No, originally there was only Aerith, and Tifa was added as another heroine later. To make up for Aerith dying, we needed a heroine who would be by the hero’s side until the end. Plus with Aerith’s death, while there were characters in previous “FF” games who lost their lives, we wanted to try a different approach. By bringing out a ‘sense of loss’ with Aerith’s death, we also wanted to portray the theme of “FFVII” which is ‘life’.

—It did certain have a different impact than that of the loss of characters in past “FF” games. Were there any other points you focused on with the story?

Nomura: I wanted to have a story where you chase Sephiroth. One where there is a SOLDIER who was once a hero, and the heroes follow him. Following a moving enemy hadn’t been done before, and I thought that by chasing something it would help pull the story along.

RELATION BETWEEN THE ORIGINAL CONCEPTS AND THE DESIGNS

—Were there any aspects of the character designs that you struggled with?

Nomura: For Cloud, at first I thought that it’d be better not to use too many polygons, so I gave him sweptback hair, but I didn’t think that looked much like a main character so I changed his hairstyle.

—Were you already thinking about polygon counts at the design stages?

Nomura: While considering it, I tried to be as unreasonable as I could. I thought that was necessary in order to do things no one else had done. For instance, making Aerith’s dress with polygons was very hard at the time. But I believed that thinking about how to make that so it moves naturally would lead to improvement of skills and rendering.

—Sephiroth’s long hair must have also been tough work.

Nomura: That’s right. That was also because I wanted to make the contrast easy to see between Cloud and Sephiroth in their designs. Blond and silver, short and long.

—At the time you said in an interview with our magazine that the image of Cloud and Sephiroth was based on “Musashi [Miyamoto] and Kojiro [Sasaki].”

Nomura: Yes. In particular the weapons, and the “showdown” image, was Musashi and Kojiro.

—Were there any other parts where the story concepts or mental images came through strong in the designs?

Nomura: At first, Sephiroth and Aerith were to be brother and sister, so I gave them similarities in their fringes. That aspect was dropped during the early stages, but the fringes stayed (laughs). I believe the original idea for them to be siblings later became that Sephiroth was Aerith’s first love. Ultimately Nojima thought up Zack, and it was all tied up.

WHITE IS THE “FF” IMAGE COLOUR

—Back at the time, did you realise the extent of the influence “FFVII” had on people?

Nomura: The Internet wasn’t wide-spread yet, and there weren’t really any avenues to see the opinions of a vast number of people, so I didn’t really know how it was being received by the public. But as the release was drawing nearer, the commercials on TV were played a lot, which gave a sense of the scale of things.

—There were several variations of commercials, right.

Nomura: Among those was a commercial that Kyle Cooper (*5) had edited. That was really cool, and it impacted me the way that different editing can give such a different impression. It was because of that that I took an interest in video editing.

—So the current high quality trailers came about because of a commercial for “FFVII”!?

Nomura: No (laughs). There is an outside editing director who has worked with us for a long time, but the present trailers are created with him.

—I see. The novel design for the game packaging, with just the logo on a white background which would be carried over to the future titles in the series, was also talked about.

Nomura: A lot of that was down to (Tadashi) Nomura who lead publicity for “FFVII”. Actually, we were talking about removing the lettering of the logo and just having the image of Meteor Amano had drawn. To have people recognise that it was “FFVII” from that. I thought that was pretty cool, but it didn’t materialise. The background being white was because Sakaguchi said that the image of “FF” was white.

—So there were lots of ideas even for the packaging. By the way, I heard that you are also involved with overseeing merchandise and publicity?

Nomura: That’s true, at the time I wasn’t sure how much I should do, so ended up drawing everything like roughs for plush toys and such (wry smile). I think it’s precisely because I didn’t know, that I was able to try my hand at everything. It was “FFVII” that was the start of my involvement in publicity as well. Though I ended up revealing info about “FFVII” I shouldn’t have and causing trouble, after that I started getting confirmation first. After I started working together like that, I was also able to cooperate with their publicity strategies, and I think I managed to get them to understand the intent of the development. Most of all, it was fun to be able to do that together.

ENERGY FROM IGNORANCE

—What sort of impression do you have now looking back on time spent making “FFVII”?

Nomura: We were basically rushing headlong, without knowing what we could or couldn’t do. And that’s why I think we could generate that much power, and pack everyone’s ideas in there. Our being able to be reckless making games that way ended with “FFVII”. Personally, it was the first “FF” where a wide range of my ideas were picked up, so it was a lot of fun.

—But before then as well, you not only created the pixel graphics but also submitted proposals as well, right?

Nomura: I put forth ideas for “FFV” and “VI”, but they were only really a part of the whole. Unlike in “VI” where with the inclusion of my ninja and my gambler I was given charge of the stories for Shadow and Setzer, “VII” was the first “FF” where I was involved from the ground up. Before then, I had been giving my opinions to a few people like Kitase, so it was interesting to be able to openly introduce proposals.

—”FFVII” is a game that has been supported by fans for over 15 years, but what kind of feelings do you have for the “FF” series?

Nomura: I still remember well what Mr. Sakaguchi said about “FF” at that time. There’s no one to tell that to the new staff, so I’d like to ask Kitase if he’d do so (laughs). I watched up close how Sakaguchi had left Kitase in charge of the development floor, and personally I think that Kitase is the true heir of “FF”. Also, “FF” carries weight because it’s a title that passed through many people’s hands and not just a single person’s. For example, “Kingdom Hearts” has the same main characters and the story carries on, but with “FF” the fact that ‘each time it’s different’ can feel like a tall hurdle. But that’s exactly why the new “FF” must always exceed the ones of the past. Even “FFVII”, which has been supported by the players for a long time and many people hope for a remake, but right now we want to prioritise new titles, and to try our best to make those become like “FFVII” or something greater.

*1: Yoshitaka Amano. Works on the image illustrations and logo designs for the “FF” series. *2: Hironobu Sakaguchi. Producer heavily involved with the “FF” series. *3: Yoshinori Kitase. Director of “FFVII”. *4: Kazushige Nojima. In charge of the scenario of “FFVII”. *5: Kyle Cooper. A video creator who produces the opening credits for films, with many credits such as “Se7en” and “Mission: Impossible”.

– On the 15th anniversary To Kitase

We see each other a lot normally, so I don’t really have anything to say (wry smile). Lately, there are getting to be fewer people who worked on “FF” with Mr. Sakaguchi. Among them, I’ve worked with you for a long time, and it feels like you’ve done a lot for me. Let’s keep on going into the future. (Nomura)

– On the 15th anniversary To Nojima

I think it’s great how you write this dialogue that gives characters clever things to say, and surprising stories. In “FFVII” Cloud’s true identity was a real shock. You later founded your own company and went independent, but I hope we can keep on working together still in the future. (Nomura)

  Sources and Other Links!

  If you like to read about Final Fantasy VII, I would also recommend buying the Final Fantasy VII Ultimania.

Interviews

Interview with Official UK PSX Magazine – October 1997

Hironobu Sakaguchi Interview – from PlayStation Underground #2, 1997

The Making of Final Fantasy VII – from Edge #123, May 2003

Afterthoughts: Final Fantasy VII –

 Dengeki PlayStation Vol.17– Dengeki PlayStation Vol.40

“EGM2 August 1997 issue” scans

FFVII 10th Anniversary Ultimania p. 8-13 “Creators’ Discussion”

 Final Fantasy VII Developer Speaks Out About “The Travelling Salesman”, interview by GlitterBerri.

Yoshinori Kitase Interview

 Tetsuya Nomura Interview

  Press Releases

FFVII North American Release Announcement – SCEA, February 1997

FFVII’s Marketing Campaign – SCEA, August 1997

FFVII Official Release Date Broken – SCEA, September 1997

FFVII Breaks Sales Records in First Weekend – SCEA, September 1997

FFVII Sells Over 500,000 Copies in the U.S. – SCEA, September 1997

FFVII Sells Over One Million Copies in the U.S. – SCEA, December 1997

FFVII for the PC Official Announcement – Eidos, June 1998

Other

Marketing material https://www.resetera.com/threads/final-fantasy-7-marketing-stuff-etc-reunion.37961/page-2

Xenon- http://xenon.stanford.edu/~geksiong/papers/sts145/Squaresoft%20and%20FF7.htm

Final Fantasy Beta- https://www.unseen64.net/2008/04/11/final-fantasy-7-beta/

See Also Beta versions of Final Fantasy VII’s world and assets- Here and here

Deleted Scenes and unseen text- Here

Concept arts here and here. Oh look more.

  From the FFVII Ultimania Omega (2005). Early concepts for the world, characters and themes. – Character Files: Page 518, Cloud, Barret & Tifa. – Character Files: Page 519-520, Aerith, Red XIII & Cait Sith. – Character Files: Page 520-523, Yuffie, Cid & Vincent. – Worldview & Terminology: Page 523-525 – Scenarios & Scripts: Page 525-526 – Scenarios & Scripts: Page 527-528 – Scenarios & Scripts: Page 528-529 – Scenarios & Scripts: Page 528-529 (Part 2)

The Unused Text Series

Text and scenes found within the game code of the retail editions. Complete with in-depth commentary written by Shademp. • Article Index and Term Register • Part 1: Bombing Mission & The Train Ride • Part 2: Sector 7 Slums • Part 3: Train Escape & The Sector 5 Slums • Part 4: Honey Bee Inn – (1) Entrance, Lobby & Dressing Room • Part 4: Honey Bee Inn – (2) Waiting Room & Second Floor • Part 5: Rescuing Aeris, Story Time at the Inn – (1) Wall Market to Shinra HQ Library • Part 5: Rescuing Aeris, Story Time at the Inn – (2) Shinra HQ Library to Kalm • Part 6: Chocobo Farm to Corel Prison – (1) Chocobo Farm to Cargo Ship • Part 6: Chocobo Farm to Corel Prison – (2) Costa del Sol to Corel Prison • Part 7: Gongaga to Wutai • Part 8: Keystone Quest to End of Disc 1 • Part 9: Over the Glacier – Attack on Junon • Part 10: On the Highwind – Cloud’s Return • Part 11: Underwater Reactor – Infiltrating Midgar • Part 12: End of Disc 2 – Final Dungeon

Additional Sources- http://shmuplations.com – http://www.ff7citadel.com/ –

As time goes on, I will try and further enhance this article with more sources and interviews as I find them. I truly believe it is important to keep the history of classic games development alive.

The Development of Final Fantasy VII The development of Final Fantasy VII is a mysterious and hard thing to follow. While there is plenty of info out there, much of it is either rumors or unsubstantiated.   

[weaselandfriends]

Hymnstoke XIV

Like Act 2, Act 4 opens with a walkaround game.

I didn't comment much on the game at the beginning of Act 2, despite it being one of those much-discussed multimedia elements that make Homestuck so distinctive. In Act 2, the movement from linear story to game serves several purposes. First, it demonstrates an increase in scope, both in terms of Homestuck's story and in relation to Hussie's previous effort, Problem Sleuth. While Act 1 incorporated a couple of new elements not seen in other MSPA comics, such as protagonists capable of speech and a handful of simple videos, the Act 2 walkaround is the first dramatic increase in what readers could have reasonably expected from the comic at the time.

Secondly, the novel concept of incorporating a game into the story corresponds to and emphasizes the novel concept of SBURB within the narrative of Homestuck. Just as the world in which John now finds himself is completely new and unexpected, so too are the readers introduced to this world through a new and unexpected medium. This world is even called the "Medium"—and surrounding a space (Skaia) described as a crucible of pure creation. I previously discussed the significance of SBURB's geography in regards to Gnosticism, but one could also interpret it as a statement on Homestuck as a creative enterprise. A crucible of pure creation through which a new world, or a new mode of expression, will be built. Like how John and friends attempt to create a new world from the fragments of the old, Hussie creates a new kind of story from the fragments of all types of storytelling that came before it. Image, text, video, sound, game—Homestuck strings together these disparate modes of expression into an original creation. In short, the method by which Homestuck is presented mirrors its explicit thematic content.

Wikipedia defines phenomenology as "the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness." Remember how I mentioned that the modernists were often concerned with the conscious and subconscious, and how many attempted to reach truth by depicting the subconscious? Similar concept here.

I was introduced to the term "phenomenology" in relation to art history. In particular, my professor applied the term to modernist painting and sculpture that was designed so that the act of experiencing it changes its meaning. Let's take the following sculpture:

"Sculpture?" you may ask. Yes, I know. It looks more like a misshapen industrial structure. The problem with this sculpture is that no single photograph can truly depict it. Here's the same sculpture from a different vantage:

Another:

Still another:

Top down:

Is this sculpture broader at the bottom or at the top? What shape is it, exactly? You can find this sculpture at the University of California, Los Angeles, and you can even go inside it through the opening visible in some of the photographs. Inside, it takes on a completely different appearance, although unfortunately I couldn't find any good pictures of the inside that didn't have a gigantic Getty Images watermark on them.

In art, this phenomenological experience often boils down to optical illusion or a similar technical trick that appears novel at first but lacks much substance beyond its presentation. What meaning can we derive from this experiment or others like it?

I believe that the phenomenological creations of the modernists eventually reached an apotheosis in a more contemporary form of creative expression: Video games.

The way the player perceives a video game, even a video game you might consider simplistic or linear, is directly affected by how the player plays the game. Take, say, Super Mario Bros. (1985) for the Nintendo Entertainment System. In this game, the player moves Mario left to right to reach a fixed goal. But even this game is affected immensely by the innumerable choices each player makes in playing the game. For an extreme example, compare how a speed run of Super Mario Bros. looks compared to any casual experience of the game. Some elements of the speed run even involve elements assuredly not intended by the game's creator (glitches, for instance). But even at a less extreme level, every player's experience of Super Mario Bros. will differ depending on the routes they take to reach the end, the strategies they employ to evade obstacles, or even the amount of times they die before finally succeeding.

Why do I bring this up? The concept of phenomenology ties into Homestuck's "reader participation" elements, both via the prompt suggestions early on and the more psychological effect the fandom has on Homestuck's development in its back half. Of these two "reader participation" elements, the latter is the one that is probably better described as "phenomenological," in that it is the readership's perspective of Homestuck that eventually drives its trajectory (as opposed to the prompt suggestions, from which Hussie could pick and choose at will). In the back half of Homestuck, the narrative plays more and more on the author's interpretation of the readership's interpretation of the narrative, becoming a perspectival mobius double reach-around where the true driver of the narrative's creation becomes increasingly unclear.

But more specifically, I want to discuss this walkaround game at the beginning of Act 4 in particular. Compared to the one at the beginning of Act 2, this walkaround is not increasing Homestuck's scope. John is entering a new location, but the experience is less novel than entering the Medium in Act 2, both in terms of John's perspective and the reader's. While the Act 4 walkaround features mechanical improvements (inventory, combat) over the Act 2 walkaround, it is still essentially the same thing: a video game. The reader has seen this before in Homestuck. It's not new.

I cannot speak for the experience of every reader, but each time I read Homestuck I am tempted to skip this walkaround entirely. The combat mechanics are banal, the camera is zoomed too close to John to allow for satisfying exploration of an unfamiliar world. In Act 2, the walkaround takes place in an area with which the reader is already geographically acquainted (John's house), so the camera issues are less apparent. But trying to navigate this twisting maze of blue paths, surrounded on all sides by nondescript rocks and mushrooms, can become frustrating. Even if I consult the supplementary map image, I find it somewhat difficult to figure out where I am and where I'm supposed to go.

