Serielley's Adventures in Gaming

I love E3 week. So many shiny games, so little time!

The festivities this year get started on Sunday the 13th with an event thrown by Microsoft for their Project Natal launch event. Cirque du Soleil will be performing, ooooooh flashy. Monday will be the beginning of the ever-popular and heavily media-covered press conferences, with Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft all starting the party off. Sony and Nintendo will wait until Tuesday for their conferences, so by about… ohhh, 2:00p on Tuesday afternoon, we’ll have all of the juicy goodness spilling forth over the intarwebs to inform us about what to look forward to during the coming year.

There are very few games that I’m really looking forward to seeing at E3. I’m mostly waiting for the unknown, the big surprise announcements for things that no one knows about yet. I wanted to write about the few games we do know about that I’m looking for, and maybe put down a prediction for an announcement that would make my year.

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Final Fantasy was released here in the U.S. in 1990, when I was ten. I honestly don’t remember playing it. I know that I did, though, because as I played through it recently, points in the storyline toyed with my memory, giving me at least the illusion that I’ve done this before, I’ve found my way out of this labyrinth before… I just really wish I could remember for sure. Whether I remember or not, I’ve recently finished playing through the game that started it all.

Sadly, I don’t have an NES anymore, so I couldn’t play the original game the way it was meant to be played, but I’m ok with that. Playing the PSP version released in 2007 was a great experience, with updated graphics and music, so it was worth it. Not the same, but worth it. The PSP version has additional content as well that I didn’t take a chance to explore, as I wanted to just play the original game. Maybe sometime in the future I’ll get back to that and see what it’s all about, but for now, playing the original game was just fine for the time being.

The original Final Fantasy has a very basic story and doesn’t really dig too deeply into the motivations of the characters or the history of the world they are trying to save.  The world itself doesn’t have a name, but is governed by the four elemental crystals of Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth. 200 years before the beginning of our story, a great change came upon the land, and the four elements began to fail. The four Warriors of Light appear one day in a kingdom called Corneria, whose princess has just been kidnapped by a former member of the royal court, Garland. They carry with them crystals corresponding to the four elements, but they are dead and useless. The King of Corneria sends them to rescue his daughter, and thus our story begins.

The “monomyth”, Universal Myth, or the “hero’s journey” is basically what we are progressing through with Final Fantasy and most other video games based on the quest motif. Joseph Campbell provided us with the basis and understanding of this concept which basically goes thusly:

In a monomyth, the hero begins in the ordinary world, and receives a call to enter an unknown world of strange powers and events. The hero who accepts the call to enter this strange world must face tasks and trials, either alone or with assistance. In the most intense versions of the narrative, the hero must survive a severe challenge, often with help. If the hero survives, the hero may achieve a great gift or “boon.” The hero must then decide whether to return to the ordinary world with this boon. If the hero does decide to return, he or she often faces challenges on the return journey. If the hero returns successfully, the boon or gift may be used to improve the world. The stories of Osiris, Prometheus, Moses, Buddha, for example, follow this structure closely.^[1]

Campbell describes some 17 stages or steps along this journey. Very few myths contain all 17 stages — some myths contain many of the stages, while others contain only a few; some myths may have as a focus only one of the stages, while other myths may deal with the stages in a somewhat different order. These 17 stages may be organized in a number of ways, including division into three sections: Departure (sometimes called Separation), Initiation, and Return. “Departure” deals with the hero’s adventure prior to the quest; “Initiation” deals with the hero’s many adventures along the way; and “Return” deals with the hero’s return home with knowledge and powers acquired on the journey. – Wikipedia,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth

The hero’s journey has been with humanity since its earliest beginnings and cultures around the world from ancient to modern have embraced it and made it their own. I think this is an important thing to keep in mind as we talk about the original Final Fantasy (and the series in general) and try to explain why it had such an impact that it has endured for over twenty years. The Quest is something that all of us can relate to in one form or another, and it can resonate deeply within people if they are so inclined.

For myself personally, the hero’s journey has been something that I’ve been familiar with since a very early age. Since I was an early reader, my family regularly gifted me with books, and my favorites were ones that contained fairy tales. There was one in particular that contained all sorts of traditional tales, pre-Brothers Grimm, and looking back now, I can see how profoundly they affected me. I devoured anything about ancient civilizations and loved the tales of King Arthur as I grew older. Video games fell naturally into this sphere for me as they were another way to experience a story and thrilling adventure.

By the time I was ten, I had only played video games like Mario Bros. and the first few Zelda games, and though they were excellent, you can’t exactly say that they had compelling plotlines. Then comes along Final Fantasy. Despite the spare plot and storyline, the Quest was still there, and I’d like to think my younger self saw and recognized this. Hindsight is 20/20, right? I really wish I could remember more of my first experiences with the series, but alas… time has eaten away at that part of my brain. Regardless of my lack of memory, I know the original Final Fantasy hooked me from the beginning, and here we are today.

I really enjoyed playing through Final Fantasy twenty years down the road. It only took me about 12 hours to finish, but it was great fun. Even with the polished graphics and music, the gameplay is still the same turn-based simplicity that changed the RPG gaming landscape so long ago. It holds up well today, in the world of fast paced combat and shiny graphics, and I’m glad that I revisited it for no other reason than to experience the Quest one more time.

Next up in the Final Fantasy Playthrough is Final Fantasy II, also on the PSP. I’ve been working on it for the last few weeks, and I have to admit that I’m having a little difficulty playing through it. Some of that might be attributed to picking up the new game Nier for the PS3 (review coming soon!), but I think there’s more to my reluctance than that. I’ll explore this in my post after either finishing it or giving up and moving on. We’ll see what happens!

