A Stand Against the Cold: The Practice of Evolution

by Chris Maguire

The times, they are a' changin'. Let the death-clad knights and roaring steeds roll out of the ancient gates which hold them back. With violence, sides noble and brave shall rise above the wasteland of consequence before them and meet as two clashing chimeras on a blood-soaked enigma of a battlefield.

And I stand before you to say that the ancients will fall.

Certainly, our forefathers bear much responsibility; it is because of them the tides have pushed in the favor of the weathering change and those ethics they set forth from the first day have been preserved. Without them, our satisfaction would never remain intact.

But they are dying now, and our dreams are reaching further, are meant to reach further. There will be destruction along the way, and from that destruction, new worlds shall arise new-born.

And the eloquence stops. . . HERE.

What does it mean? We, as gamers, reserve the right to complain, and the right to be angered when a product isnât good. Itâs rather odd, once you consider that so many people understand what makes a good game and what makes a bad game. Perhaps we live in an age where the good outweighs the bad. Certainly the evolution is rising.

With the growth of console technology and their ability to out-perform their heralded PC counterparts, as well as the diminishing of lines once precious to the PC universe, such as Online gaming and patches or add-ons available through the Net, the whole organism of gaming consciousness can be expanded. Walls fall, ideas flood over, and there comes birth. Fusion. Growth. Evolution.

It has been my primary concern since the first rise in the waves of evolution in the gaming organism that we, the gamers so crucial to that creatureâs growth and nourishment, have become too expectant and too lazy to recognize that which is good and that which is bad for our own sake.

A lot of people love the controversial Final Fantasy VII, and a lot hate it just as much. We all have our reasons, mainly circumventing around the presentation of the universe, but nary have I heard but a few ask the crucial question: is it a good game? Can it be assumed that if the Final Fantasy creators had completely avoided the acceptance of evolutionary processes, and kept the same water in the fish tank, that FFVII would have been any better? If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, weâd all have a Merry Christmas. We, as gamers, do not reserve the right to assume. Assumption leads to negation, and negation to disbelief, and disbelief to the breeding of stupidity. You either like a game or you donât, you canât assume anything on the character of the creators. Nothing.

Classics cannot always endure. There are many great ones heralding from the days of lore that was the 16-bit era. But, in the end, not many can stand against the modern works. And that is truth for a simple reason: people rarely look at the gameplay of the modern works. They allow themselves to be mislead by the premise of flashy commercials. The hardcore are not fazed. The casual rants againt such things. If a commercial sells more products, it should make people happy if they like the product. I am a person who has played The Legend of Dragoon, and it is one of my favorite videogames EVER made. Down the road, I will still have the memories of destroying the chains of fate. . . both for myself (that is, my character, Dart) and for the world caught between that cataclysm.

Should we use as little power as powerful in making our RPGs? Should we cling desperately to the Way of the Sprite? Those who do are my enemies. The power of next-gen consoles exists so we can go beyond previous understandings, and make our wildest dreams (videogame-wise) come true. You want epic? You want grand? Breath-taking? Awe-inspiring? That might have been a hard feat several years ago, and even now, in the midst of such titans, is still being held back by some degree. But now we have that power to go beyond the teachings and pass on the ethics of the ancients, but it is our duty to give those eithics a new face for a changing time.

I come to my last point: where is Square going? Having been one to pruchase both Vagrant Story and Threads of Fate (and Chrono Cross in a few days), I realized they were not as epic as some of the FF games. . . ToF revolves around a single town, and VS a single city, whose color scheme rarely departs from a dirty borwn, even in the water and the sky and the grass and the animals. . . everything is brown. I would have loved to cross continents in ToF. . .