Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Got to drive a 1967 Lincoln convertible today. Damn that's a big freakin' car. Don't say we didn't warn you.

In the words of Roy from Blade Runner - "I've done... questionable things."

Well maybe that bad, but the results were interesting. Finally picked up Chu Chu Rocket for the Dreamcast today. See, unlike my PSX, which lives at home and exists only to play RPGs, my Dreamcast lives at the office, mostly, and exists to play multiplayer games. If the DC ever puts out quality single player games, like Eternal Arcadia or the new Ecco, that may change, but for the moment the box exists on a strict diet of NFL2K and Soul Calibur.

My chief competitor in these trials is my co-worker Jason, who's about as far from me, and many of you, I suspect, as you can get. I'm indoor, he's outdoor. I'm mental, he's physical. I'm verbose, he's generally taciturn. And I'm relatively broad-minded, while he's very firmly in the good-'ol-boy world. Don't get me wrong, he's a great guy, and he has far better taste than I do. But I suspect if you took him out of Texas for any length of time he'd die sure as a fish out of water.

So Jason's gotten tired of me kicking his butt at Soul Calibur, and we don't play much NFL2K since he kicks my butt at that. He wants a change of pace and I want to get a new Dreamcast game, so when I passed through Best Buy today I decided to pick up a cheap copy of CCR. (I still think Credence Clearwater Revival when I see that.)

The point of all this is I may have given him a brain sprain with the Rocket. Having seen the infamous commercial, other media, and various reviews I was fairly well prepared for the weirdness, but Jason was pretty freaked out I think. He just wasn't ready for that level of Nipponicana. Space mice and space cats, rockets and arrows, and a crisis management pace that would make a FEMA director's head explode just weren't a good combination. I think CCR's an excellent game, and suspect Jason'll come around sooner or later. But sometimes it's good to remember how deep into this stuff we get, and remember that in general, gamers are still the exception, not the rule.

Onward.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll have to try that when I restart my game tomorrow.

Internal GIA opinion on the game has been NOT GOOD, to say the least, and I'm sure you've all seen the various reviews by now. With so much going on at the moment I'm going to give LoD a miss, personally. However, most of the emails I've gotten about it have been optimistic (pre-purchase) or satisfied (post-purchase).

As Rune says above it's very much in the mode of pre-FF7 RPGs, despite the modern FF-style graphics. Descriptions of the plot so far range from "traditional" at best to "derivative" at worst. And apparently the old-school tag extends to having a comically bad translation. But for those of you looking for another traditionalist experience now that you're done with WA2, maybe Legend of Dragoon is worth a look.

As I've said before, very few RPGs these days seem really challenging. But then again, very few RPGs have traditionally been challenging. Even Vagrant Story seems relatively straightforward once you've figured out weapon management - my problems with the final boss just mean that I didn't get deep enough into it.

That said, it seems the best we can hope for is a game which is enjoyable to play, even if it's not difficult to beat. Shinji (you suck! Sorry, just had to say that) seems to be stating that this is the case with LoM, which is great because I'm in the mood for something lightweight after FM3 (no, still haven't beaten it) and Vagrant Story.

If I had one request to make for LoM, it would be that the many sidequests be worth playing. It's one thing to be able to go off on a quest to get the magic sword of Walla Walla, but even if it's the most badass weapon in the game that's not really a compelling reason to go through an extra 3 hours of random battles. I'd like to see more stuff like the quest to restore the forest in Crono Trigger, if possible, quests that make me care about finishing them.

Listen and follow my words, game developers.

As I've pointed out in more than a few emails by now, the extended columns of the past few days have tried to accommodate both VS discussion and completely independent letters. In essence, they were two columns in one. And I feel your pain, believe it or not - I wasn't near done with FF8 back when AV took over the column for a week to discuss the game. But I just avoided the column and went back to skim the discussion when I was done. No big deal. You don't even have to do that, as long as you can skip marked letters without reading them.

And hell, if you think reading a letters column full of spoilers is fun, try writing one when people send you spoilers about a game's ending mere days after it comes out. Keyser Soze himself could not be more cruel.

You have two interesting points worth discussing here. For the first, I think there can be no argument - other mythologies are often great places to steal a few key dramatic elements. Certainly Christianity would be attractive to a writer not brought up in the culture, especially with its emphasis on good vs. evil and a history drenched in the complexities of such a battle. Even the West is guilty of such plagiarism, just look at Wagner's raid on Norse mythology in his Ring Cycle.

