|
THE CRAVE GAMING CHANNEL | |
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
 |
|
||||
 
· Home
· RttS 2008 · Games · Features · News · Media · Release Dates · Newsletter · Chat · Message Forums · Staff Bios · Feedback · Jobs Listing  |
The Nostalgia Factor, Part Three: Finding the Magic
Erica Kudisch FAN EDITORIALIST | ||||
| REBUTTAL TO: The Nostalgia Factor, Part Two There is a meme going around on Livejournal. This meme consists of a short list of instructions and a growing list of video games, many of them RPGs. The task, as related to the aforementioned instructions, is to boldface the games you have completed, italicize the ones you began but did not finish, underline the ones you own but have not gotten to yet, and contribute to the memesheepery by adding three new games to the list. The lists that I have seen--and there are several, as these memes do not tend to move in a straight line--catalogue between fifty and eighty games. I have not contributed to this meme. This is not because of a fear of being seen as "inadequate" due to the number of boldfaced items on my particular list. I admit freely that I am not as well-versed in the area of RPGs as I would like to be, and that my personal pursuit of a more enriched RPG resume has been limited by system availability, time, and circumstance. That said, I have devoted this summer, and the surprising amount of free time I have been granted for it, to trudging down this list, starting on my trustworthy Playstation (his name is Handsaw) and working my way...somewhere. The most beneficial thing about working on the recommendations of your peers is that each game exists almost entirely out-of-context. My most recent jump between games, from completed to new, was from Xenogears to Genso Suikoden; a leap of nearly three years back in real-time, two and a half standard genre deviations, two battle systems, and 99 playable characters to worry about. The standards of critique are as for two different media; while I can still laud or gripe about both storylines, stack the engines next to each other, or compare and contrast the virtues of Forelock Fong Wong versus Bandana McDohl, the games are about as easily separated as the Math and Verbal sections of the SATs. If we go by the standard suggested by the earlier editorials in this series, and Final Fantasy VII is the cutoff between the schools, Suikoden earns the designation "late old-school" and Xenogears "early new guard". It is not small wonder, then, that I think of them as different artistic endeavors, as opposed to wildly deviant interpretations of the same medium. They share a console and a platform, but very little else. It would be a good deal easier to simply rework the classification system, tuck Genso Suikoden under something akin to TSR and Xenogears under White Wolf's bastard cousin and be done with it. Upon reflection, that generalization can't be made, and Final Fantasy is why. Because of the overlying series title, despite the lack of a connection other than design staff and formula, it is a requirement that the newer, cinematic-immersion games of the new guard continue to be classified based on the standards of the old. The Final Fantasy franchise is long into its second decade, the approximate age of my Warcraft-obsessed younger brother. Considering that I've watched my younger brother grow and change from an adorable (if destructive) sprite into a six-foot tall monster with Cid Highwind's mouth and more socialization issues than you can shake Caladblog at, it's as easy to presume that the qualities of RPGdom, as we know them, are no longer as we knew them. These new games still possess the fundamental characteristics of the old, but, let us face it, Squaresoft hit puberty back in 1997 and the entire field shared the acne. This is not to say that with the maturation (if we can describe it as such) of the Role-Playing genre the magic was completely lost, as Howard Kleinman put it a few editorials back. After all, when Rydia came back as a Caller, she was not any less magical than she had been as a six-year-old. Sure, the dress was skimpier, the spells cost more, and the story became all the more complicated, but that little red pixellated flower in her green pompadour signified to us that she was Rydia still. Perhaps I am presenting myself as too much the optimist, but mark me, I never expressed any certainty that my younger brother would regain his old, lovable qualities. There is a chance that, somewhere in the transition from chibi to CGI, something has been truly lost. It is possible that, when Sephiroth came out of nowhere and killed the only true magic user in his story, he killed the magic with her. This chance, though, is not the one I wish to lay my bets on, for two reasons: First, that if there is one thing being a gamer has taught me, it is that as long as there are people who actively care about their cause, there is hope for the cause. It only takes one completed adventure to instill that belief. And second, that I feel no change in the air of magic, in the space between Xenogears and Genso Suikoden. |
|
|
|
| © 1998-2008 RPGamer All Rights Reserved | ||
|
Privacy Policy
|
RSS feed
iTunes
