"Untitled (It's a Pun)"

by Anyone But Leah Raeder

(Mr. Clerck's text is italicized.)

I guess, for the most effective start, I should talk a bit about titles. Just titles; the game completely aside. Have you noticed how we get all worked up over titles? Any kind of title. I don't think Square should continue making games under the title 'Final Fantasy.' It seems foolish. It's a contradiction, and none of the games are sequels in any fashion. What's worse, we have a new Final Fantasy coming out soon with an interface similar to those of games like Everquest: blasphemy to many Square-heads. Yet, it is just a title. Titles rarely affect any game whatsoever. Titles do not determine quality.

Duh. Of course they don't. Guess what they _do,_ though? They sell games. Consider: which of the following is more effective?

a.) Valorous Legends - an online RPG by the makers of Final Fantasy

b.) Final Fantasy Online

The [Final Fantasy] series earned its place in the hearts of oldschoolers everywhere during its cartridge days. A good lot of those classicists yearned for the old style after the disappointment that was Final Fantasy VII. Now, I know very well that many of you readers who like FF7 were also around in the days of the earlier games, and liked those just as much. However, the simple truth is that I've heard more conversations between people who just started with FF than those who've been around.

A "classic" example of the inanity of the current thought-trend of RPG criticism: "I say so; therefore, it is so." People can't seem to acknowledge the simple laws of statistics. If there is so much antipathy for the "modern" Final Fantasies (VII and VIII), _who_ is buying the games? _Who_ is keeping these games in the crowning slots of Top X-number Charts? _Who_ named Final Fantasy VII "Game of the Century?" Just because FF-bashing was popularized online does not render it a legit representative of the RPG-playing demographic. Before Hironobu Sakaguchi slits his wrists, he's going to demand the statistics--how many RPG players are online? Of that number, how many dislike the direction Final Fantasy is taking? Until someone publishes a valid study, it's just so much digitized blather.

Before you think of this as another anti-Square rant, let me give reason as to my statements. Final Fantasy, in the eyes of many old-school RPers, has become crap. Those who sought the fantasy styles see FF9 now either with hope, or with the notion that this is just Square trying to pull back the "ignorant oldies."

Know what's amusing? SQUARE DOESN'T CARE. Square keeps selling games. Square isn't going to read the editorials column at RPGamer and have an epiphany--"Oh no, our games suck! Quickly, pull the commercials! We must start afresh and woo back those who paved the way for us when we were callow and naive!"

An RPG is a role playing game. Don't tell me you know this; you don't if you call FF8 an RPG.

Well, let's see. It's not a shooter. It's not a fighting game. It's not a driving or sports sim. It's not platform action nor a puzzler nor turn-based strategy...um...

The creators of the RPG genre envisioned a system of gaming where one is given an environment followed by the ability to travel through it at will, the ability to become your own character with your own personality, fighting evil (or good) along the path to your goal, all while making friends at the traditional inn. Dice rolling and play-acting; that's what it was all about. One can see how the modern 'RPG' came to be if one looks at the pro/degression from a less arrogant stance. After computers came to be, it was inevitable that one of our pale-skinned, socially exempt youths would ponder a game like their beloved D&D. Since communications between videogames was unheard of at the time, the game design was shifted to fit around a solitary character, immersed in a world of NPCs ready to hand out the next quest. Real-time battles weren't particularly dice-like, so turn-based fights were implemented. Thus, Ultima and DraQue were born, with FF and a dozen others jumping in after them.

...thanks for the history lesson, sir. But--who cares what the originators envisioned? The forefathers of America wanted a haven from religious persecution, where they could pursue their own particular brand of happiness. And they started by exterminating the Native Americans. What does this have to do with the current state of the U.S.? Little to nothing. Religious freedom is irrelevant, now that the pursuit of happiness is encroached upon by an intrusive government and absurdly extraneous laws. Life teaches that what one envisions is seldom what one actualizes. If, indeed, there is ever actualization. What RPGs started as is far from what they've become, and we have no way of plotting precisely where we are on the timeline of the RPG phenomenon's lifespan. Besides which, I take issue with your synopsis of the original vision of RPGs. A world you can travel through at will, with your own unique personality and backstory, making friends and chasing some distant goal...in other words, life? _Were_ RPGs made to emulate life, or to escape/transcend it? But that's another rant...