Which is just the thing. The reader is not supposed to go anywhere. There is no real resolution to this walkaround. The same, in fact, can be said for every walkaround, and we will continue to get amazingly nonessential walkarounds in the acts to come. What does the reader miss if they skip this Act 4 walkaround? Some tedious exposition on the nature of John's planet, its consorts, its customs. Superfluous W O R L D B U I L D I N G that the Homestuck narrative is quick to forget from henceforth on.

It kind of makes me want to, shall we say, skip to the end.

In Act 5, Vriska and Tavros will discuss how the way one plays a game affects the way the game is perceived. Hardcore speed runner Vriska will take my side of the argument and skip what she can; Tavros, more in line with readers inclined to learn as much about SBURB's lore as possible, will argue instead for assiduously completing every task. This conflict—between speed and lore, content and fluff, meat and candy if you will—eventually becomes the core and final dichotomy of Homestuck. But in Homestuck's later stages, the characters and narrative will apply this dichotomy not to how we experience video games, but how we experience all art—and how we experience our actual lives. I intend to trace that development, and this walkaround serves as a fine introduction.

In a few years, Flash will be deprecated and you'll only be able to experience this walkaround through this series of images. I don't know who created these images, or whether laziness or incompetency made them so shitty and SBaHJ-esque. But I give that person props for maintaining that sense of "God this sucks, can I just skip it?" Good job, intern.

You switch to PICTIONARY, a choice based on a strong whim from the mysterious ethers of democracy.

Another one of those traps, like the suggestion prompts. Wow! The readers get to pick Jade's fetch modus! What an amazing display of reader/author interaction! Except Jade's fetch modus doesn't matter. In fact, as we transition into this next phase of the story, nobody's fetch modus will matter. The fact that all of Jade's possible fetch modii are total jokes only emphasizes the point.

I mentioned in the previous Hymnstoke that we're entering what I'm calling the "clockwork" part of Homestuck. In this part, Homestuck's audience has the least amount of control over its progression. While the suggestion prompts were mostly irrelevant because Hussie could pick whatever prompt he wanted, they occasionally paved actual story or character developments ("Become the mayor of Can Town") or formed memetic jokes that would mutate over the course of Homestuck into part of its mythos. And in Act 6, the immensity of the Homestuck fandom and its increasingly vocal demands will lead to a more subtle transition in what Homestuck becomes—the mobius double reach-around I mentioned previously. But here, in the clockwork part of the story, it's more Hussie than anywhere else. Of course it would be. It's Dirk, Hussie's analogue (connected via a series of motifs like horses and robotics), that comes to represent the Meat side of storytelling, that describes the way a story should be told as a perfect machine. An unfocused, nebulous gaggle of "readers" cannot hope to coordinate among themselves to create something so precise and efficient. Their strengths lie in different directions.

Ok, have at it! If you're at a loss, click the controller button up there.

This may or may not mean anything to you depending on your current perspective.

As it turns out, the story retreads everything that happens in the Act 4 walkaround anyway, making it even less relevant. Even Crumplehat and the Salamander Wizard appear as the walkaround's events are depicted from PM's perspective. This recap is actually pretty extensive, similar to the shitty SBaHJified image walkthrough that got put up in anticipation of Flash's deprecation.

I wonder if Hussie was self-conscious about people's patience for the walkaround? Or maybe he already anticipated Flash would not last forever? Perhaps he added this recap for accessibility reasons, in case of visually-impaired readers? Maybe he felt some new insight would come from seeing the same events replicated from a different character's viewpoint? Or maybe he simply wanted to reveal that the person speaking to John during the walkaround was PM instead of WV?

I'm doing exactly what I said I wouldn't do and trying to delve into Hussie's psyche. As it stands, the addition of this recap makes certain elements of the walkaround mandatory experiences for the reader to progress, as opposed to the walkaround itself which can be ended without experiencing anything. I'll leave the discussion by reiterating the second part of the quoted text:

This may or may not mean anything to you depending on your current perspective.

And I think it's safe to say our "current perspective" is much different than those who read this first.

[writing-yj]

Robin x Reader: The Bird Tattoo~Part Thirteen {END} (Soulmate AU)

 A/n: Pardon my language but fUcKiNg FiNaLLy; the end of this series is long past due. I loved writing it, but I really need to move on to different characters and different story lines! Thank you guys so much for all the notes, reblogs, cute tags, and praise throughout the series! So, without further delay, enjoy the final chapter of The Bird Tattoo! I hope you guys like it because I kind of botched the end of it!

Robin felt so defeated when he found out about your breakdown. He found out the next morning when Black Canary sat beside you, just after she replaced the bandages on you throat. The scratches weren’t very deep, but they still needed to be cleaned and bandaged.

“Why did this happen? I don’t understand,she was doing so well...” Robin was already on the verge of tears. He thought you were getting better, and you still were, but some of the progress was lost.

“She lost her powers, Robin.”

     Hearing that almost tore him to the ground, too. Your mocking abilities made you, you. You very rarely loathed them, but you otherwise greatly embraced them. The ability gave you life, gave you skill, and pure joy through and through. Now he understood why you were hurting so. On top of that, because of your powers, he got to meet you. If you ended up with no mocking abilities, The Doctor surely would have killed you.

     Just like mourning your death, the team mourned the loss of your powers. Mockingbird wasn’t Mockingbird without them, so they made it their top priority to find out how to get them back between missions. This meant research, consulting other heroes, all sorts of different things to heave in as much information as possible. 

     Batman ran another blood test and he got all sorts of useful results. He discovered that all of your mockingbird DNA was still there, but the elongated agitation was caused by stress, mental strain from PTSD, and obviously injuries from the explosion. In turn, the DNA agitation caused a negative spike in your behavior, which was why you had random outbursts of anger and disobedience. But he had no idea as to why you couldn’t mock anymore, despite the DNA still being there. 

     Batman didn’t find a solid explanation, but he had a hunch that your trances were becoming your body’s way of preventing physically unhealthy effects, caused by PTSD, from agitating the mockingbird DNA. Why it never happened during missions, Batman didn’t know. But, he was beyond thankful for it.

     Speaking of your trances, they occurred once or twice every day. Each one was longer than the last, and your team stood by you for all of it. They took turns every once in a while and brought you books, watched movies one your tablets (they were shocked by how many top-quality devices you built), ate with you, and all sorts of friendly activities you could participate in while laying in your hospital bed.

     Conner and M’gann gave you a couple home-made stress balls they learned how to make by watching a video on the internet. They were a surprising gift, but they were very cute and served their purpose quite well. Conner felt a little guilty for the times you two butted heads; it rarely happened, but he still felt bad. So, in light of that, he brought you some colored pencils, markers, and a coloring book. It was such a cute gesture and he was startled when you hugged him, but he very awkwardly and briefly returned the embrace. 

     Using the cameras, Green Arrow and Aquaman found out that Kaldur occasionally snuck into the med bay at night and put you in a wheelchair to go around the Cave. He knew how much you valued freedom, so he did the best he could to give you some without letting you leave Mount Justice. You talked about anything that came to mind throughout the small journey, and you even made him laugh with a complex and well-thought-out joke. He wasn’t scolded for it, and the two adults didn’t tell Batman. It was a very kind and thoughtful thing for Kaldur to do.

    Wally brought games to play, such as darts, Monopoly, Clue, checkers, and you taught everyone how to play poker. However, Clue led to bickering between Robin and Kaldur, you almost took Artemis out with a dart, checkers always ended within a few minutes, a few of them regularly forgot the rules of poker, and Monopoly always brought yelling and throwing game pieces. But you had plenty of laughs and fun all the same.

After school, Robin came to see you with Artemis, who carried a small stack of books and a packet of paper. Robin sat next you and held your hand as usual and Artemis sat on the other side of the bed. Robin dramatically kissed the back of your hand, making you giggle and Artemis rolled her eyes, but she had a small smile on her face.

     “I brought you some books in Spanish, French, Italian, and English,” Artemis held up the books and set them on the small table next to your bed. “And I got you a Romanian packet to work on.”

     You grinned “I actually finished it when I was ‘grounded’. I had nothing else to do, so I worked on it for hours at a time.” It was great that you learned a new language, but the circumstances? Not so much. “But I can do it anyway; you brought a pencil, right?” You couldn’t help being excited.

     “Duh,” Artemis held up a pencil. “I didn’t expect you to write the answers in your blood.”

     Robin chuckled and let go of your hand so you could grab the packet and the pencil. You grabbed a book and placed it under the paper and went to work. On instinct, you wrote your name and the date on the top and you read the first question.

     You had to translate ‘I went to buy a new set of curtains, but they were out of stock at the store’ into Romanian, and it usually wouldn’t be a problem, especially since you became fluent. For some reason, you could barely do half of the first sentence and you started to panic.

     Robin noticed your distressed face and asked, “(Y/n)? You alright?”

     You rubbed at your eyes to prevent tears. You quickly shook your head and whimpered, “I can’t understand any of it. I can’t remember.” Sobs threatened to escaped, but you used your abdominal muscles to restrict upper body movement and you breathed very slowly. “I don’t understand any of it-!”

     Artemis registered it after a few moments, and she felt like throwing up. The loss of your powers took away all of the foreign languages with it, affecting your intelligence. This was going to dramatically change you more than anyone thought it would. 

     Your bottom lip quivered slightly before you bit it. Your life was crashing down right in front of you and you weren’t strong enough to hold it up. Was there any point in going back to school? This new development would put you too far behind, you’d lose your position as captain, and your 4.5 GPA would plummet. You refused to break down again, but it was hard to not cry hysterically. You had a right to, but you weren’t letting it happen again.

     Robin’s hands started to shake a little, but he hid it from you. “Do you think you can do Spanish?” He asked. When you responded in perfect Spanish, he and Artemis were relieved. It was the first foreign language you learned, so at least you had that. 

     But everything else? All of the other languages you knew? Gone. Erased from your memory, save for a few vocab words and insults here and there. You wanted to punch things until your knuckles bled. You yearned to break things and reduce them to dust, just like you were reduced from a highly intelligent individual to an average-minded teenage girl. 

     “I... I want to be alone right now.” Your voice wavered, and you didn’t look them in the eye. “Please leave...”

     Robin moved to put a hand on your arm. “I don’t think you should be alone right n-”

     “Get. Out.” You growled and jerked away from him. This was too much for you to handle in front of them, so you were going to handle it alone. You were already becoming more angry, and you didn’t want to take it out on them.

     Artemis slowly nodded and cautiously rose from her seat. “Okay. We’ll see you later, (Y/n).” She walked out the door, briefly stopping to urgently gesture for Robin to follow. He got up as well, sending you a worried glance before exiting the med bay.

     You firmly put the pencil on top of the other stack of books and you crumpled the packet up in your hands. You threw the ball of paper across the room, but you greatly missed the trash can, and you punched the mattress angrily. It looks like you lost your accuracy, too. 

     The soft pillow caught your head as you violently sat back. You clenched your jaw as you felt more tears falling, and you held a dangerous mix of fury and sorrow. What were you becoming? Why was this happening to you? 

     A long time ago, all you wanted to be was normal. Now you wanted to be anything but normal. You wanted to be Mockingbird. You wanted to stay Mockingbird!

     First your tattoo, then your powers, but now your enhanced intelligence?

This isn’t fair.

The Justice League was holding a meeting, specifically about you. The night before, Artemis told Green Arrow about what happened when you tried doing a Romanian worksheet. It was as if every step forward came with two steps back. They weren’t considering getting rid of you, not at all, but they didn’t know how to help you. Every idea was shot down by a high price (not money) they couldn’t afford to pay.

     “What else can we do!?” Black Canary almost shouted, slamming her hand down on the table. “At this point, Mockingbird has lost everything that makes her Mockingbird! This has to be fixed!” Dinah was ready to pull out her hair. If this change was going to be permanent, you would be an almost entirely different person.

     “We’ve gone through almost every option,” Wonder Woman said calmly. “I’m not sure if this can be fixed by force. If there’s nothing we can do, the only option we have left is to give it time.”

     Flash was darting around the room every two seconds, going over every idea they had and hadn’t suggested. Your powers were from a former professional scientist, who wasn’t always at the top of the scientific ladder. Cassius Henze had to learn how to be a scientist somewhere, right?

     The loud arguing dulled to hardly any sound as the Justice League watched Flash work on one of the computers, pulling up files in a literal blur. He absorbed the information as quick as it came up, and he was slowly nearing the solution they were dying to find.

     “Cassius Henze... Star City... Seattle University... S.T.A.R. Labs... Central City High School...” Barry’s head shot up after a few moments of mumbling. “S.T.A.R. Labs! He was an intern at S.T.A.R. Labs!” He dove right back in and went through the S.T.A.R. Labs files from at least a decade ago.

     The heroes of the room were either intrigued or very concerned. “Who was an intern at-” Green Arrow started to ask.

     “Cassius Henze! He is, well, was The Doctor, right?” Flash turned his head to look at him as his arms still moved around the keyboard. “He started his scientist career with an internship, which was where he started his research on animal experimentation.”

     “Do you think he-”

     “From what I remember, S.T.A.R. Labs keeps a digital and paper records of submitted research and experiments. But, since he was there decades ago, I would assume that all of the things he tried out are hidden away in dusty and forgotten filing cabinets.”

     Green Arrow was struck with an idea. “So if we get our hands on the files, then -interrupt me one more time and you’ll get an arrow between your eyes!- we can go through his research and find a way to restore Mockingbird’s powers!” Oliver was filled with fresh motivation and he started forming a plan.

     The Flash was literally buzzing with excitement as he ran over to Batman. “Okay, so, we need to get Cassius Henze’s research and lab reports from S.T.A.R. Labs, are we supposed to go in normally and get them or-”

     It was Barry’s turn to be interrupted, but by Batman. “I’ll handle that. However, we need alternatives if this doesn’t work.” The brooding bat said and he turned to leave. “I’ll be back.” You weren’t you without your powers. You were the soulmate of his son. He was compelled to help you in any way possible and in the easiest, most efficient way available.

The world never knew if Batman broke in, played the civilian card, or bought the files that night.

You didn’t have an actual conversation with anyone for almost two days. If you played any games or read any books, you were silent. When Kaldur took you out on the wheelchair, it was a wordless journey. Neither of you really minded; the silence was rather peaceful in that situation.

     Robin wasn’t used to the lack of conversing with you, but actions speak louder than words. So you eventually let him lay in the hospital bed with you, and you were found curled up in his arms in the most delicate way possible, lest he hurt you. It was a very cute sight, but he had to leave eventually.

     It was earth-shattering to find out that even your reflexes and accuracy were deteriorating. This time, you didn’t just feel worthless. You knew you were useless. It wasn’t a feeling anymore; it was a fact. You went from a rising hero to a powerless and defenseless civilian, who can only be a bystander instead of a protagonist in the battle. 

     Once again, you were staring at the ceiling you were starting to hate. You were due to be moved out of the med bay and back to your comfortable (probably dusty as hell) room in a day or so, but time was going in slow motion for you. You didn’t want to be a normal, dime-a-dozen civilian. You didn’t want an average intelligence level or an average amount of strength. You hated the thought of being scarred and weak, but there you were. Literally scarred for life and back to existing as a standard human being. 

     Batman wasn’t too far away from you while going over some files you didn’t know he had. He seemed to be gathering materials for some sort of experiment, but you didn’t see the point in asking. There was nothing you could do to help. There was barely anything you could do at all. 

     “You guys aren’t going to get rid of me, are you?” You asked hazily with a blank look in your (e/c) eyes. 

     He somewhat sounded appalled at your inquiry. “No. Why would we ever do that?”

