Heya, I just wanted to hop in and do a quick little post so my front page doesn’t look so sad. I’ve been meaning to post at least once or twice a week and that has definitely not happened, but November has been something of a hellish month for me. Excuses, I know, but this blog is still mostly for myself at the moment so eh zero guilt sauce.
I am currently on a much-needed break from classes and work and am enjoying a variety of narrative games while working on my current WIP, Cradle of Sea and Soil. The Video Game Awards came and went in that time, with Sekiro deservedly taking the coveted Game of the Year award. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re looking for inspiration for a Japanese fantasy setting (but damn is that game difficult).
During the event, however, several new games were announced, including one that’s supposedly inspired by Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives and Joe Abercrombie’s work in general, to my absolute surprise. But we’re not here to talk about that, we’re here to talk about the real fire in the room: Bravely Default II.
Why? Because of this article that’s pissing off a whole lot of gamers. Yes, the article is definitely an attempt at farming hate-fueled clicks, and it definitely could have been worded less aggressively, but I feel that the article is actually right and it’s a bit irritating to see the backlash against ‘true’ RPGs. These kinds of games have always been sacred to me because they merge my love of reading and narratives with interactive gaming. Most are story-heavy with a focus on more tactical and/or freeform gameplay (usually) that lets your imagination run free.
Yet more recent titles have been becoming what are basically movies gorged on billion-dollar graphics with little effort spared to the gameplay or the long-form storytelling many RPGs used to employ, and that’s exactly what FFVII:R appears to be. Bravely Default, on the other hand, is more Final Fantasy than recent Final Fantasy games, which is a little bit ironic. In the end FFVII:R like the movie version of a novel, and that’s a trend I don’t want infesting my beloved hobby.
I’ve read through some of the comments on the article and boy is the venom against said article unsurprisingly heavy, but the outrage is mostly directed at the idea of anything being better than Final Fantasy 7. Zealotry (fanboyism) at work, as always. Final Fantasy 7 has ever been a meme-tier game where you basically dismiss someone as a human being if they dare announce it as their favorite (J)RPG. It was okay. Definitely not the best FF, and none of the FF games are even Square Enix’s best RPGs, but oh well.
Anyway, that’s enough of me rambling about my gaming hobby. I’ll try to post more often. In a splash of maybe-irony, I have some thoughts about the recent wave of book series made into tv-series and why that’s a good thing (and how Game of Throne‘s abysmal ending made it happen).
Stay tuned.