Console RPGs also got more graphical, and with nowhere else to go, took the simple concept of questing and turned it into story-telling. You could never make your own personality anyway, so why not have one given to you? Yet even FF8, in all its cinematic glory, has a rather shallow story. Does anyone remember creating character histories in the old-old days of RPGs? Back when you truly gave your person life. You just don't see this anymore.

Apples to oranges. Mr. Clerck's fallacy is comparing linear RPG's--which _tell_ you a story--to pen-and-paper RPGs--in which _you_ tell a story. Console RPGs were _never_ about you. Those that endeavored to bridge the rift--the Ultima series on Nintendo, GameBoy, and elsewhere; Might and Magic; a haphazard sprinkling of AD&D games like Eye of the Beholder--failed, one and all. They gained no following. You can empathize with a console RPG character, but it's a rara avis of a game in which the immersion is seamless.

For example, Raistlin of Dragonlance. Sure, -you- didn't create him, but he was created. Exquisitely. Those who read the two trilogies as well as the Brothers set know more about Raistlin and Caramon than I'll bet our good friends at Square know Squall.

As you say, Mr. Clerck, the Raistlin character is from a _series_ of books. Squall appeared in one game. Books are raw text. Video games are composites of text, graphics, music, and user interaction. A book series can amount to thousands of pages, some upward of _ten-thousand._ Final Fantasy VIII is a 40-70 hour game. All told, a terrible analogy.

Perhaps the best console RPG of all time would have to be Star Ocean II. Elegantly merging story-telling with graphics with remarkably open gameplay, as well as a full-blown personality system and skill development. There may not be any dice-rolling, but it is uncontestedly the most true modern-RPG available on the PlayStation. Of course, many will argue with me. The surest way to start an argument is to use the word "best."

This is true, although the qualifier "perhaps" was gentlemanly of you. In which case I'll spare Star Ocean: the Second Story and instead address the kernel: "open gameplay," which seems to be what you lament the demise of, was never truly open and never can be. For genuine openness, you'll have to throw out your rulebooks and character sheets and dice and maps; console systems and game cartridges/CDs and controllers; everything. Sit down and use your imagination and make it _all_ up yourself. That is the only true freedom of creation and exploration. If you're unwilling to do that--and how many are?--you'll have to accept the fact that an RPG, be it video or pen-and-paper, will not be on par with a virtual reality (any time soon, mwa ha). Your character in said game isn't "yours" whether or not you "make him/her up" anyway--if you're playing Dungeons and Dragons and devise a half-elf mage, you're conforming to someone's rules, someone's proprietary character-generation system. But this is siphoning into philosophical elements, now...

So, in the end, RPGs aren't truly RPGs. Yet, they are still called RPGs, even when their developers claim they aren't. Case in point, Final Fantasy VIII was declared, labelled, and advertised as an Action/Adventure game.

Mr. Clerck is quite right about the marketing of Final Fantasy VIII. The North American packaging doesn't have a single screenshot of a menu on it. It is, however, four discs long, and if "Final Fantasy" doesn't kindle the same recognition "Pokémon" does in the average non-gamer, it is a safe wager that someone moderately familiar with the PlayStation--the "casual gamer"--knows of it, and knows it's an _RPG._ Sub-genres are semantic scraps for the pedants to squabble over.

But hey, aren't genres nothing more than titles? I probably won't get to say everything I mean to say. I'm not a very good writer, but I hope to have formed at least an understanding. I guess the meaning behind this whole spiel is that we all need to stop complaining. Genres are genres, titles are titles. If a game is crap, the title will only save it for the ignorant. If a game is great, the greatness will save it for all but the ignorant. A title is just a bunch of words. I would much rather see a great game than three more titles. You can't tell me I'm wrong about any of this, for even if one of those titles becomes a great game, I never said it wouldn't be, for it is, in fact, just a title.

Yeah. What he said. Except without the FFVIII-sucks implications.

Original Editorial: The RPG That Is Not An RPG