     “My powers are gone. I don’t remember any of the languages I learned aside from English and Spanish. I don’t have good reflexes anymore. Hell, my soulmate tattoo is burned; you can’t even tell what it is. Maybe dying in the explosion is what should have happened.” Your voice was a mix of bitterness and a loss of hope. You were giving up. “I’m useless.”

     Batman’s sharp response made you flinch. “But you didn’t die in the explosion and we’re all very thankful for that. You’re injured. You aren’t going to be in perfect shape for a while, but not useless.” He explained, his voice was nearly harsh. “You still have a purpose, Mockingbird.”

     “What’s the point in calling me that?! I’m just a standardized kid in hospital bed! I’m never going to be Mockingbird again!” You snapped at the big-bad-bat himself.

     “Because you’re getting your powers back, one way or another.” Batman’s voice was dark and would be scary to anyone else. “You are valuable to this team and you are Robin’s soulmate. And those are only two reasons.” This was out of character for him, but you tended to do that to people. “Now hold still.”

     “What? Why?” You gave him a cautious look and leaned back.

     You didn’t have your usual reaction time, so you didn’t anticipate Batman to rush at you with a needle and plunge it into your arm. You thrashed in his hold as he held you down against the bed, freaking out as he injected you with whatever was in the syringe at the proper pace. Injecting too fast never ended well.

     You were prepared to chew him out when Batman pulled away, but your vision went a little blurry, and you felt like you were floating. Your arms and legs felt numb and everything felt odd. “What... did you do...?” You slurred and you let your head fall back on your pillow. This was like the time you got high when you walked in on about half a dozen girls smoking weed in the bathroom.

     “Injected you with something that should work. Be thankful.” To you, Batman sounded like he was joyful and joking, but he was just his normal self with his stone-cold voice and stature. 

     Suddenly, a searing pain went through your body and you felt like your body was shriveling up, constricting everything. You let out a tear-jerking cry of agony before passing out, your arm flopping down onto the mattress and your hand hung off the bed.

     Batman was teeny bit worried at this. “I really hope that’s supposed to happen...” A few drops of regret got into his system, accompanied by a dash of self-doubt and a pinch of ‘holy shit, did I just kill a teenager?’

It was nearly twelve hours later and you still hadn’t stirred. Batman hooked you up to a heart monitor to make sure you were still alive and even gave you an IV. It didn’t look like you were waking up any time soon (you were unable to eat or drink) and Batman was freaking out. It almost started to show. He injected you with something he barely tested, and he didn’t consult the Justice League about it. He made an impulsive, rash decision without planning... just like you and everyone else on the team!

     ‘Damn it, I put Mockingbird into a coma.’ Batman thought, and some colorful language followed. He contemplated sneaking Alfred to the med bay again, but that idea went out the window when the med bay doors opened. 

     The team walked in as a small cluster and were chatting amongst themselves about another recent mission. It was successful once again, and they were barely bruised. The easiest mission yet.

     “Hey Batman, how’s (Y/n)?” Wally asked. They all knew your first name now, much to your chagrin, but it was the least of your problems. 

   Batman just stayed quiet and felt very uncomfortable. “Well-”

     Robin bounced on past him, excited to see you, without waiting for a response, then promptly shouted, “What the hell happened?!”

     The rest of them barged past Batman and were shocked to see you connected to a heart monitor with an IV, and the still-healing burns made it a more grisly sight.

     “Did she get out of bed?!”

     “Is she okay?!”

     “Why does she need these?!”

     As if the situation couldn’t get any worse for Batman, Red Arrow and Black Canary came in to the med bay as well. Roy was only able to visit a couple times; this one was his third. The last thing he expected to see was you laying in a hospital bed looking like a corpse. 

     Black Canary looked at Batman with death in her eyes. “Batman... What did you do?” Her voice was dangerously calm, and it scared your comrades.

     “...I got Cassius Henze’s files from S.T.A.R. Labs, and the solution for agitated DNA was included. I made the solution, and injected it into Mockingbird’s arm. This must be one of the side-affects that I was unfortunately unaware of.”

     “Well did you read through the entire thing?!”

     “Yes. Several times.”

     “Did you test it?” Black Canary growled through gritted teeth.

     “I don’t recall ever having anything to test on whatsoever, so no.”

     Dinah was trying very hard to not use her Canary Cry. “And to think the Batman went in blind without knowing if this ‘solution’ was going to work or kill her!”

     “It’s going to work. Look at the files-”

     Roy stepped up with his jaw clenched. “How can you be so sure? You thought locking her up was going to work,” He gestured to your injured body. “But that didn’t work out so well, did it?” Roy was furious when he heard you were locked in your room, and absolutely distraught when he was told you died. Then he was relieved that you were alive, but seeing you wrapped in bandages made him hurt. “I swear to God, Batman, if she dies...”

While the adults argued, M’gann put two fingers to your forehead and gently dove into your mind. She got a weak connection to you, and it wasn’t going to last long.

“My, my, fancy seeing you here! M’gann, can you please tell me why am I trapped inside my own pounding skull?” You said sarcastically and you saw flickers of her as she appeared in your mind.

“From what I heard, Batman injected you with some sort of ‘cure’ that will get your powers back, but I don’t think any of us are very happy about it. Roy and Black Canary are yelling at him.”

“I’d like to yell at him, too! All that damn bat said was ‘Now hold still’ and he’s stabbing my arm with a needle a second later! And now look, I’m-” You didn’t get to finish your sentence when you felt her unwillingly disconnect.

     M’gann didn’t say a word for about half a minute, and the team asked her if you both were alright. Not long after, she started to giggle, and that giggle turned into boisterous laughter.

     “What’s so funny?” Robin cocked his head.

     Through her laughs, M’gann answered, “She’s so angry-” For some reason, she found the way you worded your anger was hysterical. “When she wakes up, Batman is going to get quite an earful from her!”

     The group broke into laughs and giggles and chuckles, but Robin was fretting. If Batman never tested it, what if something really bad happened to you? Granted, it was Batman; he always seemed to know everything, but anyone can be wrong. When it came to your safety, Robin would doubt anyone. 

Once again, Robin was staying the night by your side. He still spent some time at home, but he used the rest of the time he had available with you. It was expected; you were his soulmate. He got into the bed with you, avoiding the IV when he gently wrapping his arms around your frail form and prayed to any god listening for you to be alright. Whether if you wake up with your powers or not (preferably with your powers), he was still going to love you with all his heart until the end of his days.

     Your chest slowly rose and fell, and the heart monitor emitted a dim but irritating glow down upon you two. The beeping was also annoying, but it gave him comfort all the same. Your heart was beating and healthy and you were alive, and that’s all the mattered. 

     “Remember when we hated each other?” He asked you, even though he knew you couldn’t listen. “What am I saying, of course you do. God, I would rant about you to Wally all the time. I never told him or anyone else- I think I accidentally said something to Alfred, I’m not sure -but I thought you were really pretty when you first joined the team.” Robin confessed.

     His heart cracked a little when you didn’t react. Little did he know, you could actually hear him. You just couldn’t do anything to communicate.

     “When you broke into the Batcave, I was angry because I was jealous. You got past all of the security we had without setting anything off. That and you  broke into the Batcave. I think that gave all of us a right to be irritated.”  Robin took off his sunglasses and chuckled. “I’ll always hold that against you... But only in the most loving way possible, of course.” 

     Dick went on and on about almost every interaction from his point of you, as if you were actually there to have the conversation. However, you heard every word he spoke. It almost sounded like a whisper but you heard his voice. Although trapped inside your mind, you were smiling.

Unbeknownst to you, it had been nearly two weeks since you first fell into a coma. Hopes barely dimmed, but they were continuously discouraged. Dick ended up not-so-secretly holding it all against Batman for your lack of consciousness, and Batman didn’t blame anyone for doing so. He himself was starting to doubt a positive outcome, but he wouldn’t dare say that out loud.

     Robin walked into the med bay with a quiet sigh. ‘She’s going to wake up any day now...!’

     Artemis was quietly talking to you as she did her homework. “The robotics team is really starting to worry about you,” She held up a small stack of ‘Get Well’ cards and put them in your hand. “The entire team got you some cards, and I think some flowers, but I have no idea where those went. I had to come up with another excuse; it’s getting harder and harder to hide this from them. Even more of a reason for you to wake up...” Her voice faded out on a sad note.

     Robin cleared his throat and Artemis jumped. “How is she?”

     Artemis visibly relaxed and gave him a sad look. “There’s been no change. Aside from her weight loss, nothing else is different.” Her fist briefly clenched, but un-clenched a couple seconds later. “We need you to wake up, M.” She told you.

     The chair screeched on the floor as Robin pulled it up next to Artemis, taking a seat on it just like he had done almost every single day since you survived the explosion. “Yeah, that’d be perfect right now.” He said. “You need to wake up, get back on your feet, and train some more so you can go out an missions with us again.”

     “Yelling at Batman seems like a good option, as well. M’gann said you wanted to do that.” Artemis said and laughed. She lost count of how many times she wanted to do that. “We’ve all been a little upset with him for that.”

Robin and Artemis talked about it and got into a heated discussion over the events that happened in the past couple weeks. A discussion so heated that they didn’t notice your fingers moving, or when your hand tightened around the small cluster of cards. Your eyes fluttered open, and you almost shouted with joy when you could hear their voices clearly, and you could see the med bay with your temporary muddled

     You rolled your eyes when they didn’t even glance at you. They were on the verge of arguing about things you had no idea had happened, but you weren’t surprised. They were both throwing out good points and bad points, and you would have some information to shoot them down with, had you never been in a coma. You still felt quite groggy. 

‘Thanks, Batman.’

     You took the time to examine Artemis and Robin, to the best of your ability. Artemis looked a little more tired than usual, but she didn’t lose any of her fire. It was still burning bright inside her, but you were something that kept that fire flaming. She needed you to keep it ablaze.

     Robin looked a little unwell. His skin was a little paler than usual, and he yawned quite often. To you, he sounded a little more sad. But all of your senses were out of sorts, so take that with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, you were still thrilled to be awake and aware.

     Their bickering got louder and louder, and it started to hurt your currently sensitive ears. It was annoying the hell out of you and the fact that they hadn’t seen you was mind-boggling. You rubbed your eyes to try and clear your vision, but it only helped a little bit. 

     You sighed and growled/croaked into your hands, “You know, I love you guys, but you need to shut the fuck up, alright?” You made your presence known, and you were very grumpy. You had a right to be, after all. Obviously, you would feel bad about saying that later, but you didn’t want to wake up from a coma to yelling

     The two of them stopped arguing instantly and nearly choked. You were awake! No longer in a coma! Able to talk back! They didn’t know how to react for a good moment, but you weren’t even concerned. You were more hungry than anything. “If you’re not going to say anything, can I have food?”

     You didn’t get food, but your face was peppered with kisses from Robin and Artemis instantly called Black Canary and your teammates shortly after. They were happy that you weren’t going to stay in a coma that would last years, and especially happy that you still had your memories. Your mood went from grumpy to exhilarated in the blink of an eye, but was sure to soon turn sour. 

     Robin hugged you tightly, and kissed your cheek for about the twentieth time. “You’re finally up, I’m so happy you’re-”

     It was your turn to kiss his cheek, and you put your hand on his other cheek and turned his head to see his eyes- well, his sunglasses. “I missed you.” You said with a loving smile and you kissed him right on the lips.

     He almost melted in your embrace and he kissed back with no hesitation. It had been too long since your last kiss, in his and your opinion. You kissed for a few moments longer, before pulling away when other heroes entered the room. You weren’t too keen on PDA at this age. “I love you...” Robin secretly whispered in your ear.

     “I love you, too.”

     Hugs and some more cheek-kisses were sent your way, as were happy tears. You didn’t tell them that you could hear them talking throughout your coma, not yet. But you were going to give Robin so much crap about the things he said while you were under.

     “Try mocking, (Y/n).” Black Canary urged you to mock. “Let’s see if Batman did the right thing.” She grumbled bitterly.

     You opened your mouth, but closed it again. “What if it didn’t work?” You asked quietly, and your fingers fidgeted. Robin grabbed them, his eyes pleading for you to just try.

     You inhaled deeply, and gave it all you got. “The snack that smiles back, Goldfish!” There was pure silence, and a huge, beaming smile appeared on your face. It sounded identical to the real slogan and you shrieked with joy. “I can mock again! I-I can still be Mockingbird!” You wanted to jump from your bed and dance, but plenty of them would pin you back down on the bed, so you decided against it. Robin did didn’t hesitate to briefly kiss you again, much to the disgust of the bystanders

     “You always were Mockingbird.” A familiar voice came from the doorway. Batman stood there, observing the heart-warming scene. Your reaction was something he expected, but not entirely prepared for. Dynamite comes in small packages, but you were like a giant crate of C4.

     Your eye twitched and you clenched your jaw. Yes, you were thankful for getting your powers back, but you were pissed. If you were up and able to train with no setbacks, you would be hurling punches and kicks.

     “Listen here, you overgrown bat!” You cried out furiously and you lit into him.

You yelling at Batman was a memory that was treasured and laughed about for years to come. You even kept the recording from the security camera. After a few more days of healing, you got back to training, and then back to missions not long after. Villains and criminals learned to quake in their shoes at the mere mention of your name, especially when it was paired with Robin, and eventually Nightwing.

     The moment your life got back on track was the moment your life with your soulmate truly began. Neither of you knew what the future held, which pains and pleasures of life were to come, but all you knew was that your future was one you shared with Dick. 

     And you were happy with that.

{THE END}

Damn, that series was one hell of a ride! Once again, thank you guys so much for supporting me and this series which might get a sequel series that would continue into season two and kudos to those to made it this far!

~Ren

[lazydarth]

The Mandalorian was near-perfect, and that’s why I wish they would stop making more episodes of it

There is Good Star Wars, and there is Bad Star Wars. As we all know.

The Mandalorian is Good Star Wars. It’s not perfect, but none of the things that I can point to and call imperfections bother me.

The show has given us something that for much of the past four-plus decades has seemed plausible, but impossible: a good, live-action half-hour episodic format Star Wars TV show.

It used to be that producing anything to the level of visual quality of Star Wars required movie-sized budgets, and demanded movie-sized profits in order to make sense as business. For a TV-series, it was simply infeasible to replicate the show’s scale and scope, its sets and costumes and effects. The Mandalorian must still be an incredibly expensive show to produce, but so much has changed in the way fx are done, that it’s now feasible for a mega-budget TV show to do what used to only be possible for feature-length blockbusters.

I’ve now watched the first two seasons of the show, and I’m so happy with it, I wish that they would stop right now and make no more episodes, ever.

What? Why? How could anyone possibly say that?

Because it’s good. It had a story to tell, it told it, and now it is done.

A good storyteller enthralls the audience. A great storyteller knows when to stop. And you should always stop when the audience wants more.

Because, what’s the alternative? Stopping when the audience is sick of you! And who wants that? I don’t!

The Mandalorian is mysterious, and I’d like him to remain so. Forever. He’s got a lot of adventures left in him, and I’d like those stories to remain locked in the imagination, where they will be forever great. We get to share his journey for a brief time, and learn the story of how Jedi Master Luke Skywalker came into the life of a young Force-sensitive creature of Yoda’s race. And we get that story told to us in an interesting way that focuses on an unknown, nearly faceless character, through whom, we learn a great deal about the Mandalorians, yet with so many unanswered questions.

And that’s damn near perfect. I don’t want any more, because I’m left wanting more, more, more.

