Death of the Opinion

by Matt Blackie 

The Age of Opinion is slowly dying, ushering in a new era: the Age of Undeniable Truth.

It seems that lately, people have thrown out the window the idea of personal opinion.

This article may seem like a dichotomy, seeing as how the very essence of editorials is expression of personal opinion. However, I have noticed, however, that many people take hold of a game, spit every last derisive word they can at it, and then sit back to wait for everyone else to believe them. These people do not understand the meaning of opinion.

"...geniuses behind the FFT storyline threw together a plot, for their villainous religion they put together a church with a basic mythology, hierarchy, and organization which blatantly and explicitly resembles one and only one religious institution...they weren't fooling anyone." That's funny...they sure fooled me. This person seems absolutely sure that the writers of FFT were directly attacking Catholicism, whereas I, and many others with me, do not agree.

"We talk about "mature" content in movies and games. How are they mature? What makes us mature by feeding our minds with such garbage?" This was located in an editorial attacking mature content in video games. Again, the author makes a one-sided attack on this, leaving little room for argument in favor of the subject. Again, there are many people who believe otherwise.

These are just two examples: I could give more. We see in both of these excerpts that the two authors have drawn a biased, one-sided opinion of the respective topics, and have argued that opinion to the extreme. They are perfectly able to both have and express an opinion; however, they should allow at least a little room for the other side of the argument.

Opinion is based on how one person feels about a certain subject or item, and what that person likewise believes. In my own opinion, I believe that SaGa Frontier was a bad game, and one of Square's few follies. However, I perfectly well know that SaGa Frontier was liked by many people, and I allow them that right. My negative views of SaGa Frontier don't need to come flying forth in a one-sided attack.

I speak as if perhaps I am unaffected by the vicious attacks on certain matters dealing with video games. That is not the case. I almost had a change of opinion a few months ago, when I read several editorials at RPGamer that made attacks on the ending of FF7. I adored the game's ending. It had its flaws, but on the whole, I thought Square did a wonderful job with it. However, these one-sided attacks were so frequent that I almost began to believe them, and for a short time I was telling people that I didn't like the ending. Luckily, I beat the game again shortly thereafter, and made myself look at the ending closely. I reasoned that I still loved it, despite the fact that a majority of the 'opinions' on it I read were strongly negative.

I have many other beliefs that are not shared by the entire world: I advocated Aeris' death, I believe that Dragon Quest VII would make it in the US, I do believe that Sephiroth isn't the villain, and I see very few problems with any of the translations I've found in any of the FF games (FFT could have had better proofreading). However, these are my opinions and mine alone, whether or not they are shared by anyone else. I expect them to be respected, just as I respect the opinions of people that wanted Aeris resurrected or who think FFT is anti-Catholic.

Opinions are not fact. Please, let's not treat them as such.