Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2015-03-02 07:44 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2015-03-02 07:44 am
Entry tags:
Someday The Dream Will End.
Lately, I've been replaying Final Fantasy X (the original PS2 version, rather than the HD remaster). It's so strange to go back to this game after experiencing PS3 graphics. I remember when I first saw a trailer for Final Fantasy X and was absolutely floored. How were graphics this good even possible? They all looked exactly like real people!
It took me a while to get into my replay, and for a while I was afraid that I might have lost my affection for this game, but then I suddenly plummeted into the desperate depths of love again. It's so good. I love the battle system. I love the characters. I love the music. I do not love all the terrible minigames, but I will look past them because everything else is so great.
Spira is a low-technology world built on the ruins of highly advanced cities. I like the backstory of Final Fantasy X for the way it sets up a very logical explanation for this and then veers off wildly to the left. 'Centuries ago, mankind waged war. Both sides built more and more powerful weapons. In the end, they built weapons so powerful it was thought they could destroy the world.' Okay, so the previous society annihilated itself in an arms race? Nope. 'Then a giant flying whale showed up and destroyed everything.'
Replaying Final Fantasy X has intensely reawoken my desire to see a prequel in which you follow Auron, Braska and Jecht on their pilgrimage. The problem, I suppose, is that we already know how that story ends. Then again, we knew how Crisis Core ended, and I thought that game still managed to justify its existence.
It might not be the time for that game now, though, with Final Fantasy XV coming out. I'm fine with one Final Fantasy game that's All About Men, but two in quick succession might be a bit much.
Initially, learning that Final Fantasy XV would have no female party members bothered me, but I've relaxed a bit now. The Final Fantasy series has almost always included several fully-developed women with their own storylines, and of the last five single-player console games (X-2, XII, XIII, XIII-2 and Lightning Returns), the main character has been female in four (two, in fact, have had no playable male characters). Square's inability to design a female character over the age of twenty-two is troubling, but they're still one of the better game developers for female representation and they've built up some faith with me. If they go, 'On this occasion, we'd like to tell a story about boys,' I'm more likely to go, 'Well, if that's the story you'd like to tell, bring it on!' than I am with, say, Rockstar, for whom my reaction would be, 'Well, yes, but you've been telling stories about boys exclusively for seventeen years.'
It also helps that I suspect Final Fantasy XV's homoerotic roadtrip theme is in part calculated to appeal to women. There are different forms of representation, and recognition in the form of 'hello, we see you behind the controller and we want to draw you in' makes the lack of recognition in the form of 'hello, here you are on the screen' feel less alienating to me. (The former - being welcomed as a member of the audience - might actually be more important to me; Final Fantasy X-2 had an all-female cast, but I never felt entirely at ease with it because I felt it was very much aimed at men. It's been a long time since I last played it, though, so maybe I'll give it another chance once I've finished my X replay.)
None of this is to say that being upset at the lack of female party members isn't valid, of course; this is just my personal attitude. In summary: I'm fine with stories about dudes, so long as they welcome me as part of the audience and so long as they're not the only thing I'm being offered.
Now give me my Auron/Jecht/Braska tragic boyfriends game.
(Auron is so in love with Braska. The flashbacks are so painful to watch. Why do I want to subject myself to an entire game of this?)
It took me a while to get into my replay, and for a while I was afraid that I might have lost my affection for this game, but then I suddenly plummeted into the desperate depths of love again. It's so good. I love the battle system. I love the characters. I love the music. I do not love all the terrible minigames, but I will look past them because everything else is so great.
Spira is a low-technology world built on the ruins of highly advanced cities. I like the backstory of Final Fantasy X for the way it sets up a very logical explanation for this and then veers off wildly to the left. 'Centuries ago, mankind waged war. Both sides built more and more powerful weapons. In the end, they built weapons so powerful it was thought they could destroy the world.' Okay, so the previous society annihilated itself in an arms race? Nope. 'Then a giant flying whale showed up and destroyed everything.'
Replaying Final Fantasy X has intensely reawoken my desire to see a prequel in which you follow Auron, Braska and Jecht on their pilgrimage. The problem, I suppose, is that we already know how that story ends. Then again, we knew how Crisis Core ended, and I thought that game still managed to justify its existence.
It might not be the time for that game now, though, with Final Fantasy XV coming out. I'm fine with one Final Fantasy game that's All About Men, but two in quick succession might be a bit much.
Initially, learning that Final Fantasy XV would have no female party members bothered me, but I've relaxed a bit now. The Final Fantasy series has almost always included several fully-developed women with their own storylines, and of the last five single-player console games (X-2, XII, XIII, XIII-2 and Lightning Returns), the main character has been female in four (two, in fact, have had no playable male characters). Square's inability to design a female character over the age of twenty-two is troubling, but they're still one of the better game developers for female representation and they've built up some faith with me. If they go, 'On this occasion, we'd like to tell a story about boys,' I'm more likely to go, 'Well, if that's the story you'd like to tell, bring it on!' than I am with, say, Rockstar, for whom my reaction would be, 'Well, yes, but you've been telling stories about boys exclusively for seventeen years.'
It also helps that I suspect Final Fantasy XV's homoerotic roadtrip theme is in part calculated to appeal to women. There are different forms of representation, and recognition in the form of 'hello, we see you behind the controller and we want to draw you in' makes the lack of recognition in the form of 'hello, here you are on the screen' feel less alienating to me. (The former - being welcomed as a member of the audience - might actually be more important to me; Final Fantasy X-2 had an all-female cast, but I never felt entirely at ease with it because I felt it was very much aimed at men. It's been a long time since I last played it, though, so maybe I'll give it another chance once I've finished my X replay.)
None of this is to say that being upset at the lack of female party members isn't valid, of course; this is just my personal attitude. In summary: I'm fine with stories about dudes, so long as they welcome me as part of the audience and so long as they're not the only thing I'm being offered.
Now give me my Auron/Jecht/Braska tragic boyfriends game.
(Auron is so in love with Braska. The flashbacks are so painful to watch. Why do I want to subject myself to an entire game of this?)
no subject
This is a really good point and kind of the place I would like our world to be in! And I hadn't really realized the Square has actually made so many games featuring female leads. (And really, I would still argue that the main character of FFXII is actually Ashe, not Vaan, but whatever.)
And yeah, getting to actually play through Braska's quest would break my heart in all the best ways.
no subject
Square aren't perfect, of course - there's the age issue, and the fact that the party always skews male-heavy in the games with larger casts - but they're far better than the rest of the industry. So, as long as they keep on making games with plenty of interesting, plot-relevant women, I'll forgive them the occasional dudefest.