In the late 70’s, comedy genius Bill Murray did a lounge singer tribute to Star Wars, and crooned on SNL: “Star Wars! If they should bar wars, please let these Star Wars… stayyyyyy.” That’s kindof how I feel about this show. Bar them from ever making another episode that could risk ruining what they’ve done, but let’s let these Star Wars stay.

As a series, The Mandalorian feels like so many other adventure serials, from Kung Fu to Xena: Warrior Princess and The Adventures of Hercules from the 1990s. Each of those shows wasn’t attempting to be highbrow entertainment, and had their moments of kitchiness or campiness, but for what they were, they were good entertainment. The Mandalorian is perhaps a notch above, if for no other reason that the simple fact that being set in the Star Wars galaxy elevates it.

To be clear, there’s still a lot of unresolved plot threads that they could explore in Season 3: the Darksaber, the re-taking of Mandalore, the fate of Moff Gideon, the story of how Boba Fett survived the Sarlacc at the Pit of Karkun on Tatooine, Grand Admiral Thrawn and Ashoka Tano. So many other things.

I’m telling you: it’d be completely fine if those were left to the imagination, untold, and forever green and pristine, and not fucked up by the inevitable milking-it-for-all-its-worth-until-it’s-completely-ruined that is The Way of showbusiness.

I love that each of those plot threads is set up and then left hanging. It gives the universe a vastness that only an unexplored universe can have.

I’m sure that if they ran the series for five, six, even ten more seasons, they could probably tell a lot of those stories. But imagine if, like with Game of Thrones, the writers were told that they had to cut it short, and ended up rushing to wrap up everything, and did such an awful job of it that it ruined the entire series. Wouldn’t it be best not to do that?

Wouldn’t two great, solid seasons that wrapped up cleanly but left open a possibility for later attachment to other stories in the same galaxy be better than a series that goes on too long, runs out of steam, and fizzles out after making too many wrong turns, and leaves wide gaping holes in the plot and so many loose ends to subplots that were promised but then forgotten about or abandoned?

Besides: most of those threads are not Mando’s stories. They’re stories that Mando briefly brushed up against, in the service of a story about Mando, which is really a story about The Child, Grogu, and not about the Mandalorian at all. If they could have written the series as a fixed, two season story where the Mandalorian dies to protect Grogu long enough to see him safely delivered to his people, that would have been perfect. And even just leaving The Mandalorian character live, I think this is as much of him as I truly needed to see. We gained a sense of his character, we know who he is, and it’s important to recognize that’s all we really need.

Of course we want more than that, but just as we might want to eat all of the cake, and all of the ice cream, or all of the pizza, maybe that’s not what is really best for us.

I do want many of these stories told. But I think many of them would be better served as stories told not around Mando as a central character. I think Ashoka Tano could support her own series. (For that matter, she’s been the focus of some animated series that I haven’t watched, so if her story is already told there, or in video games or comic books or novels, then maybe we don’t need a new Disney series for the purpose.) I don’t necessarily need Grand Admiral Thrawn, when we have Timothy Zahn’s novels, and if all Disney did was bring Thrawn back into official canon by mentioning his name in an official canon series in one episode, I’m honestly more than satisfied with that.

And so on.

What I’m getting at, I really like a well-told story that takes a seemingly minor character, but gives that character focus and depth, makes them relatable, makes us care about them, but they don’t have to end up being the hero of the galaxy, a secret prince, a chosen one foretold by prophesy, or any of that kind of crap that writers think audiences always want to hear stories about. Mando, The Mandalorian, a foundling, apparently nobody, taken in and trained by an fringe order of a group of warriors in exile, but not necessarily one of them by birthright, who, in hard times since the loss of their homeworld, have turned to becoming mercenaries and bounty-hunters, but follow the Way, which gives them Honor, and fleshes out much that was never even so much as hinted at with the bare-nothing that we knew from our only previous glimpses into these people, the foreboding and formidable-seeming, yet apparently hapless and too-quickly dispatched Boba Fett. Mando, who’s real name we never even know, and who’s face we see for probably under a minute through two seasons worth of episodes, is a man of heart and conscience and integrity, a person who keeps his promises, and lives by a code, as he makes his way through a rough, uncaring galaxy, almost insignificant, but for a brief time when he quite accidentally found himself in a situation that forced him to break his code in order to do what his heart told him was right, and committed him wholly to a mission of his choosing, the fulfillment of which elevated him from a mere bounty hunter to a genuinely selfless hero.

I don’t need any more of his story than that, do you?

A great way of continuing the story would be to have Mando ride off into the sunset, as the camera drifts away to something else, at first seemingly of no interest at all, which our eye lingers on just a little too long, and suddenly we find that we’re drawn in and hooked on some other character, and we follow their arc, which intersects with many notable others, some perhaps familiar, even famous, but many not, until it too reaches a deliberate and well-written ending.

That’s what I wish Disney would do with Star Wars: Tell some great stories, know when to quit, and leave us ever wanting more.

[lefthandactivist]

The Beginner’s Guide

If you haven’t been able to tell, I play quite a few video games. My steam library has too many to properly pay attention to, and I have to be careful of how much time I spend gaming instead of other practical hobbies.

So when I say that I return to the same games over and over, there can be different reasons for this. Some (like skyrim and minecraft) offer a world where I know pretty much all the rules. I can do quite a bit just within those spaces, and it’s often how I cool down after a stressful day. Others, (darksouls and metroidvania titles) offer bite-size challenges that I can hit head on in my own time. 

But there are a couple of games that left me with something else, something that makes me return to them in the same way I return to certain books. One of these is “The Beginners Guide”.

Now, there are definately spoilers ahead, so if you have any interest in playing this game yourself, do so before reading please (knowing anything going in will probably color your experience, I’m not joking). Furthermore, if hundreds of words on a linear, minimal gameplay indie game doesn’t interest you, feel free to skip over this one. As always, this is mainly to get my own thoughts down (you’ll see why). 

Wow are all of my posts going to start with me telling my readers to not read from now on? Well now that I’m alone with my thoughts, lets discuss.

The Beginners Guide comes from the “same developer” as The Stanley Parable. A game that I enjoyed so much for what it does that when this new title was dropped on steam I bought it pretty much immediately, making it I believe my 300th title owned from the marketplace. I played through it not long after and then proceeded to listen to some sappy music to get myself back in order. If you let it, this game can hit you hard. But once again, I’m probably biased.

The game comes in chapters, each one a different game developed by the narrator’s friend, “Coda”. Nothing is left out of experience to suggest whether this is a true story so we’ll approach it as any other experience.

Chapter 1: Whisper. More establishing dialogue about how these games are incomplete or abandoned in most cases. The interesting points here for me are the labyrinth in the space station (reminds me of the quote “how will I ever get out of this labyrinth? Read Looking For Alaska read John Green!), and what happens when you step into the beam. floating up and seeing the whole level, I remember how these games are made, room brushes and objects, physics code and player camera. this game takes every chance it can to remind you that games have an author. 

Chapter 2: Backwards. I love the ideas in this level. the first time there was a definite “ohhh” moment when I realized what was going on. If I were to play a single level multiple times, this would be one for that, just so I can read the story written on these walls.

Entering, stairs, walls, exiting: I’m going to ignore what the narrator says about these levels. I do think they serve some connected purpose, but I like it more as an act of spite. These ideas are mine, better make the hard (or impossible) to access. as somebody who’s had story ideas floating around with them for a while, I’m always weary to share them, in case someone grabs it and runs away with it before I can do anything with it. Which probably means I should just write the stories instead of all of this..

Chapter 7: Down. The narrator finishes telling us that the engine is best at blocky empty corridors just as we enter an expansive cavern full of slanted geometry. This was the first hint to me that the narrator may not be reliable in all respects - he’s right about the engine, but that’s not what Coda decides to do with it. At the bottom we stay in a cell, which the narrator lets us out of before the allotted hour intended by Coda, which marks the fifth time he openly edits the levels to suit his need. Then we get to the puzzle.

I’m going to talk a little about this puzzle later, but when we get through it, in game dialogue keeps asking us about the puzzle, how we got through it, telling us it’s impossible. We can’t tell them how easy it is to pass through, and in some cases we have to lie to them. then the level ends with the first light post.

Chapter 8: Notes. It was replaying this level that made me want to talk about this game. Here we see a world Coda says is full of other player’s notes. The narrator reveals that they were all written by Coda. It’s convincing, they all sound like they came right from a youtube comment string or reddit thread. I immediately heard this as Coda saying. “your messages into the void are messages into the void.” In a way, he’s criticizing what I’m trying to do here, talking about the game, analyzing it. But the narrator reads this as some troubled artist who needs someone to connect to. The thoughts don’t seem to be written in Coda’s voice, but the narrator sees them that way. 

The level ends with the puzzle again. The narrator sees it as a cut off point, a end of a thought so Coda can move on. I get where he’s coming from, that’s what a lot of these posts do for me, but I think there’s something else going on. this puzzle is easy to the player, but the notes in this level and the talking characters in the last have no idea how you do it. It’s like a ski’ll that other people value and desire, that just comes naturally. I think Coda, if he’s saying anything here, is saying that. He’s able to make these games and say things with them, but he can’t explain how to do it, so the attention he gets about the process itself feels a bit misplaced.

Chapter 9: Escape. Coda makes a series of “prison” levels. each one is different, but they all hold the same idea, there will be some way to escape, but then the escape fails. The narrator hates these, he thinks coda is spending too much time on these prisons, and worries that it isn’t healthy. I think it’s natural, though. Someone described writing as choosing book after book from an infinite library, picking one that added the right next word or changing a previous one, until you land on the perfect book, one that’s always been there but nobody’s looked at before, and you leave with that one. Imagine seeing the room of previous books, would you think the author was obsessed? editing and refining is a natural part of the process.

Chapter 10: House. “You can’t stay in the dark space for too long, you just can’t. You have to keep moving, it’s how you survive”. 

I really like this level. I like how the chores loop but we get new dialogue with our cleaning partner. I like the calm music and how peaceful it is. I feel Coda would’ve had a similar reaction, which is why he made it and was so happy about it. And I hate how the narrator ends it. Describing this life as stagnation, as not living. This level is a lot like the nothing I wrote about last year, or how I feel when I’m doing work with someone and just being in that moment. The narrator takes that away.

Chapter 11: the narrator hits this one pretty much on the head, and I don’t have much to add.

Chapter 12: Theater. This level got to me. The pressure to say the right thing, the yelling at your own self to do better, the solution being to withdraw and hide away. 

This is a performance. Put on your mask and play the part assigned to you.

Chapter 13: Mobius. You can’t play this with your eyes closed, as instructed. you have to see to find out what’s going on, and you have to move. and then someone tells you to tell the truth. these games are draining you, you can’t make new ideas, you don’t know where else to go. and so the level stops.

Yeah, I’ve felt that before.

Chapter 14: Island. 

There’s a lie we tell that the work you do and claim t’o love has to be easy and worthwhile and enjoyable 100% of the time. we say that relationships are only true if they are effortless, that passion is only true if it is effortless, that stumbling blocks mean you were never going to succeed because it should be effortless.

So we lie. We all lie. Because there’s no truth to that. But it’s what we say to keep others from worrying.

Chapter 15: Machine.

But sometimes that isn’t enough, you have to stop. And when an audience demands you to keep going, but you can’t, they can turn on you. Feeling responsible for your audience, needing to meet their expectations because you know they demand it. It’s notable, that whether you destroy the machine or all the things it’s created, the result is the same.

The narrator doesn’t see this. He needs that social encouragement. Coda wants nothing to do with it.

Chapter 16: The tower.

. This level doesn’t want to be played, the narrator makes it playable.

. The narrator reveals that he had to add an end to the house level. it used to loop the chores forever.

. “I feel like a failure, I guess. When I can’t fix the problem”.

. an author isn’t his works. the works are not the author.

a hallway ends with a message on a wall. “Dear Davey, thank you for your interest in my games. I need to ask you to not speak to me anymore”.

And here’s where I stopped. There are other messages, about how the light posts were added by the narrator, how Coda didn’t want him showing his work to others. Messages talking about how the narrator had taken advantage of Coda’s work. And those messages are important, at least to the narrative. But those aren’t the messages that hit me.

These are:

“When I’m around you I feel physically ill”.

“You desperately need something and I cannot give it to you. I literally do not have it”.

“The fact that you think I am frustrated or broken says more about you than about me”.

Because I’ve been there. I’ve done exactly that. And that person pushed me away in much the same way.

And I had to let them. Because what I was taking was never mine to take. And I sure as hell wasn’t giving in return.

The end of this game, what comes after the tower, is important; you should hear it. but, maybe not here? This game is about authorship, and I find it important for that reason as well, but when I reach the end, all thoughts of that are replaced with thoughts on people. I had to write this one chapter at a time as I replayed it, because here I forget ever trying to see meaning in it other than this: “What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person”.

I cite Paper Towns and Ender’s Game and Catcher in the Rye, but this game was important for that, too. It put that thought into motion, let me control the tempo. playing through it again, I remember why I closed out of it the last time.

It serves well to remember, but “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

[party-of-rpg-muses]

A Look At Stuff You Probably Never Heard Of: InuYasha: Secret of the Cursed Mask

Hello and welcome to another entry of A Look At Stuff You Probably Never Heard Of. And guess what! This is the same month when my former favorite anime first aired in English, InuYasha. So to celebrate, we’ll be talking about InuYasha: Secret of the Cursed Mask. (Under Read More for length)

InuYasha: Secret of the Cursed Mask is a T-rated RPG PlayStation 2 game initially released in Japan on March 18th, 2004, where it was called InuYasha: The Cursed Mask. It eventually saw a release in North America on November 2nd of the same year.

Similar to the anime, this game follows a half-demon dog named Inuyasha as he travels across Japan with his friends, collecting the shards of a powerful artifact known as the Shikon Jewel. At the same time, fighting against a powerful foe named Naraku, who also wishes to have the Jewel. However, the game itself has your character, default names being Kaname (female) or Michiru (male) Kururugi, suddenly being transported to Feudal Japan while walking through your family’s storage shouse. Your family also runs a shrine, just like Kagome’s family. With the power of Shikigami, your character travels with the group to help them out, figure out why you were sent to the past, and how to get back to the present.

As mentioned previously, this is an RPG game. For the most part, you travel from place to place, ranging from familiar locations such as Kaede’s Village to the territory of the Eastern Wolf Demon Tribe (Koga’s Tribe), as well as new locations like Mount Houho and Kasasagi Town. It’s similar to that of Super Mario RPG, in which to reach a new area, you have to travel down a road to reach it. But once you do, you can go straight to that area whenever you want. Not to mention that each screen is similar to Resident Evil, what with fixed camera angels and pre-rendered backgrounds.

When coming into contact with a purple cloud while traveling, a battle will start against some demons. It plays like your typical RPG, with faster characters going first, but there’s also an indicator showing which character will go next. When a character’s icon reaches the bottom of the indicator, it’s their turn. And once it passes, they return to the right said of it and have to circle around to get their turn again. As expected, the faster a character is, the less time they have to wait for their turn. There are ways to stop this, such as if a character is confused or paralyzed. And as for the special attacks, instead of using MP or Mana or something similar, characters all use Energy, with a maximum of 300, each orb next to their health indicating 100 Energy. Energy is gained by attacking, healing, defending, or getting hit, but only a small amount is gained. Of course, the more Energy a character has, the stronger “Techs” they can use, a lot of them recognizable, such as Inuyasha’s Wind Scar and Backlash Wave, Kagome’s Sacred Arrow and Sealing Arrow, and Sango’s Hiraikotsu and summoning Kirara.

