The Final Fantasy Project: Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, part 13
Artwork from a sketch by Yoshitaka Amano
It occurs to me at this point that I have been in the world of Final Fantasy IV for 28 columns now. Seriously, this is number 28! It started in August of last year! How did anyone spend this much time working in this world of all the possible settings?
Well, in the case of The After Years, by recycling a whole lot of the first game. But no time to whine about that, we’ve got a final dungeon to explore… soon.
Once you’ve finally had the very final dungeon opened up, you actually do get something else unlocked. Remember all that Adamantite that we were stockpiling all through the game? Turns out that can be used for something, specifically for some powerful equipment. It’s taken us the entire rest of the game to get here, sure, but now we’re finally here and we can go get ourselves some valuable items by turning in seemingly irrelevant items that we had been hoarding through every single tale. Meanwhile, all of the other treasures from the challenge dungeons have been summarily replaced.
Review scores are silly
I give this questline a solid twelve elf ancestors out of four.
I hate review scores and I always have since the age of, oh, let’s just say ten. Don’t get me wrong; I understand the why behind them. I know full well why people have felt it necessary to append a whole written review with a score at the very end, a quick and easy sound bite. But I think that anything more ornate than a thumb up or down is gilding the lily, and even that has a central problem of obscuring the most valuable part of the review: the actual review.
What I do here could not be construed as “reviewing” beyond demos and the occasional Patron-sponsored piece. I have no temptation to do scored reviews, and we’ve already seen a few high-profile gaming news sites yank scores from their reviews. But this is an issue that goes beyond just video games. It’s something that we’ve had to deal with for years in movies, comics, shows, and almost everything else. It’s trying to boil a whole lot of factors down to a number. It’s silly, and it’s destructive, and it’ll be best if we can get rid of it.
Demo Driver 8: Steam and Metal
Some of you will see this and instantly be “that’s my jam!” In that case, well, you’re welcome! Glad to help.
The nice part about top-down scrolling shooters like this is that even a short demo gives you a pretty good picture of what you’re going to be getting. This is not a genre wherein there are big, hidden mysteries right around the corner. I am flying a plane vertically, there are things to be shot, they will try to shoot me down, and so forth. Dodge the stuff that hurts you and hurt the things that would otherwise kill you.
As a result, evaluating the game comes down chiefly to side elements and trying to pick out whether or not the game really delivers a novel enough experience to justify its price tag in the first place, something not helped by the fact that the game’s store page appears to have been handled by someone whose grasp of the English language is only slightly firmer than Kanye West’s grasp of social niceties. Once you get past all of that, though, the game certainly seems to do its level best to deliver on its stated goals. Whether you want those goals is another discussion.
Why are fighting games still gross as hell?
A picture is worth a thousand words, and in this case a large variety of additional questions and conclusions.
I want you to take a look at the picture up there. Really look at it. I want you to stare at the outfit, at the character wearing it, and I want you to realize that in the world of fighting games, this is progress. Big, forward-moving progress. Even though she’s still dressed up in an outfit that’s entirely impractical for fighting, complete with heels, no support for her chest, and thigh-high stockings.
Video games, despite the best efforts of trollwads that want to scream about the mere idea that a woman might be involved with a game at some point during production, are slowly growing up. The stuff that was de rigeur a few years ago just isn’t acceptable any longer. But you wouldn’t know any of that by looking at fighting games, which seem to be stuck back in their popular heyday of the mid-90s. The question is why? Why are we at a point when the game industry as a whole seems to be growing up, but fighting games haven’t actually gotten any better?
Telling Stories: I have sunk so low
Your character did something very bad, and now she needs to pay the price.
Every character screws up sometimes. I’ve talked extensively in the past about the fact that characters need to be able to make mistakes and fail at various point, and I stand by it; a character who never fails is a character who isn’t interesting to hear about or interact with. You will fail. Just like in real life, your characters will wind up making bad choices, backing the wrong horse, and trusting the wrong person.
Next, the part where she picks up the pieces.
A failure that doesn’t have impact on your character’s life is functionally nothing; you want every failure to have some long-term impact. That means that every failure stings, and things don’t just go back to normal the next morning. Sometimes they don’t ever go back to normal. When something gets broken badly enough, it doesn’t get fixed, and sometimes the broken parts will just be lingering with a character for a good long while.
Recent Work
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
Chocobo Dash
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
Eliot Lefebvre 