Console Cleanup

Since I am unemployed and my PC is acting up (therefore, sadly, no SC2) I am considering finishing Final Fantasy XIII. It's without a doubt the weakest Final Fantasy title I have ever played, but it's still beautiful and I quit it at the point that the game (finally) opened up and allowed me to play with my full party and explore the world. It's not the sci-fi heavy styling of the game and the futuristic setting that disappoint me. In fact, I think this is one of the aspects that works best - it's fresh and the visuals are very sharp. It's the pacing, characters, storyline and voice actors that are all terrible. And did I mention it's short? Even though the game feels like it drags on forever, the game is disappointingly simple compared to the massive story, cast and world of FFXII. That game made me feel like an adventurer, pulled me into the story and made me care about the characters. It made me laugh, cringe and wince. I cared and that drove me to move forward and to complete the many sidequests and achievements hidden throughout the game. Final Fantasy XIII offers none of this. It's just a dull, uninteresting story without any room for exploration or adventure.

The game has a lot of potential - It opens with a lot of flash and throws you right into serious action as the enigmatic Lightning. The remainder of the principle characters are introduced quickly thereafter, but for hours and hours of gameplay you are stuck in parallel storylines, playing pairs of characters who are often heavily restricted in their available skills, forcing the player to learn each job role without a full party to support them. It's tedious, boring, and frustrating. It's not until you reach Gran Pulse after many hours of gameplay that you finally gain access to your full party and begin adventuring together. What makes the Final Fantasy stories so great is their combination of characters and camaraderie - the group dynamics. Without this, the game is just a bunch of weak characters without any deep motivation or connection. But it is still very pretty.

Early Review for SC2

It's a bit humbling to remember exactly how long it has been since I last played Starcraft, and I admit to being surprised at how much I am enjoying SC2. I originally began playing some time after the Broodwars expansion to Starcraft during my days as an undergraduate. I had finally begun to tire of the repetitious nature of Diablo 2 and because Battlenet shared servers between SC and Diablo, I was coerced into learning to play by some friends who had been avid SC fans from the beginning. This meant that I had a lot of catching up to do, lots of practicing, lots of matches to observe.

As a result, I played the game socially (I can't really say "competetively" due to my mediocre skills) - always on Battlenet with my friends, and never played through the single player campaigns. Because of this, I never really understood the storyline and was unfamiliar with the main characters of the narrative. For me, it was always just a strategy game - one match after another without end. SC2 is the beginning of the story for me, and I am impressed with the simplicity of the narrative - I am not overwhelmed or confused without having played through the original Starcraft or Broodwars campaigns. The characters are solid and interesting, and each new campaign mission is interesting as well as excellent practice for someone with RTS skills as rusty as mine.

My only serious complaint is that my computer, after managing to survive years of WoW raiding on high graphics setting has finally become completely obsolete. I lag so badly even on medium settings (which, sadly for me, look phenomenal) that it makes competetive play impossible. Even on the lowest settings I feel the processor dragging. That being said, I do wish they'd produced a few more high quality cutscenes - years of playing Final Fantasy have certainly spoiled me when it comes to these. Blizzard did a good job of producing the narrative cutscenes - you get a lot of character and emotion even though they are not rendered in high quality. This makes the few cutscenes that are done in high quality stand out from the rest, but left me wishing more had been done to the same standard.

Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds

I grabbed a ticket to Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds, the symphonic rendition of some of the Final Fantasy Franchise's music while I was at Benaroya Hall for The Planets a few weeks back, and I've been looking forward to it ever since. I'm really glad I went, and I will gladly go again in the future in the hopes that a few things are improved. And I hope they never, ever remove To Zanarkand, Liberi Fatali and One Winged Angel from the tour!

Program: [updated to include video links from the Seattle performance]
Liberi Fatali (VIII)
To Zanarkand (X)
Don't Be Afraid (VIII)
Aerith's Theme (VII)
Medley FFI-FFIII
Dear Friends (V)
Vamo' alla Flamenco (IX)
Love Grows (Eyes on Me) (VIII)
Ronafaure (XI)
Main Theme (All)
Bombing Mission (VII)
Fisherman's Horizon (VIII)
Memoro de la Stono (XI)
The Man With the Machine Gun (VIII)
Theme of Love (IV) (skipped due to time constraints)
Swing de Chocobo (All)
The Opera - Maria and Draco (VI)
Terra's Theme (VI)
One Winged Angel (VII) (encore!)