As the game goes on, characters also get Co-Op attacks, which require a certain amount of Energy from both characters. One character may start and when the other character’s turn comes around, the attack starts, playing an animation of the two before attacking the target.

The graphics certainly aren’t bad, but somewhat basic. It’s easy enough to recognize familiar places, but with dungeons and such places, a lot of areas look the same, making it very easy to get lost or turned around. But each character looks just like how they normally do and their special abilities are given justice. The music is done quite well, with a lot of the scores sounding like music you’d hear in the anime. Not to mention the characters retain their voice actors from the anime; Kelly Sheridan returns to voice Sango, as does Richard Cox for InuYasha, and David Kaye for Sesshomaru. Michiru is voiced by Sean Broadhurst while Kaname is voiced by Carol-Anne Day.

Now, it’s time to get to the Final Recommendation: Never Let Go Of It||Get It||Hold Onto It||Try It||Consider It||Stay Away From It

The game is nice and very faithful to the anime, but there are quite a few issues, including the aforementioned issue with getting lost. But it also has an issue of bringing familiar characters in, have them do something, and leave for pretty much the rest of the game, apart from a possible cameo later down the line. Main examples being Koga, Kagura, and Kanna (though Kagura and Kanna no longer show up in the game after a certain point. There is a reason, but it crosses into spoiler territory.) There’s also a part in the game where you get the power to destroy barriers as an actual in-battle ability. But after using it for it’s intended purpose, it’s almost never used again, apart from one other instance. There’s also the fact that the start-up cutscene has Inuyasha with the Red Tessaiga, but never uses it in the game. In fact, the start-up cutscene is fairly strange, since it’s nothing more than a combination of scenes from the various intros of the anime, and a few from the endings, with a still shot of the player characters spliced in.

Another issue comes with your character. That being that they often have inner monologues that go on for a while and they may come off as indecisive or insecure or even somewhat whiny at times. They also tend to find themselves alone (be it getting separated from the others or going off on their own), but they aren’t particularly strong by themselves and need assistance. But they can still hold their own well enough, for the most part, as they’re basically the Red Mage of the group, as opposed to Kagome’s White Mage and Miroku’s Black Mage. But the point still stands, as at times, your character struggles to dish out reliable damage against sturdy enemies and minibosses.

Now, before I sign off, there are a few things I neglected to mention. Biggest one being that after major boss fights, the group can opt to take a day off to relax (though you’re free to turn it down for whatever reason). Each character pairs up with someone to spend time with them. That being said, you can spend the day with Sango, Inuyasha, Kagome, Miroku, or Shippo. While it may not seem like much, each time you spend a day with them, you increase your relationship with them. If your character is the same gender as the person, or example, playing as Kaname and spending a lot of time with Sango, you two will become best friends. But if your character is the opposite gender, such as Michiru with Kagome, your character will develop a crush on them. The exception being Shippo, as you two will always be friends, regardless of your character’s gender. This doesn’t serve much purpose apart from a single town where a demon can transform into the person you love/are best friends with. And if your character has a crush on someone, they’ll attempt to confess their feelings at the end of the game.

There are also special events that show up at certain times. More often than not, they don’t provide anything of worth, but are just laid-back. Be it a little in-game cutscene or a mini-game with everyone (other than your character and Shippo) playing Taiko drums at a festival. Before I end this, here are the various Co-Op Attacks used in the game.

So, now that that’s all said and done, I’ll see you next month, where we’ll be looking at another crossover game. With one of the series involved never having a game of their own before.

[xb-squaredx]

Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 Review: The Darkest Timeline

There are….a LOT of Dragon Ball games out there, so many that they start to blur together. The latest flavor of the month, the Xenoverse series, does admittedly have an interesting premise though. Players are inducted into the Time Patrol, an organization that works to correct any inconsistencies in the universe’s timeline and ensure events work out as they were originally intended. For our purposes, that means making sure the classic fights of the Dragon Ball series end as they originally did. I can’t speak much for the first Xenoverse game, but I DID play the second one, and while it has a strong premise, multiple issues present in the gameplay and overall story serve to bog the game down, making for a flawed, bloated experience.

Just as in the first game, the big draw here is creating your own custom characters and inserting them into the Dragon Ball universe and I definitely see the appeal. Players have five races to choose from, each with their own ups and downs. Saiyans are great attackers, and can later gain a Super Saiyan transformation to bolster their offense, for one. Humans are balanced overall, while Namekians rely more on greater health and defense, as do the Majin class, with Frieza’s race generally lacking in stamina but doing well elsewhere. Each race also gains some exclusive perks with certain major questlines in the game, usually leading to their own unique powerup, though most of these quests are exercises in frustration. Sparing with Vegeta to unlock your Super Saiyan form is fine, as is rising up the ranks of the Frieza force, but the other races aren’t so lucky, their challenges being tedious, with Namekians getting the worst mission of them all: constantly having to find Dragon Balls while fending off attacks from Frieza’s forces. Majin’s will also find that their exclusive transformation, the Pure Form, is pretty lackluster. Other than that, the races play similarly enough that players should be able to just pick their favorite…that said, the fact that each character is treated as its own save file and you’d have to start from absolute scratch in the game to play as the other races…I didn’t exactly get to play around with them all and stuck with my initial choice for the bulk of the game.

The game itself is a pretty standard affair when it comes to the many Dragon Ball games out there. Everything from Ki blasts to Instant Transmission is included here, with a combat system that’s simple, but flexible enough to result in some fun bouts that feels true to the source material. Slamming foes across the wide-open stages, then teleporting behind them to nail them with a Kamehameha never gets old…at least when it works. The game’s systems feel a little finicky at times, with enemies randomly popping out of combo strings or your teleported strike not quite lining up. The camera getting stuck in certain structures can also be a hassle, but generally you can fly away and reorient yourself fairly well.

I enjoyed the wide- array of abilities players can acquire through the game, some as rewards for completing quests and some learned right from characters in the series. Want to learn Krillin’s Destructo Disk or Vegeta’s Final Flash? Track them down and you can certainly do so. From blast-style special moves to melee-oriented moves, there are even the rare buff or debuff moves to mess around with, coupled with flashy Ultimate moves to finish foes off…if you can line it up correctly anyway. Personally speaking, a great many moves in the game…aren’t all that great, or are either too specialized or impractical to use all that regularly. The stronger moves tend to have a LOT of prep time, flashy animations that play before the attack that give opponents ample time to flee, even if you do your best to combo into the moves and hit a downed opponent. While the combat is certainly fun, there are some real glaring issues when it comes to the game’s overall balance.

At the start of the game, enemies are pretty laid-back about getting smacked around, and you’ll often barely be in any danger, but the difficulty ramps up quite quickly and after a point computers start to blatantly cheat and exploit their advantages for all they’re worth in lieu of providing something more fair. If you happen to use the guard breaking attack to drain their stamina, for example, you’ll find it recharges for CPUs FAR faster than it ever would for a player, and seeing as stamina is used to teleport out of combos, this means that even if you play the game optimally, the computer won’t let you get too much damage off. Some later-game optional quests even have them automatically dodge special attacks and blatantly use input-reading to react to actions the player hasn’t even performed yet. Coupled with missions in which multiple enemies will gang up on you at a time, the game gets actively less fun to play the further you go. While there certainly are a lot of missions, from the story missions to side-quest analogues in Parallel Quests, raid-bosses in Expert Missions as well as multiplayer sparring, I lost interest in the game rather quickly and found a lot of the extra content simply wasn’t worth the frustration.

It’s a shame, because the game has some strong moments and fun nods to the series that nearly won me back over to the side of enjoying the game. It was just fun to learn from Krillin, to run around the hub world of Con Con City and learn emotes from other in-game characters that cosplayed as Yamcha or Tien. Some story beats were cool, bringing back characters I hadn’t seen in a long time and in many ways, Xenoverse 2 feels like it’s trying to be a “greatest hits” of the Dragon Ball universe…but it still falls short.

With a set-up around fixing inconsistencies in the Dragon Ball timeline, the game has some great opportunities for some “What if?!” style stories. Unfortunately, the game always drops you in RIGHT before history has a chance to be altered, and said alterations are usually either “villain gets a sudden powerup!” or “a movie villain shows up suddenly!” What good ideas there are, like you and Goku tag teaming against Frieza and Cooler on a dying Namek or both Nappa and Vegeta deciding to go Great Ape IMMEDIATELY upon fighting the Z Warriors is drowned out by the same tired scenarios every single Dragon Ball game seems intent on recreating. It’s gotten tiring to start a game like this fighting Raditz, then Vegeta and Nappa, then the Ginyu Force, then Frieza, and so on and so on. Despite characters from Dragon Ball GT being included in the game as well, the main story does next to nothing with them, being relegated to side-quests. It’s a plot filled with missed opportunities. There are some parallel quests that attempt to shake things up, but you have to wade through an awful lot of mediocre ones to find them.

On the whole Xenoverse isn’t too bad on presentation, the cel-shading making the characters look about as good as any other Dragon Ball game (even if FighterZ looks much better in my eyes), with a decent rock-filled soundtrack and most of the iconic voice cast being retained, but there are still some rough spots. Many environments don’t look all that impressive, for one, and while the voice work is generally OK, there are many small issues. The opening cinematic, for one, has atrocious lip-synching, to the point that it’s nonexistent, alongside voice direction that doesn’t reflect the mood of the scene. Bardock is meant to yell Frieza’s voice in rage, but merely says it with grumbling annoyance. Sometimes spoken lines don’t match up with the lines in the text boxes, and at times emphasis is placed on the wrong parts of sentences. They’re small flaws, but they begin to add up over time and really distracted me. On top of that, various voice lines get cut off by the transition to cutscenes if you defeat enemies fast enough, and yet at times the game will leave the enemy with a sliver of health and force the dialogue to play out with no rhyme or reason …and I’m not sure which one is a bigger annoyance. Lastly, for the Nintendo Switch version that I played, the bulk of the game runs at 30 FPS, though one-on-one matches get a bump up to 60 FPS. It didn’t really bother me much, but it’s something I figured I should mention.

On the subject of that, the Switch version comes with unique motion control options for performing special and ultimate attacks with the Joy Cons. In a fast-paced game like this though, I choose to ignore them entirely. I also pretty much ignored all possible local or multiplayer modes, so I have no real opinion on them. I’m fairly certain the game is better with friends at the helm of allies, as opposed to the at times brainless AI though.

I haven’t played many Dragon Ball games in the last few years due to fatigue. Many of the games kept trying to reinvent the wheel, while simultaneously barely doing anything to differentiate themselves from each other. While Xenoverse has a lot going for it, the appeal of a created-character in the Dragon Ball universe is a strong one, I find the combat to be a bit too limited and the AI too cheap to really enjoy or recommend. And while the game allows you to duke it out with other players, it’s not quite a fighting game and I think you could do better with games that already exist or will be available soon.

I don’t hate Xenoverse 2 by any stretch, and I did have fun while playing a good deal of it, but it’s a series that’s not for me in the end. In a game with such a strong premise and having so many elements it could have pulled from other games, it feels a bit half-baked. Lacking in creativity and excelling in a lot of fluff and frustration, Xenoverse 2 is a game that should have aimed higher and seems instead content with minor tweaks to the first game, instead of taking the time to really iron out the kinks and make something special.

Until next time,

-B

[i-just-like-commenting]

Star Wars rewatch,part 1: Episode IV, A New Hope

I’d planned to write this last week, but life got busy, so instead it’s my last little May the Fourth celebration! I’m also updating my project from my initial plan; I’ve heard the animated series The Clone Wars praised so much as connective tissue between episodes II and III that I’m going to try to watch as much of it as keeps my interest (it’s available on Netflix). My schedule is thus now:

IV (May) V (May) II (June) Clone Wars (June-September) III (October) VI (October) VII (November)

General Impressions, or the Movie on Its Own

Well, Star Wars: A New Hope holds up pretty well after all these years. I was first exposed to the franchise through Muppet Babies (no, really) and I can’t remember how old I was exactly when I saw all the movies; maybe 7 or 8? It’s an engaging and exciting adventure story with likable characters and a lot of world-building that manages to be immersive without being overwhelming.

That said, the technology hasn’t aged well – by which I mean the depiction of computers, not the special effects. They have big keys spaced far apart, with tiny screens. Oh, and at some point in the future we decided the best way to transmit files was manually? And copying files erases them? I suppose perhaps they were being jammed for the former, and trying to keep up the flimsy pretense of being neutral for the latter. Still, it’s all very seventies in terms of its computer technology.

There’s also no way this movie would be rated PG today, not with the charred corpses of Owen and Beru, or that severed arm in a pool of blood in the cantina.

The Special Edition Stuff

I definitely remember seeing the Special Editions when they came out in 1997 (I was 13 at the time). Seeing the films on the big screen, especially that opening as the Star Destroyer first appears, was amazing. But even then, I knew there were changes that did not work.

Twenty years later, it’s easy to see how much Lucas overestimated the quality of CGI at the time. Machines and things left blurry in the background tend to look pretty good, but living organisms, especially if they are close to the camera, do not blend well with the background at all and look horribly out of place. Comparing it to, say, Maz Kanata in Force Awakens and you can see how technology has come a long way. Besides, a lot of the additions are completely unnecessary. A few droids floating around with the Stormtroopers? A few aliens in the background? They work. But having things walk between the characters and the camera is disorienting and serves no purpose. Mos Eisley doesn’t look bustling, it looks like they set the shot up poorly.

Nothing is worse than the Jabba the Hutt scene, which left the audience I was back then completely cold. It is truly terrible, and you can tell that Jabba wasn’t initially supposed to look like what he did. (Side note: has anyone confirmed if the design of Hutts was completely ripped off from the Regul? Because I think they were.) It breaks up the flow of Luke and Ben’s transition to the Falcon, and having Han make a deal with Jabba rather than being on the run after murdering one of his minions (“We’re a little rushed”) meshes better with him being on bounty hunters’ hit lists in the sequel.

That said, I do like Biggs having a short scene with Luke to give a little more impact to his death, though I wish there was even more.

Continuity, Part 1: Relation to the Original Trilogy

I know Lucas made a lot of changes as the trilogy went on, but I can easily believe that he had two things planned from the start. The first is that Han and Leia were going to end up together. While Luke has an obvious crush on Leia, and she’s fond of him, the banter between her and Han is more typical “romantic interest” writing. It’s also obvious that, for all of their hostility (he resents her class status, she resents his feigned mercenary attitude) they take a liking to each other pretty quickly. Han’s “Either I'm going to kill her or I'm beginning to like her” is absolutely real, as is Leia’s admiration of his courage (as he leads what could be a suicide charge, something he mocked Luke for earlier). Given that she isn’t as despondent over Han leaving as Luke is, and her remark that “I knew there was more to you than money,” it’s safe to say that her “I wonder if he really cares about anything. Or anybody,” was more an attempt at goading him into action than sincere dismissal of his character. Plus that wink. 😘

I played a little game of adding “married in the future” to a lot of their snarky lines, including Han telling Leia to “Get on top of it!” in the garbage chute. It made me giggle. I am so immature.

The other plot development that complements this film nicely is Darth Vader being Luke’s father. Alec Guinness’ acting, the way he won’t meet Luke’s eyes, gives a strong impression that he’s hiding details from him – which it turns out he was. And of course the conversation between Beru and Owen becomes all that more sinister in retrospect:

Aunt Beru: Luke's just not a farmer, Owen. He has too much of his father in him. Uncle Owen: That's what I'm afraid of.