At the same time, however, I wonder if the Japanese wouldn't be better off looking at their own mythologies for inspiration, but less for the West's benefit that for their own. John Milton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, William Faulkner - the list of Western writers who have been able to make compelling art built around Christian themes is huge, and there's no reason why the Japanese shouldn't be able to make games that (re)examine their own internal beliefs in the same way. (I'm sure they've done this in their own literature, movies, and probably anime, but if they've done it in their blockbuster games I'm unaware of it.) The ironic thing is, such a move might alienate Western gamers, as titles moved further away from relatively familiar themes, but in the long run I think we'd benefit from the superior insights such games would produce. And heck, George Lucas has said several times that Star Wars was based on various Eastern mythologies, so maybe we would enjoy it.

As for your other statement, that's harder to analyze. There's a motto many groups and beliefs have taken to heart: "From the outside you can't understand it, from the inside you can't explain it." Most of the time I take this at it's face value - as total BS. It doesn't, for example, give the Texas Aggies an excuse to keep doing their moronic traditions after lives have been lost. On the other hand, there are those I will accept this argument from, like the US Marine Corps. Does it work for Christianity? I don't know, but some heavy duty Christians I know seem to have something of that attitude. Not that they condone the atrocities you mention above, or even consider those that perpetrated those acts as part of their religion. But they do seem to have certain internal, inarticulated reasons why things like the Inquisition don't spoil the whole belief system. And I can at least grasp the concept that such reasons might exist, even if I don't think such reasons would actually provide a valid excuse.

Either way, in this case it's better to let a true believer make a case, rather than a relatively neutral party.

This was one of the few letters I got that was unequivocally in favor of Christianity, and I felt the argument had to be made if only for balance's sake. That said, it's probably just as well this topic ends today, because religious flame wars are generally really bad, m'kay? A quick glance at the history many people keep bringing up should be enough to verify that.

As you say, there are a lot of ways people come at RPGs. At this point I feel that RPGs exist more as a story telling medium more than an actual role playing experience. Kinda like the way "schizophrenia" as a technical medical term no longer has anything to do with "multiple personality disorder." (It's true, look it up.)

On the other hand, there are plenty of people who do take the role playing aspect fairly seriously, and in many cases these are the people who feel slighted by advanced graphics and gameplay that leaves nothing to the imagination. They want to have their lead character named after themselves, or be able to name their favorite sword "Thonguile, Skull Splitter", and as a personal preference I can't argue the point.

Of course, there are also those who get a kick out of naming their characters "Poo" and "Ass", but that's just stupid.

Sydney and Joshua talking (and not talking) at various times during the game was one of the big reasons I was behind the projection theory, but the flashback showing a much younger Duke and a kid Joshua's age makes me think the elder brother theory's currently the way to go. I dunno, maybe we can revisit this topic when I've had a chance to play through again.

Guildenstern does indeed run out of MP if he uses Apocalypse enough, although his MP regenerate just as well as Ashley's do. All things considered I wouldn't try to wait him out, since if you leave him alone long enough he'll use Blood Sin.

Samantha was... intriguing, to say the least, but her tattoos were a turnoff for me, personally.

This letter manages to be amusing and incredibly creepy at the same time, since I think a few people have tried this for real. *shudder* Remember kids, always be wary of who people say they are on the 'net.

After all, you'd never guess from my writing that I have such thick hair, long legs, and an hourglass figure... whoops, never mind...

Closing Comments:

A few people sent me some great letters on Jack Kroll's old editorial, both pro and con, but I didn't print them because it'd be in poor taste to discuss it this soon after his death. However, one thing I did want to make clear, since so many people seemed to think otherwise: JACK KROLL DID NOT WRITE THAT DOUBLE AGENT COLUMN. It was part of the April Fool's Day jokes, and said as much in the disclaimer. Myself and other staffers wrote the (purposely crude) letters, and I wrote "Kroll's" replies in an intentionally priggish manner.

I's outta heah, fo' now. But I's be back Monday, sho' 'nuff, so y'all keep right on writin' AK, ya heah'? Bah bah!

(Depressingly enough, some people in New Orleans really talk like that.)

-Chris Jones, ending 80's music reference mail link week