A while back, I was examining my gaming options for the year. (Does anyone else do this, or am I just really that nerdy? Never mind, I know the answer to that…) I realized that after I finished God of War 3, I’d be left high and dry, without any new games that I was interested in until Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is released during the Summer. Sure, I’ve got all sorts of games that I can play and some that I still haven’t finished like The Witcher, The Last Remnant, one of the new Zelda games, and another playthrough of the amazing Chrono Trigger. Yep, I could finish all of those if I wanted to, but the problem was that I didn’t really have any burning desire to do so.

As I was playing Final Fantasy XIII, I realized that there were some games in the Final Fantasy series that I’d never finished either. Whether it was from lack of interest or boredom, there were portions of the series that I had completely ignored, and as a Squenix fangirl, that bothered me, right down to the bottom of my chocobo infested soul. I took stock of what we had in the collection and realized that we were only missing a few of the games, so why not get them and then sit down and play through the entire series, from start to finish? It would be a pleasant way to spend my gaming time, and would be something I’d never done before, so why not?

I decided too that it would be a fun project to write about here on the blog, and would keep me posting on a regular basis, so it really was a win-win idea all the way around. I probably write about Final Fantasy too much, and this might be overkill, but to those of you who aren’t fans of the series, I beg your indulgence. I don’t want to write reviews about the games, since that’s been done and overdone for the last twenty-plus years. Instead, I want to write about my experiences playing the games, about the memories I have about growing up with the series, and perhaps some in-depth analysis of story and character.

Now I had to decide how I’d play them through. Would I include the spin-offs? Would I am for specific goals like leveling the characters to max level, or gaining all of the ultimate weapons? Here’s my plan for the Playthrough:

Just play.

I’m not going to burden myself with aiming high, as I don’t want to burn myself out, and I want to just experience the games again. I want to enjoy what they have to offer, and not infuse the experience with elitism. I will, however, toss in two of the spin-offs, just because I can. Here’s my playthrough order, even though it’s probably pretty obvious and goes without saying:

• Final Fantasy (PSP, 20th Anniversary Edition)
• Final Fantasy II (PSP, 20th Anniversary Edition)
• Final Fantasy III (Nintendo DS)
• Final Fantasy IV (Nintendo DS)
• Final Fantasy V (PS1 Anthology Collection)
• Final Fantasy VI (PS1 Anthology Collection)
• Final Fantasy VII (Playstation Network, played on PSP)
• Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core (PSP)
• Final Fantasy VIII (Playstation Network, played on PSP)
• Final Fantasy IX (Playstation Network, maybe PSP, maybe PS3?)
• Final Fantasy X (PS2)
• Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2)
• Final Fantasy XI (writeup only, as I’m not going to be playing this one again due to it’s online and addictive nature!)
• Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
• Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)
• Final Fantasy XIV (yes, going to write about this as well, as there is a strong possibility it’ll either be out, or I’ll be playing open beta)

Whoo! That’s a lot of gaming. It’ll be quality gaming though, and I know I’ll enjoy the hell out of it. I have no idea how long this will take, as some of these games can be well over 100 hours long. I hope though, that with each game, I’ll discover new things about each one, and won’t bore my visitors to tears. Ha!

Final Fantasy has been a part of my life for the last twenty-someodd years. I’ve grown up with the series as I’ve said before, and it has been a part of my most important friendships, not to mention THE most important friendship I have, with my husband. I’m looking forward to reliving memories of the past, and creating new memories for the future during this playthrough. I hope you’ll join me on this trip, and please feel free to add your own memories to mine as we travel together. I’d love to hear from you about how Final Fantasy has been a part of your lives, and what kind of role it played or plays in your life. That sounds really deep, and makes Final Fantasy seem like more than what it is, just a game. Is it though? This is the kind of question I want to explore as I playthrough each game.

I’m still not done with it. I could probably just leave that sentence, and let it stand for my review, but I don’t pay the upkeep on this website for nothing, so I might as well write something more, eh? Before we move forward, please look at the title of this post again so you can either keep reading or stop now. I especially want to point out the part where it says “SQUARE FANGIRL”. I am. Very much so. My husband will tell you this. It is, perhaps, one of my more fatal flaws and will surely be my downfall one day. That being said, I do have some negative things to say about Final Fantasy XIII, so this review won’t completely be chocobos farting rainbows with happy moogles flying around tossing candy about. As cool as that would be…

Anyways, let’s jump right into it, shall we? Technical stuff first, of course. I’m still playing the game on the PS3, on a beautiful 23 inch widescreen HD monitor. There, that was easy. (Easier than laying out my PC specs at least, heh.) Hubby played on the XBox 360 on the same model of monitor, so I do have a frame of reference for the graphics when we get to that part. At this point in time, I’ve logged about 90 hours into the game, and have beaten the story portion, and am now running hither and thither finishing up all of the sidequests, getting the ultimate weapons, and attempting to get all of the trophies for the game.

This is going to be a long review, so hit the jump for my novella.

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Welcome to 2010! A new year brings new games, new innovations, and new experiences in the world of gaming. I’m really excited for the year to come, as there are quite a few games being released this year that I have waited a very long time for. Some of them for years, no joke! Here’s my list of what I’m going to be playing this year, and I would love to hear from others about what they are looking forward to in the months to come, so feel free to let me know and discuss in the comments!

I’ve never done a “Top 10 List”, either here or at Adventaruing, and I don’t really see myself starting anytime soon, so the seven games I’m (SO FAR) looking forward to are below the fold. Follow me into the future, my friends…

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