The first time through, Owen comes across as simply a worrywart, concerned that Luke will die the way his father did if he ever sets foot off the farm. But if he knew that Anakin Skywalker had gone to the Dark Side, was one of the worst villains the galaxy, well yeah, he’d be very afraid that Luke resembled his father and want to shelter him from any chance of learning of the Force.

Continuity, Part 2: Relation to the Prequel Trilogy

That said, the relationship between Owen, Beru, Anakin, and Obi-Wan would make a lot more sense if Owen wasn’t Anakin’s step-sibling who he met only once. The convoluted connection between Luke and his aunt and uncle in the prequel undercuts everything in this film. How can Beru be an expert on Anakin’s character? Why is Owen resentful of Obi-Wan taking Anakin away if he only met him long after he became a Jedi?

If I’d been writing the prequels, I’d have made Beru be Anakin’s decade-older sister (allowing them to preserve his miraculous birth if they really wanted to go that way) and Owen her boyfriend who wants to buy her freedom and treats Ani like his little brother. Beru would be close to Anakin and Owen would have been around when Anakin left. It would raise the emotional stakes of them losing Anakin to the Dark Side a lot, too. Though maybe this is something Clone Wars tried to fix? I guess I’ll see.

After rewatching this film, I do actually buy that R2D2 secretly knew everything that was going on, while C3PO had his memory wiped. There are gaps in C3PO’s memories (he’s been in “several” battles, “I think”) and R2 obviously knows who Ben is, and again there’s a bit of an exchange between them like Obi-Wan suspects something is up.

There is one thing that the prequels do explain – why is Vader so hesitant when fighting Ben if he’s such a powerful Jedi? Well, he knows how it ended last time (with him having severed limbs at the edge of a pool of lava) and he’s being cautious.

Continuity, Part 3: Relation to the New Films

“If the Rebels have obtained a complete technical reading of this station, it is possible, however unlikely, they might find a weakness and exploit it.” And thus an entire movie was born. I don’t think I needed to have this “plot hole” filled in, but it worked out into a pretty good story, even if I desperately wanted more time to get to know the characters (who are pretty flat).

Obviously there are parallels between A New Hope and The Force Awakens, though not as much as people like to claim. TFA borrows from all the original films, and it’s impossible to draw direct parallels between the characters. Sure, Rey is an obvious fill-in for Luke, and Kylo Ren for Darth Vader, but Vader never captured and tortured Luke; they don’t even meet in this movie, which was probably according to Ben’s plan, separating himself from the group and luring Vader away from encountering his son. Beyond that, parallels start to break down. Person who sends off plans and gets caught by the villains? Leia and Poe. Only Leia wasn’t the one to destroy the Death Star…Duo who wind up stumbling on to the hero after being separated wandering in the desert? R2D2/C3PO and BB8/Finn, but C3PO didn’t defect from the enemy forces and free Leia at the start of the film, nor was he Luke’s love interest. Han is Han I suppose and Leia is General Dordana, and maybe Maz is Ben…? There’s a lot more originality to TFA than people want to give it credit for.

Conclusion: Bring on the Droid Revolution

DROIDS ARE SLAVES. That was the big gut-punch of watching it this time around. Like, how did I not see how horribly mistreated they are? They’re sold on market, wear restraining bolts, can have their memories wiped at their owner’s whim, or even “deactivated,” a fate C3PO clearly fears as much as a human would death. The cantina owner is bigoted against them, declaring that “We don’t serve their kind” and throwing them out of his establishment. Even C3PO’s attitude reflects a life of slavery: “We seem to be made to suffer, it’s our lot in life.”

Everything about droids is coded for them being an oppressed underclass, yet this has never come up in the films, ever. Are we supposed to be cool with it because they’re machines? They’re obviously sentient, though, and meant to be sympathetic. We spend a lot of time with R2 and C3PO before we even meet Luke, and them splitting up accomplished nothing other than character development.

They’re also obviously capable of emotion as well as intellect. I wasn’t joking when I said R2 and C3PO are the purest ship, they really are. C3PO is a classic tsundere character, claiming he doesn’t care about R2 right up until his counterpart is injured in battle, when he offers to sacrifice his own parts to save him. Seriously, I suspect “counterpart” is just droid for “life partner.” It may not be sexual (they’re gonadless robots for crying out loud) but it is true love, and I now ship it.

[dailypluz]

How to repair electric scooter

Electric scooter - it is equipped with a 250W motor, two 18 Ah batteries (voltage 12V), They are connected in series. The vehicle performs very well, but bad handling of the electric scooter battery can shorten its life by up to 80%! So how to proceed so that the electric two-wheeler will serve us as long as possible? It is enough to take care of the proper condition of the battery. Most of the electric scooters available for sale are equipped with lithium-ion batteries. How to choose the best electric scooter. The pace at which electric scooters conquer the streets of other Polish cities may seem expressive. More and more people of all ages are choosing this mode of transport. It is not surprising - the e-scooter is ecological and allows you to enjoy watching it efficiently! Greetings! Do you have any questions? Are you a DIY freak? Take a look at the group: he fell in love with electromobility in a miniature edition. Recreational boards, skateboards, and unicycles can be bought in every shopping mall. The fashion for electric vehicles coincided with the renaissance of scooters, and combining these two directions turned out to be extremely practical.

but I still do not understand these statements, but rather readings.

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I set it to 10 amps in dc and how to understand the read result or how to read it Electric scooters in Warsaw 2019 - Lime, Hive, Bird: where can you rent? How to do it? At what price? We answer all inquiries and check the most important ones. How to convert an ordinary scooter into an electric one? I have an old scooter and I want to use it for something. I thought to convert it to electric. My biggest problem is which motor to use and how to drive the wheel. I want to spend a maximum of PLN 150 on this project. Electric scooter from China. I have a question, my friend has a very nice electric scooter, but the gas handle has one disadvantage, he would like it to be up and down, not for the front back, he bought the handle only and we wanted to solder it in place of the hall sensor in the old handle, the hall sensor is identical, but the shifter on the wires does not work, the choice of a scooter for an older nephew who has been riding this equipment for years will be completely different, and the method of choosing a scooter for an adult will also be different. Some of the scooters use it as a means of transport, others treat it as exercise or relaxation equipment. The mobility of electric vehicles such as skateboards, bicycles, scooters, etc. offers us many possibilities in their use.

Their dimensions compared to non-electric vehicles differ so much due to their lack.

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The electric scooter is becoming more and more popular equipment.

This is certainly the case. In Krakow, Blinkee City services are also available, which allows you to rent both electric scooters and scooters through the application. How to cheaply rent an electric scooter in Krakow? Contrary to appearances, it is not difficult, because in Krakow there is less competition in the scooter-sharing market than in Warsaw. The electric scooter has the latest announcements on OLX.pl. I consent to the use of electronic communication means and telecommunications end devices by the OLX Group sp. Z oo for the purpose of sending me commercial information and conducting marketing (e.g. newsletter, SMS messages) by the OLX Group sp. Z oo, related entities, and business partners. o charging the scooter, charging the scooter 1000 W 48 V, - Charging voltage of the electric scooter 24V 120w, Razor E100 Electric Scooter, Razor E300 Electric Scooter Heating Motor Driver No Power, BMS B-3664-10S Scooter for M365 Battery. The description of the connector is missing. E-scooter eswing 25km / h 500w. The ESWING electric scooter has a minimalistic look. Hello, I am selling a functional electric scooter. electric scooter zinc xt1 big wheels I will sell an electric scooter eswing for 1399. The price is negotiable.

So, if you drive it around the yard, you have a scooter.

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If you go on the road with it, you have an illegal moped and a fine to pay. What this is about? For an electric vehicle that does not exist in road traffic law. If you drive it around the yard, you have a scooter. When you go on the road, there are two different classes of devices in total, the difference between them is not even like between a bicycle and an electric bicycle, and between a bicycle and a scooter or a moped. The electric bike only supports the ride, while the electric scooter goes by itself, developing much higher speeds. The electronic scooter is subject to the same third-party liability insurance requirements as motorized vehicles such as motorbikes or cars. Before your first ride, you should find out if you are covered by third party liability insurance or if you need to purchase a separate policy. The electric skate does not turn on. Radzio.pl asked on May 3, 2017, at 1:15 PM. How to fix it? I have a performance scooter, but after a few weeks I noticed that when I hold the steering wheel straight, the wheel is turned, please answer, I was thinking about the hex key to unscrew. Each scooter has brakes on the handlebar, just like a bicycle. Electric scooters can reach speeds of up to 25 km / h. Lime does not hide that he wants to conquer the Polish market, because of the company. Lodz: How to rent a scooter using the Volt Scooter application. To rent such a vehicle, you need a free smartphone application, which you can download from stores. °) will write the first impressions because many people ask me about her here and on my face: - great workmanship, very nice design. How to make an electric scooter? Hello, I already have a scooter, now I have a problem like connecting the throttle cable, lever, 250w or 350w motor, battery, on/off button. How to connect everything to make it work and exactly turn on the engine gives gas and goes, I don't know how to do it aid project! As you know, the brake system is one of the most important components in a car. It has a key impact on security. Therefore, regular maintenance is extremely important. Specialists recommend that you perform it every 2 years, then we can be sure that everything works as it should. How to recognize the holding brakes The electric scooter is associated with fun and carefree childishness, and at the same time is the perfect vehicle for getting around the city. No wonder that electric scooters enjoy unflagging interest. But how do you choose the perfect electric scooter?.

[thomasroach]

Synthrun Review

The world of parkour meets the world of synth with the release of Playrock Studios’ Synthrun. This unlikely combo sounds like a novel concept, but the end result fails to capture what makes its inspiration so great.

Synthrun Review

Players take control of a spiky haired fellow named Jake, who lacks a personality and doesn’t say a single word. The world around him is a lifeless one, suspended over a bottomless pit that goes on forever. Other than the occasional glowing block or streak of color in the air, everything is a drab shade of gray. There’s not much character to this game, lacking in anything that would distinguish it from other titles.

The ultimate goal is to get to the glowing orb at the end of each of Synthrun’s 50 stages, climbing, jumping, and wall-running along the way. Unfortunately, this proves to be far easier said than done. Its basic concept of using the WASD or arrow keys for movement, though less intuitive than an analog setup, is still passable. Rather, things start to unravel when things get moving. Jake moves at a slow pace and packs some tank-like controls. It often feels like you are controlling a hulking piece of metal rather than a speedy human being, and the action suffers greatly for it.

To make matters worse, all actions require a herculean effort. One would think a simple press of the space bar would make the character jump a fair distance, but the end result is an awkward forward flip that is barely enough to clear even the smallest distances. Another element that comes into play is the grabbing of certain surfaces, which propel the character to different areas. The sudden jump makes it hard to keep track of what’s going on, and the camera lacks focus, meaning that players will be looking at a wall more often they would like. Certain platforms also serve this same purpose, but those who have not already memorized where they will go will be dumbfounded when they see what happens to the environment and the camera.

Players can also wall run by holding down the shift key on certain surfaces, but doing so locks Jake into a fixed pattern. This does not work as it should, as sometimes there is not enough clearance to make it to the next platform. Though most levels are around a minute in length, expect to see the same areas multiple times as players succumb to yet another death.

Rounding things out is a poorly mixed synth soundtrack that is downright jarring. Unlike the works of Perturbator or Gost, what is here is crunchy and dissonant, serving as an unwelcome addition that takes players out of the game. Tracks also start and stop jarringly, and are not matched up to each world. The end result feels like a playlist that was not edited correctly.

Synthrun’s broken platforming and bland aesthetics make for an experience that fails to capture the art of parkour or the world of synthwave.

This review of Synthrun was done on the PC. A digital code was provided by the publisher.

Game Reviews

Posted 1 hour ago by Casey Scheld in Casey Scheld Reviews, Game Reviews, PC Reviews

Synthrun Review

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Metro Exodus Review

Metro Exodus seeks to take the ordinarily linear gameplay style of the Metro series and bring it to the open world. Does it handle the transition well, or is it just too much for the game to handle?

Posted February 12, 2019 by Casey Scheld in Casey Scheld Reviews, Game Reviews, PC Reviews

Little Comet Review

Space might be the final frontier, but it’s also a cutesy place to play minigolf in Outgunned Games’ new title Little Comet. The star of this adventure is certainly catered toward a younger

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God Eater 3 Review

Taking a page from Capcom’s Monster Hunter series, God Eater 3 tasks players with hunting down large creatures. Should you check it out, or are you better off sticking with your regular regimen of

The post Synthrun Review appeared first on GamersHeroes.

Synthrun Review published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/

[boltaku]

Metal Gear (MSX) Review

Play Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

Any discussion of Metal Gear for the MSX (abbreviated MGX) should start with "Play Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake" (abbreviated MGX2).

As good as the Metal Gear series is, it is important to not retroactively attribute its success to all of its games.

MGX is a bad game. It's abysmal on the NES, and it's average at best on the MSX.

Heather Alexandra's deconstruction of MGX in a series retrospective piece fails to evaluate the game itself. It is only inspected within the context of the themes and mechanics of the entire series. This improperly mixes the success of the entire series with the actual quality of MGX.

But I'll pause here and openly admit my own difficulty evaluating MGX on its own because I'm always comparing it to MGX2 and I am blatantly about to do just that. I feel like this comparison is really important though to help distinguish what is a bad game, what is a good game, and how developers respond to their past mistakes.

Let's attempt to evaluate MGX on its own. At the end, I'll compare it to MGX2 and demonstrate the improvements that were made to make an good game.

The start of Heather's article places a strong emphasis on MGX's story. Solid Snake being a clone of Big Boss, the Patriots running the show in later games, Big Boss' more humanistic portrayal in later games, and the conflict of "creator vs nature" are all bought up. None of these story elements exist in MGX. Throwing them out, we have a very simple tale of a rookie soldier invading a base and being betrayed by his commanding officer. It's not deep. It's not meaningful. It has a fine twist, but that twist isn't delivered well as the final fight against Big Boss is very lackluster.

The codec calls are very shallow and don't serve to drive plot. The codec is simply a tool, another item, to help solve puzzles and is not used for exposition.

Next we move on to gameplay. Gameplay is marred by technical limitations. The inabiltiy to equip a necessary key card and a critical item like the gask mask at the same time is not genius game design. It's a flaw. It's not good. It's annoying. This is especially obvious in the gas basement of building two which has 2 doors to open and one unintuitively requires keycard 1.

Enemy vision being only 1 pixel wide is also a flaw. This breaks immersion as sometimes it looks like an enemy or camera is staring right at you but an alert is not triggered.

Instant death pits themselves aren't inherently bad. They're a ok trap in older games. But in most cases you cannot continue walking across to avoid falling and it's a death sentence.

To specifically call out Heather's example of a room with three cameras that "has no mercy"... (1) There are plenty of stationary, background boxes to hide behind. (2) The cardboard box is literally two screen previous, so if any exploration was done it is likely to have been found. (3) All enemy and camera movements reset when screens transition, so observing and resetting the room is a perfectly viable strategy (albeit in my option yet another flaw of the game).

One time use items like the enemy uniform and bomb blast suit are also bad. Games with items should work like chemistry. I think this analogy was explicitly mentioned in a Breath of the Wild developer video. Games that allow items to have multiple, non-specific uses are better than single purpose items. In MGX, only the cardboard box let's you use it in an impromptu, unscripted way which is why it's a fan favorite across the series. Every other item has 1 specific use and cannot be used creatively.

