Telling Stories: You need to make the money
Let’s be real here – no matter when your game is set, professional murder is not a particularly good way to make a living. Sure, the definition of “professional murderer” is a bit more limited than the usual catch-all of “adventurer,” but the number of characters I’ve seen in games that are actually purely adventurers is pretty small. However you’re making your money in a mechanical sense, your character is probably finding a way to make money that doesn’t involve roaming around outdoors and swording small woodland creatures for cash.
This is usually glossed over, mostly because no one wants to come home after work just to pretend to do more pointless work. (Pointed work is a different story.) But you can get a lot of mileage out of having a character with a job that isn’t either an offscreen concern or a de facto license to traipse about and kill woodland critters after all. So let’s talk about that.
The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, part 1
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
So, let’s recap briefly. Long after the original Final Fantasy IV release, Square decides to greenlight a remake of the game for the DS. Seems straightforward enough. But someone had an idea that tied into an experiment with episodic gaming. What if there was a sequel, one that told a new story altogether? What if players could download new installments as they came out, picking out individual episodes or watching the whole thing unfold at once? What then?
Well, we don’t have to wonder; that’s what happened. A new story was written, new characters created, and the episodes began coming out. So here we are with the PSP version, which collections all of them into a single packaged form. I mentioned back when I started the interquel between the two that I quite like the fact that rather than a straight sequel, this one puts quite a bit of distance between the events of the original and the events of the sequel; they’re connected by world and by several characters, but not by conflict.
A helpful guide to Western and Eastern RPGs
This game tries to trick you into thinking it’s one thing and then it becomes something else. Surprise!
As you have probably been able to ascertain from the fact that I have an entire series of columns on this very site dubbed “The Final Fantasy Project,” I have a bit of a thing for RPGs. They’re fun! And I’ve played a lot of them over the years, some of them from the Land of the Rising Sun, others from the Land of the Rapidly Diminishing Water Supply (better known as “California”). Or the Land of the Snows and Hockey (Vancouver?). The point is, there are two different distinct design systems at work when it comes to computer RPGs, that’s what I’m getting at.
Pop culture being what it is, of course these two philosophies have to be at war with one another, and you are expected to have passionate points of view on the matter about which one is better. But some of you might not have time to carefully play through earlier installments of beloved franchises to pick out which one is better, and quite frankly no one should ever be forced to play through several portions of the Ultima series or the Fire Emblem series without the promise of a paycheck. Thus, I’ve assembled a quick guide to both sides, helpfully explaining what these things are with an eye toward pissing everyone off equally.
Lest a monster you become
It’s not the supernatural that makes any hint of opposition something to be destroyed.
What really locked in my opinion of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines was Heather.
Heather is almost the definition of an optional character, albeit an important one. You first find her when she’s in a hospital bed barely clinging to life, obviously going to die unless you do something. Feeding her a drop of your vitae will ensure that she lives, and if you’re trying to be a halfway decent person you’ll do it without a second thought. It’s an altruistic act, a kind one, something wholly divorced from your own needs.
It’s only when she shows up again that you realize what you’ve done, but even then you can’t really object. Heather immediately sets about making herself useful to you, and it’s easy to keep being nice to her right off. After all, she makes it clear that she can help you when you’re otherwise asleep, and she doesn’t want anything in return except to be near you. You could run her off, but this happy fashion student just wants to be near you. Why would you be so cruel?
Then some time passes, and she tells you she’s dropping out of school after you’ve further bound her to your blood. And you realize that you’ve ruined her life.
Telling Stories: Keeping it tense with zero stakes
I will freely admit that I have seen a decided minority of Doctor Who, but I’m always fascinated by the lengths that the show goes to in order to justify its plots. And kind of with good cause. The Doctor’s TARDIS is basically a get-out-of-plot-free card, able to travel through time and space with an ease usually reserved for making instant popcorn. Many of the conflicts in the show could be solved simply by going back in time to before the antagonist had a certain idea and then throwing him into a locked vault.
I am aware that the Doctor has a rule against killing; that is also a mechanism to avoid having him solve every single problem with infanticide.
Of course, every single story ending like this would make for a terrible series anyway, so I’m not begrudging the existence of these contrivances. The alternative is awful. But it raises an important question about roleplaying, wherein you have no such artificial narrative blocks. You can leave at any time, and you have absolute veto power over what happens to your character. And that’s for good reason, obviously, but it also creates an environment wherein you can always, always leave.
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 