First Complaint: The Accompanying Video
Most of the video footage was classic gameplay footage. Not movies, not opening cinematics. Not even later gameplay footage with acual expresssion and body language. A large amount of great game movie footage and CGI movie not used at all, and a the small amount that was used was actually reused. The "classic" style gameplay footage was hilarious and adorable at first, but though the novelty wore off quickly the footage persisted. Why use minutes and minutes of old school chocobos running across maps when you have pleanty of more dynamic footage from the more recent titles that shows the depth of the art and how the chocobo has evolved throughout the titles? For those of us who have been playing Final Fantasy for a long time it was nostalgic in small quantites, but it got old after a while. For those in the audience (mostly confused girlfriends) who haven't, it was just silly. The narratives and the art - what have always set Final Fantasy apart from the rest of console RPGs for me - were totally lost in the representation.

This was compounded by the fact that there was a heavy emphasis on early titles. The tribute to Final Fantasy I - III was great, especially since it featured some of the recently redone DS content which is beautiful. But the DS gameplay would have been preferable to the old style stuff. The FFVII gameplay was nostalgic for me since it was the first title I had access to, but after a little bit of it, they could have gone to the movie quality as well (towards the end they actually used the Advent Children footage, and it was AWESOME. If they had used the CG quality stuff throughout, the experience would've been so much more profound). The "cuteness" of the blocky avatars really drew me away from the power of the music. Terrible, terrible decision that undermined some of the strongest music of the night.

Beyond the poor choice of footage, it was constantly recycled. Really. Eleven console titles, one online title, 3 DS titles, plus additional FF stuff...and they couldn't find enough unique footage for a 2 hour symphony show? Unbelievable. For titles like 8 where a lot of footage was used, I was shocked to see none of the ballroom sequence "Waltz for the Moon", none of the very end movie, and almost none of the parade sequence. From FFVIII and onward the video sequences were really stunning, and yet there was not that much used (except, thankfully, quite a lot of Yuna's sending dance in one sequence). From FFX onward the gameplay footage is excellent too. Even as early as VIII it's possible to glean emotion from the characters in play mode, but instead of using the footage to tell a story to accompany the music, it was really just a distraction. If the video is not telling a story, then static art images would have been far superior.

Opening videos tell stories! Stories are good!
Final Fantasy III
Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy IX
Final Fantasy XII

Second Complaint: No Music From FFXII
NONE. Far and away FFXII is my favorite title. Best and most well rounded cast, best story in terms of complexity and flow, best writing, best language, best voice actors, best art....and an amazing score of music that was completely ignored for this performance. I could have done without any of the FFXI music, period. I found it to be the dullest, though at the very least the choice of video for the FFXI segments told a story. And the true loss was the gorgeous movies and expressive gameplay. There were just a few tiny, tiny clips of the wedding scene.

I'm hoping that they'll add FFXII in the future, since aparently the addition of FFXI was relatively new. Even the small bits were amazing, like the resting music! Seriously...they could tour on this alone...

Full Collection of FFXII Music on YouTube
Full Collection of FFXII Movies and Cutscenes on YouTube

Some Examples:
Final Fantasy Theme (opening credits)
Symphonic Poem Hope (end credits)
Time for a Rest (inn music)
To The Place of the Gods
The Forgotten Capital
Theme of the Empire
The Battle for Freedom
State of Emergency
Seeking Power
An Imminent Threat
Rebellion

Final Thoughts
The FF Series of games are not hard, tricky, or complicated to play. They're really just beautiful interactive stories. That's what this concert series missed and could have capitalized on. There were moments here and there where a certain clip reminded me about what it was I loved about an earlier title that I haven't played in some time. This series had the opportunity to take us back, walk us through the story and retell in a few minutes' time the dramatic and often tragic sweep of each game's narrative. I really feel a better presentation format might be to take each title, chronologically, and present its music. Leading off with the Main Theme, and moving through each title - starting with the I-III medly. For some of the games, which have a lot of music, you would have a large chunk of time to string together footage to tell a comprehensive story.

I hope that as this event continues to tour and hopefully prepares for tours in the future they take this into account. And I hope I can get "To Zanarkand" out of my head before I go completely insane.