There is a paragraph describing an unwinnable state for the game in which you are unable to carry enough explosives to defeat Metal Gear. It is not clearly stated in this article whether that is good or bad. For clarity, it's obviously a BAD game mechanic to have an unwinnable state. Instead this possibility is twisted into some sort of victory for Kojima having thwarted the player. The whole analogy this article perpetuates of BB/Kojima vs. Solid/player is preposterous and unnecessary. The game designer should want its players to succeed. The game should be presented as a challenge to beat it, not something created for a designer to relish in the failure of others. An unwinnable game is unfair, not fun, and makes it bad.

That's plenty of background and venting. What I really want to get to is how Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is such an improvement. I think what really cemented Kojima as a designer was his ability to innovate and improve on his past works.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake fixes so many of the flaws with MGX.

Story is actively explained and pushed forward through codes and the introduction of cutscenes.

The codec now serves a dual purpose of function to progress in puzzles and flavor to explain the world.

Enemy vision is still 1 pixel, but instead of being on one screen, enemies constantly patrol the surrounding 8 screens created an always active, living environment that can be seen on the radar. It also prevents the ability to "reset" rooms in most circumstances. This now has created a more unscripted gameplay experience. Enemies could be in different places in their pattrol each time you encounter them yielding new experiences with each re-traversal of a room.

Instant death pits now have a fighting chance to be dodged by never stopping movement.

Items now have multiple uses. Keycards can be consolidated (huge quality of life improvement). Rations not only heal but also solve puzzles. The brooch can be manipulated by heat and cold. The mine detector makes it easier to crawl and pickup mines (a stretch in this bullet point, but an important improvement nonetheless).

Lack of unwinnable game state. All your weapons, items, and rations are removed for the final two bosses. You are naked for the final stretch of the game and must use your exploration, puzzle solving, and combat skills learned to beat the game.

MGX needs to be called out as a Bad Game. No analysis can change that. What makes the Metal Gear series great is its improvements from one game to the next. The first 4 games, MGX, MGX2, MGS, MGS2, are all basically the same game when seen from 10,000 feet. One reason each game is better than the last is because Kojima sees the game's flaws for what they are and fixes them.

I have been struggling to write a similar article for the Zachtronics series of automation puzzle games (SpaceChem, Infinifactory, TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O, Opus Magnum). It has bad games, but I think each one gets better because the designers are identifying and fixing their past mistakes. I love both of these series (Zachtronics and Metal Gear) because I see their designers efforts to improve gameplay and innovate on a similar base formula to make new games.

[breegullbeakreviews]

Summary: A Witch kidnaps a little bear girl to make herself sexy, so it’s up to her brother and his pet bird to rescue her with the help of a near sighted mole and a skull faced shaman. It really is quite absurd, the adventures of a bear and bird. It’s Banjo Kazooie and I’m reviewing it again because I feel like it.

Overall: Banjo Kazooie sits snugly in my top ten games of all time and has for as long as I’ve had one. While I prefer the original experience on the Nintendo 64, I’ve warmed to the Xbox Live Arcade Port over time. Regardless of how you play this game it’s worth doing. It’s the pinnacle of its genre in my opinion and totally worth its price tag stand alone or as part of Rare Replay. Happy early 20th Birthday to a true classic and here’s to 20 more.

More after the break

Controls: The original N64 game has controls built to fit the controller. The analog stick was for movement since it’s the only one. A is for jumping and B is for attacks. By default the C buttons left and right rotate the camera while up and down enters and exits first person view respectively. Holding the R button will center the camera behind the titular duo. Holding Z changes all but R though. While holding Z you crouch in place so the stick lets you change the direction you’re facing. You can do a big jump from this position as well as a rather infrequently needed attack. As you learn new moves however the C buttons will fill out. Z and up C shoots eggs forward in a gravity deifying shot while Z and Down C shoots a bouncing egg from behind. Z and left C enters the slippery slope tackling Talon Trot for as long as you keep holding Z. Z and right C enters Wonder Wing mode. While the Z and C moves mean you can’t freely move the camera while crouching, it’s a sacrifice that makes sense. An excuse the remake does not have.

Over on the 360 the Camera is tied to the right stick while Movement is tied to the left. Both triggers allow for crouching, but pressing both and then holding either will perform the Talon Trot. X attacks and A Jumps. This means that B can be used exclusively for interacting and talking and tapping Y enters and exits first person view. Front and back egg attacks are mapped to Y and B when crouched. Either LB or RB centers the camera. These controls sound great and on paper they are, but you may noticed I skipped a single move: Wonder Wing. For some reason that escapes me, it’s mapped to crouch plus right on the right stick. This means you can move the camera freely while crouching as long as it’s not to the right. They could have mapped it to crouching plus clicking either stick. Hell there is an entire D-pad going unused. This choice still baffles me.

Gameplay: Banjo Kazooie is not just a, but the defining collect-a-thon platformer of its time, while Super Mario 64 set the stage, Banjo expanded it just enough to keep things satisfying without the bloat. The game has two major collectibles: golden jigsaw pieces called Jiggies, and musical notes. Some moves will require you to collect blue eggs along with feathers of both the red and gold variety to work. Unlike Super Mario 64, and its successors prior to Odyssey, when you collect a Jiggy you aren’t booted from the world. In fact with a single exception midway through the game, every level can be 100% completed the first time you enter it assuming you hit every world in order.

Every world has ten Jiggies, 100 individual musical notes, five Jinjos, two empty honey comb pieces, and a witch switch. Collecting all five Jinjos in each world will always be one of the world’s Jiggies. The witch switch for each world will make a Jiggy obtainable somewhere nearby in Gruntilda’s Lair. Musical notes need to be collected to build up a total high enough to pass note doors in Gruntilda’s lair. Jiggies are used at the various unfinished portraits in Grunty’s Lair to fill them in and open the worlds. Five of the nine worlds have a Mumbo transformation. Each of these will require Mumbo Tokens to unlock. The number required will start at five and increase by five for each transformation meaning you’ll need 75 Tokens to unlock them all.

Now there is one notable difference between the original Nintendo 64 release of Banjo-Kazooie and the port to Xbox Live Arcade: how much dying actually matters. The port has leaderboards, and apparently because of that a change was made to how Jinjos and Musical notes work. In the N64 version, to earn one of the ten Jiggies in every world you needed to collect all five Jinjos without dying or leaving the world. Musical Notes similarly reset on death and leaving the level with the goal being to try to get a high score, ideally 100 for each world. In the port they don’t reset, which I don’t like for multiple reasons.

Reason number one is one of personal preference, but I preferred the challenge of having to not die. Now it’s not like I was always a fan of this method. I didn’t ever beat the game, or even pass the first three levels until the 2000s because of this design choice. I could never get enough musical notes in Treasure Trove Cove without dying and I was absolutely terrified of swimming down to unlock Clanker because I was afraid of drowning. The challenge is fair though. Screwing up and having to start over sucks, particularly in the final two worlds, but it leads to planning to tackle that hard thing first and when you manage to pull off that feat it feels satisfying to have overcome a challenge through practicing the core mechanics enough to be able to pull off something difficult. It breeds a level of appreciation for each level that I can’t say I have for many other games.

Reason number two is the Bottle note glitch, which has apparently been fixed. A series of hidden bonus Puzzle challenges, made a central feature of the sequel, mixed with the fact that collected notes don’t respawn led to some notes becoming unobtainable if not collected prior to playing the bonus game. The moving pictures that make up these puzzles are not prerecorded footage but instead being shown in real time with pre-programmed movements in the actual environments. Since notes don’t respawn, this means that if the computer controlled Banjo collects them, they disappear forever and are never added to your note total. I’ve heard people complain that notes were disappearing regardless though and the whole thing paints a sour picture over this port for me. I had no issues on this play through, but my other point still stands.

Worlds:

Spiral Mountain: Functioning as the games tutorial area, Spiral Mountain is where you will learn your starting moves. You can skip this tutorial if you’ve already played the game, but the moves are locked until you either skip the tutorial or learn them at the corresponding molehill where the superior nearsighted mole will teach you how it works. What makes this area so well designed is how it’s segmented and designed to let you get a grasp of these moves before you even make it into the games main hub. While you won’t find any Jiggies or Notes out here, a master of all these basic maneuvers will find six empty honeycomb pieces, one with each of the moves.

Each move is taught in its own nook built to let you practice. All of them are placed in a circle around the titular spiral mountain. Once you’ve learned all the moves Bottles will repair the bridge connecting the peak of the mountain to the mouth of Gruntilda’s Lair. Oh yeah I forgot to mention the entrance to Grunty’s Lair is through the mouth of a giant replica of her head carved into the side of the cliffs that border the area. While after you enter the lair you’ll restart at the front of the lair when starting up that save file, you may want to come back outside and explore Banjo’s home. Hidden inside are the puzzle challenges I mentioned earlier. Sadly progress in these is not saved so every time you start up the game you’ll need to unlock these again. This especially sucks on XBLA as using the unlocked codes will disable saving and the leaderboards and achievements.

Gruntilda’s Lair: Once you enter the lair, assuming you’ve grabbed all the empty honeycomb pieces outside, you’ll never need to leave it again. You’ll start here on loading up the save file from here on out. The layout of the lair is pretty linear. The goal is getting through the lair to reach the end and fight Grunty and rescue Tootie. For the most part this means opening note doors. This means getting into new worlds to increase your note score. The lair is built to force you to learn certain moves before you can progress. For instance you cannot unlock the second level without the Talon Trot, and to unlock the level after that you need to have learned to use spring shock pads and to access it you need the beak buster. It’s easy to overlook this sort of design, but it’s pretty smart.

Between Mad Monster Mansion and Rusty Bucket Bay, the progression gets really complicated, but this also is sort of genius. The witch switch Jiggies, the first in particular up until this point, taught you that you can take the transformations outside of the world to a certain extent. Here it becomes mandatory. Once you complete Mad Monster Mansion you’ll have no clear way forward. On the way to the portrait you’ll have passed two rooms where the water level is too low for you to reach the platforms above. The solution requires taking the transformation from Mad Monster Mansion out of the world and down a path into a spooky house only the pumpkin can sneak into. Once inside Mumbo will switch you back into a Bear and Bird to hit a switch which will raise the water level. This will allow you to get to Rusty Bucket Bay, and another Switch closer to that world will raise the water even further allowing you to hit the next level.

Now this design is really strange, but it serves a purpose. One other thing lurks in this lair that isn’t covered by the totals screen. The mystical spell book known as Cheato is located in three spots in the lair, and this segment gives you all of the information you need to find every single one of them. The first two can only be reached using transformation abilities in the lair and the final one will require another water raising, though this one is temporary.  These cheats, unlike others you can find online, will not block saving or achievements.

Mumbo’s Mountain: Under ten minutes. I don’t consider myself a speed runner, but I can easily get through this level in under 10 minutes, something I wasn’t quite as good at last I reviewed the game. The world acts as a second tutorial with a focus on three new moves that require a little more complicated tasks designs than could be pulled off in the peaceful home of Banjo and Kazooie. Similarly it’s built with a circular design, though the circle is tilted as a large chunk of the world is on top of a slippery hill side.

There are four major areas of the map that are important for teaching the new mechanics. Up top of the hill directly right of the starting area is where you’ll find Mumbo’s hut along with a tutorial for this games ground pound, the beak buster. You’ll learn the move here and you have your first tasks right next to you in smashing the nearby huts. The nearby spinning totems will asks to be fed and you probably won’t have five mumbo tokes yet which means you’ll need to double back here. The massive termite hill is impossible to climb, even with the Talon Trot you’ll learn just passed it by the stone hedge looking thing. Downhill you’ll encounter a boss you can’t hope to beat without the world’s final move which happens to be both egg shooting moves. Over here is also the witch switch which means you need ground pound. From here you’ll have everything you need to double back across the map, and if you’ve kept your eyes peeled you should just have enough tokens to get the transformation, a termite who can scale the extremely slippery slopes of the termite tower.

It’s a very simple level and I can breeze through it at this point, but I still appreciate it. While not the most memorable level in the game by a longshot, it’s a competent first level that eases new players in while not lasting too long for experts.

Treasure Trove Cove: As earlier paragraphs would imply, I spent a lot of time here is a child. Maybe its stockholm syndrome, but it’s my favorite world in the game. Its tune is engraved into my mind like no other piece of videogame music. Again this map is built as a circle, this time with a landlocked pirate ship at its center with a lighthouse way up high on above the rest of the area on an archway. A series of tricky platforms make up the rest of the world with a clear pathway and direction in place due to the worlds treasure hunting challenge. Unlike Mumbo’s Mountain there are a lot more sections of the map.

This is where the game teaches all of its context sensitive moves, which is limited to just two. These are flight, which the limitation of makes sense, and spring shock, a super charged jump which again makes sense to limit. While these moves are at the core of the level, you won’t need to use them much. The treasure hunt I mentioned earlier assumes you’re going to fly from one X to the next, but walking is a better idea as there are plenty of other tasks to hit along the way. The spring shock pads are limited to a single area where they are used to a ridiculous extent. There is one up by the lighthouse, but it’s skippable even without flight.

A tutorial is the major focus of this level, but you’ll be doing some diving among other things. The water that boarders the island is home to a shark named Snackers who you’ll need to evade to get a few items, and this means you’ll need to dive. While this world has no transformation, you will be fighting a giant hermit crab, climbing the lighthouse, and as I said searching for treasure. While the level is filled with landmarks I’d call iconic, none are more iconic than the Sand Castle and the nearby Sharkfood Island. While the first is important regardless of anything the latter is part of the game linking Stop’n’Swop. The Sand Castle holds a single Jiggy, but it’s also where you’ll enter all the cheat codes, which on the N64 was how you obtained the unusable Stop’n’Swop Eggs and the Ice Key. Instead of requiring the insanely long codes on XBLA, which I wish was still the case as a throwback, having save data for Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts or Banjo Tooie will instead cause all of the changes to the map that these codes would have done. This raises Sharkfood Island revealing a way inside along with the first of the special eggs which can now be used in both games through the power of reading your save files.

Clanker’s Cavern: The other road block as I previously mentioned, Clanker’s Cavern is the game’s most water based water world. While the Treasure Trove Cove is a beach, the game keeps most of the action out of the water. Same goes for the penultimate world Rusty Bucket Bay where water is something to get out of as soon as possible. Here almost everything is built around water. Unlike the previous worlds, this is more a Q than a circle. The starting area is a straight area with a pipe around its upper perimeter that you’ll need to scale to leave. The bulk of the world and all but a single Jinjo and 14 of the musical notes, everything else rests in the titular cavern.

On the sides of the cavern, both above and below water are challenges, but the majority of the challenges, including the single new move for the level, is hidden inside the belly of the beast. And this is where the road block was made. If you can’t manage swimming underwater you are fucked. To get inside of Clanker you need to raise him. This requires swimming down below him and unlocking the chain so he can surface. As a child this horrified me and the first time I did it I resurfaced each time I swam through the key to do it because I wasn’t competent enough to hit the bubbles that spawn down there. Even now it’s difficult to pull off and super nerve racking.

Clanker once raised opens up the entire world. Using his fins and his height you can scale some of the pipes previously inaccessible. Of course you can also enter the belly of the beast and explore the inner workings of the mechanical garbage grinding whale. Inside is mostly obstacles as opposed to platforming. The biggest issue is how there are so many entrances but only two ways out, four if you’re being generous. It’s not a huge issue, but it’s something to note.

Overall I appreciate this level a lot more in hindsight, but it is a bit of a ridiculous difficulty spike compared to the prior two worlds. Ideally I’d have had the life bar expanding extra honeycomb pieces extend your air as well, but it seems Rare liked designing challenges around having just 6 air pieces as the last two levels have them, and the penultimate one goes crazy with them.

Bubblegloop Swamp: Beyond the second note door lies this single world. Based on what I’ve described this was a land of mystery to me for quite some time. Once you head forward from the entrance you’ll hit a central hub from which you can access the three major areas: The Maze and Mr. Vile, the raised huts, and Tanktup. A small island exists off to the side with an egg on it along with a vine platform above this hub, but most of the challenges will occur in one of the three areas, if not all of them.

I still think this flaw holds true from my original review, the Croctus Jiggy forces you to explore the level in a certain way. You shoot eggs into the mouth of the thing and a new one shows up elsewhere. Efficiently playing through the world requires you to follow them as they spawn. It’s more a problem here because where these things pop up isn’t at all randomized. Keeping the first one where it is works since it’s by the start, but everything after should be randomized.

The game’s second transformation is in this level and it’s the only one in this game that can attack. Transforming into an adorable little gator is used a lot more than the previous transformation. The gator can squeeze into small holes also doesn’t have to worry about piranhas in the water. It’s probably the second most used transformation in the game.

Overall the level is pretty darn cool. I wish the Croctus thing was different, but it’s not a huge issue.

Freezeezy Peak: It’s the snow world complete with a rather absurd of Christmas imagery. Again with the hub area with rather dull off shoot areas. The center of the map is a giant ass snowman. He’s so big that four of the world’s Jiggies are on the snowman in some form. It’s a shame most of this level is pretty forgettable outside of the center piece.

Somehow the Christmas tree is forgettable. It’s a multipart Jiggy which is a first for this game in this manner. It isn’t do the same thing in five places you do three different tasks in succession, something that is used a lot more going forward. You’ll also race Boggy the Polar Bear twice. This however is the one time this game introduces backtracking. To finish the second race you need the running shoes which are learned in the next level, but you’ll need the beak bomb learned here to complete the next level. This is the only point in the game where this occurs as after Gobi’s Valley you’ll have all of the moves.

I said in my original review that the level feels empty and it does. Outside the Mr. Slush enemies there isn’t a lot to make getting around the area challenging, particularly coming off of Bubblegloop Swamp. The iconic Ice Key is hidden away here, but that doesn’t give this level any bonus points. It’s not bad, but it’s missing something compared to other levels.

Gobi’s Valley: In my original review I said that this level was a desert dotted with temples. A quick look at an overhead map and I was clearly wrong. Most of the map is centered on a quick sand moat and the pyramid at its center. You’ll explore the tombs around the map, each with a single challenge inside.

This level also introduces the first foes that can’t be killed by any means but the wonder wing. In fact the enemies here get tricky in a way they weren’t prior. Mr. Slush is different as you can only kill them with a move from flight. Here you have undead foes that come back if you don’t hit them with a move you can only pull out sparingly and one you need to evade before attacking. This is the peak of enemy design for the game.

The best part about this level is that there isn’t any definitive best path that I’m aware of. It’s the start of levels I just blindly wander into and explore. The training wheels come off here completely and it only gets harder from here. Oh and it’s also home to another Stop’n’swop egg.

Mad Monster Mansion: Mad Monster Mansion is possibly the best spooky themed world of all time. It now has Subcon forest nipping at its heels, but that’s a debate for another day. We go back to the central fixture with sprinklings of cool stuff on the perimeter, but this time you are kind of forced in one direction. I think every time I’ve replayed this level I’ve headed right into the maze and realized I could only open the gate from the other side. Other than that the only other thing you need to do before anything else is open all the windows as Banjo before using the penultimate transformation to become a Pumpkin.

The central fixture of the level is the titular mansion. While it’s not actually home to many of the Jiggies, scaling the thing and exploring its many rooms is something you’ll need to do to find notes and Jinjos. Probably the highlight of this level for the Banjo portion is the church area. Its home to three of the ten Jiggies and the levels witch switch. The interior of the Church is by no means difficult. In fact it’s probably the easiest challenge in the game. Regardless it’s an awesome environment.

Pumpkin Banjo steals the show here though. While only two of the Jiggies are tied exclusively to the Pumpkin, a third is made much easier if you tackle it as a fruit. You’ll also need to do some platforming as the Pumpkin to reach the upper levels of the mansion to get all of the hidden goodies that Banjo is too big to reach. Knowing what comes next in the lair I always end this level with the Pumpkin stuff and it’s always fun.

Rusty Bucket Bay: Rusty Bucket Bay is a hard level. Almost nothing about this level is easy. It’s arguably the hardest level. The Rusty Bucket ship is the center piece but plenty of challenge are built into the dock that surrounds the ship. As I stated earlier this is a water level where water is something you are actively deterred from. Outside a returning Snackers who is quarantined to a single caged area, all of the water is oily draining your health as if you’re underwater on the surface and twice as fast when diving.

While you won’t be doing an insane amount of swimming like with Clanker’s Cavern, every bit of swimming is tense. The peak is the hardest Jiggy in the game, and one that you’ll want to start with regardless of platform. You’ll need to slow down the engine so that you can platform above a bottomless pit and hit two switches. Once the second is pressed a timer will start stopping the ships propellers allowing you to get a Jiggy behind them. Every time I play this section it’s tense. I didn’t die this time, in fact I only ever died in Grunty’s Lair and the Furnace of Fun, but this section is the one where I always fear death.

Like Mad Monster Mansion there are a lot of interiors to explore that have various amount of Jinjos, Notes, and Jiggies. Unlike Mad Monster Mansion there is a lot more variety. Outside the infamous Engine room which could be equated to the Mansions main hall you’ve got a navigation room, a kitchen, a storage room, two different crew quarters, and that’s just on the ship. Off deck there are two warehouses to explore three large crates. You’ll spend an equal amount of time on both the docks and the ship itself, and neither can be fully explored without the other.

Even if you hate the engine room which is warranted, completing this level fills you with a sense of pride. It’s the most difficult the game gets in the traditional sense.

Click Clock Woods: This world is massive and long, and for that reason it’s hard in an entirely different way. Click Clock Woods is a single forest, or more particularly a single massive tree that you’ll scale and explore the many points of interest on the way to its top while also hitting the points of interest at its base. The insane heights make the level frightening in its own right, but it’s the clock part that makes the level hard. You’ll be doing this all four times, once for each season. Starting in Spring you’ll explore and slowly open up the other three seasons in order as the switch for the next is hidden in the newly opened season.

This passage of time is at the center of most of the games Jiggies, but the leg work is across all seasons. While some Jiggies can be nabbed in any season, most, along with all of the musical notes, are tied to a specific season. Things change from season to season including enemies, water level, and the level of completion of the many platforms that make up the higher levels. It’s probably just worn off over time, but these changes don’t feel that significant anymore. Winter is a massive overhaul, but the others don’t feel that different. This level feels long for the sake of being long, and therefore is more a trial of endurance that tests you not screwing up and having to start over from Spring. That is lost in the XBLA version due to the note and jinjo changes which leaves this level feeling more like a chore.

I love the music and the concept, but due to the change in the note system this level just feels tedious as opposed to daunting. On Nintendo 64 it’s still fun, but without the fear of starting over it’s just an extra-long world and a reminder of what’s to come.

Furnace of Fun: Furnace of Fun is the Quiz show finale of the game. Here you are tasked with trivia, identifying characters, music, and locations, and some modified challenges from prior in the game. It’s something most games don’t do because most games aren’t this memorable. Getting this far you’ll need to have an extensive knowledge of the world, but even that won’t guarantee you can get through. With every save file Grunty’s personal trivia is randomized and outside lucky guesses, the only way to find out the answers is to find Grunty’s sister around her lair where she’ll fill you in on three fun facts at each location. I actually died a lot here, but mostly because I skipped out on talking with Grunty’s sister and went in blind.

Final Battle: While the game has had its fair share of boss fights, this one puts all of your skills to the test in a final showdown. This multiphase fight will require you to use just about every maneuver you’ve learned to take down Grunty. Even with cheats and a maxed out health bar this fight is tough. I pulled it off without dying my last go round but even then I needed my full health bar and the cheats hidden in the lair to do it. Prior to the final bout are 4 final note doors that restock each type of expendable item before the fight as well as one last portrait that upon completion will double your health bar. Of course this means getting at the very least 98 of the 100 Jiggies in the game. I won with the doubled health bar depleted so while I’m getting better, it’s not something I can pull off without the full arsenal.

Music: As I said in my original review, Banjo Kazooie started development as an SNES RPG that radically shifted into a 3D platformer on the N64. Grant Kirkhope composed a lot of music for this game. So much so that unused tracks were making there way into games all the way up to Viva Pinata a decade later. The fact that so much of this music was being used years later goes to show how good all of it was, and Banjo Kazooie was a game entirely composed from these tracks.

Banjo Kazooie is one of if not my absolute favorite soundtracks in gaming. The game uses midis and multiple audio tracks to seamlessly switch instruments as you dive change locations. Underwater versions of tracks exist for areas where you can’t even swim underwater. It’s incredibly atmospheric and is truly a lost art form. I may not agree with all of Grant’s thoughts on the series as a whole, but as a Video game composer everything he touches oozes a certain charm I can’t get enough of. He’s one of the greats and this is a prime example of why.

Characters: Banjo Kazooie has great characters. Banjo and Kazooie work off each other really well. Kazooie is the snarky and sarcastic back talker that is the very origin of this blogs name, along with my entire online identity's name. Banjo tries to keep her in check, but she’ll always come back with a another smart remark. Grunty is a villain who rhymes her every word and it really serves to separate her from other cliche villains. Bottles is a dork and Mumbo is strange right down to the way he talks. Love or hate the mumbled speech sounds, but these distinctive sounds give off even more character. It’s like the team figured out how to create that teacher sound from Charlie Brown for every type of character personality.

I was debating whether or not to put this in the review still because it doesn’t seem that important on the surface, but as I play on in the series, I think it’s important to set my stance on these characters. I truly believe that these characters are the most important part of this game. Maybe even more important to it than the game play and the music. Getting these characters right is what separates this from Mario, Donkey Kong, and especially the spiritual sequel Yooka Laylee. Great characters are can turn a generic story like rescuing a kidnapped sister into something so much more.

Stop’n’Swop: This is the coolest lost feature in video games. In an era where memory cards weren’t yet the norm and hard-drives weren’t even on the table yet, Rare had the crazy idea to use the N64′s ability to briefly store memory from a removed game cart to allow items in Banjo Kazooie to be detected in other Rare games to unlock things. Upon getting all 100 Jiggies, three of the seven items were shown telling players that how they’d be unlocked would be revealed in the sequel. That never happened.

Due to a change in how the N64 handled memory the feature became impossible to implement and the feature was dropped. The items could still be obtained in the sequel, but only three of the seven. Some hackers used a Gameshark to figure out the seven rather lengthy hidden codes that would unlock these items in Banjo Kazooie. Since the knowledge of why the feature was dropped wasn’t revealed at the time this dropped feature became one of the greatest mysteries in gaming. 

Ten years later Banjo Kazooie came to XBLA along with Nuts & Bolts, the third main game in the series. Using the magic of hard-drives, Having a save for Nuts & Bolts allowed players to obtain the Stop’n’Swap items. When Tooie came to XBLA you were able to do the same thing. I’ll talk about how it works in each game in the review of each game proper. Yes they’re both coming.

[etaylormedia-blog]

TV Drama Scene Analysis - Game of Thrones - Tyrion’s Trial and Speech

This scene takes place at the conclusion of Episode 6 of the Fourth Season of Game of Thrones, HBO’s critically-acclaimed Drama/Fantasy series. For contextual purposes, the character of Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) is on trial after being accused of the murder of the former King, Joffrey Baratheon. Throughout the trial, Tyrion is interrogated by his father Tywin (Charles Dance), while various witnesses are called to make testimonies on both sides of the trial. This scene picks up as Tyrion is slowly beginning to realise that the trial is fixed to make him be found guilty, and he has an outburst in anger at the corruption in the trial.

Much of the focus throughout the scene is on Tyrion, and he has the most screen-time of any other character in the scene, showing that it is from his ‘perspective’ that the scene is playing out. For much of the scene, we are given a mid-shot of Tyrion, which also acts as a shallow focus shot; not only is the shot framed from Tyrion’s chest upwards, but we can also see the peasants who are acting as the trial’s jury in the background, even though they are out of focus. As Tyrion tries in vain to justify himself, we are given more shallow focus shots, which also act as reaction shots showing some of the other important characters in the room, who have non-speaking parts in this scene, such as Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) and Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer). We are shown both of their characters, but also see some less important characters sat alongside them, out of focus.

Another of the reaction shots to Tyrion’s speech also acts as a low-angle shot, as we are shown Tywin sat on the Iron Throne, framing him to clearly be the one with all the power and leverage in the scene. As Tyrion realises his pleas are futile, he reluctantly announces that he “wishes to confess”. At this statement, we are given a mid-shot of Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau)’s shocked reaction, another important character who serves a non-speaking role in the scene.

Tyrion then turns to jury behind him, stating that he saved them and the city, but in hindsight should have let them all be killed (this is in reference to the climactic battle of Season 2). As the jury begin to speak up in uproar, we are given an impressive master shot of the room, showing Tywin and the judges sat at the front of the room, Tywin framed by the Iron Throne, with Tyrion stood facing him, back to the camera, while the two rows of the jury sit either side.

As Tyrion goes on, announcing that he is guilty, while still not actually naming the crime he’s guilty of, we are given a shot-reverse-shot as Tywin demands that Tyrion verbally confess to poisoning the King. We are then given a variation of a tracking shot, as the camera moves backwards to follow Tyrion advancing towards the front of the room, claiming that what he’s guilty of is simply “being a dwarf”, something he claims to have been “on trial for his entire life”.

Tyrion then claims he “did not kill Joffrey but wishes he had”, as it would have given him great pleasure. We are then given an over-the-shoulder shot as Tyrion turns back towards the jury, claiming that he wishes he was the monster they all believe him to be. At this point, as Tyrion clearly begins to snap under the pressure of the trial, the soundtrack, which has been purely diegetic up until this point, begins to pick up, giving us a slow, melodramatic, orchestral tune. The over-the-shoulder shot, which is now also acting as a shallow focus as we can see Tywin and the judges in the background, continues, as Tyrion claims he wishes he had enough poison for everyone in the room. We then revert back to the master shot as Tywin stands from the Iron Throne, ordering his guards to have Tyrion removed from the room.

As Tyrion turns back to Tywin, saying he knows the trial is unjust and thus demanding a trial by combat, Tywin is again framed via a low-angle shot, showing that, although Tyrion currently has the spotlight, Tywin is still the one in power. We are then given reaction shots of much of the aforementioned non-speaking roles, Cersei, Margaery, Jaime, as well as Prince Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal). The music picks up now, drowning out the sound of the shocked jury talking amongst themselves, as the camera gives us a combination of shot-reverse-shot and zoom, as Tyrion and Tywin stare hatefully at each other.

In terms of the behind the scenes aspects of this clip, such as the editing and mise-en-scene, the time between takes in the editing is fairly long, as this is a scene focused far more on the war of words rather than the literal war. Most of the mise-en-scene is simply constructed, with the location and costumes being fairly typical of this sort of ‘medieval fantasy’ type project.

The location is what may come to mind when thinking of a throne room, it’s a large room that is decorated with various types of memorabilia on the walls, with the large throne at the head. The costumes vary, with the royal Lannister and Tyrell family characters dressed in robes and dresses, while the peasants in the jury are dressed in dirty and dull coloured clothes. However, it is also interesting to note that this is one of few projects, film or television based, that puts a character with a clear physical disability or ‘handicap’ at the forefront of the action, both literal action as well as metaphorical.